Social Marketing «

Transition to Timeline: 4 Easy Ways to Get Started

March 14, 2012

Facebook officially launched Timeline for brand pages on February 29th. The month of March is a transition period for pages to acclimate to the new layout and operation of Timeline. When March 30th comes around, all pages will be pushed to Timeline.

If your organization has a Facebook page there will be a lot of changes with the switch to Timeline, but there are four fairly easy things that you can do before March 30th to make the transition to Timeline smooth.

Consider the Cover Picture – Cover photos are one of the most noticeable changes in Timeline. If you haven’t set up your cover photo by March 30th, your page will have a blank strip where the cover should be. Cover photo sizes are 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall. Images not in those dimensions can be repositioned for the look that you want for your page. Facebook has restricted what can appear in cover photos, so when you design yours, keep in mind that your image cannot feature price/purchase information, contact information, calls to action or references to Facebook actions (Like, Share, etc.). There’s more information here (https://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php).While you’re considering your cover photo, look at your profile image again and make sure that it will work with the cover you choose.
Tell Your Story – Timeline gives pages the opportunity to tell the organization’s story. Even back before Facebook existed. Events can always be added to your Timeline later, but telling the basic story helps your fans know more about you. Some events that you may want to highlight include:
-          When your organization was founded
-          Important milestones (anniversaries, name changes, goals reached)
-          Launches of new products or services
-          Awards
Take a Tour – Take the time to put your page in the preview mode that Facebook gives you. That will let you adjust to the admin panel and features before your Timeline is published. Find where things are and see how your information section looks. You may want to make some adjustments before you publish.
Prepare for Change – There are a lot of changes that your page will experience. On the administrative side, you’ll need to make some decisions regarding some new features. One major change you’ll probably encounter is the feature that lets your fans message you. Previously, pages and their fans couldn’t private message on Facebook which lead many pages to answer questions and problems publically on the page or directing fans to email them.

Timeline gives you the option to tell your story and highlight the important parts. Many of the changes present opportunities to try new things with your brand.

We made the switch to Timeline last week, stop by and see what we did at www.facebook.com/SonnhalterB2T

More information on Timeline can be found here (https://www.facebook.com/help?faq=203955942973503)

1 Comment | Social Marketing | Tagged: facebook, Timeline | Permalink
Posted by tradesmeninsights

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

March 13, 2012

As B-to-B marketers, we are concerned about demand generation as our fundamental mission with lead generation being the primary way of measuring success. Here are four ways that will help you get better results.

I read an interesting article by Jim Leach, VP-Marketing, Harris Corp that outlines the CORE items you need to focus on. Here are some highlights:

Content - You have two challenges here for creating great content. One, the people who probably know the most about your product are probably terrible writers and two, your audience has no time to read. Jim suggests that a product engineer or possibly a customer service person might be the ones to tap to write content. His rules are simple: be brief, be brilliant, and be gone.
Outreach - Your best source of info is from your sales force. They are out in the trenches every day and know what the pain points are for customers and potentials. Take those insights and turn them into content nugget one pagers with common themes that might be used in a drip marketing program.
Response - Don’t lead your potential back to your home page on the web where they have to start the search over for the particular item that interested them in the first place. Create specific landing pages with tailored messages and the ability to collect info and download valuable info depending on where they are on the sales ladder – awareness, research, evaluation, selection or purchase – you should have items on that page that address each step in the process so the potential can find what they want easily.
Engagement – Most B-to-B sales have longer buying cycles so you need to keep your prospect engaged throughout the process. Make sure that when they come back at you with questions to be sure to ask them some as well so you can continually update their status.

CORE marketing can help you focus your efforts and close more sales. What are you doing to improve your marketing results?

1 Comment | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing | Tagged: b to b marketing efforts, content sharing, engagement marketing, harris corp, jim leach | Permalink
Posted by tradesmeninsights

Why a Mobile Strategy Is So Important to Reach the Professional Tradesman

February 28, 2012

We all know how busy contractors and the trades are. Most of their time is spent on the job site. They rely on their smartphones, and more and more are using tablets in the field. Mobile is not going away. Consider this stat:

77% of the world’s population (5.3 billion people) are mobile subscribers!

A recent post on Marketo, BtoB Marketing To Go: Why Mobile is Crucial to Your Lead Generation, highlights some interesting stats from a recent comScore study:

72.2 million people accessed social networking sites or blogs on their mobile devices.
Almost 40 million U.S. mobile users access social media sites daily.
Facebook,Twitter and LinkedIn increased their mobile audiences by more that 50% in 2011.

So what do you think the chances are that some of your target audience isn’t in the stats above? Mobile users are interacting with brands and you should not miss out on the opportunity to engage them.

If you like this post, you may want to read:

Is Mobile Marketing the Best Way to Reach the Professional Tradesman?

What’s Your Mobile Media Strategy for 2012?

Leave a Comment » | Marketing Tools, Marketing Trends, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing | Tagged: comscore, jason miller, lead generation using mobile, marketo, mobile marketing strategy, mobile strategy | Permalink
Posted by tradesmeninsights

Should Google+ Be Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy?

February 23, 2012

Some of you may have already jumped into Google+. According to recent stats, as of January 2012, there are over 90 million users (Twitter has 100 million active users). To put this in perspective, they launched Google+ by invitation in June of 2011 and opened it up to the public in September of 2011. Google is positioning Google+ as their Facebook for B-to-B.

Google+ is a great content sharing platform, and building an audience on it may be one of the smartest things you do as a content marketer according to a recent post by Brian Clark on copyblogger, Why Google+ is an Inevitable Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy. Here are two highlights on why:

Google+ is a part of Google – they do a good job integrating with Google docs, Chrome, Google Reader, Gmail and YouTube.
Search - Google is the king of search and now they announced the Search, plus your world which merges personalized search with social search.

Brian also discusses concerns about Google having a stranglehold on the market and what we might expect moving forward.

The key for those of us who write content is to understand the language of our audience and make sure we reflect that in our content. Search will do the rest.

If you like this post, you might want to read:

Suggestions on How to Make Sense of Google+

Google+ and B-to-B: How to Get Started

Leave a Comment » | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Marketing Trends, Social Marketing | Tagged: brian clark, copyblogger, google, Google Plus, is google+ part of your content marketing strategy | Permalink
Posted by tradesmeninsights

Here’s an Example of a Small Manufacturer Who’s Leveraging Social Media

February 16, 2012

I always like stories of the little guys who take on the 800# gorilla and win the battle. One of the benefits of social media is you don’t have to be an 800# gorilla to succeed. In my opinion, it’s the one who is consistent on providing good content and responding in a timely matter that really counts.

All too often larger companies need to go through a “process” that is very time-consuming for both posting content and answering questions.

Madison Electrical Products is a small, privately held manufacturer that services the electrical contractor marketplace and is one example of doing social media correctly. The family business was purchased a few years ago by an individual that thought there was some opportunity to grow and build value in the company. When he bought the business, Madison was considered a third-tier player that competed on price. Bringing in industry experts, they identified opportunities that they thought a company of their size could take advantage of.

According to Rob Fisher, Director of Marketing for Madison, what he found out was he couldn’t outspend his competitors, but he could outmarket them by using social.

“We started off slow, initially created basic Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. The first few months, we did a lot of monitoring and listening to discover what electrical contractors and distributors were discussing. Once we began participating, we kept the focus on addressing industry issues and trends.

We keep the self-promotion to a minimum. For us, we’re much more interested in using social media to learn from and talk with our industry peers. We also want to be a resource to help others in the industry, which is why we began blogging.”

Realizing that a “commodity product” approach would limit potential growth, Madison launched the Sparks Innovation Center, the industry’s first crowdsourced approach to product development. Contractors and electricians can submit product ideas for consideration through the Sparks page on Madison’s website. To date, Madison has received more than 120 submissions, with six products already launched and several more in the pipeline.

What a unique concept: Listen to what your customer wants and give it to him/her. Thanks to Madison’s commitment to online engagement and listening, coupled with their increased involvement in industry associations, they have become known as thought leaders and are currently making new products that aren’t commodities. Now, when Madison attends regional distributor meetings, they don’t have any problem filling up their dance card.

This is just one example of what a smaller company can do if they are committed to an ongoing program using social media. (By the way, these guys aren’t clients of ours.)

1 Comment | Social Marketing | Tagged: crowdsourcing, leveraging social media, masdison electrical products, sparks innovation center | Permalink
Posted by tradesmeninsights

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