As I am compiling all my notes from Inbound Marketing Summit Boston in preparation for my company presentation at lunch, one point sticks out in my mind that I really want to talk to you about: Yes, content is King, but please for the love or your customers stop talking about yourself!
Online Marketing today has taken in a form of Inbound Marketing. Businesses shouldn't be talking about themselves, not about their history, not about how many people they have but rather where can they help, how they can help, and who they can help. To do so businesses need to start by listening.
Listening is perhaps the most time consuming aspect for many businesses, that is because they are so used to be the one talking. Listening in the Social Media world is not just sitting in front of your Twitter page, facebook page and wait for your friends or followers to comment, but it is a proactive exercise and go find the people who are talking about the business or the industry the business serve.
Since most of us are not Comcastcare (a Twitter account from Comcast customer service that spearheaded the corporate Twitter movement), where it is hard to find people actually talking about your business or product, we will have to look search for people online who are talking about your industry and perhaps your competitor, then engage them with knowledge and points that benefits them.
Word of caution here: don't start by selling your products or telling them how they should have used your service or products in the first place. It is about offering advice or knowledge to better educate your audience.
If you need a place to start, then why not start with Twitter? Setup an account, and start searching for people who are talking about your industry or the products you sell. Follow them, reply them with suggestions, then setup a simple blog that answer questions in detail if 140 characters is not enough, then point them to your blog. The goal is to let people know you care and also have the capability to care. Then in your blog create links to your website and let your audience do the clicking.
Once you get a handle on basic Twitter operations and searching, check out this list of Twitter applications and tools and enjoy!
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
You should approach Facbook and Twitter differently when it comes to social media for your business
Oh yes, there is a difference, a huge one, between how people connect in Facebook and Twitter. So as you formulate your strategies for your business, you need to be aware of this difference and adjust your strategy accordingly.
1. Facebook is a site, Twitter is a messaging terminal
Facebook is more or less a site where you can create a company page, link your blog, post pictures and videos, create PPC ads and more. Twitter on the other hand, is like an instant messenger to all of your followers, nothing more than 140-characters. While you can link to virtually anything, most of the aforementioned functions in Facebook is offsite on Twitter.
2.Your connect with friends on Facebook, strangers on Twitter
On Facebook, you rely on your confirmed friends' friends list to reach out to people you don't know, while this restriction can be broken with the use of business page and PPC ads, connections are not automatic. On the other hand, you can pretty much follow anyone on Twitter, and people are more receptive to follow you back. With some auto following tools you can go as far as "set it and forget it" and watch your follower list grows. Obviously, I'm not suggesting this approach as the best-practice approach. But this "follower-building" dynamic will help you build a large follower base quicker.
Due to these differences (and there can be a lot more if you break both categories down), your approach to reaching out to these two groups of audience will have to be different. For Twitter, you can easily engage with your customers and prospects that talks about your brand and products by replying to their twitter post, whereas in Facebook your brand monitoring is only confined within your "friend" circle. On the other hand, customers who becomes a fan on your Facebook business page are most likely your A-list customers, and your communication to this group will focus on retaining their loyalty to your brand and utilize this space to host special events that attract your A-list customers to this channel.
1. Facebook is a site, Twitter is a messaging terminalFacebook is more or less a site where you can create a company page, link your blog, post pictures and videos, create PPC ads and more. Twitter on the other hand, is like an instant messenger to all of your followers, nothing more than 140-characters. While you can link to virtually anything, most of the aforementioned functions in Facebook is offsite on Twitter.
2.Your connect with friends on Facebook, strangers on Twitter
On Facebook, you rely on your confirmed friends' friends list to reach out to people you don't know, while this restriction can be broken with the use of business page and PPC ads, connections are not automatic. On the other hand, you can pretty much follow anyone on Twitter, and people are more receptive to follow you back. With some auto following tools you can go as far as "set it and forget it" and watch your follower list grows. Obviously, I'm not suggesting this approach as the best-practice approach. But this "follower-building" dynamic will help you build a large follower base quicker.
Due to these differences (and there can be a lot more if you break both categories down), your approach to reaching out to these two groups of audience will have to be different. For Twitter, you can easily engage with your customers and prospects that talks about your brand and products by replying to their twitter post, whereas in Facebook your brand monitoring is only confined within your "friend" circle. On the other hand, customers who becomes a fan on your Facebook business page are most likely your A-list customers, and your communication to this group will focus on retaining their loyalty to your brand and utilize this space to host special events that attract your A-list customers to this channel.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Inbound Marketing Summit Thoughts
I am going to interrupt my previous promise to write more about email marketing tools. But since I am currently at the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston, I would like to share with all of you about what Inbound Marketing really is.
First of all, most current popular marketing channels such as TV ads, radio, banner / pop-up ads, even many Email marketing and social media ads are considered interrupted marketing. This form of marketing is considered interrupted method because it pause the user from their routine and force them to respond to your messages. While I see this form of marketing to continue, the newer form of Inbound Marketing is gaining a great deal of growth and expansion because it attracts users and prospects who are already looking for information about your message to come find you. And this form if marketing is about listening to what users are saying, locating where these conversations are taking place, and engage them with your creative content.
While the earlier form of marketing unique utilize market research to locate the best channel to distribute your message and measure penetration of your message by eyeballs and impressions. With inbound marketing, research on channel is replaced by locating where the listeners are, what they are saying about your industry and products, and distribute multiple messages by engaging in conversations and coming up with interesting content. Measures of success is engagement. Is about how many readers and users you can engage in conversations.
This is where social media channels comes in. Even the PR industry is shifting their focus on chasing after media channels to attractive them via viral content on social media. So the strategy for many companies is not on hiring PR firms that distribute news, but rather to hire content generation experts in their industries and engage in conversations that will bring in traffic and sales.
I will try to be more specific in subsequent posts and maybe locate some firms that can really help companies succeed in this form of marketing.
First of all, most current popular marketing channels such as TV ads, radio, banner / pop-up ads, even many Email marketing and social media ads are considered interrupted marketing. This form of marketing is considered interrupted method because it pause the user from their routine and force them to respond to your messages. While I see this form of marketing to continue, the newer form of Inbound Marketing is gaining a great deal of growth and expansion because it attracts users and prospects who are already looking for information about your message to come find you. And this form if marketing is about listening to what users are saying, locating where these conversations are taking place, and engage them with your creative content.
While the earlier form of marketing unique utilize market research to locate the best channel to distribute your message and measure penetration of your message by eyeballs and impressions. With inbound marketing, research on channel is replaced by locating where the listeners are, what they are saying about your industry and products, and distribute multiple messages by engaging in conversations and coming up with interesting content. Measures of success is engagement. Is about how many readers and users you can engage in conversations.
This is where social media channels comes in. Even the PR industry is shifting their focus on chasing after media channels to attractive them via viral content on social media. So the strategy for many companies is not on hiring PR firms that distribute news, but rather to hire content generation experts in their industries and engage in conversations that will bring in traffic and sales.
I will try to be more specific in subsequent posts and maybe locate some firms that can really help companies succeed in this form of marketing.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Start connecting your business on Twitter
Yes, I admit, this is not entirely original. Thousands if not millions of people have said this already. But the importance of outreaching to potential customers using social media can't be ignored. So here it is again.
Many consumer-oriented corporations and brands has already started their social media campaign on Twitter, Facebook, etc. But the concept remains largely non-touched by small- and middle-market. The core problem is perhaps not how to make connections, but what do you do with them?
For those of you who are still rather lost in the "Twitter for Business" concept, you should consider reading Twitter 101 for Business to get started. What for those of you who knows Twitter already, you have to focus on more than telling them what morning cup of coffee is making you sick.
Bottom-line: Content. A big list of followers may seem impressive, but are you really connecting with them with content? Sure, the 140 characters limit will limit what you can say, but it is this very dynamic that made Twitter so popular. Users can go through a short list of topics on their screen (much like reading news headlines on cnn.com or cnbc.com) and pick what they want to read about.
Then is the usefulness of the content. You have to think like your follower when you write. I've read so many twitter post that talk about what the business has accomplished and what client they've recently gotten. But that simply doesn't interest me as a follower anymore. I've much rather read about something insightful that can benefit me as a reader. Just remember, you're no longer "pushing" content like you used to on TV, radio, magazine and website. Social media involve "pulling" people to your content.
Many consumer-oriented corporations and brands has already started their social media campaign on Twitter, Facebook, etc. But the concept remains largely non-touched by small- and middle-market. The core problem is perhaps not how to make connections, but what do you do with them?
For those of you who are still rather lost in the "Twitter for Business" concept, you should consider reading Twitter 101 for Business to get started. What for those of you who knows Twitter already, you have to focus on more than telling them what morning cup of coffee is making you sick.
Bottom-line: Content. A big list of followers may seem impressive, but are you really connecting with them with content? Sure, the 140 characters limit will limit what you can say, but it is this very dynamic that made Twitter so popular. Users can go through a short list of topics on their screen (much like reading news headlines on cnn.com or cnbc.com) and pick what they want to read about.
Then is the usefulness of the content. You have to think like your follower when you write. I've read so many twitter post that talk about what the business has accomplished and what client they've recently gotten. But that simply doesn't interest me as a follower anymore. I've much rather read about something insightful that can benefit me as a reader. Just remember, you're no longer "pushing" content like you used to on TV, radio, magazine and website. Social media involve "pulling" people to your content.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
