by tradespeopleinsights | Feb 23, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
For those who follow me on a regular basis, you know I’m a big supporter of blogs. It seems that most companies now are at least considering doing a blog.
Here are a few good reasons you should consider a blog for your company:
- Websites are mostly static – Once a contractor has been to your website, why does he need to go back? He knows who you are and what you do. If you don’t get him to follow you on an RSS feed or fill out a form to be on a mailing list, you basically have lost most visitors.
- Thought leadership – One of the main objectives of a blog is to set you and your company apart. What better way to increase your brand awareness and generate new leads?
- Keep your customers/prospects coming back – When you publish new content on a regular basis, customers and prospects keep coming back. It also allows for interactions with both categories.
- Re-purpose content – You can take a current post and use it on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to gain additional exposure.
- Blogs can provide additional in-links – Once you establish yourself as a thought leader in a category, others will begin to link back to you and this will alert search engines that you must be saying something important.
These are some of my reasons for blogging. I’d like to hear some of yours.
If you like this post, you may want to read:
Are you Using Blogs to Reach the Professional Tradesmen?
Have you Started a Company Blog? Maybe you Should.
5 Helpful Hints to Attract New Business Using Your Blog.
by tradespeopleinsights | Feb 22, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
With the advent of social media, the way customers contact us and us them has changed dramatically. Gone are the days that our only options to talk to companies were either by snail mail, email or a customer service hot line.
Social media opens up numerous ways that people not only can talk to you, but about you, to others. This is the game changer and if you do nothing else on social, please at least listen to what people are saying about your company and your brands. One comment on Twitter can start an avalanche of other comments (good or bad). Wouldn’t you like to know what’s being said about you? I sure would!
I recently read a post by Jay Baer, 6 Parts of your Company That Should be Listening to Social Conversations that I found extremely interesting and wanted to share some highlights. Some are obvious; others we all should put on our list.
- Sales – Listening programs give you the opportunity to find prospects when the timing is perfect and when they’re actually asking for answers you have.
- Marketing and PR – Listening helps make sure that the language you’re using as a company is the same language being used by the people you’re hoping to hook.
- Customer Service – Customers are airing their concerns, questions, and grievances over social media channels, especially if traditional channels prove less than helpful.
- R&D – You can fuel your idea engine by harnessing the input, thoughts and creativity of the online audience.
- HR – The obvious potential here is talent recruiting, in both finding potential employees and examining their online social graphs.
- Executives and Management – They can understand market trends through the unfettered viewpoint of the online masses and determine whether they’re behind, ahead of, or riding the curve.
Are you missing an opportunity here? How many listeners do you have at your company?
by tradespeopleinsights | Feb 17, 2011 | Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
Content is the most important asset in using social media for new business.
I think we all agree that one of the main reasons we’re in the social media scene is to generate new business. What we need to do is put our brand out there along with original content so our thought leadership will come through no matter what business you’re in. So when you’re planning your content this year, make sure to focus on what your readers want to know.
According to a social media study by King Fish Media, HubSpot and Junta42, original content, both branded and expert, is by far the most employed tactic for social media.
“Next year [2011], marketers will need to rethink their approach to advertising and marketing and intensify their focus on creating magnetic content that will naturally attract consumers, rather than relying solely on the interruption model of advertising, which consumers are responding to less and less. Think pull vs. push.” Geoff Ramsey, CEO, Co-Founder of eMarketer
Here are some Content Marketing resources that will provide you with some best content creation practices along with unique insights, practical advice and tips:
Tips on How to Get the Most out of Social Media Marketing.
More Corporations are Blogging: Is Yours?
5 Helpful Hints to Attract New Business Using your Blog.
7 Ways to use Twitter to Generate Traffic and Leads.
5 Ways to use Content Marketing to Attract New Business.
Click on the following link for a downloadable copy of the study by King Fish Media, HubSpot and Junta42, 2010 Social Media Usage, Attitudes and Measurability: What Do Marketers Think?
by tradespeopleinsights | Feb 16, 2011 | Marketing Tools, Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
According to a recent article in eMarketer.com, interest is high for smart phone users who are relying more on their phones when they are out and about. They use their phone to get pricing information and check their status on loyalty programs for coupons or to access their points.
Now it may be a bit premature for manufacturers who are targeting the professional tradesmen to focus all their efforts on this medium, but I think it would be a mistake not to include them in current or future loyalty programs. Consider these facts from a survey conducted in October 2010 for Hipcricket by Zoomerang:
- 35% of those surveyed would be interested in a mobile loyalty program
- Only 9% currently participate in such a program.
There was even greater interest in loyalty programs members could join via brand’s pages like Facebook. That’s the good news. The bad news is that most brands are not letting them participate in this manner.
The bottom line here is to keep this option on your radar screen because the trend is moving that way.
If you like this post, you may like:
QR Codes: Are Manufacturers Missing an Opportunity?
White Paper: Trends in Mobile Media
by tradespeopleinsights | Feb 15, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Uncategorized
A recent survey of business people by Forbes in October of 2010 cited that a majority (60%) would watch a video before reading text on the same web page. 75% of executives said they watched work-related videos on business sites at least once a week with more than half doing the same on YouTube.
The study shows that video can be a highly effective tool in getting your message across.
So the question is, are you utilizing video to help you sell on the web?
If you like this post, you may like:
Make Videos Part of your Direct Marketing Plans to Professional Tradesmen.
Online Video Marketing: a Great Way to Educate Professional Tradesmen
by tradespeopleinsights | Feb 10, 2011 | Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
Social media is beginning to make an impact on businesses, and a friend of mine, Michael Gass, shared with me a recent study by SmartBrief that recently surveyed 6,000 of their readers on how they use social media in a business environment.
To effectively use social media for business development, it is important to know who is using social media, how they are using it, what social media channels are being used, what goals are being pursued and tactics deployed that are providing measurable results. The State of Social Media for Business 2010 report, released at the beginning of 2011, provides information on the biggest trends and challenges.
Here are eight select themes and data points from the survey (purchase the full brief for more in-depth details):
- Most companies surveyed have adopted social media in the past 18 months. About half of the companies in the sample have been using social media for only the past year, with nearly 20% starting in the past 13 to 18 months.
- Companies are focusing their energies on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and blogs. The concentration on “the big 5” hints at companies being able to find their customers on these sites. With lower awareness and/or usage of other sites, including platforms such as Flickr with large numbers of users, companies might be missing out on more niche groups.
- It takes time for companies to incorporate social media effectively. More than 25% of companies with two-plus years of social media activity state that those tools and platforms have been fully integrated into their companies’ business models. In addition, more than 50% have a well-developed or fully developed social- media strategy, which is further evidenced by the use of multiple platforms.
- Brand building is currently the primary purpose for business social-media usage. Despite the primary goals of increasing brand awareness and building communities for customers and fans, the majority of companies surveyed use social media to broadcast information instead of creating two-way conversations.
- Communications, advertising and marketing agencies are the leading adopters of social media. Communications and PR agencies recognized the potential behind social media earlier than most industries. Likewise, advertising and marketing firms have realized the potential of identifying and reaching target audiences relatively early as compared with other industries. Despite their early presence in social media, communications and PR firms are not the chosen source of advice or consultation on social media for companies.
- Lack of management support and confidentiality concerns are atop the list of obstacles to social-media adoption. One-third of the respondents note they are not decision makers. Combined with the 14.7% citing management resistance, this indicates an overall lack of management support. In addition, 33.1% cite confidentiality issues as a primary obstacle. Taken together with the prohibition of social-network use at work, the data show that many companies are concerned about how their staff would use these sites.
- Less than 15% of the businesses using social media are measuring return-on-investment. Connecting social media efforts to bottom-line results is a skill that escapes most businesses that are using social media. Over 33% of the businesses in the sample are not measuring return on investment at all. Among those innovators who are measuring social media, most focus on usage and incoming traffic but not traditional business metrics.
- While 60% of respondents say their companies are using social media, there is low confidence in their social-media strategies. Companies are critical of their social-media strategies, with only 14.2% describing their strategies as “very effective” and only 7.3% describing them as “very revenue generating” on average.
These are a few of the report highlights of where businesses are in their social-media usage, confidence and measurement. The full State of Social Media for Business 2010 is available for sale from SmartBrief: http://www.smartbrief.com/research/ and includes:
- 145 pages
- 213 charts and graphs
- 6 data cuts
- Key indicators of social-media integration
- Comparative data based on company size and industry focus
- Benchmarks to assess where your company is on the social-media adoption curve
- An introduction by social-media expert and SmartBrief on Social Media Advisory Board member, Olivier Blanchard
