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“How Do I Manage All of This Social Media Marketing?”

4/13/2011

1 Comment

 
After reviewing the opportunities that Social Media Marketing presents to small business I inevitably get asked "My God! How do you manage all that?"  

Simple! "There’s an APP for that!”  Well, actually, there are a multitude of application dashboards so that you can see ALL of your social media sites.


Realize that the heavy users of Social Media are NOT online every minute.  They have done several things, which are very important to be aware of, as you ponder social media marketing:
Best Social Media Management Tool: HootSuite
Masahble: Best Social Media Management Tool 2010: HootSuite
They have “wired” their social media sites together. 
In all reality you can only be in one place at a time.  Different users will be using different channels at the same moment.  You notice that when you channel surf on TV that you see the same commercials sometimes?  It’s just like that. In order to maximize your exposure you “connect” the sites to each other so you don’t have to post the same thing over and over again.

Remember when I explained that Twitter was a “junction box”? This is how it “connects” Twitter
permits the sharing between sites better than most any other social media site.

Here are a couple of examples of dashboard app’s:
  • Co-tweet
  • Hootsuite
  • MarketMeSuite
  • Seesmic

They have Pre-programmed “Tweets” and announcements.
If you already do a newsletter email or product announcements electronically, you have content to use.

Two very good examples of how this can be done is to take a look at Criterion Machine Works or TechniksUSA Blog sites.  Once a blog is posted it is automatically tweeted, posted on their Facebook page and appears in a number of social media outlets.

...Automatically
The Blogs can be programmed to post at a given time and, once the switch is flipped on the timer, everything else happens seamlessly.

That however, is not where it ends.  Unlike just sending it out there and hoping people read it, now your customer can interact back with you.

Think of social media like your cell phone. You should check it a couple times a day with your dashboard application and see if you have messages, comments, or questions and then “engage” the customer in some “conversation.”

Measuring ROI

Just as there are a number of dashboard app’s there are an innumerable number of “analytics” to gage and measure success in real time.

In fact, some of the dashboard applications I mentioned earlier have the measurement tools built right into them. Measuring is actually pretty easy.

Without going into a tremendous amount of detail on measurement tools, be aware that the list of measurement tools practically exceeds the number of social media outlets that exist.  Just for Twitter there are sites like Analytic.ly, Twifficiency and Twitteranalyzer.

Facebook has built-in analysis tools for their Page.  Your ROI is really going to be determined by what you put into the effort.  

​Just like a salesperson, the more you engage, the more return.  If you sit in the office and just send out emails and don’t follow up to engage into the conversation not much is going to happen.  “Engaging” is the key to ROI and the analysis tool sets are all going to measure this kind of activity and report on it.
1 Comment

Industrial Equipment Sales via Social Media

3/16/2011

2 Comments

 
AMTDA Tool Talk Social Media

​A shorter version of this article appeared in the 
American Machine Tool Distributor’s Association “ToolTalk” newsletter in October 2010 starting on Page 4.

This article on social media is going to be a bit different than previous articles that have appeared in Tool Talk. 

​We’re going to address some of the core questions that the 
AMTDA membership has been asking about Social Media:
  • “Is this just a fad?
  • Should I just wait until the dust settles to get in?”
  • “What are the best Social Media places to be?
  • Where are my customers?”
  • “I don’t have enough time to respond to emails, how am I going to manage these marketing efforts”
  • “How do I know what my ROI is?
  • How do I measure it's performance?”
Luddite email 1993 Social Media 2010

Is Social Media a Fad?

Social media trends by Age 2009-2010
“While social media use has grown dramatically across all age groups, older users have been especially enthusiastic over the past year about embracing new networking tools.

Social networking use among internet users ages 50 and older nearly doubled—from 22% in April 2009 to 42% in May 2010.
  • Between April 2009 and May 2010, social networking use among internet users ages 50-64 grew by 88%–from 25% to 47%.
  • During the same period, use among those ages 65 and older grew 100%–from 13% to 26%.
  • By comparison, social networking use among users ages 18-29 grew by 13%—from 76% to 86%.”
-“Older Adults & Social Media”, Mary Madden, PEW Internet, August 27, 2010


Social media is generating the same conversations today.  The big difference is that the “tools” to use and manage social media are expanding exponentially and will continue to expand.  The pace of change in the last 18 months in Social Media would be like moving from NC Tape Machines to full integration of MT Connect in the same time period.
….It’s not a fad.

Should I just wait to “get in?”

Unrealistic expectations for new CNC machining center
You already know that that is not realistic.  But that is the same kind of thinking that is taking place in Social Media.

“Hey, we can just set up a Twitter account in a few minutes”

Well, yes you can, but, just like the first time buyer of a machine tool, there’s still an awful lot to learn. The sooner you start learning, the farther in front of your competitors you’ll be.  This is a pro-active approach.  Too many b-to-b companies, particularly exhibitors at IMTS, took a reactive approach. They jumped in and created their “social media brand names” without first having personal accounts so they understood how it works.

So the best way to learn is to set up some social media personal accounts.
Picture
Start with your LinkedIn Profile.
  1. Does your profile web link say “My Company”  or contain your actual company name?
  2. Create a Company Page – it’s that little document icon next some people’s company name.
…get in now. 

​Be Sure to read the article Social Media for Industrial Marketing, Part 1: LinkedIn for more details.


What are the best Social Media places to be as a Machine Tool Distributor?

Picture
YouTube – It’s the simplest way to enable your sales force to have all of their product videos in one place.  You don’t need to re-create the wheel or even upload any videos. 

You can go in and “favorite” your builder’s videos after you create your own channel.  

You can read more about this here: 
Social Media for Industrial Marketing, Part 2: YouTube
​


Picture
Twitter – “Twitter’s like snack food: it tastes good, it’s fun to eat but there’s no nutritional value” In some sense, the above statement is true.  But with two  BIG caveats: It’s all in what you make of it, and, most importantly, it's a FOUNDATION level application. 

Without going into a lot of detail about API’s and tech jargon, what you need to know is that Twitter connects to 
almost everything.

It’s like the junction box in an electrical system.  

​Want to learn more? Click here: 
Social Media for Industrial Marketing, Part 3: Twitter
​


Picture
Blog – “I don’t know what to write about, I don’t have content” Press releases, news articles, technical information…. Cut and paste.  There is lots of content available.

Obviously, clear all of this with the content owners.  Actually a Blog is one of the very best things you can create. Think about this for a moment. When you type a search into Google, you don’t type just “CNC” you type what you are looking for: “cnc swiss screw machine multi axis.” 

You have learned over the years that by typing more information you are more likely to find 
exactly what you are looking for in a topic. ​​

​This is called a “long tail search.” That’s very important to know because it’s how your customers find out about your company and your products. It becomes even more important because the new algorithms used by search engines are location based. 

You’ve probably noticed that when you use a “long tail search” and you’re in Chicago you don’t get listings for many places in Europe. 

That’s not because there 
aren’t places in Europe it’s because they are NOT near Chicago.

US-Companies-Using-Blogs-for-Marketing-Purposes-2007-2012
43% of U.S. companies will be blogging by 2012.
Picture
Facebook – “That’s for kids.” Step back from any preconceived notions and think about this from a business standpoint.  There is a war going on.  Two data collection monoliths, Facebook & Google, are each trying to outdo each other. 

In April 2010 Facebook announced at their annual “F8” conference the “Open Graph”: That’s why you are seeing the “LIKE” button appear everywhere. Here’s why that’s important:  If you recall the first time you got a day planner you learned that you should not only put your business appointments down but also soccer games, weddings and personal events.

Time management 101. Your life is 24 hours a day. Facebook at it’s core is personal. But your personal life affects your business and vice-versa. Facebook collects personal data and associates it with your interests. If your title is “CNC machinist,” it permits advertisers to target that.

Although Google has a massive database, they have not “aggregated” demographics as deep down as Facebook. They are both competing for ad space. If you were at IMTS in Chicago and logged into Facebook, you may have seen some ads running.  But you would have only seen them if you were with in 5 miles of McCormick Place, between 7pm -10pm, were male, between 35-55, and had some keyword in your profile indicating you were in our industry.

​The “pay-per-click” cost .60 cents each and had a cap on the amount spent by the advertiser. Yes, you can do that level of targeted advertising. Creating a Facebook Page is a way to become “engaged’ and be in front of your customer when they get home from work.  The busiest time on Facebook is Wednesday and Friday evening, but we’ll talk about that more later…

Where are my Customers?

They are “IN” all for the above digital spaces and probably another 1,000 more.

Have you ever purchased something online?  Have you looked down at the product reviews and decided against the purchase of something because of the reviews?  Then, did you think  “Wow, I wonder why that manufacturer isn’t reading that and fixing it? They’re getting really bad press”  The problem is that the manufacturer may not even know about the comments to address them. But B-to-B  consumers ARE researching and engaging each other.
​
There are a number of free products out there to use to search for who’s talking about what.  I would recommend going to Social Mention and type in your company name and brands and see what appears.  You will find that you can drill down and drill down more and then drill down even more into exactly who is talking about what where.

Where to Start

“I’ve gotta interpolate down and then ramp into this corner with a ½” tool at an 8 thou chip load and I need a 32 finish. Which is better Linear guides vs. box ways? How’s your look ahead on that?”
The first time you heard that it would have been like a foreign language.  Social Media also has it’s own language:
“I put the hashtag in the summary blog post & the metatag to increase my SEO”

So where do you start?  You can’t arrive in our industry green and expect to know everything. Same thing applies for social media.
Picture
Start with a personal account on:
  • Twitter –  Set up Twitter account and follow some people. You can follow @RPMconsultants where we tweet about social media or my personal Twitter account, @bernardtmartin where I tweet about Education, STEM, F1, Economics and Foreign Affairs. You can then check out who we follow, learn some basics, ask some questions.
  • Facebook – Set up a personal account, be sure to set your account settings to “friends only” across all categories and then search for “International Manufacturing Technology Show” or “AMTDA” on Facebook.  Look at whom they have made favorites on their Company page.  Hit the “LIKE” button.

​The first step is really about “learning” about how to use these tools for your business.

What NOT to do & Where to begin ​

  • DON”T go out and set up accounts in YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook for your company right this minute! That’s would be like a customer saying “I want to buy the CNC with the Green Paint, I like that color.”
  • Set up your personal accounts and then go to “Knowem” Search for some available names.  I’ve talked to many machinery distributor owners and employees over the years and heard “Yea, our website name is WAY too long, but it’s what we’re stuck with.”
Unlike registering your web address, your URL, with a service that reports to one central agency for verification, called ICANN, there is no single service registration of your “Social Media Brand name”
Places like Knowem allow you to search for brand names.

You want to use the same Brand name in ALL of your social media spaces.

​There are several considerations in the selection of THAT name:
  • Shorter is better. Remember Twitter on permits 140 characters in “tweets” You don’t want to eat up half of it with your company name and be limited on your message.
  • Use the same name in all social media spaces. That bears worth repeating. Remember that long tail search discussion?
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Social Media Marketing: Getting Started

2/9/2011

1 Comment

 
There’s a big difference between watching Golf and playing Golf at a professional level. Social Media is no different that other professional efforts: Once you become in engaged in it you learn that it’s probably not as simple as you first thought.
​
In the course of talking to prospective clients I’ve found a mixed bag of comments that all go something like “I got plenty of people who are on Facebook all the time, you can create an account in 5 minutes”
The Social Media Mess 2010

Selecting your Social Media Brand NAME

Unlike when you registered your website with a registrar for your unique URL, which was all overseen via ICANN, there is NO singleplace that you can register all of your SOCIAL MEDIA brand name. The key to words there are “Brand NAME” and not “Brand NAMEs”.  You have to create a profile in each SM space you want to present your brand individually.
​
As a marketer you already know the importance of using consistent images and names.  It becomes even more important in social media because you want people to find you when they use a search engine.  If you have a mixed bag of names your message may not reach the people you want to reach and, like two ships passing in the night, you will never engage in conversation. One very good service to use to begin the process is Knowem. However, Knowem doesn’t help you establish your brand in your industry specific niche forums.

​Read the “Terms of Service” (TOS)

I’ve talked to some very well-known major companies about their Social Media efforts.  When we sit and look at their SM spaces we discover that they’ve “jumped into” social media “Oh yea, we’re there!” But then we dig into it only to find that they have set up their company name as personal account and not created a COMPANY profile at all.  They at risk with not only with the loss of the SM account but also the loss of all of the conversations that they are engaged in already.
​
Just like entering a new foreign market there are cultural “rules” that should be followed.  By not showing respect for the local culture, and taking the time to understand it in advance, you risk creating a negative brand image that could take years to recover from to get back to zero.  Don’t burn your bridges and not even realize that you’re doing it.  Social Media spaces have their own culture. You are entering a cyber world.  Be sure to have a good understanding of how things work before you make the trip.

​Linking your Social Media

Once you have selected a brand NAME in your various spaces, you will need to have a good understanding of how the various “Status Updates”, “Wall Posts”, “Tweets”, “Blog Posts”, etc all connect together.  The people you want to reach may be in one SM space while you’re posting, at that moment, in another. Determining which posts are shared and which are not becomes a very important decision.
​
There’s quite bit more to think about that I’ve put into the slide show below. Take a peek at it:
The above slideshow presentation should give you an overview of how to start your social media efforts.  It outlines the reach and scope of social media (SM) for those new to the space.

​Getting in & Staying IN the Space

Once you have gotten into the new cyber world to market your brand, stay acutely aware that the landscape in social media is changing.  I’ve compared it to the 1849 Gold Rush in San Francisco.  Everyone is new, Everyone is from somewhere else.  What was the “best place” last week is not the “best space” this week.  That’s led some to say “Let’s wait, and not be on the bleeding edge”  The Bleeding Edge was several years ago and it was yesterday. The onslaught of new users hourly entering the social media cyber world is beyond compare.

Here’s an example, when I started using Slideshare as an add-in app on my LinkedIn profile it was NOT a social network.  It was a place to put slideshows to pull up on customer & client computers.  NOW, it’s a social network…. and the added functionality is expanding weekly it seems.  Every social media site is doing the same.  As they grow, they are becoming more and more niche, more and more industry specific, more and more topic specific.  Getting IN is critical at this point so that you, and your company, can establish your brand as a thought leader and engage and develop relationships…. but, you MUST stay engaged and continue to drill down as the individual spaces evolve.

I recently had a conversation with a client about YouTube and how it has evolved.  I showed them Don Fitchett‘s YouTube Channel Business Industrial Network. Don has been in that space (and many many others) for some time. He has over 430,000 upload views, has 1500 subscribers staying current with his latest news and he has over 5,000 friends.  That didn’t happen overnight.  Don is continuously engaged with his clients and potential clients.  Now ask yourself two questions:
​
  • If I wait for the dust to settle how many customers might my competitors pick up and I won’t know about it?
  • If I jump into the space and don’t understand the culture, or have a plan, what will it cost me?

Conclusion and Take-Aways

The conclusion that should be drawn after reviewing this is that developing a structured Social Media Strategy and Tactical implementation plan is crucial to your company’s success.

Without a plan you may find yourself creating a negative brand image within the space and end up spending more money trying to undo what you created and start over.

I look forward to your comments and questions.
​
Special Thanks to @RonDavies for blogging about “Knowem”
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Social Media for Industrial Marketing, Part 2: YouTube

11/10/2010

0 Comments

 
In this installment of “What’s all this about Social Media and where do I start?” we’re going to explore YouTube in some detail.  In this posting you’ll find out the following:
  • Why – Why should you post it
  • How – How you can create your own YouTube Channel
But first, the basics….
In the beginning we’re going to review some  information, then you can watch some video’s.  Again, it’s best to open a new screen to use the video and pause it as you begin to create your channel later on. 

Creating Your YouTube Channel

Since this is a basic tutorial about YouTube it just makes sense to use YouTube Video’s to explain it...
I realize that this isn’t the greatest video you have ever seen.  BUT, this is the only video I have found that takes you through the set up step by step setup.
You might also want to check this video out:

Subscribers, Subscribing & Friends

Ok, now let’s remember that YouTube IS a social media outlet.  Probably THE most powerful outlet that you have at hand to get your message out in a clear and succinct fashion.
​
Remember when we talked about Search Engine Optimization in a previous posting?  Creating a YouTube channel and not subscribing to other video channels or not making another  a “favorite” is not following those simple words of wisdom on the sugar packets: Advertising: Shout it from the mountaintops.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site or aweb page (such as a blog) from search engines via “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search resultsas opposed to other forms of search engine marketing (SEM) which may deal with paid inclusion. The theory is that the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.
Ok, Now the plain English: The more sites your site is connected to, the more chances you have of being higher in the rankings. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot more to it. But the basics remain the same. The more sites your site is connected to, the more chances you have of being higher in the rankings.

Now, Here’s the next important thing: What happens when you go to an industry event or reception?  The first thing you do is look around for people you know.  This is a very very common human trait.  You want to be comfortable.  You want to find who else you know that is there.  Pretty simple eh?
Social Media is THE SAME WAY! Just like we talked about on the LinkedIn posting:
  • SHOW YOUR CONNECTIONS!
  • SHOW YOUR FRIENDS!

​This is all under MODULES. In order for people to participate they want to know who you know, and who they might be introduced to.  THAT is the very essence of networking and social media is ALL ABOUT NETWORKING.
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Why Video Works in Industrial Marketing : Neuro-Linguistic Programming

10/13/2010

2 Comments

 
EDITORS NOTE: There have been many questions related to the legitimacy of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. For a more complete ongoing discussion please check out the responses on Quora: Is NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) scientifically proven? If yes then how? And if no then why are some people getting powerful results and some psychologists giving it the green signal?

Why is television such a great medium compared to radio? It has to do with something called Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
Picture
According to Neuro-Linguistic Programming Model people learn in different ways. This is often called the VAK Model (visual / auditory / kinesthetic). According to this model the general population learns according to the following percentages:
  • Visual – 75%
  • Auditory – 6%
  • Kinesthetic – 19%
It would then follow that since 81% of people learn via visual and auditory ques, as the theory goes, video is the best method of communicating a message.


Why YouTube is Awesome!
Until the advent of YouTube, where you are creating your own video channels, there was no way to utilize this in marketing for the manufacturing sector.
​
This social media platform is probably the BEST one that we have found for communicating with our customers about new products AND for our salesforce to learn more about the product. Here’s why:
  1. Statistically, knowledge retention from a sales meeting is about 20% at the termination of the meeting. Without “refreshment” and “review” this tracks down to a 5% after 14 days. (That’s why it’s important to have simple bullet point sell sheets, but that’s a topic for another time)
  2. The more the salespeople show the video, the more they learn about the product. Kind of like my old college friend who saw Monty Python’s the Holy Grail so many times that now, 20+ years later, he can still recite the lines verbatim.
  3. At the distributor level, creating a YouTube channel and “favoriting” your vendor’s video’s allows the salesperson to cross-sell other products because of the “wow, what’s this?” factor
  4. SEO! Again, you are cross-linking by “subscribing” or “friending” others. Hence you are creating broad cross-links which raises YOUR profile in searching.

Do’s and Don’ts for YouTube:
  • DO look at several other channels within our industry before creating your own channel if you have not created one before. Yes, my 11 year old created his own channel for his stop motion videos he makes but you want to observe what others are doing, what you like, and what you don’t like.
  • DO add every video of every product that you still make and stock. Even if the video is 12 years old, load it. Our industry is disconnected enough that someone may be seeing it for the first time.
  • DO add different versions of the same video. You may have an old video and you’ve since redone it with some other language but you deleted some sections that you know longer felt where important.
  • DO add a link and and Icon to your company website.
  • DO create “tags” for your videos. Remember the meta-tagging section up top?
  • DON’T let your marketing person make it part of his or her own personal youtube page: it shouldn’t contain a picture of the family dog in the profile.
  • DON’T assume that “we already have that video embedded in our own website so we shouldn’t load it on YouTube”. YouTube let’s you enlarge to a full screen, provides embed code (so people can add it to their blogs, etc) and it’s ON the NETWORK.
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