by tradesmeninsights | Nov 17, 2009 | Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Twitter
Some B-to-B marketers are having a hard time including Twitter in the marketing mix. You need to think of it as a relationship-building tool. Twitter should never be used as a stand-alone tactic. It should be used in conjunction with other social media as well as traditional tools like e-mail. Jon VanZile wrote an interesting post, Is B-to-B Ready For Twitter? that you might find interesting.
One of the concerns of B-to-B marketers is that “none of my customers or potentials are on Twitter.” While that may be true now, they will be soon. And how do you know unless you ask them? This week Twitter passed the 5 billion tweet mark. Somebody is using it! According to a study released this summer by Nielsen Co., Twitter growth has been phenomenal especially toward adults. According to Nielsen, Twitter reaches 11% of all Internet users. 80% of people who Tweet are over 25.
While you’re waiting for your customers to get in the game, Twitter still offers you some great free analytic tools you should be using to keep track of competitors as well as find conversations related to a post or article. Here are 5 good ones to start:
- Twitterstats Hour-by-hour and for any 24-hour period, track up to three keywords (think competitors) w/g/t click volume. Useful if, for example, there’s news being dropped during the same time period and/or an event/tradeshow and you want to compare message volume/activity around keywords or companies.
- Tweeps.info Nifty free tool that lets you track on individual Twitter accounts (think YOUR competitors). Inside look at #tweets per day, current and prominent keywords, to what degree the account is using hashtags, following snapshot. Also has a keyword search which is useful if you’re looking to build your follow list around a particular topic.
- BackTweets A real-time, conversational-tracking tool which allows for keyword and/or URL searches to find conversations related to a post or article; connects: WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Twitter and Friendfeed. Useful for community buzz centralized listening, brand monitoring. An “alert” function.
- Twitteranalyzer Google Analytics for Twitter users. More than 50 statistical measures displayed with graphics and maps. Among the views: Reach, Subject Matter, Follower Growth, Follower Density Map, Follower Activity, Sharing Capability. Primarily a tool for Twitter users to analyze themselves or their friends.
- TwitterFriends A “reach/extended-reach” tracking tool that helps you discover information about the network behind your follower/their follower lists. Identifies meaningful users you should be talking to, or who are feeding you useful links. Capability to account search/compare (think comparing your company to your competitors, or thought leader accounts, etc.)
by tradesmeninsights | Nov 4, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
We all have limits on our time and those of us who have dived into social media have to find time in our schedules if we want these marketing tools to work. The key, like anything, is organization and setting priorities so you optimize your time spent. I recently read a post by Adam Singer (worth reading), 21 Must-Follow Tips for Optimizing Time Spent on Social Media and it got me thinking of several ways to make the most out of your time.
- Periodically review your RSS feeds – It’s so easy with all the tools out there to subscribe to something you think might have value long term, but come to find out the info you get there you can find somewhere else, and some of the original article/topics that got you to subscribe in the first place come infrequently. Don’t burden yourself down. I, at least quarterly, purge some of these that are not as relevant as I once thought.
- Focus on your niche – There is so much info on the Internet that it could easily overwhelm you. Focus on your respective core markets/interests and spend more time on those trusted sites.
- Monitor your time – This is a big one. Let’s face it, we all have limited time and everyone is asking us to do more and more. The Internet can be a fooler and suck you in and all of a sudden you’ve let hours pass instead of minutes. My rule of thumb is that I won’t spend any more than 1 hour a day checking my accounts and doing research/reading. This does not include the time I spend researching and writing my blog.
- Learn to skim – There’s not enough time in the day to read everything. You need learn how to skim articles quickly to see if they are really what you’re looking for. I find the better bloggers I read keep paragraphs short and get to the point quickly. You should be able, in 30 seconds, skim an article and determine whether or not it’s of interest to you.
- Monitor your audiences – If you’re a blogger, there are metrics which allow you to monitor views. Look at these periodically and focus your efforts on those topics where you’re getting the most action.
These are some of my priorities. What are you doing to manage your time?
by tradesmeninsights | Nov 3, 2009 | Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
Gee…who would you believe, the national news anchor or someone on one of your social networking sites?
According to the Harvard Business Review, “the American public assessment of the accuracy of the news media has reached a new low. 63% of American adults say news stories are often inaccurate, compared to 53% in 2007 and 34% in 1985. 70% say that the news media tries to cover up mistakes, and 27% describe the press as “not professional.” Right there is a pretty good reason no one is watching the nightly news. But come on, we do have options don’t we, or do we have to rely on someone pushing their agenda on us? How many times have you listened to the news and only got one side of the story?
According to The Sacred Heart University Polling Institute who released its 3rd survey on, Trust and satisfaction with the news media. Nearly two-fifths of all respondents, 38.1%, said they are reading newspapers less often than they did five years ago. And, nearly half, 45.0%, agreed that the internet is adequately covering for failing newspapers,
Now take social media. Do you think a national anchor would get away with some of the things they say on TV if they had to interact with the social media scene? Afraid not! They would have their head handed to them. Why, because social allows other people to have an opinion and they aren’t afraid to call you out if you’re wrong. Americans aren’t as dumb as the Networks think we are. People are relying more on social. Look at Twitter. You knew about the plane landing in the Hudson, along with photos, long before the mainstream media knew about it. If you really want to know what John Q Public is thinking, you need to get to the streets. Social literally has put “the man on the street” interview back in vogue. Only this time the man isn’t a staged prop.
75%-plus of us use the Internet when we’re looking to buy something and want to do research on it first. Yes, we might look at some manufacturers’ sites for features and benefits. What most people like is a site that has a place where people can leave comments and rate the product from a customer’s view. People trust other people’s experiences and views.
What are your thoughts?
by tradesmeninsights | Oct 28, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it.
One of the main reasons folks should use social is, for the most part, easily trackable and you can see quickly your success/failure rates. I’m amazed when asking people who are using social tools how are they doing, they come back to me with some generalized statements like, “I’m doing really well.” If I press them for more details, I come to find out that they really don’t have a plan for measuring what they do and the time they spend at it. Metrics are an important component for the use of social media. Especially measuring for ROI in regards to the amount of time that must be invested. You would think this would be a no brainer. But according to a recent a survey by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education, a whopping 84% of professionals do not measure ROI for social media. It appears that hardly anyone is taking the time to measure the ROI for social.
Some additional insightful statistics from this survey:
- 86% of respondents to the survey of professionals from a variety of industries said they had adopted social technologies.
- 57% said they were using social media tools for marketing.
- More than four in 10 respondents did not even know whether the social tools they were using had ROI measurement capabilities.
- 3 in 10 reported using social media for customer service and support.
Click Here to download a copy of this report.
Here’s another post you might find interesting: How Do You Measure Social Media?
A great resource of social media articles and fresh reports comes from eMarketer. I found the original source of this survey through their eMarketer Daily Newsletter. I highly recommend it.
by tradesmeninsights | Oct 27, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
This probably doesn’t come as a surprise to most, but most Industrial Marketing budgets have been cut this year. It’s also no surprise that Mar/Com departments are still charged with bringing in leads. But what I want to warn everyone about is, don’t be focused on just the number of leads (yeah, I’m assuming that they are ROI, qualified in some manner). You need to separate the suspects from the prospects from the shoppers. Shoppers are getting ready to buy, and these are the ones that need to be identified and passed on to the sales department. There is nothing wrong with the suspects or prospects, they just need to be nurtured along and up the customer development ladder. Matt Sonnhalter had an article in BtoB Magazine, pointing out that you need to make sure to look for the right decision maker.
Tough times make us focus more on ROI, but we should be doing that all along. I’ve listed several other articles that I thought might be of interest on this topic and I’d like to hear how you’re doing on your ROI.
Increase your sales revenue by 20% using existing inquiries
5 highlights from GlobalSpec marketing trends survey
Use social media to generate professional tradesmen leads
Industrial marketers focus on social media
Industrial community responds to online marketing
by tradesmeninsights | Oct 21, 2009 | Marketing Trends, Social Marketing, Twitter
Social media as a whole continues to surpass growth estimates. eMarketer reported earlier this month that Twitter has over 18 million adults who access on at least a monthly basis. That’s a 200% increase over last year.
Universal McCann’s “Power to the people-social media tracker” also sees social networking continuing to increase. eMarketer estimates that 44.2% of all Internet users in the U.S. are social network users. Worldwide, 62.5% of active users ages 16-54 have a social networking profile in 2009. Worldwide, 62.5% of active Internet users ages 16-54 have a social network profile.
Users are looking to social networking sites that can consolidate multiple social media into one place. As noted above, despite consolidation, social media is not a one-stop shop. Universal McCann advises marketers to give consumers options when engaging them through social media. Allowing individuals to share and discuss on their platform of choice remains important.
