11 Tips for LinkedIn Business Development

LinkedIn has become the defacto standard in business social networking. It has over 70 million members from over 200 countries including the Fortune list of enterprises. Unlike Facebook and Twitter where many use it for personal social networking or business or both, people use LinkedIn exclusively for business social networking.  The general idea behind LinkedIn is to build connections, then nurture them to create opportunities. Many sales and marketing professionals who actively use LinkedIn have produced measurable business development opportunities.

Since there is so much content and education around how to get the most out of Facebook and Twitter, I thought I’d put together a partial list of ways to get the most out of LinkedIn for business social networking.

1. Complete your profile 100%. The LinkedIn meter tells you how far your profile is completed. Many people overlook this simple tip.

2. Add a recent photo to your profile to humanize your profile. Likewise, many people have no photo in their profile.

3. Include links to your company website and new blog in the “my website” and “my blog” section. Note: use keywords like: “My internet marketing website” and “my internet marketing blog” which you can link to each respective site and create SEO value.

4. Build your connections methodically and consistently. You can send invitations to people based on recommendations from LinkedIn, your own professional network and even by uploading your contact email list.

5. Add a short note that personalizes your invitations to connect. The extra touch can make an impression.

6. Visit the LinkedIn application directory (under the More tab) and connect applications of interest to your profile. Applications give others insights into your interests and professional activities. Some applications to consider are:

WordPress application: In the set up, insert the RSS feed URL of your blog if you have one.  Each time you publish a blog post it appears in your LinkedIn profile.

Slideshare application: Likewise, each of the presentations you’ve uploaded to Slideshare will appear in your profile.

Amazon Reading List: Displays the books you choose to display. This allows your network to see your reading list.

Twitter: Displays your Twitter stream and allows you to isolate your LinkedIn network’s Twitter stream. You can also post directly to Twitter from LinkedIn.

There are many other applications to consider that can give people insight into your business interests and activities.

7. Update your status in LinkedIn frequently. It’s advisable to update it daily, but not more than once or twice per day. I wouldn’t use LinkedIn the same as Twitter with frequent updates. People will see your updates in their stream.

8. Visit the Answers section (under More) and search out questions being asked in your industry and contribute with your answers. You can uncover people asking relevant questions. Get involved in those conversations.

9. Join Groups in your industry. Search for groups by keyword and find relevant groups to join. Visit the discussions and get involved with your contribution. Add value to these discussions. Don’t sell.

10. LinkedIn has a “recommendations” feature. People can write recommendations about you and vice versa. Write unsolicited recommendations about people you’ve worked with in the past. It will be appreciated.  Your recommendations will show up in the stream of updates from LinkedIn.

11. Follow companies of interest to get updates from them. Consider following your customers or prospective customers. Just search out companies and click “follow.” You’ll receive updates from LinkedIn about these companies’ activities. And, you can keep track of new hires and former employees.

Above all, consider LinkedIn a professional networking environment. Use common sense. Do NOT be salesey or spammy. Be useful. Offer value to your network. You can find opportunities if you engage with your network and if you mine the data to uncover intelligence about people and companies.  Just be wise about how you use that data.  Consider the parallel common sense rule of offline networking at an event. You wouldn’t approach a group of people and slap your business card at them and give them a sales pitch. LinkedIn is all about making connections and building online relationships through professional credibility. LinkedIn can be a very valuable online tool for business development if you use it wisely regardless if you’re in B2B or B2C.

Do you have a LinkedIn social networking success story to share? Add it in the comments section below.

Florida Aquarium Dives into Social Media Waters

Podcast Interview with Tom Wagner, Public Relations Manager at The Florida Aquarium

When Tom Wagner joined The Florida Aquarium in 2006 there was no social media in place, just a website. They used traditional media channels for marketing including print advertising, billboards, local radio and television. In 2008, Tom attended a one day workshop on social media where he got inspired to get started.  Tom decided to get started with a focus on three social media channels: Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. They concentrate all their social media communication efforts in these three channels.

Expanded Target Audience

The Florida Aquarium is located in downtown Tampa, FL. They are a destination for families by offering a diverse offering of education, conservation and good old fashion fun all centered around marine life and marine eco-systems. The traditional target audience has been families. They wanted to expand into younger demographics and attract them to the aquarium. Tom speculated that perhaps by using social media they could expand their reach to a younger demographic audience.

Convincing senior management to experiment with social media wasn’t too difficult. The biggest question Tom had to answer was how much of a commitment it would take and at what cost. The only cost was Tom’s time. But, of course it was on top of his current workload.

The first thing Tom did was to start up their Twitter account. At first he sent out fun and interesting information about the marine environment. His goal using Twitter was to help people become better stewards of the environment. People responded well. Their Twitter follower count started to grow rapidly. Tom also created a Facebook business page.

Social Media Experiments

Tom convinced his boss to sponsor a Tweetup at the Florida Aquarium. Normally, free attendance events were limited to media. The Tweetup allowed anyone in the local Twitter community to attend and experience the Aquarium for free. Tom’s goal was to create buzz about the Florida Aquarium and have people talk about it on Twitter.  Over 200 people came out to the Tweetup. The top 10 attenders had a combined following of over 125,000 people. Attendance at the Florida Aquarium over the next 10 days increased by double digits over their forecast.

Early Mistakes

While the Tweetup was successful, they learned a valuable lesson. Since they didn’t create coupon codes, they couldn’t track ticket sales results directly from the Tweetup.  But, the quick increase in attendance after the Tweetup was still good evidence that it helped create buzz resulting in higher ticket sales.

It’s valuable to learn from your mistakes when experimenting with social media. Going forward all social media related activities use a coupon code. For example, they now create coupon codes for Twitter and for Facebook to track which channel drive more ticket sales. Recently, they used Facebook and Twitter exclusively to promote a show of the infamous Wiki Wachee mermaids. This event was a unique, one time event. They created unique codes for Facebook and Twitter. They didn’t use any traditional media. The local traditional media picked up on the event. They attended and took pictures which drove photo and television coverage. Many people talked about it on Twitter and Facebook.

What’s Next?

More of the same. Tom is continuing to tweak their social media plan but will continue to create buzz around Tampa Bay about upcoming events. The buzz around Tom’s office is their plan to hire another staff person to help him create more buzz on social media. Apparently, their social media plan is going swimmingly enough to increase headcount. Looks like the Florida Aquarium is keeping its head above water quite well as their social media plan continues to evolve and drive ticket sales.

Tom’s Advice to Local Businesses

Tom advises local businesses to start a social media plan by providing useful information to your target audience. Deliver on the three E’s (as I call it). Ask what information do we have that people would want from us so that when they need what we offer, they’ll think of us….That’s good advice.

If you’re in or near Tampa, you will enjoy visiting the Florida Aquarium. For the rest of you, check them out online. You’ll want to listen to my podcast interview with Tom Wagner to hear of other experiments and successes.

If you are a marketer in need of a social media strategy, check out my book, Marketing 2.0 or contact us to explore our social media strategy services.

Inbound Marketing Is All About Leverage

Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Survey

HubSpot recently released a report on the State of Inbound Lead Generation. The report is a result of interviews with more than 1,400 HubSpot customers who are mostly small and mid size businesses. A webinar delivered by Rick Burnes and Sophie Schmitt of HubSpot summarized the findings.

The findings are very interesting and very compelling especially for businesses who are either still sitting on the sidelines or are flat out skeptics of inbound marketing. I find that overwhelmingly those businesses who don’t buy into the inbound marketing mindset haven’t allowed themselves to break out of a decades-old paradigm. But, the earth is shifting and marketers simply can’t ignore the facts especially as more facts become available such as those in this report from HubSpot.

Critics of this research may say that the companies interviewed are users of the HubSpot inbound marketing software. Of course! You wouldn’t survey people sun bathing on a beach about their winter vacation habits and expect that data to be of high integrity.

HubSpot has built a customer base of more than 2,500 customers. While the degree to which each customer is using the full gamut of inbound marketing strategies to include SEO, blogging, social networking and generally a strong content marketing mindset may vary, the common denominator is they buy into the fact inbound marketing can effectively produce leads.

So, here are some of the most compelling findings from this report.

The More Google Indexed Web Pages the More Leads Produced

Businesses with 60 to 120 Google indexed pages produced a median of 7 leads per month. Those with 176 to 310 Google indexed pages produced a median of 22 leads per month. Those with 311 + Google indexed pages produced a median of 74 leads per month. This triple digit growth is achievable through a bonafide, committed, consistent blog strategy.

Business Who Blog Produce More Leads

As stated above businesses with more Google indexed web pages produce more leads. The most practical way to increase indexed page count is by having a blog connected to your website. This chart shows that companies who blog produce more leads.

Blog Size Matters
The survey proved that having a blog alone doesn’t move the needle. The more content the better. The data suggests that fewer than 10 blog posts didn’t make a difference in lead generation. But, more than 20 blog posts demonstrated more leads from those surveyed.

Twitter Matters in B2C
B2C businesses who use Twitter produce twice as many leads as those who don’t use Twitter. Though this research doesn’t account for B2B businesses on Twitter I’m a fan of Twitter due to the reach it can provide and ability to spread your content. For example, in addition to my personal Twitter account, Find and Convert also has a Twitter account.

More Keywords Ranking in Top 100 Produce More Leads

This data point proves two myths wrong. Myth #1 is that many businesses think the only ranking that matters is for a small number of keywords which typically represent their core business. Sometimes it’s just one keyword phrase. Myth #2 is that the only rank that matters is page 1. Of course, we all want to rank #1 on page 1. But, this data shows that businesses who have dozens of keywords ranking in the top 100 rankings get more leads. This translates to having dozens of keywords that rank across the first 10 pages of Google. The way to look at this is like a diversified portfolio of assets. The value is in the total portfolio, not any one asset. Having dozens of relevant longtail keywords that rank in the first 10 pages of Google will produce more leads.  These two myths are shattered in the chart below.

It’s All About Leverage

This webinar concluded with the concept of leverage. Inbound marketing allows a company to leverage content assets online to produce connections with people who have interest in your company’s products. Ignoring this leverage opportunity is very risky in a marketing economy where established competitors can surpass you with inbound marketing strategies quickly. Worse yet, newer nimble and inbound marketing savvy competitors can come out of seemingly nowhere and eat your lunch.

Get on the inbound marketing bandwagon. A good place to start is with my book, Marketing 2.0 . I wrote Marketing 2.0 for executives and their staff looking for a basic understanding of how social media and inbound marketing strategies can bridge the gap between sellers and buyers. Mike Volpe, V.P. Inbound Marketing at HubSpot wrote the foreword of my book. Those who’ve read it say it provides a good primer to get started. Check out the reviews.

Allow me to give a plug for the fact my inbound marketing agency is a certified HubSpot partner. We can help you get started producing more leads through inbound marketing or take it to the next level.

Do You Have the Right People on the Bus for Social Media?

When I consult with businesses to develop a social media strategy, one of the most common questions I’m asked is about how to staff for it. It’s a critical question to answer. Following is a condensed excerpt from my book, Marketing 2.0 where I devote an entire chapter to this important topic of staffing for social media marketing.

Having the Right People on the Bus
Successful social media marketing requires people who understand it, embrace it, and know how to work within the culture and technology. People need to understand the lifecycle and the types of community involved in social media to better understand the opportunities and the risks.

Roles should not only be well-defined and documented, but they should be discussed in depth. Everyone on the team must be on board with his or her roles and responsibilities. Then, the heavy lifting begins. In some cases, heavy lifting has been in place for some time, but now you are in a better position to turn it up a notch with better clarity of roles. Ongoing discussions about roles and responsibilities should occur as your social media plan matures. Changes may be needed as your plans evolve.

However, what if you realize you don’t have the right staff for social media marketing? The fact is some people just don’t understand social media. Sometimes the barrier is demographic, but most often, it’s just an “I don’t get it” attitude. Worse yet, some may resist it for any number of  reasons. There are still many people who are stuck in the traditional marketing paradigm, and they are not ready to shift to the new social media paradigm.  Don’t fret—the laggards will eventually get on the social media train because the forward momentum of the culture and the technology will sweep them along. The real problem is this: what if they’re holding you back today? If you face that scenario, here are some ideas to consider.

Give It Time
Don’t force everyone to jump into a social media strategy overnight. An overnight commitment with a take-no-prisoners mentality can produce corporate culture shock. You run the risk of becoming a maverick, which can trigger counterproductive results. The best way to win people over is to approach them gradually with small but highly visible wins. Assess the people on your team and determine who is best suited to contribute to your social media strategy. People have strengths, weaknesses, likes, and dislikes. It’s your job to recognize who may embrace social media and who may shun it.

People who embrace social media tend to be social. If this sounds a bit trite, hear me out. Being social doesn’t necessarily mean being gregarious, boisterous, or the life of the party. Social people are self-confident people, even if quietly so. Their self-confidence may be limited to a specific area of expertise, but they are confident about something. I’ve noticed that some people who might otherwise shun a public social setting are often very social in online social media situations. The key is to recognize the personality attributes of the people in your organization, as well as to recognize their domains of expertise and passions, and then convince them to dip their toes in the social media waters. Asking someone to display his or her expertise or passion in a way that helps your organization meet its strategic objectives is giving that individual an opportunity to shine. For some, it’s a new opportunity he or she may embrace willingly. Find the people who will embrace these opportunities and recruit them to your team. If necessary, move people around on your team. Along the way give people new opportunities where they can achieve tangible results and be recognized by peers and management. People who like to write and create content about specific topics and have some level of creativity or technical acuity are good candidates for your team. The bottom line is this: if you don’t have the right people on the bus, your social media strategy will not go very far. Defining the roles of the people on your team is my next point.

Definition of Job Roles
At some point, it will be wise to redefine job roles so that they reflect your commitment to a Marketing 2.0 strategy. If you consider social media marketing additive, to which employee’s plate do you add it? This will be different in each organization. In some companies, the CEO embraces social media by blogging or being active in a social network. This is a best-case scenario, because the CEO can set the tone for the rest of the organization. In most cases, you’ll need to allocate time away from one activity in order to allow time for social media marketing activities. In the beginning, always start small. It may or may not be too difficult to decide to cut back on some activities that don’t yield results. Don’t continue doing something just because you’ve always done it that way or because it always produces the same results. You do know this is the definition of insanity, don’t you?

Social Media Staff Requires a Blend of Skills
Social media staff skills require a blend of creativity, writing, organizational skills, analytics, and teamwork. A commitment to a social media plan requires a formal review of people’s job descriptions and in some cases revising job descriptions to reflect allocation of their time. A social media plan should leverage the individual talents of staffers while orchestrating them to work as a team to achieve results. As your social media strategy evolves, so should your staff’s skills, titles, the way they spend their time, and the way you recruit new team members. In the years to come, social media skills will be prominently displayed on resumes. In fact, they already are. Many hiring managers check candidates’ activities on the web to assess their subject matter expertise based on how proactive they are as a blogger and social networker before even considering them as a viable candidate.

In my book, I describe the difference between a chief marketing officer’s (CMO’s) job description a few years ago versus today. For a deeper dive into this topic and numerous case studies on social media marketing, check out Marketing 2.0. Your comments on this topic are welcome below.

@berniebay

Top Reasons I Follow Back on Twitter

Let’s face it, the Twitterverse is made up of individuals and brands. While the branded Twitter accounts are staffed by people, the persona of each Twitter account is either an individual or a company or a brand. For example, General Motors has a branded Twitter account, and they also have product branded Twitter accounts.

Like you I receive new Twitter followers every day. When I plow through them, I usually make my decision to follow back (or not) in under 5 seconds. Here are the criteria I use to make my quick decision. I should point out that these are my criteria. I don’t suggest for a minute that these criteria should be yours. To each his or her own on follow back decision criteria.

I should also point out that my Twitter persona is mostly about marketing. I do very little personal tweeting. When I do it’s usually on the weekend when I may be watching a ballgame or something otherwise leisure related or an occasional random thought.

Why I Follow Back an Individual

Your Twitter account is visually appealing to me. You have more than one photo or you have a creative custom design that is unique. And, you look like an interesting or fun person I would want to meet in person. Age, gender or ethnicity do not affect my impression.

Your most recent tweet was recent (in the last 24 hours). People who don’t tweet daily are not of interest to me. Remember, these are my criteria. You may not share my follow back criteria.

Your tweets are relevant, interesting and they contain links to interesting content. Your tweets will somehow add value to me.

Your profile has a link to your blog or website. If you get my attention and I want to know more about you, you make it easy.

Your profile bio is descriptive. It paints a picture for me about who you are what you care about. It’s uniquely about you.

I get the impression (quickly) that if I met you at a dinner party, I would want to have a conversation with you.

You RT others and reply to others. The absence of either RTs or @ replies immediately tells me you’re using Twitter for one way communication.

You may use hashtags, though sparingly. This tells me you participate in Twitter conversations. This isn’t a huge factor, but I notice it.

Your follower to following ratio is greater than 1. For newer accounts (less than 1000 followers) I’m flexible on this if all other factors are compelling.

A scan of your Twitter home page generally communicates that you use Twitter conversationally, not as a promotional megaphone.

A sample individual Twitter account I like from @AmyMengel:

Why I Follow Back a Brand

The Twitter account design clearly communicates a message about the brand. Whether it’s a logo or other graphics, I get a quick understanding of the brand’s main message and persona.

The profile description clearly communicates the brand’s message and purpose. It contains a link to the website or blog where I can learn more about the brand.

When skimming the Twitter home page I see interesting content with links to more content. The tweets and links inform me, educate me or entertain me in some way.

If the brand offers promotional tweets, they are done tastefully, professionally and in a way that adds value.

The Twitter account is very transparent. You don’t B.S. me. You demonstrate interest in your followers.

You tweet with a human voice. If you’re a brand and you sound like a non-human, I’m not interested.

You engage your followers with @ replies and RTs.

If you get criticism you respond to it openly and swiftly.

You tweet daily.

A sample brand Twitter account I like: @Teddy’s Pride

Do you have other criteria you use when deciding to follow back individuals and brands? Share them below…

@berniebay

Outbound Marketing Meets Inbound Marketing

When can an avid inbound marketer like me get behind an outbound marketing company? When it involves creative innovation that  allows marketers to cost effectively reach their target market AND create an inbound opportunity which is supported by the marketer’s content.

Enthusem is online system for marketers to send personalized printed messages with an online call to action and tracking to back it up. Here’s how it works.  I run Find and Convert, an inbound marketing agency. Let’s say I have identified a list of 100 companies I would like to target for our inbound marketing services. Rather than waiting for them to find and contact me, I could reach out to them through Enthusem in a very personalized and creative way that may get their attention. I would send an Enthusem card to one or more executives at each of these companies. Each card would be personalized to each individual with an image on the face of the card which is visible through the envelope. For example, let’s say I saw the CEO of a target company speak at a conference and I took his picture. I can put that image on the front of the card. The message inside the card would reference a key point he made during his talk that I found very insightful and I would like to discuss further with him. The call to action would be an invitation to visit a digital piece of content of mine that is consistent with the point he made during his talk.  How unique is that? Can you see how this CEO would likely at least open the card and read it when he sees his picture of him speaking on the front of the card?  Of course, my goal is to get the prospect to become an inbound visitor to my content to attract them to our inbound marketing services.

Below is a screenshot of how I would upload the image of the CEO making that presentation into Enthusem.

When the recipient of my card visits the landing page I’ve uploaded to Enthusem, I will be notified by email. I recognize that since I’m marketing to another business, they may not be ready to buy when they visit my content. So, now that I know they’ve visited my content, I can plan to invite them to another piece of content such as my Facebook fan page or a particular blog article on a topic I think may be of interest. In other words now, I can nurture that lead using the lead nurturing feature in HubSpot.

Enthusem is the only outbound marketing system (that I know about) that truly combines personalized outbound marketing with inbound marketing strategies. The online attachment to a personalized card is the content which marries the outbound touch to the inbound contact. When someone receives my Enthusem card one of two things can happen. They can read the card and toss it. Or, they can read the card and visit the online attachment. In both cases, I’ve created some awareness for my brand. In the latter, I’ve created a lead which I can nurture.

Back to my example of targeting 100 businesses. If I mailed them an Enthusem card once each month, my cost would about $300. That’s not a typo. I didn’t leave off a zero. It’s about $3 per card out the door. I can select the image for the front of the card, create the personalized message, upload my online attachment and schedule to send a card, all for $3. And, I can log into my account from my laptop or from my mobile device.

Steve Tingiris, CEO of Enthusem says it best. “We live in a longtail world. It’s no longer dozens of markets of millions, rather millions of markets of dozens. Enthusem allows you to reach niche markets cost effectively, generate leads and measure them.” Below is a brief interview I did with Steve.

How to Convert Old Media Marketing to New Media Marketing

In the marketing world there are several ways that people refer to new media marketing. There are phrases such as:

Inbound marketing
Internet marketing
Web marketing
Social media marketing
Online marketing
Digital marketing
E-marketing
Interactive marketing

The phrase which is probably the most hyped is new media marketing! But, is a marketing strategy that includes blogging, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Flckr still new? It’s 2010 not 2007. New media, is not so new anymore!

Consider that some businesses are still in new media denial. There are still some businesses who think they can ignore new media. They believe that old media is still the way to market. So, they still use the telephone, the print ad, the tradeshow and direct mail as the sole way of marketing their business.

The old media examples just mentioned are not obsolete. They can still be effective, but they should be adapted to the new media mindset of your prospective buyers. Let’s look at each of these old media formats and how they can be converted to new media marketing.

Telephone
Rather than cold calling for sales prospects call people to conduct a survey on a relevant industry topic. Invite them to take a survey on the phone or online. If they prefer the online survey get their email address and send them a link to your online survey. Be sure to offer them a free copy of the survey results. Keep them informed by email in the future. Don’t sell anything in this phonecall. The person will remember the content experience about your brand and possibly buy from you when she is ready. Of course, the best use of the telephone is to call all the leads you develop through your inbound marketing strategy.

Print Advertising
Assuming you’re advertising in a relevant publication, make your call to action accessible online on a unique landing page that is attributable to the ad so you can measure it. If you have a phone number in the ad, be sure it’s unique so you can measure the results of the ad. In many cases, print advertising serves to build or strengthen your brand. Even if you have a good call to action, sometimes the best result is brand awareness. Nonetheless, be sure the reader can engage your brand online in a way that can be traced back to your ad.

Tradeshows
You can integrate your tradeshow marketing with your online strategy in several ways. Whether you are exhibiting or just attending a tradeshow you should always talk about the event online before, during and after the event. Use your blog, Facebook and Twitter channels to discuss your contribution to the event as well as the contribution of others. Use Flickr and YouTube to share your photos and video from the event. Connect online with the people you meet at the event to keep the relationships going after the event.

Direct Mail
Similar to print advertising be sure to have a measurable call to action. Consider linking the call to action to personalized URLs (PURLs) as landing pages. This will allow you to measure the results of your direct mail campaigns very clearly with online interaction attributable to your direct mail campaigns.

New Media Transitions
There are many businesses that continue to use old media marketing strategies very well by integrating them with new media channels. Ultimately, you can achieve great sales results by integrating your old media and new media plans by connecting and engaging people the way they want to be engaged.

Avoid using old media strategies in a vacuum. Similarly, avoid using new media tools in a vacuum especially as a megaphone to blast your sales message. Rather integrate your old media and new media channels into the marketing 2.0 mindset so your audience will want to connect with you and your brand to explore what you can do for them.

As I’ve said many times previously, brands who adopt the mindset of a content publisher and a relationship collaborator are the ones whose content marketing strategy delivers the best results. Even old media marketing can convert to new media marketing using an integrated approach.

Are you still using old media marketing? Start integrating it with new media. Tell your story below.

B2B Content Marketing for SMB Business

Kim Albee on B2B content marketing.

Kim Albee is founder and President of Genoo, a marketing automation software company serving B2B SMB companies mostly in the U.S. Genoo provides tools to build micro-sites, do lead nurturing, lead tracking and it integrates with Salesforce.com. I met Kim on LinkedIn when I was looking for case studies for my book. This podcast interview is an update to that case study.

Kim launched her Genoo product in June 2008 in beta. It became available to the public in Sept 2009. As an entrepreneur launching a new marketing automation software product with no marketing budget Kim got very creative. She started playing with social media tools, most notably LinkedIn. She joined some relevant groups in 2008. But, at that time LinkedIn didn’t offer the “discussion” feature, so there was no ability to create conversations in groups.

Kim wondered how she could find and engage people interested in B2B marketing. She didn’t find any B2B groups on LinkedIn, so she created a B2B Online Marketing group and invited others to join it. But, without a discussion feature, the group didn’t have much value. Then, Kim set up a free forum for conversations on B2B marketing. But, no one joined. By now, Kim was getting frustrated by her limited ability to engage with other B2B marketers online.  Then, it happened!  LinkedIn started offering discussions in groups and everything changed.

Kim created a LinkedIn group called B2B Online Marketing and she also created a dedicated website which shares and re-purposes content from the group.  BTW, do a Google search for “b2b online marketing” and you’ll find this website in the first 5 search results. Kim started discussions in this group on relevant topics such as lead generation, SEO, how to create great content, how to create and use micro-sites and other topics of interest to B2B marketers. Initially, Kim emailed the members of the group each time a new discussion was started using the email feature in Genoo. The group has grown to over 3,200 members and it’s still growing, fostering great conversations among B2B marketers.

Kim blazed a new trail with this approach. She was willing to experiment with something new. She was very persistent and resourceful. Her leadership is apparent as she created a new group and has been willing to maintain it with active interaction with the group members.

Some B2B Online Marketers Still Skeptical
Kim hears the same objection I often hear from B2B marketers. Many are simply skeptical that marketing online is effective for narrowly defined B2B niches. The truth is that most people search online when they need to find a product or service. B2B marketers must ask themselves, how do their websites perform in searches pertaining to their niche? Many B2B websites are just a “blow-horn” for their products and services with no meaningful calls to action, or limited opportunity to engage (if any). The reality is most B2B prospects want to get to know a business before they call them or fill out a form. They want to check you out first. And, the way to allow them to check you out is through great content!

Niche Marketers Take Notice
I’ve written before in my blog and in my book how marketers in any market segment should draw a circle with two concentric circles around it to define their target market. The smallest circle is the bulls-eye target market. The two outer circles contain demographics who reach and influence the bullseye. Marketers should target each of these groups through great content.

No matter what business you’re in you have a USP (unique selling proposition). There is  a story there. Share your story. Your target market may not currently be on Twitter or Facebook every day, but when you share your content there you will get better search results. SEO is all about the long-tail now. If you don’t start now, you won’t be there when your audience arrives.

Email Challenge
Kim met someone online who challenged her to write one email every day for 30 days on a relevant marketing topic. He offered to subscribe to her email list, in return for Kim subscribing to his. Kim agreed and sent her first email to her list of about 5000 people, many of whom she did not email frequently. She had low expectations but was willing to experiment. Remember, Kim is not afraid to take some risk. She started her first email with a cheesy email heading: “Hello Fellow Marketers.” She explained her plan to send one email each day for 30 days on a marketing topic. To her surprise, she got 218 people to sign up to get an email from Kim everyday for 30 days on relevant B2B marketing topics. After her final email, she did a survey which received a 38% open rate. Kim took some risk with this 30 day email challenge. And, the results were impressive.

Content Marketing & Relationship Building
I couldn’t have scripted this interview any better. In my book, Marketing 2.0 I boil everything down to having a terrific content marketing strategy and building relationships online. Kim’s daily email was great content, not to mention her B2B Online Marketing group on LinkedIn. Kim built relationships with her 218 subscribers through a personal response to replies she received which built relationships with her subscribers. After the 30 day experiment Kim got several new customers without ever once making a pitch for Genoo. Her great content was her marketing. How measurable is that?! Very!

Kim is a  terrific example of Marketing 2.0 in action. She is willing to take risks. She succeeds a lot more than she fails. But, if we don’t have some failures along the way we’re probably not trying hard enough. Kim is proof positive of this.

To engage with Kim (and why wouldn’t you want to), here are several ways:

Genoo Marketing Automation Software

Kim Albee on LinkdeIn

Kim Albee on Twitter

Marketing Automation Resources

If Kim Albee’s content marketing strategy story inspires you, please add your thoughts below.

Psychotherapist a Self Taught Inbound Marketer

Ken Donaldson has a very unique vocation.  He is a licensed mental health counselor, aka a psychotherapist. Ken also calls himself a life coach and a relationship coach. Ken has been in private practice for sixteen years. While Ken is a psychotherapist by vocation has had to become a marketer. Here’s his story. The podcast interview has the whole story…

When Ken first got started in his profession, he expected it to be much easier to develop his practice. He created about 1000 business cards and waited for the phone to ring.  But the phone didn’t ring. He quickly realized developing his practice would require marketing.  So, he started speaking. That was a good start because when Ken spoke to a roomful of people he created more exposure for himself. His speaking gigs usually produced some client referrals and more speaking gigs. Ken eventually realized he had a business. So, he set out to learn how to grow and run a business.

Ken started educating himself on how to run a business by attending workshops, reading books, blogs and websites on marketing. While Ken doesn’t consider himself an aggressive marketer, he realizes that compared to most of his colleagues in his profession, he is like a Chris Brogan.

Marry Yourself First

Ken is the author of a best selling book: Marry Yourself First. His book is a compilation of “the best of his best advice” for people to live extraordinary lives.  His book offers 24 key life principles that give people success. Ken’s strategy is to market his book as a way of marketing Ken Donaldson. And vice versa. He has two websites. His primary website is Ken Donaldson.  And, his Marry Yourself First website promotes his book.

Video Marketing

When Ken first developed his website he was advised that it needed audio. So he added audio. Then he was told he needed video. So he added video. He learned that it wasn’t as difficult as he thought it would be. He also created a small website called Ask Ken Donaldson. Ken creates short video responses to the questions he receives. Then, he posts them on YouTube and on his website. He currently has nearly 90 videos. Ken’s content marketing strategy is to produce free advice and give it away through his websites, his blog, Facebook and Twitter with video as a primary form of content delivery.

Location, Location, Location.

As the old saying goes in real estate, Ken has learned that in marketing it’s content, content, content. Ken’s strategy is to give his best in 3 to 5 minutes. He produces content that delivers on the 3 E’s reaching people who are interested in his content. Ken’s videos are very authentic and human. For example, during a vacation in Utah he created some video with beautiful scenery. It was totally unscripted, raw video because it was so casual with some good advice from Ken.

Trading Dollars for Hours No More

Ken’s practice is doing well. His content marketing strategy effectively drives clients to his practice. In 2009 he got more clients from the internet than ever before in his sixteen years. He attributes his success to being more visible, more available and more downloadable.  He eventually plans to “trade dollars for hours.” He’s already started producing premium content through his 5 CD program and has more plans for more premium content.

Ken’s brand is growing and his business is thriving. I feel strongly that these content marketing, inbound marketing strategies apply equally to all business of all sizes across all industries.

In addition to the website links for Ken above, you can connect with him on Facebook and Twitter. He’s a good example of a niche marketer having fun while enjoying success.

If you want to learn more about content marketing strategies, check out my book Marketing 2.0.

@berniebay

Measuring Results in Social Media Marketing

This blog post an updated excerpt from my book, Marketing 2.0.

Measuring results is one of my favorite topics in marketing. Since the invention of marketing (I couldn’t find that date in Wikipedia), executives have wanted to measure the effectiveness of marketing dollars against sales in order to determine their return on investment, or ROI.

The reality is that in recent years, measuring marketing results, at least at the quantitative level, has become increasing sophisticated through tools and techniques. In addition to quantitative metrics, measuring qualitative results can be just as valuable.

Social media marketing measurement is very similar to measuring other web marketing results. First I’ll review the tools you can use. Then, I’ll offer ways you can use them to measure social media marketing results.

Conventional Wisdom

Let’s start with a look at the conventional web marketing metrics tools, beginning with some free tools. You may be familiar with some or all of these tools. As obvious as they are to me, I often meet marketers who are not harnessing them to their full potential.

Google Analytics—a free web analytics service that provides website owners valuable insight into website traffic details including visitors, sources of visitor traffic, pages visited, time spent on your website, keywords driving website traffic, geographic location of visitors, conversions based on a predefined goals, and much more.

Google Webmaster Tools—another set of free and powerful tools from Google providing another level of detail in studying traffic data for your website as well as keyword click-throughs and inbound links.

Google Alerts—another free service that will alert you by email or to your RSS reader each time Google finds a relevant result for a topic you’ve set up to track.

Google Blogsearch—a free search engine subset of Google’s search engine geared to display blog posts. When you search on a phrase, Google displays recent blog posts for that phrase.

Social Media Measurement Tools

As social media marketing has exploded, so has the landscape of tools and services designed to help companies measure and optimize their results. I’ll start with a partial list of free social media measuring tools. Note most free tools offer fee-based premium versions as well.

Blogpulse—a service from Nielsen Buzzmetrics that acts as both a blog search engine and blog tracker. Bloggers can track conversations taking place about topics of interest, as well as discover where their blog ranks in relation to others covering similar topics.

Trendpedia—a free service that functions mostly as a blog search engine. Its main feature involves helping people find the most popular trends in social media across a variety of topics and tracking the trend of the topic over a three-month period in comparison to other relevant topics.

Trendrr—a free service that adds a real sense of analytical measurement through its use of trending graphs. Trendrr lets anyone track, compare, and share trends on any topic across blogs and other social media.

Technorati—a free service that functions as an Internet search engine for blogs. You can track your blog content in Technorati.

Twitter Search – Whether or not your have a Twitter account, you can use Twitter’s search engine. Marketers should search relevant keywords to learn about conversations about their brand on Twitter.

The free tools listed above are a partial list of many tools available to track your content results. I encourage you to use as many tools as practical to measure and track your social media marketing results on an ongoing basis.

Staying on Course

However, tracking the reach of your content in social media is just a part of the measuring results secret sauce. You also need to gain insights so you can measure your progress and take action. A metaphor comes to mind. Social media marketing is like flying an airplane. The sophisticated cockpit constantly calculates the extent to which the plan has shifted from its course route and makes the necessary adjustment to get the plane back on its course. In social media marketing, you must similarly be tracking and interpreting in order to know when and how much you must adjust your content strategy and your tactics to stay on course.

In addition to the free tools listed above, there is an ever-growing list of fee-based tools to measure social media results. I will only list two because these are the two we use at Find and Convert and therefore I’m most familiar with them. Again, there are many other good tools available and you should do your own homework.

HubSpot – an inbound marketing software as a service (SaaS). HubSpot allows marketers to track keyword rankings, competitor’s web marketing presence, traffic analysis, leads and lead intelligence. Recently, HubSpot added social media tracking features allowing marketers to track the impact of social media on your desired goals (such as sales leads). In the screenshot below you can see the emerging impact of social media traffic.

ScoutLabs – a social media tracking tool that allows marketers to track mentions in blogs, bookmarking sites, Twitter, photos, video and more. We like the ability to track sentiment of keywords and the ability to chart trends. Below is a short video interview with Jennifer Zeszut, CEO of ScoutLabs.

Measuring Quantitative Results
There are many factors you can measure in your social media strategy. First, make sure you have clearly defined goals. Otherwise your metrics will not be meaningful and you won’t be able to measure success. Here are some quantitative metrics you can measure.

Subscribers – watch the subscriber count to your blog(s) and newsletter grow.

Followers – watch the number of followers on Twitter or Facebook grow as well any groups or communities your create.

Mentions – track the mentions of your brand and relevant keywords to learn about conversations and decide which conversations you should engage.

Sentiment – track the sentiment of your keywords to determine what (if any) changes you should consider in your content strategy and in the tactics you use. A negative trend on a topic may give you cause to back away from that topic or to change your approach to it.

Inbound Links – links are the currency of the web. Track the number of links you’re building and where they are coming from.

Comments – study the comments being made on your blog or your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Comments could give you reason to engage or add more content on a topic of high interest.

Connections – one of the greatest and measurable factors in social media marketing is the new doors that can open up. New connections can result in speaking opportunities, media interviews, guest blog or publication articles, key introductions and new sales opportunities.

Brand Equity – all businesses should care about brand equity. It’s not limited to large companies. Using any combination of tools described above you should study the trends in your brand. Is your company name a growing keyword driver of traffic to your website? If the trends are positive, correlate that to your sales results. If you have employees with a strong social media presence include them in your brand equity study. The relationship between your employees and your brand is tied more tightly than ever before. Take Mike Volpe as an example. His blogging, speaking, podcasting and overall content creation on the web has a positive impact on HubSpot, his employer. And, btw, both Mike Volpe (the brand) and HubSpot (the brand) benefit from his efforts.

It Takes Work!
If you’re thinking, man this sounds like a lot of work, you’re not only right, you’re onto something big! Measuring results properly is not just hard work. It’s time consuming. So, where are you going to get all this time? By eliminating non-performing marketing activities! Measure all your marketing activities. If you have losers in your marketing mix (assuming you’ve been at it more than six months) scale them back or eliminate them. Many marketers report cutting back on marketing activities such as direct mail and tradeshows after measuring success in their social media strategy. BTW, attending a tradeshow can be just as effective as exhibiting at a tradeshow at a fraction of the cost. While you’re at the tradeshow you should be posting to Twitter about the people you’re meeting and the content you’re enjoying, taking pictures and shooting video interviews with industry people and posting all this content on the web to keep building your footprint on the web. Of course when you tag this content you’ll create links and build more brand equity. And, you can measure that…

To measure your social media marketing results keep at it and measure. Keep at it. Measure. Keep at it. Measure.

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