Comments for

Comment on B-to-B Marketers: Is There a Way to Track Social Media? by Miranda

Miranda — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:18:03 +0000

I agree with most everything in this article, however, I disagree that social media doesn’t have set objectives and ways to track response mechanisms. Social media campaigns should ALWAYS have an objective otherwise you’re just posting aimlessly into the ether with no real reason. It is absolutley no different from direct mail communication in that sense. No matter what avenue you use you should always have a measurable objective be it to increase registrations for a meeting, increasing visits to your website, etc.

You can measure the effectiveness of your social media campaign by funneling people back to your website from social media. By leading people back to your website you can track the effectiveness of your campaign by analyzing your referring sites. If your referrals from social media goes up then you know you are doing something right and it can give you insight into what content resonated the most with your audience.

Comment on Social Media Presents An Opportunity for Manufacturers: Are you Taking Advantage of It? by Nick Stamoulis

Nick Stamoulis — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:47:07 +0000

Millions of people use social media, which means that no matter what industry you are in it can be a beneficial marketing tool if you use it properly. Blogging is an excellent strategy because people are looking for information. If they see you as a trusted resource, they will be more likely to hire you.

Comment on Social Media: What Are You Afraid Of? by cpinkney

cpinkney — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 19:19:12 +0000

John,

Great summary for those (especially in the Hardware industry) who haven’t embraced on some level Social Media.

As a Communications Major with family who are deeply involved in the hardware/retail industry (NRHA, Hardlines, etc), I am constantly dropping little hints to fully embrace it, where there can be really no failure. The most recent conference I attended hosted 200 (middle management to senior) management level people from big-box companies who WANTED to know how to run Social Media; I am baffled it hasn’t burrowed into their hopefully adaptive strategies.

The industry of tradesmen, and hardware especially are fickle when it comes to really grabbing onto Social Media roots, however, it is developing, and something I am using as part of my research.

Thanks for this, John!

Callum.
@calpinkney

Comment on Here’s an Example of a Small Manufacturer Who’s Leveraging Social Media by Nina Baker

Nina Baker — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:19:44 +0000

You have a great blog and we’d like to think we do the same for distributors at DisTribute (http://blog.tribute.com/)!

Comment on Social Media Presents An Opportunity for Manufacturers: Are you Taking Advantage of It? by Dan Kidney

Dan Kidney — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 23:34:36 +0000

Great read with valid points. I worked as a Thomas Register, now ThomasNet, preferred vendor for years and always saw the benefit of taking a different angle from the big green books. Most manufacturers were hesitant in the green book/CD days but are finally seeing the benefit of a multi-tiered approach to their marketing initiatives.

Comment on Trends for B-to-B Marketers to Focus Their Efforts in 2012 by tribalstylemarketing

tribalstylemarketing — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 06:33:22 +0000

I’d like to highlight that one bullet point,

[Collateral goes interactive like embedded videos – 92% of users say it positively affected overall influence.]

Video makes money! Get your vids up there today.

Comment on Are You Considering Mobile Media as a Strategy to Reach the Professional Tradesman? by tribalstylemarketing

tribalstylemarketing — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 06:26:05 +0000

It’s amazing to look @ Smart Phone market share around 40%. Meanwhile At&t is freaking out & throttling their users data speeds. Imagine what they’d do if we had 90% penetration! Seems like they wanna sell the phones, but don’t wanna upgrade their infrastructure.

Comment on Social Media Presents An Opportunity for Manufacturers: Are you Taking Advantage of It? by sleibson2

sleibson2 — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 13:51:14 +0000

This post is extremely significant in two elements of social media that it does not name: facebook and twitter. Both of these social media engines get more play in the consumer markets and I entirely agree with the omission of facebook in connection with the use of social media to tell a manufacturing story to business prospects. Twitter is also much less useful for B2B communications than the hype might lead you to believe. However, Twitter has one universal follower that makes Twitter use worthwhile: Mr. Google.

Comment on Are You Listening? by tribalstylemarketing

tribalstylemarketing — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 18:57:31 +0000

I find that with social media, too many people & brands are “pushing” & not “pulling” their audience. Gary Vaynerchuk talks about this as well. Go on Twitter & follow your followers, watch what they talk about, reply to them, do searches with keywords (as you suggested) & comment & reply to them.

Comment on What’s Your Mobile Media Strategy for 2012? by tribalstylemarketing

tribalstylemarketing — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:26:56 +0000

Couldn’t agree more! I think when we reach the 50-60-% smart phone saturation mark (US) we will start to see more mobile activity. Currently we’re around 40% smart phone on our US mobile phone subscriber base. That’s why I always suggest Texting because most people do not have smart phones for apps & easy mobile browsing.