How to Find Industry Blogs - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #197
Monday, February 2nd, 2009I know you have probably read somewhere that even if you aren’t blogging yourself you should at least be out there to see what other people in your space are talking about. The best way to do this is by reading industry related blogs. To ensure you are keeping up on a regular basis, set up your Google Reader. All of this sounds great but where do you find the right blogs to read for your business?
Here’s what helped me:
- Alltop – or “all the top” sites on the web. ReachForce’s space is B2B Marketing and I looked here for “all the top marketing news.” It has all the top Marketing blogs (even including this one!) based on results of Google searches, review of the sites’ and blogs’ content, researchers, and our “gut” plus the recommendations of the Twitter community, owners of the sites and blogs, and people who care enough to write to us.
- Just Google your space…like “B2B Marketing Blogs.” First on the page was Big List of B2B Marketing Blogs by Marketing and Strategy Innovation Blog. And keep moving down the page for more. Other bloggers also compile lists of top blogs in their space. For example, Web Market Central has a list of Marketing-Related Blogs.
- When looking at other blogs, be sure to check out their blogroll. It is a good way to see what blogs someone else follows and recommends.
So…now start looking for blogs in your industry and get into the conversation!
Did the Secret Service Kill Obama’s Social Presence? - Marketing WTF?
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009Here on The B2B Lead we declared Barack Obama (of course now President Obama) to be Marketer of the Year (and Advertising Age had something to say about that too) on November 5th, after winning the presidency. He and his team had a marketing strategy unlike any other before him. They had a clearly defined message of Change and targeted that message to the people by speaking to them in a way and through a forum they already understood. He understood the power of viral marketing and social media and embraced it, using it to his advantage. I believe this played a major role in him first winning the democratic nomination and ultimately the presidency.
My question now is - will he continue? He united many Americans under the promise of Change and reached out to them where they were to deliver his message. By having a presence on many social networking sites, he seemed accessible, a people’s politician. I believe that his presidency will be strongest if he continues to communicate with the people the way he did during his campaign. Don’t we all want a people’s president?
But it seems since the campaign ended, there is little to no involvement in the same social sites that were instrumental in getting Obama elected. For example, his LinkedIn profile still lists him as US Senator and Presidential Candidate. His Facebook page still has over 3.8 million supporters and over 500,000 wall posts but little to no interaction from Obama or his team. His supporters seem to still be interacting on Facebook but without much from the big guy himself.
What Obama did do after the election is create change.gov. This site was set up to allow Americans “opportunities to participate in redefining our government.” The site did offer some neat opportunities for Americans to give feedback and their opinions for where the country should be headed. Unfortunately, as of today, the site has been taken down and directs you to instead visit whitehouse.gov.
The new whitehouse.gov includes a blog as well as the President’s soon to come weekly video addresses (past Presidents did these too, in case you didn’t know, but have always been on the radio). The first blog post comes from Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media for the White House. It is very informative and gives you an idea of what to expect from the new administration. I felt the most notable was that they “will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.” You can also sign up for email updates from the President.
The new website went up exactly at 12:01pm today so not everything has been completely fleshed out. Phillips wrote, “We’d also like to hear from you — what sort of things would you find valuable from WhiteHouse.gov? If you have an idea, use this form to let us know. Like the transition website and the campaign’s before that, this online community will continue to be a work in progress as we develop new features and content for you. So thanks in advance for your patience and for your feedback.”
I am looking forward to seeing what else they add. I hope there is continued involvement in the social networking sites that contributed to Obama being elected to the White House. Or is his Facebook profile now a matter of national security?
Picture This: You Have No Control of Your Online Social Profiles - Marketing WTF?
Thursday, January 15th, 2009Check out this photo - It’s our VP of Products, Jason Morio, at his sophomore prom in 1991. Someone posted this picture on their Facebook page, tagged Jason and an update was sent to his (Jason’s) friends. Before Jason got back to Facebook the photo had spread like wildfire here at work. So while this provided us with a lot of good laughs, it made me think…
What about those Spring Break 1988 pictures? How about the ones of you when you weighed 300 lbs.? Or even better, the pictures from your friend’s bachelor party? You know the ones. You thought these old pictures were buried in a box somewhere for no one to ever see again.
With social technologies taking off they way they are, how are you to prevent your old, maybe not to proud of, photos from getting out there?
Looks like you can’t anymore.
You can clearly see why this one falls in the WTF category - what do you think? And how do we as professionals ensure we aren’t mixing up our personal and professional lives? And not just today’s personal life but our lives back when we were younger and carefree? Is it even possible anymore?
Day in the Life of a Social Media Marketer - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #187
Thursday, January 8th, 2009I know not every company has the option to hire someone specifically for online/social media marketing and here at ReachForce I do have other responsibilities, but my main job is to get ReachForce more interactive online.
There are many reasons companies aren’t taking on social media initiatives - they’re scared, they don’t have the time, they don’t understand the value, etc.. And you already have enough work as it is, right? All true, but as you have probably heard by now…social media is worth investing some time into. To help, I have listed below what I do at least once every day (I have sort of made my morning routine around it), and hopefully you can pick out some things you can start doing on a regular basis too so you can get started online.
Google Reader – This is most important to get started in social media. Every day I read our Google Reader we put together with blogs in our space. I go through reading (skimming) and pick out posts I think would be good for us at ReachForce to comment on.
Twitter – I have my own account and ReachForce has a company account that I update a few days a week. If you aren’t twittering today you should at least be checking out search.twitter.com to see who is talking about your company.
LinkedIn – I scan LinkedIn Answers for ones I think ReachForce can help with or we may have an opinion on. And there are many times our Marketing Director (Amy) is able to offer some good marketing advice. This process has been made easier with the help of groups I have joined and the weekly email I get with discussions, and with inbound marketing system HubSpot.
Facebook – We have a ReachForce corporate page. When needed, I upload photos or videos, put our events coming up or send a message to our fans. I usually always have to update our RSS feeder from our blog…for some reason it doesn’t do it on its own? Anyone else having this problem?
Social Bookmarks – I use Digg and StumbleUpon the most. I feel right now we get the best traffic from them. I recommend using it for your own blog if you have one, or recommending other people’s post you like. (Use your Google Reader to find these)!
Blog – At ReachForce we do have a blog and we post at least 4 times a week. I don’t write all the content, but I do manage it.
To help stay on top of what is going on in the social media realm I look at mashable.com and subscribe to Chris Brogan’s blog and newsletter as a start.
Okay, so this is most of my morning routine (yes it is a little time consuming, but this is what I was hired on to do). Hopefully you can pick out bits and pieces and start putting it in your routine. For those of you who do use social media on a daily basis, what else do you do every day?
Book Club Wrap-Up - ReachForce Book Club
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008Hope you enjoyed this quarter’s Book Club series. Just in case you missed an eBook or whitepaper we read and discussed, below are the links to them and what we had to say about each of them.
- HubSpots’s Get Found Online
- What we had to say…
- David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of Viral Marketing
- What we had to say…
- ConnectDirect’s How to Choose your Carrot: Effective Lead Generation Offers for High-Technology Marketers
- What we had to say…
Happy Reading. We look forward to sharing even more B2B Marketing and Sales tips with you in 2009.
It’s the Holiday Season, Time to Get Social
Tuesday, December 23rd, 20082008 has been a big year for B2B Marketers. The idea of using social media as part of our lead generation programs has become a reality. Whether it be blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook B2B Marketers are taking on new challenges and figuring out new ways to reach their audience through the readily available social media outlets. Here’s a list of some great social media posts from this year. There’s lot of lists and dos and don’ts, if we’ve left a great post out, let us know, we’ll add it to the list.
50 Ways Marketers Can Use Social Media to Improve their Marketing
10 Aspects of an Effective Social Media Campaign
How to Build a Community of Twitter Followers
Ten Elements Every Company Blog Should Have
6 Keys to Bringing Up Social Media
24 Things to do When Stuck for a Topic to Blog About
Health Check: How Trusted is your Corporate Blog?
50 Social Media & Marketing Predictions for 2009
5 Tips for Promoting Your Business Page on Facebook
If you’re already knee deep in the world of social media, please share some of your successes or experiences. Are you able to measure real ROI?
Happy Holidays and thank you for following us on The B2B Lead. We look forward to sharing more B2B Marketing and Sales best practices with you in 2009.
Publish your Content for Free – B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #182
Friday, December 19th, 2008So…you have written white papers and eBooks and they are up on your website. They are probably on the resources page and get their fair share of downloads. That’s good, but with some of the free publishing sites out there you can get more exposure.
I have started to put ReachForce content on some of the sites and wanted to share the results, compare with you or ask if you had suggestions.
Content placement sites:
Scribd – the best content placement site I think. You can publish, discover and discuss original writings and documents. It’s easy to set up…sign up and make an account for free, then just upload your documents. I have uploaded all of ReachForce’s eBooks and have gotten 5476 views as of today. People can add your works to their favorites and rate them. You can join groups an add friends.
Docstoc – provides the platform for users and businesses to upload and share their documents with all the world, and serves as a vast repository of documents in variety of categories including legal, business, financial, technology, educational, and creative. I uploaded all our eBooks and have 300 views and 30 downloads as of today.
edocr – upload your documents for sharing by the professional and business community. I uploaded our eBooks, again, and we have 618 views so far. One of our eBooks was featured on the front page when first uploaded.
whitepapers.org – is “all the world’s whitepapers in one place.” I really haven’t figured out how to see how many views or downloads our whitepapers have had.
The pros of publishing your content on sites like this is that it is free to do and can bring unexpected visitors an exposure. The biggest con I can find is that there is really no way to find out who downloaded our content (with information like an email address). To help with this, we added links to all our whitepapers and eBooks to hopefully drive traffic back to our website.
Suggestions?
The New Rules of VIRAL Marketing - ReachForce Book Club
Thursday, December 11th, 2008We are big fans of Mr. Scott and his eBook, The New Rules of Viral Marketing, which gives tips on how to spread your ideas for free using word-of-mouse. Or in other words, “one person sends it to another, then that person sends it to yet another, and on and on.” With the internet, it is now easier than ever to start a viral campaign, but “marketers need to learn how to harness the amazing power of word-of-mouse.”
This eBook is full of case studies and other “people’s success so you can apply some of their ideas and lessons in your own word-of-mouse efforts.” Most of this is at the beginning, so if you are short on time I would start on page 14 for the real meat.
David’s formula for success:
“A combination of some great-and free-Web content (a video, blog entry, interactive tool, or e-book) that provides valuable information (or is groundbreaking or amazing or hilarious or involves a celebrity), plus a network of people to light the fire and links that make your content very easy to share.”
To help achieve this success, David provides specific advice on how to launch a viral campaign using YouTube videos, e-books and other techniques. I’ll pick out some points I thought interesting (or that I haven’t thought about before) and list them here, but make sure you go back and read the eBook for all the tips.
How to help your eBook get shared:
- Present you eBook in a landscape format, rather than the white paper’s typical portrait format. This makes it easier to read and signals to the reader that the content is interesting.
- Consider writing in a lighter, more conversational style than you would in a whitepaper, marketing brochure, or Web page. Think of the writing in an eBook as you would write for a blog.
- eBooks should always be free and should never have a registration requirement. (This has been hotly debated for a while now on how to balance capturing leads and distributing content. What do you think?)
- Put a Creative Commons license on the content so people know they can freely share your copyrighted material.
- Create a landing page from which people can download your eBook. (All of our eBooks and whitepapers have landing pages set up on the ReachForce Resources page on the website.)
- To drive viral marketing, (you have to read the eBook for the rest of this great tip)!
9 tips for using YouTube (here are a few)
- Your video should be no longer than three minutes. (Come on, who has time to just sit and watch a 10 minute video…unless it is really funny or something). If you have a lot to say, consider creating a series of posts.
- Don’t attempt “stealth” fake customer insertions. Be authentic and don’t try to sneak in company promotion where you can. (YouTube itself can catch unauthenic video and that might cause harm to a brand).
- Make sure bloggers know about the video. The best way to do this is when you are reading and commenting on blogs in your space, next time you comment link to your video (if it makes sense to).
Other tips he mentioned:
- Use interactive tools (like Hubspot’s Website Grader)
- Don’t break the bank with expensive advertising
- Don’t beg mainstream media to write about you
I have left some really great tips and specific advice out, so go back and read what all David has to say about viral campaigns. Have you had success with viral campaigns? What did you do?
David Meerman Scott is an online thought leadership and viral marketing strategist. The programs he has developed have won numerous awards and are responsible for selling over $1 billion in products and services worldwide.
“You Oughta Know Inbound Marketing” - Marketing WTF?
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008This is GREAT! We are both customers and big fans of Hubspot, and they released a new video yesterday and we wanted to be sure readers of The B2B Lead saw it. It already has over 200 diggs and is Number 1 in YouTube when you search “marketing.”
Twitter Turns down $500 Million from Facebook - Marketing WTF?
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008Written by guest blogger, Jason Morio, VP of Products at ReachForce
Twitter apparently turned down Facebook’s offer to buy them for $500 million (reportedly $100 million in cash and $400 million in Facebook stock). What is Twitter up to that makes them think they can actually turn this down? There is apparently a secret revenue model they will be announcing next year. What does that mean for B2B Marketers? Will Twitter have advertising now?
While this story still appears to be somewhat speculative, when it comes to things of this nature, where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire. The brazen audacity shown by Twitter in declining this offer is mind-boggling. In a time where less than 1 in 50 VC-backed startups ever sees an IPO and down-round term sheets are the norm, one can only wonder: how much is enough? According to GigaOM, Twitter has taken down a little over $20M in funding thus far. When will the next 25X-multiple-on-money-in surface? The halls of VC-backed startupdom are littered with the corpses of past offers of this magnitude that were turned down, only to result in eventual liquidations at fractional values (anyone remember Pointcast?).
