by tradesmeninsights | Sep 8, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
If you’re just starting out with a blog, I know the scariest thing for me was wondering who in the world was going to find my blog, no less take the time to read it. If you’re passionate about a subject, market or cause, you may have more people than you think that would be interested in reading and sharing their thoughts. Ours is a passion to get to the Professional Tradesmen.
From a B-to-B perspective, here are some simple ways to get the ball rolling so you can become the super star blogger you always knew you could be. Don’t ignore the obvious. You already have a business network to tap into.
- Current customers
- Potential customers
- Suppliers
- Distributors
- Fellow employees
- Industry groups
- Associations
Here are some inexpensive ways to promote your blog:
- Add your URL to your email signature (have everyone in the company do it)
- Add your URL when printing letterhead, cards, invoices, etc.
- Make it very visible on your web site
- If you do trade ads, add to the signoff as one of the calls-to-action
- Promote through your social media pages
One of the best ways to identify readers is using LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Most of my new readers come from one of these sources. Weekly I go up on my LinkedIn page and post a topic on either the discussion page or the news page that directs them to my blog. The key here is to have groups to link to, but that’s another post. Facebook is the same way — at least once a week I post something. With Twitter, I use socialoomph (formerly Tweetlater) to put out posts hourly. I have over 100 tweets a week going out automatically. The point is it’s no good having these social media pages if you don’t use them. Remember, the power of social lies in it being viral. All it takes is a few readers who have a big following to like what you’re saying and Bingo, they will introduce you to a whole new audience.
Enough about how I find readers. I’d like to know how you do it. Please share.
Other posts that might be helpful:
5 ways to improve your blog
Blogs: How to take advantage of them to reach Professional Tradesmen
by tradesmeninsights | Sep 2, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Everyone in the manufacturing sector is feeling the pressure from around them to get in on this social media phenomenon. So you open a LinkedIn account, set up Twitter and even get a Facebook page set up. Wow, that was easy, now all I have to do is to wait until somebody finds me. Unfortunately, this scenario is much truer than one would like to think. Social media is no different than any other marketing program you have. You have to have a strategy in place before you go and start implementing it. You need to determine why you’re on the social media scene before you implement the how. Here are some helpful hints:
- What’s your point? Do you want to build awareness, build loyalty or generate new leads?
- What’s your point of differentiation? You have to define a niche or specialty.
- Do some research into how your target audience uses Social. You may find contractors use Facebook more to try to promote their local business or maybe it’s Twitter. Do you know?
- How will you determine whether your social program will be successful? You need to determine expectations before starting a program.
Jason Baer wrote a great post recently, Develop a social media strategy in 7 steps, that you might find interesting reading.
by tradesmeninsights | Sep 1, 2009 | Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
Everyone is trying to get the most out of what they’re spending this year and the manufacturing sector is no exception. With B-to-B leads from traditional sources slowing down, marketers are looking for other avenues. Many are shifting dollars to online options as they are less expensive and easily measurable.
According to a recent report from Global Spec, Trends in Industrial Marketing 2009: How Manufacturers are Marketing Today, the number-one focus of marketers is to keep the customers they have and generate new high quality leads. Marketers are under pressure to choose programs that are measurable. So where is the money coming from? Many industrial marketers are reducing trade shows and print ads. 29% of respondents said they already are spending more than half of their budget online. 48% said online will account for a bigger proportion of their budgets for the balance of ’09.
The top 3 online marketing channels for companies are:
- online directories/web sites
- e-marketing using in-house lists
- SEO
It looks like online and digital are going to become an ever-increasing portion of marketing budgets moving forward. Forrester Research predicts that by 2014, interactive spending will hit 55 billion ( pproximately 21% of total marketing spends). The Forrester study also indicated that much of the interactive dollars will come out of traditional spends.
What’s your feeling on this subject? Are you doing more online? I’d like to hear your thoughts.
by tradesmeninsights | Aug 26, 2009 | Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
Would it surprise you to learn that the biggest gains in who’s using social media are among older users? According to a report in eMarketer, “consumer internet barometer” U.S. internet users who visited a social site in the 2nd quarter of ’09 rose 16% over last year. Females still lead males in usage and 70% of users were under the age of 35. The most popular sites in order were: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Now that we know who uses it, we can tackle the why.
According to a post in eMarketer, marketers surveyed by Marketing Sherpa in late 2008 found that increasing brand reputation and awareness, along with improved search engines, headed up the reasons why they thought social media was an effective tool. Blog or social media advertising, online news release distribution and blogging led the way as far as tactics they thought to be useful.
Now based on what you just read, what do you think business executives think of social media?
Sean Callahan from BtoB online reported recently on a survey conducted by Russell Herder and Ethos business law that business executives were grappling with social media. The online survey of 438 executives showed:
- 51% fear social media and that it could be detrimental to employee productivity
- 49% said social media could damage the company’s reputation
At the same time they said:
- 81% can enhance relationships with customers
- 69% can aid in recruiting
- 64% it could function as a customer service tool
About 70% say they are going to increase their social media, however only 33% had a social media policy in place.
I don’t know about you, but I think these guys are talking out of both sides of their mouth. The only thing they should do is support a social program. They should stick to what they know and do well and let the marketing departments do their jobs.
What are your thoughts?
by tradesmeninsights | Aug 19, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
A lot of B-to-B marketers still find it hard to understand practical ways to use this marketing tool. Twitter can be used as a marketing tool to build your brand, build credibility by sharing your expertise and grow your network. Twitter is my number-one source for views to my posts. Here are a few ways you can capitalize on this powerful tool:
- Establish yourself as an expert in your field by authoring your thoughts on an industry topic, sharing tips and links to articles posted elsewhere.
- Grow your network by joining industry groups or forums
- Participate in Twit chats as they relate to your industry or expertise
- Use Twitter search to find out about competitors, trends or what people are saying about you
- Give -Get referrals
- Add your Twitter ID to all correspondence whether it’s your e-mail, business cards or even your sales material down near the corporate signature.
These are only a few ways. I recently read a post by Meryl Evans, 62 Ways to Use Twitter for Business, that you might find interesting.
Here are a few other posts you might find interesting:
5 ways to find prospects on Twitter
5 ways to use Twitter as a tool to reach the professional tradesman
use Twitter as a PR tool to help build long term relationships
by tradesmeninsights | Aug 18, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
My blog focuses on helping manufacturers better communicate with contractors and professional tradesmen. We have three challenges: 1) identify our audience, 2) give them meaningful content, and 3) keep them coming back. One of the most important things I try to communicate is that to be successful, you must be able to engage and have a genuine relationship with your reader. I recently read a guest post on Problogger from Leo Babauta of Zen Habits on 7 steps to build a genuine relationship with your readers, which highlights ways he’s been able to engage and develop relationships.
Here are some highlights from his post:
- A genuine relationship starts with you – start with an open and positive mindset and be willing to work on the relationship.
- Make posts as helpful and useful as you can – it’s not about you, it’s about your readers’ problems and concerns.
- Be helpful and positive in all interactions – whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook or your blog…always be helpful, positive and upbeat.
- Encourage discussion in comments – you’re not the only one with good ideas. Make sure to engage on your response and ask their opinion.
- Give back on other blogs – link when appropriate to other blogs, visit their sites and make comments and write guest posts for them.
One of the most important points Leo makes is you can’t fake this stuff. If you are just pretending to care about your readers, if you don’t really want to talk to them, they’ll feel it and then you’ve lost them.
Leo is a best selling author of The Power of Less. He also just released a free report for bloggers called, How I Got 100,000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits. Check out his report as it gives some insightful ways to help get and retain viewers
