by tradesmeninsights | Dec 15, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
I tell everyone if they could only use one social media tool to generate new business, I’d use LinkedIn. While my blog is important (long term), and Twitter is very useful once you get your followers, LinkedIn offers you a way to be more proactive. Before you start utilizing it, you first have to make sure that your page is updated and as near to the 100% mark as you can get it. Once that’s done, dig in and have some fun.
Here are 5 ways I utilize LinkedIn:
- Ongoing program to increase your contacts – After going through your contact list, continue to add contacts each week by setting a goal of say 4-5 new contacts. It’s easy to do. When you’re at social or business events and meet people, when you get back to the office, see if they’re on LinkedIn and get connected. Every time you go to your LinkedIn page, it prompts you in the upper right hand corner to invite people that might be primary contacts of someone you know or a group you belong to. This should be good for 2-3 new contacts each week.
- Search company profiles – for niches/markets you’re trying to target. Get in and get involved!
- Search for groups – this allows you to search associations, buying groups or other folks who share common interests. I normally, once a week, take a recent post and put it on all the groups that I belong to. This is a good way to not only build credibility, but also drive more people to your blog.
- Search individual profiles – there’s a whole bunch of info on individuals that you target. Take some time to review their profile and see what kind of connection and groups they belong to. If you do your homework, you’ll know a lot about a new potential friend, and when you ask him to join your network, you can talk about some common interests in your first contact. This is a great way to get a conversation going quickly.
- Search by market terms – determine what questions or answers can be searched that will bring up like-minded people. By reviewing your findings, “experts ” in the field will be easily identified.
Once you have a system in place, then you need to start listening and contributing. These are the ways I utilize LinkedIn. I ‘d like to hear how others out there are doing using social as a new business tool.
by tradesmeninsights | Dec 8, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
I’ve always said that social media isn’t the silver bullet that will make all things right. It’s just a tool like any other tool in your marketing tool box. Whether it’s e-mail, snail mail or social media, they all work better when they are a part of a bigger picture and an integrated plan. When we talk with clients about social, they are so focused on the “how” instead of the ” why.” “How” isn’t relevant if you don’t have plan on “why” you’re going to integrate social. Marketers need to realize that by integrating social into existing programs, the net result will be better because social lets potentials identify you!
I read a post recently by Jay Baer, The big social media integration picture, that highlights ways to achieve cross-media synergy using social media that I think is worth reading. Jay is a leading authority in social and he’s on my must-read list every day.
I’d like to hear from you on ways that you’re integrating social into your current marketing plans.
by tradesmeninsights | Nov 24, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
20 Reasons Why Social Media Won’t Replace Email
Email marketing is still an important tool to your new business program.
The rise in popularity of social media only enhances email. The two can work powerfully together. Two excellent articles, Chris Crums, writer for WebPro News, “10 Reasons Social Media isn’t Replacing Email” and VerticalResponse CEO, Janine Popick, “10 More Reasons Why Social Media Wont Replace Email.” Chris always has great marketing insights. Janine also provides some insightful resources and practices what she preaches for both email marketing and social media. I recommend them both.
Here are their 20 reasons why social media won’t replace email:
- People still send hand-written letters.
- Nearly all sites on the web that require registration require an email address.
- Email notifies you of updates from all social networks.
- We haven’t seen any evidence yet that Google Wave really will catch on on a large scale.
- Email is universal, and social networks are not.
- There are plenty who have no interest in joining social networks.
- Email is still improving.
- Even social networks themselves recognize the importance of email.
- More social media use means more email use.
- As far as marketing is concerned, email is doing pretty well.
- Twitter and Facebook are fantastic products and companies; but that’s what they are, companies.
- Your email recipients are still going to use business email for business purposes.
- You can’t easily segment your friends and followers to do targeted marketing (through social media).
- You can’t tell who clicked on a link with some social media outlets.
- That said, you can’t tell who didn’t click on the link so you can follow up with them with a different message.
- You cannot personalize your Facebook updates.
- You cannot size your graphics or use more than one in Facebook.
- You can’t track how many clicks you got on your links in Facebook.
- You are limited to 140 characters in Twitter.
- You almost have to have separate social media accounts for your business and your personal life.
by tradesmeninsights | Nov 18, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
When we communicate with our target audiences, whether it’s through traditional methods or the use of social media, we want to inform and hopefully engage them. It’s through the engagement process that we start a dialog with them which hopefully will turn into something more (hopefully a sale). I’ve enclosed some tips on how we successfully engage tradesmen:
- Make sure you identify WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) for the contractor.
- Make sure the message is easy to skim (bullet points, bold or italicized type, photo captions).
- Make sure your message is clear and expressed (understood) quickly.
- Offer a demo – either online or in person.
- Contractor testimonials – Peer reviews are more believable and hold more influence on other contractors.
- Offer several ways for them to easily contact you and get more info.
- Offer incentives or other reasons for them to respond immediately.
- Make it easy for them to respond – email, website form or special phone number.
- Back up any claim with the proper proof (or reference where they can get it).
- Make sure offers appeal to the different stages in their buying cycle.
These are my top 10 ways. I’m sure you have some proven ways and I’d love to hear about them.
by tradesmeninsights | Nov 4, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
We all have limits on our time and those of us who have dived into social media have to find time in our schedules if we want these marketing tools to work. The key, like anything, is organization and setting priorities so you optimize your time spent. I recently read a post by Adam Singer (worth reading), 21 Must-Follow Tips for Optimizing Time Spent on Social Media and it got me thinking of several ways to make the most out of your time.
- Periodically review your RSS feeds – It’s so easy with all the tools out there to subscribe to something you think might have value long term, but come to find out the info you get there you can find somewhere else, and some of the original article/topics that got you to subscribe in the first place come infrequently. Don’t burden yourself down. I, at least quarterly, purge some of these that are not as relevant as I once thought.
- Focus on your niche – There is so much info on the Internet that it could easily overwhelm you. Focus on your respective core markets/interests and spend more time on those trusted sites.
- Monitor your time – This is a big one. Let’s face it, we all have limited time and everyone is asking us to do more and more. The Internet can be a fooler and suck you in and all of a sudden you’ve let hours pass instead of minutes. My rule of thumb is that I won’t spend any more than 1 hour a day checking my accounts and doing research/reading. This does not include the time I spend researching and writing my blog.
- Learn to skim – There’s not enough time in the day to read everything. You need learn how to skim articles quickly to see if they are really what you’re looking for. I find the better bloggers I read keep paragraphs short and get to the point quickly. You should be able, in 30 seconds, skim an article and determine whether or not it’s of interest to you.
- Monitor your audiences – If you’re a blogger, there are metrics which allow you to monitor views. Look at these periodically and focus your efforts on those topics where you’re getting the most action.
These are some of my priorities. What are you doing to manage your time?
by tradesmeninsights | Oct 28, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it.
One of the main reasons folks should use social is, for the most part, easily trackable and you can see quickly your success/failure rates. I’m amazed when asking people who are using social tools how are they doing, they come back to me with some generalized statements like, “I’m doing really well.” If I press them for more details, I come to find out that they really don’t have a plan for measuring what they do and the time they spend at it. Metrics are an important component for the use of social media. Especially measuring for ROI in regards to the amount of time that must be invested. You would think this would be a no brainer. But according to a recent a survey by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education, a whopping 84% of professionals do not measure ROI for social media. It appears that hardly anyone is taking the time to measure the ROI for social.
Some additional insightful statistics from this survey:
- 86% of respondents to the survey of professionals from a variety of industries said they had adopted social technologies.
- 57% said they were using social media tools for marketing.
- More than four in 10 respondents did not even know whether the social tools they were using had ROI measurement capabilities.
- 3 in 10 reported using social media for customer service and support.
Click Here to download a copy of this report.
Here’s another post you might find interesting: How Do You Measure Social Media?
A great resource of social media articles and fresh reports comes from eMarketer. I found the original source of this survey through their eMarketer Daily Newsletter. I highly recommend it.
