by tradespeopleinsights | Aug 24, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
For those of you who read this column regularly, you know LinkedIn is one of my best sources for links to my blog. With 100-million-plus on LinkedIn, how many potential customers are out there waiting to be connected?
In a recent post on emarketer.com there were highlights from a recent study from Lab42 that reinforces the notion that users are highly engaged. Here are some highlights:
- 35% check their site daily
- 32% check it several times a week
- 42% of users update their profiles regularly
- 81% are interacting with the site
Among the top reasons why professionals use the site… for industry networking and promoting their brand.
So if you haven’t taken LinkedIn seriously, I’d suggest you spend 15 minutes searching in the upper right hand of the site groups. Type in key words/phrases and you may be surprised on the number of existing groups that share your same interests. Wouldn’t you want to be connected with them?
by tradespeopleinsights | Aug 23, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
I recently read an article by Harrison Kratz that talked about communities and how most people are missing the boat when it comes to capitalizing on them and it made me start to think.
He made the point that we’re all so wrapped up in doing the mechanics of social media that we don’t allow time for the next step, and that’s an actual conversation with another human being either on the phone or in person. Let’s face it, isn’t that why we’re doing this?
I never understood the online dating thing, but if you look at that as an example, I would hope your end goal wouldn’t be just to continue the relationship online. I would hope you would want to talk to the person and eventually meet to further discuss things you have in common.
Social media is no different if you think about it, but how many of us are guilty of keeping people at arm’s length and only communicating with them online. Seems like a waste of time to me. The opportunities are limitless and so are our excuses for not participating. I know in my case, I’ve been invited to several cocktail parties or meet and greets from several of my local LinkedIn groups and really haven’t taken advantage of them, yet I go back and forth with them with emails.
From a business standpoint, we all belong to some sort of national group that probably has a LinkedIn group or maybe you follow a work-related forum. Why not initiate a gathering at the next national meeting or trade show? Don’t wait to be invited, do the inviting and take the leadership role. You may be surprised at the response.
For those folks who want to continue to be wallflowers, we can’t change that, but I would encourage you to at least try one local event. People may not remember who they tweeted with, but most people will remember who they had coffee or a drink with.
Social media is only the first step in the process of developing relationships. Social helps you identify like-minded folks and then it’s your turn to see if you can turn some of them into actual face-to-face relationships.
So what are you waiting for?
by tradespeopleinsights | Aug 18, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Let’s face it, one of the reasons you have a blog is to get your message out to as many people you can who share the same interests. Doesn’t it make sense then to use other social media tools to drive people to your site and increase engagement?
I recently read a guest post in ProBlogger by David Cowling, that outlines some great ways to capitalize on other social media outlets. Here are some highlights:
- Promote your RSS feed – increases visitors and can result in back-links to your blog which result in better search engine rankings.
- SEO your social media profiles – This is a fairly new idea, but one that intrigues me. Facebook – about box is seen by search engines so make products specific if you’re selling something. If you have several Fan pages, link them together.Twitter profile – your user name becomes the title tag on your page. LinkedIn – your name, headline, current location and industry are placed in a meta description tag.
- Use social groups to promote your topics – Create groups and discussions on both LinkedIn and Facebook. If you belong to groups, promote them there as well as create your own group.
Other questions you should be asking yourself:
- What networks send you the most traffic as a blogger?
- What percentage of your traffic comes from these networks?
- What’s been your most shared article and what can you learn form this?
by tradespeopleinsights | Aug 17, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
As we all dive into the social media scene, we find that most of us have several different audiences we’re trying to engage with. That’s why it’s important to assign a community manager to each of these important market segments. Community managers are the social media voices for their brands that fulfill multiple roles and therefore you need a strategy to keep things on track.
I recently read a post by Janet Aronica in Social Media Examiner on 5 Tips for Building a Community Management Strategy that I thought was well written. Here are some of the highlights:
- Define metrics – What are the goals of the program? Make sure they are clear cut.
- Listening – Be where your targets are. Identify hashtags, blogs and forums that target your audience.
- Create a content plan – In order to draw people in, you need a plan. Identify an editorial calender, identify potential bloggers for your team and identify key words.
- Leverage email – Build a list, develop a schedule of launch dates and plan your content.
What are you doing to manage your community?
by tradespeopleinsights | Aug 16, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
I just read a post by John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing that really hit home. He said,
“Most organizations focus their attention on growing their customer base. The real focus should be on growing your circle of trust.”
I got to thinking that the acquisition costs to start from scatch to identify and then take them through several stages of your selling cycle to get them to try your product are pretty high. He made the point to have you think about the last time you purchased something. Most likely you were influenced by the reviews online or by countless others singing the praises of that product (sort of a testimonial).
He said that basically we fail to understand that the bigger your circle of trust, the bigger your business potential. Here are some of his suggestions to build your circle:
- Tell stories – everyone loves a compelling story.
- Ratings matter – decisions are made on how other people rate your product.
- Blog comments matter – this type of engagement conversations is influential when you read all the threads.
- Social fans are important – whether it’s Google+, Facebook or recommendations on LinkedIn.
Hopefully we’ll all take pause and consider John’s thoughts.
by tradespeopleinsights | Aug 11, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
If you’re a manufacturer and don’t have anything on YouTube, you’re missing a great opportunity. What better way to show a customer or prospect how to use your product, highlight features and benefits or even have a customer testimonial. Next to Google (who by the way owns YouTube), YouTube is the highest searched. The numbers are staggering:
- In May of 2011, there were 15 BILLION videos streamed.
- Internet viewing was up 35% and mobile viewing up 20%
- 35 hours of video are uploaded every minute
I recently read a post by Rich Brooks in Social Media Explorer that explored ways to maximize your YouTube presence. Here are some of the highlights:
- Create compelling content – Address the needs of your customers.
- Make it findable – both in and out of YouTube. Your Title, Description and Tags are important.
- Brand your channel – Create a custom background that goes along with your branding . Use “Player View” as your layout and select autoplay feature.
- Post a bulletin and alert your friends and subscribers – Create a link and put it on your home pages.
- Leverage other social media platforms – Blog about it, Tweet it, post it on Facebook and submit it to StumbleUpon.
What are you doing to leverage your YouTube videos?
