I was going over some data at the marketing charts website and was kind of surprised to see a report stating that business to business companies don’t have much of a social media presence. I read the report, and it got me thinking. What could these companies accomplish with social media, and how should they use it to their advantage? It seems we (as marketers) focus alot on business to consumer social media marketing, especially when it comes to Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, and maybe that’s the major problem. So I’d like to discuss some ways that business to business companies can use social media to their advantage. Let’s start by discussing…

Top barriers to social media for business to business companies

According to the report, there are 4 main reasons why b2b companies don’t focus as much on online marketing. Here we go…

1. Insufficient personnel to maintain - It’s not surprising that this is number 1. So many companies have downsized, and they are continuing to do so (HP just let go of a ton of people the other day). However, why do you need to hire more people to do this? Here’s what I think. I would solicit blog entries from employees and offer some sort of reward for entries that are picked. Wow, pretty simple. Every one of your employees should have a presence on LinkedIn. If not for the company, then for their own good. Encourage them to post and answer questions. Now you have a social media presence and you didn’t even have to hire anyone.
2. Lack of organizational knowledge - I’m not sure what they mean by “organizational” knowledge, but I think that if you don’t know something you need to go and figure it out. There are a ton of online resources to find out more about online marketing. There are tons of books out there. If you don’t have time to research them yourself, then pick a different career. To think, these guys call themselves marketers. You should always make time to educate yourself.
3. Preference for traditional marketing - Let me say something here (like you have a choice). I prefer traditional marketing. And yet, I still engage in online and social media marketing. Why? Because I see the advantages, and also because a marketer needs to use any and all weapons at his or her disposal. If you aren’t using social media, you’re leaving a big weapon in the armory collecting dust. There’s no reason for that.
4. Perceived irrelevance to their field - Bottom line: you have to go where your customers go. This is 2010, take a deep breath and say it with me now, twenty-ten, soon to be eleven. People go online to find information. When you go fishing, you probably go to the lake where there are tons of fish. Why is marketing any different. Sure you’re dealing with a company, but that company is made up of individuals. And individuals like to go online to educate themselves. If you have a presence online and provide relevant information, then those individuals will find you. That’s called marketing.

What can b2b companies do to take advantage of social media

1. Start a blog - We’ve talked about it before. People go online to find information. Provide useful information to people and they will find you (and your company). Provide information on all aspects of your industry and your business. Like I said before, solicit entries from your co-workers (you’ll be surprised at all of the great ideas and talent that you have on board). If you can become an industry expert, then you can’t help but increase your brand awareness… and your profits.
2. Get on LinkedIn - People go to Facebook to interact with friends, relax, and play games, and all that good stuff. People get on LinkedIn to interact with other professionals, and to learn. You and every one of your co-workers should have a presence on LinkedIn. You should spend time asking and answering questions, linking up with other professionals in your industry, and basically becoming a part of the community.
3. Be one of the few - The fact that not many b2b companies are using social media means that the ones that do are ahead of the game. Going back to the fishing analogy, if you’re the only one at the lake, you’re going to catch alot of fish. Get started, stop making excuses and do it. Your competition will hate you, but your customers and prospects will love you.

What do you guys think? How can b2b companies take advantage of social media? What other obstacles do they need to overcome?

We all know that a good website is essential to branding and marketing your company online. Here is a list of the seven different types of websites that currently exist…

The informational / brochure site: This type of page is intended to provide information to the user. They usually include a home page, products page, FAQ, testimonials, and a contact us page.

Opt-In page: This type of site is designed to collect contact information from a user. In many cases there will be some sort of offer; a discount, access to additional information, a special bonus offer, etc. The page provides just enough information to get the user interested in “opting in”. This can be a good way to develop prospects for a sales team, or sign people up for an email list.

The Sales page: This type of site includes a compelling offer and a strong call to action. If a site has a shopping cart, it is a sales page.

Blog: A page that uses video, audio, and text to create content based around different topics. The page you are on right now is a blog (thanks for visiting by the way).

Membership site: This is a type of site where specific (usually paying) customers are given access to special information or content. Usually the content is protected by some sort of password protection or login process.

Portal site: When a company owns many different brands, sometimes a portal site is needed. A portal site provides links to different websites all connected by some topic or company.

Social network: Sites like Facebook and linkedin. These sites bring users together in a way that they can interact with each other.

When you create your website, you need to think about what your goals are for the site. This will help you determine which type of site (or combination) you create.

What do you guys think? Did I leave any out?

Here we are, the final trend in Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae, “new gatekeepers, no gatekeepers.” It used to be that large companies only worked with other large companies. Basically a big company would pay top dollar to promote a product on television with commercials, reviews, news stories, whatever. Smaller companies couldn’t afford to do things this way and were therefore left out of the party. Those times are over. How much does it cost to be on YouTube? That’s right, absolutely nothing. And even better, the audience actually seeked you out, and therefore you didn’t need to interrupt anyone. Wow, you just bypassed the traditional gatekeeper.

The true gatekeeper in today’s marketing landscape is Google. If you can be on the first page of Google it means that you’re among the most relevant pages on the internet regarding your chosen topic. But unfortunately many of us will not be on the first page of Google. We need help. Which means that you need to look at other ways to promote your webpage, podcast, video, blog, etc. You can have excellent content, but what does it matter if no one sees it. We’ve discussed some ways to get your name out there, but the most important of all is to just go out there and be a part of the community you are trying to build. If your site is about marketing, then go out to all the marketing blogs and comment on the things that are interesting to you. Before long, you will have the visitors, listeners, and all that good stuff.

So yeah, I’m looking at you guys that visit, but never comment. I know you’re there because I check Google analytics. I dare you to comment on this post…. if you’re marketer enough. And be sure to leave a link back to your own blog.

Well, that’s it for Meatball Sundae. I hope you guys dug it… dig it… whatever. I recomend reading the book yourself as there’s tons of insights I’ve left out. It’s definately worth it if you’re serious about online marketing.

Notable quote from this section:

• “The web is the biggest haystack in the history of mankind, and you’re just a tiny little needle. You might be sharp and you might be shiny, but without help, no one will ever see your webpage, listen to your podcast, or watch your video.”

There used to be only a few channels out there for businesses to communicate with their customers: radio, television, and print. Now there are an infinite number. The eighth trend in Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae is “Infinite channels of communication.” Today, every interaction with a customer is a channel of communication. Sure, your Facebook page is a channel, so is your Twitter account, but so also are the interactions your customers have with each other and with potential customers. Let’s face it, people talk to each other, and in today’s marketplace it’s easier than ever for people to have discussions about your company and your brand. In the wise words of Luke Skywalker, “you can either profit by this or be destroyed. It’s your choice, but I warn you not to underestimate my power.”

So what does this have to do with you? Everything. Before, companies had to broadcast their messages to anyone and everyone out there in the hopes that the message would reach their target demographic. This meant that it just wasn’t economically feasible to market niche products. Why spend a fortune marketing something using mass media that has limited appeal? Sure, there are specific demographics for specific programs on TV, radio, or print articles, and so it’s not impossible to reach your target demographic in this manner. However, you will waste alot of money reaching people that don’t care about your product. Not only that, but people are actively trying to avoid these types of interruption messages.

On the internet, it’s not only possible to reach these niche audiences, it’s actually preferable. You don’t need to interrupt anyone; customers will look for you and your products if they pertain to them. You can succeed with a smaller market, but a larger market share. All you need to do is stay relevant, and treat every interaction with your customers as a channel of communication.

Notable quotes from this section:

• “In order for a customer to make a decision, two things need to happen. The second is that she needs to determine that it’s worth the time or money or risk to take action. But first, she needs to know about the opportunity.”
• Instead of reaching everyone (because you have no other choice) and creating generic products for large audiences, you can now reach a tiny slice of the market - just the people who are passionately interested in your products and services.”
• “The product is everything the company needs to spread the idea itself.”

I’ve talked about it before, and will probably talk about it again. Authenticity. The third trend that Godin discusses in Meatball Sundae is “need for an authentic story as the number of sources increases.” How many times have you looked for information on a corporate website? I’ve visited my share, and they’re all filled with the same old corporate talk. Even when they are trying to have fun, it’s corporate. It reminds me of the 50 year old man wearing the backwards baseball cap calling me dude or man, or those guys with the fake mohawks (you know who you are). That’s fine if that’s who you are, but if you’re not, watch out. Big brother is watching… and so is big sister, and everyone else in the world for that matter.

Corporate websites are great if you want to hear what the company is saying about itself, but to get any kind of objectivity, you usually need to look elsewhere. It shouldn’t have to be that way. The internet is a big place, and there are tons of sites available to find the information that your looking for. Customers are going to visit the sites where they will get an honest, unfiltered answer. And why shouldn’t they? You don’t like being lied to and neither do your customers. Be honest with them, be authentic to your brand, and you’ll never have to worry about getting caught lying.

There are tons of stories about people saying one thing and doing another. We hear about them all the time, Godin discusses them in his book, so I’m not going to bother listing them out (maybe later). The bottom line is that if you say one thing and do another, you will get caught eventually, and the world will find out about it in minutes. And then you’ll be stuck sending out one of those fake apologies written by a PR person, and I will make fun of you.

Trend #4, “Extremely short attention spans due to clutter”, will be discussed later.

Notable quotes from this section:

• “Saying one thing and doing another fails, because you’ll get caught.
• “When consumers are making a decision that matters to them, they often rely on the truth as they receive it from the community, not on the story the marketer manufactured.”

If you blog, podcast, create videos, whatever, check this out. Some very good tips in here. Thanks Chris.

It’s time for another book discussion. This time, I’m reading Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? by Seth Godin. The general idea is that not all organizations are optimized to take advantage of the new marketing opportunities out there today. Instead many companies are still focused on old marketing techniques. Godin discusses 14 trends that have re-shaped marketing, and illustrates how you can optimize your business to take advantage of these trends. Since the organization of the book is a bit different (and you really should read it yourself), I won’t be discussing the book chapter by chapter. Instead, I’m going to discuss each of his 14 trends in turn.

Let’s start the discussion by defining old marketing vs new marketing. Godin describes the era before advertising as a time when small and local businesses thrived. Products were usually made by hand, and sold locally. Many of these companies failed to invest properly in marketing to the masses and therefore died out when the advertising age hit. The era of advertising is what really describes “old marketing”. Godin define’s old marketing as “the art of interrupting masses of people with ads about average products.” (reminds me of those old toy commercials when I was a kid) Many companies are optimized to take advantage of this approach. However, we are in the era of “new marketing”, and many companies aren’t set up to take advantage.

“New Marketing” Godin says, “leverages scarce attention and creates interactions among communities with similar interests. New marketing treats every interaction, product, service, and side effect as a form of media.” See the difference? Let’s break it down a bit. Old marketing relies on a limited number of media outlets (print, radio, television, etc); new marketing has unlimited media outlets. Old media is focused on appealing to masses; new marketing focuses on appealing to niche audiences. Old marketing is based on marketer-to-consumer communication; new marketing is based on consumer-to-consumer communication. Old marketing sells with features; new marketing sells with stories. The book outlines many more differences, but you get the idea.

Think about it for a few minutes. From the ground up, many companies are designed with this old marketing approach in mind. They create average products for the average consumer, and use mass media to let the world know. If this describes your approach to marketing, then you will not be able to take full advantage of all the new marketing opportunities available. I’ve talked about companies using social media poorly. Many times, it’s because they focus only on the new toys and not enough on organizational changes. If you want to take advantage of new marketing opportunities, you need to create outstanding products and then tell stories directly to the people that you’ve gained permission to talk to.

What do you think defines old marketing and new marketing? Do you agree that we are in a new era? Discuss in the comments or send me an email.

Next time we’ll discuss the first trend, “direct communication and commerce between producers and consumers”.

Nothing stays the same, everything changes. Everything I’ve been talking about, and will talk about in the future can and will change with time. The information in “Crush It!” is not absolute, it can change tomorrow or even later today. It’s up to you to stay ahead of the curve, and you need to always be willing to adapt, especially when something isn’t working. As a matter of fact, social networking and new media is a fantastic way to find out what people think of your brand.

In the past, it was very difficult for businesses (and individuals for that matter) to address criticism or feedback from the masses. With social media it’s easier than ever, and you need to take advantage of the opportunity. Look at what Dominoes Pizza is doing. It’s very impressive that they are willing to interact with their customers on a one on one basis. The new social media offers this opportunity, but far too few major companies are taking advantage of this. Think about how you can interact with individuals within your community (more on this later when I attempt to define marketing) and you will always be ahead of the curve.

Notable quotes from the final chapters:

• “If you see falsehood, you can correct it. If you see praise, you can show appreciation. If you see confusion, you can inform.”
• “We’re all in the public eye now.”
• “Think through the consequences of every business decision you make before you actually make it.”
• “No matter how big you get, every email, every customer, every friend, every single person with whom you come into contact matters and deserves respect and attention.”

This concludes the discussion of “Crush It!”. It’s an excellent book and worth the read so check your local library or purchase using my shameless link.

We’ve discussed many concepts and strategies for building your personal brand online. In his tenth chapter, “Make the world listen”, Vaynerchuk reviews how to put together all the tools and ideas mentioned previously to use. Here we go…

1. Buy your domain name, preferably firstnamelastname.com When you sign up for Twitter, Facebook, etc, use this domain name (ex: www.facebook.com/edward.viator)
2. Start a Wordpress or Tumblr account and host your domain on it.
3. Hire a web designer to make sure your user interface is excellent. If you can’t afford one, get started anyway, but know that you should hire a designer in the future (as you can see, I can’t afford one yet).
4. If you’re doing video, buy a $150 Flip camera.
5. Create a Facebook fan page.
6. Open a Twitter account with your domain name.
7. If you’re doing video open a Tube Mogul account; if written word, sign up for Ping.fm.
8. Create content and lots of it. Use personal anecdotes and let your personality shine.
9. Tweet or post your content using Ping or Tube Mogul.
10. Go to search.twitter and start searching for subjects relevant to your blog. Start following many of these.
11. Go to blogsearch.google.com and search for blogs similar to yours. Comment and leave your name which should be linked to your webpage.
12. Search Facebook for pages that relate to your topic. Join the active ones. Do the same for groups.
13. Repeat 5, 8-12.

If you want to be successful, you’re going to need to focus on step 13. In other words, constantly create new content and reach out to the community online. If you’re content is great, you will get results eventually. Just remember, you should try to wait as long as possible to monetize your brand. Once you monetize, Vaynerchuk suggests that it is difficult to focus on content, so early on you should focus on building the community.

Notable quotes from this chapter:

• “Don’t forget to include a list of all of your social network links on your e-mail signature, letterhead, and business cards.”
• “Make sure you have a big fat button on your site that says “Want to Do Business with Me?” or something along those lines.”

There are basically three different formats that you can choose from to produce content on the web, video, audio, or written word (or a combination of these). In chapter 6, Choose Your Platform, Vaynerchuk discusses some of the more popular online platforms…

Wordpress and Tumblr:

All other platforms you use should lead here to your blog. It should be your headquarters. Wordpress is an excellent service, and incorporates many features. It can be challenging to master, but can pay off in a big way. Tumblr is an alternative to Wordpress that is very easy to use and while lacking some of Wordpress’ bells and whistles, succeeds in getting the job done. Personally I recommend Tumblr (this is what I use), especially for the person with a $0 budget, for one big reason. They will host your domain for free. Awesome I know.

Regardless of which blog platform you choose, you should always take advantage of the call to action buttons (Like that button on the right that says “follow on Tumblr”). These buttons allow one time users to become continuous visitors to your blog. You should also take advantage of share buttons (like the button at the end of this post that says “Share”). Having this type of button on your page can be an excellent way to build some word of mouth.

Facebook:

I love Facebook. It’s an excellent way to share all types of information, photographs, news articles, videos, etc with your friends and contacts. You can set up a personal profile for yourself, as well as a fan page (like my favorite local comic shop Keith’s Comics… http://www.facebook.com//keithscomics). The advantage of using a fan page is that you can have an infinite number of fans (there’s a 5,000 person limit on your profile). Also, it’s an excellent non-intrusive way to get your messages out to your customers (as opposed to spaming them with emails).

Twitter:

I’ll admit, I’m a bit puzzled when it comes to Twitter, but after reading Vaynerchuk’s book I’m definitely reconsidering using it. Basically you can use Twitter to put out content, and follow other people’s content. Most importantly, it allows you to start conversations with people. As with other social media platforms, Twitter can be used effectively to lure people to your blog… assuming your blog is relevant and interesting to your followers. Vaynerchuk suggests the following website (www.chrisbrogan.com/50-ideas-on-using-twitter-for-business), and I agree. It is an excellent resource for those interested in using Twitter to effectively market a business (or your personal brand).

Flickr:

Flickr is a picture hosting site that can be used to either post pictures that lead back to your blog, or you can post intriguing comments on other people’s pictures that will lead back to your blog. Just remember, if you are posting comments, you should stay relevant and tasteful; don’t just post something for the sake of posting it.

Youtube and/or Viddler:

Youtube is one of my favorite time-wasting websites. I use it all the time to search for music concerts, classic boxing matches, video game playthroughs, and tons of other fun content. It’s such a huge site that it’s very easy to get lost among all the other people out there doing the same thing that you’re doing. Viddler is a smaller site, and you can even put your logo at the bottom of your videos (instead of having a Youtube logo on it). Viddler also allows you to earmark specific segments of your video which works well for someone posting reviews and such. If video is your thing, there’s no reason to not use both.

Ustream.tv:

Ustream.tv is a live video program that includes chat functions. Vaynerchuk suggests that it is excellent for radio shows or a home shopping network style show. I haven’t tried it myself, but if you’ve had success with it, I’d love to hear your story (email me at edwardviator@evil-marketer.com).

Everyone is starting to use these sites, but don’t let that discourage you. As long as you do things your way in your style, you will be able to differentiate yourself with no problem.

In addition to these sites, you should look into using www.ping.fm which allows you to post small updates on a bunch of sites (like facebook and twitter) all at once, and www.tubemogul.com which essentially does the same thing, but for video content. Tube Mogul is also excellent for analytics (as is google analytics). Vaynerchuk recommends www.somewhatfrank.com/2008/12/social-media-my.html for a full list of social media tools.

Notable quotes from this chapter:

• “The difference between promoting your brand via traditional marketing and advertising mediums and doing it via social networking platforms is like the difference between sending a message by pony express and chatting on instant messenger.”
• “Twitter is perhaps the most powerful brand-building tool in your tool box.”
• “The best business tweet of all time… What can I do for you?”
• “It’s not about how many viewers you have, it’s about how passionate they are.”