B2B Social Media Marketing with Blogging

What is the one thing that comes up time and time again in our educational sessions at Brandswag? B2B use of social media. I have heard plenty of reasons why social media could not… should not.. be used to sell the B2B world.

What do many B2B companies do right now for marketing? Direct Mail? Newspaper Advertising? E-Newsletters? Many of the outbound forms of marketing still work for B2B sales but blogging (in my mind) has taken a mainstream stance when building trust and thought-leadership in a specific industry.

There is some truth to the thought that content can build trust between individuals. Many of us look at B2B marketing as fundamentally different from B2C marketing. Honestly….. there is hardly any difference. We are selling to people. Business to business based companies are still selling to people. The CEO of a distribution company is still a person despite the fact he deals with companies instead of individual.

As a B2B company remember to start a blog that contains content, daily interactions, client thoughts/opinions and industry news. Your purpose is to create an informational powerhouse that keeps people reading…

And involved them in your story… your brand… your legacy.

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Marketing is Always Different

I think the beautiful thing about the web, social media, marketing, and the business world is that fact that everyone is different.

We would like to sit here and say that there are TONS of companies that are the same. There are 30,343 graphic design firms in Indianapolis. Not true, but you get the point. I am not talking about face value. The difference in each organization is the people behind the brand.

Each company has individuals that run every facet of the arms, legs, and head of the company. They are each an individual. They are each… different. They each have their own ideas, thoughts, and imagination on where the company is headed into the future.

This is an extremely important concept to understand. You need to utilize each individual under a common brand. We all have different ideas on marketing and that is why companies vary greatly on marketing potential… and (of course) disaster.

Utilize your employees. Utilize your customers (your brand). Create a sustainable future for your (their) company. Create a company that embraces change, ignites excitement, and takes full advantage of a trend.

Marketing is always different. Ideas are always different. It is the implementation… that moves mountains.

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Using Social Media to Sell Yourself

Daryl Mather has a great post about frictionless selling over at the Consulting Pulse. It was such a great article and I wanted to take the concept of frictionless selling and apply it to social media marketing and blogging. It is extremely important to understand the concept of frictionless selling. To say the least:

Frictionless Selling surrounds the understand that the least amount of barriers between a person and a purchase… the better.

This means that you should not have massive forms to fill out in order to sign up for a newsletter. This means that it is better to have your phone number than a contact form (this can be debated).

Frition based selling has no place in social media. The speed of conversation and the amount of personality needed to elicit some type of purchasing pattern cannot be screwed up by a massive form or a huge blog posts.

Remember to tell stories when writing your content. Be passionate about what you love and what you do (hopefully, two of the same). Remember to give people an easy way to get in contact with you. The will love you for it.

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We Do What We Do and Why We Do It

Why do we do what we do? How many times have you asked yourself this question? Do it.

Why do WE do what WE do? There are a multitude of different answers depending on the person. We do it because we love what we do. I do it because of the challenge of running a business. Maybe, it is to be an employer and give people jobs.

When it comes to running a social media education company in Indianapolis I haven’t quite pinpointed the main push that drives me to work everyday. I love what I do, I love the people I work with, and I love the concept of educating people on the wonderful world of social media. However, there is one thing that always pushes me passed the edge and gets the juices flowing: that spark.

The spark of a business owner, employee, sole-proprietor, or salesman understanding the concepts of communicating online. When you are standing in front of a group of people you can almost see the light bulbs explode over their heads… in brilliant light… that is where I enjoy my life. Education can change businesses… shifting paradigms is important to growing companies.

If the only thing you can do is teach your clients something… anything… to make their lives easier, faster, and better… you have done the right thing. We are all striving for something and most of the time it is taking the red to black.

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Authenticity is Life. The Rest is Just Details.

How do you creat great content that is alluring to the general public and your potential clients? The simple answer would be keyword rich content and industry news. Oh yes, keyword rich writing. We all love it.

There is something deeper that tends to push one blog past the other in terms of the public attention deficit disorder: Authenticity.

Authenticity should be one of the driving focusing of your blog, your use of social networking tools, and your business. We are now in a customer centric world where people want to deal with… you guessed it… people.

Staying authentic with your content means you do not sound like the back of a brochure. It means you do not sound like the news anchor on the Fox Business Channel droning away about the pitfalls of capitalism.

It means..What does it mean?

Telling stories.

Creating visual memories of how you have helped clients. Telling the story of starting the business and being honest about the mistakes you made “growing up.” It means giving your personal opinion on activities happening in the market.

I think I speak for everyone when I say… we want to hear from YOU not your industry.

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Get Off Your Butt and Break the Rules

When did rules ever apply to the art of running a business?

Let me preface this post by saying that I do not mean moral, ethical, or legal rules. There are rules that each person has set aside for themselves whether spiritual or from the laws of the land. I am talking about business rules.

They are the rules predestined and applied by business owners, scholars, and business minds throughout the centuries. Rules on innovation and marketing that if applied correctly will help you run a business but…

Times are trying and individuals/companies are scraping to stay ahead of the competition and make a little bit of cash on the side. I am reading the book First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman and it had me thinking about the rules we apply to business marketing and thought-leadership.

I am sure you are thinking of typical rules that you apply on a daily basis in your business. What are they? Where did they come from? Why don’t you just break them?

My favorite example is from the minds that brought us Quicken and Quickbooks: Intuit. In the early days the founders were struggling to produce demand for their product. Distributors would not pick them up because, frankly, they were the 47th or so product on the market. They decided to take every cent of their $100,000 in the bank and invest it in marketing directly to the consumer and not the distributor.

We are not talking about 10% of their budget or a small portion of the revenue… they bet everything on this ONE idea. The rest is history. They broke the rules and changed the mold of how sass products were sold and distributed.

What is keeping you from breaking the rules? What is keeping you from adopting a social media strategy that could revolutionize the way you communicate? What is keeping you from starting a blog or starting a Facebook group?

Is it fear? Is it understanding? Is it resources?

To this I say, break all the rules. Live out your business and revolutionize the way you reach your customers. Empower your company to defeat fear and rise above the rest.

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Business Is Always About Connecting

I was reading a post over at SmartBlog on Social Media and it had a quote by the Mzinga CEO Barry Libert:

“GM never thought of themselves of being in the business of connecting people, which is why they’re going bankrupt,”

Pretty valid thought if you ask me. Should all businesses be involved in connecting people with each other? Better yet… should businesses search for that lofty goal of connecting people who use their services to people who do not?

My opinion… Yes they should.

Business has always been about connecting. If you look back into history there has always been some type of connection between two people that created a company…

whether it was a deal that was signed or an idea sparked out of thin air.

The Internet has given way to a landslide of communication. You now have the ability to connect with every demographic on the face of the earth. What is your company doing to connect?

I am not going to sit here and say that the demise of GM was based around their inability to connect… but it is a valid point.

What are you going to do tomorrow to make it easier for customers and potential customers to connect?

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Jason Falls to Speak at Special Event in Indianapolis!

My company, Brandswag is proud to sponser social media genius Jason Falls at a special event coming in May. Here are the details:

Confluence is very excited to announce social media expert Jason Falls of SocialMediaExplorer.com will speak at the May 27 Confluence NorthNetwork event.

His topic will be “The Future of Social Media for Corporations.”

Jason is the director of social media for Doe-Anderson, a brand-building agency in Louisville. He is also the co-founder of the Social Media Club Louisville. Jason is a widely-respected speaker at conferences and special events throughout the country. He speaks about how social media can build corporate brands, and how corporations and organizations can use social media. His blog is one of the leading blogs on the subject of social media.

Registration begins at 2:30, and Jason will begin speaking at 3:00. The cost for the event is $20, and you can purchase tickets at the Confluence website. Members come free – and membership only costs $20/month for access to all 3 Confluence events.  The event will be at the Blu Martini, at 96th & Gray Rd.

(Social media rock star Chris Brogan even says “Jason rules.“)

Limited Space: Secure Your Seat by Purchasing an Advance Ticket Today

I Don’t Care If You Are On Facebook and Twitter

There are hundreds of thousands of ways you can use social media.

Facebook… Twitter… Vimeo… YouTube… LinkedIN… SmallerIndiana… Plaxo…
They go on and on and on and on and on.
The tools are becoming universal. They are becoming secondary. The learning curve is dissapearing. 

Frankly… it isn’t unique anymore to just be on Facebook and Twitter. The world is hitting social media with a force and with that force comes millions of people using the same tool. How do you set yourself apart? How do you make a difference using the same site (Facebook) that upwards of 250 million people are using?

Put your heart into the content. Create an extreme value that PEOPLE and the masses cannot ignore. Only then will you cut through the noise. 

Gary Vaynerchuk has an excellent video blog that talks at length about the vale of content and the “2.0 hustle.” Do two things: 

1. Watch the video below

2. Follow the link above and subscribe to every little ounce of Gary Vaynerchuk content your little mouse pointer can handle..

The Future of Technology and the Changing World

In light of my presentation tomorrow at the Hoosier Hospitality Conference on the future of Technology… I thought I would post this Did You Know 3.0? video. It is awesome! Watch. Learn. Enjoy.