by tradespeopleinsights | Apr 6, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
Business has changed. Are you keeping up with the best practices to keep you ahead of the curve? A study by IBM stressed that we will see more changes that will impact our businesses in the next 5 years than in the last 50!
These changes aren’t about technology of social media, but about how businesses adapt to their audiences. The new era is one of open communications and real-time 
online participation.
Jay Baer and Amber Nashlund co-authors of The NOW Revolution do a great job in simplifying the steps a company needs to change its culture to deal with the current business climate.
The book introduces 7 key shifts that business leaders need to address along with laying out a plan for each.
- Strip away silos and overgrown business processes
- Hire and empower a new type of employee
- Organize internal teams for maximum external impact
- Listen at the point of need
- Travel the Humanization Highway and respond effectively to customer inquiries
- Plan for, find, and manage real-time crisis
- Redesign success metrics in a business world that’s increasingly instantaneous
If you’re serious about social media and how it’s impacting your business now and in the future, you need to read this book.
by tradespeopleinsights | Apr 5, 2011 | Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Twitter
For those that follow me, you know I talk about how Twitter is one of my best lead generators. Most people are either afraid or intimidated and there really is no reason to be.
Understanding how your prospects are using Twitter and what personal data they are willing to share can boost its use for new business.
Sysomos is the leading provider of social media monitoring and analytics technology. They have analyzed more than a billion tweets generated by over 20 million Twitter users in 2010. This included bio, website address and location information (both textual and lat / long) disclosed in their profile pages to see how many details Twitter users were divulging.
Here’s some of the highlights of Twitter usage in 2010:
- The number of Twitter users offering personal information within their bios has more than doubled to 63.3%, compared with 31% in 2009.
- 82% of Twitter users now provide a name, compared with only 33% in 2009.
- 73% provide location information compared with 44% in 2009.
- 45% of users submit a website address versus 22% a year ago.
- From January 2010 until mid-August 2010, new users accounted for nearly 44% of the total Twitter population.
- Only 0.05% have more than 10,000 friends they follow, and only 2.05% have more than 1,000. The vast majority of users – 95.8% – have less than 500 people they follow.
- Only 0.06% of Twitter users have more than 20,000 followers, and only 2.12% have more than 1,000 followers. Meanwhile, 95.9% have less than 500 followers.
- More than three-quarters of Twitter users – 80.6% – have made fewer than 500 tweets, 2.7% have made more than 5,000 tweets.
- A small hard-core group (2.2%) have accounted for 58.3% of all tweets, while 22.5% have accounted for about 90% of all activity.
Click on the following link to read Sysomos report: Twitter Statistics for 2010: An in-depth report at Twitter’s Growth 2010, compared with 2009
Some Twitter tools to help you measure and improve:
- TweeterGrader: a free tool that allows you to check the power of your Twitter profile compared to millions of other users that have been graded.
- Tweetstats: a free tool that will graph your Tweets and show how many retweets.
- Bit.ly is a universal url shortener that not only provides a handy service in shortening urls but also allows you to access analytics to see how many people are clicking on your link.
by tradespeopleinsights | Mar 31, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
Think about it. Wouldn’t you want to model your company around the most successful company in the world? We all use Google in our everyday lives, but have we really thought about what makes them so great?
Recently my son gave me a book by Jeff Jarvis from Buzzmachine.com titled What Would Google Do? I have to tell you, it’s the most interesting business book I’ve read in some time.
Jeff gives his insights on what makes Google so successful and practical examples (from service businesses to manufacturing, government and even religion) of how we should reposition ourselves to be more like Google. He highlights the “10 things Google has found to be true.”
Here are some highlights:
- You need a new attitude – to build trust, listen and don’t try to control.
- Customers are in charge – you’re better off ceding control to them.
- The mass market is dead. Mass niches are where you need to be.
- Free is a business model.
One of the challenges he gives us all is answering the question – What business are you in? Are you in the knowledge business, data, networking? Where is your value?
This books makes you think and re-evaluate your own business model. I highly recommend it.
by tradespeopleinsights | Mar 30, 2011 | Marketing Trends, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
We’re all seeing more and more of these strange looking square boxes (2D codes) in ads and on billboards and packaging that connect people to mobile sites for more info.
According to 3GVision, a global pioneer and leader in mobile barcode solutions and advanced image processing technologies to fast-track consumers to the mobile Internet, the USA is leading for the first time in terms of absolute numbers of scans.
Top 10 users of mobile barcodes during Q4/2010:
1. (2) United States
2. (1) Italy
3. (3) Germany
4. (10) Hong Kong
5. (7) France
6. (15) Canada
7. (5) United Kingdom
8. (6) Netherlands
9. (4) Thailand
10. (11) South Korea
( ) – Position in Q3/2010
From Quarter 4 of 2009 to Quarter 4 of 2010, there was a +400% increase in mobile barcode scans.
Bottom line is, 2D bar codes are here and they are not going away. What are you doing to capitalize on them?
If you like this post, this may be of interest to you:
by tradespeopleinsights | Mar 29, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Twitter
Twitter is an under-utilized tool that businesses should be using more.
There are well over a hundred different Twitter tools that have been developed. Recently Michael Gass, my social media mentor, came up with a helpful list.
Below are his top 5 tools that he uses for new business that will help you create an online community of your best prospective clients. Each makes Twitter a more powerful marketing tool for your online new business efforts.
TweetBeep
This tool is like Google Alerts for Twitter! Put in a keyword or website, and get emails when others tweet it! Keep track of conversations that mention you, your products, your company, anything! You can even keep track of who’s tweeting your website or blog.
TweetScan
You can search public messages and user profiles with results available via email, RSS, JSON, and Twhirl. You can even download your own personal Twitter archive!
TweetLater (now called SocialOomph)
Keep your Twitter stream ticking over with new tweets even when you’re not in front of your computer. Publish tweets when your international followers are online and you’re asleep. Send automated thank you notes to new followers, and automatically follow new followers, if you choose to do so.
Splitweet
Easy management for multi Twitter accounts and brand monitor. Splitweet allows the Twitter users to compose a list of accounts and distribute their tweets, choosing their release in one or more of their accounts. You can also follow your contacts’ tweets from all of your managed accounts in Splitweet. And you can easily monitor your brand(s).
Tweeter Karma
Basically, this is a Flash application that fetches your friends and followers from Twitter when you click the “Whack!” button, then displays them for you, letting you quickly paginate through them. By default, the list contains all your friends and followers and is sorted by last update, showing those who most recently updated first. You can sort the list alphabetically either ascending or descending by Twitter ID. You can filter the list in several ways: only friends or only followers, all friends or all followers, and mutual friends.
by tradespeopleinsights | Mar 24, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
Online media is the fastest growing media platform in history. Second only to Google, YouTube has emerged as an easy-to-use search tool.
As a manufacturer, are you capitalizing on this powerful tool to disperse your message? You don’t need a “Hollywood” production. As a matter of a fact, the ones done on a mobile phone would do just fine. We’ve done “man on the street” interviews with contractors at will-call counters and on jobsites asking their opinions on tools and other products.
Did you know – Videos convey more info per minute than any other media and 65% of the public like to learn via videos.
These were only a few of the facts that I learned from a recent post by Jon Miller from Marketo. His post, How to Optimize Your B2B Marketing and Sales with Online Video outlines how to use videos to engage prospects in different stages of the buying cycle.
According to a Universal McCann study cited by Brightcove, people find product information and research most compelling when delivered in video format. MarketingSherpa claims that online video is a close second to word-of-mouth communication when it comes to influencing key decisions. No other media channel communicates a deeper, richer message or leaves a more lasting impression than video.
He also offers 10 online video strategies you may find helpful. Here are some highlights:
- Search optimize your video with a text summary – Use key words to highlight main points and make sure you include the URL.
- Integrate video into your e-mail marketing programs – Deliver relevant info pertinent to who they are and where they are in the buying process.
- Leverage social media – Promote across all marketing channels including your blog and both personal and business profiles.
- Feature on you website – Embed videos where appropriate to promote products, company news or new product promotions.
What are you doing to capitalize on your videos?
If you liked this post, you might also like:
Busy Executives Prefer Video on Web.
Make Video Part of your Direct Marketing Plans to the Professional Tradesmen.
Online Video Marketing: A Great Way to Educate the Professional Tradesman.
online participation.
