It’s Time to Wake Up and Smell the Social Roses

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June 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Speed

Ferris Bueller once said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

The same goes for online marketing. Are even managing to keep up with the small changes?

Strategies to Manage

There’s a rapidity to online marketing and communication strategies that’s increasingly hard to keep up with even for those of us who’re actively involved on a daily basis. For example, if you’re a small business handling a fairly active Twitter stream like me, your email might have been overloaded by notifications from Twitter that so-and-so has just mentioned you, another so-and-so if now following you, oh, and by the way Twitter have just purchased TweetDeck.

Of course you probably know that you can go into your Twitter settings and turn off email notifications, but doing so will take a couple minutes of your time. If you’re not too busy responding to the stream invading your inbox.

Clearly, you need to take a moment to seize back control of your inbox. My tip is to use a mail rule to syphon off all those Twitter messages into a separate folder that can be dealt with later in the day.

Strategies to Connect

New tools also seem to crop up continually. As I mentioned in my podcast interview with Leo Widrich earlier in the week, Buffer is a great way of adding a different strategy to your business’s Twitter presence; you can easily schedule tweets to appear throughout the day.

Hootsuite also allows scheduling, and is great for those Tweets that initiate conversations but Buffer works best at scheduling a link to something of interest on the web, whether it’s on your own site or someone else’s. In contrast, I find that Hootsuite is perfect for starting a conversation with someone you know is likely to be online later in the day – especially if you’re working in different time zones.

Embracing Creativity

For me the biggest change to online marketing though is the rapid move towards creativity. [Read more...]

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How Do Business Blogs Get Creative?

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January 5, 2011 By 14 Comments
creative blog content

Get your hands dirty and be creative!

There’s an incredible amount of blog posts published daily urging you to start blogging, optimize your website for search, jump on social media to drive traffic to your business website. But one thing I started thinking about this morning (whilst feeling sorry for myself, down with flu) is just how little constructive help there is with actually creating content.

Outstanding online content is what will make you stand out from the crowd and generate interest from visitors to your site.

One of the things that all the outstanding corporate blogs that Mark Schaefer mentioned in The 10 Best Corporate Blogs in the World was just how good the content was. Varied, entertaining content.

But if you’re a newbie or looking to take your blogging to the next level, what kind of content should you be looking to share?

One of the best ways of generating ideas is to actually read blogs in the first place! Not just in your sector, but a broad selection of blogs.

From my own reading of the last couple of days I’ve spotted five types of posts that could inspire your own creative content creation if you turned them to your own business.

So here are a few suggestions of things you could try:

  • a discussion of the results and implications of an industry survey (Cf Charlotte Britton’s post on social media adoption in Yorkshire (UK) over at Quest PR).
  • a brief piece of audio content (or podcast), embedded in your blog (Cf Donna Papacosta’s post on why use audio).
  • a low-cost, entertaining vlog or video (Cf: I loved this video some of my students made to market their school. They got over 5000 views in less than a week!)
  • an e-book that generously shares important knowledge and information (Cf Danny Brown’s From Stats to Strats).
  • a genuine invitation to your audience to comment on your products or services (Cf Starbucks are masters at this, generating masses of online audience participation).

Your Turn!

What other kinds of posts would really make a corporate blog swing?

Filed Under: blogging, communication strategy Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

More on B2B Blogging & Conversions

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September 6, 2010 By 2 Comments

I‘ve got a guest post up on Mark Schaefer’s brilliant blog today about how business blogs often fail to convert visitors into clients.

By means of a follow up I was thinking about how we as online communications, marketer and PR folk can convince businesses that they really should invest in blogging.

It’s Not About Conversion

When it comes down to it, my experience with clients has shown that blogs aren’t really about converting to sales. Yes, they might be an important part in the process of generating a sale, funnelling site visitors to specific landing pages; but as anyone involved in B2B marketing will tell you, the sales process is much longer than B2C. You have to convince different levels of an organisation that your product or service is just what you need. And persuading everyone through to the top brass can take time.

So I tend to see blogs are part of that initial journey to the sale.

For small online businesses, or would-be internet marketers, blogs are a vital cog in the sales wheel because so many internet marketers make their money with affiliate links or the sale of ebooks or training courses. But the techniques they use, won’t / don’t necessarily wash if you’re selling printers; or consultation services.

So What Are B2B Blogs Good For Then?

[Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B, blogging Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Conversations vs SEO

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August 2, 2010 By 26 Comments

Daniel Hindin, over at SpinSucks wrote an interesting post about business blogs and conversations. I chimed in with my own two cents this morning because being the sceptic that I am, I couldn’t help wonder if that kind of B2B blogging strategy means you’re less likely to turn your traffic into customers if you put the emphasis on conversation rather than lead generation.

Perhaps lead generation is too crude a term but you know what I mean. There’s this whole school of thought that blogs are:

  • great for SEO
  • get you near the top of Google
  • can help you target keywords
  • and provide traffic to your website.

And as any blog marketer knows, traffic is a prerequisite for sales.

My own approach to business blogging is a combination of blogging whatever takes my fancy, coupled with a mirrored with a hefty dose of SEO strategy and the desire to make a living.

I used to blog as purely a means of creative, self-expression but that died away after I changed career and started my own business.

I’m yet to consciously set out to be more conversational on this site. I try and do that on Twitter. But I have taken considerable steps over the last year to increase my traffic through SEO and keywords.

WP Scribe SEO Plugin

As I’ve noted before, since I installed the SEO plugin the weekend it launched, I’ve seen a considerable rise in traffic to this site. I also get better results in Google and, as it happens, better conversion rates.

Although I love the conversations I have and witness on blogs, I tend to regard blogs as a strategic channel for business growth (and a way of making new friends interested in the online communications industry)! That’s why I was interested in Danny Brown’s post last week recommending Arkayne, a similar plugin to Scribe that seemed good for business.

Straight from the Horse’s Mouth

Even my customers seem to see business blogs as a stepping stone to business. For instance, I always ask new customers how they found me and last week’s response was fairly typical:

“You were at the top of Google for the phrase I searched for,” the client told me. “And your blog offered what I was looking for. That’s why I contacted you.” [Read more...]

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Your CEO Should Participate in Social Media

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April 26, 2010 By 26 Comments

It doesn’t take long to discover that not that many CEOs actively participate in social media. Just last summer, for example, ÃœBERCEO noted that only two of the Fortune 2009 list of the top 100 CEOs had Twitter accounts!

If your B2B is using social media channels like YouTube, Twitter, Flickr or a business blog, here are some reasons your CEO should be regularly involved:

Participation, Active Involvement

CEOs should not be isolated from customers and potential customers. In fact, your company can seem more in touch with its audience if the CEO actively participates.

Of course, CEOs are, by nature, busy people; however, they should be part of your content marketing strategy. If B2B CEOs are regularly:

  • tweeting
  • writing a CEO blog,
  • appearing regularly on YouTube or
  • a podcasting

your marcom strategy can bring your CEO closer to your audience.

It’s not necessarily about involving them on EVERY channel, but your CEO should be involved somewhere that is clearly marked. For example, one of my clients, Stockholm University, draws attention to the vice chancellor’s blog as part of their social media strategy.

If you regularly receive a lot of discussion about your services on Twitter, get your managing director micro-blogging. From a customers point of view, there’s one thing to make contact with customer services and another to actually connect with the CEO of a company who takes your issues or comments seriously.

Beyond B2B Crisis Management

It’s typical to see the CEO wheeled out onto YouTube or the company blog if a crisis hits. There they are apologizing, assuring customers the matter is being dealt with blah blah blah.
[Read more...]

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