by tradesmeninsights | Feb 1, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
One of the first rules of social media is to listen. Most of us get that when it comes to our outward activities and from groups that you belong to. But when it comes to listening to what people are saying about us, are we doing a good job? Jay Baer thinks we all could do better.
In a recent post, he points out that no matter what tools you’re using to monitor your activity, you may be missing the boat when it comes to key words that you are using to track activity. Jay points out that in social conversations, very rarely does your company name or trade names come up in conversation.
Rather, it’s more likely that people will be talking about a plumbing problem of their toilet leaking and are looking at ways to fix it. So if the key words that you are tracking are your company name and the trade name of the product that fixes the internal working of a toilet, you’d be out of luck.
Maybe you should be taking the list of key words you use in your SEO and incorporate them into your listening program. You should also include your competitors, suppliers, distribution outlets. Anything that revolves around your category.
Let me know how you make out.
by tradesmeninsights | Jan 31, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
Mobile media is here in a BIG way. Are you incorporating it into your marketing plans for 2012?
According to eMarketer, tablet users in the USA will reach almost 90 million by 2015. By 2015, there will be almost 150 million smartphone users.
So what can you do to dip your toe into the mobile market? I’d suggest you add a mobile component to an existing program and track the results.
Add a video via a QR code in an ad or on packaging that takes them to a helpful video. Do a mobile friendly landing page where they can easily find their closest dealer or store to buy.
Try something. Monitor the results and then try something else. This is the only way to get in since the choices are so overwhelming.
Here are a few other good reasons to incorporate mobile:
Integrating mobile marketing into your overall plans helps support every phase of the purchase cycle, based on data from eMarketer via Millward Brown-Dynamic Logic.
From a marketing perspective, it’s important to understand how and where consumers use their mobile phones. As smartphone penetration continues to increase, mobile phones are no longer just for talking. In fact, according to comScore, only one out of four owners use a phone solely for voice communications.
Mobile is here to stay so you should jump in sooner than later.
If you like this post, you might like:
Podcast: Why Manufacturers Should Be Using QR Codes
What Are You Doing to Insure a Successful QR Code Campaign?
Are You Considering Mobile Media as a Strategy to Reach Professional Tradesmen?
by tradesmeninsights | Jan 26, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Social media and its marketing are very important, and how you execute can mean the difference between fair and great results. We all try to formulate best practices.
A recent article by Ashley Zeckman, 20 Social Media Marketing Do’s and Don’ts sparked some thoughts on my end of what we need to do and avoid in the world of social media.
Here are my thoughts and I would love to hear what you would add to the lists:
DO’S
- Interaction – Take the time to comment and interact. If you’re always trying to sell, sell, sell, it becomes hard to have a two-way conversation.
- Re-purpose content – If you have different audiences, slant the message to each one. Also use content on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to drive traffic to your blog.
- Take advantage of SEO – Make sure what you do is searchable so it can be optimized.
- Have one voice – Someone has to be responsible both in delivering the message, but also in responding to comments.
- Test and measure – Make sure you have the tools in place to see what’s working best for you and your audience.
DON’TS
- Don’t ignore people – Especially negative comments. There’s nothing wrong with disagreeing, but do so in a polite way.
- Don’t use automated responses – It defeats the purpose of trying to start a meaningful dialog. When was the last time you tried to have a conversation with a robot?
- Don’t overcommit – Yes, you’ll find numerous accounts or groups that you should be in. If you can’t commit to utilizing a platform on a regular basis, what’s the point? More is not better.
- It’s not about you – Instead of telling them how great you are, ask them how you might help them solve a problem.
- What are you doing with all these relationships – You’ve spent lots of time and effort to engage prospects. What’s the plan to take it to the next level?
Let’s hear your ideas.
by tradesmeninsights | Jan 25, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Traditional Marketing
Are you using email newsletters to keep in touch with customers and prospects? If not, you should be considering it. They are relatively easy to do, especially if you do a blog.
Using a CRM service like Emma, Exact Target or Constant Contact it will give you access to templates to use for formatting, and more importantly, it will give you tracking data on who opened the email and where they spent time. The metrics will also tell you where and on what subjects people are attracted to. They also give you room for special messaging and links to appropriate sites.
Here are 4 reasons why you should consider a newsletter:
- Helps you stay in front of customers and potentials.
- Helps you establish thought leadership in your area of expertise.
- Helps identify potentials who sign up for and keep coming back to your newsletter. Maybe someone should call on them?
- Build a mailing list. Use it as one touch point to get your brand in front of your audience.
Frequency will depend on a few things. If you do a blog, I’d suggest you do it monthly and highlight the top 5 posts of the month. Most templates give you room for a customized message, like look for a new product launch coming next month or promotion of a webinar.
If you don’t do a blog, assembly of info for the newsletter may be a little more time-consuming and I would suggest doing it at least quarterly. You could assign responsibilities to various people within your company. Customer service, sales and marketing. The key is to give the reader relevent and timely info.
by tradesmeninsights | Jan 24, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Everybody does some sort of events in their businesses. Open houses, counter days, new product launches to name a few. Have you ever considered using social media to help create buzz?
I recently read a post by Ekaterina Walter in Social Media Examiner called 15 Ways to Bring Social Media to Events that I thought was really good. Even though some of her points were more for a retail/consumer approach, here are four of her tips that I thought would be applicable to this audience.
- Create pre-event buzz – Start early with registration. Encourage attendees to share details. If you’re having speakers, make sure to include their Bios and Twitter handles.
- Keep attendees informed – Use QR codes to access presentations if it’s being done outside. Collect your speaker’s blogs all in one place and create a dashboard of their latest posts.
- Help them share information – Use Twitter back channels so you can get questions and feedback. Share images and presentations. Open your event to virtual attendees.
- Post event – Publish your Twitter wall and give all access to your talks with links to videos.
I’m sure there are other ways to use social media for events, and I’d like to hear ways you’ve used it.
by tradesmeninsights | Jan 19, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Your blog should be the centerpiece of your marketing efforts, so it stands to reason that you need to promote as much traffic to it as you can. I recently read a post on Problogger from Blogstash that outlined 65 ways to improve your traffic.
So here are some of my favorite ones:
- Interview an expert or industry leader in your field and then post it on your blog.
- Guest posts, there are certainly others in your space. Talk to them and see if they would be willing to do a post. Who knows, they may ask you to reciprocate.
- Find interesting posts others have done and write a post about it and link to their site.
- Go to YouTube and find relevant videos and make comments on with a link back to your blog.
- Build a Wiki page for your blog using a non-promoting post.
- Write list posts like this one. People seem to like them.
- Publish your posts on Wikipedia.
- Make sure you post on your social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn) a brief description and link to your site.
I have found that Twitter and the groups that I belong to on LinkedIn generate more traffic to my blog than any other source.
A suggestion would be to take a few of these, implement them and see how they work for you.
