by tradesmeninsights | Aug 3, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
B-to-B and manufacturing companies alike face the same challenges when it comes to developing and implementing social media programs. They’re too busy taking care of business to make adequate plans, let alone implement them.
Social media is a cost-effective addition to your marketing program and you should try to utilize it as much as possible. I recently read a post from Heidi Cohen, Social Media Strategies for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses, that brought up some good points that can be applied to the manufacturing sector. Here are some highlights and thoughts:
- Give your prospects information that’s useful – how to info, troubleshooting tips, something simple that even could be tweeted.
- Solve a potential problem – people are always looking for help, and as a manufacturer, you want to build your thought leadership.
- Go where your customers are – no matter what kind of business you’re in, there are niche communities either through trade associations or industry forums that you can participate in.
- Create your own online community – start small with a group on LinkedIn ,Yahoo or Google.
- Educate and train – capitalize on your videos and other training aids already in place for your source of info.
Those are some of my suggestions. What are you doing to develop cost-effective strategies?
by tradesmeninsights | Aug 2, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Social media isn’t just about posting comments on Facebook or Twitter. It’s about not only having a plan of how to execute your message, but how to get the most out of it. Since social media is different from our normal marketing activities, your team needs to be trained with guidelines on the do’s and don’t’s .
The Construction Marketing Association recently posted 5 Social Media Training Tips that would really apply to any industry.
Here are some highlights:
- Create a social media policy – Ensure both brand and corporate objectives are met. Need to define ramifications of negative situations, unprofessional conduct and disciplinary actions.
- Recruit social media editors – Social media opens up who should contribute to the message outside the typical PR and Marketing disciplines. Recruit and leverage thought leaders within your company and take advantage of their expertise.
- Develop a plan – This is not ready, fire, aim. You need to define overall objectives and goals for each social media segment you are planning on participating in.
- Conduct social media training – After you’ve recruited your team, you need to give them some basic training in each social platform. Each are different and they need to understand the best way to use the system.
- Keep everyone in the loop – You need to keep everyone from the team doing the work, to management where you want to build support, updated on the “wins.” Sharing the successes creates enthusiasm.
It’s important not to just jump in but have a plan. What are some things you’re doing to help educate your team?
If you ike this post, you may like:
Have You Got a Social Media Policy?
You Should Know the “Why” Before the “How” if You’re Going to Jump Into Social Media
by tradesmeninsights | Jul 27, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Sure you’ve heard it before that content is king, but what does that really mean? It’s more than a posting on Facebook or your lates blog post. It’s a long-term commitiment to your brand and what it stands for.
Everything you do should reflect your company’s core points of differentiation. I recently read a post by John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing, called 5 Types of Content That Every Business Must Employ that I thought made several good points. Among them:
- Build trust – content builds a bridge between awareness and trust.
- Educate – content creates awareness and will make the prospect want to learn more.
- Get customers involved – build loyalty and community and let’s face it, you don’t have all the answers.
- Filtering and aggregating information – you need to be recognized as a go-to source for information; it doesn’t mean it all has to be original.
- Convert prospects into buyers – this is the ultimate goal and great content will help you in this process.
How are you using content to meet your marketing goals?
by tradesmeninsights | Jul 26, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
I’m amazed by people who say social media is free! Obviously they haven’t dove into it or they don’t value their time or the time that others invest. While outside costs are minimal usually compared to traditional marketing campaigns, what it lacks in outside costs, it makes up with internal costs.
I recently read a post by Heidi Cohen, How to Calculate Social Media Costs, that I thought was worth sharing. Highlights include:
- People – The most obvious and often the most overlooked because they are already in the budget. Your staff monitors, creates, manages and responds to social media.
- Content – This drives everything in social and you need to constantly create new stuff. Who’s doing it and if you’re not doing it in your own department and get sales or engineering involved, how do you calculate their time?
- Support media – What are you doing to promote and drive traffic? E-blast, landing pages, creative and paid advertising.
- Brand monitoring – Software and tracking fees to keep up to speed on what’s being said about you and your competitors.
- Technology – You need support which normally comes from your IT department or creative to support your website, blog and server capacity issues.
What are some other costs that you’ve identified?
by tradesmeninsights | Jul 21, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
If you do a blog and aren’t getting the results you were hoping for, maybe you’re doing something wrong.
A recent article by Cindy King in Social Media Examiner, 21 Dangerous Blogging Mistakes (and How to Fix Them) outlines some items from industry leaders on what they see as the biggest mistakes. It’s a good read and we’re all guilty of some of these. Here are my top 5 favorites:
- Not understanding your audience – What value do you bring to the table? You need to understand the problems of your audience.
- Not having a strong niche – Smaller is better. Develop a niche following that is equally focused, passionate and valuable.
- Not committing to the process – Blogging is a commitment; that means plan on writing 2-3 posts every week using keyword rich posts with persuasive, compelling titles.
- Failing to engage the readers with a compelling headline – You need to get people to open up your post. If it’s not clever or to the point, you could be giving away a million dollars and no one would know.
- Not sharing your expertise – The fastest way to build community is by sharing info. Refer and link to other experts in your industry. Have guest bloggers and be a guest blogger on other sites.
by tradesmeninsights | Jul 19, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Why are you either doing or considering social media as part of your marketing mix? Hopefully the answer is to ultimately get new customers. If that’s the case, you first need to build your followers and start having conversations with them. It’s a process and it doesn’t happen over night. Here are 3 tips on building followers:
- Content – Without it you won’t have anything to bring to the table. Come up with topic categories that would be applicable to your target audience and then put together an editorial calendar to make sure each topic is covered on a regular basis.
- You don’t have to the have all the answers – Rely on others in the field. Comment on what they say and put your take on it. Talk about industry issues and trends.
- Engage – Not everyone who reads your posts will be motivated to either share it or comment on it. But those that do open the door for you to engage them in further conversation. Sometimes your readers see you commenting and jump into the conversation.
Those are some of my tips on getting followers. What are you doing?
