Archive for July, 2009

Lead Generation in a Social Media World

Monday, July 27th, 2009

Targeting Customers / Lead GenerationThis topic is sure to be of interest if you are in business.  The world of marketing has created this bubble around people that shields off the thousands of “pitches” that people get everyday.  How do we as marketers and business owners break through the bubble and begin to effectively market and message in a way that adds value to prospects in a way that triggers action. 

The other issue we are dealing with is influence.  There are many studies that tie a consumer’s influence to purchase coming through peer reviews and recommendations.  This is very powerful in how markets are developing and how your business will develop in the future.  How do you get recommended?  How do you build influence?  These are vexing questions and worthy of spending time to help figure out what’s available and how to take advantage of it.

To help us, Chris Brogan is moderating this week’s chat on using social media for lead generation.  Chris leads New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency and helps mid-large sized companies develop sales and PR strategies using new media approaches.  Chris is a social media rockstar in his own right and we are looking forward to having him lead the following conversation Tuesday noon EST.  Participate by going to the live page of this site or simply by following the #socialmedia from Twitter. 

The questions we will discuss on the topic of Generating Leads using Social Media:

1.  Getting started with lead generation in social media, what works? what doesn’t?

2.  How do you sustain the activity?

3.  How and when do you integrate with traditional marketing?

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Posted in ROI in Social Media, social media, SocialCRM | 1 Comment »

Should Businesses use Social Networks or Communities…What's the difference & Why should I care?

Monday, July 20th, 2009

First off – I want to acknowledge that we understand using a social network or a community is a tool approach and not a strategic approach to developing a complete internal social media strategy.What's the Difference?

With that said, suppose you are wanting to experiment and don’t have a huge budget, if any.  Say you have to prove out the medium before you can have access to real budget dollars. 

This week’s topic is a little granular but still very important.  Companies are eager to jump in and try out social tactics but often stop short of actually funding a project.  When employees at a tactical level “try out” new marketing approaches they are mostly one-off and not tied into a particular strategy whether at a campaign or a corporate level.  With little amount of thought tied to the actions, it’s no surprise that when the boss asks what the benefit was…the project usually ends there.  So what’s a person to do?  Well, for one thing – MAKE IT COUNT!

If anyone can make it count, it is this week’s moderator Rachel Happe.  From her vast experience in corporate product management to a highly touted analyst, she operates from a position of true hands-on-knowledge that is difficult to match.  This is why her insights are a perfect fit in helping companies determine not only why to participate but how to derive value from the experience. 

There are a lot of ways you could take this conversation and we still find that companies are still perplexed in what to do first.  Many times it’s as simple as having a real test bed for executives and employees alike to engage and interact and get their “hands dirty” a bit.  So here we go with the 3 questions for today:

1. What’s the difference between a social network and a community?

2. What should a business or company focus on…Developing a Community or developing a social network?

3. What are the success metrics to look for in each?

This week’s chat will be flying (you might want to stretch first) so join us early at noon est using #socialmedia.

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Posted in Content, social media | 1 Comment »

Social Media Fame-Does anyone outside the bubble even care?

Monday, July 13th, 2009

spotlightWe’ve talked so much over the past few months about personal brands versus corporate brands and what is more important to a company. We railed on who is the social media expert, who is the snake oil salesman, who is a star and who is a must follow on Twitter etc etc… But what does it all really mean? Are we the only one’s that actually care about this? Are we all just living and operating in such a closed, cloistered bubble that we just have no clue? Does the outside world or corporate America, even know or care about what we are doing in our circles that surround the periphery that is social media?

Join our host this week, Jennifer Leggio from ZDNet as we dig into what social media fame really translates into with the following 3 questions. Hopefully one hour will be sufficient, but with such a hot topic we doubt it.

Fame in social media:

1) What’s SM fame worth to you or your company? Is there ROI? Do you care?

2) What do you see the value of having a recognizable personal brand is? Does THAT translate into $?

3) What drives you? visibility or accomplishment?

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The Thorn on the Rose of Social Media?

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

rose-thorn

“ROI” is an  acronym that draws huge emotion in the social media space! Some say it’s a necessity, some say it’s impossible to measure, while others are indifferent and would rather just ignore it. This coming Tuesday during our Hashtag SocialMedia Chat we will be exploring the illusive ROI along with the use of social media. I am far from an expert, but I have some thoughts and insights that just might help you next time your VP of Finance asks you, “What are you doing on that Twitter Thing?

Before we start the chat, I would like to observe some of the more important findings that I have made over my time working professionally and playing in this space:

A. Never approach your network or the individuals in your network with a selfish one sided agenda!
-This is especially true if you are trying to build a network or community online. You won’t have to worry about measuring ROI if you’re bringing the old “shout about” model to your social media presence.

B. Set clear goals and objectives
- Figure out exactly what measurements are important to you and what they are worth. An example might be Hours spent engaging online vs. leads produced. In all of this remember rule #1. Be of massive value to your network and they will extol your virtues to the holders of the checkbooks

C. Create Reporting Channels
- Have ways to track and generate reportable results. if you spend 5 hours on twitter this week, calculate the number of quality connections and the leads that are generated through your presence. After you have quantified your leads you can figure out how many convert and connect that back to the bottom line. Tools like Salesforce.com can be beneficial for this type of interactive tracking.

Enter The Hashtag Social Media Chat

I am honored that I was asked to moderate this chat and I hope everyone comes away a little smarter in the understanding of how we can leverage social media in your company or business. I was asked to come up with three questions that we will address during this chat and they are:

1. Are you setting up benchmarks and tracking systems in your use of social media? How are you proving your worth?

2. What types of things are you measuring in social media and how do they add overall value to the organization?

3. There is no “R” without the “I” what types of investments are you making in the social media space?

I am looking forward to the discussion and hope you will attend!

-Keith Burtis

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Posted in ROI in Social Media, social media | 3 Comments »