3 SEO Tips for the Ages

SEO has evolved since the mid 1990s from a cookie cutter method (pre-Google) to a set of best practices that are anything but simple. Many companies still get SEO wrong even when they think they’re doing it right. Often, a webmaster informs the IT Director, who informs the Marketing Manager and the CEO that the website “has been SEO’d.” Even the verb tense is wrong. It implies that search engine optimization is a one time process like upgrading a copy machine. Nothing is further from reality!

SEO is a Marathon

SEO is anything but a one time process. I liken it to training for and running a marathon.  If you’re serious about running in a marathon, you better start training at least six months before the race. After the marathon event, unless you have no plan to ever run another marathon, you must continue to train. As long as you are a marathoner you’re always in training – ALWAYS. SEO is the same. It’s like every other aspect of business that needs ongoing care and feeding. Sure, you go through different phases of an SEO plan, but it’s never done. If you believe that, you’ll make your competitors very happy.

Simplifying the Mystique of SEO

While SEO has certainly evolved over the years, I seek to boil it down to three key points.

Site Architecture

Your website must be friendly to search engines. It starts with the code that lives behind the front end which humans see at www.yourcompany.com. For non-techies think of website code as the plumbing, wiring and brick or wood structure of a house. While, the human eye sees furniture and decorated walls, without a solid infrastructure a house is not functional.

A website’s code should be “lean” which is the opposite of bloated. When a website has a bloated CSS or long scripts, the content on your website simply gets lost in the eyes of search engines. Literally, the search engines have difficulty finding your content because it’s so buried in a bloated code environment. The solution is to have a web developer clean up the code by consolidating it (optimizing) so that the content is easier for search engines to find and index it in their search engine (database).

Another important aspect of site architecture is the meta data. This is the data that speaks to the search engines about each web page. The title tag is very important because it identifies the central theme of the page. It’s also the title which is displayed in a search engine listing. The description tag is also important because it’s the snippet or summary of the page in the search engine listing. A well written title tag and description tag can make or break click throughs from your listings in a search engine.

Keyword Strategy

Developing a keyword strategy is also critical to a sound SEO strategy that delivers results. There is no way getting around the fact it takes work. At my SEO services agency we use a keyword strategy approach that is very effective. I’ll share it here for companies and competitors alike with no reluctance. We identify the products or services of our client and the buyer personas of each one. Then we conduct keyword research by putting ourselves in the shoes of each persona. We create tables to list each persona and their pain points in order to think the way they think. Whenever possible we interview the personas or, at a minimum the people who know the personas very well inside a client’s business. Below is a sample of buyer personas used in keyword research:

This method of keyword research sets up a keyword strategy that drives the content strategy. The SEO results increase greatly for being found in search engines by each of the personas that buy the target product.

Content Strategy

It’s been said that content is king. I once had a friendly debate with my friend Andrew Davis at Tippingpoint Labs about the role of content in SEO. His viewpoint was that all you need is great content to get good SEO results. It’s true that great content can provide good SEO results. But, the keyword strategy should drive the content strategy. The keyword strategy will guide what content you produce, for whom and the writing style. For example you may need content written for a management audience and some content for a more detailed worker. If you’re writing a page about a software product, the management level page and the data sheet page should be different to address each audience. The persona tables will help define how to write each content page.

Another important aspect of a content strategy is diversity. Text based web content is very important. But, search engines score all your content. By offering a good mix of content including images (with text tags), video and audio you please the search engines. Spreading your content across the web through social media including social bookmarking sites also contributes greatly to getting good SEO strategy results.

Lastly, the best benefit of a good content strategy is that it will result in getting inbound links. That means that people will link to your content and those links are the currency of search marketing. The more relevant inbound links you have, the better you’ll score with search engines.

It’s All About Conversions

I hope these three SEO tips were helpful to you.  But, the truth is this is an incomplete plan. A solid SEO plan will get you found in the search engines, but you need a strategy that converts visitors to your website into sales prospects or members of your community. I’ll get to that in a future blog post.

I invite you to add more tips below or comment on my three tips. I hope this blog post delivers on my goal of 3Es of content marketing, as I have preached in my book, Marketing 2.0.

Good Marketing is Southern Hospitality

I recently vacationed in the Blue Ridge Mountains of northern Georgia with my family. We had a wonderful time hiking, exploring, fishing, white water rafting and just being adventurous. As I reflect back on this vacation, it occurred to me that I also experienced parallels between our vacation and successful marketing.

Southern Hospitality
Everywhere we went my family and I were treated with courtesy, respect and warmth. And, I’m not referring to how the employees of business establishments treated us (although they were consistent in their treatment). We found the citizens of the community to be genuine, helpful and giving. More than once, people went out of their way to answer questions or offer assistance with sincerity and a smile, or just greet us with a sincere “hello” and have conversation about anything.

Content Marketing Parallel
In contemporary marketing, we speak of the importance of providing great content to your audience to build trust and relationships online. Our vacation planning was easily facilitated by the ease of access to information about the area. Before we scheduled our vacation in the Blue Ridge Mountains, we did plenty of research. We found an abundance of useful information including things to do and places to stay. I was particularly impressed with the consistency of the information we found online, and the experience we had with human interaction offline. This experience is effective content marketing. It was the total experience that made it effective. It was the integration of an online and offline experience that made it a good one. This total experience is what I am willing to talk about. And, that’s called word-of-mouth, the most valuable kind of marketing.

Social Media Parallel
For years now those of us that have embraced social media in business have been stressing the importance of producing great content that delivers on the 3 Es and building a strong community online comprised of authenticity and transparency. Often these words aren’t understood in a business context because so many people in marketing roles are used to doing marketing differently. Authenticity used to mean being truthful in advertising. Building community used to mean building your mailing list. Trust used to mean having a track record of product quality. And, customer service used to mean being accessible to customers and answering their questions.

But, this experience made me realize that social media is really just a human extension of how people want to behave naturally. I am convinced that “southern hospitality” (as it’s known in the U.S.) is a global human phenomenon.  A business is made up of people. The technology tools at our disposal enable people to build communities online with authentic human interaction to create experiences both online and offline that build trust and authentic engagement resulting in positive experiences. Of course, no one is perfect and negative experiences can occur. But, a strong community can deal with anomalies.

I’ve spoken a lot about the risks of social media. As I continue to ponder these risks it occurs to me that they are really risks of doing marketing wrong. Some of the examples I’ve provided of mistakes made by companies are marketing mistakes, not social media mistakes.  Businesses need to develop a strategy of southern hospitality and carry it through in their online and offline channels. Perhaps most important, the people in the business must have a southern hospitality mindset. The tools used to execute on this mindset may vary, but the consistency of the mindset is what’s most important.

The 3 E’s of Content Marketing

When I wrote Marketing 2.0 in 2009 I set out to write a book for the average marketer. My goal was for marketers, particularly in small and midsize businesses and non-profits, to understand what social media is and how to embrace it productively. I boiled my book down to two core principles: content marketing and relationship building (through your content). In this post, I focus on content marketing because it is so crucial. And, truth be told, I still see many marketers struggle with their content marketing strategy.

Any business, in any industry of any size can (and should) create a compelling content strategy. Regardless of your industry, a content strategy should deliver on the 3 E’s.

Educate   |   Enlighten    |    Entertain

We live in an interactive world. People go online to do research about the products they’re considering, the companies behind them and even the people who make and sell them.  There is no hiding behind a corporate façade any longer. It’s not 1997, nor 2007. Those days are long gone. If a company tries to hide behind a corporate identity, they probably don’t even realize how much damage they’re doing to their brand because their corporate head is buried in the sand.

Businesses who produce great content that attracts people to it win. Period! Let’s look at how the 3 E’s of content marketing allow these three companies to market effectively. BTW, it was hard to pick just three examples.

Educate
SpaShopper sells spa pumps, filters, covers and other parts and accessories for spas and hot tubs. Their blog, Hot Tub and Spa Expert focuses mostly on educating consumers on a variety of relevant topics of interest to hot tub and spa owners. The topics range from how often the water needs to be changed, to how to regulate the temperature, adjusting filter cycles, proper use of chemicals, reducing electrical costs, how to winterize your spa and much more you might never have thought of.  In addition to great articles on these topics, they’ve produced educational video on topics such as replacing your spa pump and motor which shows a young lady dressed in overalls replacing a spa pump and motor. The message in these videos is anyone can do it! And the message is delivered in a believable, educational way.  SpaShopper also has product promotions displayed on their blog, which results in product sales each time a new educational blog post is released. A key driver in product sales is how the blog content is spread in part through their Twitter account and Facebook fan page. In full disclosure, SpaShopper is a client.

Enlighten
Sarasota Memorial Hospital (SMH) enlightens by sharing insights about their hospital, their staff, their capabilities, what they care about and about the local community. For example, “Sarasota Memorial’s licensed mental health professionals are on call 24 hours a day to provide free mental health assessments, referrals and advice.” Or, did you know that May is national stroke awareness month? And, did you know that strokes are (unfortunately) rising among younger adults. And, did you know that the city of Sarasota has moved from #11 to #5 in the top 25 small cities according to American Style Magazine. This kind of content is endless on a daily basis from SMH. Of course, they also provide enlightening content through Twitter and Facebook and through a new construction blog. All this enlightening content helps make SMH a well known hospital system. And, it doesn’t hurt that SMH is ranked one of America’s top 100 hospitals according to U.S. News & World Report.

Entertainment
There are so many good examples of companies that use entertainment as part of their content strategy including HubSpot’s videos and, of course, Blendtec. But, the example I’ll share with you is from Indium Corp. Their story has become pretty well known too. They are outstanding content producers. Indium has more than 70 engineers blogging about solder paste applications in the electronic assembly manufacturing industry. That’s obviously a very narrow niche. If you’re not an engineer in the electronic assembly market, you wouldn’t be a reader of their blogs. But, the engineers who read these blogs, many of whom are PhDs, have a sense of humor.  Rick Short at Indium decided to create some videos designed to make fun of themselves.  As Rick readily admits, Indium is humanizing themselves by poking fun at the importance of solder paste. Let’s face it, while solder paste is very important to electronic assembly manufacturers, it’s not a product linked with romance or cheer on Christmas. Yet, Rick made video parodies about giving a tub of Indium’s solder paste to his wife on Valentine’s day and to a little girl on Christmas day. The result? Rick is effectively humanizing Indium and creating buzz that often creates new opportunities. Rick was once walking the halls of a trade show in China when he was approached by someone who saw his Valentine’s Day video. Rick had to explain that he didn’t really give his wife a tub of solder paste. It was a joke! Indium’s overall content strategy delivers on all 3 E’s including entertainment.

I hope these three examples have provided some inspiration to develop a content strategy that delivers on the 3 E’s. If you’ve only been delivering one of the 3 E’s that’s a good start. Consider what else you can do with your content to expand into the other 2 E’s. Study your competition. Don’t copy what they’re doing (if they’re doing any good content marketing). Rather, look for ways to capitalize on your strengths and differentiators by creating more content that delivers on each of the 3 E’s.

Did you give someone you love a tub of solder paste on Valentine’s Day? If not, now you have an idea for next year…

How to Convert Old Media Marketing to New Media Marketing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

B2B Content Marketing for SMB Business

Kim Albee on B2B content marketing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Genoo Marketing Automation Software

Kim Albee on LinkdeIn

Kim Albee on Twitter

Marketing Automation Resources

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

Measuring Results in Social Media Marketing

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

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

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

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

Conventional Wisdom

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

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

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

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

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

Social Media Measurement Tools

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Staying on Course

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Developing a Social Media Marketing Strategy

Developing a Social Media Marketing Strategy
When I devoted an entire chapter in my book, Marketing 2.0, to developing a social media marketing strategy, my intent was to inspire marketers. In other words, I want marketers to avoid making the most common mistake, which is the mindset that you need a Twitter or Facebook strategy. You don’t. You need a social media marketing strategy!

Consider assembling the marketing team and your CEO and asking these questions:
•    Why do we think we need a social media strategy?
•    What is our objective?
•    What will the costs be?
•    What are the staffing requirements?
•    What are the risks?
•    What are the opportunities?
•    What are our competitors doing in social media?

Old School Meets New School
While Marketing 2.0 is a new-school marketing paradigm, there is no substitute for old-school research to gain valuable insights before you develop your social media strategy. Begin with research about your customers, target customers, competitors, resellers and influencers. Take no less than a few days (at a minimum) to study the landscape in your industry. Conduct searches in Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for the names of the CEOs of any company in your industry that is relevant. Include your competitors, your suppliers, and any other relevant company, including analysts and publications. This research should provide valuable insight into where your customers and relevant community are spending time on the social web. You’ll learn what they’re talking about and what groups exist by topic or by company. You’ll learn what your competition is doing or not doing. Eventually, you will gain valuable insight that will drive your social media strategy.

Why Do We Think We Need a Social Media Strategy?
This question is somewhat akin to asking, what business are we in? When you consider why you need a social media strategy, you should take some time and revisit this question about your core business.  A social media strategy serves one simple purpose; it enables your company to engage in authentic conversations with your community so you can improve your ability to attract, retain and serve your customers.

So Begin Your Social Media Strategy by Listening!
On one hand, it’s obvious why we should be listening. It’s the same reason we should be reading industry news—to stay informed. But remember that News 1.0 came at you from only one direction. The people whose job it was to deliver the news wrote it, and you read it. That’s where it ended. In News 2.0, we are empowered to participate in the story. When you listen to the comments made by people who react to a news story, you are listening to your market in real time.

If your top competitors are actively producing content in social media, your risk may be greater if you choose not to. Your absence from online conversations may damage your brand. In short, competitive pressures may influence your decision to become a content producer.

What is Our Objective?
You’ve done your research, and you’ve identified why you need a social media strategy. Now, it’s time to clearly define your objectives. Your objectives should fall into one of these categories:
•    Competitive differentiation
•    Market share growth
•    Expansion of your brand

Competitive Differentiation
A competitive differentiation strategy requires you to increase your visibility on the social web in your market segment through online content commenting and new content creation. Identify the best sources of web-based content in your industry, including vertical industry media and associations. Task a member of your staff to monitor the content and the conversations in these online communities. Identify the subject matter experts in your organization who can get engaged in the conversations in these online communities or contribute new content. Consider a blog strategy if you have the staff to devote to it. Find a voice for your organization that can become a consistent voice in your market, delivering a consistent message on specific topics. Allow this voice to be active and free with ideas and valuable insights into the things about which the people in your industry care. Remember, this is not a direct sales strategy, though your management team may view it this way. Your differentiation goal is to allow the market to see how you think, how you serve, how you listen, how you respond, and generally how you add value to your market. Talking about your products in ways that interest your community is advisable. Shouting to them about features is not. Your goal is to make it easy for others to learn how your organization is different from your competitors.

Market Share Growth
In setting out to grow your market share, you must be committed to proper staffing and producing diversified content on the social web. You must do proper planning and be willing to experiment, even if it means taking risk and failing some along the way. The objective is to attract more of your community to your organization. To do this, you need a bigger footprint on the web. If your differentiation strategy was primarily based on a blog, you may need to expand your strategy. You might commit to producing videos. Groups are available in social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook and can offer very easy ways to expand your reach. Similarly, you may find groups in industry-specific social sites where your staff can participate. This requires commitment, which carries with it some staffing implications. But this can be accomplished by adjusting your staffing requirements, cutting nonperforming marketing activities and reallocating staff resources to producing more social media content.

Brand Expansion
To expand your brand using social media requires a big commitment and carries some risk. The content strategy is the key to success in brand expansion! You’ll need to decide which social media platforms to use, who will create the content, and who will be the public face of your content. Presumably you’ve done your homework to find the audience you want to reach, and you’re committed to producing the content that will reach them. You’ll need to experiment to find the right mix of content and platforms to reach your desired audience. You may find that some content is more effective than others in expanding your brand. You’ll need to take some risk and measure results along the way to determine the effectiveness of expanding your brand through social media.

Let Your Content Go
The reality is that most businesses have more content than we know what to do with. We have white papers, news releases, websites, newsletters, and countless internal documents, not to mention the brilliant but often undeveloped content residing in between our ears. The power of social media marketing lies in letting it all go. Share your content with the world. So if you have good content for your community, share it, promote it, but most of all, just let it go.

Ready, Aim, Fire
Do your homework. Set your goals. Set your content strategy. Assemble the team. Cut non-performing activities to make room for a social media strategy. Then, get started. You’ll make some mistakes. But, with good planning you’ll make fewer and less costly mistakes and you’ll accelerate your results.

I’ll write a blog post soon about how to measure social media marketing results…

Measuring Online Brand Value in Content Marketing

I recently interviewed Andrew Davis of Tipping Point Labs at Starbucks in Cambridge, MA.  Drew is Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder of Tipping Point Labs, a digital content creation shop that helps clients sell products through content marketing strategies.

TPL’s blog was recently rated the #1 blog on Junta42! Drew credits his team who releases new content every day!

I asked Drew why content marketing has become so important and what do we mean by digital content marketing? Drew points out that consumers are looking for more information about products, whether it’s a low engagement product or a high engagement product. Consumers may not start their research at a vendor’s website. So, marketers have to be available to buyers through valuable content that is easily found and is influential. The idea is to create the right kind of content that makes its way down to the consumer.

It’s all about valuable content that builds relationships, influences buying decisions and drives revenue.

The Influence Pyramid

One of TPL’s clients is Breville, an Australian maker of kitchen products including coffee makers. When they entered the U.S. market and they hired TPL they set out to find amateur influencers such as the Coffee Geek, and Single Serve Coffee and Heather Perry. These bloggers write content about coffee every day! They are influencers. In my social media marketing book, I call these people rock stars!

Prosumers – are people who are really engaged, but they don’t write every day as the influencers do. But, they are willing to write reviews at specialty websites such as Amazon.

Consumers – the end buyer in the mass market. They read a lot, but they don’t write. They consume and they are influenced by others who have conducted research or purchased products with something to say.

When you consider the shape of the influence pyramid the numbers at the top are much smaller. It is a finite audience at the top and an infinite audience at the bottom. Traditional advertising in this value chain has tried to sandwich itself in the middle and the bottom through mass advertising. But traditional advertising is no longer trusted. However, the influencer’s recommendation is built on trust and is therefore very valuable and trusted.

Measuring Results

TPL uses Google Insights to measure results. For example, TPL measures the espresso market in the U.S. in the food and beverage category. TPL measures through an online brand value chart to show the growth of online brand value and correlate it to revenue. This method of measurement is a new approach. TPL is hoping it will have long term validity. They also measure the impact of influencers blogging about a product such as Breville.

I asked Drew for a B2B example of successful content marketing. He told me about ORLive, an online community who transmits live surgeries online to provide education to surgeons. It’s educational content to help surgeons learn about new technologies. It’s been a successful content marketing strategy for device manufacturers by educating surgeons.

Any conversation with Andrew Davis is always enlightening and enjoyable. Sitting around the corner from MIT in Cambridge on a sunny August day was the icing on the cake for this podcast interview. I encourage you listen to the entire interview to hear more not covered in this blog post summary.

Drew promises to visit me in Florida during the winter when it’s cold and snowy in New England and warmer and dryer in Florida. You can connect with Drew on Twitter. You’ll be glad you did.

Bernie Borges
@berniebay

Content Marketing: “This stuff really works!”

Last week I had a quick trip to Cambridge, MA for a guest appearance on HubSpot TV. During my visit I sat down with Andrew Davis, Chief Strategy Officer of Tippingpoint Labs. A conversation with Andrew (Drew) is never boring. The location we picked was a Starbucks around the corner from the MIT campus which added to the charm of the experience.

Tippingpoint Labs is a “digital content creation” shop.

“We create valuable content: video, audio, presentations, photos, podcasts, wiki contributions, articles, stories. We believe in perpetual production: creating high-quality, relevant content to a well-defined audience. We move quickly to adjust and refine your content to build a relationship with your audience.”

I asked Drew to give me an example of how they create content and “move the needle” for their clients. He gave the example of a client called Breville, an Australian maker of kitchen products including coffee makers and blenders. This is a crowded market segment with aggressive advertisers.

Drew and I share a passion for “marketing 2.0” strategies which are anchored in engaging your target community through great content and building authentic relationships. Drew explained how Tippingpoint Labs engaged influential blogs such as the Coffee Geek and Single Serve Coffee to become aware of Breville and to review their products.

Product Launch Through the Blogosphere

When Breville launches new products or announces strategic partnerships such as the one with Keurig in March 2007 pertaining to a new single serve gourmet home brewer, influential blogs such as Single Serve Coffee are engaged. These blogs cover the coffee market and enjoy a loyal following. Essentially, these blogs are the new media and channel of communication for manufacturers like Breville.

Online Brand Value

Drew points out that to measure the value of branded content on the web, Tippingpoint Labs tracks popularity of brands online and correlates them to sales figures using tools such as Google Insights. As relevant topics grow in popularity such as “coffee makers” so does the popularity of Breville, and the sales figures reflect it. Below is a chart showing how the conversation between Breville and Delonghi brand espresso machines is shaping the market.

Below is a short interview with Drew. We closed this interview with a profound statement: “This stuff really works!”

Content Marketing, Need I Say More?

Podcast Interview with  Joe Pulizzi: CEO Junta42.

Along with Newt Barrett, Joe Pulizzi is the co-author of Get Content: Get Customers. This book was very inspirational to me in writing my book, Marketing 2.0. Joe was an early reviewer of my book and he was kind enough to write a review on the back cover.

Joe is the founder and CEO of Junta42. Prior to starting Junta42, Joe worked at Penton Media where he was responsible for custom publishing. His division served customers such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, producing custom content such as podcasts, newsletters,etc..  In Joe’s words, Junta42 is the “e-harmony” of content marketing. They “match up” brands who need to create custom content with expert custom content creation vendors.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the natural evolution of custom publishing. It’s branded content created by any business, in any industry no matter how large or small. Original custom content was in print, e.g, John Deere, Toyota send customers a custom magazine to strengthen customer loyalty.

In recent years, online branded custom content has become very popular.  Online custom content comes in many forms including but not limited to blogs, podcasts, video, newsletters, topical websites, white papers, articles, e-books, and any form of aggregated content.  Custom content is the natural evolution of custom publishing. In contemporary marketing, brands must deliver relevant content to keep customers loyal.

Marketing 2.0: Two Pillars

In my book, I refer to two pillars in Marketing 2.0: Content Marketing and Relationship Building. I refer to marketing 2.0 as a mindset which many companies still do not understand. Those companies who produce or aggregate great content and deliver it to their buyers across different platforms build relationships with them.

It’s Not Your Father’s Market Anymore

Buyer behaviors have changed. Buyers don’t want to be engaged the way sellers have engaged them in the past. The old style of marketing is very selfish. It’s all about the seller (me, me, me attitude). The seller just wants the prospective buyer to contact them or buy from the seller. The new mindset is about you (the buyer). Brands should think like a publisher. Brands should strive for buyers to like their brand, trust their brand, think of their brand when it’s logical to think of the brand. In other words, the new marketing mindset is about you, the buyer. What can the brand do for you?  Don’t think like a marketer. Think like a publisher.

What’s Your Competitive Advantage?

Joe is quick to point out that your competitive advantage is your communications. All your communications! Build your brand as an expert. Buyers go online to find what they want.  They seek conversations with people who have something meaningful to say. Unleash the power of your secret sauce. How are you the expert? Demonstrate your expertise. Don’t just talk about it. Share…Teach…

Lethal Generosity

Jeremiah Oyang, of Forrester Research has coined a term: lethal generosity. Brands should give and give and give to our customers…Give for free. But, most marketers still don’t think that way. But, that will change in the coming months and years. It’s inevitable as marketing 2.0 mindsets continue to evolve and buyers demand it.

What if you’re a B2B high tech product manufacturer? How do you give away your secret sauce? Become the media. Create  custom content as an asset. Create content that is compelling and builds trust. Be the media. Build communications assets which have potential to reach many people who are willing to share your content.

Excuses

“We just don’t have the time.” “We’re in such a niche market.” Joe’s response to these typical excuses is to ask people how they find new products? He asks do they buy from advertisements, yellow page ads, direct mail, trade shows? How many people use search engines? Everyone does! Buyer behaviors have changed. They go to industry websites and other sites and find people talking to each other. Brands may be left out of the purchase discussion if they don’t participate! It applies to nearly every market, not just some industries.

All buyers are online somewhere. Brands should produce or aggregate good content online in multiple formats that are accessible and subscribable.  Good content online spreads. You can reach people you would not otherwise be able to reach.

Risk of Social Media Abstinence

The risk of social media abstinence refers to the risk of being absent from conversations on the web where your buyers are and you’re not. If you’re not present and your competitors offer good content and they are building relationships across various platforms, you are at risk…If I’m a buyer and I’m consuming a vendor’s content, and others are spreading their content and saying positive things about them, I’ve begun to build a relationship with them before I contact any of these vendors. Are you one of them? If not, your social media abstinence can cost you business!

When you make content marketing your mindset, you organize your time around this mindset. So, it’s not as time consuming as you think. You’ll develop new habits. Do you really have a choice?

30 Year Nap

Imagine you just awoke from a 30 year nap. When you visit an office you observe all knowledge workers using PCs. If you are going to have gainful employment you must learn to use a computer. You need to use email, create documents, spreadsheets, use a browser to access the Internet, etc. Do you have a choice? Not if you want to be employed….People must learn new habits as culture and technology evolves. It’s just that simple.

Content marketing is a new habit that companies must embrace or die! Build content that shows off your expertise. Build content that will become an asset. Your content can become one of your greatest assets. Without this asset your marketing will eventually become ineffective.

Listen to the entire podcast interview with Joe Pulizzi to learn about a limited time offer to receive a free copy of my book, Marketing 2.0 as well as a copy of Joe’s book, Get Content:Get Customers.

And, of course you can produce your own content by adding your comments below. I want to hear from you.

@berniebay

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