by tradesmeninsights | May 25, 2010 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
B-to-B marketers, to be successful in the world of blogging, you must truly be focused on your target market.
A blog should be central to your company’s social media strategy for new business. What fuels the engine to this strategy is good content.
You must consistently feed your inbound marketing machine with rich content or you will see a slow-down in traffic, search engine results and prospective client leads.
Here are my 6 tips to be more effective with your blogging:
- To be successful, you need to write a lot. The more posts you add to your blog, the more traffic you’ll get. The more content can also fuel repurposing content through other social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. No content = no fuel = no traffic = no new business leads.
- Be consistent. To keep writing, I visualize someone walking to the end of their driveway to pick up the morning paper, only to discover there’s nothing there. That helps me to stay motivated to write 2 to 3 posts per week. My readers know what to expect. I want to give them a reason to consistently come back.
- Write concisely. People are busy. They need your content to be easy to digest. Provide them with the Readers Digest version. Make your content easy to scan, provide bullet points and numbered lists. People will be much more interested in what you have to say if you don’t try and fluff it up.
- Use your analytics. Know what your readers care about and what they respond to. It will help you to connect with your audience. They’re the judge and jury of whether your content is relevant or not. I know daily where my readers are coming from, what post titles and content generates the most traffic and what search terms they are using.
- Use your writing to learn. When I first started blogging, I was reminded of the old saying, “you don’t know what you know until you write it down.” It’s true. Writing strategizes and invigorates my learning. It can get me ahead of the learning curve and provide me with a system to stay there.
- Keep focused. If your blog is broad, you will not generate any significant traffic. Narrow your focus. Think narrow and deep rather than wide and shallow. Know who you are writing to, what you are writing about, know the categories you will be writing to, the key words that you want to dominate for search.
If you like this post, please pass it on.
Here are some other posts that might be of interest:
5 Quick Tips to Promote Your Posts.
How to Find Readers for Your Blog.
Forrester Report: Most B-to-B Blogs Fail.
by tradesmeninsights | May 13, 2010 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Facebook fan pages are the current rage. That’s all well and good as long as you have purpose other than “everybody has one.” Just because you build it, it doesn’t mean they will come. You need to have a plan just like everything else!
I was reminded recently of that very fact when I read a post by Amy Porterfield, How to Create a Facebook Fan Page Editorial Guide, in which she outlines both defining a purpose and a guide to developing editorial.
Here are some highlights:
Defining your purpose:
- Don’t do it because everyone else is.
- How will your page be different from your web site? The more interactive, the better it will be.
- What sets you apart from your competition?
Suggestions for creating editorial guidelines:
- What’s your strategy? Is it going to be daily? Will it be in the morning?
- What’s your content? Are they all going to be original posts or will some be guest posts?
- Formatting – what will they look like?
- Engagement – what’s your plan to respond to those who come back with comments?
- Set rules – make a policy on what will and what will not be posted in regards to comments.
One of my favorite fan pages in the B-to-B space where we play is that on Snap-on Tools. They have over 44,000 fans and they do it right. They promote new products, upcoming events and even offer incentives for fans to buy their tools. Wouldn’t it be nice that every time you posted something on your fan page, all your fans were notified?
Can you share some other B-to-B pages that are doing it right?
If you like this post please pass it along.
by tradesmeninsights | May 12, 2010 | Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
I’ve been saying for some time now that the most overlooked social media tool for the B-to-B market is LinkedIn. It makes sense to join groups on LinkedIn, whether it’s buying groups like A-D or Netplus Alliance, or associations like STAFDA or AHMA. Take advantage and participate in the arenas you sell to and through.
With sales cycles getting longer, social media is a good way to start building those relationships. They are by no means the only way to nurture a prospect, but according to a recent “B-to-B Sales Pulse Survey” from OneSource, LinkedIn usage has increased significantly. Nearly 50% of the respondents said they were using LinkedIn more than a year ago.
Hubspot, in their January 2010 data report, showed that 45% of North American B-to-B companies used LinkedIn for marketing and have acquired customers through the site.
So how are you using LinkedIn to identify new prospects and build relationships?
If you like this post, please pass it on.
by tradesmeninsights | May 11, 2010 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
If you want to be a serious blogger, there are some things you need to follow to be successful. It’s not as easy as it might appear, and here are some tips I’ve learned over the last year in doing my blog.
- Be Committed – Committed to write 2 or 3 posts a week no matter what. You need to read and research and plan you editorial. You need to be persistent in that you won’t become an overnight success. It takes time to build an audience, and once you do, it takes more time to develop a relationship.
- Be Focused – Choose a topic or niche and stick to it. Be consistent in your voice and approach. Also be consistent in the number of times a week you post.
- Be Concise – You’ve got between 2-5 seconds to get their attention, and once you have it, make sure you deliver content that’s on the mark.
- Be Analytical – You need you watch which posts are drawing attention. This will help when developing topics for future posts. Where are your readers coming from – other sites, search engines? What search terms are the engines picking up?
- Never Stop Learning – Stay ahead of the curve in your area of expertise. This is especially true in social media where things seem to change daily. Just think, a few months ago, mobile marketing certainly wouldn’t have been on the top of my radar screen, but today it’s a hot topic.
Those are my suggestions. I’d like to hear from you and have you add to the list.
If you like this post, please pass it on.
Here are some other posts you might find interesting:
5 Quick tips to promote your posts
Posts should be like missles:powerful and to the point
by tradesmeninsights | May 6, 2010 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
For those of you who haven’t yet dove in to the social media arena, whether it’s because of fear of the unknown or the fear of it’s going to be too time-consuming, I have some friendly advice.
I can’t force you to try it, but I can tell you it won’t hurt and you can’t break anything. For those who are willing to give it a try but are worried about the amount of time it will take, I have some suggestions for you to consider.
Social media is about building relationships and becoming thought leaders in your category. So a rule of thumb would be to automate or delegate everything except the interaction portion.
Susan Baronini-Moe in a recent post on Social Media Examiner, What You Need to Know About Outsourcing Social Media, outlines her ideas on what should be done, and I think it would be a good read for you.
Here are some highlights:
What you shouldn’t outsource:
- Anything that engages the user you should be a part of. You should be the voice of the company. Any conversation should be started or answered by you. Reply to your tweets, Facebook and LinkedIn comments from the groups you belong to.
What to outsource:
- Profile Set-ups – on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. These contain some pretty basic things and doesn’t require your personal involvement.
- Listings – setting up listings on Twitter directories, groups on LinkedIn and Facebook can be handled by someone else.
- Automated Updates – on Twitter, your blog or RSS feeds.
These are some of my thoughts, what are yours?
If you like this post, please pass it on.
by tradesmeninsights | May 4, 2010 | Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
LinkedIn has a new tool, “Follow Company,” which, like it says, lets you follow companies. What a great way to get current activity levels at your customers or competitors. Learn what the latest competitive promo is or what the customers are talking about.
It’s simple to use.
- You can either go the search box at the top right and scroll down to company and enter who you want to follow. Once the company profile comes up, there will be a place for you to click the box and you’re done. To unfollow is just as easy.
- The other option is go to a member’s profile and where it talks about who he’s working for, you can scroll and click “Follow Company” and you’re done.
I can’t believe it took them as long as it did to put this feature up there. The “Follow Company” function has truly made LinkedIn social.
B-to-B marketers, to be successful in the world of blogging, you must truly be focused on your target market.
