Archive for the ‘Social Media Marketing’ Category

Small Businesses Slow Getting on the Social Media Bandwagon

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

A recent Citibank survey reflects the slow adoption of Social Media channels in Small Businesses. Citing a variety of reasons for the slow adoption rate, manpower and time are the two top obstacles.

Social Media Inspirational Poster“Our survey suggests that small business owners are still feeling their way into social media, particularly when it comes to using these tools to grow their businesses,” said Maria Veltre, Executive Vice President of Citi’s Small Business Segment. “While social media can provide additional channels to network and help grow a business, many small businesses may not have the manpower or the time required take advantage of them.”

The results found that of the 500 small businesses polled, a full 76% did not find social media a benefit for their business in terms of generating leads or expanding their business. The August survey also reported that search engine sites such as Google and Yahoo! are used much more frequently than small business focus sites for help with small business issues.

The survey doesn’t take into account the way small businesses, especially B to B businesses, have been overlooked when it comes to instruction and examples of successful social media (the subject of a previous article). Instead of using social media to cast a huge net in hopes of a high-volume lead base, a successful B to B strategy leverages social media to become Subject Matter Experts and Thought Leaders. By creating this thought leadership an increase in the level of trust and confidence more easily turns leads and prospects into customers.

The other point that many small businesses haven’t picked up on is the relative cost, or lack thereof, of social media. Compared to other marketing channels, social media is relatively inexpensive. Accounts and activity on social media channels are, for the most part, free. The cost comes from the manpower: monitoring channels, creating content and responding to user-generated activity takes time rather than cash. If there isn’t enough time to actively engage in social media, it’s probably a good idea to stay away until a firm commitment can be given to it. There’s only one thing worse than no social media channel: one that hasn’t been updated in months.

Read my previous article on “Social Media for Business to Business Organizations”

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Social Media for Business to Business Organizations

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

womantyping260

I have recently been in the middle of some great discussions regarding social media. A number of the discussions have been between moderate-sized business owners with a B-to-B business model.

It is not coincidence that the takeaway from many of these discussions was that a majority of content regarding social media (the how-to’s, the why’s, the where’s) focus and provide advice for companies operating in a Business to Consumer world. Anecdotes and real-world examples rotate around buzz marketing, identifying “uber” influencers and direct touch customer support. Most success stories include bigger organizations like Pepsi, Motorola or Virgin Mobile.

So, Business to Business marketers are asking the right questions: what is the ROI for a B to B organization with regards to social media campaigns? Since the primary goal of B to B is not necessarily gathering individual consumer loyalty, how can an organization capitalize on these new channels?

There is plenty of opportunity for B to B businesses to promote and establish themselves in the social mediasphere to great effect:

  • Establish the organization as a Subject Matter Expert. Blogs are the perfect vehicle to create editorial on your industry (you’re currently reading an editorial on social media, on a blog, go figure). Facebook is a perfect vehicle to highlight those editorials and to highlight current industry events. This type of content creation exhibits the company’s interest, or passion, in what they do.
  • Showcase / Review new products and programs. All social media channels are great outlets to introduce new items to your readers. From new widgets to new financial tools, a social media channel can get the word out effectively.
  • Search Optimization. The more links pointing back to your website, the better. The more keyword-rich content with references to your organization, the better. Social media channels provide another opportunity to promote your web presence to search engines. This isn’t to say one should create blogs specifically for keyword search – it is to say that along the path of creating content that company prospects and clients want to read, the natural writing should contain the keywords you are targeting.
  • Showcase successes, case studies and white papers. Press releases are overkill for some news. Social media helps a company promote and display the fruits of its labor. It is also a good channel for promoting the press releases of the bigger wins.
  • Thought Leadership. Every industry landscape changes over time. The ongoing dialogue around these changes are priceless. The discussion and new thought when speaking with customers, prospects, industry professionals and even competitors sparks the type of ideas that are worth editorializing. This type of content creation stakes you and your company out as a thought leader in your space.

B to B organizations have a right to ask what’s in it for them when it comes to a Social Media campaign. The answer: plenty.

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Best Websites: Yelp – Good for You, Good for Your Business

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

yelplogoMy family and I took a road trip in late spring and ended up Yelping our way from Sacramento to Santa Fe and back.

I downloaded the Yelp iPhone app prior to heading out. Each time we pulled into a town to eat, I would search for restaurants near my “current location”. Even in the smallest highway towns we would find multiple reviews for local restaurants and consistently ate much better food than the fast food found at the interstate intersections. Yelpers had been there before us and gave us a glimpse into the depth of each town, however small. You would be surprised how nice the restaurants are in Williams, Arizona.

It was during that trip that I became a Yelp enthusiast. I had in my hands information and, more importantly, insight on any service or entity around me (there are reviews on the Grand Canyon itself). The insight came from the reviews for the businesses – previous visitors took the time to give an impression of their experience. Most times, the reviews reflected our experience as well.

My friends are probably getting tired of me going on about Yelp: the 25 million people who visited the site in August alone, 80% yearly growth and being one of Time’s top 50 websites for 2009. Applications for iPhone, Palm Pre and Blackberry make mobile search a snap. If you’ve not browsed over there, do yourself a favor and look up restaurants in your town. Odds are you might find some hidden gems you don’t know about. You can also review the businesses you like and dislike – your two cents in the web 2.0 sphere.

For Business:

Yelp isn’t just about restaurant reviews – it’s about reviews of everything around you, including your business. If you are a business owner and want to increase your web presence, it would behoove you to take ownership of your business on Yelp. The business is probably listed already and, if not, you can add it easily. After you take ownership (a simple email confirmation), complete the listing by populating as much information about your business as possible. Remember, people using Yelp are targeting, no, pinpointing their search, both locally and for type of business – you can’t get a better potential customer. Make it easy for them to get information about your business. Since Bing incorporates Yelp into it’s search results, you are also helping your Bing search results as well.

Reviews:

Businesses can learn a lot about themselves via Yelp reviews – both positive and negative. People won’t typically walk up and tell an owner what they found unappealing about their business but those people WILL write it in a Yelp review. This gives the business owner multiple opportunities. The first is to gain insight on possible areas of improvement. The second is to engage in a dialogue with the reviewer via Yelp. Many times reviewers have updated their review, provided more positive feedback and even become regular customers when the business reaches out to reviewers. It’s this transparency and customer-oriented social marketing that help businesses (and Yelp) really shine.

Yelp also provides for business to business reviews. If you do business with local businesses, by all means, provide reviews. This type of social capital is gold for both you and the other business owner. Really, all chambers of commerce nationwide should be pushing this “all boats will rise” initiative.

Getting reviews from consumers is a different affair. Soliciting reviews in return for discounts or freebies is frowned upon and will typically backfire in that you will get a negative “pandering” review. The best way to garner reviews (besides providing awesome service and products) is to leverage unsolicited compliments. By responding with “Thanks so much, it would be really helpful for my business to see that kind of review on Yelp” you might just get a good review posted.

Keep in mind that Yelp typically removes reviews by “one-timers”: people who post one review on Yelp then never access their account again. So, the only reviews that stick are ones by relatively active Yelpers.

Google:

The recent release of Place Pages by the many-tentacled Google will give Yelp something to think about (I’m sure the release isn’t new news to them). It will be interesting to see how Yelp responds to this development.

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