In some recent conversations I have found myself challenged by top business people as to why they should enter the LinkedIn space. They have said to me statements such as,

“LinkedIn is for job seekers, spammers, and marketers. I have no interest in it.”

Now, please understand I am not in business to change people’s minds, rather than to discuss opportunities and assist businesses along in their journey with strategies and tactics my company has proven to work time and time again. But this statement has really stuck with me. In fact, many very influential people I know are not interested in LinkedIn and have no intent on joining anytime soon.

I believe this is due to several reasons:

1. They believe LinkedIn’s value proposition is not clearly in line with their business objectives.
2. Time is scarce already and they don’t want to be bombarded with more emails.
3. There is a perception that the risks outweigh the opportunities.

This is why understanding a clear strategy for LinkedIn is so important. No CEO, VP of Marketing, Digital Communications Director, Owner, or even Entrepreneurs can make sense of this site for their business effectively or efficiently without a true strategy.

Think of the real opportunity LinkedIn provides?

There are 70 MILLION users! 34 MILLION in the U.S.!

These are professionals with an avg household income of $107,000.  These are high end consumers as well as professionals. Why are the banks, computer companies and luxury car dealers and so many other companies not really embracing this space?

Truth is, they probably have.  But they went the route advised by their ad agencies.  Purchase advertisements, distribute to 10 or 20 million profiles and earn “IMPRESSIONS”.  When it doesn’t work, they write it off as a bad use of their money.  When in reality, those campaigns failed because most advertisements are failing, especially when compared with alternative options within social media and other digital platforms. Besides, have you clicked on an advertisement on your own LinkedIn page? I did by accident once. I don’t want to be sold, I want to have a conversation, engage, and interact with people that can help me, make me laugh, help me grow and who care about me and what I do.

Where most companies we work with make mistakes is they start developing their social sites, LinkedIn included, prior to the first 3 steps outlined below. The following is an excerpt from our upcoming release, “An Executives Guide to LinkedIn Mastery.”

The 7 Phases of a LinkedIn Master Strategic Plan:

1. Assessment – Assess your strengths, weaknesses & needed assets for success
2. Strategic Plan – Outline a Strategy, confirm your call to action, voice, appropriate automation, scalability opportunities, etc…
3. Product & Marketing Path Development – Identify what works for your target market
4. Lay the appropriate foundation – it’s not enough to simply put up your name and call it a day!
5. Get Found – Apply strategies and tactics to attracting your market to you internally on the site
6. Build a community – Groups can help you to build highly targeted or massive sized pools of targeted key constituents, prospects, clients, etc…
7. Promotion, Campaigns, Word of Mouth – Attract your market into your Social Circle of Influence

Enjoyed this article? Please share it with your Networks.

If you have questions or would like to contact my firm for your own strategic assessment and plan development, please email inquiry@deminghill.com.

I was recently reading an article by Chris Brogan and in the process of watching the engagement of comments Chris commented and asked the question:  "Is their anytime a company shouldn’t have a blog?"

I thought this was a great question and it’s obvious to me that each reason why a company shouldn't have a blog can easily be overcome with better reasons why they should. Below you will find three very good reasons your company should have a blog.

1. Establish your company as the Industry Leader when people search for information about your vertical. For those leading their industry, blogging will help you maintain that competitive edge. Quick Stat- over 25% of the information results on search engines is of user generated content i.e. “blogs”.

2. Allows your prospects to engage. Over 80% feel better about a company who has a online “presence”, not just a website.

3. Drives organic traffic to your sales funnel. Each article you write has associated with it specific keyword content that will allow your prospects to find you. If the website is SEO-d correctly.

So what do you think are some good reasons?

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When it comes to business development and marketing it has become more complex and costly in prospect acquisition.  Companies are now awaking to using Social Media in not just B2C, but are realizing its potential in B2B.

Here are some of ways social media has changed B2B Marketing.

Client Prospecting- can now been done affordably through such platforms as LinkedIn & Twitter.  In order to get to your B2B prospect via Facebook companies are looking at more costly prospect acquisition cost.

Customer Share- social media allows you to now due blanket marketing to an existing customer in multiple touch points with many employees being engaged in social media.  Thus, allowing you the ability to influence increases in customer share.

Sales Funnels- social media allows you to build your own exclusive online communities built around industry topics, specific interest, or organizations.  Through this exclusive community ability you can manage them within your own sales funnel as long as you own or create the community. In turn, allowing you to message your entire community as owner of the community.

What are some other ways you are seeing social media changing B2B marketing?

(We work with B2B companies in providing an ROI driven Social Media Strategy that drives the results you're looking for, contact us today.)

Many executives and companies are beginning to explore social media to generate sales for their business. At the end of the day social media will generate leads and even some sales, but in the B2B space it will still come down to people. It is important to understand that social media is an ingredient to a company’s current marketing strategy and does not replace the need for people to interact with people.

Developing a social media strategy that produces leads and eventually sales needs to be done with the consideration for the need of human interaction. Most sales executives reading this already know that and that’s why they/ you even question the validity of social media as a lead generator. Still questioning the need or validity of social media in your company? Take a look at this video,

We work with B2B companies in developing and managing their social media strategy. You can contact us to learn more.

Companies getting started in Social Media are looking for tools to help streamline their efforts and workforce.  So we have put together a short list of tools that can help B2B companies in their marketing efforts.

Salesforce

A web based CRM, Salesforce has led all CRM companies in integrating Social Media to its platform. Some the nice contributions for B2B companies is the Twitter & Facebook integration allowing you to monitor multiple accounts.

Jigsaw (now part of Salesforce)

Jigsaw is the world's largest database of up-to-date, downloadable, and complete contact and company information. Every Jigsaw business contact is complete with a phone number (over 70% of which are direct dial), position, company, mailing address, and business email address. Jigsaw also offers free tools for researching companies as well as a user generated company research wiki pages.  These contacts are then cross-referenced with the social media platform LinkedIn which has over 70 Million plus professionals using this tool.

Hummingbird

Hummingbird is a great application to grow your companies Twitter following in a very targeted way using mostly automation.  It can take a lot of man hours growing a targeted following on Twitter, through Hummingbird that process can be dramatically shortened.  You can even automate your un-following of those who do not follow you back, again saving you’re team a lot time.

Hootsuite

A great tool for managing multiple Twitter Accounts.  In addition now Ping.Fm has integrated the ability to post to Hootsuite.  Allowing even more social media account integration including LinkedIn, Facebook, and WordPress.  Best of all HootSuite cost nothing.

There are multiple other tools available that get more specific to each companies needs.  You can learn more by contacting us.  We work with B2B companies in developing and managing their social media strategy.  You can contact us to learn more.

Companies taking a serious look at using Social Media are facing key internal challenges to their efforts.  This is just a short list, but these are ones I find in my discussions with executives on a weekly basis.

Measurable

How do we measure social media?  In other words how can justify using social media as an additional ingredient.  One of things executives are running into is a lot of start up firms not understanding the B2B/ B2C sales process; however they have a strong grip on social media.  Without an understanding of both, many executives find start up marketing firms along with long standing ones not truly understanding the need and basis for measurables.

Scale

Scale is a huge challenge once you realize the validity to a strong social media strategy.  Who is going to administer the strategy? Who will oversee it?  How many people will it take? Do we outsource?  These are all valid questions.  Scale can be easily overcame with the right tools and delegation along with alignment with the proper social media firm.

Humanism

At the end of the day, social media may generate leads and engagement, but it still comes down to bringing it to a conversation.  Social Media should always be viewed as an extension and ingredient of your marketing and engagement efforts.  It should not be treated as a way to re-write basic interaction and engagement.  It is just an ingredient to help facilitate much more interaction with your target market.  So do your company a favor, be real and authentic when using social media.

Want to learn more? We work with B2B companies in developing and managing their social media strategy.  You can contact us to learn more.

Does your company need a few reasons to engage in Social Media? More specifically do you need a few reasons why it is important to produce content such as articles, tips, videos, whitepapers and more?

These four reasons below should help get you started.

Credibility

Establish credibility online within your industry.  In today’s market it is ever apparent that your product or service is online, being searched online, being talked about or even gripped about.  Even before today people have not just been on your website, but other websites and blogs to learn more about your credibility.  This is your chance to position your company online or even grow its reach. 

Authority Recognition

What position does your company currently hold in your industry? By publishing relevant content your company can quickly position itself as an authority in the industry.  With great content however comes the need for a great social media marketing strategy.  Done correctly you can position yourself ahead of the competition in every search your target market is looking.  This results in your online position as the industry leader.   Even if you currently lead your industry, but have not truly leveraged the power of Social Media you may want to strongly consider.  As Social Media will allow your competition to not only catch up, but potentially take market share.

Event Promotion

A good content strategy can be built around your company events, tradeshows, and expos.  By introducing this strategy you can potentially grow your event participation, meetings, connections, and marketing funnel as people come through your website.

Lead Generation & Sales

Great content can result in not only leads, but also sales.  When positioned correctly you can attract your target market directly to your website through various social media platforms and strategies.  The days of strictly pay per click and SEO are not longer good enough.

We work with B2B companies in developing and managing their social media strategy.  You can contact us to learn more.