There are two vaults we need to open (or improve)  in 2012 and more importantly, use wisely:

Open your knowledge vault

If there’s one major mistake that companies and brands keep making year by year is to keep betting most of the chips on “interruption marketing”.  I still see loads of organisations delivering “we’ve been 20 years in business” as their unique selling point or differentiation factor. We can do better than that.
Turn it around by sharing nuggets of the knowledge that you’ve phenomenally achieved during all these years. One of the best ways to do that is through a company blog but, please do not focus on the technology or think this is something for the “social media person” to be hired (hopefully) next year. This is your knowledge vault remember? This will be your golden avenue to share with the world “knowledge gifts” (no strings attached) that will help your audience of prospects and customers to make better decisions, to find you, to come back to you and more importantly, to trust you.
The fact that you will share business solutions (in the form of a blog post) for problems that people have doesn’t mean that they’ll get the advise for free and run away. Many professionals think this way.
Your company blog and outposts (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube accounts) are in charge of connecting with people that are looking for what you have but still don’t know that you exist or for those who know you exist is helping answer the question “why should they go with you?” Your content should make that decision a no-brainer for them, whenever they’re ready to make a move.
Connect at a deeper level with your audience by listening to what they’re saying and write effective content as primary and nuclear fuel to propel your business beyond the competition.

Open your ideas vault

Facundo and I have been using for a few years two main platforms to save all different types of ideas (personal, for the business, for blog posts, new ventures, etc): Google Docs and Evernote. The latter is very handy since you mostly manage it through the mobile app on the go. You may take a picture of something, record your voice or write the idea, label it and it will stay there!
Imagine, in a 12-month period, the hundreds or thousands of ideas that you and  your team will come up with. The problem is that if you don’t save them somewhere, they’ll be gone with the wind and you’ll miss out on potential solutions that could make your business more effective, innovative,  profitable, fun and memorable.
Take the lead to create a space to save all ideas. If people tell you “I don’t have good ideas“, reply: “…tell me all the bad ones you have“, as Seth Godin would say.

2012 is another chance to make every minute count, every penny. Look around your business, your context. Are you saying you’re doing things differently already? Try harder because you are not. Do you have great ideas but the C suite can’t envision them? Get creative or get out of the comfort zone.

2012 is your best shot.

Here’s the deal: The more people you “follow” the busier your stream gets and the harder it is to digest the information. Only a minority of users know how to use Twitter really well, building a true listening station so you can read specific conversations, avoiding the clutter.
There’s an increasing amount of people using Twitter. The number of people they’re following happens to be increasing as well. The problem: There’s too much noise and people don’t see your message as often as they used to.
Those of you that have been using Twitter for a few years: Do you remember when you published a shortened URL in 2008 or 2009 and tracked the clicks along with response time? Your content would have traveled very far in a matter of seconds and get at least 5 to 10 immediate clicks. Now, you’ll be lucky if you get 1 or 2 clicks in an hour. Don’t take my word for it. Gary Vaynerchuk is going through the same problem…

So, is Twitter a bad tool now?

Twitter is still a powerful, real-time communication tool that can help you connect with customers and prospects. You will perceive the most value when people talk to you (publicly or privately) and you’re able to conduct short conversations.  Publishing doesn’t have the same impact and your content won’t resonate much. Last year, Brian Solis said that the life span of a tweet was one hour. I believe, nowadays, that has probably dropped to one minute possibly.

Conclusion

When you define your customer/community and start working on your social media strategy, do consider Twitter but be very careful on the expectation.
If you’re a big brand or company that has a big portion of the audience on Twitter and/or many mentions already, you may expect to receive immediate interaction and faster results. On the other hand, if you are a small or medium sized business, you may find Twitter a good place to listen to strategic conversations and also have a dedicated real-time channel, available to connect with customers and prospects. However, do not count with a quick, tangible ROI.

How is Twitter working for you currently? Share your story below.

First of all, let’s have a look at the current situation. The year already started, objectives have been set and budgets allocated to each department. Before you find time, think about funding and/or resources for this new initiative. Getting funding means that budget X will be taken away from other projects within your organisation in order for you to execute yours.
Once you have this clear, here are 3 basic points that will help you build your business case and hopefully find that precious time:

1. What’s the plan and how will it impact your goals?

People tend to think about social media as this “separate thing” on top of what they’re already doing. That’s not sustainable. A social media programme should blend gradually with what you’re already doing to help you achieve the same goals. Period. Otherwise you’d be just giving yourself and your team useless “homework”.
If you devise a medium or long term plan that makes sense by showing the necessary steps to improve X outcome (financial or non-financial, according to the department’s needs), you’ll be in a much better position to sell the project to the C suite. If you succeed, priorities will hopefully change. For example, you might get help from other resources within the company or maybe a new hire. You might also be relieved from certain tasks in order to execute this new initiative. The most important point is that you’re making sure that management won’t pull the plug of your programme at least in the short term, giving you the time to get started.

2. What current activities are not working?

Get together with your team and make a list (as big as you can) of all the tasks you perform throughout the day, even the very little ones. Then assign a time in minutes to each one of them. Once everyone shared the results, your objective will be to focus on those activities that have been going on for a while (or not) and that have demonstrated unsuccessful. The next step would be to assess if they can be replaced with activities of your social media programme. Through this exercise you might find hours of new “available” time.

3. Leverage your community to create fresh content

Many companies understand the potential value of a blog as a main hub in their digital strategy but they also see it as the biggest obstacle: “How do we commit to regular fresh content, how do we write good posts, what do we talk about?“.
You can learn how to produce good content very easily. One of the  ways to find time to publish more posts is by not thinking of you as the only content producer. A core step when devising your social media strategy lies on defining the persona of your ideal customer and also your community (people, brands and companies that don’t necessarily compete with you but share the main general topic). If you are a technology company , then people within the community could be: engineers, distributors, partners, installers, official body representatives, etc. Make a selection and invite them to contribute to your blog (your stage), explaining that they’ll be exposed to a relevant audience. Example: The distributor (even if they distribute other competitor’s products) could write posts for buyers that are looking at ways to go through renewals/ assessment processes more efficiently. The engineers could share insights on how to select a given product line/ family. The installers could cover DIY processes or how to put an adequate team together for X or Y initiative around a given technology. You get the idea
This tactic could help you find that time, keeping your blog content interesting while generating win-win relationships with your partners.

It could feel overwhelming at the beginning, but if you work on a good plan (on your own or with help) and are confident that your social media programme can yield results, you’ll find the time one way or another.

In which other ways would you find time?

If your company has already faced the “time problem” and moved on, how did you manage to overcome it?

Sales

Professionals that sell solutions to distributors know that a sale doesn’t close immediately and that “lead nurturing” is highly important. One of the ways in which you can generate an immediate impact with a prospect and stay longer in their minds is by being unique.
Online video messages make you memorable. We started using them two years ago and it has worked really well. We took our personal video messages to the next level last year by creating private video-message-pages on our site. Now prospects watch the video in a more relevant context. The idea is that the person connects with us through any of the calls-to-action and obviously can navigate our site and learn more.

Customer Service

Your reps collect feedback from customers face-to-face and via telephone. Pay attention (and tag if possible online or on a piece of paper) what type of product is being mentioned the most, especially those with challenges. Take down as much information as possible about customers’ questions and suggestions.
Ideally, by now your company has a blog. With all the data collected, work with the relevant department to make progress on those changes. Once that’s clear, produce a video where you acknowledge the issues with the product, thank your customers for all the input and finally set expectations in terms of how the company will overcome the challenge (e.g. improve product, replace it with a new one, information about recalls, etc).
Once you make a video post, including a good title and tags so more relevant folks can find you, here’s what’s going to happen:

• You’ll be producing a piece of highly relevant content that many people will read/view and interact with (comments)
• You’ll be leaving on the web a public valuable breadcrumb that will contribute 100% to you company’s reputation
• You’ll make your company more approachable since you’re clearly listening to customers and facilitating a solution (Making things easy)

Marketing

Uploading your TV commercials and promotional material to a video platform is OK, however it’s far from really embracing online video.
The whole idea is that you serve your community. Videos like the first example above would certainly do that and the best of all is that it’s also a piece of marketing Just because you work in the Marketing Department it doesn’t mean that videos that you upload must have a “corporate message”.
So, how can you be different? Live video is a phenomenal option. I’m sure you have product launches every now and then. Why not showcase your new product and the experts behind it LIVE to anyone in the world? You may use professional live streaming service such as  Livestream or Ustream as the ideal platforms (For optimum results and piece of mind, use paid versions which start from $350 and $400 dollars/month respectively).
The idea here is not to get rid of all the traditional methods by which you promote your new products every year. The goal is for you to own a global platform that will offer you a bigger and cost-effective reach, while offering your prospects and customers an opportunity to engage and ask you questions.
One great example is Cisco, a manufacturer that “shaved $100K off their product launch using social media“.

What other online video tips would you add?

Let’s start with the verdict: Yes, go for it.
Let’s follow with the a word of caution: Read it with an open mind and ignore the type of business Michael is in (content business).

Michael is the founder of Socialmediaexaminer.com, a magazine-style blog focused on the latest trends and advice for social media marketers. “Launch” is a comprehensive content marketing strategy book which at the same time describes the author’s journey bringing Social Media Examiner from nothing to a 1 million + USD turnover business.

As the title suggests, the book is full of space travel analogies and the author calls the main principle sustaining all content marketing strategies the “Elevation Principle”.
It makes sense and it is in line with what people like Dale Carnegie, Seth Godin or the guys at HubSpot have been saying for ages:

Great Content + Other People – Marketing Messages = Growth.

In other words, people are tired of being hammered with unidirectional marketing messages and companies making it all about them. By making it all about people and giving away great content that solves people’s basic problems companies can actually reach out and connect in a more meaningful way that results in business.

My Take-aways

The book is full of great case studies ranging from B2B companies like Cisco saving thousands with social media & content generation to B2C players like Procter & Gamble reaching out to Dads through Manofthehouse.com . If you focus on those case studies you will surely find common angles and techniques that you can use in your own content marketing efforts.

Besides the elevation principle, which should be at the core of the content generation programme, Michael clearly works with the space travel analogy by defining primary fuel & nuclear fuel.

Primary fuel is content that you offer to your community on a regular basis, for free and that solves basic problems.

Nuclear fuel is special content that you release occasionally and is so interesting that attracts the attention of many people.

In our case for instance, this blog and our regular YouTube videos can be regarded as primary and our occasional webinars and the Social Media Summer Twist Contest, nuclear.
I really liked this definition and we are already even using it at the agency because it helps us explain strategies better. The important thing about it is that it clearly addresses the need for all companies to become a publisher in some shape or form if they want their online strategy to be successful but above all sustainable.

The author’s background is in copywriting and white-paper production. Therefore the book is full of tips and techniques to produce and re-package content in meaningful ways. It is also quite based on the strategies of a hardcore content producer like Social Media Examiner so that’s why I gave you that word of caution at the beginning of the post. Still, if you stick to the case studies, strategies and techniques and avoid feeling overwhelmed by lack of resources (trust me,  you shouldn’t), you will get a lot of value out of your reading.

Finally, what I liked the most about the author telling his story is his cheekiness in getting things done and reaching out to people. He once needed 3 renowned judges for a contest but didn’t have enough credentials for the judges to show interest in him. In order to tackle this, he sent the same tweet to the 3 at the same time, addressing one judge and referencing the other 2 “Ann, would you be willing to be on a panel to judge a social media contest with join Scott Monty and David Meerman Scott?”, “Scott, would you be willing to join…”. He obviously got the three on board.

I’ll leave you with that last anecdote.

Have your read “Launch”? Are you going to?

Right there, that’s how good he is. Getting the latest armor will not necessarily make him the best against others. The shield and the sword are simply extensions. They protect him, make him reach farther and win more battles.

Too many professionals see social media tools as this separate thing, as something that will make them magically win business, customers, etc. The equation is pretty simple: if your business, product and service are not good enough, social networks will not revert that for you.

I interviewed John Jantsch, founder of DuctTapeMarketing.com and author of the book, “The Referral Engine”.  He said something similar: “…It does all start with being referable. If you’re not doing something that people want to talk about, no amount of reading my book is probably going to change that“.

Think of a bad book. Even if an effective team of digital marketers make it go around the world through social media, all they’ll be achieving is “reach” but not what matters: good reviews, loads of people talking about it and spreading the word.

I recently thought about some business that came to us via Twitter and LinkedIn. I pictured the entire scene: The lead, that post we published, the relationship we’ve been building throughout time, that coffee we had… and one day the “social media phone” rang. That simply facilitated the entire process, it gave us constant visibility of each other and a platform to stay in touch, that ultimately even became the glorious messenger for the business query. It was the quality of the information, the way a concept was explained, the answer to a question what really closed the deal. Social media was just the facilitator, our extension.

What do you think?

Social media in the B2B world is easier because you can benefit from the journey of building deeper business relationships, you can get to know and discover people better. The B2C world is extremely fast-paced: Pushy decisions and transactions must happen right now as opposed to the B2B mechanism.

B2B sales professionals can embrace loads of different tactics. The reason why most of them do not apply them is because they see social media as something separate, like homework. Here is a valuable selection of four tactics that you can blend with your current activities and put into practice straight away:

1) Generate warm calls

When you make calls to prospects, ensure that you first visit their company’s website to learn a bit more. Then go to LinkedIn’s advanced search and enter the name of the company (select “current” otherwise you will get results with people that previously worked for that company), ensure that “Country” and “Location” are correct and finally hit “Search”.

All you need to do after that is look for professionals with a title description that matches the person you want to talk to or at least,  a title close enough. When making contact, use that name or more to get closer: “…I would need to talk to someone that handles partnerships. Would that still be Mary Higgs or maybe John Right?“. In my experience, when you put your foot in the door with a name, the rest becomes easier. Even if you make contact with those folks you found on LinkedIn and they can’t help you, they will put you in touch with the right person 8 out of 10 times.

2) Discover new leads

You may listen to relevant conversations in different sites but try to build your own listening station, where you can track everything that is only relevant to you in just one spot!

This tactic consists in creating Twitter columns (I suggest Hootsuite.com since you can create sets of columns under labeled “tabs”). Here’s an example of the columns you can build:

• Community: Create a Twitter list with that name and track everybody that’s mentioning your company and retweeting your company news.
• Colleagues: Build a list with everyone in your company that’s on Twitter.
• Competitors: Create another list to track all the players in the competition to check what they’re up to and unfold opportunities.
• Keywords: Track key-phases (up to three per column) in relation to your products, services or a problem.
• Check-ins: Think about all relevant business spots. For example: business venues, coffee shops (that you go to), partners’ offices, competitors’ offices, etc. Track who is checking in at those places. Simply click on people’s profiles to learn more about them and decide if it’s worth following or inviting them for a coffee straight away.
• Prospects: Include those professionals that you’re getting closer to in a separate list/column. Replying to their tweets or retweeting them will make you stay in touch and keep the relationship fresher.

3) Make yourself visible

In the previous step you built a spot to listen to all relevant conversations. LinkedIn should be the record of all your business connections. Yes, do use a diary and CRM system if you want but LinkedIn will give you something unique: exposure and visibility of your business network.
Before or after a meeting, people will Google you and/or look you up on LinkedIn (assume that).

If prospects find an incomplete profile or nothing, I’m not saying that you won’t be able to close the deal but, you will be missing a great opportunity to stay closer to your potential customer and maybe closing that sale even sooner.

4) Emails and business cards

You use them already everyday! If you simply replace your fixed email signature with a “social signature” and share the URLs of your Twitter and  LinkedIn accounts on your business cards, you will be providing not just more points of contact but also dialogue channels. Your prospects may decide to ask you questions and stay in touch through any of these platforms.

Over to you:

What other tactics that have worked for you can you share?

Here’s the BIG question (and problem) with the “saviour campaign” approach: Who is manning the front desk while we work on the next campaign?

There’s nothing wrong with marketing campaigns. They must be part of our strategy. However, all we’re doing is engaging our brand in a series of microcycles that reach their peak but then crash without building up brand equity neither endurance in the long term.

The secret lies on staying very focused on your listening stations and connecting with your community of customers and prospects… all the time, and not just in-between campaigns.
There are several ways to know how well you’re doing. For example, comparing month-to-month the number of queries from people, the number of answers delivered by your department and others (IT, Sales, Customer Service). You can track those indicators per day or if it’s too busy, I would suggest even to break it down by the hour to get a better perspective about the busiest times and proactively request back-up, as it would normally happen in an inbound call centre.

Being available to your community all the time (“Business as usual”) is perceived as more valuable than showing up only when you have something to sell. The best example is the Old Spice campaign. Many said it was one of the most successful social media campaigns because it was creative and delivered ROI. As Gary Vaynerchuk geniously pinpointed later: “Have you paid attention to the Twitter activity from the Old Spice account after the party was over?” Their official posts reduced dramatically. That was a clear indication of how much Old Spice cared more about the campaign itself than people.

The goal would be to build blocks that elevate us, reaching more people every time we launch a new campaign. The only way to do this,  is by genuinely engaging in conversations with our community while we plan the next campaign.

Every time, the Twitter or  Facebook “phone” rings, be there to help: Deliver valuable information, acknowledge relevant comments, answer questions, feature followers. If you want to achieve endurance you must earn people’s trust along the way.

Remember, it’s showtime 24/7 now. You can’t just go on stage only to increase sales, people will notice

Even though this activity could certainly take time, depending on the level of listening that you need for your brand, there’s a very simple way to get started, building a platform in which you can keep track of all important conversations. All this can be done in less than ten minutes!

I made this short video on how you can customise Hootsuite.com to make it work for you as a true listening station, ensuring that the main part of your monitoring activity gets done in one spot

The video below will show you:

• Customization tactics
• How to add a social network, stream and tab
• How to filter conversations

Do you have any other listening tip on Hootsuite or suggestion? Leave a comment below.

In Japan, you can hire spouses, best men, relatives, friends, colleagues, boyfriends and girlfriends for parties and public appearances…

How many brands and companies are taking tempting shortcuts to stuff their email database with thousands of irrelevant people, get more Twitter followers and/or increase by thousands their Facebook fans?

What all the examples above have in common is the key phrase “optical illusion” and that they only have impact on once-off events.

Let’s say you are working on developing a sustainable social media strategy to present to your CEO and one of the goals reads: Acquiring 10,000 Facebook fans…

What’s the purpose?

Every time I ask that question, very few professionals are able to answer it specifically. The majority would provide a general answer that consists on “increasing sales and revenue”.

The confusion

If we go back to the specific “goal” of 10K fans mentioned above, it would look like the idea is to increase reach (In your head: reach = traffic, visits, unique visits, impressions, clicks through, revenue). Yet, when I ask what the purpose in this case, the answer I’m given is about sales and not reach. Stay with me.

Translation

Does your company want 10,000 new Facebook fans or 10,000 net new customers acquired through Facebook and/or other platforms? Maybe, you’re simply looking at a target of just 200 more transactions for Q4.

The idea is to use social media as a platform to support your existing business objectives. Coming up with all these amount of followers and fans as main goal will:

• Deviate you from your core company goals
• Tempt you to go for shortcuts to inflate those fans/followers to justify your social media programme
• Frustrate you: Building a community with people that don’t care about your brand and will never buy your products and services, will simply not improve anything at all.

The point is not to avoid fan targets. The point is to first respond to the main objectives and then work out secondary targets (like fan acquisition) from there.

Have you gone through any similar experience when working out your strategy? Please share your thoughts and experiences below