by tradesmeninsights | Aug 19, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
A lot of B-to-B marketers still find it hard to understand practical ways to use this marketing tool. Twitter can be used as a marketing tool to build your brand, build credibility by sharing your expertise and grow your network. Twitter is my number-one source for views to my posts. Here are a few ways you can capitalize on this powerful tool:
- Establish yourself as an expert in your field by authoring your thoughts on an industry topic, sharing tips and links to articles posted elsewhere.
- Grow your network by joining industry groups or forums
- Participate in Twit chats as they relate to your industry or expertise
- Use Twitter search to find out about competitors, trends or what people are saying about you
- Give -Get referrals
- Add your Twitter ID to all correspondence whether it’s your e-mail, business cards or even your sales material down near the corporate signature.
These are only a few ways. I recently read a post by Meryl Evans, 62 Ways to Use Twitter for Business, that you might find interesting.
Here are a few other posts you might find interesting:
5 ways to find prospects on Twitter
5 ways to use Twitter as a tool to reach the professional tradesman
use Twitter as a PR tool to help build long term relationships
by tradesmeninsights | Jul 30, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
Before you answer that question, you first have to have something to measure it against. Set expectations and goals, then make a plan, execute it and then monitor it. Why are you even playing with social if you’re not looking to reach new prospects. You first need to identify your audience, make them aware of who you are and then engage them. Use metrics to keep you on track but don’t get obsessed with them.
Use measuring devices first of all to help you monitor what you’re doing and secondly to fend off the bean counters as to what are we getting out of this. Are you reaching the people? Are you engaging them and building a relationship? If you have a blog, how is your audience embracing your message? With social you have numerous tools that will help you monitor your progress from Google Analytics to Twitter Search, Technorati or BoardReader.com. With my blog, I know immediately if I’ve hit a home run with a post. With Twitter, you can monitor what people are saying about you or your competitors. LinkedIn lets you participate in groups that gives you the opportunity to gain visibility and credibility and hopefully start engaging new potentials.
Several folks have got their own processes in place. Bill Seaver has a L.A.C.E. method which stands for – Leads, Awareness, Customer Service and Engagement. Tarla Cumming’s method is called M.O.M. – Monitor, Outreach and Measure. The point is everyone’s circumstances are different. Try something and if it doesn’t work or it needs to be revised, then do it.
I’d like to hear what others are doing to measure their effectiveness and whether you’re doing it as a quality control issue for your content, or if you’re doing a numbers thing for management.
by tradesmeninsights | Jul 28, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Traditional Marketing
The answer is both depending on how you’re developing and nurturing prospects. Today both Drip Marketing and Closed Loop marketing are seen to be online strategies. Truth be known, these have been going on long before we had the use of the Internet tools. Effective marketing programs today should utilize both. We are fortunate to have these tools that help us monitor and measure our activities in infinite ways. Here are some suggestions on how to reach the Professional Tradesman using both Techniques:
Drip Marketing – I define this as an ongoing way to communicate and deliver product info and thought leadership to contractors and tradesmen who have identified themselves to us. It can use traditional methods like direct mail with things as simple as a series of postcards or other mailers to touch folks on a regular basis (monthly, weekly or daily). With the advent of the Internet we can add links to our e-mails to landing pages that can expand on content, offer incentives and interact with tradesmen.I’d suggest that to be effective, run and monitor these campaigns using an automated system.These automated systems will help you create and deliver messages and gives you the metrics to monitor open rates,click throughs and opt outs.They will also help reduce spam complaints and increase delivery.
Closed Loop Marketing – I define this as a more complex system that involves marketing working closely with sales to work a contractor through the sales process. It utilizes many if not most elements that are in a Drip program but goes beyond just delivering information based on a previous actions and their place in the buying cycle. Marketers literally “close the loop” by working with sales to provide the right info at the right time based on contractors responses. “Close the Loop” marketing provides feedback through reporting on each step and can adjust both timing and content based on feedback.
Both Drip and Closed Loop are great tools for B-to-B marketers. Deciding on which use or in what combination will be dependent on your own circumstances. If you’re trying to decide where to get started you might want to read a free white paper from DemandGen – calculating the return on lead nurturing.
by tradesmeninsights | Jul 16, 2009 | Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Twitter
Finding your best prospective client online audience is not yet an exact science. But for now you can be in the right ballpark. The same is true regarding Twitter. There are plenty of search applications out there, but all have their limitations. The following five sites have been the most helpful to me in locating prospective client “tweeps” to follow.
1. Twitter Search – Twitter’s built-in people search is the easiest place to start, but isn’t necessarily the best way to find people on Twitter. Twitter Search is much better, especially using their advanced search page. Be sure and check out their search operations pages for some handy examples for your search query.
2. Twellow – Is an excellent search tool for prospective clients with over 6.2 million Twitter user profiles now indexed in Twellow and placed into a huge number of categories. You can search the entire lot of profiles, or confine searches to a single category. Twellow also operates a local directory called the “Twellowhood.”
3. Tweepz – Allows you limited searches to specific parts of Twitter’s user information (such as name, bio and location). Through the advanced search filter results by follower/following numbers, location, and other extracted terms, enhances your search results.
4. Twitterel – You can search for prospective clients to follow by doing keyword searches of tweets. This service can update you by email, direct message, or @reply when it finds new people it thinks you might be interested in following. It’s similar to Google Alerts.
5. WeFollow – Is a Twitter user directory that organizes people by hashtags. WeFollow is user-generated and anyone can add themselves by tweeting @wefollow with three #hashtags that describe them.
If you have helpful search sites/directories that have been helpful to you, please share them in the comment section below.
by tradesmeninsights | Jul 15, 2009 | Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Twitter
Social media is trying to be taken seriously, and in late 2008 came out with several tools to measure the effectiveness of Twitter. Two of the more popular tools are Twitter Grader (I scored 97.6 out of 100) and Twinfluence (I scored 98 out of 100).
How much credibility do you put into these type tools? I use them as a guidepost to make sure I keep on track.
It makes me:
- Check my network to get rid of non-contributing (spammers) followers.
- Re-evaluate my end game to make sure you’re still on target. You want to search for like-minded people (in my case, those looking to talk to tradesmen). You’re not looking for the biggest list of followers; you’re looking for the right ones!
- To make sure my messages are timely and rich in content for my target audience.
Twitter Grader bases its score on the number of followers you have, the power of your network, the frequency of your updates and how complete your profile is.
Twinfluence bases its criteria on Reach (what’s the maximum number of people that could get your tweet),Velocity (how fast are you adding followers), Social Capital (how many followers do your followers have) and Centralization (how dependent are you on a small number of followers who have big followings).
You may or may not agree on the metrics, but at least it’s a start. If it does nothing else but make you stop and evaluate your program at a 30,000-foot level, it has served a purpose.
So what are you waiting for? What’s your score?
by tradesmeninsights | Jul 8, 2009 | Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
Are you taking advantage of the numerous sites out there that can drive traffic back to you? If your online presence is limited to things like banner ads and blogging, you’re missing out on some great social media marketing opportunities. 
Following is a link to 50 sites you may want to visit. Granted, they may not all be applicable, but I’ll bet you’ll find plenty to keep you busy for a while. Take your social media networking to the next level. Enjoy!
Inside CRM, 50 social sites that everybody needs a presence on.
Nicky Jameson, There’s more to social networking than LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
