» Social Media Marketing

Defining the Purpose behind Social Media Platforms: Part II

Michelle Salater — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 12:30:32 +0000

Viral content posted on social media platforms is often dictated by the specific attitudes that make up each of these social media sites. Understanding the purpose of each platform and the unwritten behavioral guidelines on each of these sites will greatly influence the components of your online marketing strategy and help you to achieve a favorable position among your key influencers and target audience.

If you have not already viewed Part I of this post, feel free to visit it here.

See below for a spotlight on the various types of attitudes seen on Twitter and YouTube and tips on how to behave on these platforms:

Twitter

Words to describe the attitudes: Quick, news-oriented, informal, fun, streamline

The main purpose of Twitter for businesses: To get in front of key influencers and to build relationships with others in your industry.

Behavior tips: Let me give you an example. The Sumèr team has used Twitter several times to find guest bloggers for our blog. Whenever we find that a Twitter user is providing valuable advice and appears to be a key influencer, we approach them via a direct message on Twitter asking if they would be interested in being a guest blogger for us. We have had great success with this approach and have built numerous beneficial relationships from Twitter.

Because of Twitter’s real-time nature, posting anywhere from 8 – 12 tweets a day is completely acceptable. Your Twitter followers may only see a few of your tweets per day as their list of tweets is constantly moving, and fresh tweets are pushing out older tweets every minute. But similar to other social media platforms, posting informative tips and advice is a must if you want to increase your followers and valuable relationships. Tweeting that you just got home from the mall is not a great way to attract followers, because guess what? No one cares.

Due to Twitter’s unwritten etiquette guidelines, linking your Twitter account to other social media profiles is not always the best action to take when attempting to build exposure and influential relationships. For example, if you link your Twitter account to your Facebook company page, your Facebook page will stream in constant updates (as many as 8 – 12 tweets per day, depending on how often you tweet). Because Facebook is not designed to have a constant flow of real-time updates the same way as Twitter, this could deter people from reading your company page. If Facebook users want to view a streamline of updates from your business, they would follow you on Twitter.

YouTube

Words to describe the attitudes: Fun, highly engaging, professional, and personable

The main purpose of YouTube for businesses: To spotlight a specific product or service, illustrate your industry expertise in an interview, or strengthen your brand image by providing viewers with valuable tips and strategies.

Behavior tips: When posting a video for business, keep in mind that your video should reinforce your brand image, not hinder it. Many times, businesses will post a video just to have exposure on YouTube. But if the lighting and audio are poor, unprofessional elements are strewn throughout your video, or you lack the tools to incorporate effective calls to action throughout or at the end of your video, you won’t be creating a very positive image for your brand. Therefore, only post videos that will encourage viewers to contact you, visit your website, register for an event, or sign up for your newsletter.

And because YouTube is not based on real-time updates that stream through your YouTube home page, it doesn’t matter how many videos you post. Just remember to always post with purpose—not just for the sake of posting.

Did you find this post helpful? Let us know in our comments section.

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Defining the Purposes behind Social Media Platforms: Part I

Michelle Salater — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:30:44 +0000

Are you confused about how to act on various social media platforms? Perhaps you’re unsure of the purpose of each of these platforms. Well, if you want to get out of the dark, you must understand the attitudes behind each of these platforms because these are the attitudes that will dictate your behavior and the content you post.

Noting the varying unwritten behavioral guidelines on each social media site is one of the most beneficial ways to spend your designated business marketing time. When you blindly jump into a social media platform, even if you think you have an idea of the purpose of the platform, you may begin to notice that no one is talking or responding to you. Although it takes time to establish rapport on social media platforms, if you get a feeling that people are ignoring you or completely disregarding your responses, you might want to consider taking a step back and observing for a bit.

If you choose to ignore the warning signs you receive from other social media users and continue to act in a manner inconsistent with the social media attitudes, you may be at great risk for creating a poor name for yourself or your company. When you haphazardly post, you’re not only wasting your time, but you run the risk of tarnishing your brand image.

It’s important to keep in mind that most social media platforms are not designed for companies to make sales. Rather, they’re used as a collaborative hub between consumers, business owners, peers, and key influencers looking to share valuable information and talk about topics of interest. Your website is your main direct-sales-generating tool—not social media platforms.

See below for a spotlight on the various types of attitudes seen on Facebook and LinkedIn and tips on how to behave on these platforms:

Facebook

Words to describe the attitudes: Casual, friendly, open-minded, link-oriented, fun, interactive, real-time updates, personable

The main purpose of Facebook for businesses: To establish casual relationships with peers, key influencers, and targeted consumers; to have conversations and share information with these individuals; and to gain exposure for your brand and your expertise.

Behavior tips: When interacting on Facebook, don’t be afraid to “like” someone’s post, comment on a post, send a personal message to someone you’d like to introduce yourself to, or invite key influencers to be your friend. Facebook users, for the most part, are open and willing to share and talk about everything from various interests to industry news.

Because of Facebook’s friendly and inviting atmosphere, the conversations that occur are less professional and rigid and more real, conversational, and personable. For this reason, don’t try to put on your best professional attitude; injecting your personality is the best way to attract friends and followers on Facebook.

Also, keep in mind that posts should not be sales oriented. We often go by the following rule of thumb: 20% of posts should be about your company and 80% should be information you receive from others. Whether you share informative articles you find online, blog posts, or videos, your posts should always be valuable and designed to build a connection with other Facebook users.

LinkedIn

Words to describe the attitudes: Selective, professional, business-oriented, informative

The main purpose of LinkedIn for businesses: To establish business relationships and possible collaborations or partnerships.

Behavior tips: One of the best ways to describe LinkedIn members is “selective.” Unless you personally know the person you wish to connect with, you should not attempt to request connections with random people. This is often viewed as impolite and equivalent to spam.

If you do, however, want to connect with someone whom you do not have any third party connections with, you may do so, but with caution. Don’t merely send the person a generic message stating, “Hi, John, I’d love to connect with you.”—probably not going to happen if John has any rapport in LinkedIn or the business world. Rather, send John a personal message introducing yourself, telling him why you are interested in connecting, and possibly commenting on John’s company, website, or blog. The more personable your message, the more likely John will consider adding you to his connections.

In terms of interacting with others on LinkedIn, visit LinkedIn’s Q & A section. Here, you can answer questions related to your industry, or ask other professionals questions that you might have about their industry. In the Questions area, you will see a list of questions related to your industry or interests that others in your network have expressed. When you answer a question with valuable tips and advice, you’re showing others that you are active in your industry, willing to share advice, and highly knowledgeable.

You may also ask questions directed toward a certain group of industry professionals. For example, let’s say you own an eco-tourism outfitter company and want to know the basic elements for writing an effective press release. You may categorize your question based on professionals who will most likely have the answer you’re looking for.

Did you find this post helpful? If so, let us know in our comments section, and stay tuned for Part II of Defining the Purpose behind Social Media Platforms.

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Understanding the New Ways to Market Online

Michelle Salater — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:30:32 +0000

You know it’s true: you cannot continue to chase your tail in circles, marketing the same way you have been and expecting different results. After all, that’s the definition of insanity, isn’t it?

The game has changed: how markets react, how people search for information, prospects’ attention spans, and prospects’ purchasing behavior.

While it’s easier than ever to market online, generate more exposure, and bring in more business, in order to do so, you have to understand the new rules of the game.

If you’re feeling frustrated, overwhelmed, or simply want to ramp up your online marketing efforts, then you’ll want to join me for a free webinar on “Marketing in a New Media World” happening Wednesday, July 21, 2010, at 1 p.m. EST / 10 a.m. PST. During this one-hour event, I’ll be showing you how I successfully market my own company and help my clients achieve the results they desire.

Reserve your spot here.

On this one-hour webinar, you will learn how to . . .

Easily locate and engage with your target market and key influencers.
Share your brand message without selling (or being annoying and pushy).
Be found online using new search trends.
Integrate social media into every aspect of your business.
Effectively market your business blog.
Create and market content that people want to read and share.

Reserve your seat today.

Again, the free webinar happens Wednesday, July 21, 2010, at 1 p.m. EST / 10 a.m. PST. You’ll be able to ask questions via webinar chat, so come prepared with questions, and make sure you attend the live event. I’ll also be giving away some free gifts, but only to those who are on the live webinar.

Feel free to share this event with your friends and colleagues, but please make sure you reserve your spot HERE.

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5 Tips for Building Online Relationships That Last

Michelle Salater — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:30:49 +0000

As many of you know, I was asked to speak at the Big Africa business conference in Harare, Zimbabwe. Quite a few people have asked me how this came to be: Did I know the conference organizers? Did I submit a speaking proposal?

The opportunity came to me because of my efforts to build online relationships across the globe. The invite can be traced back to a Tweet, which led to an email, which led to a call, which led to the invite. To top it off, Sumèr was asked to write Big Africa’s website copy and help them refine their marketing message.

If I can end up halfway around the globe, speaking to an eager audience of business owners—all because of reaching out online—then you can, too. (By the way, if you haven’t seen the clip from the event, click here).

Below are 5 tips for building online relationships that last and produce results:

1. Become friends with your favorite bloggers on social media: Friending bloggers on social media platforms is a great way to stay in front of and build relationships with your peers and target audience. Blogs often have an area on the sidebar that features direct links to the bloggers’ profiles on social media. Take advantage of this by visiting their profiles, adding them as your friend, and leaving a friendly message for them on these profiles. I’ve reached out to some of my biggest key influencers this way. It’s powerful, and it works.

2. Comment: Build relationships with others by commenting on blogs, Facebook walls, videos, Tweets, answering LinkedIn questions, and more. Comments should offer additional valuable advice, compliment the post, or provide constructive criticism—with respect. I suggest searching blogs and social media platforms for topics related to your interests and your industry and commenting on these areas at least once a week.

Also, if you are commenting on a blog post, do not put your website or blog URL in the body of your comment. This often shows up as spam and will not be accepted as a comment. There is a designated area in the comment section that asks for your blog or website URL, as well as your name and email address. This is the only place you should place your blog or website URL.

On the other hand, if you’re commenting on a social media post, feel free to put a link to an article or post that you wrote. But do not constantly bombard people with your own articles. Instead, ask questions, provide additional advice, and recommend someone else’s article as a valuable resource. The whole point of commenting is to build rapport with others and show you are an expert in the industry or topic yourself.

3. Ask Engaging Questions: When you target certain social media users with a question pertaining to their industry or to their interests, you’re are engaging them and illustrating that you are interested in what they have to say. It doesn’t sound like much, but it is—it shows that you took time out of your busy day to ask them for their valuable expertise.

One of the most effective ways to engage and build relationships is to ask bloggers questions in their comments section that pertain to a post they wrote. Just remember to subscribe to the comment thread or check back frequently—the last thing you want to do is ask a question and never return to the blog to engage in the conversation.

4. Share and Support: When you mention bloggers or online friends / acquaintances on your Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, Twitter, and / or StumbleUpon, ezine, or blog, it not only adds diversity to the content on your page, but it also shows that you seek out valuable information and support the tips and advice that these people provide. Also, don’t forget to encourage followers or readers to contact you with questions, and post links to websites or pages that interest your audience. Give freely, be generous, and people will love you.

5. Send out personal invitations. Whether you’re asking someone to become a fan of your Facebook company page, sending an invite to a special event, or an invitation to an upcoming webinar you’re hosting, customize your invitations so that they connect with the receiver on a personal level. Take a quick look at his or her profile, and mention something specific: “Hi, Sue, we both like Cary Grant. I’d like to invite you to my fan page, where we can talk about his movies.” Tell her what’s in it for her. Two or three authentic, personal invitations per day have the potential to open numerous doors for your business.

Frustrated because you can’t seem to connect with prospects online? Not sure of what your company needs to be doing to market online? Join Michelle Salater for her free webinar on Marketing in a New Media World. Click here to register for the event.

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Why Aren’t Your Sales up to Par? Could It Be the Shift?

Michelle Salater — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:00:21 +0000

The key to getting customers to purchase from you is to influence them in some way, shape, or form—right? But how can you influence your customers and prospects if you aren’t conforming to their shifted purchasing and decision-making behavior? Quite simply, you can’t.

Before I delve deeper into the subject, some of you may be wondering, what shifted purchasing and decision making behavior? Well, take a look at your sales for the past year and a half. If they’re not quite up to par, you can probably thank the shift for the low numbers.

But, this shift in purchasing behavior isn’t the deciding factor in the fate of your company. Rather, it’s the beginning of a new era. Embrace the change by integrating one of the most influential and engaging elements you have into your online marketing and social media efforts—yourself.

But before you can do so, it’s important to educate yourself on the shift in purchasing behavior and understand the dynamics of engaging prospects.

Below are three ways to begin to understand the whole picture of social marketing:

1. Understand that social media marketing isn’t black and white: Many of our clients come to us asking how to properly post to Twitter or Facebook. Although there is a certain etiquette that should be respected, it’s also important to embrace your unique brand message and think outside of the box. There is no right or wrong way to Tweet or post to Facebook; just use your best judgment, and always remember that your prospects’ purchasing behavior has shifted to a more personalized approach. As long as you’re not being overly salesy, you’ll do just fine. Remember to be engaging, conversational, and approachable by injecting yourself into all that you do.

2. Consider how you prefer to be sold to: **Queue the red flag** you probably don’t prefer to be sold to at all! Rather, you want to feel a connection to companies before you purchase from them. A salesy pitch is the last thing that’s going to connect you to a company—you can see right through those, and so can everyone else. Being “sold to” doesn’t influence you to purchase—if anything, it probably deters you from purchasing. But, if you are influenced by the actions, reactions, and conversations you’re having with a company (in other words, the emotional connection you build with that company), you are being influenced to purchase in a way that doesn’t turn you off.

3. Don’t try to sell, and you’ll make the sale: You’re probably scratching your head in bewilderment, but I assure you, this tip can be justified. For example, let’s say you own a luxurious day spa and you want to leave your clients with more than a rejuvenating experience at your spa, but something that they will also remember you by. You could give them an eight-by-eight-inch card outlining “At Home Spa Treatments,” “DIY Spa Treatments,” “Bubble Bath Guide,” or “Tips to Making Your Pedicure Last Longer.” This way, if your clients want to give the cards to friends or hang it on their refrigerators, you’ll remain in front of your clients and reach others.

For prospective clients, you can offer these cards as a downloadable free gift on your website. This shows prospects that you are an expert in the spa industry and you care about your clients and are compassionate toward their needs. You’re also showing them that they don’t need to purchase from you to have a relationship with you and to benefit from your services.

Did you find this post helpful? If so, share it with your friends on Facebook.

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Is Business Transparency a Given in Everything We Do? I Say Not.

Michelle Salater — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 11:00:43 +0000

Each day I read the Ragan.com headlines and often learn something new and valuable. But, the other day, as I was looking over the headlines of the day, I came across a post, What social media words do you want to retire? I found the content of this post to be a bit off. The author of this post, Danny Brown, discusses five of his least favorite social media words and phrases and why he dislikes each.

One of his disliked phrases, which actually stuck out to me as an important phrase, was “Transparency is key.”

Here is Danny’s reasoning behind why this phrase, out of many others, should be “put into the social media retirement home.”

“Transparency is key. Unless it’s okay for us to lie about ourselves and make us sound more interesting than we are with tall tales and over-hyped statistics, then isn’t this a given in everything we do, and not just restricted to social media?”

Now, I understand that when people throw this term around without understanding what this phrase truly means, it can be frustrating. But, by no means do I think that “Transparency is key” should be thrown into the social media retirement home, and here’s why:

I most definitely see Danny’s point about overused social media phrases and words. Many people have the same exact point of view. Sometimes it can get extremely annoying when people throw around phrases without understanding the true meaning behind them.

However, I do think that, if used in the correct context and backed by intelligent ideas, “Transparency is key” holds true. I would have to strongly disagree that transparency is a given in everything we do. Transparency is much more than simply telling the truth about your business and using zero exaggeration. In my opinion, understanding what “transparency” means in a business environment goes way beyond being truthful in your business practices.

Many business owners and entrepreneurs often don’t understand exactly what it means to be “transparent.” The truth is, transparency can come in a variety of different forms. A face behind a brand, a strong and clear business message (on all marketing materials), and even a credo or philosophy section on a website are all forms of transparency. These elements enable your prospects and current customers to connect with the brand on a personal level.

And, often, strategically expressing your business transparency is an acquired skill. In fact, transparency is a branch of marketing. Is everyone educated in the effective practices of marketing? Probably not. So then, why is being transparent in our business practices “a given,” as Danny says.

When you throw “Transparency is key” around without understanding the defining aspects of it, you are setting yourself up for speculation. In other words, transparency is not something you say you are. Rather, it’s something you illustrate through effective brand messaging.

Respectfully, I think to say that “transparency is a given” is an incorrect assumption.

What do you think? We’d love to hear in our comments section.

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What Businesses Can Learn from the South of France

Michelle Salater — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 12:00:14 +0000

Continuing with our How Did They Do It? series, where we interview and spotlight companies who are successfully marketing their brands online, this post focuses on the successes of Cannes, France-based corporate hospitality company Azure Online Marketing LTD.

We are pleased to share with you our interview with the managing director for Azure Online Marketing, LTD., Lao Watson-Smith. Azure Online Marketing is a corporate hospitality company based in the beautiful South of France with an international clientele of corporate customers as well as private individuals visiting the region on holiday or otherwise for pleasure. Azure Online offers accommodation services in serviced apartments, luxury villas, and charter yachts, and also manages events, PR, logistics, and staffing.

Below is our interview:

1. For the past 6 months, you’ve been leveraging a lot of social media into your websites and marketing efforts. How were you marketing before, and what specifically caused you to integrate social media into your marketing?

Previously we were using a combination of various marketing methods, in order of importance (focuswise):

Website SEO (natural listings)
PPC (Google Adwords)
Email list marketing

We began to integrate social media into our marketing plans mainly (and simply!) because it began to gain traction as a methodology, and the tools and resources to do so become useable and cheap! At the same time, we found our space both on the natural search engine listings (SERPS) and the PPC becoming crowded, and less and less cost effective. We have always wanted to lead and innovate in our field, and we felt that we could drive our traffic, lower our cost, and, at the same time, differentiate ourselves from our competition by being social media early adopters in our business space.

2. You’ve decreased marketing spending by 70% while increasing site performance (enquiries and bookings) by around 40% since you started on your social media push. Is there a specific strategy you implemented to see these results? Please share what you did to see these results.

1. A strategy of openness and of engaging in an open conversation with our stakeholders (Customers / Suppliers and Staff). This has led to a deeper engagement with our brand and has also helped us to improve our service simply by giving our customers and suppliers the tools with which to feed back information to us—something we never received before.

This, we believe, has deepened people’s trust in our brand, and made them more likely to commit to an action (booking / enquiry) than before. We have used services such as Disqus to get comments on our content, Get Satisfaction, and feedback reviews from past customers (positive AND negative) linked to particular properties.

2. Giving our customers and website users the opportunity to share all the content on our websites with their friends and within their social networks. This has not only boosted traffic, but it has also increased the value of that traffic since a lot of the traffic is now coming by friend referral. This means that the person referred is far more likely to take a deep look at our website and service offerings because he has been specifically “recommended to” it.

We gave our users the ability to sign into our site via Twitter and Facebook (both of which post a message to the user’s profile and into their feeds, which has a viral effect since many of their followers and friends will have similar interests).

As a result of this, we have seen the average user’s time on the website and the number of pages they look at increase greatly. We have also seen a significant increase in repeat visits. We believe that all of this points to the fact that users are more prone to be engaged when they are personally referred, rather than stumbling across the site by way of a generic web search—something that holds little emotional weight.

3. All of the above had an initial setup cost in terms of programming, but little or no ongoing cost. The services mentioned have either free subscription models, which are fine for small businesses, or the cost is marginal when compared to even a small Google Adwords campaign, linking campaign, or any other SEO-related task. Not to mention those campaigns must be redone again and again for best effect, whilst the viral aspects of social media integration remain and work untouched and without cost for a long time!

3. What online platform has brought in the greatest results for your business? And why do you think that is?

A combination of LinkedIn Groups and Facebook Groups / pages has probably had the greatest effect. We have set up profiles, pages, groups, and personas on both of these platforms for various events and localities that we are involved in. Luckily, we are involved in an industry that has “sexy” connotations, from our geographic location (South France) to sexy and noteworthy events (Cannes Film Festival), and thus, it is not hard to get people engaged and talking in a group.

We have stewardship of these groups; therefore, with thousands of members and a lot of discussion, networking, and banter, we have the opportunity to insert our messages and themes into them as we wish. We are very careful to do this very subtly, and not to detract from the fun networking side of them. And there is most definitely a very fine balance one has to find between overtly promoting commercial services and offering the group members timeouts and useful information that they can act on. We seem to have managed that fairly well, and thus have built solid user communities who engage with our programmes, messages and groups, and what is more, they evangelize them to their personal networks!

4. How do you locate your target market online / on social media?

Again, we are lucky and blessed to work in a very notable and high profile / high visibility sector, so it is relatively easy to target people who will be attending, or at least talking about, events and the area. We do this by monitoring “chatter” on the networks and monitoring those that are joining groups associated with the events and the region.

5. Have your online marketing efforts had an international impact? If so, what strategies did you use to reach a worldwide market?

We attract visitors and have customers from all around the world. We have not so much used a strategy of “reaching out” worldwide, but rather a strategy of ensuring that we are visible worldwide. People find us. We therefore have a presence on all social media sites (which seem the most segmented by geographic region), and we make sure our content, or at least the major part of it, is available in several languages (but only the languages for which we have a native speaker on staff).

6. How have your online marketing efforts impacted the relationships you have with your current and prospective customers?

The afore described efforts have impacted little on our existing customer base, really, since we have a fairly advanced nurturing and re-sales department that works on building personal relationships with our existing customers—that part has not changed. We are in a “touchy-feely” service-orientated business with large ticket / value items, and as such, we need to build personal, offline relationships with our customers, face-to-face and on a personal level.

With our prospective customers, however, it is a different story. We are feeling that they are far more engaged right from the moment of first sale, are less prone to “buyers’ remorse” following an expensive booking, and, also, critically appear less price sensitive. I believe that they feel that they know us already by the time they come to make a reservation, and this has resulted in our managing to increase our “close rate” substantially, which must be directly related to deeper feelings of trust engendered by our openness and our perceived social presence.

About Azure Online Marketing LTD:

Azure Online is a corporate hospitality company based in Cannes, France, with an international clientèle of corporate customers who attend the various trade-shows, markets and festivals in the South of France, and also with private individuals who visit the region on holiday or otherwise for pleasure. Azure Online offers accommodation services in serviced apartments, luxury villas, and charter yachts, and also manages events, PR, logistics, staffing, and other related needs for our customers.

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Why Your Target Market’s Attention Span Is More Targeted Than Ever

Michelle Salater — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:05:53 +0000

Anyone can post anything on the Internet. This is why we have conditioned ourselves to quickly skim, scan, and scavenge the Internet for the good stuff. There is simply too much useless information on the web to waste our time reading through each article, Twitter post, Facebook profile, website, or blog post, and watch every video on YouTube.

Finding exactly what you’re looking for on the Internet can be a pain. This is why Internet users shift their attention instantly from one thing to the next.

As more and more information is added to the Internet each and every second of the day, the attention of web users is often tugged from one item to the next within mere seconds. Think about YouTube for example. To the right of each video you watch, there are suggestions for other videos you might also like. If the first video you play doesn’t grasp your attention, you’re going to click on one of the other videos suggested within just a few seconds.

If Internet users aren’t finding a video entertaining, a blog valuable, or a website informative, they’ll leave—it’s as simple as that.

Because of this small attention span, it’s important to understand what keeps your target audience focused. Where do they place most of their attention, and when are they most active online? Understanding and utilizing these essential components of your target audience’s attention span will enable you to quickly get in front of your prospects, grab their attention, keep their attention, and convert them into customers.

Whether your online marketing materials consist of a website, blog, social media profile, YouTube channel, or a weekly newsletter, they will not be found unless you actively promote and optimize your valuable content. Active promotion and SEO work together to enable your social media posts and online marketing content to surface in search results. SEO and online promotion work simultaneously as the catalyst for increasing brand awareness and finding followers who are key influencers.

In order to successfully promote your online marketing materials, and therefore, successfully promote your business, you must understand your target audience’s attention span. It’s small, targeted, and extremely specific.

The key to grabbing and keeping the attention of your target audience online is to place yourself strategically in front of them and know how to keep their focus on you.

Here’s how . . .

1. Become Instantly Visible: Real-time social media networks are a wonderful way to become instantly visible to your target audience. When you properly optimize your posts, are active throughout each day, follow the conversations your key influencers are having, and post relevant information on these social media sites, you are increasing your chances of visibility to your target audience and key influencers.

Based on the conversation your target audience is having, you can place relevant and valuable information right into their attention scope. These prospects will then be much more likely to lend you their attention.

2. Keep them crazy glued: Now that you did all the legwork to get in front of your prospects and key influencers, how are you going to keep their attention glued to you?
Your content—whether in the form of website copy, a blog post, a Facebook post, or a tweet—must be . . .

A great or new find for your audience.
Interesting to your audience.
Engaging (whether through captivating words, interactive elements, or photos).
Written so that it speaks directly to your market’s needs / desires.
Truthful and authentic.
Consistently stimulating.

3. Tell them what to do: Now that you have done the incredible—held your target audience’s attention online for longer than a few seconds—you can direct them to take action. Whether that action is to view another one of your videos, visit your website, email you, or visit your blog, you have to keep their attention and encourage them to connect with you. Even if they don’t immediately contact you directly, they may be following you via social media—waiting to receive your next bit of valuable and engaging information.

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How One Real Estate Company Successfully Uses On- And Off-Line Marketing

Michelle Salater — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 11:00:36 +0000

As part of our How Did They Do It? series, where we interview and spotlight companies who are successfully marketing their brands online, this post focuses on the successes of commercial real estate brokerage firm, Titan Commercial.

In the below interview with Emily Vanderbeek, Marketing Director for Titan Commercial, Emily shares the company’s on- and off-line marketing successes and strategies.

Below is the interview:

1. Where you do you spend most of your marketing dollars, on- or off-line? What past results have impacted your marketing spending decisions?

Titan Commercial spends most of its marketing dollars off-line. As a commercial real estate company, a lot of leverage comes out of putting up signage on the properties that we are representing. This way, individuals can see that the property is available as they drive by.

We also create informational packets for every property, which we either print or email to potential clients. This helps to ensure a quick, easy, and eye-appealing way of sharing property information.

This is not to say, however, that online resources are not valuable to us! We put our listings on multiple websites such as LoopNet, Costar, Property Line, etc. Also, we have invested heavily in email blasts and are currently redoing our website and looking into Search Engine Optimization. This is a large investment that we feel will be very worthwhile in the long run.

Past results that have impacted our marketing spending decisions are varied. The reason why we spend most marketing dollars on signage is because in the real estate world, a “for sale” or “for lease” property is expected to have a sign displaying its availability.

Also, a huge benefit of a sign is the amount of exposure it receives from the people driving by. In terms of online marketing, past email blasts and property listings have produced great leads and results for us. This is why we continue to spend a considerable and growing amount on online marketing.

As the world continues to gravitate towards online as a means of obtaining information, we feel that this will increasingly become a huge segment of importance for us to reach our customers, which is why we are heavily investing in website redevelopment and a social media presence.

2. How has marketing online affected the way customers and prospects perceive and engage with your brand?

Marketing online has made our brand easily accessible. Between email blasts, online listings, social media, and our website, with the click of a few buttons, you can find Titan Commercial’s property listings, our brand identity, and outreach efforts in which we are participating.

This has helped us to reach potential clients that we may not have otherwise been able to reach. It has also helped to shape Titan Commercial as a leader, by allowing us to tap into great resources like social media, which allows our business to engage with clients and customers. Additionally, our online listings have generated a lot of leads for our brokers, because the first thing that most people now do when they are seeking a property is to search online resources for their needs. We offer a quick and reliable solution to their needs through online marketing.

3. What social media platform has brought in the greatest results for your business? What are those results?

In regards to social media, Twitter has brought Titan Commercial the greatest results. Titan Commercial has shaped itself as a leader in the field as a result of the continual tweeting of our “Titan Word of the Day,” real estate news, and articles involving market trends. Many people have “retweeted” our tweets, and we know that our links are successful because they are continually growing in the number of clicks they receive (just a week or two ago, a link we posted received over 250 clicks!).

This clear engagement has helped individuals perceive Titan Commercial as a leader, because we have positioned ourselves as an educator, which is always a great position to be in. The results have brought a continual increase in Twitter followers, and it has also increased the number of viewings that our website has received.

4. How have Twitter / FB helped increase property listing viewings? In what ways? Be specific.

Twitter postings have helped to increase web traffic to our company website and, often, when people go to the web they will search our available properties. Every Twitter follower that we add is another opportunity for us to market our name and properties to him or her. We see this as a slow and gradual process, and we are aiming to build our brand name first, and from this, people who want to search for properties will come.

Additionally, every once in a while, we will tweet links to properties that we have available. This is done on rare occasion so as not to spam our followers. These links often receive hits, which clearly indicate an interested individual. Though we have not yet received an actual lead from our property link postings on Twitter, the clicks that we receive on our property link postings reinforce that we are indeed generating interest. Hopefully one day we will reach the right person at the right time, and they will actually pick up the phone to call us!

5. How are you tracking and managing your social media efforts / online marketing efforts?

The website http://bit.ly/ is a great resource because it shortens URLs and tracks the number of clicks that the link gets. This combination is perfect to use for Twitter and has been a huge resource for us.

We have continually managed our progress on social media by reviewing our followers every week and noting the number of click-throughs that we receive on our links. This helps us to gauge which links interest people, which links do not, and which links have been successful. Another way we manage our success is by tracking how many people retweet our posts. This is a number that is continually growing.

In regards to email blasts, we generate reports for every email blast that we send out. These reports tell us how many people opened the blast and the number of people that clicked through to the website. However, the best way of tracking success for email blasts is the number of leads generated, and we track these as well.

About Titan Commercial:

Titan Commercial is a full-service commercial real estate brokerage firm dedicated to embracing the relationships they have both internally and externally. They focus primarily on assisting clients with real estate strategy and operations challenges across a variety of real estate functions. Titan Commercial has been successful in acquisition, leasing, and disposition of commercial property and consulting.

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How To Get Your Online Marketing Efforts To Pay-Off

Michelle Salater — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 11:00:54 +0000

Continuing with our How Did They Do It? series, where we interview and spotlight companies who are successfully marketing their brands online, we had the pleasure of interviewing Yan-David Erlich of ChoiceVendor.

Providing real-world ratings and reviews of business-to-business service providers in more than 70 categories across the United States, ChoiceVendor is passionate about providing businesses with the resources they need to make the best vendor decisions.

On the ChoiceVendor blog, there are articles on how to find and select vendors, tips for running a business, and best practices for using word-of-mouth marketing to promote your firm. Vendors who list their firms on ChoiceVendor benefit from free, authentic word-of-mouth marketing; any firm with business clients can create a free listing on the site.

In the below interview with Yan-David, founder and CEO of ChoiceVendor, Yan-David shares his online marketing strategies and successes.

Below is the interview:

1. ChoiceVendor is similar to a business to business form of Yelp for startup and small businesses. How are you using your blog, Twitter, and Facebook pages to illustrate this image?

ChoiceVendor is a site by and for business professionals, and we’re developing content that speaks to that core audience.

On our blog, we have articles on how to find and select vendors, tips for running a business, and best practices for using word-of-mouth marketing to promote your firm (vendors who list their firms on ChoiceVendor benefit from free, authentic word-of-mouth marketing). Service providers who are experts in their field often provide guest posts with actionable advice for business owners.

We also maintain a presence on Twitter to connect with business owners seeking answers and advice about vendors, B2B marketers, and service providers who could benefit from listing their business on ChoiceVendor.

Currently, our Facebook page is primarily for outgoing messages to our fans, such as links to the company newsletter and featured reviews. We have plans to develop more interactive dialogue with fans.

We are also planning and actively developing features to more deeply integrate valuable content and community from ChoiceVendor with SMB’s existing networks on Facebook, using Facebook’s recently announced OpenGraph technologies. Although these features won’t be available immediately at our public launch, look for these to come out soon after.

2. ChoiceVendor is an interactive website. How are you using Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and your blog to drive traffic and bring the online conversation to the ChoiceVendor website?

The original and authentic content on our blog—whether written by our in-house staff or our expert guest bloggers—addresses timely and important questions for SMBs, whether looking for new vendors or new business customers. As a result, our article pages are getting noticed by the business community and starting to rank highly in web searches for the appropriate topics of interest, which drives direct traffic to our blog. In turn, our blog is integrated—both philosophically and structurally—with our site, thus driving traffic to the main ChoiceVendor service.

On Twitter, our conversation with business owners and B2B marketers spans a wide range of topics, from high-level discussions about the state of affairs for the business environment to tactical best practices for finding a vendor or new business customer. In some cases, though not all, the right answer is to make use of our service, either to look for a vendor or claim one’s company profile to attract new business. In those cases, our followers and friends on Twitter find their way to our service. That said, we consider Twitter to be less of a marketing channel and more of a forum for conversation with the B2B ecosystem as a whole, so many of our tweets aren’t directly related to the specific features of the ChoiceVendor service, but rather more broadly display our philosophy of wanting to help businesses succeed.

Currently, our Facebook page is primarily for outgoing messages to our fans, such as links to the company newsletter and featured reviews. Our fans who interact with these outgoing messages tend to make their way to our site to interact with more content. We are also planning and actively developing features to more deeply integrate valuable content and community from ChoiceVendor with SMB’s existing networks on Facebook, using Facebook’s recently announced OpenGraph technologies, which we plan to release a bit after our public launch.

We’ve underutilized our LinkedIn presence to date but are working on some features to engage with the community on LinkedIn more actively and will announce these in the near future.

3. What online marketing efforts have brought in the greatest results for your business? What are those results?

No single online marketing effort has stood out as being the bearer of “greatest” results for the business. We really believe—for ChoiceVendor as a business and foremost as a community—in engaging with businesses and B2B marketers in a multichannel / multimodal fashion. As such, our blog, newsletter, Twitter, and Facebook presence coupled with more traditional online channels like SEO work, SEM, and even email outreach has helped us engage with the business community at different times, on different topics of interest, and using the medium they felt was most appropriate at the time. Though it’d be easier if a silver bullet existed, we believe our long-term marketing strategy will continue to be an integrated one.

4. How have your online marketing efforts impacted the relationships you have with your current and prospective customers?

Our online marketing efforts have given us the opportunity to engage directly with our members to find out which issues are most important to them, and then respond with useful content. We want the blog to be a hub of useful information about all aspects of running a business, and we regularly reach out to vendors and reviewers to write guest posts about their area of expertise.

Similarly, we view the conversations with our community on Twitter, Facebook, and through our email newsletter all as steps to building a relationship with the ChoiceVendor community and enabling us to address their vendor and customer finding needs.

5. How has your blog and social media platforms shaped the way your customers and prospects view your brand?

We want our members to view our brand as a place where vendors and service providers connect, and we try to provide useful content for both of these audiences. A lot of our blog traffic has come from keyword searches looking for more information on vendor selection—e.g., our all-time most popular blog article is about comparing between payroll providers.

Another high-traffic topic is social media and word-of-mouth marketing, which is of particular interest to service providers who list on ChoiceVendor. Many small businesses are just getting started with tools like online business reviews and Twitter, so we try to provide educational content about how to use these tools to grow their business.
In general, we’ve honestly enjoyed the conversation with the business community, both on the business decision maker and vendor front and have found the community to respond to this. We’ve invited several business owners and marketers to write guest posts on our blog and found that they’ve been delighted with the opportunity and the honor. We definitely plan to continue this type of deeper conversation with the community as well as extend it to other channels like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

About ChoiceVendor and Yan-David Erlich:

ChoiceVendor is an online community of business decision makers who share their first-hand experiences with service providers through ratings and reviews. Through this community, well-reviewed vendors receive more business and poorly reviewed vendors can engage with their existing customers to address the complaints.

And, as Yan-David so eloquently puts it, “As for me, each time I choose a ChoiceVendor-rated service provider, I’m satisfied in knowing that the wealth of experience of other business owners is on my side—so I can spend less time worrying whether I picked the right vendor, and more time building my business.”

Prior to ChoiceVendor, Yan-David was an entrepreneur in residence at Battery Ventures and the founder and CEO of Mogad / Social.IM, acquired by iSkoot in 2008.

On the ChoiceVendor blog, there are articles on how to find and select vendors, tips for running a business, and best practices for using word-of-mouth marketing to promote your firm. Vendors who list their firms on ChoiceVendor benefit from free, authentic word-of-mouth marketing – any firm with business clients can create a free listing on the site http://www.choicevendor.com/claim_your_business/