{grow} Tops July social media blog rankings

Aug 5th

8 comments

My friend Jamie Wallace called to my attention that in the latest B2B marketing zone’s ranking of top blog articles, {grow} had the number 1 article (or more) in every HOT TOPIC category for the month of July!

Article category and {grow} article ranking:

SOCIAL MEDIA
1) The Biggest Lie in Social Media Marketing, July 19, 2009
2) Social media measurement — It’s like being a great bartender, July 29, 2009
3) An interview with GE’s Social Media Wizards, July 2, 2009
4) Crunching the real numbers on social media ROI, July 20, 2009

TWITTER
1) Twitter for business: Four breakthrough insights, July 12, 2009

SOCIAL MEDIA MEASUREMENT
1) Social media measurement — It’s like being a great bartender, July 29, 2009
2) Creating a measurement plan without losing your marbles, July 27, 2009
3) The Biggest Lie in Social Media Marketing, July 19, 2009
4) Twitter for business: Four breakthrough insights, July 12, 2009

SALES
1) Crunching the real numbers on social media ROI, July 20, 2009

This is all very cool and very humbling! Congratulations to Jamie for penning the number 1 and number 2 articles in the social media measurement category. Thank you loyal readers, supporters and friends for being right here. Your comments, calls and emails push me to do better every day.

I am going to go have a beer now.

The biggest obstacle to social media business success

Aug 5th

15 comments

This is the third in a series exploring the keys to achieving business benefits in social media:
 
Connections + Meaningful Content + Authentic Helpfulness = Business Benefits.
Let’s continue the discussion with the second element, MEANINGFUL CONTENT.

To turn online connections into serious business relationships, you need to surround your cyber-self with useful, interesting content. Difficulty in providing consistent, meaningful content is the NUMBER ONE reason people give up and never achieve social media business benefits. So you just have to find a way to do it! First, let’s get those excuses out of the way:

  1. If you’re interesting, entertaining and funny, people will be drawn to you. But if you’re shy and have difficulty being entertaining, you just can’t provide content, so why try?
  2. Takes too much time. No person with a full-time job can possibly have time for the incremental effort needed for social media. Who has time to write a blog???
  3. Social media is just a stupid fad any way.

We are not going to accept these excuses, right? RIGHT! So, I’ve worked up a strategy for you to efficiently deliver meaningful content even if you’re not a natural writer. All you have to do is be yourself and tenaciously ENGAGE. Ideas to create content for the non-writer, in just a few minutes a day:

  • In the last post, I emphasized the importance of joining Linked-In Groups. Now become INVOLVED. Twice a week, respond to a question or comment in the group. You can answer questions can’t you? Of course you can! Time commitment: 20 min/week.
  • Once a week, peruse online magazines related to your industry. Find an interesting article. Leave an opinion or your appreciation in the comment section then tweet the article out to your followers on Twitter. You’ve created meaningful content twice. Time = 15 min
  • Find five or more blogs related to your industry and put them in an aggregator like Google Reader. Once you have this set up, review blog content at least once a week and comment + tweet out your favorite articles. 15 min
  • Find interesting and useful content that has already been created by your company. Are there ways you can reference this content to help others, solve problems, and answer questions?
  • In the last post we talked about finding connections through Facebook. Now visit them. Share, engage, comment, react, ask more questions. 20 min
  • Tweet AT LEAST three times a day (at different times), AT LEAST three days a week. (45 min/week)

At first, I know it can be difficult to figure out what to tweet, but you have to keep at it! When you get stuck, here are some subject matter ideas to get you going again.

  • An entertaining observation you made – it could be a funny bumper sticker, a movie or a commercial you saw on TV.
  • Something interesting related to your business or industry. But DO NOT SELL. Here’s an example of something appropriate: “Finally landed a great contract – business has been tough.” Or, “Went to a great training program on social media today – I recommend it”
  • Re-tweet a particularly good article or post provided by somebody you follow.
  • Comment on an observation made by one of your followers.
  • Take a picture from a place you’re visiting and comment on it.
  • Express an opinion on a national news story.
  • Ask a question and authentically seek help from the community.
  • Thank followers who do something nice for you, like mentioning you on a Follow Friday.

To provide meaningful content, you don’t have to write a lot, but you MUST COMMIT. You know that old saying: You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him tweet. I can’t make you engage, but I promise that you can’t be successful without it.

If you were to help a friend get started in social media, what other ideas do you have?

Tomorrow, the final part of the success formula: Authentic Helpfulness.

Other articles in this series:

Part 1: A formula for social media business success

Part 2: Building meaningful business connections

Part 4: Social Media’s Economy of Giving

, , , , , , ,

Building meaningful business connections through social media

Aug 4th

6 comments

This is the second in a series exploring the keys to achieving business benefits in social media:

Connections + Meaningful Content + Authentic Helpfulness = Business Benefits.
Now, we’re going to dive into each element to build a strategy for YOUR social media success! Today we start with CONNECTIONS.
Think of the social media landscape as a garden … being planted in a desert! To get something to grow, you need to plant a LOT of seeds, which are your connections. Then you’re going to water those connections with meaningful content and authentic helpfulness, which I will cover in subsequent articles.
I’ll give you seven delicious ingredients for the business connection recipe, but before I do, I’d like you to consider two things 1) What is the profile of your best customers, and 2) Where are they likely to be hanging out? If you can answer those questions, your quest for great business connections will be so much more successful! Here are two resources to help you out (click links)
CUSTOMER PROFILING
FINDING YOUR CUSTOMER “TRUCKSTOP”
OK, let’s mix up a fresh batch of social media business connections:
1) The Advanced Search feature on Linked-In is your best connection-finding buddy. You can find high-potential connections by location, company, industry, even business title. Offer to link with these people as a first step toward building your targeted audience.
2) Participate in Linked-in groups and forums. What better way to build relationships than to get involved with online groups of like-minded professionals? So many people sign up for Linked-In and forget about it. Get your skin in the game and actively ENGAGE new connections. A new national contract of mine began with a lady who liked my answers on Linked-In!
3) Find online journals related to your industry. Look for comments that interest you. In the comment section, note who is there – their comments often point readers to their Twitter name, Facebook or Linked-In page. Connect to them. Engage.
4) Use Twellow to find targeted industry connections who are actively involved in Twitter. There is a related app on this site that you can use to search people by state or city, which is so important if you are a small business serving a targeted geographic area.
5) Steal contacts from your competitors. If you can find your competitors on social media channels, you can also find their links and followers. This is public information for all to see and so it is perfectly acceptable. P.S. They can do the same thing to you!
6) Use http://my.peoplebrowsr.com/ to do high-powered searches for relevant Twitter users by just about any demographic category you can think of.
7) Have you participated in Twitter “discussions” on subjects related to your area of interest? These discussions are demarcated with a hashtag (#) so you can search for the term and follow the trail of the discussion, whether you are following the people or not. Here’s an example. In the search field in the right hand column of Twitter, I searched for #SMROI because I want to find people who are talking about social media and ROI. I will see a timeline of the discussion and all the people who are participating. Follow them!

There are hundreds of ways to build targeted contacts but these are a few ideas that have worked for me and my clients. What is working for you? Please share in the comment section below.

This article is part of a series on creating business benefits through social media. Other posts:
, , , , , , ,

A formula for social media business success

Aug 2nd

45 comments

Starbucks.  Dell.  Mark Schaefer.

Yes, I am now up there with the mega-brand big dogs, at least momentarily, in an article in Forbes recently. Not only that, but I was acknowledged as a Twitter marketing authority in the same breath as Chris Brogan and Jeremiah Owyang, two national marketing luminaries.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you already know that I make up about 75% of what I say and fabricate the other 25%.  You’re thinking that now too, aren’t you?  No, it’s true. I’m really in there.

How did this happen??  Through social media, of course.  And it’s a great case study on the Social Media Formula for Business Benefit:

Connection + Meaningful Content + Authentic Helpfulness = Business Benefit

Let’s see how this worked in the real world.

CONNECTION

It started about nine months ago when I attended a free webinar featuring Nathan Egan, a former Linked-In exec who had just started a company call Freesource. I thought he was an exceptionally bright guy and decided to comply with his public request to “link” with him. I also looked him up on Twitter and he became one of the first people I followed.

 MEANINGFUL CONTENT

Through his posts, I grew to appreciate Nathan’s vision and he became a regular reader of my blog. He was so interested in one particular article that he called and talked to me for over an hour, deepening the respect and connection between us.

 AUTHENTIC HELPFULNESS

Our friendship has grown and now we routinely support each other. We discuss new ideas and bounce around solutions to business challenges. Nathan recently asked for my help on a new app his company was developing (which I will also be featuring on a future blog article). He has tweeted out my blog posts, helping to grow my readership. That’s what social media is all about!

BUSINESS RESULTS

When Nathan was interviewed by Forbes, he was asked if there was anybody he could recommend who had done an exceptionally good job nurturing business relationships through social media. And he thought of me.

So now I had an opportunity to extend content and helpfulness to a reporter at Forbes. Over a lengthy phone call, I brought him up to speed on my experiences, my client’s social media successes, and ideas about the future of social media. And now we’re friends, too.

As Nathan’s business has expanded, he turned to me to take over some of the company’s marketing functions he no longer has time to handle.  Our social media connection has turned into a fantastic opportunity for both of us.

That’s how social media works for business: C + MC + AH = Business Benefits. Look at ANY B2B or B2C success story and these three elements were in place — none can be missing. Over the next three days, we’re going to look at this STEP BY STEP and come up with some new, actionable ideas that you can use to realize your own business benefits from social media.

But here’s the best part. YOU AND I ARE CONNECTED, TOO! Who knows what will happen NEXT?

If this article made you think, please consider leaving comments.  I’d love to hear from you!

Other articles in this series … each one builds on this theme:

Part 2: Building meaningful business connections

Part 3: The biggest obstacle to social media business succcess

Part 4: Authentic Helpfulness: The economy of giving

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
, , ,
« First...150160170«177178179180181»190200...Last »