by tradesmeninsights | May 5, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
I’ve written previously that one of the primary objectives of a blog is to engage readers. Unfortunately, we sometimes get so focused on our message and making our blog stand out that we forget about our audience, the people reading our posts. These folks bring new insights and ideas to our posts and provide us with the opportunity for dialogue and feedback .
Here’s an idea: Why not recognize a reader and give them their 15 seconds of fame.Yes, you heard me right, make it about them.
If you create a space or regular column highlighting some of your readers, you accomplish both the benefit of acknowledging that your readers have something to contribute, but it also shows other readers that you value their opinion as well even though you only recognize a few.
A recent post by Darren Rowse, Pay special attention to a reader, outlines 8 ways to highlight your readers. Here are some highlights:
- Promote a comment to a post. When a reader makes a good point, recognize them and talk about their comment.
- Write a post about their blog. Check out some of the blogs of people who share your ideas and write an unpaid review of their blog on what you like about it.
- Send your readers to comment on others blogs. Write a post that links people to another site and ask them to comment on the other person’s site.
- Give readers opportunity to promote themselves. Run a contest/project that gives readers an opportunity to promote themselves.
- Reader of the week. Highlight a reader once a week, say on a Friday.
- Projects/competition. Invite readers to post blogs and share a link with others.
- Run a reader poll. Then highlight it in a follow-up post.
- Invite guest posts. A great way to get another perspective as well as giving someone else the opportunity to have an impact on your blog.
Those are some ideas. What have you found that works?
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 30, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Why promote your blog? Just because you write the most provocative post, it doesn’t mean the world at large will know it’s even out there. Yet by using the right key words and phrases, you’ll get organic action from the search engines, and if you spend a little more time being proactive, you’ll see even better results.
Here are 5 quick tips to help promote your posts:
- Email Signatures. Add a link to your blog especially of recent posts. Have you ever thought of how many e-mails you send out a day (not to mention all the other people at your company)? What a great way to let people know you have a blog. Most of your correspondence is either going to customers, prospects or vendors, all of which should have a vested interest in your topics.
- Social Networking. Hopefully you belong to Facebook, Twitter, etc. Leverage these by promoting your posts. The object is to have your friends and followers spread the good news. The key is to give them something worth sharing!
- Internal Links. Sometimes we’re so focused on promoting our posts on other sites that we lose site of the most obvious place to be linked internally. Hopefully you’ve written content on a similar topic or market before, so add a link. It keeps people on your site longer and helps build your credibility as an expert. I have all my posts broken into 3 categories: Trends, Tools and Tips and link back appropriately.
- E-newsletters. If you have a list, send out an e-mail promoting some of your key posts. If you don’t have a list, start one as that’s blogging 101.
- Pitch Other Bloggers. This is an important one, but not so easy to accomplish. Like anything else, you need to establish a relationship with other bloggers. Read their stuff to make sure you’re compatible. Make comments on their posts. Link back to some of their posts when appropriate. Blogging is like any other referral network. People need to know, like and trust you before they recommend you. And when you think you’re ready, suggest versus ask them to consider linking.
Daren Rowse provides additional insights to promoting your post that you might find helpful: 11 ways to increase your chances of being linked to by a blogger.
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 27, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
A lot of people don’t know or understand enough about the dynamics of SEO. They either choose to ignore it or become targets of SEO companies that start guaranteeing results. Remember the old saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” “There is no free lunch.” You get the idea.
These companies use techniques called “black hat” which in the short term could raise your traffic, but in the long term it could get you banned from search engines and then who would really lose? It’s important to remember that no SEO company controls rankings on competitive search key words.
I read a post recently by Janet Meiners, Five tips for avoiding deceptive SEO companies, in which she outlines both questionable and downright deceptive tactics. Here’s a summary of what she wrote:
- Putting too many key words on your site. It’s called key word stuffing and they repeat words/phrases. This is an ineffective practice that does nothing more than confuse everybody including the spider.
- Overuse of bolded text or too many links. It looks terrible and doesn’t build trust with people.
- Hidden Links. These are hidden in code or in the footer and may not even be related to your site.
- Complicated link schemes. Google can detect unnatural link patterns. Some people build programs that link automatically that are full of spam content.
- Multiple domains with virtually the same content but different key words. Content is deliberately duplicated across domain names in an attempt to manipulate search engine results.
There are no short cuts. The best rule of thumb is to make your site a good experience for your visitors. This means good original content or other elements that want to make people want to link to you. And as in looking at any service provider, do your home work, get references and if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 21, 2009 | Marketing Tips
A professional tradesman worth his salt, whether he’s an electrician, plumber, HVAC technician or a MRO specialist, doesn’t have a million answers on how to solve problems.
Why not ask the right questions and get engaged in a conversation?
After all, isn’t that what social media is all about — ENGAGEMENT!
One of the biggest benefits of social media is the ability to put something out there (the universe) and let those to whom it applies to identify themselves as users. Where could you corral that much experience in one place and then get input from them (it’s like shooting fish in a barrel).
This beats traditional focus groups hands down. You get a quick, more honest feedback from a broader section of your target audience.
Here are 5 reasons to ask Tradesmen questions:
- New application– You may have a new tool or application that you want to get feed back on.
- New product- what better place to do some real beta testing to see if you’re hitting all the right points with the user.
- Quick tips– ask for theirs and you will be inundated with ideas.
- Identify new uses for products– it would sometime amaze you how these guys are using your product(not according to instruction manual).
- Market research. use polls and surveys to collect valuable marketing info on the product,its applications and the competitors!
When was the last time you talked to a tradesman who didn’t want to tell you about something? Why not ask?
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 20, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
E-mails have been around and we’ve used it to asked tradesmen to forward on valuable information to their peers about our products or programs. It’s not easy and isn’t reliable because you’re asking the customer to do a lot of work on your behalf. E-mail is also a one-way street in that you don’t make it easy to respond back to the original source.
Joint research by Ball State University,Exact Target and e-mail networking association reveals that more than 46% of e-mail marketing campaigns this year will use social media and e-mail in tandem compared to just 13% in 2008.
E-mail combined with social media offerings like Linked-in, Facebook and Twitter allow you to get your message out quicker to more people and give them an easy way to reply. In other words you’re engaging them and that’s why social media is so important. By clicking a link, you are sharing content with influencers that you might not have had reached.
I read a post recently from Karen Bannan, Combining e-mail with social media,where she shared thoughts from Ryan Duetsch from StrongMail Systems on ways to get the most out of your efforts.
- Use ESPs. Most major ESPs (like StrongMail and Sliverpop) and e-mail providers are making it easy to send e-mails directly to your Facebook page for example.
- Create your own social network. Create your own community. If you’re targeting professional plumbers for example, the discussions that go on provide great resources for e-newsletters. You know what the hot topics are and can address them as an expert.
- Add opt-in links to all your marketing collateral. For example, if you post a new video on Facebook, make sure it contains a link at the end so viewers can opt-in. Once it’s shared, you’ll be reaching thousands of prospects making sure you give them a way to ask for more information.
- Use your status to publicize your e-mail newsletter. Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter give users the option to publish information. Take advantage of this and even send out a reminder before you actually send out the e-mail that it’s coming.
- Change your layout. If you’re sending people from a social media site to your web site, make sure your opt-in links are very visible.
- Use search functions. Follow your company and brand names on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter to gain market knowledge. Twitter search lets you follow everything that’s mentioned about your company.
- Be a Joiner. You need to get involved. You want to become a trusted source, and in order to do that, you need to join Linkedin groups, respond to questions and get involved in discussions.
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 20, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
It used to be that marketers counted on “word of mouth” to help spread their message to the tradesmen and maintenance professionals. Today, social media takes this to the next level and does it quicker and better.
Since you already know who you’re focusing on by using viral marketing, you can make it easier for your message to be passed on. Viral marketing has gained popularity because it produces results that are measurable while increasing your brand awareness. A recent post by Chase McMichael, The 3 pillars of viral marketing, outlines ways you can put viral marketing on steroids. Here’s an overview of how using these techniques can help you reach the professional tradesman:
- Target your audience. Social media makes it easier and faster to reach your target. More people are posting their personal profiles on social networks allowing you to data mine them and identify and rank affinities within specific communities like HVAC -TALK.
- Reach your audience. Once you’ve identified your user, you can quickly pinpoint influencers and begin enticing them to become brand ambassadors.
- Create the right call to action. If you’re doing your homework by monitoring these communities, you will soon identify the issues that need to be addressed and the appropriate call to action. It might be good to join a great online community that you have or sign up for the latest performance charts of a specific tool or application,
Conclusion: Messages that connect with you target can drive a high degree of brand awareness and acceptance. Practical and simple to access technologies help drive engagement and participation.
