Stay on your Own Bandwagon: Maintaining control over your online marketing presence

This blog is brought to you by BrightBlue Marketing team member, Anne Saulnier.

As a business owner or marketing professional, it's easy to get caught up in the latest social media trend, but it's important to focus more on your message and your overall strategy than the tools you use to deliver it.

This article will provide tips for using the latest marketing tools to drive targeted traffic back to your content in a format that you can track and control. Using this simple strategy, you can easily change and expand upon the tools you use to connect with your community without sacrificing the content you've worked so hard to create.

Here are three tips for staying on your own bandwagon:

• Connect with people in social media settings that are already comfortable to them
• Create a centralized blog on your own website
• Use multiple Marketing channels to drive traffic to your content

It is essential to branch out and connect with your community in environments that they feel comfortable with, but social media outlets like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter do not need your help in driving additional traffic to their sites. If Facebook or LinkedIn ever follow in the footsteps of social networking sites like MySpace, you want to ensure that your overall Marketing communications do not suffer because all of your content is housed on a third-party site. By taking simple steps to maintain control over your materials, you can easily keep a diverse set of tools in your Marketing tool belt without fostering dependence on any one site.

Creating a blog on your own website is an excellent opportunity to centralize your content. Because a blog can support several multimedia formats, including embedded video, audio, images, and links, it's a logical headquarters for your subject matter expertise. It's also a great way to make sure your website remains dynamic by populating it with fresh content that provides value to your community. Opening up each post for comments also provides an additional avenue for starting conversations with your customers, prospects, and partners.

As an example, if you participate in online discussions or "Answers" on LinkedIn, you can post a summary of your thoughts in the thread and then link back to a relevant blog post that contains a more in-depth response.

This accomplishes a few things:

• You connect with community members in an environment that is comfortable to them
• You build credibility by openly sharing your subject matter expertise and by participating in the conversation
• You drive additional traffic back to your own website if you've presented relevant, quality information that is of interest to the community
• You create timely, dynamic content for your website for additional users to see even if they aren't connected with you on LinkedIn
• You maintain an accessible archive of the content that will survive even if the third-party website does not

Happy blogging!

- Anne Saulnier

Ways to establish a following for your company using all Marketing and PR tools at your disposal

The Marketing Think Tank call is hosted each month by BrightBlue Marketing and Big Noise Communications. The call was facilitated this month by Andrea Lamarsaude of BrightBlue.

The following are the topics we discussed:


1. Should you focus on one social media tool or should you try and do it all?

· You should really stay somewhere in the middle.

· Have a balance (especially if you are just starting)

· Found out which tools your audience is listening to more than others.

· Don’t try to do everything because you don’t want to dilute your message too much over too many places

2. How do you narrow down where you want your following to come from?

· Track your followers with reporting tools and you can see who has signed up for what format

· Service for good reports, but pricey: radient6

· Service for free: Google Analytics has some effective tools

· Hootsuite Pro is good for a nominal fee

· Search www.twitter.com for key words in your industry and see who is talking and active in your industry

· Search to find news that is relevant to your industry and see who is already out there writing and producing content that is getting the followers to engage in your industry

3. Once you have your following, how do you maintain it?

· You have to engage your followers

· Content has to be thought provoking and relevant to get them to engage with it

· Interact with your followers and start a dialogue

· Maintain that dialogue

· Have fun contests or polls to keep their interest

· Ask questions of your followers

· Be generous with them (in content/offers/tips) and your followers will be generous to you

4. What are the best ways to grow your Social Media audience?

· Find a way to let people know you have these avenues of communication

· Tweet about events you are attending that your followers are also attending

· Add your social media links in your signature block on all email correspondence

· Have a call to action saying “have you connected with me on LinkedIn, etc.”

· Quality is as important as quantity in followers – keep your target audience in mind

5. Can you obtain a following without a lot of budget?

· Social Media is free, but it does take time

· Focus your time by making your content very relevant to your audience

· You can set up a group of messages on something like HootSuite and schedule them to go out at regular intervals

· Focus on higher traffic times and/or days on the various social media outlets – Wednesdays are very high traffic times for Facebook and Twitter

· Comment on the social media outlets of others (clients, potential clients, others in your industry) so they see and hear you and have a reason to follow you as well

6. What are some ways to use PR to establish a following?

· Use social media to let people know about an interview you are involved in or a presentation you will be giving

· Let them know when and where they can see and hear you

· Get involved in a community effort (Race for the Cure, Red Cross, planting trees) and encourage your followers to be involved with you

7. What about more traditional marketing tools?

You will never eliminate the need for traditional marketing, but you need to blend traditional marketing channels with social media channels.

8. Are there ways to fuse traditional and social media marketing to establish your following?

· Educate your followers and point them to follow you in other media areas

· Give surveys, polls, point them to a web landing page for special online events, etc.

· Make them feel like you are talking to just them which you can do more with traditional marketing

· Educate your audience on how to use social media so they first have the ability to follow you

· Many of those in your audience may not know how to get involved with social media; however, they are afraid to admit it

Further Reading:

Which Social Media Channels Should Your Business use? http://www.phillymarketinglabs.com/2011/05/05/which-social-media-channels-should-your-business-use/

B2B Tech Marketing and Social Media - Which Social Media Channels Reach Tech Buyers
http://www.idgknowledgehub.com/docs/b2b%20social.pdf

Do You Still Need Traditional Media for PR?
http://prinyourpajamas.com/traditional-media-for-pr/

Incorporating Social Media Into Traditional Marketing Campaigns http://www.socialmediamarketingexpert.net/2011/05/social-media-traditional-marketing-campaigns/

Does Social Media Mean that Traditional Marketing is Obsolete? http://www.philsimonsystems.com/blog/social-media/is-traditional-marketing-obsolete/

How Social Media and Email Marketing Can Work Together?
http://www.inboundnow.tv/how-social-media-email-marketing-work-together/

The Facebook Marketing Toolbox: 100 Tools and Tips to Tap the Facebook Customer Base
By Inside CRM Editors
http://www.focus.com/fyi/marketing/facebook-marketing-toolbox-100-tools-and-tips-tap-facebook/

What Does PR Look Like in 2011?
http://blog.marketingmatters.net/2011/01/28/what-does-pr-look-like-in-2011/

Real-Time Marketing and PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now?
http://theentrepreneursmanual.com/blog/2011/05/07/real-time-marketing-and-pr-how-to-instantly-engage-your-market-connect-with-customers-and-create-products-that-grow-your-business-now/

How to Make Your PR & Marketing Believable
http://mashable.com/2011/05/13/likeonomics-rohit-bhargava/

In the Wake of Tragedy….

Helplessness. That is the overwhelming feeling that I have had watching the news stories in the last few weeks. As the weather has turned deadly across our nation many of us are wondering what can we do and how can we help. As a company this is a question you should be asking as well.

What can you do as a company?

Here are some ideas to get you started in thinking how your company can help:

Do we have an office nearby?

If so, send some people as volunteers to help with clean up, searching, caring for those in shelters, etc.

If not, have a blood drive at your office designated for the victims of the storms.

If you have an empty office or warehouse space then offer it to the Red Cross or other organization for storage, office space for their workers, or a place for sheltering victims.

Do we have some financial resources we can spare?

Send money to the Red Cross to help them with everything associated with these tragic storms.

Are you a small company with little man power and/or financial resources?

Set up a blood drive for the community to participate in.

Set up a fundraiser of some sort to raise money for the victims of the storms or one of the organizations that are helping them.

Does all of this sounds like it takes to much time?

Then how about launching a campaign where a certain percentage of your sales for a given period of time will go to the storm victims or an organization that will help them.


How much you do is not really the point, it is just that you do SOMETHING.


Finally, I would like to make one more point:

Is this good PR for your company?

Yes, however, this should not be your motivation for helping your community when it is in need. It is easy to see through wrong motives and that is never good for any person or company.


Do Something, but do it Sincerely!

Here are some helpful links:

http://www.redcross.org/

http://www.carterbloodcare.org/

http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/articles/responding_in_missouri

http://www.directrelief.org/EmergencyResponse/2011/SevereWeatherSoutheastUS.aspx?gclid=CMz35KfOl6kCFQla7AodyUQHwA

Do you struggle with the sales and marketing relationship?

This blog is brought to you by one of the members of the BrightBlue Marketing team: Candace Miller.

How many of you struggle with the sales and marketing relationship?
Is there a disconnect between the two at your organization?

Please share with us your insight into where you see a gap between marketing and sales. We’ve heard and observed complaints in this area so many times that we’ve teamed up with two sales experts to deliver a web seminar called:

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You can join us at this valuable event where not only do we talk about real life scenarios, but have applied calculations and statistics as to how the sales process improves with a collaborative effort between sales and marketing. Read on for more about the seminar and how to sign up...

You are invited to attend this powerful web seminar... Bridging the Gap between Sales and Marketing: How Better Cooperation Fills the Pipeline More Effectively and Efficiently

Come join BrightBlue Marketing along with the biggest experts in appointment setting and cold calling, Caponi Performance Group and Contact Science. Together we offer an incredible process to fill the pipeline. Read on to learn more about our event:

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The webinar is hosted by a cooperative effort between sales and marketing: Barry Caponi with Caponi Performance Group, Bob Howard with Contact Science (affiliates of ColdCalling101) and Candace Lopez Miller with BrightBlue Marketing.