Online Reputation | inBlurbs Inbound Marketing Agency

December 22, 2011December 22, 2011

How B2B Marketers can Embrace Social Media

An increasing number of companies like Intuit, Sysco, Cisco, GE Healthcare and AT&T are using social media for effective business lead generation.

A recent study from Sagefrog Marketing Group shows how companies have learned to leverage social media. Leveraging social media for branding and building awareness helps B2B companies.

4 Ways how companies can leverage social media:

• Increase brand awareness
• Humanize B2B companies
• Establish as thought leader
• Connecting with customers and prospects

What sites, tactics and strategies are B2B marketers including in their social media outreach?

To do their social media outreach B2B marketers include professional networking sites like LinkedIn which have proven to be an effective way to generate business leads. Furthermore they utilize social networks like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube also which are helping them to reach customers in new ways.

“67% of B2C and 47% of B2B companies report to have acquired new customers through Facebook.” “47% of companies who use Twitter report to have acquired new customer through it.”

Online Marketing strategies like banner ads have been replaced through proven buyer persona oriented content creation which also brings better ROI than pay per click marketing (PPC).

A corporate blog has become the number one content marketing tool for companies. The importance of blogging is growing and people are adding nearly 3 million blogs per month. [Technorati 2011 State of the Blogosphere Report]

In this report, Technorati shows that 8% of the corporate bloggers which responded to blog full-time as part of their job or are contracted to blog full-time for a company and that 13% of entrepreneurs responded to blog for a company or organization they own.

Studies show that companies who operate and update a corporate blog frequently have 55% more website visitors. From those companies 57% which operate a corporate blog report to have acquired new customers through their blog.

There is no question content marketing, corporate blogging, is definitely a revenue driver for B2B companies.

To learn how to jumpstart your content marketing read this article: Get up to 25 times more business leads with Content Marketing

Infographic: Business To Business – Social Media

—How do you use Social Media for your B2B?

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December 21, 2011December 21, 2011

How to save 62 percent of your budget with inbound marketing

Every business wants to succeed. But not every business is doing what it needs to succeed. As for the past years corporate blogging and social media has increasingly earned popularity because auf its successful use, there are still a majority of businesses which still do not engage in these said marketing opportunities.

During the past years inbound marketing, which consists of strategic and buyer persona oriented content creation and content distribution like corporate blogging, engagement in social media, lead generation and lead conversion through lead nurturing and measurement through closed-loop analysis has grown in popularity.

The increase of inbound marketing popularity is no fad but the outcome of measurable and proven results which studies like the MIT study certifies.

Furthermore it is a proven fact that companies which rely on online lead generation are 25 x more profitable than companies who do not.

Some examples why inbound marketing is so successful:

Content creation

Companies who operate a corporate blog and update it frequently have 55% more website visitors. 57% of companies which operate a corporate blog report to have acquired new customers through their blog.

Social media

67% of B2C and 47% of B2B companies report to have acquired new customers through Facebook. 47% of companies who use Twitter report to have acquired new customer through it.

Lead generation

Inbound marketing has a 62% lower cost per lead than traditional marketing strategies. Inbound marketing way generated leads have an 55% higher lead conversion rate than lead generated through traditional marketing strategies.

As inbound marketing strategy consists of buyer persona oriented content creation, social media engagement, lead generation, lead nurturing and closed-loop analysis; it covers the necessary areas for a successfully operable strategy.

Some suggestions to jumpstart your inbound marketing:

1. Identify your buyer personas. (Download this free buyer persona sheet)
2. Produce remarkable content (blog articles, whitepapers, eBooks, photos, video, press releases and FAQs) for your buyer personas.
3. Distribute your content online through your corporate blog and in social media.
4. The more you publish and share the better. As you increase the amount of pages of your website and blog articles you get increasingly more digital outpost to get found better online.
5. The more articles you publish the more opportunities appear to get Backlinks from other websites and blog who also like your publications and you will be recognizes as a trusted source.
6. Build relevant landing pages and clear call to action to generate leads.
7. Nurture those leads with important information and not with sales pitches.
8. Measure what you do, optimize and repeat.

Infographic: Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing

—What do you think about inbound marketing?

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November 3, 2011November 3, 2011

Social Media can be thread to your reputation

Companies engage increasingly in social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other forums and platforms. They go to step into conversation with their audience to offer better service and support and to strengthen the band between actual and future customers.

Social media is a great way to grow brand awareness for the business and to expand the reach to get more customers. But social media can also be a trap for those who are not familiar with managing their reputation online.

Everything a company is communicating on the web and in social media can travel a far way and have an impact on the reputation of the brand.

On social media people are talking about your last blog article, your service, products, about you and your brand. With or without your involvement.

As content which is published on social media also can be indexed by the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing the chances are great that also the content you have distributed will appear in the search engines search results too.

For you it is important to know where you or your brand name has been mentioned so you can respond. Therefore your best strategy to keep a good reputation is also to be active where your target audience is talking about you. So you can respond professionally and show your opinion.

You should care about your online reputation as the web has a wider reach than small town gossip. Future business and future contacts will be influenced by what the people find about you on the web.

Your behavior on the web and what other say about you will affect your future for sure.

To keep a good reputation you need to take care of the WHAT, WHERE and the HOW.

WHAT do you publish on the web and in social media?

You should avoid do praise your products too much. Do not make the mistake to use social media as a distribution channel and overload your audience with dump sales pitches.

WHERE do you publish your content?

Publish content topics where they belong and where they are appreciated. Therefore you need to listen carefully to your audience and give them the information they demand.

HOW do you communicate?

Always communicate in a professional and friendly way. Try to be helpful and show expertise and avoid sounding like schoolmasterly.

How you present yourself on the web can win you business and respect. To achieve this you should take the time to establish a good digital branding and biography.

Infographic: Reputation Management

–How do you protect your reputation on the web? Let me know what you think. I am looking forward to your comment.