Rnordman

I ran across this infographic listing 25 outstanding content marketing tools, so I thought I’d share it with you.

I use many of these tools, and some not mentioned on here. Rather than re-iterate what’s contained in the infographic, I thought I’d spend today sharing with you WHY you need all these tools and what to look for in the content marketing tools you use. So, here goes:

Content marketing tool 1: Curation

Now, I wouldn’t have started with content curation, but it’s an important aspect of your content marketing strategy. Put simply, content curation means becoming a tastemaker by winnowing the best from vast amounts of content. While we often think of content creation (discussed next) as the core value of content marketing programs and as tools creating influence and building reputation, content curation is also important. That’s because, if you’re good at curating content, you provide a valuable service to readers who want the best on a particular topic, not an exhaustive list of content.

In addition to providing reader value, content curation builds relationships with others working in your topic space. These relationships build your network and support your marketing efforts. Sharing the content of other producers also creates pressure for them to share your content, thus enlarging your reader base.

I spend some time each morning culling good pieces to share with my social networks. I use SproutSocial to bring in my RSS feeds (through Feedly) and ease the task of sharing good posts with some or all of my networks. This saves me a lot of time.

I also use Storify, a tool designed to cull posts from social networks, including Twitter, Facebook. G+, YouTube… Storify works using search terms or hashtags to search recent updates/ posts. You create a story by dragging and dropping individual elements (text, images, etc) into your story. You can add your own text above or below the imported elements. I find this most useful when I Storify an event such as gathering posts from a meetup/ convention or a holiday, such as Black Friday. Here’s an example of a Storify post.

Content marketing tool #2: Content creation

Content creation is really the meat of the content marketing strategic problem. It takes time, talent, organization, and money to create valuable content on a consistent basis — at least 2X per week.

Increasingly, content creation is visual and the tools in the infographic give a good overview of some content marketing tools to help build visualizations, which are an especially challenging form of content creation.

I like PowToon for creating short, lively videos. PowToonsuses animation elements to tell your story. It’s free, but worth the few dollars to get the professional version with enhanced animation and scores. Check out this example sharing a large number of stats about content marketing.

Another great tool is Call Recorder, which records Skype conversations with several optional formats. I commonly record interviews with amazing experts in a side-by-side format where you see both of us. I then use iMovie or Final Cut Pro to edit the movie and add a donut — branding around the interview.

Extending existing content is important in creating content consistently. Google inflect severe penalties for duplicate content, but re-purposing content is a big time-saver. Taking a bunch of posts on a similar topic and combining them into a white paper for instance. Or updating older posts — one thing you can always do in social media is update old posts because social media marketing is SO dynamic.

Content marketing tool #3: Finding writers

Here I take issue with the infographic, finding writers isn’t that easy. Sure, I’ve used guest bloggers (which they don’t even mention) and tested out a service that created content around my keywords. Neither really worked well for me — although I’m always willing to consider high-quality guest posts.

To understand WHY I don’t like their recommended solutions, read my post on why marketing is still queen to content marketing’s king. My personal belief is that content marketing ISN’T journalism — never was; never will be.

Content marketing IS marketing — it’s not called content writing or content journalism for a reason. Doing GOOD content marketing means understanding what consumers want, their preferred approach, their lifestyles and what resonates with them, using subtle influence, embedding CTA (call to action), and lots more marketing skills.

Good content marketing also requires technical skills such as CMS (content management systems), simple HTML and CSS, simple graphic design (we use the Adobe creative suite), keyword research, etc.

Hiring someone to do content marketing is different from hiring someone to write because it involves multiple skills that a writer just doesn’t have. Notice, I bundle a number of services together in our content marketing packages because you can’t just do writing. Ideally, your writer should also promote your content and should be an integral part of your analytics team to ensure they continually tweak your posts to optimize them to reach your goals.

Content marketing tool #4: Content promotion

My agency combines content promotion with content creation using our community managers. For me, that works because community managers know when content is ready for promotion, spend time building community on the firm’s social networks (which enhances engagement and promotion), and are charged with responding to shares and comments related to the content they’ve created, thus further building community.

We use a variety of tools to aid in promoting content — from website tools like Outbrain and AddThis, that encourage visitors to consume more content, to sharing tools like Flare, to social sharing tools like SproutSocial and Hootsuite. For larger clients, with deeper pockets, we use tools like Oktopost and may be adding Marketo.

Ads help promote content — and drive traffic back to your site. Facebook ads manager (especially with the power editor) and Google Adwords are particularly useful in creating and managing your social advertising.

Content marketing tool #5: Analytics

It’s surprising how many of my competitors do little or nothing with analytics. Of course, that’s changing as awareness of the power of analytics to drive ROI (return on investment) increases.

Among other things, you need to track the following with respect to your content marketing:

• # of website visitors
• Engagement with post
• Resonance of topic area
• Effectiveness of headline (usually involves A/B testing of options)
• Best day/ times to post to reach objectives
• Demographics/ psychographics of readers (responders)
• Website metrics for posts such as time on site, bounce rate
• Funnel optimization from post or where visitors went after reading

I’ve used and like many of the analytics tools listed in the infographic. If you’re looking for a great social media analytics tool, we’ve crowdsourced some options to help you make a better choice. Take a look at the list and vote for those you find useful or add you own favorite tool to the list.

Need help?

Whether you need a complete analytics strategy, some help with brand marketing, or some consulting to learn how to optimize post content, we can fill your digital marketing funnel. We can help you do your own social media marketing better or do it for you with our community managers, strategists, and account executives. You can request a FREE introductory meeting or sign up for my email newsletter to learn more about social media marketing.

Is your business one of the best-kept secrets in its industry?

Assuming your general capabilities are in order, the reason for this is more than likely your marketing.

#1 – It lacks clarity and is therefore confusing.
#2 – It is inconsistent and therefore not memorable.

Both challenges are easily resolved

Tell the Market Only What You Do Best

In the real estate industry, the valuation of a parcel of land is determined by what is known as it’s highest and best use. It’s location and other factors will determine if that use is for retail, commercial, or residential development.

This and only this is what the market needs to know. Thus, to achieve what the seller wants, which is the highest price; their land is listed and marketed only for its best use.

Markets are comprised of people who when presented with too many choices will either say no or choose what is expedient. This often will be the lowest priced option.

Your marketing has to give these lazy markets a reason for choosing your business. They need to know what you do best, and that is all. Too many marketers are not clear on this point. They cast a wide net that catches little or nothing.

Let’s assume your profession is carpentry. Google carpentry and you will receive results that include handymen, remodelers, homebuilders, and more. This confuses buyers that simply want the best solution, which will be whomever dominates the category most relevant to their problem.

Know your best category, and then distinguish your business within it to become a category of one. To accomplish this, your marketing has to be focused on one and only one area of specialization.

It’s OK to work in multiple categories, but market only to your best or highest value category. This should be a mantra that permeates not just your marketing, but your company culture too.

Remind the Market What it Already Knows

When people are reminded of what they already know, it makes them feel smart.

Isn’t that what I’m doing now? You already know what we are discussing today, but you may not have given it much thought lately. By reminding you, I’m providing useful value that further develops our relationship.

Most people cannot recall what they had for dinner just last week. Think about that if your business is not attracting the steady flow of work it desires.

If your business expects to be memorable, it has to be a valuable resource.

Use your media to provide tips and advice for your communities. This keeps it top of mind, while also making it easily referable.

Success in business and life is often the result of just consistently showing up. The same holds true for you marketing.

That’s all there is to this. Show up with clarity and consistency and enjoy the flow of new business that comes your way.

Photo Credit

Disputing the notion that any publicity is good publicity, Isis Mobile Communications, the joint venture behind the Isis Wallet mobile payments system, will be changing its branding, according to CEO Michael Abbott.

It’s hard to question the move given that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (aka ISIS) is cutting a bloody swath through those two countries and the association with that moniker doesn’t engender cozy feelings about a brand. The company, launched two years ago by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon offers a mobile payment system that runs on NFC-equipped Android and iOS devices and competes with Google Wallet.

Per Abbott’s blog post:

However coincidental, we have no interest in sharing a name with a group whose name has become synonymous with violence and our hearts go out to those who are suffering. As a company, we have made the decision to rebrand.

The company is working on its new branding and will update customers about changes in coming months. It’s clear, however, that the current brand wasn’t working even if peace ever comes to Syria, despite lofty goals for the project a few years ago.

Related research and analysis from Gigaom Research:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• What the first-quarter 2014 meant for tech buyers
• Gigaom Research predictions for 2014
• What You Need to Know About the SoftBank-Sprint Merger

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Big data meets small business?

Two years ago almost to the day, ThriveHive closed a $1.5 million seed round. Now the company’s everything-in-a-box small business marketing solution is ready to go. Briefly, the company claims it’s everything you need to market your small business, connected, integrated … and powered by the collective wisdom of hundreds of similar businesses.

CEO Max Faingezicht calls it “guided marketing.”

“We see all the best practices,” Faingezicht told me this morning. “Guided marketing is a way for small business to get going with a website, contact manager or CRM, email marketing solution, social media manager … all empowered through a guidance layer showing you what you should be doing with all these tools.”

There are a lot of marketing solutions built around websites, often offered by local marketing solutions like former business directories or iYPs, or local marketing experts such as ReachLocal, which offers “smart sites” that are essentially marketing automation lite. They typically offer lead generation, email marketing, and web analytics.

Essentially, ThriveHive has gone one step farther.

The service adds social, a mini-CRM, and the ability to run and track digital advertising campaigns. That’s pretty much all the pieces of the marketing puzzle for a local business, especially when you consider you can also connect print advertising via custom phone numbers or website addresses. It’s a lot of functionality for a local business, but Faingezicht says the integration makes it all easy.

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We’re studying free or cheap marketing automation systems
Add your voice, and we’ll share the data with you

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The goal is to allow small businesses to do what they would do anyways — send out email, write blogs, post to social — but the trick is in doing it via the platform, which then adds a layer of analytics.

“We can automatically see what’s generating leads,” he told me. “Because you have all the system under one single login, you can do things that are almost impossible for small business otherwise.”

That includes automatic lead scoring and distribution, tracking email sends, opens, and clicks, seeing social media likes, shares, retweets, and visits, and getting an SEO overview of your website with broken-out search engine traffic and social traffic all in one place.

That’s impressive, though not unique. But it’s just the beginning of Faingezicht’s vision — to make all small businesses smart through the power of big data.

Because all ThriveHive’s customers are on the same platform, and all events on the platform are tracked, ThriveHive knows what emails work, when social campaigns are most effective, what website topics and posts do best. And it can share that collective intelligence, anonymized, with each business owner.

That gives every independent local business the ability to operate, act, and market with the same tools as the big boys, Faingezicht says.

“We think that data can enable clustering of like-businesses in terms of sales & marketing,” he told me. “This means that we can actually provide a franchise-like experience at scale and across many industries and for very small operations.”

The metaphor, he says, is “FaaS,” or franchise-as-a-service.

Naturally, businesses considering participation in something like ThriveHive will have to balance the risk-reward of better marketing with also potentially making their competitors better as well, via the shared data. But companies will also have to wonder if they can afford not to.

ThriveHive is powerful all-in-one marketing platform that enables small businesses to create great marketing programs that are custom built for your business and your budget. Coupled with the ThriveHive platform, we provides skille... read more »

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The post Is it time to ban resumés? Tell us your most innovative recruiting techniques appeared first on Canadian Business.

The job market in the US and the UK can be tough, especially for a graduate who, for the most part, is “untested” in the workplace.

Think back to your lectures and seminars in college. Some would have been delivered to rooms with 200+ students crammed in, and each and every one has the chance of graduating with a similar skill set and similar qualifications to yours. Daunting, right?

What this adds up to in the long run is a huge amount of competition for graduate jobs. Some have even estimated that as many as 83 graduates apply for each entry level position offered in the US and UK job markets. Considering this fact, it’s easy to understand why candidates without an impeccable extra-curricular record or relevant on-the-job experience are unlikely to make it onto the short-list.

So what are the alternatives? Well the world is a big place, and when you can expand your job search beyond your home-town, state, or even country, you open yourself up to thousands of new opportunities.

You might have noticed the term “brain-drain” being thrown around in the media. This refers to the theory that as more and more graduates take up jobs abroad, the countries in which they earned their education will suffer. The fact that this is becoming a commonly debated problem gives a good indication of how common it is becoming for young graduates to take on roles abroad.

With this in mind, here we take a look at five reasons that you too should make 2014 the year in which you look for employment overseas.

You can use language to your advantage

While English is commonly spoken all around the world, native English speakers are still highly valued in the workplace thanks to their ability to write English perfectly and speak it with native flair. Being able to use your mother-tongue as a “skill” on your CV not only feels gratifying, but will also put you ahead of other applicants who are more local to the job than you are.

This is particularly true for jobs in disciplines such as customer service, PR, marketing, content management and business development.

You can make your savings work harder

The cost of living can vary massively depending on where about in the world you are. The $1000 your Grandma has been saving up for you over the years might not even get you a used car in your homeland, but overseas could represent a vast sum, enough to set yourself up with accommodation and all the furnishings of a life with money left to spare.

We spoke to the editor of financial publication QROPS Review, who specialise in providing those who are looking to move abroad with easy to understand information. He had this to say:

“A great way to create a short-list of countries you could afford to live in is by using the cost of living index rate. This list contains many of the world major countries and cities, comparing the price of groceries, rent and entertainment as a percentage of the average cost of these outgoings in New York. You will be surprised at how many of the world’s most beautiful and modern cities aren’t even close to being amongst the most expensive.

In terms of moving your savings abroad, take extra care to ensure that you are following guidelines laid out by the financial authority in your country. The HMRC in the UK and the IRS in the USA are particularly prone to changing policies and going back on previous legislation. Do thorough research and ensure that you and the tax man are square before moving away.

Experience abroad looks great to employers back home.

The corporate culture of businesses can vary hugely from country to country. Some companies, tech start-ups in San Francisco for example, are known for informal and creative corporate cultures, while other parts of the world, like Japan, still conform to traditional business management practises.

Having experience of working overseas shows employers that you are adaptable and can easily integrate with not just new corporate cultures, but new cultures entirely. Many employers want people who are capable of working outside of their comfort zone, and there is no better demonstration of that than leaving your home town and setting off into the big wide world of international business.

Less personal taxation

America and the UK are home to some of the world’s largest income tax rates, meaning that a large chunk of your earnings could be disappearing before the money has even hit your bank account. Fortunately, there are many places in the world who place a much smaller emphasis on income tax when scheming to grow the national coffers.

The Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, many countries in the Middle East and even the Bahamas enjoy a low or non-existent rate of income tax, making employment in these countries a great way to save for your future while gaining work experience.

The chance to live and work wherever you desire.

You can’t choose where you are born, you can’t choose where you grow up and, in many respects, you can’t even have a truly free choice as to where you go to college. By this logic, getting a graduate job could be the first time you have truly had free reign over your geographical future.

Will you decide to work somewhere where you can spend every weekend at the beach? Or would you rather move to a cultural capital, a world renowned hub of art and cultural experience? When you seize the opportunity to take on employment abroad, you literally open up a whole world of possibilities and are given the chance to build whatever lifestyle you might desire.

So, where will you be heading?

Five-year average oil price has reached triple digits for the first time

Have you ever seen a fantastic fireworks show?

If so, you not only experienced a brilliant display of light, color, and sound against the night sky, but you also witnessed one of the most important principles of effective presentations: ending with a bang, says Darlene Price, president of Well Said, Inc., and author of "Well Said! Presentations and Conversations That Get Results."

While the opening of a presentation draws the audience in, the last thing you say is what they remember. "Your 'grand finale' is your final chance to make a lasting impression, reiterate your key points, tell the audience why the message is important, and ask them to respond to your recommended next steps." 

Here are the six worst types of grand finales:

Not announcing you're wrapping up.

Audiences often feel confused when the speaker does not provide a clear road sign that the speech or presentation is coming to an end. "Therefore, before closing, you should always announce it," Price says. "Tell the audience you're getting ready to conclude the speech." Not only does this announcement courteously prepare your listeners for the ending, it also heightens their attention level and makes the closing more memorable, she says.

Here are a few sample phrases to signal the ending:   

"As I conclude this presentation, let me ask you a question."

"In respect of time, allow me to wrap-up my comments."

"I'm going to close my presentation with … "

"In conclusion … "

"In summary … "

Not offering a summary.

The average adult attention span is only five minutes, according to a study commissioned by Lloyds TBS Insurance in 2008, Price explains. "Despite the causes — fast-paced technology, task-saturated schedules, Attention Deficit Disorder, stress, or other factors — your audience needs to be reminded of your key points again, and again, especially in the closing." So, briefly summarize what you've told them.

Price offers the example of a CEO who did it right: "As I conclude this presentation, let me ask you a question: How will you care for the planet? In summary, please remember the three Rs we've covered here today: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle ... "

Not providing a call to action.

The purpose of presenting is to persuade. Your content may be informational and entertaining, but ultimately you want your listeners to respond in some way, whether in thought, word, or action. "This requires telling them what you want them to do in response to your message," Price says. "Fill in the blank: 'At the end of my presentation, I want my audience to __.' Is it fund my project? Recommend my solution? Approve the budget? Comply with regulations? Agree with my position?" Pick an action verb and ask for it, she says.

Here are a few examples from famous speeches:

Susan B. Anthony's 1873 "Is It A Crime For A Citizen Of The United States To Vote?" speech: "We ask the judges to render true and unprejudiced opinions of the law, and wherever there is room for a doubt to give its benefit on the side of liberty and equal rights to women."   

John F. Kennedy's 1961 U.S. presidential inaugural address: "Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country."

"A call to action tells the audience exactly what you want them to do, and every great persuasive speech or presentation has one," Price says.

Leaving the audience with a 'dud ending.'

Have you ever heard a speaker end an otherwise effective presentation with an abrupt, "Thank you," or worse, an anti-climatic statement such as, "That's all. Any questions?" or "I'm done"? "For the audience, it's like a firework with a wet fuse, otherwise known as a 'dud,'" Price explains. "Instead, after the summary, call-to-action, and tie-back, conclude with an impactful statement that encapsulates the most important idea of your message." Many of history's most famous quotes were the last words of a well-crafted speech, she says.

For example, in 1775, Patrick Henry convinced legislators to deliver the necessary troops to the American Revolutionary War with his final words, "Give me liberty, or give me death!"

Other famous examples: 

Winston Churchill: "Let men still say, 'This was their finest hour.'"

Martin Luther King: "Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

"Remember to say last what you want the audience to remember most," Price says.

Failing to tie up loose ends. 

"In the principle known as 'Chekhov's Gun,' playwright Anton Chekov advises fellow writers, 'If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on a wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there,'" Price says. "For presenters and speakers, this is known as the 'tie-back principle.' If in the opening you use a quote, show a photo, assert a claim, tell a story, employ a prop, or present a statistic — whatever the 'rifle' — be sure to 'fire' it in the ending." Don't leave it hanging there as a loose end. Refer back to its significance, solve the puzzle, or bring it to resolution.

This approach bookends your presentation and seamlessly connects the opening with the closing for a very professional finish, Price says. 

Concluding with a Q&A.

The most common error presenters make is ending the presentation with a Q&A. "By all means, conduct a question and answer session at some point in the middle, and allow plenty of time for audience discussion and concerns; however, never close on it," Price says. Allot time to end your presentation with what you want to say: a strong summary, a compelling call to action, and powerful closing statement.

Your last words will most likely be the first words your audience remembers, Price says, so craft an effective three-part closing: deliver a strong summary; present a call-to-action; and conclude with a powerful closing statement. "You’ll light up the hearts and minds of your listeners and end with a bang," she concludes.

SEE ALSO: 7 Excellent Ways To Start A Presentation

Join the conversation about this story »

Are you social channels thriving, full of interaction with your audience, or are they the digital equivalent of a deserted Main Street, complete with tumbleweed?

If you’re creating high quality content but your social media channels aren’t creating engagement, this could have significant impact on the ROI. 33% of consumers now use social to discover new brands, and the more your existing fans engage with you, the more likely their friends and connections are to register your social profile.

There are numerous ways to create and amplify social engagement – these are four of the most effective and adaptable strategies, which you can use whether you’re a multinational or a microbusiness.

Data Analysis

If you don’t know where influencers and customers are and what they’re talking about, it’s going to be so much harder to find the right channel to invest time, money and energy into. Using data from social media monitoring tools help you evaluate and analyze not just what’s happening across your platforms but more widely too.

You can leverage this to create discussions and content that are highly targeted to your audience, and more likely to generate genuine engagement. When Jellyfish attended the Gadget Show 2014 with Fitbit they used Brandwatch to monitor social conversations around the event, discovering that the overwhelming majority took place on Twitter and that Facebook and video channels were the next most popular. As a result, on the first day they were active across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Vine, and Fitbit dominated share of voice compared to its competitors.

Source: Jellyfish blog

Social listening through a tool like Brandwatch enables you to gain greater insight into relevant audiences who aren’t necessarily already engaged with the brand. If you can tell that target audiences are keen on certain sports or are interested in parenting you can create a compelling content calendar.

Gamification

 Although gamification builds on the concept of video games, introducing it into your social media campaign doesn’t necessarily mean creating the next Candy Crush. Instead you can tap into your customers’ competitive streaks to enhance engagement and interaction levels.

Intel asked their Facebook fans to solve a Rubix-cube related math trivia question, while Nike created a running app which shares performance across social channels and allows a user’s friends to cheer them on in real time.

Source: Intel Facebook Page

Before you add gamified aspects into your social presence ensure that your data analysis and customer insight research is in place. The Intel Rubix cube question works because their audience is highly technologically literate and these people tend to demonstrate mathematical aptitude and enthusiasm. If it was a fashion or entertainment site the same question would be unlikely to get such a strong response (112 thousand likes and counting).

User Contribution

A highly effective way of encouraging customers to interact on social media is inviting them to become content creators, not just consumers. This can be as simple as asking Twitter users to use a hashtag when they photograph their new purchase, or as elaborate as curating blog posts based on user generated content.

Clothes retailer Modcloth harnesses this to drive impressive social engagement, with 1.1 million Facebook likes and weekly audience engagement statistics that frequently hit five figures. Users can submit photos of themselves through their website or tag their own photos on Instagram and the best are featured on a weekly roundup on their blog.

Customer’s cats are included too –they encourage people to tweet or Instagram photos of their felines in one of the brand’s boxes with the accompanying #modboxkitty. The best of these photos make it onto the company’s feeds.

Source: @Modcloth Twitter

This level of interaction with their customers not only creates enviable social statistics, with the majority of photos on their Instagram account having between 50 and 150 comments, but also an engaged community of brand advocates.

Instagram utilizes a similar approach on their blog, selecting a weekly themed hashtag and featuring the best photographs on their blog. Not only does this inspire users to keep their account active, it encourages connections between users and a focus on photographic excellence that is likely to give the platform an enhanced appeal to keen photographers.

Smaller brands could scale this approach to benefit from the shareability of user generated content. Smaller clothing brands or shops can feature user outfit submissions on their Facebook, while a hotel could ask fans to let them know about their favorite places to visit, compiling the answers into an online guide or blog post.

Events

Social media and real world events shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. Whether your brand is hosting an event or participating at larger occasion, this is an opportunity to add value to the engagement that occurs at a real world event.

Most events have a hashtag. Don’t wait until the day of the event to use it. Tracking it can show you what attendees are talking about and any concerns which you could help address before the event, like suggesting good local places to eat beyond the hotel.

If you want to go further, look at the number of people who use social media to organize informal meet-ups at SXSW. For people who are travelling to an event alone, an invite to a safe, friendly event is going to create an unbeatable first impression.

At the event, you can drive social engagement by asking attendees to share photos or comments. Alternatively monitor relevant hashtags in Hootsuite and retweet and engage with people who are using it, showing that you are willing to genuinely engage with your audience.

Source: @Oreo Twitter

Oreo’s 2013 Superbowl Twitter ad proved that you don’t have to be directly involved with an event to leverage it to gain traction and engagement that goes far beyond the norm.

Repeat visibility and engagement is a vital part of the social sales funnel, moving customers from awareness to purchase. To get maximum ROI strategy for social engagement needs to move beyond link posting or content creation to encompass a range of engagement techniques to build a community which looks forward to interacting with brands on social platforms.

The post Use Images (Not Just Words) to Turn Your Distracted Visitors into Engaged Readers appeared first on Copyblogger.

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Twitter’s downloadable analytics are far from being as robust as social media juggernaut Facebook’s, however, there are still a number of ways that you can slice and dice the data provided via .xls or .csv to glean deeper Twitter insights.

The focus of this article will be on how you can dissect the data that Twitter provides to measure and optimize social media performance. However, to extrapolate intelligence of greater value, data from outside sources would need to be overlaid. Such data could include, but is not limited to, sales data, website analytics, shopper surveys or market research. It’s important to remember that without this added context, engagement and other common social media metrics shouldn’t carry much weight.

With this said, following are 7 ways that you can break down and create correlations with the data that Twitter provides to glean deeper social insight about what seems to be working, what’s not, and potentially why:

Break Down Your Data

Separate Tweets and @-Replies

When you download your .xls or .csv from Twitter Analytics, it will contain all tweets, including @-replies. Because the two formats of tweets are objectively different, one of the first things I like to do is to create two spreadsheets from my initial download: the first with regular tweets, and the second with all @-replies. This will let you review performance of each type of tweet individually.

High-Level Tweet Performance

Sum Actions

As a high-level review of which tweets incited the most actions (favourites, retweets, replies), consider creating an additional column in which you sum all actions on each tweet. This shouldn’t be viewed as an ultimate indicator of success – actions have nothing to do with business results after all – but are a nice indicator of the social performance of your tweets.

Potential Influencer Identification

Sort Replies from Greatest to Fewest

Sorting your newly created spreadsheet that only contains @-replies by number of replies can help you to identify potential influencers. This will give you sight to who has been most actively interacting with you on Twitter, and if you take time to review those interactions and the people or organizations behind them, you’ll be able to form a subjective opinion as to whether you want to include them on a potential influencer list for future focused engagement.

Optimal Time of Day to Tweet to Maximize Social Actions

Separate the date and time of day of each tweet and graph the time against actions

Column B of your downloaded analytics contains the date and time each tweet was published. To make this information even more helpful, separate this data into two columns (in Excel: Data – Text to Columns – Delimit your data by Space). You’ll now be able to graph the social actions on your tweets against the time of day each tweet was published. If you see any spikes in social actions during specific times of day, and those actions have proven to be meaningful to affecting your objectives, then you may want to consider that range of time to be a sweet spot for publishing future tweets.

Optimal Weekday to Tweet to Maximize Social Actions

Convert dates of each tweet to day of the week and graph against actions

After separating the date and time of day of each tweet as described above, add another column beside what now just contains the date of each tweet. In your new column, extrapolate just the day of the week of each tweet (in Excel, use the formula: =TEXT(B2,“ddd”)). When complete, you will now be able to graph total social actions on tweets against each day of the week, which may provide some insight as to which days your audience is most likely to take action on your content. Again, if this has proven to be useful in the past, then you may want to consider increasing the number of tweets you publish on these days.

Optimal Tweet Character Count to Maximize Social Actions

Count characters of each tweet and graph against actions

Quickly count the characters of each of your tweets in a new column (in Excel, use the formula: =LEN(F2)). Now, you’ll be able to graph the character counts of each of your tweets against social actions, which may provide some insight about what length of tweet your audience has a propensity to respond to socially.

Optimal Number of Hashtags to Maximize Social Actions

Count the number of hashtags used in each tweet and graph against actions

Count the number of hashtags used in each of your tweets in a new column (in Excel, use the formula: =COUNTIF(F2,“*#*”)). Graph the total number of hashtags used against total social actions on your tweets to see if there is any correlation between the two. If there is a correlation, you might want to take this into consideration when crafting future tweets. If there is no correlation, this doesn’t mean one won’t emerge in the future, so consider continuing to track this and perhaps with a larger sample of tweets to review, you’ll find that one emerges.

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How do you break down Twitter analytics spreadsheets to glean deeper insight?

What data do you find useful to overlay on social media analytics?

What information do you wish that Twitter divulged as part of it’s analytics offering?

If you have any questions, would like some help with formulas in Excel, or would like to chat further about any of this, it would be great to hear from you in the comments.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The on-field magic in Brazil may be winding down, but the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA) hopes that Canadian footy fans will soon be watching the sport’s best players a little closer to home. The CSA announced plans to bid for the 2026 FIFA World Cup in its four-year plan in January.

The men’s soccer team currently sits between Bahrain and Niger in the international rankings, but that’s precisely the point, according to the CSA’s strategic plan. Hosting the tournament, it hopes, will provide a boost to the sport’s national profile.

But hosting would be an expensive process: the bill for the 2014 edition has ballooned to an estimated $11.3 billion and the Samba nation’s citizens aren’t happy about it. Brazil defied expectations just by getting promised infrastructure ready (barely) in time.

READ: Seven international predictions for 2014: Brazil’s World Cup is a financial fiasco »

New stadiums and renovations accounted for much of that cost, with FIFA requiring at least eight 40,000-plus seater venues and one stadium with a capacity of 80,000  to host the tournament final. Canada’s largest venue is Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, and the city has expressed an interest in spearheading a 2026 hosting operation. But the CSA doesn’t see a need for a lot of new construction because many existing and planned CFL venues are expandable. “I believe we have enough there to put a successful bid together in the stadia that are currently available and maybe one more that would meet the highest needs of FIFA,” says Peter Montopoli, general secretary of the Association.

Canada will play host to the 2015  Women’s World Cup as well as the U-20 Women’s World Cup later this year, and successes with those events could pave the way for a shot at FIFA’s biggest prize. FIFA has yet to announce the timeline and requirements for a 2026 bid. Montopoli says he has been in contact with staff in the office of Minister of State (Sport) Bal Gosal to discuss the CSA’s plans; Gosal says he’s had no official contact yet, but that the federal government is open to the possibility of a bid.

Recent hosting choices have aroused significant controversy, with allegations of corruption and concerns over temperatures at the 2022 Qatar tournament. Those scandals, coupled with negative publicity around the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, could work in Canada’s favour, according to Robert VanWynsberghe, a professor at UBC. “I think what you’ll see is that the IOC and FIFA are going to go to more conservative hosts,” he suggested. “You might want to call it a Canadian hosting experience — kind of boring, but you can count on it.”

READ: Soccer in sun and shadow »

Would anyone come out to watch? Montopoli suggests that 300,000–500,000 fans would flood into the country to watch their teams compete, but VanWynsberghe says that number would be offset by the drop in regular tourists who don’t want to get caught up in the tournament. “The tourist piece I think is a bit of a red herring, it just doesn’t seem to work out,” he said.

And what about Canadians? With a team mired in the lower reaches of the FIFA rankings, there would seem to be little incentive to flock to stadiums to watch our boys in red be crushed by the opposition. There’s a huge appetite for soccer in this country, Montopoli counters. “Of all the 209 FIFA members in the world, we ranked number 10 in terms of number of tickets bought for Brazil 2014,” he notes. “The 10th spot would put us number one for non-participating countries.”

The 1994 World Cup in the US is widely credited with a renewal in soccer interest that led eventually to the formation of Major League Soccer (MLS), and Montopoli points to a similar example closer to home. “The 2007 U-20 World Cup brought to our country a brand-new soccer-specific stadium [BMO Field], and in turn that stadium brought to us MLS professional soccer [in the Toronto FC franchise],” he explained.

READ: MLSE makes a strong statement naming Tim Leiweke new CEO »

Still, with players like Bosnia goalkeeper Asmir Begovic and Holland’s Jonathan de Guzman opting to represent the countries of their roots or professional clubs rather than wear the maple leaf, Canadian soccer would have to come a long, long way to make a competitive showing in 2026.

But Canadians should hope that a Canuck team on home soil would go all the way. There’s more than bragging rights at stake — according to Goldman Sachs, World Cup-winning nations experience an (admittedly temporary) economic boost in the aftermath of their triumph. And Montopoli estimates the economic impact of hosting would be “in the billions.”

A bid is still a few years away, and the CSA will have a lot of work to do to convince FIFA that a country that has only made it to one World Cup  should be trusted with hosting it. In the meantime, Canadian soccer fans will just have to make do with watching their heroes on TV.

The post Canada is bidding to host the 2026 World Cup, and it could be worth billions appeared first on Canadian Business.

Did you know the average person spends over 5 hours every day online? And that internet usage continues to grow each year?

There’s no shortage of people with an internet connection who are just waiting to fall in love with your company’s content. It’s now your job to win their hearts, minds, and wallets, by creating truly epic content. To help you bridge the gap between mediocre and excellent, or boost your volume without losing quality, here are 7 must-have tips for brilliant blogging:

1. Know Your Audience

Do you know your audience theoretically? Or on a more personal level? Your buyer personas should be data-rich profiles of the people your organization is trying to attract, and your content should be written accordingly.

If you’re struggling to obtain data, we couldn’t help but love HubSpot’s Jeff Russo’s recommendation, which is simply asking for data like Khan academy. Let your audience define themselves.

2. Get Ridiculously Perfect Keywords

We’re not talking about the kind of keyword research where you cram in a bunch of irrelevant keywords into a page until it looks like a robot wrote it. That’s just not an effective way to improve your site’s rankings or authority:

Image source

Come on, even search engines are much smarter than that! Think of modern keyword research as a stealth weapon. If you’re using the right tools and techniques, you can overtake your competitors and provide content that’s right in line with your audiences’ needs and interests.

Essentially, keyword research is a tool for differentiating your content creation, and providing better value within your verticle. For a more detailed, in-depth guide, we recommend Keyword Strategy the Right Way. Here’s How to Do it.

3. Research Continually

Really smart people – people like Jeff Bullas and Jay Baer – probably don’t sit down to do dedicated research before they write an article. I’m not saying they don’t look up key facts and studies to bolster key points, because they certainly do. However, the world’s greatest bloggers are naturally pretty immersed in their industry’s top content, and conduct research on an ongoing basis.

Develop a sophisticated system, using a tool like Evernote, to curate inspirational articles, studies, and data for use in future content creation. Your blog will become significantly more sophisticated and on-point if you’re always researching and learning.

4. Write Efficiently

Let’s hit pause for a minute and think about some of the tasks your average content marketer has to do in an average day:

• Content creation
• Networking
• Content promotion
• Social media
• Guest blogging
• Researching and learning
• Planning and keyword research

It’s pretty darn overwhelming. That’s why we recommend that you work smarter, not harder, and adopt some hacks to become more efficient. This could mean shutting the door to your office, putting in your headphones and blocking out the world, or using a tool like Write or Die to get the words directly onto paper.

For more efficiency hacks, check out How to Write a Blog Post in 30 Minutes or Less (yes, really!).

5. Create Gorgeous Visual Content

Check out the image below. It’s simple, to-the-point, and best of all, it was created in about 2 whole minutes using the free graphic design tool Canva:

Image credit: More in Media

Your graphic design skills don’t need to be super sophisticated, but any effort at all to create custom visual content will differentiate your blog from companies that rely on stock photos. Get comfortable with one or two tools, and you’ll find that the sky is the limit. We reviewed 14 of our very favorites here.

6. Format

Nothing – and I mean nothing – makes me stop reading a blog faster than a great big wall of text. Or, long paragraphs, or a lack of subheadings. The truth is, neither humans or search engines like blogs that aren’t correctly formatted with nice, small chunks of text, headings, and meta data.

We published an in-depth guide to blog formatting if you’re interested, but remember the following hacks when you create content:

• Keep your paragraphs short
• Use subheadings
• Use at least one image – more for longer content
• Illustrate with screencaps whenever possible.

7. Promote and Measure

Per expert Neil Patel, people all too often forget the “marketing” aspect of content marketing. Believe me, it’s crucial. Even if your content is truly amazing, so is lot’s of other people’s. Promotion, networking, and sharing is crucial to gain traction, relationships, and an audience.

Measurement of your blog marketing metrics is an equally crucial part of creating content. The data doesn’t lie, so embrace it for its honesty, and continually seek ways to improve your blog’s performance.

What else would you add to this list of hacks for creating content? Share your favorite tips in the comments!

GUEST POST

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If there’s one thing I’m sure of as a marketer, it’s that mobile is more than its channel — it’s a behavior.

The rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets has created an ultra-connected mobile consumer, which has permanently disrupted the shopping experience. Mobile devices have become a habit we’ve integrated into our daily lives that have dramatically changed the ways we interact with the world.

As eMarketer analyst Catherine Boyle recently explained: “Local mobile ad spending is on the rise. But the definition of local for one advertiser can be very different from another. It’s when you want to get into a one-to-three block radius around a specific location, that’s where the advertiser really needs to do a lot of research.”

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We’ll be exploring how you can grow your mobile business at MobileBeat in San Francisco on July 8-9.

Grab your tickets now!

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This requires marketers to stop limiting the capabilities of mobile marketing to its channel only. I don’t say this to call out errors or mistakes — I say this to help marketers realize the power of mobile marketing in untangling and facilitating the path to brick-and-mortar.

As more purchasing decisions become aided by mobile devices, savvy marketers need to shift their focus and think differently.

Mobile is a behavior, not just a channel

Mobile behavior is transforming the traditional path to purchase — with mobile consumers increasingly looking to embrace their phones. In fact, Google reports that 79 percent of mobile consumers are using their devices to aid in shopping activities and 84 percent use their devices in store.

In response to this, retailers have taken the approach of testing and building varying approaches to connect with consumers across the shopping journey from online to in-store. For example, consumers can download the Home Depot app and read product reviews in-store by scanning product UPCs. Beyond in-store, the app displays real-time inventory, makes it easy for consumers to buy products online and pick-up in store and even locate products through the use of an in-store map & aisle locations.

Urban Outfitters,on the other hand, is relying on loyalty and social as key drivers for their mobile strategy. Urban Outfitters added a news feed to its mobile application to encourage repeat visits and help consumers stay up to date on sales and events. Furthermore, the UrbanOn app syncs with users’ social networks, while distributing reward points when users mention the brand on Twitter or Instagram. Other features intended to drive store traffic and frequency include integration of the Urban Outfitters music player and ongoing access to sales, new collections and events

Both examples, although very different audiences, exhibit the following three key characteristics that drive impact with mobile and seamlessly move shoppers from the second screen into physical stores.

Ditch the random and make it locally relevant

Consumers want messages that are relevant to them — for the products they want, at the stores in their neighborhood. While retailers have been focused on what’s ‘sexy’ in local — iBeacons, geofencing and other technologies — we need to consider how consumers already interact with their devices and take advantage of that behavior.

Anything that adds work on the consumer side — from opt-ins to turning on their location settings — may sound good on paper, but today’s mobile consumer quickly tires of novelty that requires effort.

Like Home Depot, Lowe’s has been an early adopter of localized mobile marketing. The home improvement retailer mastered the art of the simple with its brilliant mobile campaign leveraging Vine, a mobile app that enables users to create and post short six-second home improvement video clips.

Not only are these clips simple — “Keep bugs out of your sandbox with a little cinnamon” or “Use caulk to make it stay put” — but they’re also in tune with home improvement shoppers’ local needs. This is a perfect example of how a brand enables consumers to access tips to common home improvement problems in a mobile-friendly way while on-the-go and ultimately, drives these mobile shoppers to make a purchase in a local Lowe’s store.

Prioritize personalization

Consumers are not only expecting tailored experiences as part of their shopping experience, but they also gravitate toward retailers that offer more customizable options or the ability for the consumer to interact on their own terms. This is going to be important as retailers launch in-store beacon technology. A Beacon is essentially a low-energy Bluetooth transmitter that can track the location of a customer and allow for advertisers to serve ads to the customer based on location. Retailers like Macy’s & Safeway have started testing Beacons to communicate with customers in-store.

Major League Baseball was one of the first to adopt this technology and has installed thousands of transmitters in their parks. So the MLB creates a better fan experience by offering coupons and help navigating the park through their custom app. Imagine leaving a ballpark on a Saturday and up pops a coupon for $5 off a ticket for a game the following Wednesday. This allows the teams an ability to manage seats, inventory, while providing value and increasing fan loyalty. But it remains to be seen if consumers will see this beacon-enabled content as valuable or annoying, invasive and irrelevant – which, in turn, will turn them off and away from the brand altogether.

When you simplify, you win

From Belly to Shopkick to ibotta, mobile shopping startups have lured brands with the promise of mobile consumer engagement. However, the verdict is still out on their ability to drive loyalty, brand connections, and most importantly, generate consistent revenue.

For example, according to a PayPal commissioned Forrester study, PayPal tapped into existing behaviors with its two-step, mobile express checkout that has increased mobile sales conversion by 30 percent and increased retailers’ incremental sales by 35 percent. Some marketers might argue with the specifics of this campaign, but the key is that it makes the mobile experience simpler for consumers. With PayPal, your payment account is already linked — that makes it easier for consumers to say ‘yes’ instantly to making a mobile purchase.

There’s no such thing as a national customer

With most mobile consumer sessions averaging about 15 seconds, the easier you can make things for the shoppers to engage is more important than how fun it is. Whether it’s ‘opting in,’ filling out mobile sweepstakes forms or printing out coupons, as good as it may sound on paper, today’s mobile consumer quickly tires of novelty that requires extra effort.

The implications of localized mobile marketing are clear: Marketers who want to succeed at mobile must understand the individual motivations, behaviors and varying paths to purchase of consumers first. From there, it’s up to marketers to provide locally relevant, contextually targeted and engaging experiences and advertising that are native to the user experience. If they don’t, consumers will quickly move on to competitors who do.

Jeff Fagel is CMO at G/O Digital. With more than 20 years of brand, digital and startup marketing experience, Fagel has held multiple leadership roles at PepsiCo, Frito-Lay & and Sears Holdings. You can find Jeff on Google+ and Twitter.

Yesterday, we took a look at some essential and affordable equipment for successfully shooting quality video content at live events.

Today, we’re going to focus on some quick tips that will help you put together a good strategy for producing as much content as possible during said events. So whether you’re scrambling around at a conference shooting customer testimonial and real-time recaps or just helping a client film key speaking sessions, here’s what you need to do to plan it all out:

1. Schedule Interviews in Advance

Live events are often jam-packed when it comes to scheduling. Time is limited and extremely valuable, so do yourself a favor and reach out to anyone whom you know will be in attendance and desperately want to connect with. See if you can nail down a window of time where you can get them on camera before their itinerary is full to the brim. If you snooze, you lose (out on the opportunity to capture some great interviews).

2. Leave Yourself Some Time/Flexibility

There’s plenty that can and will happen at live events that isn’t on the schedule. Leave yourself a few open windows where you have the freedom to shoot things that you didn’t know about in advance. Often, that’s when you get some of your best footage.

Maybe an individual you wanted to interview suddenly has an opening in their schedule. You want to be flexible enough to accommodate them if needed. It’s also just a good idea to give yourself some time to breathe, eat lunch, and download footage to your computer/external hard drives so you don’t run out of room on your recording media, too.

3. Map Out the Social Landscape

Whether it is a major international show like CES or Mobile World Congress, or an independent summit hosted by a single company, these events bring in thousands of people from all over the world, all with fingers hovering over their smartphones ready to send out tweets, Facebook posts and Instagram pictures.

Use the right keywords in your YouTube descriptions/titles and hashtags in your posts and your video content can sit front and center in the event’s social media buzz. So make sure you visit the event website and see what hashtags are being used to promote it beforehand, as well as any hashtags the hosts are encouraging attendees to use once the event kicks off.

Then be ready to work them into your social media posts along with your video content. These hashtags often maintain a decent shelf life even after the event is over, as people look to catch up on anything and everything they might have missed.

There’s a lot more that goes into successful live event video strategies, but these are three helpful planning tips that make your life that much easier once everything kicks off.

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Want to learn more? Check out our free eBook!

In The Ultimate Guide to a Successful Product Launch, you’ll learn:

- How to plan before a big event or product launch
- The strategy behind promoting and publishing collateral
- How to approach social media and influencers before, during and after a launch
- What and how to measure to keep a campaign going

Download

LinkedIn has always focused on the professional audience from the very beginning. But in the past, you may have only visited the site when you had an update to your resume or were trying to find a connection for that perfect job. However, like other social networks, LinkedIn evolved.

Last year, LinkedIn began focusing on content marketing as a key piece of its growth strategy.

Around the same time, LinkedIn introduced a new marketing option called Sponsored Updates. This is an in-stream native ad unit that promotes content from a LinkedIn business page to the world’s largest professional network. But a lot of people are unfamiliar with these sponsored updates, so we thought we’d take a few moments to break them down. Let’s jump in.

When you add a piece of content to your LinkedIn business page, you’ll notice a sponsor update button toward the bottom of the post.

If you click the sponsor update button, you’ll be taken into the Campaign Manager where you can sponsor or promote this piece of content. If this is your first time sponsoring a piece of content, you’ll be prompted to enter a credit card into the system. For future sponsoring opportunities, you’ll bypass this step.

You can now choose the sponsor content button, where a drop down will appear allowing you to name your campaign, choose the company this campaign is for (you will only have multiple options if you’re an administrator of multiple business pages) and click the update you want to sponsor.

Next, you’ll be provided with a preview of what your content will look like on various devices including a PC, smart phone and a tablet. This is a helpful feature that other social networks don’t currently offer.

Once you click the next button you’ll be moved over to the targeting section. Here you can target a location based on the area.  For example, you can’t target a specific city like San Francisco, but you can target the San Francisco Bay Area. You’re also given the opportunity to focus on specific companies and job titles if you want your content to be served up to those specific groups. One last thing to consider: The more LinkedIn members you target, the higher “per click” price you will pay. So getting more specific can make your budget go further.

With a final click of the next button, you’re taken to the budget page. You can choose pay per click (CPC), or cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM). In our experience, we’ve seen higher return on investment with the CPC option. You also choose the total budget you’re willing to spend on this sponsored update, as well as how long the campaign should run. With a click of the launch campaign button, your advertising is now in motion.

Once your sponsored update is running, you’ll see two different engagement metrics under the post. One is the organic traffic your post has seen, and the other is what your post has gained from sponsoring it. In this example, the difference is substantial: 92 organic impressions vs. 23,950 paid impressions.

You can also visit your campaign dashboard to see more detailed information about the posts you’ve chosen to sponsor. One thing to highlight: Tthe budget versus the total spent. LinkedIn provides additional value to your posts, especially if they’re popular with your targeted audience. So for the example above, you can see the budget was $50.00, but my total spend was $175.00. Even though you’ll never be charged more than the budget you set, sometimes you get additional exposure at no additional cost. In this case, I received an additional $125 worth of clicks for free. We can’t confirm why LinkedIn does this, but we confirmed with a LinkedIn sales representative that it does happen from time to time. Just note that this may not be available permanently.

There you have it – A quick little walk through LinkedIn’s sponsored updates. We’d love to hear what you think of them, and if you’ve had any experience using them yourself. Just drop us a note in the comment section below.

A Day In the Life of a Sales Rep: Advice on How Sales Enablement Tools Can Increase Efficiency and Success from SAVO CEO, Mark O’Connell

Mark O’Connell is the President and CEO of SAVO, a fast-growth enterprise SaaS company and strategic alliance partner of Richardson. SAVO’s technology solutions improve productivity and performance of sales organizations and salespeople. This is the second part of our interview with Mark regarding sales enablement technology. (Read the previous post here.)

Dario: Are CRM and marketing automation tools enough to help sales reps?

Mark: The life of a salesperson has become more difficult with the pressures of time, complexity of selling, and ability to meet buyers’ needs. The simple idea of sales enablement having presentation material and content available at the right place and time is still a central idea, but the way it is served today has changed tremendously in recent years to align with how salespeople sell and how buyers buy.

Most companies have invested in CRM technology and marketing automation tools, which either create more opportunities or provide a place for salespeople to report on their progress on their current opportunities. Prior to implementing SAVO, most of our clients’ sales reps begin their day by opening Outlook and CRM. Most salespeople believe CRM is a management tool that they have to support. They are required to update their CRM system with information about the status of an account and progress they have made in individual meetings. Then they have to upload documents and presentations into the system so that the management team can have better insight into deals and the revenue forecast.

But few salespeople will say they love their CRM system and that it helps them get their job done. Most tell us it is “not one of the most inspirational experiences of their day.” They require a lot of manual effort and duplication of effort to execute common sales activities such as creating presentations and proposals. Today most people cut and paste from Word documents, which is a sinkhole of time that salespeople spend to get them right (including the numbers, messaging, and branding) – when you think about how much time salespeople put into a commercial proposal, that is a huge amount of effort! Finding the right content to use at the right time in the sales process is a constant challenge and quality is inconsistent.

The bottom line is that most reps in these situations experience a drain on productivity, efficiency, and image as well as a lack of focus on the buyer and content and message needed to sell to them.

Dario: How about after implementing SAVO Sales Process Pro?

Mark: Our focus for sales enablement is a productivity platform where salespeople go to work. We build our applications for mobile first, since most salespeople are on the move. When you get up, you open your iPad to view your opportunities and SAVO tells you what you should do. It gives you real-time coaching to refresh your memory on the products relevant for each opportunity, the talk track on how to present their value, and the discovery questions you should ask when in the meeting later in the day.

SAVO helps reps get organized and prepare for meetings by pushing the best presentation material based on the situation as well as background information, tips, and guides that not only tell you what to do, but also what to say. Sales reps no longer need to guess or spend time searching, and they are more confident because the materials have been prescribed by sales management, product management, and marketing to be used within each specific sales stage which eliminates the guesswork for sales reps.

Other tools in the software allow me to see whether people have looked at the material I’ve sent in advance (including digital “postcards” using my voice), which enables me to prepare and gives me insight into their level of seriousness and how engaged this customer really is on what I am considering an important sales opportunity. I can customize my presentation through the same window based on the buyer’s level, industry, and business problem I am trying to solve, the sales enablement software will guide me to the solutions and products to present, assemble the presentation, and allow me to make any necessary modifications… then I am ready to go.

All of this drastically reduces the amount of time, effort, and guesswork that reps typically spend in preparing for a custom presentation. The fact that it can be done anywhere on an iPad or mobile device at the reps’ convenience makes it even better.

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Richardson and SAVO have partnered together to bring you  SAVO Sales Process Pro Richardson Edition™, an CRM-enabled application that allows sales and marketing leaders to reinforce training and execute best practices through coaching at each stage of the sales cycle. To learn more, click on the link above or the image below.

The post Advice on How Sales Enablement Tools Can Increase Efficiency appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Hiring for content marketing is difficult. It’s a new field, and marketers are still trying to figure out how to find the right people for the job.

LinkedIn is one of the best resources at your disposal to find talent. But to use this resource to its full potential, you have to know who—and what—to look for.

When searching for qualified content marketers, here are 5 LinkedIn keywords (1) to use in your search and (2) will indicate you’re on the right track.

Writing

Content marketing is all about transforming your brand into a world-class brand publisher. To do it, you need members on your team with excellent writing skills. This should be one of the first keywords you use when hiring talent. Then, make sure to check out (and ask for) clips of their work. Ask yourself if their writing is:

Hiring for Content Marketing? Look for These LinkedIn Keywords

• Clear
• Concise
• Entertaining
• Simple

Writing is a hard thing to teach. Make sure your hires are already equipped with this essential skill.

Editing

In addition to writing, the candidates you consider should have a keen editorial eye. You’re going to rely on them not only to produce content, but to control the quality of that content. They should not only be great at proofreading but also know how to make an eBook, a blog post, a whitepaper, and website copy better.

Buyer-Centric

If a prospective employee doesn’t understand that the content they create should meet the needs—and speak the language of—the buyer, you’ve got a problem on your hands. The people producing and editing your content shouldn’t be product-focused. They should understand that a key element of successful content marketing campaigns is that they meet buyers where they are and provide the information they’re looking for.

Design

How to hire a content marketing team [webinar] with @jasonmillerca & @noyesjesse

The very best content requires a large amount of collaboration between designers, writers, and editors. If your writers don’t have any interest in the design of the final product, and pass it off to your designers to “make it pretty,” your content will suffer. The design should support the content, and vice versa. Your writers need to understand how they want their copy to appear on the page, and what design elements will help communicate their message.

Project Management

In addition to creative thinking, your content marketers should know how to run a content marketing campaign from start to finish. You want to be able to delegate. And you’re only going to feel comfortable delegating if you have full confidence in your team members to really own their campaigns.

The best candidates do their research on your company before they’re interviewed. The best hiring managers do their research, too. There’s a lot more that goes into hiring a stellar content marketing team. But these five LinkedIn profile keywords are a good start.

These days small businesses are being bombarded by consultants, pundits and thought leaders telling them they need to get their businesses on social media.

With hardly a moment passing where we aren’t told to follow something on Twitter or like a page on Facebook, the proliferation of social has reached epic proportion. With this hyper-awareness comes a certain sense of urgency for most entrepreneurs — primarily the desire not to miss the ball on social media.

With this in mind, the desire alone doesn’t serve much purpose: Companies need to focus on an agenda or goal. One way to do this is using social media to ramp up revenue, specifically through a tactic called “social selling.” In the age of Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and what seems like a million other social platforms, the idea of social selling is for companies to use content, social media and traditional communication channels to more successfully sell. (Otherwise, businesses may not be able to keep up with their competition.). Think about it. As social media has evolved, consumer behavior has changed. No longer are they relying on one channel (a sales person) for information, but they are actively seeking out data on the Internet – everything from your products, evaluating your vendors and looking at clients – before making a decision.

And consumers are coming out in droves on social media to find this information. Indeed, there are currently more than 1 billion regular monthly users across social media platforms. And buyers tend to do their research before making a purchase, with the average consumer viewing more than 10 pieces of content prior to making a purchase. Plus, people are much more likely to make a purchase when someone they know (via social) recommends it. Seems like a win-win for businesses – that is if a company implements it correctly.

Here are a few tips to get your business (and customers) invested in social selling:

1. Get your sales team on board. Make sure you introduce them to the premise of social selling. This means spending time mining data and information that helps them understand how social media may help them connect to customers and can lead to sales.

2. Take baby steps. Sales executives often need some simple tactics such as how to use social media or content. I usually recommend a very simple program where the sales execs share three to five pieces of content a week via LinkedIn or email with at least five different customers and prospects. Make sure the customer gets a personalized message that says why the content is being shared and why it matters to the client. I also recommend setting up a follow up in the email that spells out an explicit action, like a follow-up meeting.

3. Show results. Wins don’t have to be just sales. I advise clients to track conversations and appointments generated from the tactics I suggested above. For instance, have the sales person mark down responses to their social-selling tactics, coffee or other meetings that they may have led to and then of course any revenue opportunities that can be directly correlated to the efforts.

Once you got you sales team on board, here is how to customers excited about social selling.

4. Have your ear to the ground. Keep an eye out for content that is useful for your clients. Generally the content should be on topic and with some good tips or actionable items. Note that these may also be good for future clients and prospects.

5. Keep track. When you find useful content, it is a good practice to keep an Excel or Word document where you keep the article titles, links and main topic. Also, look to software that can help keep track of metric, like views, clicks and time spent examining the content.

6. Find connections. Look for opportunities to pair the content with specific clients. Keep tabs of this in your document to know what you sent to an individual. Over time you should build an aggregate of useful content that helps provide more clarity to your message and your customer needs.

7. Make it meaningful. Deliver the content with an email and a simple message that helps the customer or prospect understand the topic and why you think it is important. Often referring to a previous conversation where the topic was discussed.

8. Include a call to action. Make sure the client needs to take some sort of step. Some examples include a follow-up call or a meeting, where you can discuss the information.

9. Be consistent. The response rate will likely not be 100 percent but that doesn’t mean clients aren’t reading it. With so much information out there if you can be the person that consistently delivers solid content then you will be front of mind when buying decisions are being considered and made.

If there is no tension in the sales process, you’re not selling. You’re taking orders or you’re the customers bitch.

Truly selling means you are offering some type of fundamental change and tension is inherent to change.

Your buyer isn’t going to always agree with your view point, recommendation or suggestions and that’s OK. That’s healthy tension.

There are going to be detractors to your solution. The competition is going to add to the tension, spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt (fud). That’s brutal tension.

Your product won’t meet all their needs, that for sure creates tension.

New requirements will come out of the blue, the product team will miss a delivery timeline, budgets will be cut, prices will be too high and they all create tension.

Tension is natural. It’s part of the sales cycle. As a sales person, your job is not to reduce tension or avoid it but rather know how to manage it.

Tension gives you visibility into what your clients are doing. It’s provides insight into your buyers mind, their challenges, issues and concerns. Tension is the natural connection between your buyers fears and your solution. Embracing tension is how you get to the close and deliver.

Sales is not meant to be tension free, we’re creating change and change makes people nervous.

Embrace the tension, it means you’re heading in the right direction.

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan

Not too long ago, before the advent of social selling, if a salesperson needed to add new opportunities to the pipeline, there were basically two options:

1. Make cold calls; or
2. Call existing customers for referrals and introductions.

Interestingly, this choice was not a no-brainer!  I observed that for every three salespeople who would call customers for referrals, there were always two who preferred to make cold calls.  This was not because they loved making cold calls, but because in their minds, it was a more comfortable option for them than asking for something from customers.

Of course, things are quite different today.  Most salespeople are the beneficiaries of a nice supply of leads from their company's marketing, advertising and online efforts.  I typed that "things are quite different", but is that the same thing as, "things are quite better"?

I don't know about you and your leads, but a lot of the "leads" I see aren't very good at all. They're actually more like names with email addresses and a good percentage of them can't really be considered leads at all.  But because a small percentage of them turn out to be really good ones, all of them must be followed-up.  One can't distinguish the good from the bad until the follow-up calls have been made.

With salespeople so busy, following-up on mostly crappy leads, they probably don't even give a thought to calling customers and asking for referrals.  Suppose I was given the option to phone one of two leads:

I know all the statistics about lead follow-up.  If you don't place a follow-up call within the first 10 minutes, your chances of connecting decrease by...I know.  I also know that it takes 8-15 attempts to reach one of those leads...

We all know that the introduction beats the crap out of the lead follow-up 95 times out of 100.  If that's the case, why are so many salespeople spending all of their time attempting to generate and follow-up on the leads that produce results 5 times out of 100?

If you've been reading my blog for the past 8 years, then you know that according to Objective Management Group (OMG), 74% of all salespeople are ineffective.  So we already had this huge class of sucky salespeople and now, with leads making life so easy for most salespeople, we have created a new class of sucky salespeople who are also lazy.  

Have your salespeople pretend it's 1985.  Have them each call 5 customers or clients every day for the rest of the month and ask for referrals and introductions.  If they don't do it, shame on them.  If they don't know how to do it effectively, shame on you.

Would you like to have a greater impact on what your salespeople sell?  Attend my Sales Leadership Intensive in September and become a master at coaching your salespeople!

Image: Chin Kit Sen via Shutterstock

 

(c) Copyright 2014 Dave Kurlan

You may have heard the big news that WordStream has added call tracking software to its arsenal of PPC tools. This means you can now track the campaigns, keywords, match types, ads, and landing pages that drive inbound calls to your business. Not only that, each call gets recorded, so you can refer back to it for marketing and training purposes.

It’s a pretty freaking sweet feature, and, if you use it, it may change your business.

Let’s assume you already know it’s freaking sweet, you know that inbound calls are worth 5 to 10 times the value of form fill leads, and you’ve got call tracking set up. Now what?

Now you start tracking performance so you know what’s working and what’s not.

You already know the traditional AdWords metrics, including which campaigns, keywords, ads, and landing pages trigger conversions on your site. But when it comes to prospects who pick up the phone and call, the ability to track conversions diminishes quickly unless you use call tracking.

The image below shows a snapshot of the types of data call tracking captures. With this in mind, let’s take a look at five of the most important metrics to monitor with call tracking.

5 Essential Metrics To Use In Call Tracking

Number of calls

Yes, this is pretty obvious: If your business relies on calls, you’re going to monitor this regularly. The great thing about PPC call tracking is that it records the call quantity on a regular basis so you don’t have to manually track inbound calls. You’ll have a deep view of call patterns by the hour, day, week, month, and year.

With PPC call tracking you’ll also have your PPC calls segmented from all other call types. That means you’ll know definitively if a call came from PPC without having to ask the caller (good luck with that), and the data won’t be intertwined with calls from organic or social media calls.

The point is that you can now tie PPC calls to your PPC costs. If phone calls are the lifeblood of your business, you now have a clear view of the true ROI of your campaigns.

Call length

Not all inbound calls are equal. The generally accepted view with call tracking is that long calls are better leads. The thinking goes that a prospect who spends a lot of time talking with a company representative is probably a hot lead – they wouldn’t keep talking if they weren’t still interested.

To help filter which calls are higher-quality leads, call tracking data reports the call length for each call. Call-length data tells you which campaigns, keywords, ads, and landing pages lead to the longest (and likely best) phone calls.

Key point with call length: Establish a minimum call-length threshold that qualifies a call as a lead. Not every single call is a legitimate lead because of the spam-call factor: those annoying auto-generated calls from a robot. In addition, some calls are from actual people but they turn out to be telemarketers who found you by conducting a search, just like anyone else did, and they’re not really leads.

To filter out the illegitimate calls, set a minimum call length as the threshold a call must reach before it’s considered a lead. This could be as short as 30 seconds and as long as a minute, but it really depends on your business’s sales process.

Time of day and location

AdWords Enhanced Campaigns give advertisers the ability to change bids by location, time, and device. Call tracking data gives advertisers another reason to take advantage of this AdWords feature.

Now that you know which calls are converting, you can adjust bids based on the types and quality of calls received from different locations, days, and times.

For example, if the calls you receive on Friday afternoons tend to be non-converters, you could bid down during that time period. Further, you can apply the same logic to the locations where your ads are showing: If you know a particular metro area produces great phone leads, you can increase your bids for that area.

Landing page performance

Most landing pages give visitors two options: a form fill and a phone number. Without call tracking, most PPC advertisers can only gauge landing page success by form fills, which could lead you to believe your conversion rate is (a lot) lower than it is. Now, however, you can tie in phone calls to get a better grasp of landing page performance.

For example, it would be easy to deduce that a landing page with no form fills is a failure, but this is where call tracking comes into play. Call tracking data may reveal that that landing page delivers a high number of quality leads and conversions from phone calls.

Landing page analysis should be approached from different angles. Ask multiple questions about your pages’ performance. For example, ask which landing pages:

• Deliver the most calls
• Produce the best calls, i.e., calls with qualified leads
• Generate the most customers
• Yield the best call conversion rate (just like click conversion rate, except you replace clicks with calls: conversions/calls = call conversion rate.)

Conversions

Conversions are easily the most important metric of all. Take a top-down view of your campaigns and the calls created by each campaign. This includes the keywords, ads, match types, and landing pages.

An inbound call may take as little as a few minutes or as long as a few months to become a customer. Capture that first interaction that PPC produced so when the prospect becomes a customer—in a few minutes or months—you can track it back to that first click and know your return on PPC investment. You’ll also have a better understanding of your sales cycle—the amount of time it takes from initial contact to sealing a deal.

Another comparison to make is phone leads and their conversions versus web leads and their conversions. Track both types of leads to the very end of the sales funnel and learn which type of lead—phone or web—produces the most profitable type of customer. Knowing this will help you make adjustments to both phone and web strategies.

You’ve now got a good idea of what metrics to track with call tracking. For sure there are more complex and advanced metrics to pull in, especially when you throw Universal Analytics into the mix, but these five call tracking metrics are a great place to get started.

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” –John Wanamaker, late 1800s.

More than a century ago, the founder of Wanamaker’s department store uttered those words (or so the legend goes). A pioneer of merchandising and sales, John Wanamaker knew advertising helped drive purchases, but the why and how remained a mystery.

Fast-forward to 2014, and we like to think we’ve turned marketing and sales into a fine-tuned science. Generations of salespeople have been schooled in the concept of the sales funnel, the more-or-less linear journey customers take as they progress along the path to a purchase. At the top of the funnel, marketing efforts build awareness and interest. Deeper down, things such as opt-in email campaigns and white papers drive leads. At some point, the sales team kicks into high gear, courting hot leads and converting opportunities to sales. Finally, the customer is spit back out the bottom of the funnel to, theoretically, begin the journey anew.

The idea of the sales and marketing funnel is so entrenched that it has given rise to an industry of customer relationship management, or CRM, software offerings, which help companies acquire and identify leads and usher them neatly through the distinct stages of the funnel.

The problem is that nothing about the funnel is neat. It has always represented an idealized journey and, in the era of social media, it increasingly represents a fictional one. Customers are navigating their own paths to purchase. They’re learning about products in new ways and from new sources. They’re entering the funnel–then exiting, distracted by other offers. There is no predetermined path to purchase, no series of predictable steps to a sale–and these days, a sale hardly represents the end of a customer’s journey. Ideally, it’s just the beginning.

Channels such as Twitter and Facebook represent a different, decentralized, and nonlinear way for customers to learn about, interact with and compare companies and their products. In one respect, this represents a huge challenge. Simply tracking–not to mention influencing–the dialogue on fast-multiplying numbers of social channels can be a daunting proposition for brands. On the other hand, social media is remarkably effective at driving more prospects into the top of the funnel. And, used correctly, it can also compress and cut out entire stages (as when a salesperson reaches out to a hot lead directly on Twitter), and it can give consumers countless new entry and exit points (as when prospects turn to Facebook for social proof points before purchasing).

Consider the relatively simple example of a customer searching for a new car. Awareness is built not just through TV and print ads but through word of mouth on Facebook and Twitter. In many cases, online friends and followers help narrow down options, steering the buyer toward a particular model. Then comes the research phase of online reviews, blogs, and other resources. By the time the buyer makes contact with the brand itself, visiting its website or actually going to a dealership, she’s already deep into the funnel. But sales staff may be completely oblivious to her history. And our theoretical buyer is by no means hooked at this stage. Strategic social ads on her Facebook account or new input on Twitter, for example, might send her careening in a new direction. Finally, if she does purchase, the cycle is far from over. Ideally, she shares photos on Instagram; she raves about her new car on Twitter. Social media has twisted the familiar sales funnel into something almost unrecognizable.

The result is a happy paradox. The rise of social media and new digital channels has hopelessly complicated the traditional marketing and sales process. At the same time, social media offers a way to look past these complexities and introduce a new level of efficiency and personalization to sales.

We’re starting to see this (finally) with the emergence of purpose-built social CRM tools, which are finding ways to catalogue diverse customer touch points and make use of the huge trove of public, social information out there. Each additional interaction with Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or Yelp becomes, rather than an obstacle, a way to better understand the consumer, her needs, and the particular phase of the sales funnel (or cycle) that she’s in.

The data collected is infinitely richer than what could be gleaned from a click on a website or an opt-in email campaign. And the benefits flow both ways. When social CRM and marketing automation work right, consumers end up with exactly the information they need to evaluate the product they’re looking for. In turn, companies are able to dispense with archaic marketing strategies–email blitzes, costly paid ads that reach the wrong audience, high-priced creative content that fails to hit its mark–and connect directly with people who actually want to learn about their products.

In other words, social CRM holds the promise of answering, at least in part, Wanamaker’s century-old riddle, more poignant in the social-media era than ever: how to turn the elusive art of advertising and marketing into something resembling a science.

Staying competitive in the B2B marketing space seems overwhelming for a lot of marketers right now with all the hype about everything from content marketing to programmatic ad buying.

While I am a firm believer companies do need to stay on top of what’s new, continuously experiment, adapt and evolve, there’s still quite a bit of low hanging fruit when it comes to B2B marketing tactics.

What are those easy pickings you ask? It’s marketing fundamentals! But you say, “Nah, we’ve been to the basics mountain, summited and back. Been there, done that.”

Here’s the thing about online marketing basics: the nature of the tactics persist, but the data that supports them along with execution have undoubtedly changed.

Here’s a list of 21 B2B online marketing tactics that you can review to see if you’re up to date on the data that informs your approach and the way you execute. When is the last time you revisited, analyzed and optimized the performance of these essential marketing tactics?

• Client Testimonials – Client stories of success are often one of the first things that catches the eye when looking at potential business partners and B2B vendors. Common mistakes include testimonials that are too enthusiastic or those that are benign but packed as if they’re something special. Most importantly, testimonials should reflect issues of interest to the target audience. Client stories on video, in Slideshare decks, at conferences as speaking partners and similar partnerships are the “entry level” of client testimonials.

• Case Studies – With more complex situations, buyers want to drill down into specifics of how a company does what it does. The changing nature of just about every industry along with buyer behaviors for researching and evaluating B2B vendors means a continuous set of problem/solution exercises. Case studies present a picture of a company’s breadth and depth of ability to solve a variety of issues. B2B case studies don’t have to be limited to a PDF file. Core format can be augmented with visual and video content as well as curated related resources to give buyers a bigger and more useful picture of your B2B brand and what it can do.

• Industry Awards – Getting recognized by a respected third party can mean a quick trip to the credibility club. However, such awards are only as meaningful as the credibility of the entities giving them out. Whether you agree with awards in your industry or not, they are a signal of credibility that work with certain segments of buyers. You might even take a different approach and create your own awards to recognize people and companies that represent your ideal customers.

• Being Quoted by the Press, Blogs – Being cited as an authority on a particular topic in a high profile publication can transform a business marketer’s reputation and credibility overnight. For our business, being profiled with a photo on the cover of a regional print publication had amazing effects, but not nearly as much as getting mentioned in a favorable light in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and industry specific websites like Advertising Age, MarketingProfs, Content Marketing Institute and Social Media Examiner. Media Relations is now more valuable than ever and PR should be involved right along with marketing during planning, development and amplification of a B2B brand’s content marketing programs.

• Brand Influencers & Thought Leaders – Because of conferences, blogs, and social networks, there are more opportunities than ever for key executives and subject matter experts to become influential. Having one or more of these brand influencers on staff can give the indication that the company has a competitive advantage. There’s a careful line to walk with “brandividuals” vs. brand influencers as the former are almost always transient and the latter may not be as enthusiastic about continuous promotion.

• Speaking & Attending Conferences - Baring it all in front of an audience so to speak, can go both ways. If the speaker knows their subject matter and can entertain as well, speaking at conferences, regional events and at Universities can be very productive. However, if the speaker does not prepare, present well or “know their stuff” things can go badly. Whether a company hosts their own event with subject matter experts and clients as speakers or attends an industry event – there are numerous opportunities to create content, experiences and media coverage as well as direct connections with prospective customers. Just don’t make the mistake of sending people to conferences that don’t create content, network for prospects or bring back a list of actionable advice to share with the rest of their team.

• Web Site’s Design & Functionality – A web site still says a lot about a company, even though the kinds of interactions many B2B companies are looking for to attract leads can happen anywhere on the web where a form can capture prospect information. Websites that provide useful content, engage with audiences and curate brand social media activity give buyers a reason to return and keep the B2B brand top of mind.

• Editorial Contributions to Industry Publications – Contributing articles to prominent online or print publications gives companies an opportunity to show their unique problem solving abilities and expertise. That’s right, I said print! By association with the publication, the company also gets a boost in the credibility department. Getting a column with online publications like Forbes and The Huffington Post are not as difficult as in the past and can provide syndication and exposure to entirely new audiences.

• Online Advertising – One way of growing reputation is to advertise in all the places your target audience looks for credible information in coordination with brand content, social media marketing, email, PR and organic content. Whether it’s a B2B campaign or content amplification, there are numerous options to buy attention to B2B content. The question is, will it be the right audience? Thanks to retargeting, programmatic ad buying and increasingly sophisticated targeting through social networks, the answer is increasingly, “yes”

• Employee Advocacy - Answering the phone, speaking to prospects in meetings, networking online and offline, front line staff behavior can have leave a big impression (good or bad) on potential clients. In today’s always on, always connected world, everyone in your business is a potential sales person, customer service agent and brand ambassador. Insourcing and employee advocacy shouldn’t be left to a few individuals or to chance. Make employee advocacy a part of your strategic marketing initiatives.  A great resource for this is “The Most Powerful Brand On Earth: How to Transform Teams, Empower Employees, Integrate Partners, and Mobilize Customers to Beat the Competition in Digital and Social Media”.

• Connecting with Industry Influencers - Relationships with industry influencers doesn’t need to be limited to the pay to play with analysts. Journalists, bloggers and credible individuals with authority can provide highly credible access for a B2B brand to new audiences of buyers. Like all productive relationships, these connections need to be maintained through communications and oftentimes through value exchange or even compensation.

• Client List – You are who you associate with. Big brand customers bring a whole other set of challenges and opportunities. But seeing those big names often gives lesser known brand prospects a certain kind of warm fuzzy feeling, “If this company made it through the vendor sourcing process with a Fortune 500 company, then they’re probably of the right caliber for my Fortune 1,000 company.” But if it appears that your company ONLY does business with the big dogs, then the mid-market companies may get gun shy. For the best of both worlds, keep it balanced.

• Search Engine Visibility on Competitive Industry Terms – I can’t tell you how many times companies have said, “We found you on Google by searching for (insert industry term here) and we figured if you can do it for yourself, you can probably do it for us.” I know, I know. There’s so much wrong with that kind of ranking logic these days, but it’s a fact of life in today’s world of online business. Search engine visibility is a form of public relations and showing up for relevant, broad terms (as well as your niche specialties) makes your brand name (if your Title tags are written properly) associated with those terms. Relevant search visibility also means your company is present as a resource at the very moment a buyer needs you most.

• Brand Identity, Message, Narrative - There’s a lot that goes into creating a brand. I like the definition: “A brand is a promise kept”. Each interaction between a prospective company and something that communicates information about the agency is an opportunity to make a brand promise. Repeat interactions provide the opportunity to keep that promise. Thoughtful storytelling in a B2B brand’s content marketing efforts convey important messages that evoke feelings which can either build or detract from credibility. Content shouldn’t be isolated by campaigns, but support an overall brand narrative designed to connect with buyers across the entire customer lifecycle from awareness to transaction to advocacy.

• Press Releases – It’s true, the direct SEO value from press releases is pretty much gone. And sending out non-news press releases like, “We launched a new web site design”, is worse than not sending any press releases at all. But sending out occasional press releases with “real news” to wire services and directly to cultivated lists of relevant industry publications can still create signals of your credibility. And with clever pitching, they might even get you some press coverage.

• Social Media Footprint: Social Networks (especially LinkedIn and Twitter), Forums, Images, Videos, Podcasts – As Charlene Li has said, “Social networks are like air”. Social Media and Networks provide B2B buyers another perspective on companies they want to know as potential vendors. Promoting unique knowledge through social media formats and networks can give important indications of an B2B company’s expertise in formats that can match the information consumption preferences of a variety of potential buyers.

• Industry Research, Surveys and Reports - In the same way that faculty at Universities gain prominence and reputation by publishing research in professional journals, companies that have the insight and resources to conduct real research and publish their findings create very strong signals of credibility. It is not only the execution of such research that makes it an effective “signal” though. The intelligent promotion of these learnings is as much or more important. Quality research that is packaged well gets significant play on industry websites, blogs, on social networks and can be repurposed numerous ways. Conducting research at intervals (quarterly or annually) creates anticipation that grows audience with every release without an increase in marketing costs.

• Industry Association Involvement – Investing in the future of the overall industry through association involvement can give the impression that a company has a higher level commitment than those that are not involved. Being involved with setting industry standards, guidelines and even training programs can set an agency apart and give an indication of their expertise. The time investment can be substantial though, so this one needs to be carefully considered.

• CEO, Executive and/or Company Blog – Blogs can be exceptionally effective at imparting a company’s “genuine” philosophy and corporate personality. Company web sites tend to be dry and careful or conversely, full of hype. A well written and promoted blog can do absolutely amazing things for an B2B company’s reputation in an industry. I like to think our very own Online Marketing Blog is a good example of that.

• Word on the Street, Buzz, Word of Mouth – First and foremost, providing great B2B products and services and is the cornerstone of building positive word of mouth. At the same time, successfully engaging the tactics on this list will build positive buzz, but the longevity of that buzz is only sustainable if the company has something significant in it’s ability to deliver results, to back it up.  Making it easy for customers to share the good news about your company or making sure testimonials are properly promoted can extend a company’s reach with nominal marketing investment. At the same time, monitoring social networks for brand, product or key executive mentions can reveal real-time engagement opportunities.

• Being Included on Industry “Lists” of Top Companies - No matter how you slice and dice it, getting included on a list sends a signal. Lists are inherently controversial because getting included means others are excluded. If you know how to create and promote the right signals, like doing great work for clients and letting the world know about it, getting on the kinds of lists that build credibility is pretty straightforward. Leaving it to chance and expecting inclusion based purely on merit is flat out naive. Also, if your B2B brand really wants to take advantage of lists as a marketing tactic, then start making your own lists. Just make sure they’re well researched, credible, relevant and well packaged.

So how does your B2B company rate on these online marketing fundamentals? What core tactics would you ad?

Take the time to inventory what makes sense for your business and target audience, then prioritize. Go after the top of the list and see what can be improved upon. There’s plenty of data and lots of shiny new ways to execute many of these tactics to give your business a competitive advantage without breaking the bank.

Photo: Shutterstock

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© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2014. | Is Your B2B Company Getting Ahead or Dead on these 21 B2B Marketing Basics? | http://www.toprankblog.com

Every sales team has an arsenal of tried and true methods that they rely on to close the deal when it counts. But not every habit is a good one. Sometimes we get comfortable in the way that we do our jobs, and it’s not always efficient or effective when it comes to making a sale. Here are 7 things you and your sales team might be doing that aren’t helping acquire customers, and 7 sales stats that support how to change them.

1.) Bad Habit: Making Cold Calls Between 11am and 2pm

It seems like a no-brainer, but many sales teams make the mistake of cold calling between 11am and 2pm; hoping, perhaps, to catch a prospect on their lunch break and get a few words in. But that logic is working against you: you are catching them on their lunch break or an early afternoon meeting, so they’re either not going to pick up the phone or they’re not going to be receptive to a sales call.

Sales Stat: The Best Time to Cold Call is 4-5pm. The Second Best Times is 8-10am. (Kellogg School of Business)

If your sales team is cold calling as part of their daily routine, great. But arm them with the best information that makes it easier to do their job more effectively. Cold call when the leads are hot.

2.) Bad Habit: Waiting to Follow Up on Web Leads

For whatever reason, sales teams don’t always follow up right away when a lead comes in from the web. Sometimes this is because they’re busy handling other leads they think are more important and sometimes this is because they simply don’t have the tools to follow up right away.

Sales Stat: If You Follow Up With Web Leads Within 5 Minutes, You’re 9 Times More Likely to Convert Them

It’s true. The faster you contact a web lead, the more likely it is that they will convert. You see, when a prospect fills out a form online, it’s because they want more information and are likely ready to purchase. Agents might think that by waiting to contact that customer, they’re being considerate and not being too aggressive. But in fact, every minute you spend waiting to make contact is a minute that the lead spends looking into other vendors who might be quicker to respond. Think you don’t have the tools to solve this problem? A sophisticated voice-based marketing automation tool is an affordable way to automatically trigger a phone call that connects agents with those web leads instantly. Problem solved.

3.) Bad Habit: Not Networking

Another no-brainer, it would seem, but unfortunately too many sales agents don’t do enough networking.

Sales Stat: Top Sellers Use LinkedIn 6 Hours Per Week (Jill Konrath)

Cold calls and follow-up aren’t the only ways to make a sale. Making connections and engaging with people you might eventually hope to sell to are key. LinkedIn really is Facebook for business professionals, so get on there, join some groups, and start some conversations. You never know where you’ll find the next big deal.

4.) Bad Habit: Giving Up On A Sale After Too Few Attempts

Not every sale is easy, but salespeople who give up on a sale after too few attempts aren’t doing themselves any favors.

Sales Stat: Today It Takes An Average of 8 Cold Call Attempts to Reach A Prospect. The Average Salesperson Only Makes 2 Attempts. (Ovation Sales Group and Sirius Decisions)

This stat pretty much speaks for itself. If it takes an average of 8 cold call attempts to reach a prospect, and your sales reps are only making two attempts, your sales force is nowhere near closing the deals they want to close. Sometimes you have to be a dog with a bone: don’t let it go. Keep after it.

5.) Bad Habit: Ignoring Email Marketing

You spend a lot of time cold calling, networking, and going to trade shows, but ignoring email marketing has some consequences because…

Sales Stat: Emailing Marketing Has 2x Higher ROI Than Cold Calling, Networking, or Trade Show (MarketingSherpa)

This is not to say you should ignore cold calling, networking, and trade shows. But divert some of that attention to email. The inbox is where many a sales rep finds their ready-to-close deals.

6.) Not Telling Stories

Your sales rep gets in the door, gives a sales presentation to a captive audience and…nothing. But why? All those helpful stats didn’t mean anything to the prospect?

Sales Stat: After A Presentation, 63% of Attendees Remember Stories. Only 5% Remember Stats. (Chip and Dan Heath, authors)

This can’t be emphasized enough. Tell stories. How has your product or service helped other companies? How has it caused big changes for other organizations? What is the narrative of your product? These are the stories you should be telling when it comes to sales presentations.

7.) Bad Habit: Not Asking for Referrals

Period.

Sales Stat: 91% of Customers Say They’d Give Referrals. Only 11% of Salespeople Ask for Referrals. (Dale Carnegie)

All you have to do is ask. Really. Sales people get told “no” all day, so what’s the worst that can happen? You have a whole pool of customers just waiting to give you a name, and if you’re not asking, you’re neglecting a viable source of high quality leads.

Which of these bad habits are ones that you and your sales team have overcome? Share your story in the comment section below. In the meantime, want to learn more about tools that can help you improve your sales? Download this white paper, How Sales Teams Use Virtual Call Centers to Close More Business.

Big Data. If you are like a lot of business owners, managers and marketing professionals, the term makes you a little (maybe a lot) uneasy. And dealing with the onslaught of available marketing intelligence that Big Data can lead to, even for a small business, can be a major challenge. But where there are big challenges, there are often even bigger opportunities. I’m confident that’s the case with Big Data as it relates to marketing.

So What Is Big Data? 

Big Data can be defined in a number of ways, and it’s a discipline that extends to many different industries. But for our discussion today, we are only interested in it as it relates to marketing. According to ADMA, The Association For Data-driven Marketing & Advertising,

“Big Data is the current term given to collecting, analyzing and generating insights from a wide variety of customer, commercial and environmental information. It is used to develop better understanding of customer preferences, habits and considerations in making transactions with different categories, brands and channels.

The successful use of data in marketing leads to improved customer experience, a better exchange of value between customers and organizations, and improved business performance.”

According to Forbes.com contributor Lisa Arthur, “Big data is a collection of data from traditional and digital sources inside and outside your company that represents a source for ongoing discovery and analysis.”

The term “Big Data” is at least somewhat open to interpretation and will vary from company to company.

The Information Age Is Upon Us

This is the Information Age. Everywhere we turn, it seems we are being bombarded with information. The total daily volume of data  created by humans is 2.5 quintillion bytes. 90% of the world’s data has been created in the past two years. Let those number sink in for a moment!

Nowhere is this feeling of “information overwhelm” more prevalent than it is in marketing. Marketers like you and I are constantly being bombarded with the “latest and greatest” marketing tools that all the rage.

And to make matters more difficult, these technological marketing marvels produce a lot of data. And we can’t totally disregard data, not if we want to enjoy a robust level of marketing success. We do need to pay attention to and make use of  relevant data to maximize our marketing effectiveness and enjoy the kind of conversion results we want.

So what can we do to harness the power of marketing technology to provide us the data that will help us reach our marketing goals without being washed away by an “information tsunami”? In an upcoming article, we will be discussing specific tools and techniques for managing and leveraging the power of Big Data to help us enjoy more marketing success.

But for now, let’s concentrate on some Big Data practices that can help us regardless of the tools used.

Focusing On What Matters

Even for a small business, the amount of available online marketing data can be overwhelming. And we keep hearing about how we need to put this data to use, but the task seems too daunting, so we often take a “head in the sand” approach and try to forget about it.

Don’t do this! Please understand that if you are going to maximize your conversion rates, you do need to pay attention to relevant data! And it will take some work. But if you focus only on data that’s truly relevant to growing your business, probably not as much work as you might think.

So which Big Data matters in marketing and which doesn’t? That can be hard to determine. Suffice it to say that a lot of the data we tend to get carried away with and focus on and put much (or even most or all) of our efforts into increasing, doesn’t matter that much in terms of ultimate sales results.

For example, think about the number of social media followers you have. The number of “likes” your Facebook business page has, the number of times your tweets are retweeted or favorited. These all count as “Big Data”. And granted, these numbers may give you a feeling of excitement, and many marketers put substantial effort into trying to increase them. But do they lead directly or indirectly to more sales?

Think about how large your email list is. It may be enormous. But does your email marketing lead to sales? Wouldn’t you rather have a list of 1,000 rabid fans that routinely buy from you passionately than 1,000,000 disinterested list members who never buy anything?

Are you focusing on and measuring the email metrics most likely to have a direct effect on your conversion rate, like open and click-through rates?

There are digital tools that give you the means to measure “everything but the kitchen sink” in your online marketing. Ask yourself regarding the data you are collecting and analyzing, “How important is this to my conversion results?”

And don’t let yourself be overwhelmed with or distracted by irrelevant data. Focus on what matters. Focus on gathering and analyzing the data likely to directly, or at least indirectly, lead to more sales.

Your Big Data Is Useless If You Don’t Do This 

While you’re focusing on measuring and analyzing the data that matters for your business, while ignoring that which doesn’t, don’t get caught up in measuring just for the sake of measuring. And once you’ve collected and analyzed your data, follow through on it.

Take action to make the improvements the data would suggest you need. After you implement the changes, start the process over again – collect and analyze your data and take further action to improve your marketing results even more!

The Biggest Opportunity From Big Data? 

Your prospects will be most likely to respond to offers they view as relevant to them. This requires you having an intimate understanding of a detailed customer profile and marketing to prospects who match that profile. It involves the power of persuasive, reader-centered copy and contentthat solve problems for your audience rather than just push and brag about products.

One of the most powerful ways you can give your marketing efforts a “relevance boost” in your reader’s mind is to personalize your messages to him. Big data can help you do this – more about this in an upcoming post.

Not only can you address him by name, a powerful persuasion tool in its own right, if you gather enough information from online surveys, email signups, e-commerce transactions and so on, you can offer him a highly tailored customer experience that matches his preferences, including the tone of your message and the medium through which its sent, video vs. text, for example.

You can set the stage for repeat sales and follow up sales of items that compliment the one he just bought. For example, let’s say he just bought a winter coat through your e-commerce store. You could – and should – offer him complimentary items at the point of checkout.

You could also send a tailored, personalized email message after the sale thanking him for his purchase and offering him scarves, gloves and hats, maybe at a discount you only offer to current customers, like him.

You could pursue him with messaging details most enticing to him. For example, let’s say you were selling cars through the power of personalized messaging. The sales approach you would take for a particular model would be much different for a young single man than it would be for a “soccer mom” with two kids, ages 8 and 10.

With personalization, you could offer each of them the same car through vastly different messaging. With the single man, you might focus on the car’s style and performance, with the soccer mom, you would focus on value, safety and reliability.

But the bottom line here is that the personalization afforded you by Big Data is a powerful tool that can help you convert more shoppers into buyers.

A Powerful Compliment To Your Big Data 

So why are you putting in this time and effort to collect, analyze and take action on Big Data? Because you want to make more sales. You want your online marketing campaign to be more effective. And to have the most effective online marketing campaigns possible, you need landing pages.

A well-engineered, conversion-optimized landing page with solid, persuasive copywriting, clean design and relevant, noticeable graphics can help turn more online shoppers into online buyers.