BlogPosts from March, 2011

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Harnessing the power of Social Media: Lead generation in B2B selling

Social media sells, there’s no doubt about that; but when you’re selling B2B, how do you make it work for you?

If lead generation is the blood of your business, then a lead generation pipeline is its artery. But despite the increasing success of B2C selling in social media, as evidenced by the arrival of new ‘social shopping’ platforms like Gloople, many businesses remain uncertain of how to harness the power of social media in B2B selling.

But social media doesn’t have to remain an untapped resource for your B2B business; asking seven key questions can help you unleash its potential, whatever your industry or trade.

What’s your data?

Quietly sitting behind the fancy downloads and flashy graphics of the internet is your key resource – online data. Savvy companies can get ahead of their competitors by ensuring they effectively monitor and mine their data in order to effectively develop their company, as well as set the foundations for their pipeline.

There are plenty of web analytic tools, including Google Analytics, which is free and gets good feedback. If you don’t know your analytics from your elbow, you can also view Google’s explanatory video that accompanies their platform.

With analytics, don’t stay too close to home. While the data you get from your own website can be invaluable, with social media you need to go further afield to get the full benefit of analytics – make sure you explore tools that cover your social platforms such as Bit.ly for Twitter.

Where’s your content?

Without a strategy, even the brightest, sharpest content is a lame duck when it comes to lead generation, and the best strategies are the result of trial and error. Take the content you think your customers want – and if you don’t know it, research it – and make sure it’s available on all your content distribution platforms. Then it’s test time. What platforms work best? What times result in the greatest leads? What content worked especially well? Use the analytics produced as a result of this activity to adjust your strategy and voila! You’re leading the pack.

What leads do you actually want?

So you’ve engaged your customers, but where do they go from here? Make sure you know, and have the infrastructure to get them there, or else you’ve just put in a lot of effort for little return.

Your lead can be a sales call, a brochure request or a subscription – as long as you know, you make sure this call to action and the process that follows is integrated across all your social media platforms, as well as offline distribution. And remember an effective business is a responsive business – ask yourself, if your call to action changes, can you change your infrastructure easily and efficiently?

Where are your leads going?

We’ve all known the frustration of being put through to the new loans department when what we really wanted was to query a bank charge. Don’t lose customers unnecessarily – make sure your leads go to the right person, every time, and close the deal.

Not only that, but you’ll waste acres of valuable data if you let your social media leads disappear into the leads from all your other online and offline lead generation pipelines, and most importantly be unable to track ROI on your social media ventures. Segmentation, with or without a CRM system, is crucial.

Are you getting left behind?

Think B2B social media lead generation stays the same? Think again. Social data is real time – constantly changing and evolving – and your strategy and tactics need to keep up in order to be effective and improve your conversion rates. Monitor your workflow and make sure that you take the steps you need to take, especially with regard to collating and analysing data, in order to maintain maximum ROI.

Are you following up?

What’s the nature of the follow-up to your social media lead? A phone call? A tweet? A knock on the door? Whatever it is, make sure it happens – understand your customer expectations, and make sure you have a team with the skills and resources to nurture your new social leads and respond in a timely manner. By resources, we’re talking about social CRM and social monitoring systems – if you don’t have them implemented already, consider doing so.

Are you evaluating effectively?

You might meet your targets and goals, but nothing’s ever perfect the first time round. Make room and time for a thorough evaluation after each target is hit as you develop your lead generation pipeline. What went wrong? What went right? Why?

By constantly evaluating your performance, you apply the findings to every step listed above, fine-tuning your process and streamlining your service to the benefit of both your customers and your business.

Finally, if it all seems like daunting new territory, remember that it’s not much different from traditional B2B sales pipelines. The main difference is speed – like social media itself, the process is moving fast and ever changing. But by asking yourself the seven key questions above, you’ll not only stay with the pack, but lead it.

How Social SEO WILL help YOUR Business

When discussing Social Media and SEO, most marketing specialists will agree with me when I say they come hand in hand. Combining the two will give you Social SEO which, in my opinion is valuable to any consumer marketing strategy. This article will give you four easy to follow steps to help make your Social SEO matter to your business.

1. Listen & Be Taught

The most important part of this step is to listen to what you social customer has to say. They hold the line between the success and failure of your business- without them it would not survive. Make sure that you dedicate time in your day to listen to what your consumer has to say- your ultimate goal is to increase your ROI.

Google Alert is a great place to start as it gives you the low down on Google and teaches where most conversations are happening.

2. Build Content

When you build content around your business, you want your customers to respond to it in a good way so you have to make sure that it includes a range of; blog posts, videos, eBooks, presentations and even the possibility of Iphone/Ipad applications.

3  &  4.  SEO + Social = Optimise & Socialise

These two steps are combined together to give you one, more important step. For Social SEO to be successful, you need to create greater results in the short-term and long-term by socializing your business. The Optimal way to achieve this is by integrating your social media activities with SEO.

To help start your quest on combining Social SEO with your online marketing, use; Google Instant Results as part of your Social Keyword Research and a slideshow site called SlideShare to help you with your Social Content Marketing.

For a Social SEO marketing strategy to work, you need to consider the Big Picture Process- A three part plan consisting of; Strategy, Leverage and Process. This approach will help create a total, integrated approach to Social Marketing.

Social SEO matters because all businesses are turning to Social Commerce as a way of increasing sales. Combining Social with SEO gives you that extra edge with your online sales and optimising your search engine results!

Is Social SEO important to your business?

10 Ways Social Media Embrace’s the World of Commerce

With Social Sites Groupon and Facebook growing rapidly overnight, it was only a matter of time before social commerce was tipped to be one of 2011’s highest online growth areas.

As shown by Forbes, 41% of Facebook fans are more likely to recommend a brand to their fellow online community. Social Commerce is only as confusing as you make it; the best place to start is by implementing a strategy that will work effectively for your company. To help you with connecting your brand to social commerce, I will give you ten tips on embracing and facing the social world of commerce.

1.      Check & Re-Check your Analytics

When dealing with analytics, you need to measure your social web traffic to help identify your goals and work towards future results. If you find that your social networking traffic is not converting effectively, you need to identify the problem quickly.

It is so important that you check and re-check your analytics because even the most thorough professional may fail to identify an issue.

2.      How social are your Customers?

To find out how social your target audience is, try setting up a Facebook and/or Twitter account to promote your brand. You may not receive the response you initially wanted but, social sites are not for everyone so give it some time before you re-think your strategy.

3.      Using Facebook to promote your Brand

As mentioned previously, Facebook is not for everyone but it doesn’t hurt your brand to have an account regardless; it’s free publicity!

The best thing about using Facebook for your brand is the amazing opportunity it gives you to market your product. If you use analytics (point one) to measure success then you know exactly where you stand with your brand and its connection with social commerce.

4.      Make your Website User Friendly

By this I mean adding Social Media links to your website e.g. Adding ‘like’ or ‘tweet this’. This encourages your users to get involved and promote your brand by sharing content with their fellow social networking friends.

5.      Use a Facebook Shopping App

As most people now have a Facebook account, take tour brand to where they feel most comfortable and offer them an opportunity that they cannot refuse. Using the ‘Shop Tab App’ is an easy place to start when building your Facebook shop. (Although this is limited in regards to its use, you can upgrade to a better platform whenever you feel like it)

6.      Investigate Customised Solutions

If you feel you are ready to transform your Facebook into a fully functional ecommerce platform then there are various routes you can take.

The American firm ‘1-800-Flowers’ offers a flash based site which is pulled in through an iframe because it is hosted on a different server. This is the very first company to trial f-commerce and has proved successful in doing so. If you want detail then ‘1-800-Flowers’ is for you!

7.      Do more than just sell

There are only so many sales you can make without engaging with your target audience. They need to feel part of your brand and that they are contributing to the social shopping experience. The companies that have proved most successful are those who are part of the social web.

8.      Create content that you can give away

By this I mean simply making sure you content can be received by RSS. Introducing this will show your target audience that you have produced content that gives them something they can value. Give your customers something to read without having to answer pages of questions. Don’t lose their interest on an error that can easily be resolved.

9.      Be Responsive

Sometimes a re-tweet or responding to a comment is not enough. Have a look at what that person may have to offer YOU. Take a look at their website/blog as it may help you further your knowledge in commerce.

10.  Create ONE message

The important thing about Social Media is that you have one direct message that you want your peers to see. Yes, you can show other interests but make sure it is part of your overall message; whether that is as a person, or representing a company.

Remember, on average a fan is worth $136.38 to a brand and spends on average $71.84 per year. It’s the perfect time to embrace the world of social commerce; it has the ability to increase brand awareness and much, much more. Thanks for for the gentle nudge that helped write this article from the guys at econsultancy.

Are you ready to Embrace Social Commerce?

The 3 Social Media Metrics that Really Matter!

When you say ‘Social Media Metrics’ to a social media expert, you would expect them to answer with followers, retweets and likes. Are these an influential way of measuring social media? I doubt it. This article will stress the importance of measuring social media and the most effective way to do exactly that.

1.      Conversions

When considering your brand and improving its strength, converting will always be the easier option. It may seem that spending time tweeting the day away will guarantee money but in actual fact, converting is the more successful way of generating money within social media. A brand that doesn’t inspire action won’t be strong for very long e.g. everyone has either heard of or seen the logo for Fred Perry clothing but who really buys the collection anymore?

When you chose to support a brand, make sure there is an accessible link to conversion online or even offline.

2.      Page Views on your Website or Blog.

When considering Brand development, you want your clients to see your brand the way you want it to be seen. A place where you have complete control of your brand is on your website or blog. Having a twitter or facebook account based around your brand may not ultimately draw your target market towards you because you can’t measure the response accurately.

Having people view your website or blog shows they are interested otherwise they wouldn’t have clicked onto your brand page. ‘Re-tweets’ and ‘likes’ have a personal impact but when considering your brand, a page view is more worthwhile.

3.      Opt-Ins

To make your fans part of your brand journey, you need them on your house list and to do this; they must opt-in. As most companies will know that a social networking site has terms and conditions which will state that you do not own the names that you have collected so you need to get them into your environment.

The most important part of opting in is the registration. If people are committing their time to register with you and your brand you know they are interested.

The great thing about promoting a brand through a social network is creating a snowball effect. This is when something begins small and will slowly increase in popularity (we hope this is what will happen with your brand).

You must remember that creating impressions through social media isn’t enough; you need to create sales too.

Is there more to Social Media than Metrics?