by tradesmeninsights | Sep 15, 2009 | Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
It’s always interesting to see which articles pull the best each month. Enclosed are the top ones from August ranked in the order of the amount of traffic each generated. Enjoy.
- 10 Engagement Tactics That Will Help B-to-B Marketers
- Social Media: Who Uses It and Why?
- Industrial and B-to-B Marketers Can’t Ignore Social Media Anymore
- 5 Tips for B-to-B Marketers to Get the Most out of Twitter
- 2009 Trends and Spending Strategies for B-to-B Marketers
- Social Media: 4 Signs Your Tradesman Wants to Hear From You
- 5 Tips For B-to-B Marketing Thought Leaders on How to Increase Your ROI.
- Forrester Report: Why Most B-to-B Blogs Fail
- 5 Quick Tips to Promote Your Post
- 5 Ways to Find Prospects on Twitter
by tradesmeninsights | Jul 15, 2009 | Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Twitter
Social media is trying to be taken seriously, and in late 2008 came out with several tools to measure the effectiveness of Twitter. Two of the more popular tools are Twitter Grader (I scored 97.6 out of 100) and Twinfluence (I scored 98 out of 100).
How much credibility do you put into these type tools? I use them as a guidepost to make sure I keep on track.
It makes me:
- Check my network to get rid of non-contributing (spammers) followers.
- Re-evaluate my end game to make sure you’re still on target. You want to search for like-minded people (in my case, those looking to talk to tradesmen). You’re not looking for the biggest list of followers; you’re looking for the right ones!
- To make sure my messages are timely and rich in content for my target audience.
Twitter Grader bases its score on the number of followers you have, the power of your network, the frequency of your updates and how complete your profile is.
Twinfluence bases its criteria on Reach (what’s the maximum number of people that could get your tweet),Velocity (how fast are you adding followers), Social Capital (how many followers do your followers have) and Centralization (how dependent are you on a small number of followers who have big followings).
You may or may not agree on the metrics, but at least it’s a start. If it does nothing else but make you stop and evaluate your program at a 30,000-foot level, it has served a purpose.
So what are you waiting for? What’s your score?
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 17, 2009 | Marketing Trends
They are the hard-working men and women of America. They drive the products to market. They build the towers of business. They dig the foundations of dreams. They serve America in every capacity.
They are the blue collar tradesmen, working class heroes we sometimes overlook.
They have been all over this social media stuff long before the rest of us jumped on board. They have been building relationships with friends and business associates from around the world, across the country and around town for decades. They adopted these amazing communication technologies not as a narcissistic plaything but as serious tools of industry.
They are the ham radio operators, the CB truckers and the Nextel two-way cell users. They go by names like Gladys and Night Rider and Bubba and they are the real pioneers in social media.
What makes any of us think this group of users will avoid this brave new world? They are logging on in record numbers. According to one survey, while the universe of blue-collar social media users is less than 10%, they are the fastest-growing segment.
As their jobs dwindle, they are learning new trades and finding new jobs through the use of SM.
Blue-collar men and women are a critical part of the conversation.
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 17, 2009 | Marketing Trends
I guess there is no surprise in this Nielsen/NetRatings study:
“Low-income tradesmen spend more time online from their home computers than do high-paid professionals.“
Makes sense, right? After all, white collar surfs the net while at work, whereas those who work in factories or at construction sites probably don’t have a chance to use the Web while on the job.
Nielsen’s Peggy O’Neill says: “They’re more likely to come home and spend time checking email, chatting online, playing games, and visiting stores than someone who has been online all day long.”
For her research, O’Neill used Claritas Prizm clusters based on ZIP codes and neighborhoods where people live. She looked at the home-based Web surfing habits of all 62 clusters and found that …
the top five Net users were low-income, blue collar workers who burned about 12 hours online per month.
Chatting on instant messenger, clicking through Wal-Mart online and visiting entertainment sites such as Emazing.com were the most popular activities for the top five clusters.
Those who spent the least amount of time online — about seven hours per month — were high-paid professionals.
O’Neill said, “When these people get home, they don’t have a great need to surf the Web.”
What an opportunity! Reaching blue collar consumers at home through the Internet, social and viral media may be the next big idea for emotionally connecting with this broad and loyal audience.
Read more about the study blue collar workers favor home Net use.
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 17, 2009 | Marketing Tips
In the B-to-B marketing world, most companies have specialties or niche markets that they serve.
In our case, most of our clients target the professional tradesman which makes our task a bit easier than others. To reach, for an example, Electrical Contractors or Electricians, there are very specific key words that would drive them to your site like IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers), side-cutters or power bender.
Key words and SEO have long been associated with web sites. But blogs are actually more SEO friendly and much easier to update from information from your analytics.
Twitter isn’t there yet, it’s only a matter of time and search will be one of its most important elements.
Consistently using key words that your target audience would use to find your company will generate significant online traffic.
Companies make the mistake of assuming that once the initial search for those key words and phrases are done, they won’t have to go through that again. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Key words and SEO have to be a part of a continual process of monitoring and updating.
Tools like Google search allows you to type in key words and phrases to see what kind of activity levels there are. Especially in this economy where everything is being measured, SEO/organic search engine marketing has proven itself to be a good ROI.
Here are 4 tips to consider when developing your key words:
- Understand your audience. Since you’re in the business of making stuff, i.e. for Electrical Contractors, you should know their slang and buzz words. You should also know what’s going on in the industry. Don’t focus on marketing terms, focus on what the contractor would be typing into Google to solve his problem.
- Keep it simple. Because you’re talking to a specific audience (electrical contractors), you don’t need 1000 key words. The rule of thumb for key words is to have one key phrase per page. Having 6 or 8 only confuses the search engines so they’re not able to determine the focus of the page.
- Evaluate your competition. There are few companies that don’t have some sort of competitors. Look at their site and blogs if they have them. See what key words/phrases they’re using.
- Treat key word searches as an ongoing process. At least once a quarter, take a good hard look at the metrics and make tweaks where necessary.
What tips can you share to help improve your SEO performance?
