by tradespeopleinsights | May 5, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
I’ve written previously that one of the primary objectives of a blog is to engage readers. Unfortunately, we sometimes get so focused on our message and making our blog stand out that we forget about our audience, the people reading our posts. These folks bring new insights and ideas to our posts and provide us with the opportunity for dialogue and feedback .
Here’s an idea: Why not recognize a reader and give them their 15 seconds of fame.Yes, you heard me right, make it about them.
If you create a space or regular column highlighting some of your readers, you accomplish both the benefit of acknowledging that your readers have something to contribute, but it also shows other readers that you value their opinion as well even though you only recognize a few.
A recent post by Darren Rowse, Pay special attention to a reader, outlines 8 ways to highlight your readers. Here are some highlights:
- Promote a comment to a post. When a reader makes a good point, recognize them and talk about their comment.
- Write a post about their blog. Check out some of the blogs of people who share your ideas and write an unpaid review of their blog on what you like about it.
- Send your readers to comment on others blogs. Write a post that links people to another site and ask them to comment on the other person’s site.
- Give readers opportunity to promote themselves. Run a contest/project that gives readers an opportunity to promote themselves.
- Reader of the week. Highlight a reader once a week, say on a Friday.
- Projects/competition. Invite readers to post blogs and share a link with others.
- Run a reader poll. Then highlight it in a follow-up post.
- Invite guest posts. A great way to get another perspective as well as giving someone else the opportunity to have an impact on your blog.
Those are some ideas. What have you found that works?
by tradespeopleinsights | May 4, 2009 | Marketing Tools
Facebook now has over 200 million active users. More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once a day.
The INSIDECRM blog provides a comprehensive list of 100 tools and tips that will help your company maximize the marketing opportunities available through Facebook.
This is a great resource list that will make Facebook part of your company’s social media marketing mix for new business:
- Learn why Facebook has rapidly become the go-to networking site for marketers. Learn about the current and future advertising opportunities on Facebook.
- Learn about the endless ways you can use Facebook to promote your company at no costs. Use your creativity and marketing mind to maximize these features.
- Learn about the tools and applications, add-on features for Facebook, that will allow you to customize your profile and fan pages to build relationships with clients and prospective clients.
- Learn how to narrow down your target audience through researching Facebook’s demographics. Learn to tailor your social media new business strategy through “How-to Guides” to help fully utilize Facebook.
- Learn the benefits of Facebook from this list of tools and tips.
Bookmark and read, The Facebook Marketing Toolbox: 100 Tools and Tips to Tap the Facebook Customer Base
by tradespeopleinsights | Apr 30, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Why promote your blog? Just because you write the most provocative post, it doesn’t mean the world at large will know it’s even out there. Yet by using the right key words and phrases, you’ll get organic action from the search engines, and if you spend a little more time being proactive, you’ll see even better results.
Here are 5 quick tips to help promote your posts:
- Email Signatures. Add a link to your blog especially of recent posts. Have you ever thought of how many e-mails you send out a day (not to mention all the other people at your company)? What a great way to let people know you have a blog. Most of your correspondence is either going to customers, prospects or vendors, all of which should have a vested interest in your topics.
- Social Networking. Hopefully you belong to Facebook, Twitter, etc. Leverage these by promoting your posts. The object is to have your friends and followers spread the good news. The key is to give them something worth sharing!
- Internal Links. Sometimes we’re so focused on promoting our posts on other sites that we lose site of the most obvious place to be linked internally. Hopefully you’ve written content on a similar topic or market before, so add a link. It keeps people on your site longer and helps build your credibility as an expert. I have all my posts broken into 3 categories: Trends, Tools and Tips and link back appropriately.
- E-newsletters. If you have a list, send out an e-mail promoting some of your key posts. If you don’t have a list, start one as that’s blogging 101.
- Pitch Other Bloggers. This is an important one, but not so easy to accomplish. Like anything else, you need to establish a relationship with other bloggers. Read their stuff to make sure you’re compatible. Make comments on their posts. Link back to some of their posts when appropriate. Blogging is like any other referral network. People need to know, like and trust you before they recommend you. And when you think you’re ready, suggest versus ask them to consider linking.
Daren Rowse provides additional insights to promoting your post that you might find helpful: 11 ways to increase your chances of being linked to by a blogger.
by tradespeopleinsights | Apr 28, 2009 | Marketing Tools
Twitter is the micro-blogging platform that will help B-to-B marketers grow their brand. It’s not a fad (upwards of 10,000 people a day are signing up).
Twitter helps you:
- Build brand awareness
- Generate traffic via followers
- Gain insight via polls/surveys
- Get to people you wouldn’t necessarily get to because of re-tweets
Twitter support applications that I find useful for B-to-B applications are:
TweetLater. Schedule tweets like you would an e-mail campaign so that you’ll have several going out each day automatically.
TweeterSearch gives you the ability to receive e-mail digests of key word activity so you can track and participate in conversations. You can now know who’s saying what about your company or brand.
Ping.fm. If you have a Facebook or LinkedIn account, you can post updates across all your social media sites.
Twitter on Facebook. You can forward your Twitter updates directly to your status updates on Facebook.
TwitterFox. If you use the web browser Firefox, you can view your tweets in you browser as in a pop-up menu so you don’t have to be going to Twitter to check .
Tweetdeck. A personal browser that connects you with your contacts across Twitter and Facebook and allows you to follow your friends.
Twitter is so much more than a micro-blog limited to 140 characters, and when used properly, can help your overall marketing program.
Have you used other tools to help you get the most out of Twitter? Share them in the comment section below.
by tradespeopleinsights | Apr 27, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
A lot of people don’t know or understand enough about the dynamics of SEO. They either choose to ignore it or become targets of SEO companies that start guaranteeing results. Remember the old saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” “There is no free lunch.” You get the idea.
These companies use techniques called “black hat” which in the short term could raise your traffic, but in the long term it could get you banned from search engines and then who would really lose? It’s important to remember that no SEO company controls rankings on competitive search key words.
I read a post recently by Janet Meiners, Five tips for avoiding deceptive SEO companies, in which she outlines both questionable and downright deceptive tactics. Here’s a summary of what she wrote:
- Putting too many key words on your site. It’s called key word stuffing and they repeat words/phrases. This is an ineffective practice that does nothing more than confuse everybody including the spider.
- Overuse of bolded text or too many links. It looks terrible and doesn’t build trust with people.
- Hidden Links. These are hidden in code or in the footer and may not even be related to your site.
- Complicated link schemes. Google can detect unnatural link patterns. Some people build programs that link automatically that are full of spam content.
- Multiple domains with virtually the same content but different key words. Content is deliberately duplicated across domain names in an attempt to manipulate search engine results.
There are no short cuts. The best rule of thumb is to make your site a good experience for your visitors. This means good original content or other elements that want to make people want to link to you. And as in looking at any service provider, do your home work, get references and if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
by tradespeopleinsights | Apr 21, 2009 | Marketing Tips
A professional tradesman worth his salt, whether he’s an electrician, plumber, HVAC technician or a MRO specialist, doesn’t have a million answers on how to solve problems.
Why not ask the right questions and get engaged in a conversation?
After all, isn’t that what social media is all about — ENGAGEMENT!
One of the biggest benefits of social media is the ability to put something out there (the universe) and let those to whom it applies to identify themselves as users. Where could you corral that much experience in one place and then get input from them (it’s like shooting fish in a barrel).
This beats traditional focus groups hands down. You get a quick, more honest feedback from a broader section of your target audience.
Here are 5 reasons to ask Tradesmen questions:
- New application– You may have a new tool or application that you want to get feed back on.
- New product- what better place to do some real beta testing to see if you’re hitting all the right points with the user.
- Quick tips– ask for theirs and you will be inundated with ideas.
- Identify new uses for products– it would sometime amaze you how these guys are using your product(not according to instruction manual).
- Market research. use polls and surveys to collect valuable marketing info on the product,its applications and the competitors!
When was the last time you talked to a tradesman who didn’t want to tell you about something? Why not ask?
