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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.