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“How will social media change lead nurturing?”

By Kim Albee

Updated October 18, 2012

I talk with B2B marketers every day, and now more and more B2C marketers, and in just about every case, people think they are missing out if they're not active with social media.  I then ask them, if you could achieve your marketing objectives without social media, would you care?  The answer is always "No! I just want to achieve my objectives."  Exactly.  As I reviewed this post, even though I wrote this two years ago -- it is still relevant today.

Great question that was asked at Focus.com.  It also came up tonight at dinner with my sister, Ardath.

 

It all boils down to CONTENT. If you want to participate on social media sites to drive interest, the only way to do that is through having relevant and engaging content.

Social Media is a distribution channel. 
You Tube is a distribution channel.
iTunes is a distribution channel.
Your Website is a distribution channel.
Your Blog is a distribution channel.
 Email is a distribution channel.
 Direct Mail is a distribution channel.

For your content.

I think it's safe to say that effective online marketing and lead nurturing is completely dependent upon how relevant your content is, and leveraging all of the different media (text, video, audio) in your content strategy. In social, you can post discussions, or status updates that point to content that you make available, so you continue to build your reputation. Then other content is available to people who "opt-in" to learn more, or otherwise show interest, which you deliver through email, direct mail, etc.

Is there a difference between content that drives traffic and interest, and content that nurtures leads who are actively expressing interest and providing you with their information? I believe that the answer is Yes.

Which gets at the critical aspect that underlies the ability to produce relevant content, which is having an intimate understanding of your target market -- their pain, their needs, their interest, etc. Without this, developing a content strategy, that both drives traffic and interest, as well as nurtures those that have expressed interest, will be a guessing game -- no matter whether you use social to distribute that content, or other nurturing tactics and channels.

Updated October 2012 -- Focus has been taken offline - so you can't see the answers. We did a webinar In May 2012 on Easy Social Media Marketing that outlines how to approach your social media activities in a way that's manageable and will produce results.

For interviews with Joe Pulizzi and Ardath Albee about how to put together content that drives results, check out:  InternetMarketingCompete.com/content-strategy

LinkedIn Doesn't Get The Social Media World

By Kim Albee

LinkedIn has experienced HUGE growth -- particularly in the business/professional sector of the social media space.  But recent experiences with LinkedIn have led me to believe that they are accidental recipients of that growth, and don't really get (nor are they interested in) the social media world and space.  There are things that made LinkedIn a great place for business and professional networking -- distinct from Facebook, MySpace or the other social media sites, and now I'm certain that they have no idea what made them a great fit for the business world.

Last March (2008), I started a Group at Linked in, called the B2B Online Marketing group.  I had a designer develop a logo for it (because back then, you could only have a little logo that would display on a user's profile, and your group could link to an outside URL -- there was no other ability for group members to participate with one another).  Because we wanted to foster conversation with other B2B Marketers specifically about online marketing and what was working, etc., we started the microsite called B2B Online Marketing Pros (http://www.b2bonlinemarketingpros.com) - and associated that with the URL for the group.  Each month (or every other month) we would aggregate topics from around the Net, relevant to B2B Online Marketers and send a newsletter out to our group membership.

LinkedIn made the name and email address available to Group Owners -- and tells the users who are joining a group that this will happen.  LinkedIn also provided a CSV download of those members or those requesting membership to the group owner.  So it was really easy to export that list, and import it into the tools we used to communicate and measure responses, so we could gauge how well we were hitting the needs of the group with the content we were featuring and aggregating -- because we're interested in providing relevant content that helps B2B Online Marketers put together winning strategies.

The group is growing at about 240 members a month -- which is a pretty good clip, and new members get a nicely formed welcome message that includes the last email newsletter subject (and link to the site).

Then, 2 weeks ago, LinkedIn moved out "new" functionality for Group Owners -- called an Announcement feature, and at the same time removed the ability to export group member information.  Never mind that the group owners have grown their groups using LinkedIn, that many of them brought their offline groups to LinkedIn to make the management of the groups easier and provide a more "social" framework for interaction of the folks in their group.  So being able to send a monthly newsletter out, and export all of the current email addresses of your group membership, is something that many of LinkedIn groups were built around.  LinkedIn's response was "now that we've given you the announcement feature, you don't need to export members information." 

Point #1:  Their announcement feature provides ZERO ability to format the email, removes all the formatting so it gets delivered in a big text blob that isn't readable at all -- it's NOTHING I would ever send to my membership -- here's a clip of what it looks like:

Note: it is sent from a "noreply" email at LinkedIn, so no one could just hit reply and type a message that would be received by anyone, and there are zero statistics provided about open, clickthrough, etc.

Point #2:  LinkedIn has it's own group called the LinkedIn Products Forum that has a lot of group owners in it, and we have provided feedback to LinkedIn re: their products, features, and capabilities consistently.  When this "upgrade" was released, there were immediate discussions that were started, and to-date, there have been 117 comments in all -- making this subject THE MOST talked about, with some group owners imploring LinkedIn to put the export capability back in place. 

What has been LinkedIn's response?  NOTHING.  NADA.  They are absent.  I think they figure they have the market on the professional social media space, or that the venture money they received has VC's pushing that they need to be more like Facebook -- so they are blindly going forward trying to somehow "catch up" with what's offered by the Facebook crowd, with no understanding or willingness to engage with those who have helped build LinkedIn as the professional social space that it is.

I'm reminded of how Dell treated the social media space, and got nailed -- and now they have a very social strategy.  But I expect more from LinkedIn.  The social media realm is where they live, isn't it?  Or are they just a traditional, lucky company that doesn't really understand the success they've achieved? (unfortunately, I now believe it's the latter).

Here's the email I send out (and it has a way for folks to unsubscribe -- or reply to the email so we can read it), and it has a way for us to understand what happened with that email -- BASIC marketing tools to help grow interest and provide more relevant content (i.e. GROW THE GROUP AND IT'S VALUE TO THE GROUP MEMBERSHIP).

 

Further, we have extensive metrics so we can gauge how the content was received, and if it provided value to our group membership:

Suffice it to say, our latest email, that went out with our focus on Social Media Marketing, got a 33% open rate and a 48% click-through rate, which is very high based on standard email metrics.

So, besides being inept at providing functionality, LinkedIn makes unilateral decisions about it's functionality without regard to the "free" labor they get by way of people organizing their groups (which LinkedIn sells targeted advertising for their group pages).  And when we do raise up and sound the alarm, and at times even plead with LinkedIn to respond and join the conversation, and engage with us, they remain silent. 

The only thing I can think to do is take it to the blogosphere -- and see what we can accomplish here.

Please post your comments!

Kim

Use Social Media to Gain PR Traction

By Kim Albee

I was at a coffee gathering for the local Business Marketing Association as a follow-up to a social media panel presentation that I was unable to attend the previous week.  It was a great conversation -- but there was this one idea that caught my attention, and I'm wondering who else out there is doing this as part of your online marketing strategy:

Get the editorial calendars for the trade publications in your industry or for your target markets, and plan your editorial calendar ahead of theirs, so you can have blog posts, videos, eBooks, etc., on topics that they will be covering, so they have a chance of getting picked up by the pubs when they're pulling together their content.

Given that we don't have a lot of time on our hands, it seems to me that this is an easy way to help establish the editorial calendar and schedule within your organization for specific target markets, to get out in front of those audiences, and help augment your search engine optimization for them as well.

What do you think?

Social Nets and Blogs More Popular Than E-Mail

By Kim Albee

Pulled right from eMarketer: "according to Nielsen Online, more people in the US and other leading digital countries worldwide are using social networks and blogs than e-mail."  This is interesting, because while I was in San Diego at the Online Marketing Summit in February, there was a terrific panel discussion about this very topic -- well sort of -- the question was, "Will Social Media take over email in effectiveness?" -- which is how some people might read the headline above.

The answer from the panel throughout the discussion was, No.  Think about it -- what is the ONE thing that all social media sites ask for when you set up an account?  Yep, email address.  How do you know that someone has asked to be in your network?  Yep, you get an email.

Just like in previous times, when people thought the TV was the demise of radio, it wasn't.  The uses are just different.  In terms of online marketing in a B2B world, email still provides the best ROI of the online media.  Targeted email and drip campaigns can increase those returns significantly, and can be measured through the sales cycle as leads convert to customers.

So don't go throwing the baby out with the bathwater!  We might be using social media more to connect and keep up with groups of friends and colleagues, but email is still hugely effective, and in many ways keeps us alerted to things happening within our social networks.

Here's the article at eMarketer: Social Nets and Blogs more popular than e-mail.

Is Your Company an Ostrich when it comes to Social Media?

By Kim Albee

A lot has been said and promoted about social media and the fact that companies need a social media strategy.  While I think there is a lot that might go into such a strategy, there is something to be said for exploring the media and learning how it might benefit your organization.

I monitor a lot of different forums and discussions, and recently a thread caught my attention.  B2B companies that are blocking access to Facebook and LinkedIn from their corporate networks.  The "liberal" ones are graciously allowing access before 8am, over the lunch hour, and after 5pm.

It wasn't just one or two posts that admitted this, it was plenty of them.  More interesting is that Marketing was fighting the ban.  (?? who controls the Internet and web access at your organization, the IT department?)

I call this the "Ostrich Strategy For Social Media".  And now for a little ranting...

I'd like to know WHO at these companies is establishing this rule. It's ABSURD! It shows how much of an Ostrich the company is (i.e. putting their head in the sand under some other guise of not wanting to disturb employee productivity or some other nonsense).

OK – never underestimate the executive who doesn't “get it” and the mandates they apply out of ignorance or fear -- but is that leadership?.

Is your company an Ostrich? It would be fun to find out which companies are actually blocking access to these sites and what the rationale is for doing so.

Possible rationale (figuring out why organizations would put such a rule in place):

1. Allowing access to social media sites will disrupt employee productivity. I find myself wondering about the effectiveness of the managers and leaders within the organization if they're unable to motivate their staff to continue to get their work done. Do these companies also confiscate all cell phones at the door when employees enter? Or prohibit any cell networks from getting a signal from within their walls?  Certainly leadership and management training would be a better investment.

2. Employees might say things about the company, and they're not 'cleared' as spokespeople. Again, I'm curious what morale is within the organization. Or what is the real 'fear' behind that sort of rationale?  I think companies would be surprised when employees speak authentically and listen/engage in social media.  Does anyone have examples of this going really badly for an organization?  I've only seen the cases where being an ostrich has cost a company enough to make them rethink and embrace the social realm.

3. ??? (i invite your input here -- help me to understand this...)

I'd welcome any insights that you have, but given that 25% of adults in North America who are online are participating in the social media, and given that if you're a B2C organization you might find Facebook useful for creating relationships about what your organization does, or if you're B2B then LinkedIn may provide some real value – putting your head in the sand and mandating action that deafens your organization to any sort of participation seems like a backward strategy no matter how it's conceived or why.

My experiences using social media to get the word out

Launching a new business is a very very time consuming task!  But if it were easy, everyone would be doing it, right?

In my last post -- in mid-June, I said I would be sharing my experiences in launching a new business on a shoestring budget -- taking the suggestions from David Meerman Scott's book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, among other things.

As I was exploring how to engage with social media and how it might help get the word out about Genoo, I already had a profile at LinkedIn, and I created one at Facebook, where everyone said I should also be.  I began to see that people in my network were in different LinkedIn groups, so I joined some of those as well, to see what that would afford in terms of converations.  I did the same at Facebook.

LinkedIn's group functionality currently isn't anything more than the logo for the group that you can display with your profile.  I thought maybe there'd be a way to post a question at LinkedIn and then distribute to members of the group -- particularly if it's a question that the expertise of the group could most likely address.  But they don't have that capability -- and when I inquired, the answer I got back was pure business that wouldn't give me any indication of whether they even appreciated the suggestion or question.

Facebook just has group functionality that works for group members to collaborate with one another -- ask questions, post things, etc. 

I started to get curious about the group functionality, so I created the B2B Online Marketing group at LinkedIn and Facebook.  I'd always wanted to get B2B Online Marketers together to discuss issues and learn from each other's experiences -- so I thought this might be a good group to create.

I did this in March. Today, the LinkedIn group has almost 300 members.  The Facebook group has 9.  I invited everyone who fit that sort of profile to join both of the groups -- and the LinkedIn group has just grown by leaps and bounds. 

LinkedIn gives you the ability to identify a URL for the group -- so at first, I found some discussion forum software and created a little community for LinkedIn group members to ask and participate with each other -- but that got really minimal participation.  So when Genoo launched, I created a microsite with a Genoo account, had a designer provide a header graphic, footer graphic, color and font suggestions, and then put together a site for the group that would have an agenda, and aggregate articles on a particular subject each month.  It took me about 2 weeks to put that site together at Genoo.  It's located at www.b2bonlinemarketingpros.com.

Then, I exported the group members from LinkedIn, and imported them to my lead database at the Genoo account, and put together the first newsletter for the group, and sent it out.  Response was pretty good in terms of click throughs, etc.  And since that site has been the URL for the group out at LinkedIn, we've gotten about 10+ people a week expressing interest -- which is great.

I actually look at the profiles of everyone who requests to join the group, and it's amazing the membership and what they do for their companies.  I have not excluded anyone, including competitors, from joining the group -- because I would love and relish the dialog and sharing of what works for B2B Online Marketing -- and be able to have a place where B2B Online Marketers can go to easily reference what's available.  And that is what this site is  -- a true microsite, sponsored by Genoo, for that particular segment.

I've asked folks to contribute articles, etc., for the topics we'll be putting together, and I've had a few people send me links and things -- but by and large -- very little participation or discussion has occurred to-date.  So we'll continue to bring together valuable content for this group, and see where it leads, but it's a great venue for communicating.  Since I can measure response and interest in different topics as people respond to the newsletters, with Genoo's tools I will even be able to target specific content to folks in the group who appear more interested in different subject matter, which may also be an expansion of this site and the way we let people know about the content available there.

I mean, isn't one of the goals of content marketing and the "new" marketing in general, providing people with content that is relevant to them?  Having tools integrated with the microsite for email marketing and lead nurturing that tracks interest and response so we can do this sort of targeting will make it fun (and easy) to see how that might evolve at this site, and whether that changes how people interact -- I'll keep you posted.

The Facebook group hasn't really done much of anything to-date. There are only 9 members in it.  My experience with Facebook has been really fun with all of my friends -- but not as effective as my LinkedIn experience from a professional level.

For sure, participating in the social media takes time and effort.  It's a constant generation of conversation and networking.  For businesses, I think it's important to weigh the time/cost of that effort to the gain you expect to receive from it, and plan or budget accordingly.  If I allowed it to, it could easily take my entire week to do a credible job on these platforms.

Launching Genoo Using The New Rules of Marketing and PR

I've been kind of quiet over the past month on my blog.  My time over the past 8 weeks has been in testing, demo-ing, and bringing the new company, Genoo, to its launch, which happened on Monday (June 16th).

I see so many articles and webinars on the subject of how businesses can utilize the "social" media options in their marketing, that I thought it would be an interesting series of posts to use my experience as a kind of case study in the possibilities for using online marketing and social media, etc. to get the word out about this new company, so here goes.

As a point of quick background, I've been working with companies and their internet strategies since 1995, when I spearheaded the technology-side of the nation's 16th largest major metropolitan newspaper's Internet presence.  I then went to a bank, who is the nation's largest Ag financial lender in the nation, and in 1997 put together an online community for Pork farmers with news, information, and discussion forums -- you could say, a web 2.0 offering ahead of itself.  As you know, the entire community definition has morphed into the "social media" phenomenon that we're engaged in today.

I've been working with marketers specifically since 1998, helping to answer the question, "how can companies leverage the internet for advantage?"  In 2000, that took the form of my company Einsof, which offers an infrastructure set of tools that enables organizations to publish and manage all of the content for their Website, Sales Portal, and Partner Portal - with permissions easily established, and not requiring the help of IT, once it was set up.  The purpose was to bring easy to use, integrated internet-based tools to the mid-market. Einsof went beyond content management, and included discussion forums, surveys, email marketing, auto-notifications, eCommerce - it is essentially a set of tools that can be combined and used in a myriad of ways, to create an internet presence and easily manage it. 

But with Einsof, we could never figure out how to get folks launched without a sizeable setup fee, and a pretty good ongoing monthly fee.  Some of my colleagues kept challenging me to come up with a Software-as-a-Service offering that would be super easy to just go out and set up -- but the challenge was in how to allow enough flexibility in the customer-facing pages, so that branding, etc could be employed and utilized.

At the end of last year, after what you could say was 4-5 years of considering different approaches, the idea for Genoo was born, and it was feasible.  I was reading David Meerman Scott's book, The New Rules of Marketing And PR, that talked about how to use the different online avenues such as bloggers, social media, and others to tackle the PR and marketing challenges.  And I thought Genoo could be an example of launching a company using these different media options. 

With some marketing folks, we put together the Genoo pre-launch website, to reveal what Genoo would be over a series of months while the development was getting finalized, and to build interest and recognition for the name and the ideas.  We started with a list of about 3500 names, and began an email marketing campaign.  We also worked on ensuring that each story was search engine optimized for specific keyword functionality.  The pre-launch site displayed more content with each new email that we sent -- we added another article that revealed the need for another capability that Genoo would have.  All of it based on the work done with marketers and the challenges faced in fulfilling the internet marketing paradigm -- which is relevance and niche segmenting right into the interests that your buyers have.

I have been active with the social media options, pretty much all of them that I've come across -- Rollyo, Squidoo (which I learned about reading Seth Godin's book, Meatball Sundae), Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

I attended the Online Marketing Summit in late February, and had Genoo cards printed up that I could hand to the folks that I met and got in conversations with -- I used those conversations to get initial feedback on the idea for Genoo -- and it met with fairly good enthusiasm.  Almost everyone I spoke with about it, handed me their card and said they wanted to get more information as we moved forward.  I added that stack of business cards to the Genoo mailing list -- and I looked each of them up on LinkedIn and followed up with an email, and added them to my LinkedIn network.  The conference was very well done, small enough that really good conversations could be had, and the speakers were well versed in their subjects. 

Originally planning to launch in April, we started our pre-launch articles and email marketing efforts in February, with an email and new article being added every other week or so, through mid-April.  But we weren't ready to launch in April -- as with all of the best laid plans, we were still testing. Near the end of April, I started giving demos of Genoo -- for the first time.  The people we gave demos to got excited - and we signed up some of our initial "customers" who will be some of our first case studies as they engage with the tools. People were excited about the ease with which they could set up microsites, capture leads, and conduct integrated email marketing as well as lead nurturing through drip email campaigns based on dynamic segmenting of lead activity.  And what almost every one of them were excited about was the fact that they wouldn't have to engage with their IT groups.  But by mid-May we still weren't quite ready to launch... and now we had folks really wanting to get started...

No email marketing efforts or new articles were added to the Genoo pre-launch site -- we had fulfilled that plan -- we were working to get feedback, and give those who wanted it a view of Genoo, to see who else we might 'sign up' as initial customers.

Genoo is now live (officially went into public beta on June 16th), at www.genoo.com.  Feel free to check it out.  The folks who've seen it so far have given great reviews and what we've hopefully started is a conversation that will grow and morph in ways that our customers will drive -- providing exactly what our tag line says: "Online Marketing Tools At Your Fingertips!".

So that gives you an overview of the first part of our marketing experiences -- and I'll continue in my next posts to share more about what has become an all-encompassing endeavor to launch a new company using the social media and new marketing practices and philosophies.... so stay tuned...

Online Marketing Summit - Harnessing Social Media

Before attending the Online Marketing Summit, I found and began reading the book, "Join The Conversation" by Joseph Jaffe.  It was a terrific preparation, because at the Summit, there were several excellent sessions on how to harness social media -- and from both the book and the sessions, there were a few common threads that really stand out, namely:

• To engage effectively, you must be willing to give up control of the message and be authentic and real in your communications.
• Start with listening.  Locate the conversations happening in your market or about your company, and listen to what is getting said -- good, bad, ugly.  Just like in life, be appropriate when you "join" a conversation - so get a feel for it. 
• When you do start participating, don't ever defend yourself -- just like in life, it's just not very effective, and in most cases, worsens a situation.
• There may be no single department within your organization that "owns" the social media space.
• The reality of engagement is much different than the fears that are stopping most companies today. 
• You don't have to be perfect to participate -- don't be afraid of people who say bad things about you - just listen, engage, and be authentic.  Quit trying to spin everything.  Quit pushing for an outcome that fits your pictures (like getting people to buy something from you).
• The team you have pay attention and participate in the social media realm may not be anyone you've got today -- it might be Interns who enjoy the social media realm and understand it, rather than your PR group or Marketing Communications who are too busy 'spinning' to be authentic. 

Think about this: by the year 2010, 100% of high school grads will have spent a portion of every day of their school life online.

Are you exploring any of the social media sites yet?  LinkedIn or FaceBook?  Did you know that FaceBook allows you to publish a business page specifically?  If not, what's stopping you?  If you are interested in how to harness the power of social media for your business, you're going to have to find the time to engage with it yourself.

If you're curious where you or your organization might be showing up or getting talked about, set up a Google Alert, so you will get notified when it happens, so you can track it.

There's also a good post on Jaffe Juice about a specific Chapter of "Join The Conversation", that's all about getting started -- you might enjoy some  of those insights.