Why is it important to be able to change and add to the content on your website if you use social media?

Second, the key component of any social media campaign is content.  And the best content is always your own.  Putting your articles, videos, and photos on your own website and then sharing links to that content on the various social media platforms is a great way to get people back to your primary digital real estate – your website.  When you add your own content to your website, it’s always there for people to find. We get continual traffic to our website because we have developed a library of articles that contain keywords and phrases that people use in their internet searches.  People find us and contact us through articles that we added to our site – and some of those articles are almost two years old.

Second, Google scores websites based on “freshness of content”.  This influences how Google ranks your website for search terms. This is a great article from SEOmoz that explains more about how Google looks at website content to determine rankings.

Third, when you can log in to your own website to make changes, you are in control and you can do it at any time. If something is happening at your company or in your industry, you can share it on your website as soon as you know about it.  This also makes for timely social media content. You add the event or article to your site, share the link to the page on Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook, and now you’ve got website traffic from people who are interested in what you have to say.

Fourth, there are hundreds of tools available for WordPress websites that make sharing your content via social media very simple. You can also track how often your content is shared and encourage people to follow your accounts right from your site.

Fifth, a changing website is a current website. It’s time to start thinking about it as something that is dynamic rather than static. Too many sites are just online business cards or brochures. Your company changes all the time; your website should, too.  Your website can be working for you, even when you’re not. WordPress makes it easier.

1. They tweet multiple times per day, every day. Many companies tweet once a day or once a week and think that will be enough. Keep in mind that the average Twitter user follows over 100 people, and many people follow a lot more than that. Tweets can be going by a lightning speed. So, you have to keep getting the word out there to catch as many people as possible. Some stats indicate that 22 tweets per day is optimal.

Since most people don’t have the time to check in with Twitter multiple times per day and compose a witty or informative tweet every hour, there are several tools available that will help you keep your sanity. Bufferapp.com allows you to schedule out tweets during the day. So does hootsuite.com or a number of other sites.

2. They write tweets that are likely to be retweeted, are relevant to their target market and get people to their websites. They think to themselves, “Would I want to read this?” “Would I find this helpful, engaging, funny or interesting?” Every tweet should not be a selling tweet.

3. They check their interactions at least once per day. If you’re logged into Twitter, it’s that “@Connect” link up at the top that shows you who has mentioned you in a tweet or has followed you. A good rule of thumb is to check it in the morning and then again in the late afternoon or evening. That way, you can reply to people who have mentioned you within a few hours. You can also thank those who have taken the time to follow you.

4. They scan their Twitter feed at least once per day. Spend a few minutes scanning the tweets of those you follow and retweet ones you find interesting, ask and answer questions, watch for trends and news, and just “listen”.

5. They schedule in time to follow people and companies that might be interested in their products and services. This can be very time-consuming (we can help with this, by the way), but it is critical. Unless you are really well-known, you’ll usually only get followed by the people you follow. And, generally speaking, the only people who will see your tweets are those who follow you.

6. They track the number of clicks they get on the links they tweet. Probably the most popular link shortener and stats service is bitly. Copy and paste a long link into bitly and voila! they will shorten it and keep track of how many people actually clicked on it. Over time, you can see the types of articles and web pages that get the most engagement and adjust accordingly.

7. They use hashtags in their tweets. Help your audience quickly scan for topics that they want to read. Put hashtags in your tweets to attract attention, categorize your tweet and make it more searchable. Check out hashtags.org to find popular hashtags and even see what time of day hashtags are used most often. For instance, if you provide accounting and payroll services, you could include #payroll, #accounting, #taxes, etc., in your tweets if you are talking about one of those topics or if you are promoting your services.

8. They promote others. Chances are you’ve been in a networking group at one time or another. Did the members make a commitment, however informally, to promote the services of the other members in the group? Companies that get the most out of Twitter don’t make it all about them. They actually interact with others and zero in on a few “power partners” that they can retweet, mention and connect with on other networks (maybe even on the phone or in person!).

This is not an exhaustive list of Twitter tips for small business, but you should start to see better results by doing what other successful businesses do.

If you have had success with Twitter, do you have other ideas to share?

We often meet with small business owners and leaders who are leery, for various reasons, about “putting themselves out there” and claiming their social profiles or directory listings on Yelp, Google Places, Bing, etc.   What they don’t often realize is that people are searching for their products and services on these sites AND reading reviews about them right now… even if the business hasn’t claimed the listing!  We just spoke with a locksmith company that had 3 reviews on Google and 2 reviews on Yelp, and they had no clue.

So, you may ask, if reviews are already out there and people can see your listings anyway, why bother going through the process of claiming them? Because it’s better for you to fill out all of the information, add your logo and photos and take control of your own profile than it is for you to leave it to chance.  For example, we recently spoke with an art gallery that was listed under “Chiropractors” on Google Places.  Not good. They were missing out on a lot of opportunities to be found.  This happens more often than you would think.

By owning and monitoring as many listings as possible, your company will have better control of:

-how you appear to those who search for you (a listing with a logo and all of the information completed looks much more professional and informative than one that has only a name and website

-how and where prospective clients and customers find you (give the search engines some information to categorize your business correctly!)

-what products and services they find you for, and

-what they are posting about your products or services.

You can hate Yelp all you want (and there are many, many businesses that do), but it does no good to ignore Yelp.

So, how do you get started?

1. Get over your fear of getting reviews online.  The reality is, as I mentioned before, people can be writing reviews about your business right now, even if you have never claimed a listing or social profile.

2. Pull together your company’s information into one document/folder so that you or your staff member can fill out these profiles/listings quickly and consistently. Each website may ask for slightly different information, but beyond your basic company name, address and phone number, you’ll need your logo file, tagline, list of services and products, hours of operation, services areas, website address, social media URLs, industry category and maybe even some photos and a YouTube video if you have one.

3. Determine which profiles you want to claim.  Do a Google search on your company and see where you are already listed. Claim those first. Or, go to a site like GetListed.org and see the major listings that are available.  There are hundreds out there, but get started with:

Google Places for Business

Yelp

Bing Business Portal

Foursquare (especially for storefronts)

Manta

Take control of your online listings and social profiles.  You’ll be found more easily and look more professional, and you will be ready to address and learn from any negative reviews that might be left about your business.

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Now that the Endorsements feature on LinkedIn has been around for a while, it’s been interesting watching the activity among my connections.  It’s a good feeling being endorsed for my skills and expertise.  Some people are even endorsing me (and others) for skills I know they haven’t experienced with me, but it’s nice to know that they feel confident in my abilities. And, of course, I’m endorsing people for the skills and expertise I believe they possess and which fit with their core business.

I’ve also noticed that some people are being endorsed for skills that I doubt they would put on a resume or use when meeting with potential clients.  Such as the business consultant who is being endorsed for “Dashboard”, whatever that means (he didn’t know either).  Or the bookkeeper I know who is getting a lot of endorsements for her social media marketing skills.  It’s true that this bookkeeper does use social media to promote her business, and she does a good job of it.  However, when I asked her if social media marketing was one of her present or future services, she confirmed that, no, she was sticking with bookkeeping.  We then had a discussion about the skills for which she really wants endorsements (and appearance in searches by other LinkedIn users), such as Quickbooks, Accounts Payable, Accounting, etc.

This brings me to my next question:  Are you being endorsed (and found) for the skills you really want on LinkedIn?  If not, what can you do about it?

Keep in mind that if you hadn’t listed Skills and Expertise on your profile previously, LinkedIn may have filled some in for you based on your summary and experience.  So, take a look at your profile and see if the Skills and Expertise listed are really ones that speak about what you do and offer to others.

This video gives you tips on how to modify your profile to highlight your most important skills and expertise.

Like me, you may not be interested in seeing ALL of the activity that happens among your connections, especially if you have more than 500 of them.  The good news is that you can filter out a lot of the noise and focus on the updates that you do want to see.

To see all of your filtering options, click on the “All Updates” link on your home page (see below).  The drop-down box lists a host of options.  If you want to just see the shares of your connections (such as when they share articles), click on “Shares” and take a look at what you get.  Likewise, if you want to see what your connections are up to in their Groups, select “Groups”.

My favorite filter, though, is the “Customize” option.  When you select “Customize”, you get to choose the types of updates that you see on your home page at all times (see below).  You can go through the list and uncheck the boxes of the updates that you do not want to see.  You may want to do some experimentation, as I have, to see the most valuable information.

Do you see the “Hidden” tab in the image above? This is another great filter option for those people whom you want to keep as connections but who just post way too much or tend to post items that aren’t valuable to you.  If you click on the “Hidden” tab, you will see all of the connections whose updates you have hidden.

How do you hide someone’s posts? Just hover over the latest post of the person you want to hide and you’ll see the “Hide” link. You always have the option to “unhide” a connection if you choose by going back to the “Customize” link and selecting “Show Updates” next to the person’s name in the “Hidden” tab (see above).

By the way, you can also hide the LinkedIn Today feature on your home page as well.  Just hover your cursor directly underneath the “All Updates” link and you’ll see the “Hide” button.

I have found that my experience on my LinkedIn home page has become much more focused and valuable since I took the time to customize the updates I see.  Give it a try if you haven’t already.

Article writing can be a marketing gift that keeps on giving for the following reasons:

1.  Article writing forces you to listen and find out what information might appeal to your target market.  In order to plan out a series of articles, you might, for instance, ask your salespeople and customer service staff about the common questions and concerns they hear from prospects and customers.  Sharing thoughtful content and listening to what your target market finds interesting and useful is at the heart of good social media.  If people like what you post, they’ll be more likely to remember you when they need your products and services. And if you’re always thinking about what THEY like, well, so much the better.

2.  If you place your articles on your website, people can access them at any time, even months (or years) after they were published.  And if you give your articles interesting titles and add relevant, meaningful keywords to the content, your articles may be found when your prospects do a Google search on the topic.  We have many articles on our own website that are listed on the first page of Google for certain phrases and keywords.  The same can be said for our clients who take the time to write and publish articles (or have the articles written for them).  Even small businesses can, and do, build significant traffic to their websites using this tactic.

Adding a WordPress blog (an excellent place to post your articles) with a subscription option to your existing website is not usually a huge undertaking; most web developers can do this for a fairly small fee.

3.  Article writing allows you to showcase your expertise and the core values of your company.  You may get a few visitors to your “About Us” page every now and then, but those pages on most websites are usually pretty dry and static. Adding periodic articles to your site, however, allows you to become the “go-to” expert for your target market. Occasionally, you can also use the opportunity to talk about what’s happening in your company, such as your involvement with a non-profit organization or a successful project.  It’s surprising how many people will subscribe to your articles if you provide them with relevant and meaningful information.  And the beauty of it is, if you build into your website the tools to allow readers to share your articles with THEIR networks, many people will.

If you have a B2B company and you’ve been struggling with what to share in social media, start writing or get someone to write for you. You’ll start to see results after just a few articles, and you’ll keep on reaping the benefits.

Microsoft's LinkedIn Company Page Product and Service Spotlight

As long as you can create images (640 x 220 pixels in size), you can create your own spotlight.

Here are the steps to adding a spotlight to your company page:

1. On your LinkedIn company overview page, click on the Product & Services tab in the top navigation.  (If your company page contains only Products and/or Services, you may see only Products or Services in that tab.  Note that Microsoft has a Products only tab, above).

2. Click on the Admin tools button on the far right and select Edit.  

3. Go to Step 3: Market and showcase your company with up to 3 images.  Add up to 3 images (640×220 pixels) with corresponding URLs, and LinkedIn will create a rotating spotlight module to display on your page. The URLs you match with the images should take visitors to the web pages that contain more information about what’s highlighted in the images.  Many companies use these images as calls to action, such as in the Microsoft example above.

By the way, the rotating spotlight is manual, meaning the user has to click on the arrows on the top right to go to the next screen.  Because of this, choose your first image wisely.  We hope that LinkedIn will make this an automatically rotating slideshow in the future.

A couple of other examples of company pages with the rotating spotlight are:

Dell

Quad/Graphics

Most small businesses (and many large businesses) haven’t taken advantage of this feature, so you will be able to stand out with a few simple steps.  We’ve noticed better engagement with our services listings since we added the spotlight to our company page.

Recently, Lori Ruff, aka the LinkedIn Diva, alerted us to the fact that the Products and Services section of LinkedIn Company Pages can be targeted to specific groups of individuals and/or locations.  For example, you can create version A that is shown to people in U.S. companies with 11-50 employees, version B that is targeted to consultants in Asia and version C that appears to senior market researchers in the Middle East.

Here’s how to create different versions of your Company page. Please note that this applies to the Products and Services section.

1. In your company page, go to the Products and Services tab. (If you have included only Services or Products in this section, the tab will be called either “Products” or “Services”.)  Click “Edit” under “Admin tools” on the right.

First, you’ll need to create a default version of your Company page, if you haven’t already done so.  You have the option of creating a 3-slide slideshow of images that describe your products/services.  These slides can be linked to webpages of your choice.  You may also add a YouTube video URL.  Once you have created the default version by following the steps on the page, you can then create a new audience.  You’ll see the “Create New Audience” on the top left (shown below).

You may create a new audience using the following filters: Company Size, Job Function, Industry, Seniority and Geography.  There are several more filtering options within these categories.

Once you have determined your new Cateogory of audience, you can finish the rest of the section, which includes developing another targeted 3-slide slideshow (LinkedIn calls this a rotating spotlight module) .  You may want to have a graphic designer develop images that appeal to each audience.

After you have further tweaked your Company page to take advantage of this targeting function, be sure to encourage people to follow your page by adding a Follow button to your website.

We often talk to B2B owners and CMOs who are thinking about funneling some of their marketing budget into social media. Many times, their main objection is the belief, either substantiated or not, that their potential customers do not use social media or would not think to look for their products/services on social media. Certainly, there are times when this is quite true today.  If you have determined that your target demographic is 82+ years (that’s an actual best demographic for the hearing aid industry), you may have a point.  And there are other demographics and industries where using social media won’t net you a lot of results today.  But we like to think about the future.

Consider what Shiv Singh, Global Head of Digital for PepsiCo Beverages, has to say about social media when discussing Oracle’s acquisition of Vitrue and Salesforce’s acquisition Buddy Media: “No more is it (social media) something separate, disconnected, cute and experimental. It has just moved to the heart of all marketing efforts, and the stock price movements of Facebook will not change that. Social Media Marketing is on scale and needs to be at the heart of your marketing efforts right now.”

Investing time and energy into developing relevant and useful content and a large digital network now is preparing for your future.  Pulling people to your website now by offering them something to read or watch on a regular basis is planting the seed for a later time.  Just as in face-to-face business networking, you do not know where that initial Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook contact or posted article will lead down the line.  The content that you place on your website and share out through your social media network doesn’t get thrown in the trash like a postcard.  It remains to be found by your potential customers, today or in the future.  They may even have to catch up to you.  But you’ll be there already.

1. What type of original content do you already have? Articles, videos, radio show, infographics, presentations, photos, testimonials, whitepapers
2. What type of content will appeal to your target market?
3. What type of original (developed by you) content will be developed on an ongoing basis?
4. Who will be developing the content? A staff member, the owner, a group of people, Mediavine Marketing?
5. What other content can be used to supplement your original content?
6. How often will the original content be developed?
7. Where will the content be placed initially? The website, YouTube, a trade publication?
8. Where will the content be shared? LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, social bookmarking sites, etc.
9. Will others be able to share the content as well? In other words, is your website set up to allow comments and sharing of your content?

Once we have established the who, what, when, where and why of content, we inevitably start discussing the details of developing content. Many B2B companies really struggle with this, and understandably so. Most of us will not acquire legions of raving fans who are waiting breathlessly for our next product or announcement.

So, what do we B2B companies share out there? How about thinking in terms of “edutainment”?

We’ve adapted the term “edutainment” from the educational world, but we think it applies well to social media.  Edutainment is designed in order to keep people interested and engaged, and the goal is to provide some valuable knowledge to the target market by keeping them engaged with entertaining content. It doesn’t have to be hilarious and earth- shattering, but it does need to be interesting and/or useful enough to encourage further exploration of your digital profiles and even an email opt-in or phone call. Articles/blog posts should have targeted and interesting titles, and the articles themselves need to be written in a more conversational, less “whitepaper-ish” tone. Videos, rather than the “salesly”, long and over-produced showcases of yesterday, should be shorter, authentic and address a “pain point” or offer a way to solve a problem. Think about showing your prospective clients what their success would look like if they work with you.  Help them visualize how they would achieve their goals with a short presentation or an infographic.

We have found from experience that edutainment may be the thing that keeps you in your prospects’ minds longer than anything else you have on your website.  What do you think about the idea of  using “edutainment” for B2B social media?