Posts Tagged ‘LinkedIn Groups’
The Two Core Elements of B2B Social Media Marketing Success
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012There have been numerous models proposed for social media and content marketing (including the Four C’s of Social Media Marketing model previously published here), but when all of the complexity is stripped away, social media marketing success comes down to two core elements: content and amplification.
Content is like singing a song. Amplification (done well) is like singing that song into a microphone. On American Idol. Late in the season.
Content can be produced in a wide variety of formats:
- • White papers
- • Case studies
- • Video
- • Podcasts
- • Presentations
- • Product data sheets / brochures
- • eBooks / digital magazines
- • Blog posts
- • Webinars / webcasts
- • Checklists
- • Infographics
- • Research reports / briefs
- • Product reviews
- • News releases
- • Newsletters
- • Online tools / apps
- • FAQs
- • Guides / toolkits
- • Tutorials
- • Microsites
- • Bylined articles
- • Virtual events
- • Buyer’s guides
- • Product comparison grids
- • ROI / TCO calculators
But regardless of the format, the first key to getting your content amplified by others is to produce high-quality, share-worthy content. Of course, in the B2B realm, your content should be targeted at addressing a specific question or concern of a specific type of buyer at a specific stage of the buying cycle (e.g. research reports at the top of the funnel; webinars at mid-funnel; product comparisons near the bottom).
Truly “social” content will go beyond those basics, and also be:
- • Optimized: content is more likely to be found and spread if it contains the words and phrases your buyers are using, rather than jargon or internal company terminology. These can be discovered by using keyword research tools or by talking to your customer-facing employees. The use of keywords in content should never be forced; content that’s truly written for your target prospects will incorporate these words and phrases in a natural manner.
- • Remarkable: ask yourself—if I were on a buying team that was evaluating my product or service, is this a piece of content that I would feel inspired to pass along to other members of the team? To my boss?
- • Unique: people are most likely to pass along content that is new or different—information, a point of view, or a collection / presentation of data that they haven’t seen before. According to Google, there have been 77,400 blog posts, articles and guides written that contain “SEO basics” in the title tag. The world probably doesn’t need another article on SEO basics, and such a piece would be unlikely to be shared, unless it somehow stood out from the previous 77,400 writeups on the topic. Not easy.
- • Compelling: to be shareworthy from your standpoint, the content should compel the reader to take some sort of next step—download a white paper, register for a webinar, subscribe to your newsletter, contact your sales team—some type of action that makes the effort of developing the content worthwhile. Otherwise, it’s just entertainment.
- • Easy to share: encourage sharing and make it easy by including social sharing buttons on your content whenever practical. Recent research shows that incorporating social sharing buttons increases email sharing by 115% (and helps with all sorts of other content as well).
Amplification is the process of getting influential voices in your market to share your content with their friends and followers. It is not about creating a “viral video” or some such thing. What kind of videos go viral? Funny videos. Videos featuring animals doing cute things tend to do well also. Create a funny video of animals doing cute things and you’ve got an almost sure-fire viral hit. But unless you sell pet supplies, the value of drawing that traffic to your site will be virtually zilch.
The amplification process has three essential steps:
1. Build a network of influencers. There are several ways to find the key influencers in any industry. On LinkedIn, search for relevant groups, then connect with members of those groups. On Twitter, search for hashtags relevant to your industry, or peruse Twitter directories like Twellow and WeFollow. Identify the top blogs in any segment using AllTop, then note who those bloggers include in their blogrolls. If you’ve got the budget, search for influencers using a social media monitoring or PR management tool.
2. Develop relationships with those influencers. Follow them on Twitter. “Like” their Facebook pages. Join the same groups on LinkedIn. Read their blogs and leave thoughtful, value-added comments. Tweet / retweet their posts and other content, and ask questions. Take an interest in them and they’ll be likely to take an interest in your content as well.
3. Produce content that those influencers will want to share with their friends, fans and followers. Key influencers get into that position by staying on top of trends in their industries, and sharing valuable, interesting, relevant content with their followers. Help them to do that and you’ll end up helping everyone involved: those influencers will become even more influential, they will amplify your content (because of its high quality), and—most importantly—your prospective buyers will be more likely to see and respond to your helpful and informative content.
The bottom line? “Build it and they will come” only worked in Field of Dreams. Success in social media marketing requires both “building” it (creating great content that showcases your unique expertise and compels buyers to act) and amplifying it through a network of the key influencers in your particular industry segment or market niche.
Best Quora Guides and Insights of 2011
Thursday, February 2nd, 2012Is Quora still a significant social media destination? When the service was first launched, I was (like many others) flooded with notifications of new followers and invitations to follow back, to the point of annoyance. But that flood began to subside in about April of last year and had slowed to a trickle by late summer.
Blogger interest in the site seemed to follow a similar pattern. At the end of last winter, posts about how cool Quora was, the various uses for the site, and tips for getting the most out of it seemed ubiquitous. Then they began to taper off and disappear.
According to Compete.com, traffic to the site did fall off sharply in February and March of 2011 after an initial surge, but has rebounded to new highs since then (though half a million unique visitors per month isn’t particularly impressive for a social media site).
What do you think—are Quora’s best days still ahead? Will it go the way of MySpace? Or will it fill a niche and level off?
In any case, here are a few of the best Quora how-to guides and insights of 2011. As things stand now, there’s unlikely to be a 2012 version of this post next year.
Why Quora Won’t be “Bigger than Twitter” by Smart Insights
In this amazingly prescient post, Dave Chaffey lists 14 reasons why Quora won’t overtake Twitter (yes, in early 2011, there were people who suggested that it would) including “Asking or answering questions isn’t a daily must for most. But you often do want to socialize and share daily which is what you can do on Twitter or Facebook” and “There are better niche communities where you can get your questions answered, for example specialist communities or LinkedIn groups.”
A Marketer’s Guide to Quora by HubSpot Blog
Brian Whalley provides a helpful basic guide to what Quora is, what makes it different from other social networks and social media sites, how to get started with it, and the marketing applications of this Q&A tool.
33 Quora Q&A Resources: get actual ROI out of using it by SEOptimise
Frequent best-of honoree Tad Chef lists several business uses for Quora, followed by 30+ Quora-related resources covering everything from pros and cons of the platform to how to use it for SEO purposes, concluding “Will you get more out of it (Quora) than you invest in? That’s not clear yet, as it’s the initial goldrush right now.”
Quora SEO: How to Use Quora if You’re an SEO by WordStream Internet Marketing Blog
Tom Demers delves into two different ways to use Quora for SEO. The first is finding topic ideas for tech-oriented content: “take a look at all of the ‘open questions.’ This is interesting because these are questions that people are asking, but that no one has produced a good answer for: demand without supply = opportunity. I can take a peak at this list (here we see 44 unanswered questions) and pull together all the questions that myself or anyone else authoring content for the blog could answer.” The second involves following Google engineers (and ex-Google engineers) on Quora to try to gain insights on the inner workings of Google’s algorithm.
5 ways to harness the marketing power of Quora by iMedia Connection
Ashley Reed provides a helpful how-to guide for marketing use of Quora, from listing to customers and keeping tabs on competitors to commenting on answers and demonstrating expertise in a specific topic area.
Social Media: Making Friends for Fun & Profit
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010Guest post by Kim Albee
With all of the hype surrounding social media, knowing how to dip your toe in the water without falling into the deep end of the social media pool can be challenging. Should you participate? What avenues will be most fruitful? And how do you optimize the time you spend with social media sites?
Excerpted from my new booklet, Effective Online Marketing In A Nutshell, here are some tips that will help:
1. Find 3-5 groups in your target market and join them. Follow the discussions, and when one comes up where you can add value (not just spout about yourself and your business), then participate – help people solve issues and think more effectively about whatever the subject is.
2. Subscribe to LinkedIn Answers for your segments and/or categories. Answer a question every day (be within the top 5 answers posted) until you are selected as the “Best Answer”. Then slow to 3 times per week until you get another “Best Answer” designation. Then slow to one per week (or keep it up if you’re having fun and have the time). The purpose is to build you up as an expert who adds value in your arena / subject matter.
1. Think carefully about your Twitter name. Use your name or a name that is memorable or says something relevant about what you do for your customers.
2. Tweet according to your content strategy. Push traffic to your available downloads. Use a URL shortener like bit.ly or su.pr to schedule tweets ahead of time.
3. Re-Tweet good posts and make friends.
The jury is still out on Facebook’s effectiveness for the B2B market. We’ve got some useful first steps in the booklet on Facebook specifically, as well as additional tips on both LinkedIn and Twitter.
Social media is in the press every day. Its impact on many industries is still murky, but how it is re-shaping marketing strategy and activities like market research and demand generation continues to get clearer and more understood.
Utilizing social media as part of your overall marketing strategy and understanding where it fits in your marketing mix are critical to effectively leveraging your participation and time.
Effective Online Marketing In A Nutshell covers the 10 essential items of Internet Marketing – the 10 critical factors to focus on to be as effective as possible. It offers more information on social media, where it fits, and ways to use it effectively in your online marketing strategy.
To your Internet Marketing Success!
Kim Albee is Founder and President of Genoo, a marketing automation and online marketing tools vendor for small and midsize businesses. She is a frequent speaker at marketing conferences, such as Marketing Sherpa’s B2B Summit, the Online Marketing Summit national, virtual and upcoming regional conferences, as well as the upcoming Niche Digital Conference in Chicago this September. She founded the B2B Online Marketing group on LinkedIn, and is committed to providing information and tools that allow businesses to compete and win in their online marketing activities.
FTC Disclosure Notice: I have absolutely no financial relationship with Genoo whatsoever, and have not been compensated for this post in any way—other than hopefully getting a few retweets.
How to Launch a Successful Blog in 12 Weeks: Lessons from Webbiquity
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010One of the primary reasons most blogs are abandoned is that it takes time to build an audience. It’s demotivating to spend hour upon hour crafting sparkling prose that reveals your most profound industry insights and most valuable guidance, only to see that after weeks of effort, your blog is attracting only a handful of readers per day. How can you avoid that fate and build an audience more quickly?
It can be done. the graph below compares the last three months of traffic on the WebMarketCentral blog, which after four and a half years had built up a sizable and consistent following, to the first three months after launch of the Webbiquity blog. As the graph shows, it took just 12 weeks for traffic to Webbiquity to surpass the traffic level of a far more established blog.
Blog Traffic After Launch - Webbiquity vs. WMC
Granted, in the case of Webbiquity, it helped to have an established blog to link from. But even absent that advantage, traffic to a new blog can be ramped up quickly using the following 12 techniques.
1. Build links to your blog from every possible source. Link to the new blog from your website, Facebook page, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles, other social networking and social bookmarking profiles, comments you leave on other blogs—anywhere you can create a link. Add your blog name and link to company email signatures and include it in your corporate newsletter or marketing emails as well.
2. Publicize the blog through offline channels. Include the URL on business cards, brochures, your corporate PowerPoint template, trade show booth signage, etc.
3. Use Twitter. Twitter is the fourth-highest source of traffic to Webbiquity, just behind Google. Of course it helps to have a sizable Twitter following, but the quality of your followers is much more important than the quantity. A few influential followers (with significant followings of their own) who will retweet your blog post links are far more valuable than a boatload of spammy followers who probably never visit your blog in the first place. Blogging and Twittering work together synergystically; writing quality blog content, then tweeting about it, can help increase both your relevant Twitter following and blog readership.
4. SEO the blog. Write compelling, relevant (i.e., don’t try to be too clever) headlines. Include post tags and properly categorize each post. Use keyword-rich post URLS, not meaningless page names like “id=98″. In WordPress, you can set this in Settings…Permalinks. Finally, include relevant page titles, a compelling description, and keywords with each post. For WordPress blogs, two of the best SEO plugins are All In One SEO Pack and Platinum SEO.
5. Promote your blog posts to your relevant LinkedIn groups. If you haven’t already done so, find and join LinkedIn groups relevant to your industry, groups that key influencers, potential business partners, and most importantly your sales prospects are likely to be members of. Link to your posts as either discussion items (for posts that ask questions, solicit reader feedback, or address controversial industry issues) or news items (for posts that are more straight reporting of research or how-to type content.)
6. Create “linkable” content. Links can generate direct visits and they are critical for SEO. The best way to obtain links is to attract them naturally, by writing link-worthy content. A variety of content can qualify, including posts that report new information, explain how to solve a problem, take a controversial stand, or make people laugh. A SWOT analysis is one helpful tool to develop killer topics for blog posts.
7. Write guest posts for popular blogs. A great way to reach a new audience, spread your company’s fame and promote your own blog is to write an attention-getting piece for an established industry blog. It helps (greatly) if you already have a relationship with the blogger, but even if you don’t, most bloggers are far more open to offers of a guest post than they are to PR pitches. Politely contact the blog owner, offer to write a guest post on a pertinent topic for the blog, and ask what the requirements are. When using guest-posting as a strategy, it’s best to start with relatively small blogs and work your way up the food chain. An offer to guest post will have far more credibility if you can point to other posts you’ve already written. If you’ve never had a guest post published, it’s extremely unlikely you’ll get your writing to appear on an A-list blog like TechCrunch or Mashable, but—as evidenced by the fact that both do publish guest posts—it is possible to work one’s way up to that level.
8. Use social bookmarking. Social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Mixx and Propeller can help drive traffic and provide links, though some sites including the first three in this list use the insidious nofollow tag, which means the links won’t help with SEO. It’s perfectly acceptable to link to your own content, as long as you don’t promote your own stuff exclusively. And if someone else bookmarks your content—vote it up!
9. Add your blog and feed links to blog directories and RSS syndication sites. These links can help drive direct traffic, increase your blog’s subscribers, and improve the position of your blog in search. Helpful, though slightly out-of-date lists of blog directories and RSS sites can be found on the TopRank blog and Robin Good’s site.
10. Link to other bloggers. The golden rule as applied to blogging would be: link unto others as you would have them link unto you. Almost every blogger appreciates links (it’s high praise that you find their content worth linking to) and many will return the favor in some way; by linking back to you, Tweeting up your blog post, social bookmarking it, etc. Linking to other blogs accomplishes at least three things: it’s social (and therefore may lead to a link back), it’s helpful to your readers (by pointing them to more information on a specific topic), and it demonstrates confidence.
11. Submit your blog to AllTop. This is very popular blog directory. It won’t necessarily drive a lot of direct traffic, but it helps, and you never know—Guy Kawasaki may end up retweeting one of your posts and giving you a huge spike in visits.
12. Add alt tags to images and use SEO-friendly file names. Google’s image search can drive a surprising amount of traffic. To optimize the images in your posts, use appropriate alt tags and descriptive file names (e.g., a photo of a polar bear should be named something like polar-bear.jpg, not image01243.jpg). Proper alt image tags also help with SEO of the post itself.
The first requirement of a successful blog launch is to create quality content and publish on a regular basis; weekly at a minimum, more frequently if possible. The second requirement is patience—being willing to stick with it even if your traffic doesn’t skyrocket immediately. There’s no way around that first requirement, but you’ll need less of the second if you utilize all of the avenues above to help your blog quickly build a respectable following.
How Trade Magazines Can Take Advantage of Content Marketing
Friday, March 12th, 2010Recently I asked the question: will content marketing kill trade publications? Gordon Plutsky seems to answer in the affirmative, contending that marketers need to set up their own content distribution channels, bypassing the trade media. Ted Bahr, on the other hand, not only won’t concede the death of trade magazines but isn’t willing even to give up on print versions of them.
Personally, I believe that trade pubs can continue to play an important role in the distribution of industry-specific, niche content to focused groups of readers due to several advantages they have over other channels. Mind you, I’ve never worked for a trade publisher and am not telling them how to run their businesses, these are just observations based on nearly 20 years of media buying and 25 years of business experience.
Conversation Aggregation. Publishers no longer have a monopoly on content creation, but they can potentially create integrations with bloggers, Twitter feeds, YouTube videos, LinkedIn groups and other places where their industry is being discussed and provide a centralized portal for vendor, user and independently created material. They need to go beyond content aggregation to conversation aggregation, facilitating not only publishing but also interactivity.
Research. As independent third-parties, trade publishers are in a unique position to conduct industry research. If buyers are asked whether they have a more positive opinion of vendor A or vendor B, they are far more likely to answer honestly to an independent source than to a vendor.
Ratings and Rankings. Expecting a vendor to objectively rate its products against those of competitors is like asking a mom to honestly evaluate her kid’s artwork against the rest of the class. Not possible. Bloggers could do this independently, but few have the resources to do a thorough job. Only trade publishers (and industry analysts, but that’s another business model) have both the resources and independent perspective to do a credible job in this area.
Events (Online or Offline). Again, publishers are in a unique position to bring together a wide range of participants from both the vendor and buyer sides for online or live events focused on education, networking and yes, marketing.
Republishing – Providing a Forum for Thought Leadership Content. Many marketers have figured out that David Meerman Scott was right in The New Rules of Marketing and PR
And finally, a recommendation: start charging subscribers for print publications. You can offer incentives, such as publishing longer, more in-depth feature articles only in print, or first in print then later online, or in print and in a premium, fee-based area of your website (which paid print subscribers could be given free access to), but charge a print subscription fee. Advertisers are far more likely to see value in buying print media that 5,000 readers are willing to pay for (and hence may actually read) than for 25,000 “free qualified” subscriptions most of which will end up, unread, in landfills. If readers aren’t willing to pay for print, that’s a strong signal—and one ad buyers are unlikely to ignore.
With some refocusing of their business and content models, trade publications have the opportunity to continue to have a central place in the dissemination of industry-specific content. At least that’s my take. What do you think?
