How Are You Managing Your Content Marketing?
The job of marketing today isn’t to create new customers but to create passionate subscribers to our brand. Your community will take charge and social networking will continue to facilitate the power shift towards the consumer. Our challenges are to make a person stop, read, think and behave differently.
Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and known as the Godfather of Content Marketing, describes it “as a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable actions.” Does that sound like something we should be doing?
Roper Public Affairs says that 80% of business decision makers prefer to get company info in a series of articles vs. advertisements. 70% say content marketing makes them feel closer to the sponsoring company, while 60% say company content helps them make better product decisions.
So how do we manage this thing called content management? I found a good book by Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi called Managing Content Marketing that might be a helpful tool for your marketing team to read. They outline and focus on 5 areas:
- Understand YOU – What makes you different? You need to define this before writing content to support it.
- Understand THEM – Who and where are the communities you’re serving?
- What content can you provide to help build loyalty?
- Subscribers need to be fed, nurtured and unsubscribed when it’s time.
- Measure success.
Content marketing is a different way to get the same information in front of customers, and we all need help and tools to manage it better.
We did a webcast with Joe Pulizzi on content marketing that might be of interest to you. You can watch it here.
Are You Using LinkedIn to Generate Leads?
LinkedIn has always been one of my best sources of activity to my blog. It also allows me to network with others who have the same interest in groups that I join, and I can always count on input from those who are linked with me if I need something or a question answered.
That’s why it wasn’t a big surprise to me when a recent study by HubSpot said that LinkedIn generated the highest visitor to lead conversion rate of 2.74%, almost 3 times higher than both Twitter and Facebook.
I guess that shows me that the people who are on LinkedIn are there for business purposes and are looking to network. So here are some tips on how to leverage LinkedIn:
- Invest the time – develop and nurture your community. Don’t post something for the sake of posting. If you don’t have good content, wait until you do.
- Focus content on what’s working – if blog posts are getting the most traffic, concentrate on doing more of them. If webinars or podcasts create more activity, focus on them.
- Don’t forget lead generation content – call-to-action items need to be included in the mix so you’re continually inviting people to engage.
- Keep learning – don’t take any success for granted. Keep working to improve your content.
Those are some of my thoughts. What are you doing to take advantage of LinkedIn?
Transition to Timeline: 4 Easy Ways to Get Started
Facebook officially launched Timeline for brand pages on February 29th. The month of March is a transition period for pages to acclimate to the new layout and operation of Timeline. When March 30th comes around, all pages will be pushed to Timeline.
If your organization has a Facebook page there will be a lot of changes with the switch to Timeline, but there are four fairly easy things that you can do before March 30th to make the transition to Timeline smooth.
- Consider the Cover Picture – Cover photos are one of the most noticeable changes in Timeline. If you haven’t set up your cover photo by March 30th, your page will have a blank strip where the cover should be. Cover photo sizes are 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall. Images not in those dimensions can be repositioned for the look that you want for your page. Facebook has restricted what can appear in cover photos, so when you design yours, keep in mind that your image cannot feature price/purchase information, contact information, calls to action or references to Facebook actions (Like, Share, etc.). There’s more information here (https://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php).While you’re considering your cover photo, look at your profile image again and make sure that it will work with the cover you choose.
- Tell Your Story – Timeline gives pages the opportunity to tell the organization’s story. Even back before Facebook existed. Events can always be added to your Timeline later, but telling the basic story helps your fans know more about you. Some events that you may want to highlight include:
– When your organization was founded
– Important milestones (anniversaries, name changes, goals reached)
– Launches of new products or services
– Awards - Take a Tour – Take the time to put your page in the preview mode that Facebook gives you. That will let you adjust to the admin panel and features before your Timeline is published. Find where things are and see how your information section looks. You may want to make some adjustments before you publish.
- Prepare for Change – There are a lot of changes that your page will experience. On the administrative side, you’ll need to make some decisions regarding some new features. One major change you’ll probably encounter is the feature that lets your fans message you. Previously, pages and their fans couldn’t private message on Facebook which lead many pages to answer questions and problems publically on the page or directing fans to email them.
Timeline gives you the option to tell your story and highlight the important parts. Many of the changes present opportunities to try new things with your brand.
We made the switch to Timeline last week, stop by and see what we did at www.facebook.com/SonnhalterB2T
More information on Timeline can be found here (https://www.facebook.com/help?faq=203955942973503)
Four B-to-B Marketing Efforts That Can Improve Your Results
As B-to-B marketers, we are concerned about demand generation as our fundamental mission with lead generation being the primary way of measuring success. Here are four ways that will help you get better results.
I read an interesting article by Jim Leach, VP-Marketing, Harris Corp that outlines the CORE items you need to focus on. Here are some highlights:
- Content – You have two challenges here for creating great content. One, the people who probably know the most about your product are probably terrible writers and two, your audience has no time to read. Jim suggests that a product engineer or possibly a customer service person might be the ones to tap to write content. His rules are simple: be brief, be brilliant, and be gone.
- Outreach – Your best source of info is from your sales force. They are out in the trenches every day and know what the pain points are for customers and potentials. Take those insights and turn them into content nugget one pagers with common themes that might be used in a drip marketing program.
- Response – Don’t lead your potential back to your home page on the web where they have to start the search over for the particular item that interested them in the first place. Create specific landing pages with tailored messages and the ability to collect info and download valuable info depending on where they are on the sales ladder – awareness, research, evaluation, selection or purchase – you should have items on that page that address each step in the process so the potential can find what they want easily.
- Engagement – Most B-to-B sales have longer buying cycles so you need to keep your prospect engaged throughout the process. Make sure that when they come back at you with questions to be sure to ask them some as well so you can continually update their status.
CORE marketing can help you focus your efforts and close more sales. What are you doing to improve your marketing results?
Are You Tweaking Your 2012 Social Media Plan?
Now that we’ve crossed over into another year, are you reviewing what you did last year and trying to make improvements?
I ran across a paper by Radian6 (you can download it when you click) that highlighted 30 ideas to think about to include in your planning. They included ideas on strategy, listening, engagement and measurement. I’ve always respected them and their content.
Here are some points that hit home to me:
- Socialize your culture, not just your technology. Your whole organization needs to adapt to empowered customer model.
- Cultivate long-term relationships. It’s 5-10 times cheaper than getting a new client.
- Pay attention to people talking about your brand. Listen and tag both advocates and detractors.
- Great leaders listen.
- It’s not enough to listen in the shadows.Your fans expect you to respond and start conversations.
Those are some of the ideas I’m going to try to work on this year. What are you planning on doing to improve your social media plan?