Social Media Consulting Portland

–By Justin Albano, Director of Business Development at Bonfire Social Media–

B2B marketers and business owners often ask me if the benefits of social media only exist in the B2C realm. The answer is a resounding no. The core concepts of social media: establishing your brand as an industry influencer, engaging with your customers, leveraging brand advocates, and nurturing leads along a sales cycle are just as powerful in connecting with companies as they are with consumers. In fact, B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those who do not [1], and 57% of B2B companies have acquired a customer through LinkedIn [2]. However, just like any other marketing tools, here are some best practices that will get you started in the right direction.

1) Know Your Objectives

What do you want? More customers? A better relationship with your customers? Both? As a biz dev guy I love “to do lists,” strategies, and most of all accomplishing objectives. Often, companies that I talk with are either focused on driving more leads or improving their brand’s perception and share of voice. Dependent upon your company’s objectives, you need to understand which, or both, of these categories your company falls into. Without defining your objectives, you stand no chance of measuring success or understanding the effect of your actions.

Action Items:

• Start macro and go micro. What do you really want out of your business? Do you want to grow a secure company that can be passed on to your kids? Do you have a quick profitable exit in mind? Start with your vision and let it set the framework for your strategies in every business facet. Then develop your bottom up action items, i.e. what will it actually take to get there?
• Set success metrics and milestones and review your progress regularly, not just at the end of the year.

2) Understand Your Demographics

It may seem obvious, but it never ceases to amaze me how few companies actually understand who their demographic is, what their buying cycle looks like, what motivating factors/events cause them to take action or where they get information on products and services.

Action Items:

• Create customer profiles that allow you to examine your demographics in a more intimate way. For example, Suzie is a mother of two who works full time, loves to play tennis and hike, cares about the environment, and prefers to watch movies rather than TV. Setting up these profiles gives you a great demographic snapshot and helps to focus your marketing efforts.
• Once you understand your demographic’s buying cycle, what info, education or resources can you provide to make their buying decision easier? This is not only important for brand awareness and brand perception, but should be the driving force behind your lead nurturing cycle.
• It is crucial for you to understand your industry’s keyword landscape. Which keywords are your demographic using to search for the products/services you offer or information related to your offering? Which keywords are obtainable? How do you currently rank for those keywords? Google provides some free tools for the Do-it-Yourselfers, but any digital marketing shop should help you build the list and give you the analytic insights that will enable you to make sense of it all.
• Discover which social platforms your demographics are already engaged with and focus your efforts there. Currently, there are over 800 million users on Facebook, 300 million users on Twitter, 116 million users on LinkedIn and only 60 million users on Google+ [3]. If you currently have an email database, run it through some social networks to discover who is already using which networks. This could save you mountains of time in the long run and allow you to target your unique demographics.
• Listen via social networks like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and forums, as well as online news sites. Once you know your demographic’s hangouts and keywords, you can listen to social conversations via CMS platforms like HootSuite/TweetDeck and by setting up Google Alerts that monitor articles, blogs and forums that are currently talking about your keywords.

3) Create Value Based Relationships

Social media is not the place for old-school messaging tactics, and the concept of protecting your secret sauce is dead. Company decision makers typically go to your website, not social networks, to learn the benefits of your products or services. Companies and consumers alike are actively searching for value-based content that makes their lives and their buying decisions easier.

Action Items:

• Offer value-based content. If you help companies streamline their processes, don’t just talk about how you do it; offer them free templates or How-To whitepapers that teach them how to be more efficient. Providing this type of value will convert prospects in to fans of your company and customers in to loyal brand advocates.
• Understand the difference between relevant content (e.g. interesting articles, company update s, etc.) and compelling content that provides value and motivates visitors to take action (either by providing contact information or requesting a demo).
• Monitor conversations within social communities, like LinkedIn discussion threads, and offer advice or input wherever possible.
• Don’t be afraid to give away the secret sauce. As we all know, understanding how to do something and actually doing it are two very different things. Some of Bonfire’s best clients are those who tried to do it themselves first and quickly realized that their time and resources are much more effectively spent doing the things that they already excel at rather than learning how to develop custom Facebook tabs, constantly managing social networks, writing blogs or producing webinars.

4) Leverage Your Current Marketing Mix

A common and dangerous myth is that social media replaces traditional and costly marketing channels with free messaging. This is simply not true. Social media is at its best when it is amplifying other marketing efforts or when integrated in to a well thought-out campaign.

Action Items:

• Install social plug-ins throughout your site. These allow visitors to share your content on their preferred social network quickly and with a minimum of effort.
• Utilize landing pages to capture leads and initiate your lead nurturing cycle.
• 59% of B2B purchase decision makers have used their smartphone to research products and services when they are considering purchases [4], so optimize your content and landing pages for the increasing number of mobile users.
• Include QR codes on in-print advertising and articles with compelling calls to action.

This is not rocket science and it’s not revolutionary. Instead, this is a new application of what the heart and soul of American business was when companies took the time to connect with their communities and develop relationships with their customers. As a B2B marketer your audience might be smaller than your B2C counterparts, but that means you can be much more targeted and strategic with your marketing. While a B2C marketer may segment their demographics down to niche communities, you can target specific decision makers within your target companies and develop a value-based relationship that not only nurtures the current sales cycle but also sets a positive framework for a long and supportive business relationship.

—-
Stat Citations
[1] Source: Hubspot, State of Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Report, 2010
[2] Source: http://www.hubspot.com/social-media-monitoring-in-10-minutes-ebook/?source=hspd-affiliate-PID-3701805-txt-ad-social-media-10-min-day-ebook-20110819&AID=10933127&PID=3701805&SID=skim1024X498223X8a5f920e568fa93e07c8561649950bf2
[3] Source: http://www.business2community.com/social-media/b2b-social-media-marketing-statistics-to-ponder-099980
[4] Source: http://socialmediab2b.com/2011/09/b2b-decision-makers-smartphones/#ixzz1jmUIeJul

It is never a bad thing when great work is recognized.

Bonfire was thrilled to receive a nomination for the 2011 ‘Best ROI Under 25K’ award at this year’s Social Media Awards in Portland, Oregon. We were surprised and delighted when host Daniel Baldwin called our name as the winner!

The winning campaign involved Gresham Toyota, a long-standing client and one of the top Toyota dealerships in the Pacific Northwest. In an industry known for pushy salesmen and “hard” selling, we were able to take a step back and highlight what made Gresham Toyota stand out from other dealerships: outstanding, pressure-free customer service. We built an engaged community, turned existing customers into brand advocates, and increased inbound sales calls by an impressive 600%. We were especially pleased to be receiving an award in the “Best ROI’ category, illustrating our commitment to outstanding business results for our clients. Read the full case study to learn more.

If you are ready to light the fire, contact Justin Albano, Bonfire’s Director of Business Development today at JAlbano@bonfiresmm.com.

As a professional who has been implementing campaigns in Facebook for clients over the last few years, I know one thing to be true: change is coming. If you learn to deal well with change, chances are you’ll be able to bypass the frustrations with Facebook that many developers and marketers experience. As of yesterday, all Facebook pages now reflect a new lay-out and offer users additional functionality . I’ve been eagerly anticipating the move to allow iFrame functionality on page ‘tabs’.

Facebook has been promising this feature to developers for months and I had grown skeptical that they would ever make it work. The issue is that in order to create an interactive experience on a page tab you were limited by FBML, a bastardized mark-up language with limited functionality. Common scripting languages like Javascript wouldn’t work on Facebook tabs. This meant marketers had two options: 1) use a ready-built application that could do the job but offered little or no customization or 2) pay a company thousands of dollars to create one for you. After some testing, I can assure you THAT has all changed. continue

Bonfire Social Media recently conducted a survey and there was one stat that really stood out. A whopping 94% of businesses surveyed felt that adding social media to the marketing mix would help meet overall business objectives. That was expected since social media has become THE marketing buzz word over the last few years. The shocking part was that 68% of those businesses neglected to allocate resources to social media. So many businesses completely get the value of social media, but haven’t made the move to put their money where their mouths are.

This article is for those who recognize the value of social media but due to lack of time, knowledge or fear have refused to step-up and commit to implementing a social media campaign. continue

By Lisa Peyton, VP Bonfire Social Media

Let me start off by announcing that none of the platforms mentioned have compensated me in any way or asked me to promote their products. I simply hoped to find a good tool for a reasonable price that would allow me to track metrics associated with campaign goals. I would also like to add the disclaimer that with the dozens of great tools available, there was no way to include them all. If you have experience with a great tool, PLEASE SHARE with the community by commenting on this post.

The information provided on each tool below is only PART of the equation when searching for a good social media monitoring solution. The MOST important question that should be asked is – what do you need to track and why? Most tools out there will report on endless amounts of data; the real trick is finding the tool that will report on the data you need to determine if campaign goals are being met.

Goals

The first step to finding a great tool for my client was taking a look at campaign goals. The primary goals included growing their Facebook fan base as rapidly as possible (BAD GOAL) and tracking – that is, which social media platforms and influencers were the most active for their brand terms. A good goal is measurable and time-sensitive, but not many clients come to the table armed with goals that include this level of detail so I made a few changes and came up with these working goals:

• Grow Facebook fan base by 100% over the next 3 months
• Increase overall fan page interactions by 100% over the next 3 months
• Identify the most active social media platforms for brand terms over the next 3 months
• Identify the most influential and active brand advocates on social media networks continue

It’s rare that I try to tout the advantages of outside marketing help. I usually try to focus my efforts on the value of social media to businesses of all shapes and sizes. But I think it’s time as objections, misconceptions and unwise decisions have started to gather momentum within the industry. continue

What seems like somewhat of a harsh title is nothing more than a mantra every business owner, marketing professional and web designer needs to practice. What it means is very simple. Ideas are the easy (but complicated) part, making them simple for other people to learn and enjoy is the hard part. This applies most specifically to web design/engineering, but can be implemented just as effectively for any business owner or marketing professional. continue