Is Content Marketing the New Branding?
Branding is no longer a company logo, tagline and brand colors. Yes, it helps people identify with your company, but it doesn’t necessarily make them want to buy from you. Branding isn’t something that happens overnight. The essence of branding lies in what does it mean. So words play an important part in establishing a brand, and what better way to do that than by creating content.
Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and known as the Godfather of Content Marketing, describes it “as a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable actions.” Does that sound like something we should be doing?
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google says every two days we create more information as we did from the dawn of civilization up to 2003. We need to create and convince customers and prospects to generate content that mentions our brand.
Frank Strong in a recent post on CopyBlogger talks about the web and its endless 24/7 cycle fed by content and social actions. Shouldn’t you be a part of that?
Here are some things to think about:
- Content is Currency – How are we spending ours? How much do we have to spend?
- You currency becomes more valuable every time it’s shared by someone other than ourselves.
- Your responsibility is to create content that’s worth sharing.
So take advantage of the tools that are out there, from blogs to LinkedIn, YouTube, webinars and the multitude of other options available to you.
If You Were to Give Your B-to-B Social Media Activities a Grade, What Would it Be?
Come on now, let’s be honest here. You got into social media maybe because you thought it might help your business overall, but maybe you got into it because everyone else was doing it and you didn’t want to be left out.
No matter why you got into it, many B-to-B companies are getting a big F in social media and they can’t figure out why. Social media isn’t a silver bullet, it’s not a stand-alone tactic, it’s something that should be used in conjunction with your other marketing tools.
In order to use social media, you also need to understand how and why to communicate using this media. Traditional feature/benefit, “how great we are” copy won’t work in this arena. Your customers/contractors are looking at ways to solve their problem, not get a sales pitch. They are going to Google it…” How to troubleshoot a specific plumbing problem?” If you want any chance of getting in front of that person, you had better written content and have it tagged properly with the right key words if you want to have a chance of being on the first page of the search results.
I recently read an article by Kipp Bodnar, 10 Reasons Why B2B Companies are Failing with Social Media, that outlines some very important points. Here are some highlights:
- Lack of content – The more valuable content you have up there, the better your chances of success.
- Focus on lead generation – Not number of followers or clicks. Leads turn into sales and isn’t that our end game?
- Get management to buy-in – To do social media right it takes time and talent, and if you can get support from the C suite, you’re paddling upstream.
- Identify your target audience – If you can’t do this, then how will you be able to find out what their critical issues are?
- Don’t be boring. Make your communications exciting – Give them “HOLY COW” content.
- Improve your website – You could be doing everything right in social media, but if where you’re sending them sucks, then you’ve lost all the momentum and credibility you’ve worked so hard to establish.
Learn from your mistakes and go out there and kick some butts!
LinkedIn Changes
Social media is transforming to be more visual and ultimately more mobile-friendly. LinkedIn recently introduced some changes to improve the overall Company Page experience and made it easier to interact with your connections.
I’ve asked Rachel Kerstetter, our PR Engineer, to give our readers an overview of LinkedIn’s changes and how you can take advantage of them.
Facebook started the wave of change by introducing timeline for brand pages and eventually individual profiles. Now, in the same short span of time, Twitter introduced a cover image and LinkedIn overhauled its company pages to be more visual and mobile-friendly.
Just as Facebook pushed all of its brand pages to timeline by a certain date, LinkedIn has a deadline of November 30th for all company profiles to have the new format.
Here are a few of the main changes that you should be aware of if you control a LinkedIn Company Profile:
- Banner image at the top of company pages. Mimicking the Facebook cover photo, LinkedIn’s banner image gives you the opportunity to show off some personality for your company. This image should be 974 x 240 pixels; many companies that have already uploaded banner images have incorporated not only their branding but some of their corporate culture and a few have used it to highlight products or services. LinkedIn gives you the option to make this banner clickable to take people to your company’s website.
- Career section. LinkedIn has highlighted the career section of company pages, making it easier for businesses looking for new talent to showcase opportunities.
- Refined company information. The overhaul makes communicating about your company cleaner and hopefully more effective. The About section is now shorter, but you can post more links to send people to your blog or other social media as well as your company website. Products and services are more visible in the side bar, drawing attention with visuals. A custom company module gives you a place to showcase your company culture, awards, events or other information.
- Better visibility. Updates from your company are now front and center on your company page and LinkedIn has updated their stream, so your company information is more visible overall.
Check out the Sonnhalter company page for an example of the new style.
LinkedIn is also rolling out changes to individual profiles:
You can now endorse others for their skills or be endorsed. Recommendations are still very powerful, but to show that a colleague or partner is particularly skilled in a certain area, you can now endorse individual skills. Your list of skills has been turned into a list of buttons, but if you have a wordy skill description, it will be cut off and there isn’t a way for your connections to see the entire skill, so take a look and shorten your skill descriptions if needed.
Mouse over a skill and click to endorse it
Profiles will also get a new look, without any action needed from you. I requested to be switched to the new design early, here’s a brief snapshot of what my profile looks like now:
To preview more of the new individual profiles and request to switch early too, check out LinkedIn’s blog.
All the Buzz About Mobile: Streamlining the Flow of Data Between Field and Office
Mobile is a hot topic, and I thought that a practical view from someone who is dealing with contractors on a daily basis would be beneficial. Fred Ode is CEO/Chairman of Foundation Software, and they are the leading accounting software for contractors. Fred has written several articles and is known for his insight into this market. Here are some practical ways contractors should be using mobile. Enjoy.
Guest post By Fred Ode, CEO/Chairman of Foundation Software
Stop where you are right now and look around. I bet there are at least two mobile devices in your vicinity. Depending on where you are—say a crowded street—there may be even more! This is the Mobile Age and many industries, including construction, are using this technology to improve their work processes.
So what types of mobile applications could benefit your construction business? One is a remote timecard entry.
Remote Timecard Entry
Contractors can now utilize remote timecard entry applications to streamline the flow of timecard and job data between the field and the office. Some other benefits of a remote timecard entry system are:
Less Double Entry, Fewer Errors. By entering time in the field, contractors can eliminate handwritten timecards (and the difficulty that comes with reading them!) Time is entered directly from the field in a digital format just once, and is then synced back to the office.
Data Defaults. Many apps have dropdown fields that already contain information pulled directly from the company’s accounting software like employee names, job codes, and more.
Multiple Timecard Formats. A good remote timecard entry app will offer multiple timecard formats, including single and group timecard options.
Benefits of Mobile Applications
When it comes down to it, the ultimate goal of any mobile app is to help contractors improve their processes across the board. Some of the benefits include:
Better Communication. Mobile devices can greatly improve communication between crew members. Workers on a large job site can instantly send one another updates, pictures and more.
Improved Workflow and Real-time Data. Along with communication, mobile devices also offer improved workflow and real-time data. Because communication is instant, there’s no waiting around to see if requests were approved or if the next steps can be taken.
Offline Capability. Some apps are equipped with offline capability, allowing contractors working in remote job locations to enter timecards, save them, and sync back to the office once they re-enter their service area.
Electronic Trail of Data. Using mobile applications also creates an electronic trail of data that contractors can reference at any time. Whether it’s solving an issue while a job is still active, or looking back at past jobs to better plan for future ones, the ability to save and learn from past data can only be beneficial.
Making the Move to Mobile
Remote timecard entry is just one of many helpful applications available to contractors. So where to begin with making a move into mobile? Start with a clear goal and thorough research. Find the options that will benefit the company and that have all the features they need. And don’t forget to get the end-users on board before starting the implementation process!
Branding: When’s the Last Time You Looked at Yours?
The correct answer in my mind is today. We all get caught up in the day-to-day to do list and putting out the most recent fire, but we should be aware of our brand daily.
Branding is about your whole organization, from the way you answer the phones, to the attitudes of your CSRs. It’s about a culture, things that are out of the control of the marketing department. Yes, marketing can control the look and feel of promotional materials, but once we’ve hooked a prospect, what happens when they contact the company and actually talk to a human being?
Heidi Cohen, in her post, Why Brands Matter (And Size Doesn’t), highlights several attributes we can all use to help in our long-term objectives.
Here are some highlights:
- Are you providing value to your customers – understand your target markets and their needs
- Are you relevant to your customers – be where your customers are
- Extend your brand beyond the product – provide useful info at every step of the purchasing process
- Have a brand personality – needs to be consistent in all dealings with customers
- Creating a trusting relationship – earn your reputation every day. Don’t assume anything.
What’s your company doing on a daily basis to make sure your brand is living up to expectations?