Social media is no different from any other marketing tool. In order for it to be successful, you need to have a specific plan with action items that can not only be attained but measured. Once you have a plan, get the C suite to buy into your goals and objectives and keep them in the loop as things move forward.
Once you get approval, make sure you integrate social media programs into your other marketing plans. It can’t and shouldn’t stand alone.
I recently read a good article by Heidi Cohen that outlines seven social media goals. Here are some highlights:
Build brand awareness – a great way to engage directly with prospects.
Protect your reputation – you need to know what folks are saying about your brand.
Learn more about your customers – use social as a kind of market research.
Increase customers or prospects – based on your content you can engage new potentials.
What are you doing to ensure your social media program is a success?
We subscribe to The Kiplinger Letter to keep abreast of the pulse of the markets and insights on what lies ahead. His observations and predictions of what’s ahead are usually right on.
In one of his recent newsletters he was talking about job creation and where the big need will be moving forward as the economy starts to pick up. According to Kiplinger, 85% of future jobs will come from six sectors, Health Care, Hospitality, Construction, Manufacturing, Business Services and Retail.
Among college degrees – science, math, engineering, technology and health sciences have the best prospects.
Among skilled workers – plumbers, electricians and HVAC mechanics can count on good demands. What’s interesting is that Kiplinger says that 25% of these folks (licensed skilled workers) will earn a bigger income than the average college graduate.
Sage Lewis is Founder and CEO of SageRock Inc., a digital marketing agency in business since 1999 and recognized as a Marketing Sherpa top ten U.S. search marketing company.
You do a search on Google for your top-selling product and there you are in spot #1. Whew. Your listing is followed by your best distributor and then after him that new startup you signed on that knows how to market online, but has a website from 1998. Then the trade publications are interspersed in there, touting your product in their article but, sure enough, your competitor’s ad is all over the landing page. The paid search is filled mostly with competitors and Ebay folk selling parts without your permission.
Face it, this is a mess.
Your brand and products are being represented by everyone with a vague interest in them online. You want to control the marketing message, but how? Ideally people would come to you and localize for the distributor, but you can’t tell partners to disengage because it’s driving revenue for everybody. You talked about cookie cutter distribution sites, but those flop in Google. You can’t fund top distributor’s marketing the same as the guy who sells every competing line indiscriminately. Besides they all talk after 3 beers and you don’t need that hassle.
So, you do your own SEO and Paid Search and keep your head down, right? Wrong. There IS a solution to this madness. Here’s what you can do to fix this:
Create a system
What’s the ideal? Step one is defining the goal. What does page one on Google realistically need to look like when you visit? Now make it happen. How? That’s the system part.
Part one of the system:
Create a portal, a first place of contact for those selling product. It should be populated with everything you wish they inherently knew and thought you didn’t have to tell them (you do).
Shareable useful content:
Approved photos
Press releases on product and parts
Video tutorials on selling and running demos
Downloadable brochures and sales PDFs
Recommended products by industry, price and other demo targeting
Tools and Resources:
Training in effective SEO and PPC practices
Google Analytics basics
Localized targeting advice for PPC
Local Page claim instructions
SEO phrase recommendations for product and location (help everyone understand long vs. short tail)
Ideal Phrases for distributors vs. corporate (and why they should comply for their best interest)
Web design consultation and improvement tips and options
Free software for managing digital marketing
Policy:
Link back requirements
Duplicate content restrictions
Spam and other deal breakers
Blog and social media policies
Launch the System
An onsite launch / workshop is ideal.
Explain and build excitement about the common goal (Discuss the master plan for online dominance).
Show everyone how working together means increased revenue for those who comply.
Bring in experts for your event.
Give funding incentives for those who follow the system
People won’t do it. Plain and simple. Money talks. Match investment. Give marketing dollars to those who use the portal and comply with the system. The smart ones will see the benefit and jump all over it.
Monitor and follow-up
Use the tools in the portal to do your own digital marketing work.
Monitor who’s doing what out there and reach out to the eyesores and the high achievers.
Combat competitors who hijack product phrases. In paid, by contacting Google about policy and inorganic by creating content strategies that smack spam landing pages down.
Encourage those complying to share success.
Offer additional incentives for high achievers.
Is it a lot of work? Yes. Is it free of investment? No. Is it worth it in the long run? Of course. Take back your brand.
It still boggles my mind that companies who rush into social media ignore feedback once they do get it. I wonder if they do that with traditional feedback? Why get into it if you aren’t going to participate? What I don’t get is why many companies are ignoring social media on a day-to-day basis. The object of the medium is to engage with like-minded people who are looking for information or products.
I recently read a post by Jeffrey Cohen from socialmediaB2, 69% of B2B Companies Ignore Social Media Feedback. He cites a recent study by Satmetrix that shines some light on worldwide social media practices. They interviewed almost 1200 companies from around the world.
“Businesses recognize the need for a social media strategy, however many are challenged in putting an effective strategy in place,” said Richard Owen, chief executive officer, Satmetrix. “While 77 percent of consumers post about products, 67 percent of businesses have no means of measuring what is being said, and less than one in 20 have any insight into the sentiment of what is being said. This is both a huge threat and a massive lost opportunity. Not only are companies running the risk of losing customers by not addressing their issues shared online, but they are also walking past the opportunity to capitalize on positive comments made on the social web.”
Highlights of the study include:
Businesses are blind to the threats and opportunities of social media:
Thirty nine percent have no social media tracking in place at all.
Fifty one percent of B2B have no tracking compared to 22 percent of B2C companies surveyed.
Fifty five percent of companies ignore customers who provide feedback via social media – by having no process in place to respond:
This increases to 69 percent for B2B companies compared to 42 percent for B2C.
Sixty seven percent of companies do not measure or quantify social media – increasing to 75 percent for B2B companies:
For those that do have some form of quantification, 56 percent just count the comments and followers.
Only 4 percent have any form of sentiment analysis.
Sixty percent of businesses do not have an integrated social media strategy (either do nothing, track or follow-up only).
North America leads the way with 43 percent of North American companies having a follow-up process compared to about 25 percent in other regions.
So where does your company’s social media program stack up? Do you have a strategy in place?
B-to-B marketers are responsible for generating leads from various sources, among them today are social media. I read a report a few months ago by Pardot, a B-to-B cloud marketing automation software provider that said 42% of B-to-B marketers report zero social media leads.
I can’t believe that that high a percentage of users of social media aren’t getting any types of leads. I know some folks use social primarily for brand awareness, but for most of us, the end game (strategy) is to generate leads and eventually a sale. We target a very small market niche, and our blog alone gets 40-50,000 hits a year, many of which turn into opportunities for us.
I’d like you to take a quick poll to see if you’re getting any leads, and if so, do you know where from? Thanks, and you’ll be able to see responses from the other participants.
Miles Free, Technical Director of the Precision Machined Products Association (PMPA), has been a contributor before to this audience and he and I share the same enthusiasm about giving young people other options than a 4-year college degree. The association has been a great supporter of Right Skills Now that are local technical training programs that are very successful
Miles writes a blog for the association called Speaking of Precision. Miles sheds some current insights into the issue. Enjoy!
I remember the excitement of back to school when I was child – new clothes, new shoes, maybe a new notebook, and new school supplies. These items embodied my parents’ wishes for us to succeed academically and earn a better place in the world. Blue-collar budgets meant money was tight, and a well thought out list assured that they did the best for the family with the resources we had.
It is back to school time and while my children have long since left the nest, I have been thinking about what we, would as employers, put on this year’s back to school list for our shops and for our industry?
People that want to work. At a meeting in Chicago recently, I met a VP of Operations from a major soft drink company. What is number one on his list? He told me ‘people that want to work.’ Really. ‘I am looking for people looking for a job, not those just looking for a paycheck. I’m looking for solid people who can make a difference as they make a career.’ His company offers internships and a company development program, but his first task every week is to review his vacancies report. Add people who want to work to the list.
Looking for talent, not labor. U.S Productivity is high, and one consequence is that we need talented people, not just bodies in the ‘labor gang.’ U.S. productivity doubled from 2008 to 2009; then it doubled again in 2010 according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The jobs that were cut in 2008 and 2009 tended to be the least skilled positions at any company, according to most press reports.
Now, companies seem to have hit the limit for what they can produce with the talent that they have. To make more sales, they need to add talent, not just bodies. Add talented people to the list.
Urgent need for craft workers. Much of the value add in our industry comes from the programming, set-up and operation of high-tech multiple axis CNC machines. This is not ‘just push the big green button’ work. An inefficient program can cost the company dollars per part if the program runs too slow. Setting up the machine in a longer time than that planned results in higher costs and lost profits. Operators have to be on top of their game to assure all features are produced to spec and that tools are replaced before they create problems. The craftsmen (and women!) in our precision machining industry add value by what they know and how they do.
Our industry’s employees are getting closer to retirement. Median age (half the workforce is older, half is younger) was reported to be 51 for occupations in our industry according to BLS. According to Mark Doms, Chief Economist for the U.S. Department of Commerce, there is a “…longer-term trend of an increase in the average age of those employed in the manufacturing industry. Those age 45 years or older now comprise almost half of manufacturing employment, up from about one-third in the mid-to-late 1990s.” With 10,000 baby boomers turning age 65 each day, our industry – every industry – needs a plan to retain the knowledge and capture the skills of our departing workers.
Willing to train. My parents bought me my school supplies, knowing that I would take them to school. Given the need to replace our retiring highly productive craft workers, what has changed is that for employers at least, we are going to have to step up our investment in training, cross training, and setting up programs for knowledge retention and the capturing of ‘tribal knowledge.’ Unlike my parents, who bought me school supplies, packed my lunch, and sent me off to school, employers today need to take charge of the training and development of the people who add value in our shops. We can no longer take for granted that a surplus of craft machinists is ‘out there’ somewhere just waiting for our offer. We need to actively manage for today’s reality – High productivity, high technology workplaces require skilled, talented, trained employees. We can’t just take what the schools give us. We need to tell the schools what we are looking for in our hires.
Eliminate the skills gap. The policy wonks in Washington D.C., many state capitals, and on our TV ‘news programs’ can debate the finer points of whether or not the U.S. has a skills gap or a skills mismatch. Every employer that I have spoken with in the precision machining industry has told me that if they didn’t have an opening, they would create one for the right candidate if they applied at their shop. That fact alone tells me that the debate is irrelevant. U.S. advanced manufacturing companies must have a talented, trained cadre of capable workers in our industry specialties like CNC programming, Setup, and operation, if we are to remain competitive and sustain manufacturing as a competitive strength here in North America.
Like my folks who wanted to see their kids earn a better place in the world, our companies should be leaders in helping to improve the visibility, value and prestige of the advanced manufacturing people who make a difference in our shops each and every day. By applying their talent, skills and efforts, cars are safer, food and beverages are delivered hygienically, and aircraft and medical devices can be relied upon. As employers, we have a list of what we need. Our job now is to turn that list into a list of actions to make a difference.
The first item on that list should be “to increase the visibility, value and prestige of precision machinists, programmers, engineers and our other high value team members.” If we take this first step, we will make it possible to find people who want to work, people with talent,people able to be trained for our craft, so that we can eliminate the skills gap and keep our shops as competitive and sustainable centers of advanced manufacturing and productive value adding activity.
The longest journey starts with but a single step. Let’s take that first step to let the world know just how good a career awaits them in precision machining. We can, we must, sustain the competitiveness of our shops and industry through our back to school investment.
