Posts Tagged ‘LinkedIn’

« Older Entries

Helping B2Bs Execute Social Media

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

Content Strategy Provides a Social Media Roadmap

Successful execution of social media programs is an issue for SMB B2Bs, but it can be done. Post Four in our series is Content Strategy. This is timely in that I’m doing just that – developing a Information Structure 300x225 Helping B2Bs Execute Social Mediacontent strategy and a blog post (editorial) calendar for a client this week. They didn’t understand the need for this step. I convinced them that what seems like an additional task will actually save significant time and effort over the long run. It is SO MUCH easier to come up with useful and relevant content each week when you’ve taken the time to map it out up front.

Development of a content strategy plays a key role in successful execution of a social media program. Whether you communicate to your audience via a blog, Twitter or social networking sites like LinkedIn, the only true way to build relationships with a growing network is to listen, engage and provide content they find valuable.

Capturing insight about your audience in a social media context can be accomplished through:

  • Participation in appropriate online discussion groups,
  • Social media monitoring tools, and
  • Surveys and polls.

If the objective for your social media efforts is to sell more products and services, become a resource to help your audience make smart buying choices regarding configuration and integration. Give them information re how to leverage your products and services in ways that will make them heroes in their companies. Give them information that’s relevant and useful to them in their business. Over time your knowledge and tools will help them accomplish their goals and, in turn, they’ll see your company as a valuable resource.

In this age of Web 2.0, those who are active in social media are essentially publishers. Content creation plays a key role in your social media strategy. One way to ensure you publish consistent, unique content that:

  1. speaks compellingly to your target audience,
  2. extends and amplifies your marketing messaging, and
  3. aligns with your target keyword concepts;

is to create an editorial calendar. Social media publishing platforms like blogs can use content schedules (aka editorial calendars) to serve as a guide and keep messaging aligned with your overall content strategy.

Share and Enjoy:
  • services sprite Helping B2Bs Execute Social Media
  • services sprite Helping B2Bs Execute Social Media
  • services sprite Helping B2Bs Execute Social Media
  • services sprite Helping B2Bs Execute Social Media
  • services sprite Helping B2Bs Execute Social Media
  • services sprite Helping B2Bs Execute Social Media
  • services sprite Helping B2Bs Execute Social Media
  • services sprite Helping B2Bs Execute Social Media
  • services sprite Helping B2Bs Execute Social Media
  • services sprite Helping B2Bs Execute Social Media
  • services sprite Helping B2Bs Execute Social Media
  • services sprite Helping B2Bs Execute Social Media
  • services sprite Helping B2Bs Execute Social Media
  • services sprite Helping B2Bs Execute Social Media
  • services sprite Helping B2Bs Execute Social Media

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in acSellerant, Bob Leonard, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, execution, social media | 1 Comment »

Make Social Media Easier with Target Personas

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011
Diverse Group of Business People 300x149 Make Social Media Easier with Target Personas

Different Content for Different People

This is the third in a series of blog posts where I deconstruct the social media marketing process in order to solve the content development problem. The number one cause of social media marketing failure is poor and/or inconsistent content development. This is especially acute for small to mid-sized B2B companies. Why? Because…

  1. SMB B2Bs don’t have the resources that large companies have to do the requisite content development.
  2. B2Bs sell complex products and services to professional business people; so their content must be concise, compelling, relevant, useful and (hopefully) entertaining – not an easy task.

You can’t create compelling content if you don’t have a clear idea of who you’re communicating with. What’s relevant and useful to one person is irrelevant and useless to the next. Target personas should include current customers, as well as prospects. I develop one persona for both customers and prospects. If you have more than one type of product or service, you should create a persona for each product line (and probably a different corporate voice and SM profile for each too).

You Want More of Your Best

If you haven’t created a clear profile of your most desirable prospects, this process can help you do that:

Take a look at your list of current customers. Which are your most profitable? Which are the most fun to do business with? (It’s always interesting to see the overlap between these.) Put this subset of customers into a spreadsheet and score them on a list of demographics (age, location, industry, role/title, size of business, etc.) and psychographics (attitudes, beliefs, values, personality type, buying motives, etc.).

Let’s say, for example, you determine that your prime prospect has the following attributes:

  • lives in the Midwest
  • is between 35 and 55 years old
  • works in a small (10 to 50 employee) credit union or community bank
  • is the COO, VP, (person in charge) of Operations
  • is male
  • is married and has school age children
  • is active in his community
  • and makes buying decisions based on how they might affect his career.

You now have a good idea of who your best target is, what his interests and concerns are, and how you can motivate him. Some people even name their primary persona (I named mine ‘Erica’). Print out this list of attributes and tack it up where you can read it from your desk chair. Before writing a blog post, or tweeting, or contributing to a LinkedIn discussion, review that list to remind yourself who you’re conversing with. It makes the process much easier. Try it and see.

Please let me know if you have any other targeting tips that help you in developing content, or if you decide to try this process, let me know how it works for you.

Share and Enjoy:
  • services sprite Make Social Media Easier with Target Personas
  • services sprite Make Social Media Easier with Target Personas
  • services sprite Make Social Media Easier with Target Personas
  • services sprite Make Social Media Easier with Target Personas
  • services sprite Make Social Media Easier with Target Personas
  • services sprite Make Social Media Easier with Target Personas
  • services sprite Make Social Media Easier with Target Personas
  • services sprite Make Social Media Easier with Target Personas
  • services sprite Make Social Media Easier with Target Personas
  • services sprite Make Social Media Easier with Target Personas
  • services sprite Make Social Media Easier with Target Personas
  • services sprite Make Social Media Easier with Target Personas
  • services sprite Make Social Media Easier with Target Personas
  • services sprite Make Social Media Easier with Target Personas
  • services sprite Make Social Media Easier with Target Personas

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in acSellerant, Bob Leonard, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, execution, social media, trust | 6 Comments »

User-Generated Content via Market Research

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

This is the third post in a series devoted to a pervasive problem experienced by SMB B2B companies. That problem is successful execution of their social media strategies. The best social media strategy on the planet is worthless if it isn’t implemented. The most difficult piece to execute for SMBs is the development of an ongoing stream of relevant and useful content. Poor quality content is cheap and easy to generate, but it does more harm than good.

In my last post, Getting Over the Social Media Content Hump, I listed all the ingredients of a successful social media campaign (that I could think of at the time). My intention is to take each of them – one per week – and delve deeper in an attempt to answer, “How can this facet of social media be leveraged to help develop and/or distribute quality, highly readable content.”

This week’s topic is Market Research.

Social media is a great tool for market research. You can research your clients and your competition, and improve your products and services via crowd sourced surveys. Knowing what your prospects and clients are saying, as well as what your competition is up to, is highly valuable in itself. Anticipating and validating product changes through social research, polls and surveys can be of extreme value. And these polls and surveys will also develop user-generated content.

Business Strategy Chart 300x199 User Generated Content via Market Research

This is a tactic that market research firms (e.g. Forrester, Frost & Sullivan, Gartner) have been using for decades. It’s no small task to develop a survey questionnaire that elicits valuable information, but there are consultants who specialize in this.

Can’t afford a consultant? Send an email around to your department heads: C-suite, Customer Service, Engineering, HR, Marketing, Product Management, Sales; and ask them for two or three market-related questions that each would love to have the answers to.

Then place these surveys on relevant sites like Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Twitter, and industry specific networking sites. The answers will give you a treasure trove of information that is, by definition, relevant and useful. The information came directly from your target audience!

Use this user-generated content to feed your blogs, group discussions, tweets, etc. And take another sheet from the research firms’ playbook – every year (or quarter, or month) update and re-post your polls and surveys. You’ll get more fodder for your content needs, and more up to date insight into the needs and wants of your clients and target market.

Beneficial side effects may include tighter alignment between your social media people and the rest of the company (and a new found respect for what social media can accomplish), and a closer digital relationship with customers and prospects. This blog post by Scott Frangos makes a crucial distinction between content and true connection (the kind needed to close high ticket B2B deals).

Share and Enjoy:
  • services sprite User Generated Content via Market Research
  • services sprite User Generated Content via Market Research
  • services sprite User Generated Content via Market Research
  • services sprite User Generated Content via Market Research
  • services sprite User Generated Content via Market Research
  • services sprite User Generated Content via Market Research
  • services sprite User Generated Content via Market Research
  • services sprite User Generated Content via Market Research
  • services sprite User Generated Content via Market Research
  • services sprite User Generated Content via Market Research
  • services sprite User Generated Content via Market Research
  • services sprite User Generated Content via Market Research
  • services sprite User Generated Content via Market Research
  • services sprite User Generated Content via Market Research
  • services sprite User Generated Content via Market Research

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in acSellerant, Bob Leonard, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, execution, market research, marketing strategy, new product launch, social media, trust | 2 Comments »

Crucial Components for B2B Social Media Success

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

Success in B2B social media marketing is like success in every other endeavor. It requires thought, planning, time and effort. Your social media plan must:

Social Media Marketing2 258x300 Crucial Components for B2B Social Media Success

1. Include input from Sales. If you haven’t already, align Sales and Marketing. You can’t afford not to. Sales should be immersed in the conversations taking place with prospects offline. That information is critical to success in migrating, extending and amplifying those conversations online.

2. Be no longer than six months. You can’t plan beyond that. The conversations you need to be having with suspects, prospects and leads is influenced to a significant degree by the environment. Things change in a hurry. Your plan should define how you’ll adapt, not predict the future.

3. Develop and define target personas. Who are you trying to reach? What are their interests, needs and wants? If your content isn’t relevant and useful to that person; it won’t be consumed, remembered or acted on. You have to know, specifically, who you’re engaging in conversation. What’s relevant and useful to one person is irrelevant and useless to the next.

4. Include search engine optimization (SEO), link building, and probably paid search, too. Place your QUALITY content where your targets are congregating online; and take the extra step to PULL others to your blog and website. If they can’t find you on Google, you don’t exist.

5. Have a content strategy that doesn’t assume ‘existing resources’ will do the development. Beyond the strategy itself, this is the most important piece of the plan. Hire someone (either permanent staff or an outside consultant) as a dedicated resource… someone who is an expert at content development. That means not only an excellent copywriter, but one who has SEO skills, and one who understands how to deploy multimedia to communicate your messages quickly, clearly and persuasively.

6. Include distribution, outreach and socialization… the mechanics of how you’ll get your quality content in front of your target audience (which includes not only prospects, but influential people in your industry, in the blogging world, in the media, etc.); and give them the tools they need to comment and distribute.

7. Build in an analytics plan. List key performance indicators (KPIs). What are your goals? They should include traffic, blog comments, retweets, and conversions. This last, conversions, are where the rubber meets the road. What action(s) do you want your targets to take after consuming your content? That must be clearly defined up front. Google Analytics will give you reams of data for free. You don’t want reams of data. You want the half dozen or so stats that will give you a good idea of how well the plan is meeting its goals.

8. Serve existing customers. It’s easier to keep existing customers than it is to obtain new ones. Does your social media marketing plan lay out how you’ll keep your current customers informed and happy? Social media isn’t only a marketing tool. It’s also an excellent research, customer service and PR tool. Make sure your plan leverages it across all those departments.

9. Include Facebook along with Twitter, LinkedIn, and Foursquare. There are so many people on Facebook you’d be crazy not to try to reach .01% of them. Also look at niche social networks that may aggregate your targets. Once the content is developed, there are tools that automate the process of distributing to these platforms.

10. Follow through. After the content is distributed, you have to follow through. Your social networks must be monitored; and questions and comments must be answered. That’s the essence of  conversation. Listen.

11. Build your house list. It’s your most valuable marketing asset. Your plan should include integration of the various social media platforms into your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

12. Include a feedback loop. You developed relevant and useful content for your target audience. You distributed it. You socialized it. You listened and gathered intelligence re what your target thinks of your messaging. You’ve seen which content drives traffic and conversions, and which doesn’t. Feed that information back into the plan. Tweak, and repeat.

13. Be reasonable. There’s a perception that social media is low cost. The price of admission is practically zero, but social media marketing is a process. It requires a significant investment of time. You must listen, participate, and converse over time. Budget money and other resources accordingly.

14. Do the math. The easiest way to check on #13 is to do the math. Your social media plan should put a dollar value on a customer, and provide a worst-case cost estimate for acquiring that customer. Your customer acquisition cost, using social media, should be no more than a few percentage points of the lifetime value of that customer. If it isn’t, something is wrong with either your plan or your pricing.

Share and Enjoy:
  • services sprite Crucial Components for B2B Social Media Success
  • services sprite Crucial Components for B2B Social Media Success
  • services sprite Crucial Components for B2B Social Media Success
  • services sprite Crucial Components for B2B Social Media Success
  • services sprite Crucial Components for B2B Social Media Success
  • services sprite Crucial Components for B2B Social Media Success
  • services sprite Crucial Components for B2B Social Media Success
  • services sprite Crucial Components for B2B Social Media Success
  • services sprite Crucial Components for B2B Social Media Success
  • services sprite Crucial Components for B2B Social Media Success
  • services sprite Crucial Components for B2B Social Media Success
  • services sprite Crucial Components for B2B Social Media Success
  • services sprite Crucial Components for B2B Social Media Success
  • services sprite Crucial Components for B2B Social Media Success
  • services sprite Crucial Components for B2B Social Media Success

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in acSellerant, Bob Leonard, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, execution, marketing strategy, Sales and Marketing alliance, sales enablement, social media | 10 Comments »

Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

I used to think the worst thing my clients did to qualified leads was to ignore them once they found out they weren’t ready to close this quarter (or even this month).

Complex, high-ticket B2B solutions have long sales cycles. If you have a qualified lead (they have the need, budget and authority), keep them engaged and nurtured. There are right and wrong ways to do this. I’ve seen clients waste time and money on what they think are ‘nurturing’ activities, only to end up with annoyed, tuned-out prospects.

Here’s my list of Lead Torture vs. Lead Nurture:Torture 150x150 Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads

Lead Torture – calling leads just to ‘touch base’ (“Are you ready to buy yet? I need to make my quota.”). Lead Nurture – calling leads when you have something to talk about, something that is of interest to that individual. Having a valid business reason to make the call.

Lead Torture - Tweets about mundane or arcane (too techie) matters; salesy, obviously self-serving Answers and Discussions on LinkedIn; invitations to become a fan of your company page on Facebook. Lead Nurture - a thought through, coordinated social media plan that has an objective, is congruent across platforms, and consistently delivers interesting, meaningful and/or entertaining information.

Lead Torture – sending the same, tired brochure (or case study or white paper) over and over again. Lead Nurture – sending new, relevant and useful information on a regular basis (blogs are a great way to accomplish this AND improve your SEO at the same time).

Lead Torture – sending weekly emails, written by whichever technician wasn’t billed out at the time, containing technology feature dumps. Lead Nurture - sending a weekly email that curates news items from the Net; items that are of interest because they’re related to that prospect’s industry, business role, etc.

If you’re going to do it, do it right. Otherwise you’re training your leads to dismiss your messaging and your company.

Share and Enjoy:
  • services sprite Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads
  • services sprite Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads
  • services sprite Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads
  • services sprite Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads
  • services sprite Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads
  • services sprite Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads
  • services sprite Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads
  • services sprite Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads
  • services sprite Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads
  • services sprite Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads
  • services sprite Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads
  • services sprite Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads
  • services sprite Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads
  • services sprite Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads
  • services sprite Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in acSellerant, Bob Leonard, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, execution, sales enablement, trust | 1 Comment »

Make Your Sales Calls Naked

Friday, April 30th, 2010

I ran across this blog post by Jill Konrath. She advises sales people to meet with prospects ‘naked’. That is without brochures, or PowerPoint presentations, or anything except a pen and a notebook. Her thinking is that this forces the sales person to focus on the prospect, to listen to their Naked Salesman 150x150 Make Your Sales Calls Nakedproblems, and to have a person to person conversation.

I agree with Jill. That may seem to be an odd stance for a guy who makes his living developing marketing collateral and sales tools, but it isn’t really.

Today people won’t agree to a meeting with a sales person unless:

  1. they feel you have a solution to a business problem they’re experiencing, and
  2. they’ve already checked out your website, read your company blog, and researched your executives on LinkedIn.

I’ve been there, so I know that hard copy collateral can be a crutch for sales people… especially young or inexperienced ones. It used to be that the collateral was necessary. Prospects had no other way to learn about complex B2B products and services. Those days are gone. Make sure your website is filled with high quality content that is relevant and useful to your clients and prospects; and keep adding content so people have a reason to return to your site.

Focus on developing relationships when you meet with clients. You’ll close more business. Don’t go in totally naked, though… I recommend you wear a smile.

Here’s Jill’s blog post Naked Selling.

Share and Enjoy:
  • services sprite Make Your Sales Calls Naked
  • services sprite Make Your Sales Calls Naked
  • services sprite Make Your Sales Calls Naked
  • services sprite Make Your Sales Calls Naked
  • services sprite Make Your Sales Calls Naked
  • services sprite Make Your Sales Calls Naked
  • services sprite Make Your Sales Calls Naked
  • services sprite Make Your Sales Calls Naked
  • services sprite Make Your Sales Calls Naked
  • services sprite Make Your Sales Calls Naked
  • services sprite Make Your Sales Calls Naked
  • services sprite Make Your Sales Calls Naked
  • services sprite Make Your Sales Calls Naked
  • services sprite Make Your Sales Calls Naked
  • services sprite Make Your Sales Calls Naked

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in acSellerant, Bob Leonard, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, marketing strategy, sales enablement, trust | No Comments »

Using Social Media to Design New Products

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

I know that my clients (SMB B2B IT providers), amongst many others, need a better way to communicate to their prospects. acSellerant’s tag line is “Relevant and useful information builds trust. Trust sells.” While that still holds true, it’s not enough.Innovation Group 150x150 Using Social Media to Design New Products Not when it’s delivered primarily via text. The vast majority of B2B marketing messages are delivered online. People have a short attention span online

Relevant, useful, interesting… even entertaining copy is no longer enough to hold the interest of harried, starved for time, inundated with information business prospects. I’ve spent a lot of time and effort researching and building a process to develop multimedia storyboards that can deliver a significant amount of information in a short amount of time. The idea is to use sight and sound simultaneously to compress the amount of time, and increase the ease, in which information is communicated.

You’re thinking, “Wow, Bob. Alert the media. Ever hear of television or the movies?”

This process might include video, but it doesn’t have to, and it’s designed to be deliverable at less cost, with less equipment, and less prep time than video. It’s designed to fit the budgets of my clients. It’s untried, though.

So, I’ve been thinking about how to launch it. I first vetted the idea with friends, colleagues and clients over the holidays. Then I submitted discussions to a half dozen groups on LinkedIn. I was surprised at the response. Many smart, talented, creative professionals joined in the discussions. The consensus was, if I can pull it off, it’s a winner.

Then I went to three online custom publishers I have a relationship with. They were positive. They all said the same thing, they can sell it, IF I can pull it off. So now it’s time to develop a proof of concept and get feedback.

I’ve built a prototype with a voice over script, some on screen text, and a story told in cartoon format (with my crude stick figure drawings). I realized I needed a professional cartoonist to do the eight or nine frames necessary to tell the visual part of the story. So I’m using iFreelance and contacting other cartoonists I found on LinkedIn and through graphic designers I know.

So stay tuned. I’m going to blog about the process as I reveal the proof of concept online, try to build buzz via social media, and crowdsource tweaks to the process/product to improve it. By the way, one of the outcomes of the discussions on LinkedIn is a name for the product: acStream.

Should be interesting.

Share and Enjoy:
  • services sprite Using Social Media to Design New Products
  • services sprite Using Social Media to Design New Products
  • services sprite Using Social Media to Design New Products
  • services sprite Using Social Media to Design New Products
  • services sprite Using Social Media to Design New Products
  • services sprite Using Social Media to Design New Products
  • services sprite Using Social Media to Design New Products
  • services sprite Using Social Media to Design New Products
  • services sprite Using Social Media to Design New Products
  • services sprite Using Social Media to Design New Products
  • services sprite Using Social Media to Design New Products
  • services sprite Using Social Media to Design New Products
  • services sprite Using Social Media to Design New Products
  • services sprite Using Social Media to Design New Products
  • services sprite Using Social Media to Design New Products

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in acSellerant, acStream, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, execution, information technology providers, marketing strategy, new product launch, sales enablement, trust | 1 Comment »

« Older Entries