The reality is you can’t be all things to all people. Pick a side, draw a line in the sand. Your company will be better for it.

Content marketing over the last few years has become the big buzz word and is often associated with social media. While it can be used to foster social media relationships, content marketing goes way beyond that. As a matter of a fact, it defines who you are and what you stand for.

Years ago you had limited ways to communicate your value proposition, not so today. Today specialists not generalists (no matter what field) are the preferred choice when folks are looking for something and they have a multitude of ways to get information about your company. And people like to be associated with leaders.

Let me ask you a question. If you think this assumption is correct, what do you or your company stand for? Have you chosen a niche? Are you considered the leading expert in it? If not, you’d better do it soon or you may not be around in 10 years. So how are you going to define and get the word out about your specialty? Content marketing.

By creating good content and sharing it, you can establish yourself as the thought leader in your niche. You can attract and retain customers by creating and curating valuable and compelling content on a consistent basis.

Ten years ago before anyone heard of social media, companies still stood for something. I believe you’ve heard of IBM or Apple? You knew one was known for main frames and the other for PCs. Today when you think of either brand, what do you think of…computers or other things? IBM may still make main frames, but they got their butt kicked in PCs and are known more now for their consulting services. Apple was defined by the PC, but not today. When you think of Apple, you think phone, tablet and soon TV.

The point is, both of these companies reinvented themselves and used content marketing to help spread the word in different ways. IBM took advantage of both traditional and social media methods to communicate their position. Apple, on the other hand, didn’t rely on social media directly, but worked the social media system by getting great content out to bloggers and others on the social network to create the buzz for them.

What are you doing to spread the word? Are you using content marketing?

I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Here’s a few other posts you might find interesting:

How Are You Managing Your Content Marketing?

Four B-to-B Marketing Efforts That Can Improve Your Results

Does everyone within your organization understand your different stages in the selling cycle? Most sales funnels were set up for developing traditional leads. A question you must ask yourself is whether social media leads fit into your existing process and if so where? As a rule, social media leads take longer to convert because they are engaging  you earlier in the process.

Nurturing social leads needs to be handled differently.This will include decision-making content designed to answer questions, overcome objections and provide opportunities that arise during the purchasing process.

I recently read a good post by Nichole Kelly in Social Media Examiner, 5 Tips for Moving Social Media Leads Into the Sales Funnel that I thought might be of interest to you. She makes useful points from understanding the sales funnel to optimizing the path to conversion and explains why social media leads need to be nurtured differently.

What do you think? Have you successfully converted social media fans and followers into revenue? Are you still trying to figure out how to do this?

If you’re doing a blog or thinking about starting one, make sure you identify the objectives and expectations at the onset.

Our objective when starting the blog was to talk to those interested in reaching the professional tradesmen and ways you could do that. We also wanted to help educate our target audience (manufacturers) on ways they could integrate social media tools into their marketing mix since most of them were very traditional on how they approach things and didn’t like change.

I can remember back in the mid 90s when websites were the big thing and how even back then manufacturers were the last group to come to the party. For those of you who have been around long enough, you will remember those days. Can you image a business today without a website?

To become a thought leader in marketing to the professional tradesmen was our primary goal. We knew that if folks like you (by the way, if you’re a regular, thanks for sticking around) got benefit out of my babblings, we would eventually connect and might even do some business.

We have established dialogs with several folks and have been fortunate to start doing business with several of them. It’s gratifying to be at a trade association meeting or shows and be introduced to people who know who we are because of the blog. And oh, by the way, we are getting business from our blog which was one of our other objectives.

If you do a blog,  make sure you have clear objectives and an audience that wants to learn more.

We all are facing the challenges of doing more things with sometimes fewer resources, so it stands to reason that what we do, do we want it to give us the best results. Where are you getting your leads and how are you qualifying them? I recently read an article by Dave Thomas on B2B Online Marketing that talks about the results of a recent nationwide survey from BtoB Magazine and Bizo that highlights marketers biggest challenges in 2012.

Among them were:

• Paid search came in as the second-ranked tool for marketing, followed by display advertising (35 percent);
• 60% of marketers claim their biggest challenge this year will be generating additional leads;
• 63% of marketers state that their marketing mix either falls short of sales demand or they are not entirely sure their mix is working;
• 56% note brand promotion as a major area of focus.

What I thought interesting was that their biggest challenge was that leads were falling short of sales demands. I guess does that mean that companies are forecasting growth and in order to attain it, they need more leads?

I guess the question I’d like to ask is are you experiencing these kinds of challenges, and if so, will you  share with the rest of us?

I know the big focus and conversations over the last few years have been on social. Have you jumped in yet, and if so, what kind of results are you getting? What about traditional things like print ads in trade journals and direct mail? Is anyone gaining traction with these?

So to answer my own question, we’re finding in our self promotion that both traditional as well as social media are playing important roles in new business development

A few years ago, we added social media to our marketing mix with this blog. It’s been a major commitment by us to do 2-3 posts a week, but our strategy is paying off. We not only have clients following us, but also potentials who are looking at going after the professional tradesmen.

The blog increases our visibility and also visits to our website. We’ve had a run on inquiries over the last 6 months from folks who have been following us and like what we’re saying. From the market overviews to Podcasts with industry leaders, they have recognized that we specialize in a niche market they are trying to reach and have come to us for help. What’s nice about these new business opportunities is that we’re not competing for the business.

All of our new business isn’t coming from social. We’ve had a print campaign going for the last three years in the leading trade journals where we put a false cover on the copies that go to potential advertisers in those markets. This too has brought us several new business opportunities.

So what’s working for you?

Google Reader will save time and allow you to consistently share and create appealing content that will be of primary interest to your target audience.

Social media is a great tool for new business, but it is the creation and curation of content that will provide success. Creating content is difficult. If you are going to write effectively, you must read and your reading will fuel your writing.

Constantly using search engines to find your resources is not only a huge waste of time, but you can easily get distracted. How often have you started a search for something in particular and 1-1/2 hours later, you can’t even recall what you were looking for? 

The key to creating good content is to have a simple system that brings an organized approach to your online reading.

One of the most effective time management tools for an online reading program is an RSS Feed. There are a number of RSS Readers to choose from. My personal preference is Google Reader.

Once you have clearly identified your audience, Google Reader can help to organize your resources around their interests. You can be sure you are on the same page as your audience, reading what they are reading, discovering their trade publications, information and research from their associations, etc. You can also glean important information from sources that are not specifically relevant to your audience.

Here’s a sampling of what Google Reader will help you do:

• Stay up to date with the very latest materials.
• Comb quickly through online resources from hundreds of source sites in a single place.
• Easily share your reading to your followers in Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest.
• Keep materials organized by creating folders and tags. Just like with email, folders help you easily find what you are looking for. It is far better than managing your email inbox.
• Quickly spot trends.
• Monitor your competitors or your client’s competitors. Know what they are writing and sharing.
• Create a consistent system that allows you to stay updated by reading the latest information from target audience’s industry publications, associations, even their competitors.
• Use it for Google Alerts. You will want to have a lot more alerts being created for specific type material than you would have coming into your email inbox.
• When online resource sites don’t pan out, easily drop them from your feed.
• Use the share settings to share your favorite blog posts and articles directly to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and other social media channels.

I have established the mornings as my daily reading time. Google Reader is set as the Home Page for my browser. It is the first thing I open each day. My readings are gathered from resources all over the internet and organized into a central location. It becomes my own personalized Continuing Education program.

If you read feeds on the iPhone or iPad, I recommend using Reeder, a nice app that can be used for that purpose. You will be able to view your feeds in “stacks” based on the folders that you have assigned to them.

Reader for iPhone: iTunes $2.99

Reader for iPad: iTunes $4.99

How are you researching for good content?

In the 25-plus years Russ has been in this business, he’s seen lots of changes in how leads are delivered and with social media, how they are created. This brings to light the need to develop a social media strategy to generate sales. It also requires CRM and lead management programs that ultimately enable companies to track sales results.

Listen to our conversation – click below.

Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and known as the Godfather of Content Marketing, describes it “as a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable actions.” Does that sound like something we should be doing?

Roper Public Affairs says that 80% of business decision makers prefer to get company info in a series of articles vs. advertisements. 70% say content marketing makes them feel closer to the sponsoring company, while 60% say company content helps them make better product decisions.

So how do we manage this thing called content management? I found a good book by Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi called Managing Content Marketing that might be a helpful tool for your marketing team to read. They outline and focus on 5 areas:

1. Understand YOU – What makes you different? You need to define this before writing content to support it.
2. Understand THEM – Who and where are the communities you’re serving?
3. What content can you provide to help build loyalty?
4. Subscribers need to be fed, nurtured and unsubscribed when it’s time.
5. Measure success.

Content marketing is a different way to get the same information in front of customers, and we all need help and tools to manage it better.

We did a webcast with Joe Pulizzi on content marketing that might be of interest to you. You can watch it here.

That’s why it wasn’t a big surprise to me when a recent study by HubSpot said that LinkedIn generated the highest visitor to lead conversion rate of 2.74%, almost 3 times higher than both Twitter and Facebook.

I guess that shows me that the people who are on LinkedIn are there for business purposes and are looking to network. So here are some tips on how to leverage LinkedIn:

• Invest the time - develop and nurture your community. Don’t post something for the sake of posting. If you don’t have good content, wait until you do.
• Focus content on what’s working - if blog posts are getting the most traffic, concentrate on doing more of them. If webinars or podcasts create more activity, focus on them.
• Don’t forget lead generation content - call-to-action items need to be included in the mix so you’re continually inviting people to engage.
• Keep learning - don’t take any success for granted. Keep working to improve your content.

Those are some of my thoughts. What are you doing to take advantage of LinkedIn?