Dragan Mestrovic – Page 8 – inBlurbs Inbound Marketing Agency

September 13, 2011October 7, 2011

10 Great Ways How to Reach Global B2B Customers with LinkedIn

LinkedIn has about 100 million users from all over the world and the majority of 56% comes from outside the US.

As the biggest business related social network, LinkedIn offers large opportunities for B2B to get in touch with future and to stay in touch with recent business partners.

LinkedIn offers a wide toolset of features to get seen from future business partners. To list all of them would lead to far. But let me mention some which you can use right away.

For your profile:

You personal profiles are the first stage you have to reach. Register with LinkedIn and complete your profile. Take care to use keywords related to your business. This makes it much easier for the search engines to index your profile and for future customers to find it during their research online.

-Twitter stream

You can add your Twitter stream to your LinkedIn profile. This stream can encourage visitors of your to become more curious about what you do.

-Publications

Ad your publications and a web link where your profile visitor can read or download them. So you can lead visitors of your profile directly to landing page to get them registered as lead.

-Ad your blog

Here you can add your blog RSS feed and all blog articles you publish will also be visible on your personal LinkedIn page.

-Recommendations

A great way to capture attention is when other people talk about you and your qualities. Her you have the opportunity to ask for recommendations of your network members you already have worked with. This can increase your credibility with people who did not know you before.

-Additional Information

Here you can add your websites with up to three links, your Twitter with up to two links and your interests which can be made of keywords to get better found from search engines.

LinkedIn Company Pages:

This is where you can introduce your company to the LinkedIn audience.

-Overview

Here you can write a brief description about your business and how it benefits the future customer.

-Recent Tweets / Recent Blog Posts

As in the personal profile you can add your Twitter account to make your Twitter stream visible on LinkedIn as well and your corporate blog to show your blog articles on your LinkedIn company page.

-Careers

Here it is where you can post jobs on LinkedIn to find candidates on the world’s largest professional network.

-Products & Services

This is my personal favorite of all LinkedIn company page features. Here you have the great opportunity to introduce your products and services to you audience. You can add a description and a picture of the product or service. This is a valuable opportunity on the world’s largest professional network with it 100 million users!

-Analytics

To know what’s going on your LinkedIn company page is important for you. By this analytics tool you get a clear picture what going on, on your company page. So you can measure, observer and improve your LinkedIn marketing.

Keep in mind that all of the above described features are for free. The only thing you have to do is to make seriously use of them. By seriously use those above features you empower your LinkedIn to a powerful business outpost for your company. An additional toolset of chances to get attention, visitors to your website and business leads to increase revenue and profit.

It is as simple as that! Get on LinkedIn be persistent and serious about the goals you want to achieve from your LinkedIn marketing time investment!

–What do you think about LinkedIn for business? I am looking forward to your comments below.

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September 12, 2011October 7, 2011

3 Ways how to use Online Video for Business Lead Generation

The average internet user is watching 30 minutes of video online daily! These people mostly lookout for entertainment.

This opens wide opportunities for your business to get your products and services in front of potential future buyers when they are looking.

The use of online video is growing as people also increasingly watch videos from their mobile devices.

Videos made as product pitches are not a good bet to attract interested people. Also image videos do not work as a potential viral marketing tool.

Your business should use online video to inform and to entertain your audience. Take care to also optimize your video for mobile. As the smart phone use grows you should keep in mind that these users are also able to see your videos on their mobile devices. Here is an interesting article about video sizes.

Smartphone Trends Infographic:

For information / education: You can show your products in action or explain product features in a more understandable way through video. Let your satisfied customers talk about your products and publish and market those videos everywhere on the web.

Watch this video:

For communication: You can do a video blog, where you instead of to write articles can do videos. Steve Garfield’s video blog.

Steve Garfield is a videographer and video blogger based in Boston, Massachusetts. One of the Internet’s first video bloggers, Garfield began experimenting with the technique in 2002 and launched his own video blog on January 1, 2004.

For entertainment: Nobody says that a product video needs to be boring! You can be creative and do an entertaining product video which people like and share.

Watch this video:

If you have a lack of ideas just crowd source your video to your audience, for example to your Facebook friends and Twitter followers.

Do a contest for the best crowd sourced video! So you can create a buzz on the web, get a lot of attention from your target audience, a ton of creative videos online which mention your brand and can lead further interested people to your business.

Online Video Facts Infographic:

The easiest way for you to profit from online video for your business is to do videos by yourself and publish them in your corporate blog on Youtube, Facebook and other videos channels on the web.

You can simply start your video by using the camera you already have. This can be the cam from you smart phone or any other cam you have. Start doing videos of your company and your products. Ask your collages to explain one of your products in plain English and upload, add a descriptive title, tag and describe this video to help search engines to index it and your audience to find it.

Embed it to your website, write a blog post about the video topic and embed it in your corporate blog. Market it on your social media channels and ask for comments and opinions.

Than do the next video and so on.

Don’t try to do a perfect video. There is no such thing like a perfect video on the web!

With the time you will get a better routine and your videos will become better and better. But this will only happen if you start doing them.

— How do you use online video for business? I am looking forward to your comment below.

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September 6, 2011October 7, 2011

Ten Simple Steps to make Twitter your Business Leads Machine

Social media has become an important communication channel for businesses online. Its importance is growing by the technology developments for social media analytics which enable businesses and there for marketing responsible employees to exactly show the ROI of social media marketing to their executives!

Companies increasingly embrace social media and the other important strategies like content marketing and real time marketing an

Social media sites like Facebook with its more than 750 million users, Twitter with its more than 280 million users and the business network LinkedIn with its more than 100 million users offer wide opportunities for businesses, not matter if they are B2B or B2C, to get seen and to get in touch with their future customers.

One billion humans are online world wide and when you take a closer look at the numbers above you can clearly see that it looks like that almost every online user seems to be active in social med.

That leaves only one conclusion, that your future customer is active in social media as well! Which leaves a second conclusion, that your competitor is their also!

Take look at this Social Media Infographik:

“53 percent of people on Twitter recommend companies or their products in their tweets.”
“42% of companies active on Twitter report that they have got new customers through Twitter.”
“Dell was the first company which published their results of Twitter marketing. They made eight million dollars from their Twitter marketing within one year.”

Twitter has more than 280,000,000 users worldwide. So it seems that about 28% of the global online population is on Twitter. These people are all potential future clients for any branch of industry.

Do not cheat yourself by trying to convince yourself that your customers are not on Twitter. For sure they are, so you should hurry to get in touch with them there before your competition takes this opportunity because while you are hesitate.

So what can you do to take advantage of Twitter for your business?

1st Register with Twitter and complete your profile and customize it.
2nd Start to observe the conversation related to your industry. To do this you should download and install TweetDeck. Set you brand name and look if it is mentioned. If mentioned, respond in real time if necessary.
3rd Go to Google Alerts and set Alerts for your name, your company brand, your products, your best customers and your top ten competitors. These alert will be delivered directly to you email box as news appear. This keeps you updated and by the way you monitor your brand name mentions, which offer you the opportunity to respond in real time if necessary.
4th Lookout for your competition and invite their followers to your Twitter.
5th Connect with your audience on Twitter and start the conversation.
6th Share interesting and helpful content. Not only yours but other content from other sources as well.
7th When you publish your own content include a call to action which directs your reader to dedicated landing pages.
8th Do Twitter exclusive specific promotions for your Twitter followers. Direct them to landing pages for lead generation.
9th Promote your Press Release on Twitter. To learn how take a look at HubSpot how they have published a PR on Twitter with its 140 characters.
10th Incorporate effective landing page for lead generation. This will ensure a steady flow of fresh business leads for your sales team.

Incorporate the above for your Twitter marketing, test, measure and refine.

Take look at this Twitter Infographik:

— How are your experiences with Twitter for marketing and lead generation? Leave your comment below.

Further impotant resource:

Shockingly, Twitter Users Don’t Mind Its Ads
‎Was Biz Stone Wrong to Leave Twitter?‎
The case against an Apple TV set

‎

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September 5, 2011October 7, 2011

How to reach 43 percent of all online consumers with your brand message

Stats show 43 percent of all online consumers are in social media. Is your business there too?

78% of online consumers research online before they buy! They research preferred in blogs and their social networks.

Can your future or existing customers find you in social media? Are they able to find you when they research on Google, Yahoo or Bing?

By engaging in social media you increase your chances by about 54% to get found from your target audience when thy research for products your business also has to offer.

By listening to the social media conversation you can discover what’s talked about your brand and what kind of expectations, challenges and interests your target audience has for your.

To be active in social media makes people aware of your brand and gives your business the opportunity to step into a real time two way conversation with your audience.

You get the opportunity to gain trust and credibility and to be there with helpful and share worthy information before you ask for business!

Moreover this 2 two way communication shows you the expectations of your target audience for your products and services. When you listen carefully your audience tells you what, when and how they want buy from you.

You can tailor custom products and services to fulfill your audiences needs and expectations and you can improve existing products and your support to solve your audience’s problems and serve their demand when they need it!

Imagine which kind of impact such knowledge could have on your business and your competitive advantage you can gain over your competition by simply engaged in social media.

An average Facebook user has about 130 friends. When they share your brand to their friends and his friend’s share your brand to their friends and so on, can imagine how far your brand can be spread online?

How can you reach those 43 percent of all online consumers with your brand message?

1.) Start a blog

Companies that blog get about 55% more traffic to their websites. More than a half of them generate new customers through their blog.

To find blogging topics is easier than you think. Just go through your customer requests and questions your audience has about your products and services. For example, you can write How-to’s and publish them in your blog.

2.) Engage in Facebook

67% of B2C and 41% of B2B report that they got new customers through Facebook. Simply go to Facebook and register a personal account first. Complete this and start a business Page as the second step. Find your audience in other business pages and groups and start listening. If you have something helpful to contribute to the conversation than do it otherwise listen and learn.

3.) Engage in Twitter

42% of companies report that they have got new customers through Twitter. Register a Twitter account and start listening to your audience. The same procedure on Twitter: If you have something helpful to contribute to the conversation than do it otherwise listen and learn.

Make yourself interesting and attractive by publishing interesting and share-worthy content on the web through your corporate blog and in social media. Ask your audience for their opinion ask questions about their opinion about your brand and your products. Get the conversations starting and keep it running.

The more content you publish on the web, the more outposts will be online which can be seen and lead traffic to your website.

You will not reach all of the 43 percent of all online consumers with your brand message, but much more than before.

— Do you have experiences with social media marketing for your business now and how are they? Let me know what you think and leave your comment below.

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September 2, 2011October 7, 2011

3.5 billion Reasons for Content Marketing on Facebook for Lead Generation

More than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, videos, etc.) shared each week on Facebook.

Facebook is accessible in 70 languages and has about 750 million users worldwide and there is actually 1,5+ million active business pages online.

There is no doubt if you want to reach your target audience the chances are good that they are on Facebook.

Facebook has become a true business machine which has the power to lift up business in the same speed like its progress. Groupon and other popular brands have experienced this effect in a very successful way. Not to mention the thousands of small businesses who have embraced social media networks like Facebook.

With its massive global reach Facebook has become some kind of a state by its own. And with its technical possibilities like Pages and apps it offers a large toolset for businesses to get seen on this powerful globally accessible network.

But what’s in for your business you will ask now?

My question: Are you active on Facebook, because if not, than nothing. But if you are seriously active in Facebook than this question should have been answered in a positive way yet.

Businesses which want to be active in Facebook but don’t know how to make it happen have two options:

1.) They can do the steps by them self, because there is a truck load of free information on how to establish a business outpost on Facebook. The only thing a business needs to get started is to do the first step and to register a personal account on Facebook. From there you can do one step behind another. From completing your Facebook profile to the registration of a business page.

2.) Or you could shorten your learning curve and save time and money through trial and error by hire a professional agency to help you with your social media marketing like Facebook.

Facebook is a great place to get seen from recent and future customers. Moreover you can attract new customers targeted through the help of Facebook and direct them to your business and your products.

Facebook can become your automated 24/7 business leads machine if you know how to handle it.

How mentioned above there are more than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, videos, etc.) shared each week on Facebook.

You could be one of those smart marketers who are doing content marketing on Facebook to generate new business leads.

Facebook offers you to connect your corporate blog with your personal profile and your business page. So every time you publish a blog post it is also showing up on your personal profile and your business page.

Also you can connect your Twitter with Facebook. Every time you tweet something it also shows up on Facebook.

These above are great ways to spread your content to reach your target audience.

Facebook pages offer you the opportunity to establish custom tabs with your content which you can also optimize for SEO.

By the way when you use Facebook, take care that all what you write there is SEO optimized and tagged the right way. This makes it easier for search engines to find your content and to index it.

Facebook pictures are also in the game of content marketing. Pictures are content as well. Upload pictures from your products and events and describe and tag them right.

Facebook video: A great way to show videos from events, product description and testimonials of satisfied customers.

Avoid speaking about you self. Publish interesting and share worthy content. Publish content with your audience in mind. Allways have your target audience in focus!

Again! Take care that all what you write there is described correctly, SEO optimized and tagged the right way. This makes it easier for search engines to find your content and to index it. Social media marketing is the new SEO.

Marketing takeawy tipp: To publish and market your content on facebook will increase your brand recognition and your credibilty. Produce share worthy and helpful content with your audience in mind.

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September 1, 2011October 7, 2011

Study shows: 20 of 100 of your customers are researching on Google

More interesting is that 20 percent of searches on Google each day have NEVER been searched for before. So every day 20 percent of chances are completely new with new search terms which include products and services.

“Udi Manber, Google’s VP of Engineering, gave a brief 15 minute presentation where he also explained that 20 to 25% of the queries we see today, we have never seen before.”

People hear from their friends’ info about products and services and then they go to their favorite search engines and try to find more information on.

What does this mean for your business? More and more people research online on search engines before they buy products and services. The chances are good that an interesting amount of your target audience is also looking for products and services on the web which you also have to offer.

The chances are also good that those people do not know your business and what you have to offer.

And here is your big opportunity to profit from this fact.

Here are some tips how you can get more seen on the web:

To get found online you need to be active and visible there where your audience is. The best and proven way to get seen on the web is content marketing. Content marketing is very simple and easy to do.

You should publish interesting and share worthy content on the web and market it in social media.

Content is everything you have from your business which can be published online. For example photos, articles, videos published on Flickr, forums, social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, document and video sharing platforms like Slideshare and YouTube.

But it is not enough to publish the content. To tag it right with long tail keywords and include a keyword rich description can also help to get it found on the search engines.

By publishing content through a corporate blog every blog article you publish becomes an outpost of your business online.

Market your blog articles in social media. Social media content is indexed by major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing and your social media activities increase your chances to get found on search results of search engines from people who are looking for products and services you also have to offer. Social media marketing has become the new SEO!

Companies who blog generate more traffic and more business leads.

Find further spaces to publish other kind of content and repeat this. Make content marketing to an important part of your marketing strategy.

The more outposts you establish online the more chances you have to get found from future clients.

Published content increases the brand recognition of a business and can earn a trust and credibility with its target audience. The more interesting content a business publishes on the web the higher are the chances that people will find it also interesting and share worthy and share it with their friends and their social network. This spreads your brand to undefined reach and attracts attention from people which did not know you before.

This effect multiplies! The more content, the more outpost, the more chances to get shared and to get seen from new people the more potential clients you will attract to your business!

Companies which do the content marketing strategy seriously get the most traffic through their outposts on the web. The content there is indexed by search engines and appears in search results when the used keywords are typed into search engines!

Smart companies direct this “outpost traffic” to optimized landing pages to generate business leads, to get new customers and increase revenue!

Marketing takeaway tip: Start to publish interesting and share worthy content on the web and market it on social media. The more content you publish, the more your chances will increase to get found from future customer.

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August 31, 2011October 7, 2011

Overtake 33 Percent of your Competition by Measure your Marketing ROI

If you are in B2B than this data could be very interesting for you! Moreover if you read them backwards you can learn how to overtake about 33% of your competition by simply measure your marketing ROI.

A new research done be Sagefrog Marketing Group and reported be eMarketer found out that about 33% of B2B companies did not track return on investment (ROI) at all.

Do you measure your marketing ROI? If not yet you should do it as soon as possible. To measure the marketing ROI is easier than you think.

What does this mean to your business when you are selling primarily to B2B?

When you actually are able to measure your marketing ROI effectively this could mean that your marketing department is working closely with your sales department to generate and to close leads. This also means you have set efficient CRM and follow processes to support your lead to customer conversion, measurement and reporting.

But if you have not already done these steps above than you will need to rethink your business strategy if you want to overtake about 33% of your competition by apply these simple tasks and processes to your business.

To apply powerful marketing ROI measurement you will need to invest time, effort and money. You will need to do an audit of your whole business and recent processes to learn where you stand at the moment.

From this point you can do a plan to execute your pathway to marketing ROI measurement and to overtake the mentioned 33% of your B2B competition. But be aware that your competition is also not sleeping and they read the news and such reports like this as well. So you should start right away to improve your market position.

Here are some quick steps you could do make your marketing ROI more visible:

– Measure your traffic and the traffic sources.
– Find out which of your pages attract the most traffic and the how long the visitors stay on those pages.
– Optimize those pages and include effective business lead generation tactics on those pages. You could do call to action and you could offer more bonus info by registration through a short form.
– Use technologies like marketing automation software to help you to do the things smarter.
– Segment the generated leads to track the best and most successful lead sources.
– When you push a new lead to your sales, than they should touch the lead ASAP and report the recent lead outcome. They should do this with an effective CRM. By the way Microsoft Excel is not an effective CRM system. Instead of you could use one of the several very high qualities and less cost hosted solutions on the market.

Hosted CRM Solutions:

– Track the way of each lead from the visit at one of your websites, the registration on a landing page, the push to a sales person, through the lead nurturing process and the closing.
– Establish reliable and track able communication ways between marketing and sales so things can be improved in real time.
– Make the reporting of these data and the recent marketing ROI to a real time task to hold your marketing transparent and all people involved accountable for the results.

With these activities you will be able to see from which marketing activities and sources you gain your best ROI and to improve your recent marketing tasks to increase your revenue.

Marketing takeaway tip: To measure your marketing ROI is the same thing as check a course of a ship at high seas. If you do not check your course in your business you will not be able to reach your goals on the long term. Stop relying on luck or your experience. It’s a real time world where things happen and change within minutes. There is a lot of technology out there to help you. Set yourself in the position to see your business in real time. This helps you to make decisions in real time as well. To know where your marketing budget is going and what you get out can make the difference between to overtake the 33% of your competition or to get left behind and lose the game!

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August 29, 2011November 6, 2019

Social Media Recruiting for Businesses Made Easy!

As social media popularity is growing, the business opportunities for companies grow also. Social media has become a powerful communication channel for businesses to gain attraction, to educate their target audience, to offer support and service or simply to stay in touch with recent and future customers worldwide.

Companies which use social media as an additional way to communicate and to get seen from their targeted audience are increasingly experiencing positive results for their businesses. Moreover today technologies like HubSpot offer a great way to visualize the development and ROI of social media and further lead generation ways.

In the mean time every serious business should have learned that social media is not a kids or college students thing. Moreover the most growing group on Facebook is in the age of 55+ years.

But students and other potential job candidates are active in social media like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and several other smaller networks and forums.

Smart companies have discovered that they can attract great employees through social media like they do it to attract new customers. They simply apply their social media marketing and communication tactics to fuel their human resource department with “Job applicant leads”!

To attract potential candidates to your business you need to be credible, authentic and trustworthy.

Most job candidates use social networks to research about potential employers before they submit a job application. The information they discover about a company online decide if they go to submit a job application!

Credible, authentic and trustworthy companies set them self into the position to gain the necessary credit to communicate to their audience of potential job candidates.

What should companies talk about on the web?

Companies should talk about things their audience of potential employees is interested about. But not about them self! You could use tips for applicants what they should take care off when they submit an application and to whom to speak directly to get a more inside view into the company.

How can a company sound more human to attract job candidates?

Being authentic and helpful and not to speak in corporate style is a great way to look more human. Also to introduce yourself in a more personal way, for example use an original picture can be very helpful.

How to showcase the human site of a company?

As above mentioned your business should introduce every person involved in the human resource process. This includes a short bio, a personal picture or even better personal short videos of the humans which work at the company. So they can get a better impression of the humans the maybe goes to work with.

How to use sociel media and blogging?

Social media gains more value for your business when you have something valuable, remarkable and share worthy to say. To start a corporate blog is a great way to publish valuable, remarkable and share worthy content on the web. Also a separate section of the blog can be used to communicate job related information to benefit ad to attract potential job candidates.

You could offer a separate blog to each of your recent employees where they can write about the things they are interested in like IBM does for their employees.

The more valuable, remarkable and share worthy content you companies publishes with the target audiences of potential job seekers in mind the more interested potential candidates you will attract to your job offers.

Your recent employees are great speaking tubes for vacant job positions in your company. You can tell them to communicate job offers through their networks in Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and forums. This will spread your reach in an unexpected way.

Build local specialized discussion groups!

Another great way is to build elated discussion groups in social media. For example if you are an IT company and you need IT consultants for server security, you set a local (your city or state) related group about server security. So you would attract interested participants and if you need a server security expert for an open job you could reach out directly to the persons which are active in this group.

With this strategy you learn in advance about the potential candidate and the candidate about you. You have built a trustworthy relationship previously which increases your chances to get their attention when you need it!

How can you measure the success of your social media recruiting efforts?

This is the simplest part of your social media recruiting. You can do this by taking old numbers to by the hand, means what you have paid out to headhunters and job sites like Monster in the past. Then you have your old spending.

Now you take the new numbers by the hand, means what you have invested into your social media recruiting strategy. The head count cost, the corporate blog setup, content creation and so on.

As your applicants apply on special landing pages you can differentiate the various lead sources very easily.

So you can see how many came from your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, special social media groups you maintain and corporate blogging activities. How many application-leads and how many high quality candidates you get to choose from. Last but not leas how many of them you employed for your business.

How to deal with negative comments?

There are no negative comments only chances to step into conversation!

When you have done something wrong than confess it apologize and get back to business. Do not try to hide something. On the web things become public it’s only a question of time

When anybody says something what you don’t like jump into the conversation and explain your point of view.

The only things you do not need to answer to are insults and personal attacks. You can exclude rude people from your discussion and delete their comments. But all other discussion you need to take as a big chance for communication and to get seen from your target audience.

Marketing takeaway tip: Through right done social media recruiting you increase the quality of applicants. Also you should keep in mind that those activities will increase your brand recognition and how potential candidates view your company as an employer. These effects are priceless!

Further import resources about social media recruiting:

If you also like to attract great employees the smart way, please request a detailed custom quote! We’d love to hear from you!

August 24, 2011October 7, 2011

47 Percent of your competitors are not using Social Media for business

Hiscox surveyed US small business leaders and found out that 47% do not use social media for business. Furthermore 24% of the surveyed stated they do it when they have the time and about 14% indicated they don’t know enough about it.

Puuuuh, I don’t know what you think when you read such information but I ask myself: “What do the 24% mean when they say they do it when they have the time and the 14% which indicated they don’t know enough about it?

Does this mean they step into customer conversation when they have the time and the other seem even not to know how to communicate with their audience?

Maybe they do communication through telepathy or any other exciting media. I am just kidding, let’s get serious now.

Social media websites are communication channels. These communication channels are the places where your target audience is around, where they communicate, ask their network friends for product and services opinion and where major brands and thousands of small business worldwide are ready and prepared to step into the conversation with their audience.

Those businesses are aware they need to be active in social media, to get seen, to gain trust, credibility and to attract there audience to their products and services by publishing share worthy and remarkable content on the web and in social media.

Every business which treats social media as a serious communication channel to attract new customers and to stay in touch with their existing customers and their followers (potential future customers) is a step ahead of those 47% which not using social media for business.

Moreover, every business which treats social media marketing with a strategy and obligation instead of doing it when they have the time will profit from it.

Some facts about social media for business:

– Customer behavior has changed so your marketing must change!
– Internet and social media has changed the marketing push to a real time communication.
– 78% of internet users do research online before they buy!
– They spent 3x more time on blogs and social media than on email or other publications.
– 67% of the b2c and 41% of the b2b companies report to have acquired new customers through Facebook.
– 42% of the companies report to have acquired new customers through Twitter.

Social media makes your business found when your audience is looking! As social media is indexed through search engines, the chances are good that your business appears in search results of the big search engines when potential customers are researching on the web!

What does this mean for your business when you are active in social media actually? It’s simple you are a big step ahead of those 47% which are not.

You should improve your social media tasks and fine tune them step by step to improve your results.

Listen to your audience; this will help you to improve your business and products. When you listen carefully your audience will tell you what they want to buy from you. This gives you the opportunity to build custom tailored products and services to increase your customer base and revenue this way.

Marketing Tip: Keep an eye on your competition and look what they are doing, but do not try to copy them. Instead of look through other industries to get ideas and to adopt their creativity with social media marketing to your business! Don’t try to do your social media marketing perfect. It will never be perfect! Just do it as soon as you can and get the word out to your target audience and then refine it step by step.

Further important sources:

47 Percent of SMBs Still Not Using Social Media. Oy.

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August 19, 2011October 7, 2011

Social Media puts your business at risk! Are you prepared?

The marketing technology company Alterian found out that 80% of companies struggle to analyze their social media data.

As social media marketing is estimated to increase in the next twelve months by up to 25% companies should have clear how the online – social media conversation can impact their brand. Not taking the effort to monitor social media conversation can result in the risk of failing to engage with potential new and existing customers on the web!

How about your business?

Are you monitoring social media to know what conversation is going on about your company?

How do you monitor the web to know in real time what’s talked about your company, your products and your competition online?

No matter if you want to be a part of the conversation or not, conversation about your brand is happening on the web with or without your participation. But when you decide to become a part of the conversation this can offer tremendous opportunities to gain trust and credibility with your audience.

In social media people are talking and an average Facebook user has about 130 friends and they have an average of 130 friends and so on. Good news can spread fast in social media and reach new potential customers. Bad news spread faster.

You need to have a plan how to interact with you audience in good and bad times. You also need to listen and to know what is talked about your brand on the web.

To know what people are talking about gives you the opportunity to jump in to the discussion and explain your point of view. Another underestimated opportunity of listening online is, you get deep insides of your target audiences needs.

In other words they tell you what and which kind of product they deserve and what they are willing to pay for. So you can offer special tailored solutions to your audience and increase business and revenue, only by listening – monitoring.

The customer honors companies which show that they care about their needs and which are willing to communicate.

The ability to know what’s going on and to communicate in real time with the target audience is a powerful credibility builder and supports your branding online.

By knowing what your target audience is thinking and deserving from you sets you in a powerful competitive position. You save time and money for research and you can bring custom tailored products and services to your audience much faster than your competition!

What do you think? Are these above good reasons to start listening – monitoring social media and the web?

To start monitor what’s been talked about your business you can use some free tools:

SocialMention

Like Google Alerts but for social media.

Receive free daily email alerts of your brand, company, CEO, marketing campaign, or on a developing news story, a competitor, or the latest on a celebrity.

Google Alerts

Monitor the Web for interesting new content

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

Build your dashboard with Google Reader

Effective social media monitoring starts with a dashboard.

A good way to build a dashboard is Google Reader. The only thing you need is to subscribe to the RSS feeds of blogs and news sites related to your business and industry, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and you got all at one place. If something comes up which mention your brand or any other interesting news than it appears on your dashboard.

How do you monitor the web and social media? How are your experiences in social media conversation with your customers?

Further important resource: Social media monitoring stumps most businesses: Report

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August 16, 2011October 7, 2011

The sense and nonsense of Social Media Groups

Groups can be a great place to get In touch with your audience. But which groups make sense and which are a simple waste of time?

Most social networks offer groups where you can become a part of the conversation. But do you need to be a part of every conversation and every group?

Today I got some updates from my LinkedIn Groups I am participating and one group is about venture capital.

Especially in venture capital groups are many people who offer financing and in the past I often have posted the question “does anybody get any investment for their business” there?

The people who answered stated that they even did not get any response from those “Business Angels” when trying to reach them. Seems not to be a vlauble source for anything.

How do you find Social Media Groups which are usable for your business?

First of all, potential clients can be everywhere! And the best way to attract attention for your business is to be part of the conversation and to publish share worthy content!

Take your time to go through potential Social Media Groups to find out which one offers the best interaction and in which one interesting conversations are happen.

If you are a member of a group where not much conversation is happen than look further and leave this group.

There is a simple rule: The more people are in a group and the more interaction is happen the better are your chances to participate and to get seen!

Check how many members are in a group. The more the better. Look out for groups of about 300+ participants.

Register with this group and listen to the conversation. If you have something valuable to contribute than do your statement.

If the group you are member of is not very active, than look out for more active groups, where you can increase your visibility and leave this one.

During the time you will learn which social media groups are valuable for your business and which are not. Simply invest your valuable time there where you get the most out of it.

What are your experiences with social media groups? How do you choose your groups?

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August 9, 2011October 7, 2011

Is your health care institution prepared to communicate in social media?

A study done by National Research, a health care research firm discovered that 96% of their respondents use Facebook, 28% of their respondents use YouTube and 22% of their respondents use Twitter to research on information about health care.

The study shows that people which are more likely to use social media for health care information research have an average age of 42 and live in households $75,000 annual earnings or more available.

National Research found out that the most Americans still rely on professional -hospital websites as their main source for research on information about health care but also combine information from social media websites which 11.5% of respondents gather with mobile devices like smart phones and apps.

What does it mean for hospitals, local doctors and other health care related businesses to engage in social media in real time?

When people are looking for products and services on the web they go to Google first to do their research.

When they research about services you also have to offer what will they find?
Will they find your Health care organizations to give the answers to their questions?
What will they find about you? W
ill they find helpful information which benefit there health, if yes how much information is online accessible from your source?
Do you know what’s talked about your health care organization in social media right now?
Do you respond in real time?

Social media is conversation!

Conversation is happen with o without your participation. The point is if you do not participate you lose your chance to explain your point of view. You also lose the chances to show your professional competence and the opportunity to gain trust and credibility in the health care sector.

Health care organizations which miss this opportunity to engage their audience who is actively researching for health care information will be left behind after the smart organizations which embrace social media and understand the necessity of conversation to show their professional competence and to gain trust and credibility at the moment when their opinion is requested and needed.

Open and honest conversation earns health care organizations a lot of credibility and can result in an increase in wide exposure for their organization.

Open and honest conversation can also increase business for a health care organizations by simply being there when potential help is needed and to offer professional competence and information in real time when it is needed!

What should you do to secure your share of health care conversation in social media?

Your first step should be to establish a presence in social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

As the next step you should set alerts through Google Alerts to stay on track what’s talked about you and your health care organization. This gives you the opportunity to react in real time and you should use this opportunity to do so!

The strategy to go to different influential groups and listen to the conversation should be your third step. Listen and if you have something beneficial to contribute, than do it otherwise listen further.

By contributing to discussions in a professional manor you attract attention of your target audience and the level of quality of your contribution decides how you will be seen from your audience and your influence.

Marketing Takeaway Tipp: Get on social media, there where your audience is. Participate in conversation in a professional and beneficial way and increase your chances to and get seen, to gain trust and credibility when your audience is researching on Google for services you also have to offer.

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August 4, 2011October 7, 2011

Show me the social media Return on Investment

The Return on Investment of social media is measurable and this is much easier than you think.

There for you need the right platform which displays all tasks, traffic, lead sources and includes them into CRM and financial software.

To get this done social media needs to be seen as part of an integral strategy called Inbound Marketing.

Inbound marketing includes Blogging, social media, Lead Conversion, Lead Nurturing and Closed-Loop Analysis.

Inbound marketing is the marketing strategy that focuses on getting found by customers when they research online for products and services your business also has to offer.

With inbound marketing businesses earn their way to the customer, by publishing helpful information on a blog, in social media and forums.

A seriously executed Inbound Marketing strategy saves up to 62% of the marketing budget and increases lead conversion rate by up to 55%.

A study done by the “MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Sloan Institute” has discovered that businesses which use Inbound Marketing can reach up to 13% revenue growth in a time period of 18-24 month, depending on the target market.

To get measureable results and even your up to 13% revenue growth for your business out of Social media you need to do some more things than only to have a Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn account.

Social media is a communication channel. So you need to communicate with your target audience!

About which topics you should communicate with your audience? Simply about anything related to your market which solves your audiences’ problem!

To do this effectively a corporate blog can be a great way to publish helpful information and start the conversation through blogging and on social media as well.

You should also consider to distribute helpful and share worthy information in any channel where your audience could do research online for products and services in your industry.

When your audience researches for products and services from your industry they go to Google first. Here they are able to take a closer look to different topics for their search term.

Everything, here all the search results appear for the requested keywords.

Images, here all the search results which appear for the requested keywords and are related to any picture published to the web.

Videos, here all the search results which appear for the requested keywords and are related to any video published to the web.

News, here all search results which appear for the requested keywords and are related to any news published to the web.

Shopping, here all search results which appear for the requested keywords and are related to any shopping published to the web.

Books, here all search results which appear for the requested keywords and are related to any book published to the web.

Blogs, here all search results which appear for the requested keywords and are related to any blog article published to the web.

Discussions, here all search results which appear for the requested keywords and are related to any discussion published to the web.

When you go through these search options, than you can discover communication opportunities, to position yourself where your competition actually is not active.

Simply type in your company URL address and see what’s coming up under these above search options about you.

When you are done, repeat this with your best competitors URL address.

Marketing Takeaway Tipp: Discover creative ways to reach your target audience to set you apart of your competition.

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August 3, 2011October 7, 2011

Learn from the ‘PEANUTS’ social media expansion approach for your business

Today the Iconix Brand Group, have announced ‘PEANUTS’ launches major digital and social media expansion. They are expanding into mobile gaming, e-books, Facebook and digital apps worldwide.

With his move the Iconix Brand Group want to reach his consumer market where they are around. The offer this kind of freemium games for smart phones and tablets based on the ‘PEANUTS’ characters.

Here the ‘PEANUTS’ show your business how to reach your target audience laser targeted in social media through mobile gaming, e-books, Facebook and digital apps.

The ‘PEANUTS’ have accompanied generation of fans and are famous worldwide. Now you maybe think “my brand is not known worldwide” and maybe this is true but when you do not expand your marketing and communication to social media where your target audience is “worldwide” you will not evolve with your brand recognition in the future.

What Iconix Brand Group is doing here is to be there where there target audience is in social media with the set of digital tools to fit into any taste of possible users out there.

They offer ‘PEANUTS’ related mobile gaming for people who enjoy playing with the ‘PEANUTS’, e-books to read about them, Facebook to connect with likeminded and digital apps to interact!

That’s what they simply do is to engage with their audience and get attention. The mobile market and mobile gaming are growing massively and studies show that users are about three (3) hours active on their favorite social media through mobile devices compared with one (1) hour on their pc.

EBooks are enhanced content and content marketing is a way to reach target audiences the smart way. Furthermore eBooks can become viral by be given way from one to another person. So the brand message is spreading in a powerful way.

Facebook has about 750 million users at the time of this writing this post. Facebook is not anymore a playground of college students only. It has evolved to an effective way for brands to reach and to interact with their target audience.

The possibilities of digital apps are limitless. Facebook apps are an inexpensive and reliable way to get the brand in front of the target audience. They encourage community interaction and can be used to measure the brand impact.

Any business can profit of going piggyback with social media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and several other social networks.

Several companies like Goupon have proven that connection to social media directly relates to their business growth.

The content marketing strategy is an emerging and proven one to reach target audience the sustainable way. Good content in form of EBooks, Blog Articles, Pictures, Videos, Infographics, etc. can spread like a wildfire and attract attention for business.

So what can you do to reach your audience more effective on social media?

Do you have any idea? Yes or no? But your customers are telling you daily how to reach them.

Go through your support requests and customer emails and you will discover how you can utilize social media for your business.

Read carefully which kind of problems and obstacles your customers face daily and offer a solution. This can be an eBook, a video series or a Facebook app!

Jumpstart your creativity and you will come up with a great digital tool which solves your target audience’s problems.

Make yourself relevant to your audience!

Gain trust and credibility by just being there where they are and to help when they need you!

Marketing takeaway Tipp: The more of your target audiences problems you solve the more they will talk about you and this will attract more interested prospects to your products and services like a magnet.

Important resource: ‘PEANUTS’ launches major digital and social-media expansion

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July 29, 2011October 7, 2011

The pros and cons of promoted Tweets

More and more advertising money is shifting to social networks. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter offer various opportunities to advertise a company targeted to their audience.

Twitter announced to start displaying promoted tweets in user streams. Twitter is also planning to release a self-service platform later this year. Facebook and LinkedIn already have self-service platforms where business can showcase their brand message, products and services.

Pros of paid advertising

Paid advertising allows you to place your ad there where your community is so that you reach this community instantly. You save time because you do not need to develop relationships and do interaction with people. But this will not instantly led your business to a loyal customer base.

Pros:

Instantly visible: You are instantly visible as long as you want to be and with the keywords you have chosen.
Keywords control: you have your keywords under control and choose which to use and which not.
Flexible budget: You can start paid as with any budget.
Cheap: As it customizable you can choose how much and how long you want to spend.
Measurable results: You can track your spending and your results. Lead to customer quote, etc. and have a good picture of your returns.
Wide reach: you can instantly reach a wide user base of millions who are already looking for products and services you also have to offer.
Quick: You can set up a paid ads campaign very quick.
Target your location: When you are a local business it makes more sense to target your local area. With paid ads you are in full control that should see your advertisement.
Time frame: You can set the start and the end of any campaign. You are not obligated on long term agreements.
Mobile: As more people are on their favorite social networks though their mobile devices, you can also reach them through paid ads.

Cons of paid advertising

As you have no relationship with your audience in these communities where you place your ads, it can become difficult to attract them to your business even if your ads are fancy. Only a good relationship to your target audience leads you to a loyal customer base in the long term.

Cons:

You can’t buy authority: Even ifyou have a high ad budget; you do not have the relationship and authority to your audience.
You can’t buy credibility: Through paid ads you get seen but when they visit your website. What will they find? Is there anything what can increase trust and credibility?
Paid traffic costs money: As long as you want results out of paid traffic you need to do paid advertising. In the moment you stop, your constant stream of leads will stop instantly as it has begun!
Keywords battles: As you are not the only person who understands the opportunities of paid ads, others will also try to get the most popular keywords. A keywords battle begins and prices for those keywords increase massively! So a single click to your website can cost you a large sum of money! And there is no guarantee that this click will convert into a lead or in a paying customer!
Brand recognition: As you buy your audiences attention through paid ads you can imagine they will not be very willing to listen to what you have to say. This could let you look like a lazy and budget oriented company without a personal face. So your brand could suffer!

Marketing Takeaway Tipp: Paid ads on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter offer various opportunities to advertise a company targeted to their audience. Paid ads should be used in a context of a clear marketing strategy which includes blogging, social media and social web marketing, premium content creation and real time marketing and PR. Only than paid advertising can serve you as a valuable source of new business leads an customers!