All B2B marketers have a dual objective when it comes to lead generation. They want to fill the top of funnel (TOFU) to build the sales pipeline. A healthy sales pipeline produces viable sales opportunities over the long term. But, marketers also have pressure to produce leads that are sales ready now. These leads move to the bottom of the funnel (BOFU) quickly.

When planning inbound marketing lead generation strategies, it’s important to make the distinction between TOFU and BOFU leads. Consider these approaches to both.

TOFU Lead Generation

Engaging prospective buyers early in their evaluation process is less about sales, and more about building awareness for your offering and establishing trust. Great content that gets shared is the most effective way to build awareness and trust.

Create a steady stream of content that offers your prospects choices to engage with you. You’re familiar with the content choices: webinars, white papers, e-books, newsletters, videos, podcasts, live events such as seminars, conference speeches, etc. Focus on the three Es of content marketing: education, enlightenment and entertainment. When you deliver content that is valuable and different, with a call-to-action, you can generate quality TOFU leads. One key to effective TOFU lead generation using this content strategy is social sharing. Unfortunately, this is where many B2B marketers fail. Ask the employees at your company to share your content through their individual LinkedIn and Twitter status updates. Companies whose employees share content through their social channels greatly increase the social sharing and hence SEO value of that content. The marketing team should share content through your LinkedIn company page, Facebook company page and Google+ company page. And, as people engage with your content in these social channels, don’t ignore them. Engage them to explore opportunities to start offline conversations.

BOFU Lead generation

Catching prospective buyers in a ready-to-buy mode isn’t easy, but it’s very possible. You have to meet the buyer where they are. And, yes sometimes you have to interrupt them (oh, shutter the thought)…

SEO and PPC

The first place ready-to-buy prospects turn is a search engine. Develop landing pages with long tail keywords that address your buyer’s pain points. Ensure these landing pages use SEO best practices. Keep the landing pages short and to the point. The sales ready buyer is in a hurry. They don’t want fluff. They want to know if your product/service is a fit now. Don’t hesitate to use pay-per-click advertising (PPC, also called SEM) to capture sales-ready prospective buyers, but focus on long tail keywords to minimize your costs. Consider advertising on your competitor’s names to capture click troughs on your ads.

Pricing Calls-to-Action

Many B2B marketers are unwilling to even discuss this topic. Be open minded about it. While it may not be practical to offer a price quote in some cases, you can capture sales-ready buyers by offering a price estimate. There is a big difference especially if you make the process painless and void of contact with a salesperson. By allowing a visitor to request a self-service price estimate, you allow serious sales-ready buyers to engage with you online. You will answer one of the most common questions a B2B buyer has about your offering: “Is it in my budget range?” Even though the final price is usually configured or negotiated, the estimate you provide serves one purpose – to open up a sales conversation. Be open minded about this approach. In many cases, it works. But, it’s not for all B2B marketers.

To summarize, avoid a one size fits all lead generation strategy. Create your lead generation strategies differently for pipeline building versus sales-ready conversations. Consider learning more about price estimate lead generation strategies.

In 2005 Google started talking about how they were integrating search results with social media, but it was very early stage. It wasn’t until October 2009 that Google took a big step forward in social search by indexing content from social media sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, albeit on a limited basis.

In 2010 more mobile devices sold than personal computers. By 2011 mobile marketing had arrived with marketers having to consider two forms of mobile elements in their strategy; 1) the experience of a user when navigating their website on a mobile device, 2) the possibility of a standalone application that provides utility to the user to create an emotional connection to the brand.

Let’s look at the top three reasons social marketing has arrived as “not optional” for all marketers across all industries.

SEO & Social Marketing Tied Together

As I mentioned above, Google (and Bing) have been evolving their algorithms since 2005 to include social content. Just recently, Google launched Search Plus Your World, which shows search results shared by people in your Google+ network (your world). Simply stated, SEO and social media are not silos. They are overlapping circles. In other words to get desirable SEO results, you need to have an active social marketing strategy. The planning process and the people involved should be tightly orchestrated.

Prolific Sharing of Content

Twitter has the retweet, Facebook has the like button and Google+ has their +1 button. Even LinkedIn has a like function. Good content travels through online channels at lightning speed. When your content is shared, Google and Bing track it and consider how often it’s shared and who shares your content. When socially influential people share your content, that’s worth something in Google’s eye, and therefore it’s good for SEO results.

Laggards in C-Suite Admit They Can’t Ignore Social

I remember countless conversations as recently as 2010 with executives not convinced that social media is viable, especially B2B executives. But, the groundswell of social media momentum has grown to a point of mainstream. Even the biggest doubters have come to the realization that social media is here to stay, even if they don’t like it. And, they’re learning that social marketing results can be measured.

The question is no longer about the viable role of social media in a business’ marketing strategy. The question is what role does it play? Businesses are also asking how will they do it?

The latter question is huge because it is inevitable that many businesses are diving into social media with little understanding of how to use it effectively, how to measure results and how to staff for it.

All businesses want to get found online. But getting found is not enough. Converting a visitor or a contact into a “relationship” is the end game. That relationship can evolve through several phases before it is monetized. Social marketing is a strategic element that requires integration with all other marketing elements to achieve your objectives.

SEO and social marketing will be discussed in detail at the Social Fresh East conference, February 6 & 7. We’ll be there. Drop by for a discussion about how social marketing fits into your business plans in 2012.

In case you missed it last week, Google announced a major update to how they deliver search results. The update is called Search Plus Your World. Much is being written about Search Plus Your World. Essentially, it makes search results much more personalized by displaying private content you’ve previously shared with your network through Google+.

While Google’s new personalized search raises all kinds of privacy and even anti-trust concerns, I’ll let pundits like Danny Sullivan (and others) cover that aspect of it.

I want to comment on the implications of Search Plus Your World on search engine optimization for marketers. Note, at the time of this writing the announcement is less than a week old. Therefore, there is undoubtedly more to come. But, it’s safe to say that marketers must pay attention to this and other announcements from Google that impact organic search results. So, here are three key take-aways for marketers who rely on organic search engine optimization (SEO) results to drive traffic to their websites.

SEO Rankings Continue to Mean Less

Since the introduction of Google’s social search originally in 2005, which were made more prominent in October 2011, the ranking results for a search vary according to your personalization and previous search behavior. This requires marketers to continually focus on producing relevant content, and promoting it through social media sharing sites. Speaking of social sharing….

Social Search is Here to Stay

Both Google and Bing have released updates that take into account the extent to which content has previously been shared through social media. Facebook has the Like button. Likes data is shared with Microsoft Bing. And Google has the +1 button, which is tracked by Google’s search algorithm. Any user can share web content through Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Stumbleupon, Tumblr and many other social media properties. When people share content through social media, Google and Bing “score” that content well determining (algorithmically) that the content is worthy of a competitive ranking in a search result. Of the social media properties listed above the youngest of the bunch is Google+.  Therefore….

Marketers Must Pay Attention to Google+

Google+ has only been live since late June 2011. The user base is approaching 100 million (at the time of this writing).  Whether or not you (and I) like it, Google+ results are prominently displayed in Search Plus Your World, and therefore favored over any other social media site. Neither Facebook nor Twitter content is displayed in Google’s search results other than the home page of a Facebook page and the home page of a Twitter page. But, content inside Facebook pages and Twitter accounts is not displayed. Google’s argument is that Facebook doesn’t share their data with Google. And, Twitter and Google didn’t renew their previous agreement to display Twitter content in search results. We’ll see if these reasons hold any water in anti-trust investigations.

Again, privacy and anti-trust implications aside, this simply comes down to one point.  As marketers we want our content shared on Google+.  Period.

If you have not yet created your Google+ company page do it now. If you have not encouraged employees to build their personal brand in Google+ consider doing that too.

Another SEO implication for marketers is to track your search results in Bing closely. If your search results in Bing are very different than Google, you’ll need to serve both search engine masters more than ever before.

I have a strong feeling the SEO implications of Search Plus Your World will continue to play out in the court of public opinion and possibly in other legal courts.

Before the Conference

Prior to the conference communicate your plans to exhibit at the event through social media. Write one or more blog posts about the topics to be covered at the conference, and your company’s contribution to these topics to illustrate your credibility on those topics.

Invite people to visit with you at the conference. Use Twitter hashtags such as #SocialFresh to promote the event and your participation. Create several tweets about the event and send them aggressively in the final 3 weeks leading up to the conference.

Promote other exhibitors and speakers that will be at the conference through social media. Some of them will spread your messages as they also promote their participation in the event. In other words, help each other by promoting each others participation in the conference.

Send out a promotional marketing piece with a QR code that invites people to register at your exhibit with the QR code for a chance to win something.

Marketing Tips At the Conference

Do you remember Andre Agassi’s well known commercial in the 90s? His famous line was “image matters.” In most cases you are making a first impression with your exhibit at the conference. Every visual element matters from the graphics, to the wardrobe of the staff. Sweat those details to make a good first impression about your company and your products. Image matters…

Lead Generation

You don’t have to be the largest exhibitor with the largest or most creative display to get high quality leads at a conference. You want to attract traffic to your display. You want to inspire visitors to engage with your team in conversation. And, you want to make it easy and fun for visitors to provide information about them including their interests and contact details.

Tablet Apps

Consider having a tabletop or tablet application that displays a solution you’ve created for other customers. By allowing people to see your solutions in action you can engage with visitors. Consider having a brief questionnaire that can be completed on the spot on a tablet device. Give people an incentive to answer your questions with an offer.

QR and NFC Codes

If you sent out a piece before the event inviting people to visit your exhibit, they can scan their QR code at your booth to get entered in your offer. BTW, your offer can be as simple as a free website analysis. You don’t need a big budget to make this work. Ask people to complete the digital questionnaire on the spot to capture their interest and contact info. While some smartphones already have the NFC chip, many of the new phones rolling out in 2012 with the Android Ice Cream Sandwich OS will boast the NFC chip set. Think about offering an NFC tag within your display for effortless data exchange.

Brand Building

Whether your company is well established and well known or it’s a newcomer, branding is always an important consideration in your conference marketing strategy. Make sure your story is told effectively in all your materials and that event staff is well versed in how to articulate your value proposition and call to action at the conference.

After the Conference

If you invest time planning for a successful conference, don’t forget to plan your follow up after the event. Have an email written and sent the day after the conference thanking people for visiting with you. Keep it brief, but emphasize the main point that differentiates you from others at the event. Have a relevant call to action. Have a second email ready to go about one week later with another call to action.

Don’t turn your event list over to a hungry pack of sales folks to call the day after the conference. That will not differentiate you. Follow up calls can be effective when combined with your digital touchpoints both in timing and synchronized with your your key messaging.

Find and Convert is a sponsor and exhibitor at Social Fresh 2012 conference in Tampa on February 6 and 7.  The winter months are a great time to visit Florida.  Come see us at Social Fresh. You just might win a free website analysis!

December is the month for predictions for the new year. Generally, I’m not a fan of predictions. While many marketers are predicting the year of mobile for the fifth year in a row, I’m going to take some risk with just one marketing prediction that 2012 will be the year social business becomes mainstream.

What is a social business?

A true social business has a double meaning. It is one whose culture embodies social from top to bottom. It doesn’t just allow employees to be social, it inspires them to be social because it is the culture of their business. A social business thinks socially in two dimensions; externally toward a social cause and from a customer engagement perspective.

What constitutes a social business?

A social business understands that it must be social with customers and with a portion of the community or cause that inspires them at an emotional level. Dell’s Social Innovation Challenge looks for projects around the world to help those who need it. GE’s Healthy Imagination social initiative is focused on projects that make people healthier.

The other aspect of a social business is how they engage in their market with customers and prospective customers. A typical social business has been using social media for at least two years. For most businesses it takes two years to learn how to produce or curate content that is social media worthy. It takes two years to build an authentic community of loyal friends and followers. And, it takes two years to develop an employee base whose personal brand is so aligned with the corporate brand that each embodies the other.

What are the benefits of a social business?

A social business has intimate relationships with current and prospective customers. In today’s digital world, where customer engagement is possible 24/7, only a social business can gain the most benefit, while also reducing the most risk if something goes awry. In a social business, employees intuitively know how to represent the brand in all circumstances. Other than a catastrophic event, employees in a social business can handle customer interaction across all circumstances and do so with an authentic human touch. Dell has 6,000 employees formally trained to represent the brand in social media.

Dell has a set of metrics that measures the social impact to their business across all stages of their customer lifecycle. In Dell’s case, they measure the impact represents tens of millions in revenue.

Is social business more relevant to B2C or B2B?

This is an irrelevant question. All businesses sell a product or service to other people. Let’s just call all businesses P2P. A social business recognizes that its customers are people. And, all people are social. That’s why the culture of a social business is to encourage employees to be authentic in their involvement with external causes and with engagement with their customers in all situations.

What are the criteria of a social business?

IMO there are three attributes present in a social business:

1. A social culture with top down support
2. Empowerment of employees to be human in all customer contact and toward a cause
3. 2 years experience using social media company wide

Will your business become a social business in 2012?

You don’t need to have 6000 trained employees to be a social business. You need a leadership team that embraces the culture and commitment to being a social business. It may not happen overnight, but it must start with authentic culture. For some businesses the transition to a social business is natural and for some it’s not.

Continued trends in globalization and corporate social responsibility are increasing awareness for businesses across all industries and all size ranges to become social businesses. Employee recruiting and retention are also factors to consider as your business makes the shift toward becoming a social business. Oh yeah, and if you train and empower your employees to represent your brand in social media, you can expect to experience bottom line business benefits too. Consider that if your consumer perceives your brand to be equivalent to your competitors, how else can you differentiate yourself?

I’m not totally confident that 2012 is the year of the social business. Maybe it will take a few more years. The Social Business Index tracks global brands across five criteria and it’s updated monthly. Will you become a social business in 2012?

Personal branding is well recognized as the public earned reputation of an individual. The digital world, fueled by content marketing and social media, has propelled the concept of personal branding into the mainstream. Today, anyone can develop a personal brand from a high school athlete to a corporate employee. But personal branding has mostly been associated with the individual. That’s why Toby Bloomberg and I have co-authored a two-day live training event that focuses on the convergence of personal branding in the corporate workplace.

The corporate organization that embraces the benefits of employee personal branding with a plan, can reap significant benefits. Here’s a look at some of the key planning elements to harness the personal brand in the corporate workplace.

Your Personal Brand Story

The starting point is the employee’s story. An employee with interest in developing their personal brand should identify the words they wish to represent their brand. This is an exercise that can be very revealing to one’s personal brand journey. If for example, you want to be known as innovative, thought provoking and intellectual, you must take action to develop your reputation for these words. Your actions should be comprised of a content strategy supported by digital and offline communication channels that support your desired personal brand.

Your Corporate Brand Story

Your corporate brand (whether it’s your employer or your own business) must also be examined. What are the words that describe the promise of your corporate brand? If you work for a company such as AT&T, Google or IBM, the words innovative, thought provoking and intellectual represent (in part) their brand promise. It’s important to assess your desired personal brand in contrast to your corporate brand to understand congruency or lack there of.

Gap or Alignment

Once an individual goes through the exercise above, you’ll have insight into the alignment or gap between your personal brand and your corporate brand.  If you have strong alignment, the two should work together to leverage each other’s brand promise through a plan designed to produce mutual value. If there is a gap between the employee’s personal brand and the corporate brand, the two should be honest about it and decide if you can narrow the gap to work together or not.

Developing a Plan

The purpose of the exercise described above is to provide the employer a framework to develop an employee personal brand development plan that harnesses the power of an employee’s brand. Like anything else in business, a plan should be developed to identify the employees with personal branding potential, and to develop their brand for mutual benefit.

Branding Benefits to Employee and Employer

When branding converges between the employee and the employer there are benefits to both parties.

Employer Benefits

• Build trust in the market through the human engagement by employees, made possible largely through social media and other digital channels
• Strengthen the corporate brand through the convergence of personal and corporate branding touch points with the customer
• Develop loyalty among employees to reinforce the corporate brand
• Develop a talent management hierarchy that can have long term benefits to the organization

Employee Benefits

• Career development guidance
• Increased visibility within the industry
• Increased visibility within the corporate workplace
• Opportunities for growth within the industry and the employer organization

Risks to Employee Personal Branding

There are some inherent risks when corporate branding and personal branding converge. This post won’t discuss them in detail. Suffice to say that other factors come into play including corporate culture, proper planning and nurturing of the employee’s personal brand. The biggest risk is associated with the alignment or gap between an employee’s personal brand and the corporate brand. Another risk is lack of proper planning to harness the two for mutual benefit.

Examples

There are many terrific examples of organizations where personal and corporate branding converges for mutual gain. Three such examples include Dan Zarella of HubSpot, Matt Cutts of Google and Scott Monty of Ford Motor Company. We’ll explore these and many other examples in detail during our AMA training event.

The strategic value of personal branding in the corporate workplace is the topic of a two day training workshop Toby Bloomberg and I are delivering through the American Marketing Association. Mid and senior level managers in midsize and large corporate environments should explore this topic to gain insights into how to plan for maximum success potential. You can listen to a brief podcast Toby and I recorded about this workshop.

This is a guest post by Brian Millis of Compendium, the business blogging platform.

As a company that specializes in blogging software for business, we’ve had a chance to look across our clients to explore which blogs get the most traffic and click through. So, we thought we’d share some business blogging best practices:

Post Frequency and Consistency

Without a doubt, consistency is key in your business blogging efforts. Keeping your blog updated with fresh, timely, and engaging content will bring an audience back for more while ensuring new readers aren’t greeted by stale posts. Finding the schedule and pace that works for your business blog (and matches when your targets are looking for your ideas) might take a little time and experimentation. But, the payoff we see is that blog post frequency is highly correlated with traffic to your blog. Fresh content brings readers.

Oh, by the way, most of your traffic will be new visitors (see our study results below). To sum things up, fresh content has two effects: it keeps existing followers engaged, and it makes it easier for new prospects to find you.

Use a Wide Variety of Content

The power of a business blog is its ability to accomplish multiple purposes. Of course, the overall purpose of your blog is to engage prospects and customers online. But you can drill down more than that. In fact, we suggest a business blog has three overarching purposes and you should vary your content based on the blog’s purpose:

1. Create Awareness for your brand. Use keyword rich posts to convey what your products are and how they are used. Much of this content might be re-purposed from your existing marketing materials.
2. Help visitors see your brand as a human and establish your thought leadership. Here’s where you need to look broadly for content. Leverage internal experts to highlight what makes your brand and company special. See how Indium uses their engineers in an award-winning way to establish its thought leadership. Have someone who keeps abreast of industry news add insight about your company’s take on that news. Check out this post by Fusion Alliance about employees of today. Oh, and don’t forget that your customer-service reps are constantly answering customers’ questions. Here’s how PetRelocation.com leverages email FAQs in its blog through an Ask-the-Experts feature. Don’t be afraid to reach out to guest bloggers to help add content for you. Social Media Examiner gets nearly all of its blog content from guest bloggers.
3. Drive Purchase Behavior. The best way to excite your blog visitors to take the next step is to show them how you  solve their problems. The best people to help you do this are your existing customers. So, getting content from customers is our success tip #3.

Ask Customers to Share their Stories

The best people to share how your products and service solve problems are your customers themselves. Our clients’ data suggests that those who solicit customer stories get higher click-through than those that don’t. Check out how some major retailers capture their customers’ stories at Gymboree Play & Music, Zenni Optical, and Bass Pro Shops.

Create a Schedule

Blogging consistently is just like developing any new skill or habit. At first, you’ll need to be very deliberate about practicing. Over time, maintaining post frequency will become more routine. Start with an editorial calendar. If you aren’t sure what one looks like, Google “blog editorial calendar’ and you’ll find at least half a dozen suggestions from other bloggers. Some blogging platforms have an editorial calendar incorporated into them so you can see when you’ve got content scheduled for publishing and when you’ve got gaps. Once you establish your blogging routine, stick with it! When you feel like you just don’t have time to write, the momentum you’ve built with a routine will help you power through.

Here’s the reality: running a business blog doesn’t have to be difficult. But, you do have to make a plan about how to manage it (we do this with all of our clients). The tips here are basics to get you started. When you get stuck in your blog writing, check back on these to make sure you’re on the right track. Look for new insights from your fellow industry leaders to make sure your writing is relevant. Stick with a schedule to keep your momentum steady. And when you do run afoul of writer’s block, ask your teammates, customers and industry experts to share their knowledge and stories. With a little practice, maintaining a successful business blogging strategy with new content for your current audience and new visitors will take care of itself.

As we approach the end of the year, we have conversations with our clients about how to improve SEO results in 2012. With all the changes from Google this year (aka Panda), including the freshness update in early November, changes are needed in content strategy to improve or sustain SEO rankings.

Content is Still King

At the heart of your SEO strategy is the importance of continually creating, posting and sharing relevant content to your website and blog. Google has been very clear about this. The challenge most companies face is getting subject matter experts spread throughout the company to contribute content. Here are five strategies to consider to get employees to contribute content.

Paint the Vision Picture

Internal communication is critical to paint the vision of why you need employees to contribute content. Make sure they understand that the company’s financial viability is (in part) dependent on being found by people searching in Google and other digital platforms. In other words, you should inspire employees to contribute to their own job security.  Cite examples of other companies that have employees contributing content such as AT&T, Indium, Kinaxis, Intel. If possible, use examples in your industry including your competitors if applicable. The vision picture you paint should clearly communicate the importance of creating content to position your company well in organic search results. But, don’t stop there.

Go Wide

Use your internal communication channels to invite employees across the entire company to contribute content. Let it be known that you want all functional areas of the company represented in your content. Name them by department so that people in Finance, Customer Service, Production, Sales, Research, etc., all know that they can contribute to your SEO strategy.

Go Public

Publish an online content (aka editorial) calendar. Make it easy for all employees to see the calendar and volunteer for content assignments. Place the calendar on your intranet or Google Docs or equivalent so anyone can see the calendar. The calendar should also publish the name and department of content contributors to provide total transparency and inspiration to others to get involved in your SEO content strategy.

Promote Personal Branding

Don’t assume that all employees understand the value of personal branding. In your communication, highlight the value of their content to their personal brand. But, you should tie the benefits of employee personal branding with the corporate brand. You don’t want to scare department heads by creating the impression that you’re promoting personal branding for a job search.

Bribery

I DON’T like this option, but in some companies the resistance among employees to contribute to your SEO content strategy is so extreme that this method may be necessary, at least in the early stages. Some options to consider might include a small cash bonus, an entry into a contest, or a gift certificate. Other incentives to consider include making a donation to an employee’s favorite charity and monthly recognition in the company newsletter. I recommend that you select “winners” using quantitative factors, not qualitative factors to avoid controversy. Some of the quantitative metrics to consider include content engagement such as comments, and content social sharing through likes, +1s, Re-Tweets, bookmarking and other social sharing metrics. Employees whose content gets spread across the web contributes more value to your SEO strategy and therefore warrants whatever “prizes” you choose to award.

The bottom line to these five suggestions is that timely, relevant content is more important than ever to improve and sustain SEO results. Balance these suggestions with your corporate culture for best results. Please share your suggestions or successes in the comments below.

Google’s Matt Cutts wants to dispel the myth that Google considers SEO to be spam. He outlines some basic SEO best practices and strategies for marketers to consider. Follow these guidelines and you’ll be better off than most.

Crawlable Website

Google’s search algorithm is also referred to as a bot (short for robot). The Google bot crawls your website. So, it stands to reason to maximize your website’s ability to be crawlable by Google. This includes using a search engine friendly content management system (CMS), keyword-centric URLs that correlate to the page’s content, a silo approach to content to make it easy for the Google bot to crawl, and of course, well written meta data. If this sounds like a lot of detail, it is. Just remember the goal is to make your website easy to crawl so Google will return it in search results for relevant keywords. Speaking of…..

Keywords

A viable SEO strategy requires that you perform keyword research to identify the keywords used by your target audience. Your keyword research should be organized by relevant themes. Ideally, you should also do persona research to identify the personas of your target customer. Armed with these insights, your content should be written (or revised) to reflect the relevant keywords searched by the personas you identified. For example, if you sell a home product the person doing a Google search might be a female consumer, or it might be a male consumer. One might be the buyer and the other an influencer. Reaching each persona may require different keywords and different content pages on your website.

Usability

Google has made it clear they care very much about the experience you provide the user on your website. The layout and design of your website is a factor. Is your content well organized? Is all the content easy to find? Do you provide images, video, informational resources that help the user get valuable information? Do you provide social sharing of your website content? If the answer to any of these questions is no, you lose favor with the user and with the Google bots as they score the usability of your website.

Load Speed

If your website loads fast, Google considers that a contribution to a good user experience. You may need to clean up your website’s code to improve load speed, or change your hosting package, or switch CMS platforms. Consider the factors that may be slowing down your website and take appropriate action to increase load speed for good SEO ranking results.

Cooperate with Google

As Matt Cutts explains in this video, ethical SEO is merely the process of paying attention to these details in order to gain SEO favor with Google’s bots. So, just cooperate with Google and chances are you’ll get good SEO ranking results.

I’ve been in the Internet marketing industry since 2000. As much as I’ve seen it evolve over the past 11 years, it feels like it is still in its infancy. I find myself referencing the “digital age” often when discussing modern marketing principles. Here are the five pillars to digital marketing.

Content Marketing

It’s no coincidence this is first on the list of digital marketing pillars. Buyers have little tolerance today for a straight sales message. As I wrote in my book, Marketing 2.0, when we produce content that educates, enlightens or entertains our target audience, we build trust and authority. Your content can be delivered in various formats ranging from website, blog, e-books, webinars, slideshows, videos and through offline events such as conferences. Your content is your currency in modern marketing. That’s why it’s #1 on my list of digital marketing pillars.

Inbound Marketing

The expression Internet marketing is being replaced with inbound marketing, thanks to our friends at HubSpot and their evangelism. Inbound marketing is essentially the art and science of creating relevant and compelling content, optimizing so it will be found by Google, shared and spread across the web and containing appropriate calls-to-action to convert a portion of the people that find it into a contact. Essentially inbound marketing is all about getting found online by your prospective customers. Tactics such as SEO, PPC, blogging and social media are used to execute effective inbound marketing plans.

Social Media Marketing

I long for the day this phrase is obsolete. Social media is mainstream now. Social media is merely the aggregate of all online channels where your customers spend time. The selection of the social media channels to use in your digital marketing strategy is very important. Using social media is a tactic, a means to an end. If content is your currency, social media is where it changes hands for value. You develop a content strategy, not a social media strategy. Social media channels provide the roadways to drive your content so relevant people will find it, engage it and share it.

Email Marketing

Despite all the technology innovations in the past decade, email is still the #1 digital communication channel in business. Email has even made its way into Facebook and LinkedIn through “messaging.” For many brands one of the most strategic and impactful elements is the size and quality of their email list. Brands with effective email communication enjoy loyalty, lead generation and consistent growth.

Mobile Marketing

The new kid on the block is mobile marketing. What started out as SMS text messaging, largely found in B2C marketing, has evolved into marketing to the third device. This is the notion that devices 1 an 2 are television and PC/laptop, and device 3 is a mobile device defined as a tablet or smartphone. Smartphone shipments are expected to exceed PC shipments in 2012. It won’t be long before smarthphone shipments eclipse laptops. Branded applications on mobile devices are the most popular and among the most effective forms of mobile marketing. The same principle applies in mobile marketing as in content marketing. It’s all about providing utility to the end user on her mobile device.

Integrated Marketing

The sixth pillar of digital marketing is integration with offline marketing. A marketing team needs to have a complete view of where their customer spends time and engage them there. In most industries there are offline components and online components. By integrating them, you demonstrate that you care about your customer, and you are rewarded with more revenue opportunities, provided your product is competitive with similar offerings.

The next time someone suggests that you need to beef up your “Facebook strategy,” or your “SEO” strategy, consider where it fits into your digital marketing strategy. How you answer this may have a dramatic effect on your actions and ultimately your results.

If you’re a B2B marketer you know the balancing act in Q4. Your sales team needs to close sales in the fourth quarter of the year. And, you need to wake up on New Year’s Day with a healthy sales pipeline for the first quarter of the new year. So, now is the time to be executing effective lead generation strategies to build your 2012 pipeline. Let’s look at five effective digital marketing strategies for B2B lead generation.

Content Marketing Mindset

I assume you have a content marketing mindset, because you must. What content are you producing in the current quarter that will fill your sales pipeline for 2012? Consider getting back to basics. What are the top 10 questions your customers ask? Just check with your customer service department and they’ll tell you. Produce content that answers the most common or the toughest questions. Avoid the temptation to sell. Rather, focus on answering the most popular questions with an offer of content that provides more detail. If you double the amount of blog posts you write in Q4 around the most popular questions, you’ll generate more sales leads. And, be sure all your content (including your website) is mobile friendly.

Landing Pages

How many custom landing pages are you using in your inbound marketing strategies? Double them in Q4! Experiment with different headlines, different copy, QR codes and different calls-to-action (CTAs). We have clients with landing page conversions ranging from 5% to 70%. The reason for the wide variance in conversion rates is a willingness to experiment. Guess which landing pages we use most?

Premium Content

Let’s face it, B2B digital marketing is becoming somewhat of a content war.  You may need to step up your content to another level. Are your white papers getting old? Create a video white paper. Or, expand a white paper into a well designed e-book with appealing graphics that tell a story. Are your videos boring? Let your (B2B) hair down and create a humorous video. Poke fun at yourselves or your industry. But, do it in good taste to avoid negative PR (unless you’re okay with that). Kinaxis does a great job with entertaining video.

Strategic Content Partners

Maybe you need to partner with others in your industry that can help you co-create premium content? Consider your industry relationships. If you have the budget, hire an analyst or otherwise prominent person to help you create an event such as a webinar. In the absence of budget, identify rising stars in your industry with whom you can partner at a lower cost. Consider creating content that is relevant to your industry, but not the same old stuff. I spoke at Content Marketing World 2011 where one of the keynotes was comedian, Kevin Smith who discussed how he used content marketing to launch the next phase of his career.

Get More Rowers in the Boat

This is a hot topic for me. I see too many marketing professionals dealing with the weight of the world on their shoulders. It’s sooooo old school for any company to expect the marketing department to carry all the weight of content marketing. Employees with subject matter expertise must participate! If you’ve not been able to convince them by this point, perhaps you should take the time to do some training in the fourth quarter of 2011? The proper training will get your employees motivated to build their personal brand while helping you build your corporate brand and your sales pipeline. Whatever you have to do to get more employee support to help you become a social business in 2012, do it.

My B2B Lead Generation Call-to-Action

In the spirit of the theme of this blog post I offer you a downlable e-book on B2B lead generation strategies. The strategies outlined in this e-book work well for B2B companies that sell a complex, high ticket product with long sell cycles. These strategies don’t fit for lower priced products and most services industries. Here’s to waking up on January 1, 2012 with a healthy sales pipeline!

Marketers have been excessively focused on understanding the effects of the Google Panda update on their website search rankings since the first announcement in February 2011. SEO advice for Panda has been overwhelming for most marketers.

Fundamentally, the Panda update is Google’s way of doing some housecleaning. In recent years, many website owners have been building backlinks and adding content fixated on improving their rankings in Google. So, Panda was launched to reward websites with high quality content, and penalize websites with low quality content and non-organic inbound links. Google’s primary goal is to deliver users relevant search results to maintain brand loyalty and dominance in search.

In May of this year, Google provided an update reinforcing what they originally announced in February about the Panda update. Their primary emphasis was to provide guidance on what constitutes high quality content in order to take the mystery out of it for marketers interested in maintaining their organic search results. This time Google emphasized the importance of the user experience by offering a list of questions you should ask about your website (below):

Google goes on to suggest that marketers consider answering these questions in relation to your content, especially if your website has been negatively impacted by the Panda update.

It’s About The User Experience

I like the fact that Google communicates the underlying intent behind Panda and offers guidance on how to ensure your website has high quality content. I also like the fact Google wants to reward websites which offer a good experience to the visitor. This means that factors not previously considered important to SEO are now relevant including navigational layout and to some extent design. Google doesn’t explicitly say that design matters, but if the user experience is really the focus, poorly designed websites do not offer a good user experience or necessarily exude confidence in Google’s eyes.

SEO Fundamentals Still Matter

I don’t like that Google makes no mention of the continued importance of fundamental SEO best practices through implementation of well written title tags, heading tags and URL structure. These factors alone don’t make or break your organic SEO results. But, in combination with high quality content, they make a difference.

Google Engineers Open Up About Search

In the video below, Google engineers discuss how they go about making changes to their search algorithm. While they don’t disclose specific ranking signals, they open up about the processes they use to update their algorithm.

Google’s search engine algorithm will always be a mystery to the average website owner. The takeaway from these summary points is to avoid being overwhelmed by the myriad of articles hyping the effects of the Panda update. Focus on delivering a good user experience through high quality content, intuitive navigation, modern design elements and by paying attention to SEO best practices described above.

An employee’s conduct in the public eye is perceived as his or her personal brand. There is a lot of potential for productive personal branding when there is congruency between the employee’s conduct and the company’s culture. And, there is potential for unproductive personal branding, when there is incongruency between the employee and the employer’s company culture.

Productive Personal Branding Needs C Level Guidance

Company culture is often defined by a mix of top leadership guidance, collective conduct of its employees and how the business conducts itself in the public eye. From a corporate marketing perspective, a company should understand what its culture is as recognized by its market place.

Two brands which have defined their culture well, are Zappos and Southwest Airlines. Both are well known for their passion for customer service as well as a flair for light hearted fun and humor along the way. So, when an employee’s personal brand complements this culture, it is supportive and productive.

Another example worth examining to illustrate the importance of congruency in culture and personal branding is Apple. In the post Steve Jobs era, Apple will likely remain a company that is secretive with most topics, especially its products. Unlike the rest of the world, Apple shuns social media. You won’t find any social media buttons on the Apple website. So, employees at Apple would not be congruent in personal branding by being vocal about industry issues in the name of the company. Certainly Apple employees have as much right to use social media as the rest of us. But, due to their company culture, they must represent their own views, not those of Apple.

The company culture sets the tone for employees’ personal branding. If I worked for Apple, I would have a content strategy similar to what I have today, but I would never identify my content as an Apple employee, and I would never discuss anything pertaining to Apple.

Company Culture Guardrails

Company culture must be deliberate. It must provide employees guidelines and guardrails for use of social media in the context of their profession.

Apple is an extreme case both because of its secrecy culture and because it is such an established and successful brand. For those businesses working hard to build a brand, they will be well served to develop a corporate culture that can be supported by employee personal branding.

More Rowers in the Boat

I call this “getting more rowers in the boat.” This is the concept of content marketing by employees with subject matter expertise across the company. When most or all employees are encouraged to be brand ambassadors by sharing company content, expressing their professional opinions and generally waving the company’s culture flag, the company usually wins. The caveat of course is that the company must have employees capable of personal branding congruent with company culture. This is part art and part science.

The company culture needs to become part of the DNA of each employee. It’s not something that is communicated in policy form. Rather it’s communicated through action. This is where “leading by example” comes to life. When employees witness its leaders being ambassadors of its brand and encouraging employees to freely do so in their own personal expression, this is the ultimate in personal and corporate branding. One of the best examples of this is in HubSpot.

Personal branding and company culture are like a glove on a hand. If the fit is perfect, everything clicks and great things happen. If the fit is not good, bad things can happen that need to get addressed by management.

This is a topic that warrants attention at the CEO level. When a company CEO defines the culture and communicates it in words AND actions, then a company can expect employee personal branding to be mutually productive for the employee and for the company.

This topic interests for more than one reason. I’m teaching a two day training event entitled Personal Branding in the Corporate Workplace through the American Marketing Association. The first live event will be January 24/25, 2012 in Atlanta, GA, USA.

LinkedIn warrants more of your attention whether you’re a marketing professional, a sales professional or a career seeker. As Facebook continues to get a lot of attention by the media and by marketers; and Google+ is likewise getting a lot of attention now that it’s available to the public and its popularity is growing, your attention to LinkedIn should increase.

LinkedIn for Marketing Professionals

Too many marketing professionals underestimate or misunderstand the power of LinkedIn for branding and lead generation. Your LinkedIn Company Page is a powerful social destination to display your products and services, communicate positioning message and promotional offers, as well as allow visitors to meet your employees. Marketers should urge all employees to beef up their profiles to maximize the strength of your LinkedIn Company Page. Your company page is a standalone URL which can be shared across the web. And, now you can post status updates to your company Page. Consider that your prospects will probably visit your company page to gain insight into your company’s vitals statistics and learn what others say about your products and services through testimonials. I urge marketing professionals (B2B and B2C) to beef up your LinkedIn Company Page for maximum inbound marketing value.

LinkedIn for Sales Professionals

LinkedIn is a valuable social networking site for sales professionals to make influential connections that can result in viable sales opportunities. Sales professionals should be constantly expanding their network on LinkedIn. Join professional groups for networking with peers, customers and partners. Follow company profiles of customers and prospects to stay informed of their initiatives, new hires and departures. Answer questions in LinkedIn Answers to build credibility. Use LinkedIn Signal to create and save advanced searches. All of these social networking activities are valuable. But, the most valuable is having a robust LinkedIn profile complete with testimonials, a recent photo and keywords in your profile headline. Sales professionals should take advantage of LinkedIn’s many features that enable you to build and grow a network where you can build valuable relationships and fill your sales pipeline with new prospective customers.

LinkedIn for Career Seekers

A career seeker is anyone not planning to retire next week. We are all career seekers. LinkedIn allows you to build your personal brand, connect with people influential to your career and help others with their career aspirations. Aside from the obvious job seeking features of LinkedIn, the opportunities to stay “in career shape” in LinkedIn are plentiful. LinkedIn Today allows you to aggregate external sources of relevant media coverage to stay in touch with news in your industry.  Leave status updates daily to strengthen your personal brand. Connect your blog to your profile. Add other relevant applications to your profile such as Slideshare, Events, Polls and Amazon Reading List to display your credentials. Speaking of credentials, list your skills in your profile using LinkedIn’s Skills feature.

LinkedIn is a mature and robust social networking and social marketing site that all marketing professionals, sales professionals and career seekers should leverage whether you’re in B2B or B2C. IMO LinkedIn is the one social destination that warrants daily activity of not less than 15 minutes each day.

Join me for a webinar October 14th, 12:30pm to 2pm Eastern

Offered by PeopleOntheGo: LinkedIn for Sales & Marketing Professionals Webinar

All businesses want to be found online by their prospective customers when they search. Many marketers assume that ranking well in Google is the ticket to driving traffic to their website. The reality is that it’s only a part of the equation. Many B2B businesses are not getting the

If your title tag is not well-written for search engines your content may not rank well enough to be found to be clicked through. Additionally, if your title tag doesn’t match relevantly with the eye of the searcher, you could miss out on a click through.

Relevant and Well Written Description Tags

When a user reads the listings on a search result page, the eye is skimming the title and secondarily reading the description. If your description is weak in comparison to your competitors’ descriptions on the same search results page, you can miss out on click throughs. For SEO results, Meta titles and Meta descriptions must engage the visitor and be keyword relevant in order to be found by users and to convert click throughs from the search results page.

Relevant Content – Relevant Content – Relevant Content

Google’s recent Panda updates are proof positive that content is still the most important ingredient in getting desirable SEO results. Too many marketers short change this aspect of their SEO strategy. I submit that a lack of relevant content constitutes a lack of a SEO strategy. Unless you’re in a non competitive industry (which doesn’t exist), you need enough content to earn authority with Google and Bing. SEO results are driven by quality content, and lots of it, written to meet the needs of your audience.

Engaging Calls-to-Action

If your SEO objective is to produce sales-ready leads, then getting qualified visitors to your website is truly only half of the equation. It serves no purpose to strive for SEO results that drive traffic to your website if you can’t convert a healthy portion of visitors into sales ready leads.

B2B marketers should be willing to experiment with calls-to-action (CTAs). We’ve seen some marketers have success with self-service pricing CTAs. White paper downloads can be effective too, but you still need to experiment with content. It’s easy to produce a lot of white paper downloads that result in no sales ready leads. The same holds true with webinar content.

Social Search Drives SEO Results

Even though it is late 2011 many B2B marketers still ignore social media for various reasons ranging from a lack of understanding to a lack of time. In modern SEO this is like ignoring sunshine when seeking a tan. Both Google and Microsoft Bing use as ranking signals the extent to which your website’s content is shared across social media and by whom. Google is using its +1 sharing button and Bing is using Facebook Likes as ranking signals. Google is also beginning to track the extent of content sharing on Google+ which is their new social network. B2B marketers will improve SEO results when they make it easy for website content to be shared through social media contributing to social search success. Likewise, employees of B2B marketers should share their company’s website content and encourage customers to share it as well. Blog content is one of the best content formats for social sharing.

B2B marketers who need to improve their SEO results should consider SEO fundamentals (title and description tags) and should also have a willingness to experiment with CTAs that can create sales ready conversions. Additionally, social sharing is not an option to compete for search engine rankings. Contemporary SEO success is part fundamentals and social currency.

The white paper on the right describes 6 critical success factors in B2B lead generation. Give it a read and leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Whew! The pace of updates, announcements and new innovations in social media coming available seemingly on a daily basis are more than anyone can follow. In the past week alone we’ve seen major updates on Google+ and from Facebook. Twitter has also announced new features. And, LinkedIn is doing its fair share of innovating as well. How does a business possibly keep pace with all the new social media features?

What would you say if I suggest that it’s all meaningless! Ignore the social media technology. Rather, focus on becoming a social business. When a business embraces the mindset of being a social business, the technology components become enablers.

B2B is Irrelevant

Unless you sell a widget through retail with little or no human interaction, your business is dependent on a good human experience both internally and externally. We commonly refer to business-to-business as B2B. Dharmesh Shah recently coined the replacement acronym for B2B. It’s B2H. If you sell to other businesses you’re a business-to-human company. In the digital age the B2H experience is an opportunity to touch our customers, employees, partners and prospects everyday through social business practices anchored in human behavior. Social media is simply an enabler. B2H is a mindset.

Training

In my book, Marketing 2.0 which was published in 2009, I made an easy prediction. I said that in about 20 years when the current crop of senior executives that don’t understand the social media mindset has retired, businesses would adopt the proper mindset for social media engagement. Although I didn’t call it social business, I realize now that is what I meant. For a business to become a social business today, it’s imperative to provide training to employees and partners on how to be a social business. That involves everything from how to collaborate digitally, to how to market and promote through socially acceptable practices. And, that doesn’t mean applying yesterday’s advertising to today’s digital channels. Training is key to creating a social business culture that crosses all departments and reaches the customer.

Speed

To be a social business means that you leverage the intellectual capital of your employees and partners. The pace of collaboration, decision making and response time in today’s digital age is measured in hours, days or weeks, not months, quarters or years. This applies to testing new ideas, problem solving as well as responding to customer and marketplace issues. It’s not uncommon for a loyal employee to observe breaking news on a Saturday morning and communicate the implications to her team within hours, generating a digital conversation with team members over the weekend. When Monday morning arrives, a plan might be 80% complete. This is accomplished by a social business mindset where speed of action is understood to be important. The technology elements are merely enablers. Without the mindset the technology is meaningless.

Employee Community

In the social media world we’ve been speaking of the importance of “building community” since the middle of the last decade. In this context, community refers to people who demonstrate loyalty to your brand through social media engagement. Their loyalty often creates behavior reminiscent of family or community. In a social business the employees become a company-wide community. Their level of collaboration is characteristic of family and community. The employee becomes the brand both inside and outside the business. He embodies the brand in every behavior be it through digital interaction or in offline activities.

A Social Business in Action

There are too few examples of social businesses at this moment in time. However, one such business that deserves recognition is IBM. As they celebrate their 100th year, they have created a global culture as a social business. Ethan McCarty, leads IBM’s global digital and social strategy team responsible for driving the transformation of digital communications and marketing at IBM. You can read his interview in Fast Company where he shares the story of how IBM has transitioned to a social business. I recommend you read this article to see a social business in action. You’ll be inspired.

So, ignore the announcements of new social media features from Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn. Instead focus on becoming a social business. The technology features are enablers to a new way of winning and retaining loyal customers and employees.

Do you know other examples of a social business? Share it in the comments below.

• Quality Relevant Content
  Audience Persona
  Frequent Blogging
  SEO Best Practices
  Technology
  Aesthetic Design
  Positive User Experience

Blog Case Study: NFC Rumors

The NFC Rumors blog focuses on the cutting edge of the latest developments in Near Field Communications, aka NFC, for mobile devices. Wikipedia describes NFC as, “allows for simplified transactions, data exchange, and wireless connections between two devices in close proximity to each other, usually by no more than a few centimeters.[1] It is expected to become a widely used system for making payments by smartphone in the United States. Many smartphones currently on the market already contain embedded NFC chips that can send encrypted data a short distance (“near field”) to a reader located, for instance, next to a retail cash register. Shoppers who have their credit card information stored in their NFC smartphones can pay for purchases by waving their smartphones near or tapping them on the reader, rather than bothering with the actual credit card.”

The objective of the team behind NFC Rumors is to provide a blog that infuses the latest NFC mobile device technology with best ways to harness and market this technology to a broader audience. What makes NFC Rumors such a valuable blog case study is their rapid ascent to global readership.

How is a blogging website less than four months old commanding five page-one rankings on search terms with “ NFC” in the phrase, with over 9 million results? And how did they accomplish this in such a short period of time?

Quality Relevant Content that Resonates with Target Audience

Each post is informative, thought-provoking global commentary that is well researched, provides relevant links and share credit to statistical resources. It is trust-worthy blog content which builds authority.

Focus on Audience Persona

The NFC Rumors team did their audience persona homework. Their posts are consistently informative to a mobile technology-centric and digital marketing audience. A successful blog strategy requires a content marketing plan that identifies your target audience personas and delivers content that appeals to their their interests through high quality content. People are motivated to share content that is interesting to them. Keep your content focus on your  audience across all the personas that make up your audience.

Consistent Frequency of Content

In successful blogging, content is king. Multiple blog articles are posted daily. Frequent blog posting builds search engine page indexing, increases shareability and results in organic linkbacks. Blog often. Blog consistently with quality content. That’s the secret sauce.

SEO Best Practices

The website and every blog post is optimized and well written for both the human audience and for the search engines. A strategic category and tag structure is meticulously maintained. Meta data is well managed. Search engines are paying more attention to how content is shared. The importance of well executed SEO best practices in combination with organic shareability is a winning combination.

Blog Technology

The blog architectural structure takes full advantage of the latest technology as it unfolds, consistently improving the visitor experience. This encourages more viral sharing which improves  search engine rankings.

Aesthetic Design

The website is well designed. Quality infographics are incorporated in the blog wherever relevant. Simple, well designed calls-to-action are clearly defined. Finding relevant content is easy. NFC Rumors enjoys less than 10% bounce rate.

Positive User Experience

If delivering cutting-edge information was not enough, NFC Rumors just launched a “Global List” of NFC phones and carriers which is a list of all NFC phones and carrier availability worldwide. Providing usable content that is valuable to your target audience creates lasting relationships and repeat visitors.

The NFC Rumors blog was not created by accident. The NFC Rumor’s team began with a clear objective. Meticulous attention to content strategy, architecture, design and digital marketing strategy were well conceptualized prior to launch and consistently executed following the launch. Well done NFC Rumors. We look forward to a blog case study, Part Two in the future.

Leave your thoughts on NFC Rumors’ blog strategy in the comments below.

This week I had two “first” experiences. I visited Cleveland for the first time. While I was there I had the honor (and enjoyment) of speaking to students at Cleveland State University. Todd Wheatland and I spoke about careers in content marketing. My other first was attending the inaugural Content Marketing World event. I’m thrilled for my friend and colleague, Joe Pulizzi, founder of Junta42 and Content Marketing Institute for organizing this first rate event. To say it was awesome doesn’t describe it. The speakers, the content, the conversations, and yes the food, were all incredible.  Over 600 content marketing professionals attended from 13 countries. As if that wasn’t enough, the pre-conference social event was a private party held at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

It’s difficult to summarize everything I learned in one blog post. But, I’ll offer some of the more memorable take-aways.

Content Marketing is Mainstream

The first take-away for me is the realization that content marketing has really arrived. Joe Pulizzi is well recognized as the Godfather of Content Marketing. He points out that businesses have used content marketing for decades without calling it content marketing. But, the realization that buyers engage with relevant and compelling content more effectively than advertising messages is finally recognized by businesses across all industries. In Joe’s opening remarks he points out some statistics that can’t be ignored:

• B2B marketers allocate approximately 26% of their total marketing budgets to content marketing initiatives.
• 51% of B2B marketers plan to increase their spend in content marketing over the next 12 months.

Joe Pulizzi makes his grand entrance dressed in an orange space jumpsuit.

Joe goes on to say that “content marketing is like using a new muscle.” Marketers need to harness it and keep it “in shape” across all marketing initiatives.

CMW had two opening keynote presenters, Sally Hogshead and David Meerman Scott. Both are authors and well recognized for their own content and achievements as content marketing strategists. Here are just a few highlights from their keynote presentations.

The Power of Story
Sally Hogshead

Give more meaning to your content with emotional triggers….It doesn’t matter if your content is the best if people aren’t listening. It’s about creating a relationship that is captivating….If you don’t have the biggest budget, you have to be the most fascinating. Fascination is an intense emotional focus. Sally also presented the 7 triggers to fascinate.

Real-Time Content Marketing
David Meerman Scott

Most companies are good at planning for next quarter and next year. But, few companies operate efficiently in the present, in the now. Every organization needs a Chief Real Time Officer to plan for NOW!….Social media are tools….Real-time is a mindset….When a story is told in real time, become the “second paragraph” to the story.

Transforming a Large Organization into a Content Machine
Todd Wheatland: Kelly Services

In the context of his B2B content marketing presentation Todd Wheatland of Kelly Services shared tips on how to use Slideshare (among many other tips). Slideshare provides “visual merchandising” of your PowerPoint content….Reformat white papers into a horizontal format and upload to Slideshare…..Experiment with calls-to-action in Slideshare for lead conversions….Every piece of content must have an internal spokesperson….Use infographics to make your content “beautiful.”

Build a Better Buyer Experience With Content
Ardath Albee

Ardath Albee shared that 47% of B2B buyers take more time to do research before making a purchase….More people are involved in the buying cycle than in years past….Content is marketing currency….Develop content for the buyer’s experience and content for your sales process. They are not the same.

How Your Content Impacts Your Career and Your Brand
Bernie Borges: Find and Convert

Yours truly spoke on how to apply a content strategy to improve your career. My session was attended by a mix of corporate marketers and consultants and agency professionals. I offered a five point strategy for individual career advancement. I also encouraged corporate marketers to share these strategies with internal employees to inspire them to contribute content.

• Think like a triathlete
• Develop your personal brand
• Commit to at least two content assets
• Become a “stalker” (follow relevant people)
• Be a storyteller

To all Find and Convert clients and future Find and Convert clients, I urge you to plan and budget for Content Marketing World 2012 in Columbus, OH. The 2012 dates are September 4 – 6. I hope to see you there.

I teach a full day workshop on Facebook for Marketers through the American Marketing Association. One of the topics we discuss is the use case for B2B Facebook marketers compared to B2C marketers. Below is a point-counter-point discussion between me and Gerry Praysman of Brainshark on this topic.  I’ve excerpted key points from his blog post Does Facebook Make Sense for a B2B Business?

Gerry: A lot of people start by asking, “Does Facebook make sense for a B2B business?” I admire the desire to get straight to the point but with all due respect, it’s the completely wrong question. If I were to ask you what your company does, how it makes money, who your customers are, what your sales cycle looks like, the extent of your human and financial resources, and most importantly what your business goals are, would your entire response be: “We’re B2B?”

Bernie: Interesting point. But, the question is still valid. Boeing is a B2B company that sells airplanes and related aeronautic products. I don’t find a Facebook page for Boeing. Perhaps they’ve determined their customers don’t care to engage with their content on Facebook?

Gerry: You need to turn that question inside out and determine what it is you’re really trying to accomplish with your overall marketing strategy, how social media in general fits into that mix, and then determine if Facebook helps satisfy it. The thought-process seems kind of obvious and yet VERY FEW follow it. Understand your specific goals and then vet Facebook for the potential use cases in reaching them.

Bernie: I couldn’t agree with you more! That’s why I’m advocating that businesses stop thinking about social media as social media, but rather focus on their marketing strategy from their customer’s needs perspective. Then, just meet your customer’s needs. If Facebook offers a way to meet their needs, great. If it doesn’t fit that’s okay.  In the end it’s always about meeting your customer’s needs.

Gerry: Facebook is a medium where your customers and prospects can potentially join the community represented by your brand and become emotionally associated with it. This drives loyalty, referrals, and both conscious and subconscious recognition.

Bernie: Maybe….Back to the Boeing example, it appears they have decided their customers are not likely to develop loyalty or generate referrals on Facebook. I argue that B2B marketers that sell a complex product to a highly specialized, niche audience (like Boeing) are much less likely to make “emotional” connections with their customers on Facebook.

Gerry: If all you’re doing is auto-posting your blogs and links for the SEO “value,” then no one will develop a connection with you (on Facebook). The most successful Facebook presences I’ve seen care about what the community wants and doesn’t want, provide constant value, and ALWAYS vary their content.

Bernie: I agree, but the benefit you’re describing is much more prevalent in B2C scenarios than in B2B. As mentioned in the previous point, if you can’t develop a community on Facebook because your customers don’t want an emotional connection with you there, there is no community with which to connect.

Gerry: To those who say, “No, don’t use it. It’s a waste of time.” – Are you sure?
Well, you may actually be right. There are other social media avenues such as LinkedIn and Twitter that have traditionally provided more value for B2B marketers. But just because you can’t sell your product or service on Facebook, or use it to directly connect someone to a sales rep (actually you can), it doesn’t mean that it’s a waste of time. Again, it all depends on your goals, but if one of them is to foster a strong online community, you might want to give Facebook another look.

Bernie: I generally agree. But, it comes back to your business goals and where your customers spend time online. On a daily basis, I hear B2B people say that they use LinkedIn for business and Facebook for personal. They go out of their way to say they don’t want business colleagues or business pages connected to them on Facebook. Each B2B business needs to make this assessment uniquely based on their customer’s behavior.

My Closing Thought on B2B Facebook Marketing

I’m not against Facebook for B2B marketers. Find and Convert is a B2B marketer and we have a Facebook page with a fan base that continues to grow (albeit slowly). Our fan base grows based on the content we share on our page. We don’t offer any promotions or “deals” because we know our audience doesn’t want that from us. Our audience wants relevant, informative content about inbound marketing strategies. By providing good content, we build and sustain our relationship with our audience.

Perhaps Boeing could develop a strong connection with consumers through a custom Facebook game? It would be fun to plan trips on my own private Boeing jet equipped with my custom features. I could invite friends to fly with me in my custom jet. It would be like a fantasy lived out on Facebook. While, this idea may be interesting and build consumer loyalty for the Boeing brand, it may not be the best use of Boeing’s resources at this time. Besides, the example I just provided is not a B2B strategy. It’s a B2C strategy targeting the consumer to build loyalty for their product. It’s doubtful it could affect their ability to win major contracts with airlines and Department of Defense projects.

Each B2B marketer should assess their overall marketing strategy and decide the role of each social channel including Facebook. I submit that B2C marketers generally have more opportunity to use Facebook more effectively than many B2B marketers. But, each B2B marketer should uniquely consider Facebook’s potential role in their overall customer communication and engagement strategy, or not.

Are you a B2B marketer using Facebook? Share your experience with Facebook marketing below in the comments area.

11 Rules to Insure You Fail Miserably

1.    Keep Upper Management in the Dark

Effective digital marketing contributes to sales efforts in a multitude of ways. If upper-management does not fully understand the ROI value of your digital marketing plan, your funding (and maybe your job) can be jeopardized at any point. Imagine what would happen if upper-management refused to be involved in marketing. Needless to say, your ability to be found on the web would be a fraction of your full online potential. If you are looking to minimize your results, “keep management in the dark.”

2.    Adopt a “Need to Know” Management Style

Digital marketing success demands a 360-degree marketing mindset. In a recent post, I listed the number of skill sets required for effective digital marketing results. Each skill set affects your results. Ignoring collaboration among team members is a sure-fire way to fail.

3.    Keep Focused in Your Comfort Zone

It is virtually impossible to be an expert in all the skill sets required for effective digital marketing. Marketers do not need to be technology geeks in order to create effective digital marketing success. However, marketers do need to grasp how technology is used to execute and measure digital marketing plans. Marketing techniques that have worked well in the traditional sense, do not always convert into effective online strategies. Keep looking back to your past successes. Then try to replicate them all online. That’s a great way to fail.

4. Ignore Data

Analytics allow you to measure your online digital marketing results. They provide insight into visitor behavior that offers understanding in how to refine your online campaigns, compete better and deliver content that resonates with your audience. Don’t bother to take the time to analyze the data. Just keep doing the same thing with no regard for what’s working and what’s not working. That’s a great failure strategy.

5.    Keep Your Offline and Online Marketing Separate

Internet World Stats March 2011 statistics report illustrates that almost 2.1 billion people worldwide use the Internet. That represents a 480% increase in usage since 2000. 78.3% of North Americans (over 272 million) use the Internet. Pretend that almost 80% of North Americans don’t bother researching or engaging with businesses on the Internet.  Be sure to keep your offline and online marketing strategies completely separate. That should keep your competitive advantage low.

6.    Assume Your IT Department Understands Online Marketing Because They are Geeks

Just because your IT department is technology savvy, go ahead and assume they understand everything about Internet marketing and SEO best practices. Don’t bother collaborating or checking with your digital marketing agency before making changes or updates to your website. After all, who cares if you wipe out all the backlinks, web authority and progress you have gained during the past year?

7.    Maintain Ego Supremacy

You have been a successful marketer for decades. You have collected numerous Addy’s. You have accumulated an impressive portfolio of successful media and print campaigns. You already know everything. Keep that attitude. It is a great way to alienate your team.  It will certainly limit your ability to collaboratively create online digital marketing campaigns that drive incremental revenue opportunities.

8.    Forget About Online Research – Just Tweak Your Current Marketing Plan

Who needs online marketing research? You already know your customer demographics. You understand who are your main competitors. That small company that is generating page one Google rankings across multiple keywords is small stuff at the moment. Ignore them. They can’t hurt you. Just don’t blink.

9.    Pull the Plug if You Do Not See Immediate Results

Mr. Small Fry marketing associate came up with this great social marketing idea. Reluctantly, the project was given a green light.  You are carefully watching to see if it is going to be an instant overnight success. Granted, it is gaining some momentum…but not fast enough for you. So you pull the plug after two weeks. Don’t bother understanding that social marketing is about building relationships and trust, neither of which get built overnight.

10.    Ignore SEO Best Practices Because Your Website Looks Great

You redesigned your website. It looks great and the content is updated and well written. That should be enough, right? Who needs SEO? No matter how great the site looks or how long the site has been around, you will be found more often by your desired audience with SEO best practices firmly in place. If you do not want to be found more often or generate more leads…definitely, do not bother with SEO.

11.    Fear Losing Control

No, you cannot control the Internet. Likewise, you cannot control how your staff and customers respond in social media. But you can provide a policy and create a culture of openness and transparency. We humans are social creatures. People often respond better to their friends and influencers on the web than to an advertising slogan. But if you want your digital marketing to fail, just keep pitching them.

Did we miss some sure fire ways to succeed at digital marketing failure? Add your favorite in our comments section below.

I recently wrote a post about the number of experts required to design a website that engages visitors and drives traffic through organic search results. Yet a website is just one platform of a successful online marketing strategy. Technology is driving more sophistication in search as well as social marketing.

So, how many experts does it take to drive an effective online marketing strategy?

More than you may realize. There is a big difference between being online and generating results that drive revenue opportunities. Marketers seeking maximum results from online marketing require a full team with diverse skill sets that include:

• Ad and PPC Manager – Online ad campaigns can be powerful lead generators. This entails the ongoing measuring, testing and refining of your keywords, ad copy, landing pages and lead conversions. Well-managed and targeted ad campaigns often pay for themselves in lower costs per lead.
• Analyst – Marketers that pay attention to metrics enjoy more successful online marketing results. Metrics tell you what is working. Moreover, they provide guidelines in how to improve your online marketing strategies. Even more important for a marketer, they provide ROI to justify your marketing projects.
• Communicator – Are some marketers working on offline campaigns? Are others focused on online marketing? Integrating offline and online marketing requires planning, strategy, coordination and collaboration.
• Content Manager – Content is King when it comes to online marketing. Most companies have a wealth of content that can be repurposed into valuable online content that has never yet crossed a marketer’s desk. A content manager coordinates between departments to repurpose a treasure trove of quality content that is shareable on the web.
• Designer – Good design is synonymous with quality. Most products and services will render far better results with a well-designed website, landing pages and blog.
• Editor – Even the best writer needs one. Have a second pair of eyes  read all  blog posts and content before publishing.
• IT Technician – Do not confuse the skill sets of an IT technician, a programmer and a webmaster. The ideal role of an IT technician in your online strategy is configuring the website’s servers. When an IT technician is familiar with the latest web technology or code optimization best practices, their role can be expanded.
• Programmer – Writing code is not always synonymous with understanding website technology. Not all programmers are webmasters, nor are all webmasters necessarily programmers.
• Project Manager – Offline marketing is comprised of several channels. The same is true in online marketing. Integrating offline and online marketing requires several layers of details. For successful execution of offline and online marketing strategies, a project manager is required.
• Publisher – Blogging is a powerful way to share valuable content with your target audiences. Marketers that think like a publisher are the new brand leaders.
• Public Relations – The role of public relations has changed dramatically with the advent of social marketing and online media. Social media and content search engine optimization are intricately interwoven in how online media gets found and shared on the web. Online media has become an intricate component of online marketing and public relations. Marketers that harness this powerful combination can achieve great results.
• SEO Specialist – Shareable content has become an important way for search engines to index and rank content. Optimizing your content for organic search has become more important than ever before. If you want to be found online…employ search engine optimization (SEO) best practices with shareable content strategies.
• Social Media Specialist – Engaging in social media through clear objectives is far different from “doing” social media. Social media revolves around content and relationships. Optimizing your social media efforts requires strategy, understanding your customer and where she spends time. It also requires social media etiquette which starts with listening. You can reduce the timeline between implementation and optimization by engaging a social media specialist or agency to engage with your target audiences and “share” your content.
• Story Teller – This overlaps with the content manager, but it may not be the same person. A story teller is usually someone with journalism experience. People engage with stories, not pitches. A good story teller will produce compelling content that tells stories and engages the audience.
• Marketing Strategist – The online connected world is evolving quickly. You need a marketing strategist that can develop your online marketing strategy and keep your marketing campaigns and initiatives moving forward as technological advances unfold.
• Webmaster – A webmaster’s expertise is focused on web related technology and how to apply them to your website for more search discoverability and visitor engagement. While some webmasters are programmers, not all programmers are webmasters. A talented webmaster has a blend of the technical skills needed along with a collaborative marketing attitude.

If you happen to look up from reading this post and notice your marketing department is a little shy on some of the aforementioned skills, do not despair. It is rare, even with large enterprises, to have such a comprehensive online marketing range of skills within a company’s marketing department. The good news is, marketers can hire specialists or get help from outside sources for the skills they need in order to implement the most effective online marketing strategies.

The New SEO is Social Search

With more than 60% market share in the search landscape, Google remains king of the hill in search. So, how does a corporate marketer achieve positive results in the search game at a time when the SEO landscape and the rules of engagement are evolving so rapidly?

Content Remains King

Despite the rapid pace of change, one thing that has remained constant and is more true than ever before is that content is still king. Google’s recent Panda update is testimony to this. Google wants the user to have a good experience in a search and the best path to a good experience is delivery of relevant content. Marketers should remain committed to producing quality content.

Content Diversity is Queen

The good news is that we have so many social media platforms at our finger tips to produce content. The bad news is that Google and Microsoft are watching for content diversity, putting more pressure on marketers to produce a diverse mix of content. Admittedly, this is no small undertaking. A traditionally SEO optimized website is no longer enough to rank well for competitive keywords. Marketers need to produce video and photo image content that is likewise optimized with the proper tags and descriptions. Delivery of downloadable content can also be indexed and therefore sends positive signals to Google and Microsoft that you are a producer of diverse content. Content across other social channels are worthy of a marketer’s focus.

Hail the +1 Button

In keeping with the “content is king” theme, the +1 button is gaining wider importance. We know that Google is using +1 clicks as a signal. But, did you know that the location of the +1 button is significant? For example, when someone clicks on the +1 button on a product page, that signals that you like that product page. However, when someone clicks the +1 button on a category page, that signals that you like the entire category. Take that one step further to clicking the +1 button on a home page, signaling that you like the entire website! Are you getting the picture? The +1 button is a bigger deal than you might have realized. Hail the +1 button!

Share the Love

Since the introduction of social search in October 2009 the sharing of content across various channels has become important. This is truer today. Google and Microsoft are tracking the extent to which your content is shared. Consequently, the social sharing buttons on your website or blog are hugely important. And so is the next point…..

The Company IS the Marketing Department

If content sharing is that important, then it’s even more important that your entire company understand this point. The larger a company, the easier it is to leverage this, not from a spam standpoint, but from a genuine sharing standpoint. Let’s say your company has 200 employees. If each employee shares your blog posts, YouTube videos, Facebook posts, LinkedIn company pages, etc., across their social networks that turns the entire company into the marketing department. I pity the company who doesn’t yet understand this and unwisely attempts to shoulder this burden entirely on the marketing department. I’ve previously written about this in the context of marketing is not a department. The most successful companies get this. It takes a company-wide culture with strong marketing leadership to execute this strategy.

Social search is here to stay. I urge marketers to embrace this. Denial is career-threatening risky.

If you’re a B2B marketer that needs further insight into how to implement a strategic social search plan, contact me at bernie (at) findandconvert (dot) com referencing this blog post.

4 Reasons I’m Excited About Google+ for SEO Marketing

It was born as an adolescent…

Since this is Google’s third attempt at social marketing (Buzz and Wave) they’ve had some practice. This time, they seemingly got it right. The most notable and differentiating feature is the genius of Circles. As simple as it is, Circles seals the deal because it emulates real life. Now, when I use Facebook and have no efficient way of sorting through my stream, I loathe it. The result is I’m spending A LOT LESS TIME IN FACEBOOK since joining Google+.

It makes sense…

Circles is a great feature because it makes sense! You probably have friends from work, from school, from your kid’s soccer club, from church, from previous employers, from golf, etc. Google+ Circles allows you to organize your friends according to how you live your life. You can create as many circles as you like and decide which streams (Circles) you want to see when you visit Google+. That just makes sense! But, let’s talk business. Sparks is a great feature that allows me to select the external content I want to see according to any topic I choose. I create the content categories and Google+ finds it for me. That’s an SEO benefit out of the gate! Your content can be found and consumed inside Google+ just by doing the requisite SEO best practices to get your content indexed and displayed. Think about the extended reach that offers your content strategy as Google+ continues to grow.

SEO marketing potential is already apparent…

As mentioned above, I can find your content using the Sparks feature. If you have the +1 button on your content, others can “+1 it” and Google is tracking that. Google is already using +1 as a ranking signal. We can expect the +1 influence on SEO marketing to grow even more as Google+ evolves. Additionally, Google didn’t renew their contract with Twitter for real-time search results. They’ve let us know that they plan to integrate Google+ content into real-time search results. So, if you have breaking news, sharing it in Google+ will get it displayed in Google’s real-time search results.

Forthcoming business features should be worth the wait…

At the time that I published this post Google+ business features are not yet available. In other words, Google+ is currently only useable by individuals.  According to a credible Google spokesperson we can expect to see the business features later this year. I won’t guess when we’ll see them. But, I will speculate what types of business features we might see from Google. Think Google Analytics. Think Adwords. Think Maps, Places, Video. We’ve already seen Gmail integration. While I expect that we’ll see some “me too” Facebook features I’m hoping the game changing features will be around metrics, which is where Facebook is weakest. If you have a Facebook page and you’ve studied the analytics in Facebook Insights, you know how lame it is. I expect the analytics Google will provide businesses will blow away Facebook’s equivalent, thereby attracting more businesses to Google+.

Companies that have been using Facebook for brand marketing have experienced firsthand its many shortcomings. The long term success of Google+ will depend less on how many individuals flock to it, and depend more on how many businesses flock to it. If the much anticipated business features are rock solid, I expect Google+ to explode in popularity with brands and with users.

Don’t wait for the business features to be available later this year to start using Google+ and to start experiencing the SEO marketing opportunities for your content. Start sharing your content in Google+ today. And, create keyword rich content that can easily be found in Google+ by users of the Sparks feature.

If you want an invitation to join Google+ drop me a comment below with your Gmail address and I’ll send you an invitation. Soon enough, Google+ will open up for general availability and an invitation won’t be required.

The video below nicely explains the early differences and long term potential differences between Google+ and Facebook. Although this video doesn’t address business features, it makes compelling points about Google’s treasure chest of assets while giving credit to Facebook’s rapid rise to social networking stardom.

What does your crystal ball say about Google+ from a business perspective? Leave your comments below.

How? Content! Useful, relevant, interesting, easy to consume, quality content that’s gently persuasive.

Over the past ten years B2B buyers have learned to research online. They don’t want to see or talk to a salesperson until they’re near a buy decision. That means Marketing must create demand, nurture leads and keep them engaged until they’re ready for Sales.

So how do you develop quality web content that’s relevant and useful to all the different types of prospects who influence a complex B2B buy decision? You need lots of quality content to address different people’s needs and different selling situations.

Three Basic Ways to Develop Content

Create it. Repurpose it. Or curate it

Without fresh content, people stop reading, stop listening, and stop caring. Creating quality content consistently is difficult. Original blog posts, articles, videos, infographics, presentations, etc. take skill, time and money. So how do you keep up?

Work smarter, not harder – repurpose your content

There are several ways quality content can be repurposed or updated from one format to another to add value. Here are four ways you can repurpose content to leverage work you’ve already done.

• Turn a speech or presentation into blog posts. Almost everyone has PowerPoint presentations they can repurpose. Don’t forget to link to your original video or slide deck.
• Break up a lengthy white paper into a series of blog posts. Write separate posts with examples from different industries. Take a complex idea and break it up into a series of simple, quick posts.
• Update existing blog posts to include new innovations and examples. A blog post that’s a couple of years old can be made fresh again with a few edits.
• Repurpose offline content to use online. For example, take presentations produced by Sales, edit them to tone down the ‘salesy’ content, and post them online using BrainShark or SlideShare.

Content curation is not just for museums

I’ve been doing “Content Curation” for years. Ever since the internet and email have been widely available, I’ve been sharing bits of information I found interesting, thought-provoking, or just plain entertaining; and I shared with colleagues, friends, clients and prospects. My forwarded content curations are highly personalized. I’ll send a tidbit of information to a single individual, or a small handful of people. The information is relevant and meaningful to them, so they’ve learned to look for them…and I’ve learned that this is a great way to keep top of mind with clients and prospects without being pushy.

Curated content can also be an important ingredient in content marketing campaigns designed to inform and gently persuade regarding products, services and solutions.

Attribution

There’s an old adage – “If you take from one information source, that’s plagiarizing. If you take from twenty, that’s researching.” There’s a spectrum of content curation ranging from direct quotes all the way to completely re-thought, re-contextualized, re-written material. All are equally valid…as you approach and reach the “direct quote” end of the spectrum, you should attribute the source including author and publication.

So, How Do You Curate Content?

Step 1: Identify your topics of interest

• What topics might be of interest to your target market? What industries are they in? What types of technology do they manufacture or use in their businesses? Are there political or regulatory issues that affect them?
• Is there a specific niche in which you’d like to position yourself as a thought leader?

Step 2: Select your search and aggregation tools

There are many search and aggregation tools available. Which one you choose is up to you. They should help you find the nuggets of gold hidden in the vast mountains of online information. Pay particular attention to the search terms you use. The more ‘advanced’, selective and sophisticated your search terms, the fewer results you’ll get, but those results will be more valuable and relevant in producing quality web content.

Step 3: Gather

Once your tools are set up, the information will be delivered to you daily. It’s up to you to skim and scan, trash and save, read and contextualize for quality content relevant to your audience.

Step 4: Organize

You can get as detailed as you want about this. Obviously, the larger the amount of information, the more you’re going to need to categorize. At a minimum, organize curated content by target audience.

Step 5: Share

There’s no point in doing all the above unless you deliver the appropriate quality content to your various constituents. What’s important here is to assess the content, and assess the audience; then select the appropriate vehicle and frequency for content delivery.

So What Have We Learned?

• Fresh, relevant quality content is essential to B2B marketing success.
• There’s more than one way to produce quality web content.
• By creating, repurposing and curating, we can develop the quantity of quality content we need without blowing our budgets.

Bob Leonard is the Managing Consultant at acSellerant. Over a 20 year period, prior to launching acSellerant, Bob held individual contributor and management positions in Corporate Marketing, Field Marketing, Sales and Sales Support at EMC, GTE, Interleaf (document management), and Digital Equipment Corp. acSellerant is a content and social media marketing agency focused on the B2B market place. Follow Bob on Twitter @acSellerant.

If your company is considering upgrading your online web presence, keep in mind these five effective online marketing tips:

• Content Strategy is Number 1
• Address Your Audience Needs First
• If You Want To Be Found On the Web – SEO Your Website
• It Takes More Than Great Design for a Good Website
• There Is No “I” in Web Strategy

Create Your Content Strategy FIRST

Develop your content marketing and keyword strategy BEFORE you begin your website redesign. It will make the process much smoother and keep launch objectives within budget and on schedule. Invest the time to revisit your business objectives. Research your target audiences and learn to listen in order to understand your target audience’s wants and needs. Then create a content and keyword strategy that aligns your audience needs to your products, services and business objectives.

The Objective of Your Website is NOT a Grandstand for “All About You”

Too often, marketers continue to think of their website as an online digital brochure. While that was true in 1999, websites are no longer static but dynamically interactive opportunities for engagement. Your website is there to provide information and solutions to your audience’s wants and needs, open engagement opportunities that result in sales or leads that ultimately convert into sales. Distressing as it may be, your audience is not interested in you, they are interested in what you can do for them. Keep the “how wonderful we are” to your About Us section. The rest of your website’s content should be focused on your audience’s needs and your solutions to their needs. Think “their problem, our solution to their problem.”

A Website without Relevant SEO Does Little to Broaden Your Web Footprint

Granted, as a Search Engine Optimization SEO firm that helps clients get found online, we are extremely vocal advocates about the importance of SEO marketing and best practices. Shockingly, less than 30% of the websites we research have any viable SEO elements. Even more distressing, less than 10% have healthy design and adequate SEO elements. We take this as great news for our clients as it helps them build brand dominance even faster against their competitors as part of their effective online marketing strategy.

Design is Just One Piece of the Puzzle

Your website is usually the primary magnet in your online strategies. You do not need to be a tech whiz to oversee great website development and online marketing strategies. That said, you do need to know that a diverse team of specialists that collaborate and work together is essential. Rarely is the best team for the most effective online marketing support under one roof:

• Designer – Website design is the most tangible aspect of a website, therefore it often gets the most attention while equally important aspects of a website strategy get ignored or downplayed. This can be very shortsighted thinking.
• Programmer – Marketers and designers focus their attention on the user-experience and design. While this is good, it should never be at the expense of slow load times. Every milli-second delay contributes to increased website abandonment. Reducing the number of HTTP requests required to render a page without compromising rich page design is the secret to faster load time. Website design and website load optimization programming are two completely different skill-sets. Both are required for optimal website user experience and search engine performance.
• SEO Specialist – On page SEO is not about adding a few keyword Meta tags. SEO best practices mean developing a content strategy and keyword strategy around content relevancy. It requires applying page relevant Meta data that supports each page with unique content in order for search engines to rank your pages well. Without it, being found is little more than a crapshoot.
• Publisher – Content is king. This means quality content that is relevant to your audience’s interests is a critical component of your website. Design your website to fit your messaging rather than creating content to fit your design. If you do not have the required writing talent in-house to create quality content, outsource it…and be sure it is properly optimized for SEO value.
• Strategist – The primary goal of most websites is brand awareness and lead generation. Most websites focus on brand but give less attention than they realize to lead generation. Lead generation should be a collaborative strategy between marketing and sales. Invest in “no tech skills required” software management tools that give your marketing team the flexibility to integrate and manage marketing campaigns. This will improve online marketing effectiveness and reduce IT department dependency.
• Analyst – Understanding online customer behavior is critical in order to maximize the full potential of your website assets. Measuring online marketing ROI and communicating its contribution to the bottom line is very important to satisfy management’s objectives (it is good for job security as well).

Sharing, Collaboration and Teamwork

Let’s face it, as human beings, we all have an ego. But there is little room for egos or knowledge hoarders in creating effective online marketing strategies. The technology is too vast, changes happen too quickly and each online strategy and tactic can integrate quickly across web channels in ways that individually we may not perceive. The only way to stay ahead of the game is to collaborate by pooling our knowledge, talents and resources from multiple skill sets in order to develop the most effective online marketing results.

For those of us that have been in marketing for a while, integrating old media marketing and new media marketing can be challenging. Tried and true static marketing tactics that worked well in the past do not always translate to online marketing results. However, being aware that online marketing strategies require a different mindset is the first step.. Approaching online marketing with a 360-degree lens will lead to more effective online marketing results by pooling technology and sales and marketing resources toward a common business goal.

Tell us your online marketing story in the comments section below.

Social media marketing is different for B2C (business to consumer) companies than it is for B2B (business to business) companies. Yet, there isn’t much written about the difference in developing a social media plan for a B2B compared to B2C company. So, I’m offering five steps for companies to develop a winning B2B social media strategy.

1. Don’t Call it a Social Media Strategy
2. Know What Stage You’re In
3. Focus on Your Customer’s Issues
4. Develop a Keyword Strategy
5. Content, Engagement, CTA

Don’t Call it a Social Media Strategy

It’s about time we stop calling it social media and think bigger picture. We’re talking about a marketing strategy. It’s 2011 so of course social media will play a role in how you reach and engage your customer. But, don’t tunnel-vision your strategy by thinking it’s a social media strategy. Do you have a “tradeshow strategy,” a “direct mail strategy,” and an “email strategy?” These are each elements in your marketing plan that help you reach your customer, engage them, differentiate, create leads and move qualified prospects into to your sales process.

Know What Stage You’re In

Jamie Turner wrote an article for Mashable with research which estimates that about 50% of all companies using social media are in the initial Launch stage of their plan. This typically involves creating branded accounts for the big four: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. BTW, Google+ rounds out this list to the top 5. The focus in this stage is just establishing a social media presence usually with little or no strategy. Another 40% are in the Management stage. Here, businesses are seeking to drive traffic, followers, fans, subscribers and to engage with their community. Usually, there is very little strategy involved in this stage as well. The remaining 10% are in the Optimization stage. Here, there is a strategic marketing plan in place with executive level support including budget for people and technology resources. The purpose is to drive revenue with ROI metrics defined to measure successes. Ask yourself, in which stage is your business with regard to social media?

Focus on Your Customer’s Issues

Develop personas for your customers and identify the business issues that each cares about. In a typical B2B sale, multiple people are involved in the research and selection process. Often, the team of decision makers spans different areas of a business, and therefore they have different needs. The needs of an operations person versus a human resource person versus a sales person are each unique. If your product touches multiple personas in a business, map out the issues for each persona and develop your content to address each of them. Do NOT assume a “one size fits all” mindset with your content. Additionally, their issues can change according to the stage of the buying process. Meet your personas where they are through your social media engagement and address them accordingly. Blog and video content is a good way to deal with this by using titles and tags that allow your content to be easily found according to the relevant issues for each persona.

Develop a Keyword Strategy

This is very closely tied to developing a persona strategy. Once you’ve identified your personas and their issues, create a list of keyword phrases that very closely address each persona’s issues. For example, an IT Director evaluating a technology product may care very much about “cloud computing technology.” But, the same product should also address “cost effective” technology to the CFO and it might need to provide “customer service improvement” to the CEO. The same product must be communicated according to keywords that are meaningful to each persona that must approve the ultimate purchase.

Content, Engagement, Calls-to-Action

In B2B marketing slick campaigns have limited effect. B2B buyers are not influenced by sizzle. They are influenced by the steak. And, the steak in B2B marketing is relevant content. Blogs, white papers, ebooks, videos, case studies, webinars all represent methods to deliver relevant content. But, the content alone is like a party at an empty mansion. You need lively people to have a good party. In B2B social media that’s engagement. When people respond to your content, don’t be invisible. Be engaging! It sounds simple and intuitive, but why do so many businesses not do it? Lastly, add relevant calls-to-action in your content. It can be as simple as an invitation to contact the author of a blog post with his or name and email address. Or, it could be an invitation to request budgetary pricing about your offering. Or, it can also be a graphically represented image with a call-to-action to download content that goes into further detail.  Calls-to-actions should always be designed according to the strategic goals that can be measured as tangible contributors to the revenue goals of a B2B company.

Speaking of which, below is such a call-to-action. Let me know how it fits with your persona.

Download a chapter excerpt from my book on how to develop a social media strategy. I wrote this book for B2B companies.

Much has already been written in the first week of Google’s new social networking service, Google+. Many of our clients have been asking what it means to them from a marketing perspective. Here are my early thoughts.

It’s Still Very Early

It’s no secret that Google’s previous attempts at getting social have been less than successful. They acquired YouTube, so that doesn’t count as a social media product launch, although it’s been a home run for Google. Wave was officially retired last summer, and Buzz should be retired because the +1 button trumps it. Besides, no one uses it.

It’s also no secret that Google is in a race with Facebook for web dominance. Facebook’s Like function has taken the world by storm, and their integration with the Microsoft Bing search engine makes Facebook a very powerful threat to Google’s runaway success in the search engine landscape.

Google Plus is a Social Network

At its core, Google+ (aka Google Plus) is a new social network. Let’s face it, Facebook has established a dominant worldwide footprint as the most popular social network. Facebook is also a robust advertising platform, which is where it represents its biggest threat to Google, although Facebook’s $2 billion (current) annual revenues pale in comparison to Google’s $30 billion pace for 2011.

I must admit, the Google+ social network has some interesting features such as Circles, where you can group people together according to a common interest or theme. Another interesting feature is Hangouts, where you can create a video chat session with a group of people. This feature could be useful for business colleagues.

The Business Use Case Outlook

While the initial launch of Google+ is strictly for people, Google has stated that business features will be launched soon (see video below). When this feature is launched, the head-to-head comparison to Facebook will be more relevant as (reportedly) this feature will allow businesses to set up a “profile,” although it won’t be called a profile. I wonder if it will be called a “page?” I guess not since that is the term used by Facebook. Once the page equivalent feature is launched, then businesses will be inspired to take notice.  I anticipate the page equivalent profile will offer more than a Facebook Page “me too” option for businesses. I hope it offers more features that will appeal to B2B companies (see below). It’s no secret that B2C companies are enjoying more success with Facebook Pages than B2B companies.

Google’s Trojan Horse(s)

There are three huge assets which Google has that Facebook does not:

1. #1 search engine market share
2. The Android mobile OS
3. Google Apps (used by businesses and a chief competitor to Microsoft)

I must say that when I downloaded Google+ to my Droid, the process was smooth as silk. The app itself is very elegant! They certainly got it right! By contrast, using Facebook on my Droid is about as pleasant as visiting the dentist. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Google+ adoption accelerate due to the growing popularity of Android mobile and tablet devices.

Currently, you must set up your account with a connection to your Google Profile. If you don’t have one, you’ll have to set one up. However, a Google official has already stated that Google+ will soon support Google Apps users. Implied in this statement is forthcoming support for Google Apps. This could be another boon for adoption of Google+ by business users if business apps such as docs and calendars get integrated. Additionally, don’t be surprised to see a search bar integrated into Google+. In fact, I’m surprised it didn’t make it into the initial trial release. Lastly, it’s a matter of time before you start to see the Google Advertising Network display relevant ads in Google+.

Google Plus’ Biggest Obstacle

Many bloggers have written about the challenge of trying to catch Facebook with such a late entry into the social networking world.  The biggest obstacle to widespread adoption of Google + in the short term (IMO) is the time shift it requires for you to use Google +. Even though it’s easy to use, there is a little bit of a learning curve because it is not the same as Facebook. In fact I would say it’s part Facebook (stream, photos), part LinkedIn (Circles) and part Twitter (status updates). In the end, we are all busy and most of us don’t have time to adopt an additional social network. For many it will come down to a choice among them, not the addition of Google Plus to their list of social networks.

Additionally, when the Google + page equivalent is launched marketing departments currently devoting precious time to managing their Facebook pages will need to assess the viability of setting up, promoting and managing their Google + pages. It will come down to ROI. If the pages equivalent is more robust, we may see some migration from Facebook Pages to Google + pages equivalent, especially for B2B companies.

My Prediction for Google+

This is Google’s third attempt at launching a social networking platform. As the saying goes, the third time just may be the charm. This social offering seems to show promise. The vision of Google’s leaders and engineers appears pointed at the long term direction of blurring the lines between social networking and conducting business. While Facebook’s Pages have long offered business and social engagement, B2B companies haven’t found much success with Pages. Google has the strategic advantage over Facebook of integrating their other assets into Google Plus (Android, Apps, Search, Maps, Voice) in a powerful way that could be a game changer. I believe we will see a flurry of new announcements from Google over the coming year. My prediction is that 12 months from now Google Plus will either be a game changer or another flop. My bet is on the game changer.

What’s your bet on Google Plus? Leave your comments below.

When it comes to keeping up with the latest and greatest SEO and social media best practices, two of my favorite go-to guys are my boss at Find and Convert, Bernie Borges , and SEOmoz’s Wizard of Moz, Rand Fishkin . Lately, when it comes to the recent search engine algorithm updates, these two always seem to be talking about SEO, social media and shareable content in the same sentence. And in 2011, we have definitely seen a pattern where search marketing and social media marketing are converging .

If you had to pick just two areas of SEO to focus on for the remainder of this year, here’s where I recommend you spend your time: content and social media sharing.

Content, Content and More Content

I find myself saying this a lot lately, especially to clients. But, it’s true. Content is the cornerstone for improved keyword rankings and building inbound links over time. Lots of optimized content written on various strategic keyword themes drives more visits and power, improving SEO results in the long run. Blogging is a great way to frequently add content to your website. If you’re not already blogging for improved SEO results , what are you waiting for? It’s time for you to start blogging and writing content now!

Keep in mind SEO results in the search engines do vary according to the personalization of the person doing the search. This personalization brings us more relevant, useful search results and makes relevant, SEO-friendly content more important than ever. This means no more top rankings or number one rankings for certain keywords, as SEO results vary from user to user. Writing optimized content regularly in addition to tracking your traffic and ROI is what’s important, not necessarily tracking individual keyword rankings.

Bottom line: The more SEO-friendly, relevant content you write the more chances your target audience is going to find you.

Social Media Sharing

Once you start blogging frequently and creating all this attention grabbing SEO-friendly content, the next critical step is to share it via your social media profiles. I’m not going to lie to you…just like writing content takes time and effort, social media sharing takes effort as well. But the time and effort reaps tremendous benefits in the long run. Social media sharing  provides SEO benefits in addition to improved lead generation results over time.

It is important that you, your employees and staff share your blog posts. The more people sharing your content in social media, the better. Good content spreads. Make it easy for your visitors to share your content. Be sure social media buttons are on all your web pages so that your visitors can socialize and engage with you and share your content.

Bottom line: The search engines are really starting to incorporate social media into search results. Social media should work together with SEO. So start integrating social media sharing into your content strategy for improved SEO results.

Learn more about ways you can create shareable SEO content. Download a chapter excerpt on blogging from Bernie Borges’ Marketing 2.0 book now!

Let’s face it, we are barraged with internet marketing and social media technology innovations everyday. I try to stay current by reading Mashable, TechCrunch and by following early adopters on Twitter. These reliable sources keep me informed of game changing technologies as they become available.

I don’t often write about marketing products on my blog, except when I believe a product has outstanding value to you as a marketer. That’s why I want to tell you about eShare.

eShare is a direct response marketing system geared primarily for B2C marketers. Typical users of eShare may include retailers, restaurant chains, catalog marketers, automotive dealers, politicians and any marketer that needs to reach large numbers of consumers through direct response marketing campaigns with a specific offer desiring a measurable revenue outcome.

eShare allows a marketer to send a direct response marketing piece such as an email, a direct mail piece or an advertisement (online or offline) that may include a PURL (personalized URL) to “hyper personalize” the message for increased response probability.

Game Changing Direct Response Marketing Software as a Service

A campaign might look like this. I get a direct marketing offer (via mail, email, advertisement, etc.) The piece has an offer that drives me to call a toll free number or to respond online. If I call, eShare has an integrated voice response system to capture my data in real time. If I visit the PURL (with my name in it) I can respond to the call to action on a landing page. The response captures my details in the first step of the “funnel.” And, this is where the game changing stuff starts…

Next, the marketer gives me another offer. For example, I’m invited to enter into a contest to win an iPad by answering a short survey. I’m asked just two or three multiple choice questions capturing more valuable buyer behavior data about me such as the type of vehicle preference I have, my driving habits, spending habits, etc. The survey is quick and painless and the marketer has captured valuable data about me as a consumer.

Next, I’m invited to share this contest with my friends through social media. I’m given the option of sharing the offer through Facebook, Twitter, Email or SMS. Once I share it with my social network, eShare tracks it “in perpetuity throughout the share lineage with authoritative data.” In other words, eShare will track how many people in my social circle respond to the offer I’ve shared. eShare also tracks my influence to the marketer’s campaign, and of the people with whom I shared the offer which of them are influential as they share it with their friends. This tracking occurs through “authoritative data” about all of my friends and their friends based on their public social profiles.

The power behind eShare’s (patent pending) viral peering sharing (VPS) technology is a huge boon for marketers. I believe eShare is really onto something big in the field of direct response marketing. I plan to explore how I can “influence” adoption of eShare in the B2B space. If you are a B2B marketer interested in exploring this with me, leave a comment below.

I recently guest hosted on the Malcolm Out Loud internet TV show, where I interviewed Sean Marra, founding partner of eShare. He explains how it works and gives examples of how it’s used by marketers to monetize social media campaigns through accurate revenue data down to the penny as influenced by a consumer’s response to a direct marketing advertisement.

I hope you enjoy my interview with Sean Marra below.

In the course of delivering our internet marketing services for our B2B clients, we regularly see common challenges in executing an SEO plan in this evolving climate of change. The recent Google Panda update adds more emphasis on quality content than ever before.

The trend we’re seeing at Find and Convert is twofold. Businesses are jumping on the quality content bandwagon, but they are struggling to get their employees (their subject matter experts) to contribute content and to share content through social media. The result is the entire burden falls on the shoulders of the marketing department and that’s not a winnable war in most cases.

Therefore, I’m providing 5 suggestions for marketing executives to inspire employees to contribute content and to share the content online for SEO ROI.

1.    Get the CEO to back you.
2.    Find a head bowling pin.
3.    Give lots of public recognition.
4.    Show examples of other companies getting it right.
5.    Dangle a carrot, not a stick.

CEO Support

This could be the most difficult one. But, if your CEO is vocally supportive of employee participation in your internet marketing plan, it should put wind in your sails. In fact, it will probably accelerate your momentum. The best case scenario is if your CEO blogs or regularly tweets thoughts or activities, or if he/she shares employee’s blog articles in social media. Imagine Steve Jobs sharing a blog post you wrote (if you worked for Apple). Would that inspire other employees? You know it would!

Find a Head Bowling Pin

Geoffrey Moore first coined this phrase in his book Inside the Tornado (great book). His metaphor refers to the impact you can have by striking the head bowling pin. It will knock down most if not all of the other 9 pins. In this scenario, if you recruit one or more well respected, influential employees to actively participate in your content marketing strategy by contributing articles and actively sharing them, others will notice. The probability of others getting involved will be much greater when influential people actively engage in the company’s content development.

Public Recognition

The single most desirable perk employees want is recognition. The bigger the company, the more true this is. By giving people recognition for their contribution to your SEO plan through their content, you give thanks and inspiration. Others notice this and often they want in on the “love.” Recognition can be as simple as Twitter shoutouts or publishing employee’s blog posts in the company newsletter. There are many ways to recognize employees for their social interaction and contribution to your content marketing and SEO plan. The important point is that you do it. Watch how employees will start volunteering to get involved in your SEO content plan.

Show Examples of Other Companies

The marketing department should communicate examples of other companies using social media with great content and engagement by their staff. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen as often as it should. There seems to be a reluctance to give praise to other companies because it might be interpreted as negative by comparison to your organization. On the contrary. Recognize companies like Zappos, Ford or Cisco for their marketing prowess. Point out what they’re doing right through great content and employee engagement. Give inspiration to your employees to emulate their behavior where it may be appropriate to do so. If you point out how some of your competitors are doing it right, that can also be very effective. Just be careful how you communicate it to avoid too much of a comparison that can backfire. If possible, get your CEO to back you on the competitive example.

Dangle a Carrot Not a Stick

When your employees participate in your content strategy they contribute to your company’s overall marketing results. Among other things they help produce more sales leads, strengthen your company’s brand and thought leadership and help differentiate you from competitors. The personal branding benefits to the employee can also be very beneficial. For many employees, their participation can produce new opportunities inside the company, within the industry and in the long run in their careers. There is so much to be gained by the employee, this carrot alone should be motivation enough for employees to contribute to your strategic content marketing plan.

I firmly believe that most employees lack an understanding of the importance of their participation in your content marketing strategy and its positive impact on your SEO results as well as their own personal brand.

These five suggestions may help you recruit employee participation as well as external business partners such as VARs to contribute content. Their contribution of content and their active sharing of that content through their social networking activities on sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook will have a very positive impact on your internet marketing results.

Do you have other suggestions to add to this list?

If you like this article, please share it with your network!

Have you noticed how Facebook is trying to become more search engine-like and Google is trying to become more social?

I’ve been closely following the search engine wars for years now. Once upon a time the search wars were comprised of Google, MSN and Yahoo! Those days are long gone. Today, it boils down to Google, Facebook and Microsoft Bing.

When Facebook launched their Open Graph API in April 2010 that was a game changer for them and for you and me (marketers). Through the Facebook Open Graph, we are no longer restricted to using Facebook only inside of Facebook. It includes the Like button, as well as Facebook Connect, Facebook Sharing, Facebook Comments and the Send button.  Essentially any visitor to a website or blog can influence the sharing and hence the reach of your content through these Open Graph Facebook functions.

But, it doesn’t end there. Google recently launched their Google +1 button. Twitter has long provided an API allowing anyone to tweet your content. More recently, Twitter added a follow button so someone can follow you on Twitter without leaving your page.

Recently I wrote a post about maximizing your LinkedIn profile on my personal branding blog. This article received healthy sharing activity. Let’s look at how the numbers shake out.

Clearly the largest sharing number came from the ShareThis button. Accessing my ShareThis account allows me to analyze this further to determine how this blog post was shared to gain valuable insights into the social sharing and audience segments. Another button worth noting is the volume of content shares on LinkedIn.

Have you noticed how LinkedIn has been growing in popularity for content? Just look at the quantity of LinkedIn shares for this blog article. If you have a website or blog with business content, you may experience similar results. Be mindful of this.

Back to the search wars….In the first quarter of 2011 Facebook was the #1 site for ad impressions followed by Yahoo!, Microsoft, AOL and Google. People are searching for and finding content across non-Google web properties, so the ad dollars at stake are huge! The influence of content being shared through Likes and other sharing methods is very significant to those in this search engine war.

Marketers Need to Create Shareable Content

What all of these observations mean for marketers is the need to constantly create relevant content that is shareable. This concept used to be known as “link bait content.” And, while links are still important, content sharing is the new search marketing currency. In the end content that is shared the most wins in search indexing and being found online.

Are you creating shareable content? If you are, you’re doing well in being found online. If you’re not, you’re vulnerable in the new SEO paradigm.

If you like this article, please share it with your network using any of the social buttons available here.

This blog post is a follow up to an article I wrote entitled Eleven Sales Attributes of a LinkedIn Company page. That article addresses a checklist for improving your LinkedIn Company page as a valuable marketing asset.

In that article I point out that a LinkedIn company page is in part the responsibility of the marketing department. Marketing should set up the company profile and the products and services and any career opportunities. However, the real strength of a LinkedIn company page is in the employees. Think about it, your customers conduct business with your employees, not your logo.

All too often a LinkedIn company page is weakened by its faceless employees (as in no pictures on their profile), and employees with weak profiles. I’m not referring to weak credentials. I mean their LinkedIn profile is incomplete or lacks thoroughness in communicating professional and social credibility.

Marketing should step up its leadership responsibility to communicate to all employees the need to beef up their LinkedIn profiles. I suggest the CMO send an email to all employees. Below is a sample email on this subject:

Team,

Subject: Our LinkedIn Company Page

“We are competing against the big guns in our industry, and while we are generally fairing well, it’s a battle that wages daily. Our competitors get stronger everyday and we do too. In the battle for mindshare with our clients and prospective clients we embrace the power of LinkedIn. As you know, LinkedIn is the social networking platform of choice for professionals. It offers both individuals and companies a rich set of communication and networking tools.

In order for us to get the most marketing value from LinkedIn as a company we need to work together. When someone visits our LinkedIn company page, they gain access to a lot of information about us that is not on our website. Namely, LinkedIn offers visitors to our company page insights about the mix of our employees by job function, years of experience, educational degree, and universities attended. LinkedIn pulls this data from your individual profiles.

Therefore, it’s imperative that each employee visits their LinkedIn profile to check its completeness. Here’s a checklist for you to run through:

1. Is your profile 100% complete?
2. Is your profile photo representative of you in a business setting?
3. Do you have a clearly written summary of your experience?
4. Are your last three positions clearly described in your profile?
5. Have you updated your status with a professional comment in the last week?
6. Do you belong to at least three professional groups and participate in discussions?
7. Have you written recommendations for colleagues?
8. Have you received recommendations from colleagues?
9. Have you listed your “skills” using the LinkedIn Skills function?
10. Have you customized your LinkedIn URL so it displays your name?

As your chief marketing executive I ask that you contribute to our marketing strength by giving this the attention it deserves. Collectively, we’ll contribute to the company’s overall position of strength when our prospective customers visit our LinkedIn company page and consider doing business with us.”

Thank you.
Cindy Marketeer
CMO

In my opinion, this email would be most effective if it is emailed by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and “replied all” by the CEO with a note of his support for this request and a comment that he’s doing his part by updating his LinkedIn profile.

Additionally, I recommend that all the executives on the leadership team embrace LinkedIn for its marketing potential. Employees that use advanced LinkedIn features such as Answers, should be given periodic shout-outs to recognize their contributions. Others will take notice.

You probably know that LinkedIn went public in mid May. Their Initial Public Offering (IPO) was one of the most popular in recent years for many reasons. One reason is the recognition that LinkedIn’s 100 million (and growing) network of professionals are influential (representing a high valuation to LinkedIn).

LinkedIn’s overall marketing potential is largely untapped by many companies. Getting all your employees to beef up their LinkedIn profile can “rise the tide” for your LinkedIn Company Page and your company’s overall marketing efforts.

Learn more about how to beef up your LinkedIn profile on Career Central by Bernie Borges.

I’ve been following all the coverage on the recent Google Panda update, which represents a significant update to Google’s search algorithm, affecting how many websites are ranked by Google.  I must say my head is spinning from all the chatter. The amount of coverage, opinions and speculation around what’s really in Google’s latest algorithm update and what’s not almost resembles a debate among super intellectuals.

I don’t consider myself a super intellectual. My brain works this way. I consume facts then break them down into a business-centric, bottom line manner.

As CEO of an Internet marketing company responsible for SEO service delivery for B2B clients, I want to know what is really the impact of the Panda update to our clients? That’s the bottom line I care about.

To help me get this perspective on the Panda update, I turned to Matt Cutts, a senior engineer at Google, and widely recognized as the voice of Google to the SEO industry.  The Panda update was announced February 24, 2011. On March 7, 2011, Matt Cutts published the video below. I must admit, it’s a little odd that Matt doesn’t even mention the Panda update in this video.

Matt answers a question from an inhouse SEO professional at a large company who wants to know what he should pay most attention to in 2011. Matt gives him four guidelines to follow. In summary he suggests that SEO professionals sweat these four details:

1. Optimizing for speed. A faster loading site is a signal tracked and rewarded by Google for page ranking.
2. Having CMS control for good internal linking from relevant keywords.
3. Educate management to get buy in for investment in SEO best practices for best ROI.
4. Social media marketing. Spread content across Twitter, social bookmarking sites, etc., to create more inbound links. Google is tracking social media links as a signal for search engine page ranking (SERP).

These four tips from Matt Cutts represent a good summary of the most important factors for good SEO results in 2011.

Since my brain translates technical details into its business meaning, here’s another spin that we probably won’t hear from Matt Cutts.

Google is in intense competition with Microsoft Bing for search engine market share and with Facebook for mindshare, particularly in social marketing. So, in the end what Google wants is that you and I use their product and to be satisfied using it. The more time we spend in Facebook, the less time we might spend searching in Google’s search engine, particularly since you can search through Bing in Facebook.

That’s why these four best practices for SEO in 2011 make a lot of sense to me. I’m not going to sweat details such as the impact of bounce rates on Google’s algorithm (a source of debate surrounding the Panda update).

I want our clients to sweat the four factors outlined by Matt Cutts because these are tangible elements of an SEO plan that can provide real SEO value.

At the end of the day, our B2B clients want sales leads. They depend on us to deliver SEO results that produce qualified sales leads. Period. So, I’m going to sweat the stuff that moves the needle toward this one bottom line goal.

These four SEO guidelines offered by Matt Cutts of Google sum it up nicely for me and for our clients.

What about you? Do these four guidelines clarify SEO best practices for you in 2011?

You have a website. You probably have a Facebook fan page. Do you have a LinkedIn company page?

If you are a B2B company, your LinkedIn company page could be as valuable (at least as requisite) as your website. Don’t believe me? Consider these facts.

By the time your company is on the radar of a prospective customer, they are going to conduct research on you. One of the first things they’ll do is Google your company name. Since Google’s social search results include LinkedIn company pages, you will want your company page to appear on page one, right?

Your SEO plan has your LinkedIn company listed on the first page of Google, great! How complete is your company profile?

Company Overview

If you’ve spent considerable time carefully choosing the words that describe your company, your products, your value proposition, etc., that’s great. Make sure you add it to your overview in your LinkedIn company page.

Employee Profiles

Are all your employees up to date on LinkedIn? If your business has 200 employees, how many employees should your LinkedIn company page display? This isn’t a trick question. The answer is 200. Next, you’ll want to peruse your employee’s LinkedIn profiles to ensure they display a respectable photo, and they display relevant keywords in their bio description. The more often your employees display relevant keywords, the easier it is for your prospective customers to find your company on LinkedIn. And, the more authority you build toward your brand.

Products/Services

You probably have several products or services or both. And, you’ve carefully chosen the words to describe them too. Add all your products and services into your company page in the product and services tab.

Careers

If you’re hiring, display the job opportunities in your career section on your LinkedIn company page.

Recommendations

Do you have satisfied customers? Of course you do. Ask them to recommend your products and services in your LinkedIn company page. Imagine the difference it can make when your prospective customers visit your company page and read them, especially if your competitors don’t have strong recommendations and you do.

Skills

Make sure your employees display their skills on their profile using the “skills” display option provided by LinkedIn. Why? Because your prospective customer is considering doing business with your employees, not your logo. It’s your employees who will deliver your value proposition. Their skills should be readily displayed on their profiles.

Promotions

You can list specials or promotions on a per product or service basis. You may think this doesn’t apply to your business, but if you’re exhibiting at a conference, you can promote your exhibit plans.

Videos

You can add videos to each product or service listing. If you have them, you should add them.

Twitter and Blog RSS

You should also add your branded Twitter link and your blog RSS to let your visitors see how you engage with them in social media.

Follow Us on LinkedIn

Grab the code provided by LinkedIn which is unique to your company page and display the “Follow us on LinkedIn” badge on your website or blog.  The more followers you have on LinkedIn, the more visibility you’ll have. Don’t forget to notify all your employees to follow the company page on LinkedIn.

Share the Standalone URLs

Each tab in your company page is a standalone URL which is shareable.  LinkedIn makes it easy to post each tab to your status update and to Twitter. You can also create shortened URLs of your company page, as well as any of the tabs. Track views to these pages using the analytics provided by LinkedIn.

What’s the ROI of a LinkedIn Company Page?

You may not close a deal with your LinkedIn company page. However, it’s fast becoming a valuable digital asset in B2B marketing where your prospective customers can do some serious due diligence on your company and your employees. They can even see the mix of your company staff comprised across functions including General & Administrative, Sales & Marketing, Research & Development, and Executive Leadership.

Your LinkedIn company page could possibly earn you a spot on a short list of companies being considered by a prospective customer, or it could possibly eliminate you if, by comparison to a competitor, you don’t convince the prospect you deserve to be on the short list.

Someone in marketing should be responsible for maintaining your company profile page. BUT, (and this is a big but), all employees should share in the responsibility by maintaining a complete LinkedIn profile which accurately reflects their responsibilities and specialties at your company. Marketing should provide the guidance and vision by communicating to all employees the importance of maintaining a strong LinkedIn profile and the relationship to your company page.

Put your LinkedIn company profile to work for you in your B2B sales lead generation process. If you need help with that, let us know.

Podcast Agenda:

• What’s up!
• Shoutouts
• Main topic: Social Search Wars
• Bernie’s brain food

What’s Up!

I’ve been working on getting ready to launch Career Central, a new online community for people in all phases of their career. I call them career seekers! Not the same as job seeker, although job seekers may be career seekers. A career seeker can be a business owner, any working professional, and of course a job seeker. Essentially anyone who wants to improve their career using social networking and personal branding strategies. Career Central will provide information and how-to tips as well inspirational content for anyone in their in online and personal branding strategies to improve their career. Career Central will launch in early May. It will be available at BernieBorges.com and on Facebook. So, if you’re listening to this podcast post May just visit either of these two online destinations to check out Career Central.

Shoutouts

Eric Cook recently had me as a guest on his Free Webinar Wednesday. Eric is Certified Internet Business Consultant with WSI Internet Consulting. He partners with Jeff Simpkins of Community Bank Consulting.

Jackie Weber is an internet marketing consultant, she teaches SEO for LaSalle Academy. And, Jackie edits my podcasts. In that role she is behind the scenes dealing with the technical side of podcasts, which I have no interest in or patience for. Jackie makes these podcasts sound as good as technology allows. And, I get all the credit, but it’s long overdue that Jackie gets a shoutout and well deserved recognition for her awesome contribution to my podcast. Follow Jackie on Twitter @jackieweber. Give her a shoutout with the hashtag #podcast.

SEO & Social Search

Google owns more than 60% market share, but the landscape is rapidly evolving. But, the social search capabilities are expanding. For example, a search may start in Google and wind up in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Quora, Slideshare or a blog.

It’s no secret that Google recently expanded their social search capabilities. While I applaud them for doing this, it’s really Google’s way of saying: “we can’t beat them so we’ll join them.” In other words, Google can’t prevent us from using social sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to do research. So, they are better off delivering results from that include content from those sites.

How Marketers Can Harness the New Organic Search Paradigm

There are seven attributes of the new organic search paradigm marketers must embrace to get found online and to be engaged in meaningful sales opportunities. I wrote a blog post describing each of these seven attributes.

• Personalization
• Social
• Quality Content
• Real-Time
• Relevant
• Dynamic
• Shareable

Google and Facebook Are in a Social Search War

It’s become apparent that Facebook is becoming more search engine-like and that Google was been attempting to become more social. Admittedly, Google’s attempt to add social features has been a miserable failure so far. Case in point: Google Buzz.

Facebook Like Has Become Pervasive

Facebook has trumped Google with their Like button. But, one thing Google has that Facebook doesn’t have is search market share. After all, Facebook is a noun and Google is a verb. When you are searching for information online you don’t “Facebook” it you Google it.

Google+ 1

It’s estimated that more than 50% of corporations don’t allow its employees to access Facebook from the office.  But, Google is available to all employees. So, Google came up with its own version of Like with the recent announcement of the Google +1 concept.

Essentially, the Google +1 button is the same as Like. When you see a search listing you are willing to recommend in Google you can click the +1 button to tell the world (publicly) that you like it. The +1 button will also be available for ads in Google Adwords.

The new Google Plus 1 feature is only visible to people that are signed into their Google accounts. Overnight, the value of a Google profile has skyrocketed. If you have not set up your Google profile, now is the time to do it or you’ll not see the people in your social circle that like search listings via the Google +1 button.

Presumably companies with a larger pool of employees have an advantage over small companies on this. But, Google has a track record of building very smart algorithms. I certainly hope they can detect “+1 spam” by detecting when employees of a company click Google +1 on their website listing.

Google has been cautious and somewhat vague about the influence of +1 on search rankings. They are saying it will be a “signal” they will use in determining how listings are ranked. The early market reaction is not very positive.

+1 Is a Signal for SEO Rankings

Google has made it clear they will roll out Google +1 (in the U.S. first) and watch the “signals” given by people who “+1” your search listings. They will use these signals to influence rankings. Since Google’s ultimate end user goal is to deliver relevant results (to keep you loyal to using Google for search), they want to reward those sites which have legitimately earned +1 clicks. So, in the end the implications to any business concerned about their impact on search engine rankings is to deliver quality content.

Socially Active Businesses Will Have an Advantage

Additionally, companies whose employees are socially active and signed into their Google profile will have the ability to be influencers by clicking +1 on listings they like and to observe the influence of others that click Google +1 on search listings. Socially active businesses will have an advantage over non-socially active companies by participating in Google’s signal ecosystem through its evolving social search strategy.

This is still the beginning of Google’s evolving social search strategy. They are carefully rolling this out without much fanfare to monitor its adoption and impact on search behavior. Their war with Facebook is interesting to watch. In the end, we are all the winners, although our heads may spin trying to keep pace with the advancements coming from both companies.

Bernie’s Brain Food

Charlie Sheen is on a national tour called “My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat is Not an Option Show.” The reviews have been mixed. No matter what you think of Charlie Sheen, there is a lesson in personal branding there worth noting. Sheen is most effective when he is true to his personal brand. When he deviates from his personal brand, such as trying to be a show host or to be a stand up guy, his live audiences have given him a thumbs down. But, when he behaves like the character he played on Two and a Half Men, which is what his fans love, and that’s where he’s most effective.

The lesson in personal branding is:

• Know your personal brand
• Don’t try to be what you’re not
• Be true to your personal brand
• Be sincere about it
• You can’t fake your own brand

Bernie’s Challenge

In the next week I want you to do something outside your comfort zone, whether that’s jumping out of an airplane, speaking in front of 100 people, kissing your spouse in public or whatever it is, just do something that gets outside your comfort zone. I guarantee you will grow in some way from it. I guarantee it. Share it online!

Before I wrap up, are you subscribed to my weekly newsletters?

• Corporate marketers: Find and Convert blog (ranked #10 in the top 100 Internet marketing blogs)
• Career Seekers: BernieBorges.com (sign up to get in on the ground floor!)

This has been Bernie Borges of Find and Convert and BernieBorges.com. Until next time, be good, and if you can’t be good, be great!

C ya!

Image credits:

Google vs. Facebook: googlerankingseo.blogspot.com
Brain food: http://www.artuji.com/brain-food-for-your-child/344

As an internet marketer, we view the website design process through multiple lenses. For the ultimate search engine optimized success of a business website, diligent attention to each of these three lenses is required.

Designer Lens

The designer lens is often the area of greatest focus. The reason is fairly obvious. The human eye is the most impacted by the outcome of the website’s new design. A well designed website will provide strong branding support and deliver a good user experience. Design elements include layout, colors and menu navigation.

Developer Lens

The developer lens is the least sexy. It’s akin to the plumbing and wiring of a new construction project. A well designed website from the developer lens uses an efficient code structure that permits flexible changes. It uses industry standard coding techniques so the client isn’t beholden to one person for ongoing support. And, it uses a search engine friendly URL structure and compact scripts that allow search engines to easily crawl the website and for fast loading of website pages.

Content Lens

If building a new website is similar to a construction process, the designer is like the architect, the developer is like the builder and content is like the furnishings. In short, the content is the reason anyone visits a website. Content ultimately makes or breaks the user experience. The most common reason for a website not launching on time is the content isn’t ready by the planned launch date.  A website redesign project requires a team effort to update the content according to the goals of the website redesign initiative.

The SEO Lens

Arguably, the most important lens in a website redesign is the SEO lens. This is a generalization that may not apply to your business, especially if you are in an industry where people don’t search for your products (which is very rare). But, I’m writing this for 95% of the business population that wants their website to be an inbound marketing lead generation magnet to attract new prospective customers.

The SEO lens isn’t the fourth lens because it intersects each of the three lenses discussed above.

SEO and Design

A good design will be implemented using a combination of images and search engine readable text. Image only home pages are not friendly to search engines. Image heavy home pages can also be an impediment to being indexed by search engines. Images should be supported with alternate text tags and meta descriptions for SEO value.

SEO and Development

Each page of a website should undergo a thorough optimization process to strengthen its authority with search engines. This involves many details including writing the URL using the primary keyword of the page, creating meta data, anchor text linking and writing header tags, among other details. When each page is submitted to the developer with these SEO details to upload into the new website, each of the SEO details MUST be implemented without exception to gain SEO value in the new website. Each detail has a purpose.

SEO and Content

There is no such thing as SEO value in a website without relevant, quality content. Though I’m an SEO consultant, I don’t condone forcing SEO into content at the expense of the user experience. That said, many websites require more than a single page written for a topic to create SEO value that will result in being found in a search engine query. For that reason, a content strategy is required that provides content written for the user personas targeted by the marketer. And, such content should be available in navigation that allows users to easily find and consume additional content. Examples include navigation sections such as a “library” or “university” where dozens of additional pages can provide both user and SEO support. Of course, a blog is a very effective way to deliver a lot of search engine friendly content.

Any marketer undergoing a website redesign should give equal attention to these three lenses, with the intersection of SEO across each of them. The benefit will be a website that delivers bottom line measurable results such as new sales opportunities. There is nothing worse than a new website that looks better than your previous website, but is not able to be found in search engines due to a design only lens approach to the website redesign project. This is a mistake that can be avoided with proper planning.

Have you experienced a multiple lens approach in a website design project? What results can you share with us?

My other prediction, which has taken much longer to materialize, is that Google would become more social in the way that it presents search results. I’ve blogged about this several times. More recently, I’ve blogged about Google’s announcement to integrate social search results in organic listings.

For example, below is an example of a search result that was shared by someone in my social circle.

Google vs. Facebook: It’s a War

It’s become apparent that Facebook is becoming more search engine-like and that Google was been attempting to become more social. Admittedly, Google’s attempt to add social features has been relatively slow. Google Buzz hasn’t exactly taken off, but it’s a step toward social.

While Google and Facebook are the clear 800 pound Gorillas on the Internet vying for our time and ad dollars, there are some distinct differences that marketers should understand.

Facebook Like Has Become Pervasive

Let’s face it, Facebook has succeeded in permeating the world’s websites and blogs with its Like button. Google has to (privately) feel they’ve been trumped by the almighty Like. But, one thing Google has that Facebook doesn’t have is search market share. After all, Facebook is a noun and Google is a verb. When you are searching for information online you don’t “Facebook” it you Google it.

Google Announces +1

It’s estimated that more than 50% of corporations don’t allow its employees to access Facebook from the office.  But, Google is available to all employees. So, Google brilliantly came up with its own version of Like with this week’s announcement of the Google +1 concept.

Essentially, the Google +1  button is the same as Like. When you see a search listing you are willing to recommend in Google you can click the +1 button to tell the world (publicly) that you like it. The +1 button will also be available for ads in Google Adwords.

The Rise of the Google Profile

The new Google Plus 1 feature is for people that are signed into their Google accounts. Overnight, the value of a Google profile has skyrocketed. If you have not set up your Google profile, now is the time to do it or you’ll not see the people in your social circle that like search listings via the Google +1 button.

Within minutes of reading about the new Google +1 button and how it works, I was hearing how companies were planning to tell all their “friends” to click the +1 button on their listings in Google. Presumably companies with a larger pool of employees have an advantage over small companies on this. But, let’s put a yellow light on this. Google has a track record of building very smart algorithms. I certainly hope they can detect “+1 spam” by detecting when employees of a company click Google +1 on their website listing.

It‘s speculated that the Google profile will become more prevalent than it was previously. Heck, many people don’t even know there is such a thing as a Google profile.  In due time, it’s possible the Google profile will become the equivalent of a Facebook fan page, especially if Google evolves the profile into a more social and feature-rich digital asset. BTW, there’s another prediction!

SEO Implications for Small and Medium Businesses

Google has made it clear they will roll out Google +1 (in the U.S. first) and watch the “signals” given by people who “+1” your search listings. They will use these signals to determine rankings. Since Google’s ultimate end user goal is to deliver relevant results (to keep you loyal to using Google for search), they want to reward those sites which have legitimately earned Google +1 clicks. So, in the end the implications to any business concerned about their impact on search engine rankings is to deliver quality content. Additionally, companies whose employees are socially active and signed into their Google profile will have the ability to be influencers by clicking +1 on listings they like and to observe the influence of others that click Google +1 on search listings. Socially active businesses will have an advantage over non-socially active companies by participating in Google’s signal ecosystem through its evolving social search strategy.

This is still the beginning of Google’s evolving social search strategy. They are carefully rolling this out without much fanfare to monitor its adoption and impact on search behavior. Their war with Facebook is interesting to watch. In the end, we are all the winners, although our heads may spin trying to keep pace with the advancements coming from both companies.

There are many articles and blog posts being written on Google +1. I recommend you read Google’s official blog post announcing Google Plus 1. It provides a clear explanation and a short video.

As a marketer, are you prepared for Google’s +1 social search results? Leave your comments below.

Now, when people conduct a search they may use other sites to supplement their search, especially in B2B searches. For example, a search may start in Google and wind up in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Quora, Slideshare or a blog.

It’s no secret that Google recently expanded their social search capabilities. While I applaud them for doing this, it’s really Google’s way of saying: “we can’t beat them so we’ll join them.” In other words, Google can’t prevent us from using social sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to do research. So, they are better off delivering results from that include content from those sites.

How Marketers Can Harness the New Organic Search Paradigm

There are seven attributes of the new organic search paradigm marketers must embrace to get found online and to be engaged in meaningful sales opportunities.

Personalization

Each of us searches for keywords pertaining to our interests. Marketers should recognize that search results will vary according to a searcher’s history and interests (especially from Google).

Social

The search results searchers find are increasingly coming more from social media sites. Google’s recent update reflects this by integrating search results onto the first page of organic search results. Marketers need to broaden their online footprint to produce content across social media sites that can now be indexed.

Quality Content

Quality content has always been important, but it’s more important than ever before. Marketers need to review the content on their website and remove any content that doesn’t add value to their website. The risk is being penalized by Google for low quality content.

Real-Time

We live in a real-time, online world. Search results can include content provided through Twitter that was produced moments before a search was conducted. Marketers should consider that content updates can occur 24/7/365 and organic search results can vary accordingly.

Relevant

Google in particular is working hard to deliver relevant search results. For example, when I search on “content marketing” then shorten my search to “content” the results are still relevant, even though this word can have other meanings. Google remembers how I’ve searched this word previously. Similarly, relevant content is offered from my social circle. Marketers should create as much content as possible around relevant keyword phrases to ensure delivery of highly relevant search results.

Dynamic

The search marketing landscape is evolving. For example, Quora has been on the scene less than one year and its content is indexable by Google.  Open LinkedIn groups are also now indexable by Google. It seems that search marketing evolves on a weekly basis. A marketer must have a “marathon attitude” about search marketing. It’s a race that never ends. Complacency is the kiss of death in organic search marketing.

Shareable

Content that is shareable is extremely valuable in search marketing. The more people that share a marketer’s content the more authority is credited back to the marketer. Such authority comes in two forms: from people who trust the merit of the content, and the authority Google gives the marketer for being the source of popular content that is widely shared.

A marketer should follow these seven guidelines to ensure their organic search marketing strategy is effective. But, stay tuned because next week there may be another seven guidelines to follow.

Download SEO chapter from Marketing 2.0

The Growing Influence of Facebook

Once upon a time software giants Microsoft and Oracle were labeled as wanting to take over the world with their software products. Google has also shared that label in recent years. But, if anyone deserves that label today it’s Facebook. They continue to roll out features that expand how we interact with each other online and with our Facebook friends both inside and outside of Facebook. The growing influence of Facebook has significant implications for all marketers.

Open Graph API

The first game-changing breakthrough from Facebook came when they launched the open graph API in spring of 2010.  Since then, we’ve grown accustomed to being able to “like” an article or a web page anywhere on the web. Of course, those likes get reflected in your Facebook social profile and advertisers target their ads to you from such data. For example, if you like an article on pet health on CNN.com, don’t be surprised to see pet health centric ads displayed while you’re inside Facebook.

Email Will Become Messaging

In 2010 Facebook announced their plans for Fmail, which will revolutionize the way people send digital messages to each other. You’ll soon be able to communicate with people through email, SMS and inside Facebook messages while being able to retain a conversation thread and maintain it all in your social inbox. It will make today’s email look like AOL email in 1998.

B2B Marketing Implications

When you want to leave a comment on a blog post that has the new Facebook comments plugin, if you are signed into Facebook you can leave a comment as you (in Facebook), or as a page you administer in Facebook. Your comment will display in your Facebook news feed. If a friend comments on it in your Facebook news feed it will also display in the original blog post as well as your news feed! Think about that….Your behavior outside Facebook is interactive both inside and outside of Facebook!

B2B marketers should be doing back flips yelling something like “Woo hoo! Finally I can get excited about Facebook as a viable marketing platform!”

Maybe now B2B marketers will have the hammer they need to convince staff to post comments on industry blogs. Of course, some people will not want to co-mingle their Facebook personal profile with their work. These lines have long been blurred. This news blurs them even more. Staffers should jump at the chance to contribute to their employer’s content marketing strategy and this is an easy way to do just that.

Those with page administration sign-in authority will have greater ability to send people to their Facebook page when posting comments in the name of their page.

Facebook Ubiquity

Anyone doubting Facebook’s ability to expand its ubiquity across the web needs to fully understand how Facebook is spreading its footprint at lightning speed. The Facebook comments plug-in is a giant leap forward in expanding that footprint.  B2B marketers should jump on board by installing Facebook comments plugin and looking for it on relevant industry blogs.

As with any new social media feature there are some risks. I chose not to comment on those now. Rather, I’d like to invite your comments on the potential benefits and the potential risks of the new Facebook comments plugin offers B2B marketers.

Go ahead…Leave a comment using your Facebook profile below…

Search Getting More Social

Both Google and Microsoft recently made announcements that pertain to integrating results from your social circle.  Google announced an expansion to their social search plans, originally announced in October 2009. In the first expansion into social search, Google provided you the option of drilling into real-time search results through options in their navigation. For example, you could see what people in your social circle said in blog posts, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, and even on Facebook pages. But, these results were listed separately, accessible through left side navigation.  The most recent announcement is different in that Google social search results will be integrated in the main search results. The other significant news is that some websites are expected to rank better or worse depending on the extent to which people have linked to them from social content such as blogs or Twitter. Note, you must be signed into your Google account, and your account settings must include links to your social profiles in order for Google to find people in your social circle.

Currently, Google’s social search results do not include Facebook Likes. We can only speculate that Google doesn’t have the same access to Likes as Microsoft does, considering Microsoft’s strategic relationship with Facebook, which includes an ownership stake not to mention Bing’s integration into Facebook, giving them the edge on Likes. There is speculation this will eventually change.

Impact on Marketers

In my opinion, the social search impact on B2C marketers is greater than on B2B marketers. For example, a search on the words “coffee shop” yields both standard web listings, along with images from Flickr and people in my social circle.

The impact can be very big because it’s a well known fact that people are greatly influenced by others opinions to the extent those opinions are expressed in believable ways. If our online friends provide content and commentary on coffee shops, those comments can have a huge influence on my selection.

However, I mostly live in the B2B world with clients that sell a product or a service to other businesses.  So, for example a search on the words “accounting software” turn up all standard web listings. In order for me to dig into my social circle on this search, I must go looking for them.  If I want to see what people are saying in discussions, I can find them from LinkedIn Answers .

If I want to find out what people are saying in Twitter I can find them in Real-time results.

Likewise, to find blog content in my social circle I can select on the Blog tab to find it.

The Handwriting is on the Wall

Social search is not new, but it is still evolving. The semantic web is unfolding before our eyes. The competition between Google and Microsoft/Facebook will continue to offer marketers and users alike with new and interesting experiences. The burden on the marketer is to understand the impact it has on how people can find you. More importantly, it’s not so much where people find you but what they find. The content that people find on your product is of greater importance because the whole idea behind social search is to facilitate community influence over decision making. As a marketer you want to be found and engaged. As a consumer, you want to find meaningful information that helps you make a decision.

So, the best advice I have for marketers, especially B2B marketers is to think like the buyer. You must be actively building a community around good product outcomes. Problem products will be the big losers. Good products with good outcomes supported by genuine community engagement by the marketer will gain more social search favor.

Now is the time for companies to get on the bandwagon with the mindset that marketing is not solely the responsibility of the marketing department.

Are you prepared to benefit from social search? As a marketer, what are you doing to reap the benefits? What concerns you about social search? I’d like to hear from you in the comments below.

The idea is you connect to Quora using either your Twitter or Facebook (or both) logins and you follow people and their questions. Then, you engage with people by asking questions and/or answering questions across any topics that interest you.

As you type a question, Quora displays similar questions (which is useful). This allows you to either differentiate your question or avoid asking it if someone else has already asked it.

My early impression of Quora is that it is likely a worthy tool for job seekers and business development professionals and for anyone interested in developing more influence and growing their personal brand. However, I don’t see value in Quora for marketers.

The three reasons I don’t like Quora for Marketers are:

Email Heavy

I don’t know about you but I already get more email than I can handle. Now, I’m getting more email each time someone follows me on Quora. I found the settings where I can control email notices for other functions in Quora related to questions, but I didn’t find a setting to turn off email notices for new follower notices.

Need to Manage More Followers

I already manage followers on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Now, I need to manage my followers in Quora by reviewing new followers and seeking new followers. I really don’t have time for that from a marketing perspective. Again, for job seekers and biz dev folks, that’s an individual decision.

Too Much Overlap with LinkedIn

Even though Quora’s approach to Q&A is a bit more robust than LinkedIn, it is not orders of magnitude more robust to warrant the additional time required. As a marketer I can stay inside “the four walls of LinkedIn” and accomplish a lot including the value of LinkedIn Answers.

The Biggest Cost of Social Media is Time

The reality is that using social media is very time consuming. As marketers we must use our time wisely by prioritizing a content strategy over a social media strategy. I want to use social marketing tools productively in support of my content marketing strategy and networking strategy. And, while I can see benefit to sharing content on Quora when relevant to a question I answer, I can’t justify the additional time it will take. And, I also see the networking benefit. But, it’s not compelling enough to me to make considerable time for it. If I do make time for it, it will come at the expense of something else. And, I can’t see cutting back on how I use LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to connect, share and network.

All of the above sentiment is subject to change in time. After all, when I first started using Twitter in 2008, I had a similar sentiment about it as a tool for marketers. And, I became a huge fan of Twitter for marketers.

As I state above, this opinion (and that’s all it is) pertains to getting marketing value from Quora. I do believe that Quora can be a valuable tool for job seekers, biz dev people and anyone actively working on building their personal brand. I’ll blog about that over at BernieBorges.com/blog.

What say you about Quora as a viable social media site for marketers? I would love to hear from marketers getting value from Quora.

As I expand my content strategy I’ve been exploring tools and technologies to use to create and share my content. I’ve been dabbling in YouTube video. And, I’ve been using Slideshare for years to publish my PowerPoint presentations. And, recently I started experimenting with a service called myBrainshark. I was so impressed with it that I reached out to the company and got Jay Wilder,  Director of Product Marketing to join me on a podcast to discuss it. While this is not a formal product endorsement (my use of it alone is an endorsement) it is my way of sharing a valuable tool that has a lot of merit for marketers and other business professionals.

What is Brainshark?

With a name like Brainshark it needs some explaining. Brainshark is a Boston area company that provides a platform for businesses to create, share and track digital video presentations for online and mobile platforms. It’s used by business users for training and sales enablement of products as well as by job seekers to develop custom presentations in their job search. As Jay explains, Brainshark has offered a multi-user version for enterprises for about ten years with thousands of loyal customers.

About one year ago, myBrainshark was launched for single users. myBrainshark is used mostly by small businesses, independent consultants, entrepreneurs, job seekers and business development professionals. myBrainshark has a free version and a pro version. The pro version is very affordable for small businesses and even for individuals.

“Video presentations, online anytime…”

Here’s how it works. I create a PowerPoint presentation. I create a myBrainshark account and upload my PowerPoint file. In the Edit window I can add voice, video, polls, attachments, tracking and more. Then, myBrainshark converts my presentation to a URL which can be shared online.

Practical Applications

If your mind isn’t already spinning with ideas, there are many ways to use myBrainshark. If you know me, you know that I’m all about producing good content.  Marketers can add life to their content through voice and video and share it online and track it. Business Development professionals can distribute presentations to prospective customers and track when it’s been viewed. Job seekers can create custom presentations to send to prospective employers with voice narration customized to an employer. Brainshark has a comprehensive library of case studies.

Tracking Options

In addition to myBrainshark’s ease of use and price points (which starts at free), one of the most compelling features is tracking. There are two ways to track who’s viewed your presentations. myBrainshark offers a guest book and the ability to add a tracking code.  The guest book is a registration form that collects the viewer’s information before or after a view.  A tracking code is a way to track viewers without asking them to enter any info into the guest book.  You simply enter an identifying piece of information (like an email address) about the viewer when you send your presentation through myBrainshark’s “share.”  That identifier will be added to the link so that when that specific viewer clicks your presentation, Brainshark records the view along with the tag, so you can tell who’s viewed your presentation.

In the podcast, Jay shares a story about a Brainshark customer that produced $1.5M in sales tied to one Brainshark presentation. Jay also shares some compelling data about the best time to follow up on people who have viewed your presentation. You’ll want to listen to the podcast to hear this and more not in this blog post.

How I’m Using myBrainshark to Promote My Events

I’ve created an online video presentation of my Social Networking for Job Seekers training content. Check it out below.

JobSeekers Should Produce Online Presentations

Jobseekers should create unique presentations about themselves to differentiate from other candidates. Create one presentation and then edit your slides based on who you want to send it to. Imaging sending an email to a prospective employer like this:

“Dear Susan, I’ve created a short online video presentation that summarizes my qualifications for your product manager position and why you should consider me as a candidate.”

When Susan watches your online presentation, you’ll know it so you can follow up with her. Jobseekers must be creative to stand out and this is one way to do it.

Connect with Jay Wilder

I encourage you to listen to the entire podcast with Jay Wilder, Director of Product Marketing at myBrainshark. To reach Jay, just follow these links:

Twitter: @jaywilder, @mybrainshark, Email: jwilder@brainshark.com.

You know the cliché “don’t put the cart in front of the horse!” That’s exactly what many businesses do when they say they need a social media strategy. That’s the wrong way to look at it. I’ll explain and I think I’ll convince you (if you need convincing).

Social Media is a Channel

Would you agree with me that social media is a channel for communication and engagement? When you use social media you connect with people and communicate with them. And, hopefully you have some meaningful engagement with some of them. Unless you are a “lurker,” this is probably how you use social media.

When you get in your car, the roads you drive are also channels. The roads provide the channel to get to a destination. But, do you ever get in your car to drive without a destination? If you don’t have a destination, the roads are pretty meaningless. With a destination, or a purpose for getting in your car, the roads are very meaningful.

What’s Your Social Media Destination?

Back to social media. If you think you need a social media strategy, what’s your destination? We can equate this to your goals or objectives. This is an excellent question to ask before you set out on a social media strategy. But, there is still another question that is just as important.

Assuming you want to use social media for measurable business value, who is going to care about your business in social media and why will they care?

It’s All About Content

No one will care about your business in social media unless you deliver content of interest. So, the question to ask is what is your content strategy?! Develop your content strategy first, and then identify how you will implement your content strategy through social media and other communication channels.

Think of it this way. If your content strategy is rock solid, and you do a good job of communicating it in social media channels, then people will share it. Some people will “like” it in Facebook. Google is looking at who those people are. They are looking for the relevance of the people that share and “like” your content. When those people are relevant to your content, you gain favor with Google’s current algorithm. Such is the evolving nature of SEO, or as some would call it social media optimization.

Develop a Content Strategy

The “horse in front of the cart” approach to social media is to develop a content strategy. Identify who the people are you want to reach. Develop personas for each type of person you want to reach and identify their pain points (the issues they care most about), and then write your content against this plan. Use social media as one of (not the only) channels of communication and engagement.

Download the content marketing chapter from my book, Marketing 2.0 for an executive summary on how to develop a content strategy that gets results.

The problem many marketing executives encounter is producing leads that Sales will accept as viable. Often the Sales team rejects leads produced by Marketing. As a result many Marketing and Sales departments collaborate to implement a lead scoring system to agree on which leads are considered A or B based on mutually agreed upon criteria. B leads go into a nurturing process which can someday convert them to A leads.

Attracting More “A” Leads

Often the people marketers attract through calls-to-action are B leads because they are not ready to buy. They may be a general fit, but they are in the early phase of their search for a solution provider in your field. They are just gathering information about you and your competitors. Perhaps they will download your white papers, but they may not be willing to engage in a sales conversation yet because they’re still in a fact-finding or research phase.

A prospect can read your website and blog content to determine if your offering is likely to be a functional fit. But, the #1 piece of information your prospect wants to know before engaging in sales conversation is if your offering is priced in their budget.

In most cases it is NOT wise to publish your pricing model. But, for some marketers in some industries it would be wise to offer self service budgetary pricing as a call-to-action.

I recently co-hosted a webinar with Dale Underwood, CEO of EchoQuote and Tony Gonzales, Sales Director at Federal Appliance, a successful user of this lead generation technique. Below is the entire webinar recording. If you are a Marketing or Sales executive responsible for lead generation in a B2B selling environment, this webinar will be worthwhile. Click the image below to launch the webinar recording.

I should point out this technique is not a fit in all industries. It fits best if your salesforce is specialized, selling complex B2B offerings (products or services) and your sell cycles are 30 days or longer. Sample good fit industries include hardware, software, equipment, some business services.

B2B sellers that fit this lead generation technique prosper by generating leads that are approved by Sales. The result is more A leads because Sales is actively involved in approving the self service budgetary quote request. Below is a sample call-to-action used on a client’s website.

After you view this webinar, if you think this is a fit, I encourage you to start a trial. It’s easy and hassle free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First, some assumptions:

• Your inbound marketing strategy currently results in visitor traffic to your website.
• Prospective customers visit your website during their evaluation process.
• People who visit your website are in various stages of their evaluation process.
• In many cases, they are not yet ready to talk with a sales person. They are often just interested in learning if your company’s offerings are a fit with their needs.

We know that visitors to a B2B website are most interested in understanding your offerings and your pricing model to determine if your offering fits within their budget.

However, most B2B companies have long believed that discussing price without demonstrating value is taboo. While there is some truth to that, it is also true that the typewriter was once a productive device to write a letter!

We now live in the age of transparency. Visitors to your website can remain anonymous across all their visits until they are ready to identify themselves to your sales team. The risk you take is that you can keep visitors engaged enough to bring them back to your website and eventually convert them to a sales lead. That’s a big risk…

Enter Self Service Budgetary Pricing as a Call-to-Action

Here’s how it works…..

Step 1: On one or more of your website pages, you offer a button or hyperlink (or both) with a call-to-action to request budgetary pricing.

Step 2: The user is presented a page that describes the process. You control the message. Generally, you state that you are offering budgetary pricing but a firm price quote will require a conversation with an expert to configure a price to their exact needs. This is a valid disclaimer for budgetary pricing. The user enters an email address to proceed to the next step.

Step 3: The user is presented with a menu of your offerings from which to choose. You can display as many or as few of your offerings as you choose. The user chooses the offerings of interest.

Step 4: The user is required to provide the remaining contact details including their name, company name, phone number and website. If the user abandons the process, the email was captured in the first step. Upon completion of this step, the quote request is submitted.

The Seller is in Control

Once the user’s request has been submitted, an email is sent to up to three people (in the seller’s company) for a human review. The purpose of the review is to determine if the budgetary price request appears to be legitimate prior to approving it. If the user didn’t enter valid details about their company, phone or website, you might choose to deny the request.

Business Rules Offer Lead Integrity

You can also set it up so that a user who enters a non-corporate email address such as gmail or hotmail is automatically rejected. The user is notified that a corporate email address is required to make a budgetary price request. Another rule can filter out competitors. Yet another rule allows you to designate select customer email domains to get directed to a designated pricing page. This allows you to direct existing customers to their pre-determined pricing page.

Budgetary Pricing Requests Produce Sales-Ready Conversations

In our Register to attend our webinar on January 19^th at 12pm ET to hear from a customer firsthand how they generate valuable sales-ready leads using self service budgetary pricing call-to-actions on their website.

If you missed this webinar, check back often for the next webinar date.

I also wrote a blog post recently recommending three words that you might consider to guide your new year.  The three words I recommended for your consideration are:

Leverage | Brand | Communicate

My Three Words for My Marketing Plan in 2011

Leverage | Big | Video

Leverage

There are so many demands for our attention every day. We must be working with a leveraged mindset and a leveraged game plan to be productive. I leverage people, content and technology.

People

I need to leverage people to complement my weaknesses. I leverage their insights and wisdom and to open new doors for me. I also leverage relationships. And, I want people to leverage me. Some relationships are very close and as such that leverage is through direct contact. And, some are virtual relationships, and as such are leveraged through content and online interaction.

Content

There is so much content available to leverage. I generally leverage podcasts, blogs, videos, white papers and books. Some of my favorite marketing podcasts are DishyMix, HubSpot, Duct Tape Marketing, Marketing Over Coffee and Six Pixels of Separation. I listen to them regularly. I also read many blogs including HubSpot, Mashable, TechCrunch, Read Write Web, ChrisBrogan.com, Content Marketing Institute and a few others. Additionally, I also subscribe to some video channels for inspirational content.

Technology

Let’s face it, we need technology to get the most out of each day. I am never totally disconnected even when I’m not in the office in front of my laptop. It’s important to stay connected in a real time manner. Sometimes a response is needed within minutes when communicating with clients, staff or partners. It’s amazing how much we can get done in one day because of the technology available at our fingertips.

Big

I’m focused on bigger projects in 2011 that can have bigger outcomes. For example, I recently launched BernieBorges.com focused on my speaking, training, seminars, workshops and digital learning content. One of my biggest projects in 2011 is my Social Networking for Job Seekers training content. I have a big passion for helping unemployed people find a job through advanced social networking strategies. So, I created this video training product comprised of five segments. In 2011 one of my big projects is to partner with strategic distribution channels to help reach job seekers with this educational content. Incidentally, this content is also very applicable to business development professionals.

Video

I’ve been dabbling in video the last two years. But, in 2011 I am committed to doing more video in two forms. I’ll do the “man on the street” kind with short videos on relevant topics (see below). I’ll also produce more educational content on video. Some of it will be free and some will be premium content sold through BernieBorges.com. Video content is the most compelling way I can think of to communicate and network with my three targeted audiences; marketers, business development professionals and job seekers.

All my strategic goals will revolve around these three words in 2011.

Business as Usual

I also want to point out that these three words also apply to the direction of my internet marketing agency, Find and Convert. It’s business as usual here. We’re as dedicated as ever to helping midsize businesses get found online and convert contacts into sales opportunities through search and social media strategies.

I invite you to subscribe to BernieBorges.com to keep up to date with my educational events including many webinars I have planned.  I’ll continue to interview fascinating guests on the Find and Convert podcast. And, I have several more social media marketing workshops planned through the American Marketing Association.

I invite you to hold me accountable to these three words! What three words have you chosen in 2011?

It’s easy to miss news that comes out during the holidays. You may have missed this announcement from the LinkedIn blog about opening up groups to be shareable to anyone on the web. Here’s how it works.

A Group owner now has the option of allowing discussions in a group to be shareable through a unique URL to the discussion thread. This means that:

• You can share that URL anywhere on the web
• Anyone can add their comments to a discussion
• The URL is indexable by search engines

There are several implications for LinkedIn Groups, some positive and some risky.

Let’s start with the risky first.

Membership Integrity

Group owners may be concerned that anyone can add comments to a discussion, which has potential to degrade the quality of a discussion. This could require group administrators to police discussions more frequently, which is time consuming.

Discussion Spam

Certainly, it’s possible that open group discussions could be prone to spam-centric content. No one wants that.

Let’s look at the positive aspects.

Broader Group Exposure

A group discussion now has potential to reach more people than its current membership. For some groups seeking to grow, that is appealing.  Tactics like Tweeting a link to a group discussion, or sharing it on Facebook will become more common giving a group wider exposure.  Availability of group discussions in search engines also provide more exposure.

Broader Individual Exposure

The benefits cited above for groups also apply to individuals. Now, your comments in a LinkedIn Group discussion will be accessible to the broader web. If you’re a marketer, in business development, consulting or a job seeker, this offers a new opportunity for you to gain more exposure.

Open Web Implies Parity with Facebook and Twitter

LinkedIn has carved out its niche among business professionals for social networking. Nonetheless, LinkedIn knows that it competes for your time with Twitter and Facebook. Even if you don’t consider the latter on par with LinkedIn for business social networking, LinkedIn is under pressure to maintain some level of parity with these social networking sites with updated features that add more value and robustness to its user base. Additionally, LinkedIn doesn’t want to give up any market share in the U.S. to Plaxo or any other business-centric social networking sites, particularly when vertical industry professional networking sites are on the rise.

A Matter of Choice

Remember, it’s ultimately up to the group owner to open up Group Discussions to the web or not. For some groups, it may not be a good idea. If you are a group owner, here is a link to instructions on how to change your group from closed to open.

LinkedIn is a valuable social networking platform for professionals, especially for business development professionals and job seekers. I advocate spending not less than 30 minutes each day visiting groups and Answers looking for ways to contribute your ideas, learn from others and build your network.

B2B Playground

The sweet spot of social networking in LinkedIn is for B2B professionals. If you’re in B2C, there are plenty of opportunities for you too. Business development professionals looking for new B2B sales leads should invest time producing relevant content in LinkedIn Groups and Answers to make connections that produce new sales opportunities.

What’s your reaction to the new open attribute in LinkedIn Groups? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Join me on February 23 at GCC in Trinity, FL  for this free 0pen-to-the-public jam-packed workshop on using social media to build your personal brand.

Joe Pulizzi is founder and CEO of Junta42, a company that provides marketers access to solutions around content marketing. Specifically, Junta42 provides a match making service that is free to the customer (the marketer). A marketer submits their content marketing project to request proposals from qualified vendors of custom content solutions ranging from website, video, social media, print, custom content, etc. The vendors pay to be in the Junta42 market place. The marketer is presented with three qualified vendors from which to interview. Junta42 customers have been large and small companies around the globe. Junta42 also offers a free educational community called the Content Marketing Institute.

Content Marketing Definition

Joe defines content marketing as the creation of content on a consistent basis to attract and retain customers. This requires a content marketing mindset.

History of Content Marketing

Joe points out that back in 2005 new technology was being unveiled ranging from more sophisticated websites, to the early introduction of social media. Marketers were trying to figure out how to get customer’s attention as this new technology was growing in popularity. Traditional media outlets were on the decline. At the time, Joe was with Penton Media where they provided content marketing services for big companies ranging from custom websites to custom magazines. Essentially, they helped marketers create their own media channel. An example is a magazine (print, online or both) for a community of hot rod enthusiasts. That magazine is devoted to hot rod content supported by various makes and models. This form of custom content marketing was new to marketers at that time.

Content Marketing Has Finally Arrived

Content vehicles have been around for decades. But, today content creation has become the center of the marketing plan. Custom publishing people used to be tucked away outside of the marketing department just a few years ago. Now, custom publishing is mainstream. Marketers are figuring out their story and telling it through content. It’s important to acknowledge that content marketing is not limited to the marketing department. Marketers should “get more rowers in the boat” to produce compelling content on a consistent basis.

Study: Junta 42 & Marketing Profs

In September 2010 Junta42 and Marketing Profs released a research report. They surveyed over 1,100 B2B companies in North America over a diverse range of industries and size. Some of the report findings include “B2B marketers allocate approximately 26% of their total marketing budgets to content marketing initiatives. 51% of B2B marketers plan to increase their spend in content marketing over the next 12 months. While content marketing is mainstream, marketers are unsure of how effective various tactics are. For many tactics, there is a large “confidence gap” in which marketers use tactics but are unsure of how effective they are. For instance, of the 79% of B2B marketers who use social media, only 31% of users think they use this tactic effectively.”

Content Marketing in 2011

Junta42 does a predictions blog post each year. The 2011 prediction that Joe likes most is “the story matters, no matter the channel.” We’ve been too focused on tools. It’s all about the story. People will go to the channel when the story is good.

Content Marketing is Not Easy

Marketers have so many options and channels from which to choose. Marketers should focus on the story and use the channels that people will use. The reality is that marketers have become media companies. Joe’s globe trotting exposes him to custom marketing content in various formats but he finds that print publishing formats are still very popular in parts of Europe.

Content Marketing World Event in 2011

Junta42 is holding the first ever Content Marketing World event, September 6 – 8, in Cleveland. This conference is focused on helping marketers advance their publishing skills. This conference is not about “why” content marketing. Attendees should already be convinced that content marketing is a necessity. It’s all about how-to execute content marketing strategies.

I encourage you to listen to or download the entire 25 minute podcast for more insights from Joe Pulizzi not included in this blog post.

P.S. Learn how job seekers can develop their content marketing strategy to accelerate their job search. I have a an introductory 80% off offer for job seekers with my video training series. This offer expires December 31, 2010.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This podcast aims to share the journey of Chris Brogan from corporate employee to New York Times Bestselling author, international speaker and social media rock star. When you listen to this podcast, you’ll glean that Chris is as humble as he is accomplished. I observed that about him the first time I met him in 2008.

From Cubeland to Celebrity

Chris enjoyed his work as an employee in the wireless and telecom industry. He was inspired by Les Brown, (author of Live Your Dreams) as well as other authors with inspirational works such as Tony Robbins and Steven Covey.  The light bulb for Chris was when he realized that as “any old employee” in corporate America (his words), he shouldn’t depend on the H.R. department to develop him. So, he set off to develop himself. Not surprisingly, his corporate career began to blossom once he acquired this mindset.

Chris always enjoyed writing about stuff for which he has passion. As a kid growing up in Maine, he was more interested in Batman than the Red Sox. In the 90s he started writing on bulletin board services about his favorite topics. Another light bulb for Chris was the enjoyment of connecting with people online around his passionate topics. That’s when it became obvious to Chris that geo location was not an inhibitor to connecting with people online.

Chris started blogging around 1998, when it was known as journaling.  He wrote fiction stories and all kinds of stuff including fitness and health topics. He even wrote for a literary magazine while in school. But, Chris always knew that writing was not a lucrative career, so he had to find a way to combine his passion for writing with some kind of business. In his telecom job he was a “translator” between the tech guy and the business guy. This talent for “translation” combined with his passion for writing that eventually would be the catalyst to propel him to fame.

Not An Overnight Success

In 2005 Chris started doing some podcasts. His blogging started to take off, but not overnight. Chris remembers his excitement when he reached his first 100 subscribers, a milestone he says took 8 years to achieve!  In 2006 Chris teamed up with Christopher Penn to hold Podcamp, a conference on podcasting, blogging and video blogging. Then, Jeff Pulver hired Chris to run a Video on The Net conference.  That put Chris on the road where he met lots of interesting people and things started to take off from there.

Best Selling Author

In 2008 he released Trust Agents, a N.Y. Times Bestseller which he co-authored with Julien Smith. I selected an excerpt from Trust Agents to discuss during our podcast. The chapter I chose is the Human Artists chapter (chapter 6). I read this excerpt from page 184.  “In social media, human is the new black. People are the next revolution, and being active on the human-faced Web is your company’s best chance to grow its business in the coming years.”

Unbeknown to me, this excerpt is the theme of his next book with Julian Smith. Chris points out that not many businesses are embracing the human artist theme. Some companies are using the new social tools but not in a human way. Sales copy applied to the social web is not human. And, sales copy will not replace a human relationship. He points out that digitizing of relationships on the social web is like the “Hamburger Helper” that you can add to make it a more fulfilling “meal” in between the face time. I asked Chris what types of businesses are demonstrating sincere adoption of the human faced web. He mentioned tech companies like Dell, Comcast and IBM as well as real estate professionals who understand the importance of human relationships.

The Social Enterprise

We spoke about this new buzzword the “social enterprise.” The tools used by enterprises include documents, phone and email. These tools don’t work well for human communication. The social tools are being consumerized. Some of the people leaping into the social web are vendors who use it as a sales platform. But, there is a lack of understanding of how to shift out of email into the social web’s culture. The reality is that many people have not made the culture shift. Chris agrees with my longstanding opinion that the social enterprise is a mindset shift. Chris feels this culture shift issue is not where he best fits.  He wants to help companies with external messaging to find more sales. I don’t blame him.

The Chris Brogan Enterprise

Chris has figured out the business side of writing and content production. He is involved in many business ventures. He leads the charge on the annual roadshow of the Inbound Marketing Summit, which usually occurs in three or more cities annually since 2009. He heads up New Marketing Labs, an inbound marketing agency. They focus on educating their client to success. Then when the client is comfortable they drive their own strategy.

Chris recently launched Human Business Works, an online education and community platform. HBW is building various education projects for different verticals. The first HBW initiative is 501 Mission Place, a community for non profits. It’s facilitated by Estrella Rosenberg. Its focus is to help non-profits improve operations and fund raising.  The next HBW initiative is Kitchen Table Companies, which will be for small business and entrepreneurs. It is scheduled to launch around the end of 2010. HBW communities are online paid membership communities with options for educational content and peer-to-peer networking that will help its members keep their business flourishing.

Teamwork

I asked Chris how he can keep all these business ventures moving and stay committed to 8 hours sleep each night. Chris builds teams for each of his business ventures. He lends his vision, leadership and personal brand, then gets out of the way as the respective leaders and teams for each venture run the day to day. Chris uses 3 words to guide his strategies each year. In 2010 they were: Ecosystems, Owners, Kings. He explains this creative approach to annual goal setting on his blog.

Chris’ Advice for BernieBorges.com for 2011

In this podcast, I inadvertently pre-announced my 2011 initiative around BernieBorges.com where I will combine my passion for helping jobseekers and business development people through education and best practices pertaining to how to use social media to build personal brand and find new employment. Chris’ advice was brilliant in its simplicity. He warned me not to assume that my target audience is always found online. He advised me to go find them where they hang out. Job seekers often don’t have great networks, so his advice is for me to help them build their networks. Just so happens, that is exactly my vision!

Predictions for Mobile

Chris says he’s not a predictor of the future. There is a fine line between predicting the future and understanding where it’s headed, which is what he says describes him more accurately. In the case of the future of mobile his advice is for us not to limit our thinking about mobile just for mobile phones. Mobile applications are already showing up on other platforms including cars, billboards and tablet devices.

The opportunities for productive and social mobile applications are only beginning to surface. The future for mobile will be limited only by innovative thinking.

In addition to Chris Brogan’s interesting journey from cubeland to social media fame, Chris is a devoted family man and a genuinely nice guy. I urge you to listen to the entire podcast to get a glimpse of Chris you may not have previously seen. I’m confident you’ll enjoy it.

If you’re a job seeker (or you know one) check out the 80% introductory discount offer on my new educational video series entitled Social Networking for Job Seekers. (offer expires 12/31/10)

This most recent class I delivered December 7/8 in San Diego was comprised of 18 marketers from a cross section of industries ranging from universities, retail, banking, government, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, healthcare and publishing. These marketers were focused on B2B and B2C nearly equally.

The three most common social media marketing challenges discussed during this class were:

• Producing content
• Being relevant
• Management comprehension

Producing Content

No one can convince me that a business or organization lacks content to produce and share online. Content production is one of the two strategic pillars of social media marketing. The most common challenge in social media marketing is for a business to get cooperation from its team members to contribute content. I have referred to this as getting more rowers in the boat. The advice I gave this class is to educate internal team members on the impact of being a content producer on their own personal brand, and the contribution each one can make to produce sales opportunities through their content. I suggested they tap into someone as a “head bowling pin.” In other words, if this person’s content is well received then others will take notice and say “hey, I want in on this action!”  Once some momentum is created with a few people, the list of contributors can grow. Before you know it, you’ve created an editorial calendar of content with lots of people contributing. That’s the end game in producing content for a social media strategy!

Being Relevant

Truth be told, these are not the words used by class attendees to describe this challenge. But, this is what I heard consistently as a challenge in social media marketing. It’s one thing to produce content but how do you produce content that is relevant to your target audience? We discussed the content marketing strategy process we use at Find and Convert where we map out the target audience into a matrix by persona and pain point. When you literally illustrate your audience in a matrix listing columns by persona label and pain point attributes under each one, you can easily identify relevant content for each of them. This approach ensures you can create a content strategy that is relevant to your target audience.

Management Comprehension

Once again, these are not the words used by my class attendees. To be more blunt about it, I’m referring to the “get it” factor. When management doesn’t understand social media marketing they can have unrealistic expectations. I stressed the importance of clearly defining goals that align with management’s goals and reviewing them in a documented format with management. The absence of such alignment can be a risk of failure if the marketing team is marching to the beat of their own drums disconnected from management’s goals. Equally important is to educate management on the realistic metrics that will illustrate progress on the written goals. One goal we discussed as an example during class is improving customer service. One way to measure the results for this goal is to measure the impact on traditional call center customer service. If call volumes go down, or the time per call goes down, these improvements can be attributed to effective online customer service. Another is to measure the frequency of positive mentions online by customers when they have a positive customer service experience. The types of activities and details measured in social media are often different than what management has measured in the past. Getting management alignment on the front end is necessary to have harmony when reviewing progress of the social media marketing plan.

While this two-day class was all about how to use Facebook and Twitter for Marketing, the strategic discussions we had about social media marketing strategies helped put the tactics into a healthy perspective.

If you have a “Facebook strategy” or a “Twitter strategy” are they aligned with an overall marketing strategy which aligns with management’s goals?

Download an excerpt of my book on social media marketing strategy.