Last month we discussed the importance of proper planning and of setting goals prior to jumping into social media for B2B sales. Today let’s talk about your critical first steps. Call it setting up house. Although we are going to concentrate on LinkedIn, the basics of what we discuss and advice will apply to all of the social networks for B2B sales. Your choice of which email address to use is important! One of the topics that I don’t see mentioned too often relates to your choice of email addresses. I might have 10 or more. With texting and social …
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There are so many social media networks online that you’d think that you’ve seen them all. Google Plus created a major disruption when it was introduced last year. And now here comes Pinterest. After reading my recent post on Getting Started with Pinterest, you should already know that it is a “virtual pin board” where you can place photos and classify them according to the things that catch your curiosity as well as share these “pins” with your friends. Picture yourself compiling your thoughts on a digital album and showing them to people who like the same things you like, and …
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Throughout this article, I will be speaking strictly from my experience as to how social media is introduced in universities as an adjunct faculty member within Marketing and Management departments. Therefore, I am not referring to other disciplines or courses other than my own. Social Media as a tool for educators: Most college courses incorporate some form of social media into learning material, so most students are familiar with basic uses of the medium. Considering most students are already using such platforms as Facebook and YouTube, it only makes sense to utilize these tools for education. Students are using social …
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Social media is everywhere these days. You can’t escape it. You really shouldn’t want to escape it. When used properly, social media can be a nonprofit’s best friend. It offers free advertising, easy promotion, and once you’ve given it a little TLC, it gives you a built in audience. The problems arise when Nonprofitss get serious enough to establish a presence online and then neglect it. Just because you forget about your online world doesn’t mean everyone else will. The good, the bad, the ugly – it all ends up online. And if your NPO isn’t hitting the airwaves quickly …
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Integrating social into your marketing? Don’t overlook your most important asset. Your Website is the Core Your company website is a core asset and should be the center of your marketing efforts. Your website is the mainstay of your online presence; it brands you and serves as the foundation, or center, of a constellation of marketing assets. Not only is your website the host of your content and offers, but it is the gateway through which the world can reach you, and serves, in many cases, as a first introduction to your prospects. Your Prospects are Already Online “Many Americans …
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Social bookmarking is coming back in a big way, thanks to the popularity of Pinterest (pronounced to rhyme with “interest”). Dubbed as a “virtual pinboard,” it lets you organize and share photos of the many products, places, and things you find interesting online. You can also browse other users’ pinboards and re-pin to your own board anything that piques your interest. Pinterest has attracted a lot of buzz, and our own Windmill Networking contributor Debbie Miller‘s recent post on Pinterest for the Hospitality Industry actually has more Pins than Stumbles or Pluses! That being said, there are just as many Pinterest skeptics out …
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LinkedIn Company Pages are actually a combination of a number of different modules that are rarely maximized by businesses. In order to better understand how your sales and marketing team can best maximize this multi-functional part of LinkedIn, it’s important to understand exactly what the Companies functionality offers. A good way to start is to compare the Company Page with the most famous corporate presence in social media: The Facebook Fan Page. You could say that a fan page provides details about a company in the “info” section, but this is not the primary way that people are introduced to a …
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Outsourcing training and strategy is a safe bet when you want to implement social media marketing with your company. Rather than give the reins over to an outside resource, it’s a much better choice to stick with your in house team members and let them be guided by a social marketing expert. Your in house team will need to be trained in not only the basics but the more advanced aspects of social media management. If you’re using multiple marketing platforms (Twitter, Facebook and Google+ for example), they will need to understand the strategy, approach and experience that your organization …
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Channel Goldilocks in determining the right amount of PR “personality” for your social business profile—not too little, not too much. Just right. On CBC Radio’s The Current, a recent guest was Susan Cain, author of the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking; she described introverts’ preferred forms of interactions and contributions to society. A sound bite that stood out from a public relations and social media perspective was about how the 19th century focused on “character,” whereas the last and current centuries promote a culture of “personality.” From a social business perspective, what makes more sense …
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Our moms and our kindergarten teachers told us again and again: “It’s nice to share!” But why? How does sharing make things better? Before long the smartest kids figured out that sharing increased the fun. When you shared, more kids wanted to play with you. They’d stay in the sandbox longer, and they’d share their cool stuff with you. Those kindergarten lessons are no less true in the world of social media. In social media, sharing means reposting the content of others (always with a clear link back to them!) or recommending others to your followers. It’s no secret that …
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Use the Right Content Marketing Metrics and Strategy to Produce Real Results I believe it is a very exciting time for content marketing. Some say that this will be its big year, e.g. see 2012 is the Year of Content Marketing; and Windmill Networking columnist Judy Gombita shared this post about a Content Marketing Institute study that projected an increase in spending and said it “remains a top priority for marketers in 2012”). Social media expands the possibilities. By combining the two, you can take a discrete unit of marketing, track its trajectory, costs, impact, and connect the effort back …
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I frequently get invited to speak on social media for professional associations, and when I do it often seems as if the clocks in the room have been turned back 10 years since before the advent of social media. Although there are always some savvy users of social media in the room when I present, the associations themselves are usually using the same antiquated medium to promote themselves, both internally and externally: a pre-historic website and email newsletter blasts. I always say that social media is about the convergence of information and communication. Isn’t this the mission of every professional …
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Pinterest has emerged as a social platform to watch as more businesses jump on board (no pun intended). It lets users organize things they find on the web by creating pinboards then “pinning” items onto boards of each corresponding category. My first thought upon learning about businesses trying Pinterest was that it’s a perfect platform for travel marketing since there are so many (independent and collaborative) components people consider when planning a vacation. Plus, so much of leisure vacationing is taking in scenery, so there is already a very visual association with travel planning. Here are a few ways the …
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Currently, Facebook is the fastest growing social networking site in the world with over 800 million users and growing. With this population, there is a great opportunity for your local business to flourish. Moreover, you would also be able to find your ideal target customer in Facebook if you know how to find them. The Facebook advertising platform is definitely something that is worth exploring especially if you are trying to target a local market .This is a great opportunity for you to get new customers and it seems that failing to be in Facebook these days is a huge …
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If you’re reading this, that probably means you’re involved in a startup. Which means that you’ve most likely heard about Kanye West’s early-January rantfest on Twitter in which he declared his intentions to kick off a new company, DONDA, which will “pick up where Steve Jobs left off”(!). DONDA will supposedly have 22 divisions including:“architects, graphic designers, directors musicians, producers, AnRs, writers, publicist, social media experts, app guys, managers, car designers, clothing designers, DJs, video game designers, publishers, tech guys, lawyers, bankers, nutritionists, doctors, scientists and teachers.” TWENTY TWO divisions, presumably overseen totally by one guy whose main qualifications are …
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