by tradesmeninsights | May 5, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Social media has its protocol just like anything else to participate, interact and engage. I recently read a good post by Heidi Cohen, Social Media’s 10 Commandments that I thought said it pretty well. Here are some highlights:
- Be real – Be yourself. You want to make your audience feel comfortable.
- Know your audience – If you know who they are, you can better understand and know what focus to on.
- It’s not about you – Talk to the bigger picture of what’s in it for the community you’re addressing.
- Participate – If you don’t, how can you expect to engage people and build relationships?
- Share your knowledge – Support the greater good of the community.
by tradesmeninsights | May 4, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Blogs are a good center piece for your marketing strategy, but they are time-consuming, and if not taken seriously, will fail long before they have time to succeed.
I’ve created a list of things you need to do to ensure your blog’s success:
- Establish a niche – You have to be able to blog about something specific. This helps identify your target audience and a strategy to reach them.
- Identify possible topic categories – Based on your target audience, you should come up with several different topic categories to write on.
- Establish frequency – You can’t build a following when doing few posts a month. People who have the same passion on the subject want to be touched on a more regular basis. I find that 3 posts a week work for me and my audience.
- Keep ahead of the curve – If you’re going to do several posts a week, you don’t want to wake up on those days and HAVE to write a post. What if you get writer’s block or God forbid a customer takes up your time. I try to have a least a few weeks of posts in the can and ready to go so the pressure isn’t on.
- Identify guest bloggers – Once you’ve identified your market and your niche, you’ll be able to find other bloggers who share your passion on the subject and can offer a different perspective on a subject.
- Build links – These are important in SEO. Link to relevant sites.
- Promote your blog – That’s why it needs to be an integral part of your overall marketing program where you can leverage and promote across all mediums.
- Respond to comments on your blog – One of the main reasons for the blog is to get conversations going. What a great way to start a relationship.
- Comment on other blogs – If your comments are sincere and on point, other bloggers will check you out and start a conversation with you that might end up with you reciprocating in doing guest posts.
These are my tips. I’m sure you have others you’d like to share and I’d love to hear from you.
If you like this post, you may want to read:
Increase your Visibility by Commenting on Blogs.
B-to-B Blogs Can Help Increase Marketing Efforts to the Professional Tradesmen.
2011 Trends for B-to-B Blogging.
by tradesmeninsights | May 3, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Blogs can play an important part in your overall marketing plan. By integrating them with other marketing tools like e-newsletters, other social sites and your existing website, as well as offline activities, you can enhance your efforts and results.
I have found that we are getting more activity as far as page views on our blog than our website.What’s more important is that I have regular readers who view my posts via RSS feeds and everyday, new readers find the site through key word searches.
We have also gained insights into our readers, and by their responses, we know what they want to hear more about. We even use surveys and polls to help us get answers directly from the readers as to what is important to them. We can look at monthly results to see which topics are having more traction than others.
Our long-term plan is to gain the readers’ trust and become their go-to resource when it comes to marketing to the professional tradesmen. By being informative, creative and reliable in what we say, and the examples we give, we build trust with our readers.
Ultimately, we want to gain new business opportunities, and a blog helps you do that. We recently won a few pieces of new business from companies that were following us on our blog. Many are virtual clients who feel comfortable doing business with us even though they never met us in person because they like what we said on our blog.
These are a few things you should expect from a company blog. We use it as a marketing centerpiece that we position our other activities around.
I’d like to hear some of your success stories around your blog successes.
If you like this post, you might like:
B-to-B Blogs Can Help Increase Marketing Efforts to the Professional Tradesmen.
2011-Trends in B-to-B Blogging.
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 28, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
There is no simple solution to social media. Yes, you might get a bright idea and put it out there and then what? If you can’t answer that question, then you’d better rethink what you’re doing.
Why would you think that a social media strategy would be any different from any other marketing one? Unfortunately, some folks think social is different.
Here are 5 pointers that might help in developing a social media strategy:
- Define your audience – Not all of your current or potential customers are into social. Identify who’s following you as this will dictate messaging.
- Define the message – What’s the overall message and the other components that will support it?
- Define the participants – Depending on your target audiences, you will want to involve others in the company on the team for their expertise.
- Integrate into other marketing elements – Social isn’t a stand-alone strategy. Make sure to integrate it when possible into other activities to maximize your efforts.
- Make sure all your ducks are in a row before launching – Don’t get anxious and pull the trigger too fast. Make sure all elements are locked and loaded before starting.
I’m sure you could add to the list and I’d like to hear from you on other elements that you’ve included in your programs.
If you like this post, you might like:
2010 Highlights of the State of Social Media for Business
For Social Media to be Successful Sales and Marketing Must Work Together
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 26, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I’m very high on LinkedIn as one of the best social media tools for B-to-B businesses, and it is one of the tools that is most overlooked. In March of 2011, LinkedIn passed its 100 million member. It’s currently averaging about 1 million new members a month (more than one new member per second).
I recently read an article by Heidi Cohen that outlined ways businesses can successfully use LinkedIn.
Here are some highlights:
- Position your company – Let people know you exist and what kinds of thing you do.
- Offers credibility – Position your company as a thought leader.
- Expands your contact base – of friends, business associates and prospects.
- Expands company network – The more members of your team that are on LinkedIn, the greater the exposure is for your company.
- Source for new employees – LinkedIn was originally a HR network and still is.
The key is to have a plan for your company and get as many people involved. Make sure the description of your company and what it does is the same on everyone’s pages as this helps in being found on search engines.
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 19, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
Mike is pretty well-known from “Dirty Jobs.” You likely see him quite a bit on commercials these days, but lots of folks still don’t know about MikeRoweWorks.
Basically, Mike’s mission is to not make work the enemy. Our country seems to forget the value of hard work: we are ignoring infrastructure, we are getting rid of shop classes, etc. Mike explains what he’s trying to do here.
Mike started the Trades Hub. The way this site works is that it organizes the content in a way that makes it easier to go through and find things. It only shows snippets of any content and does a good job of pushing traffic out to participating bloggers.
It uses social signals, what people view and save, to help determine what the best content is. And it generally aims to attract an audience that may not otherwise find each individual blogger. It is going to be a fantastic resource.
You’ll find a link on my side bar to the right and I was asked to be a regular contributor to the site which I was very happy to do. So check it out and let’s keep America working with the professional tradesman.
