The long term result is longer term relationships with your customers before they buy from you and afterwards.

What do I mean by content?  Traditionally we do this in PR a lot, examples include:

• Press releases
• Books
• Newspaper articles or columns
• Newsletters
• Leaflets and brochures with free information

In other words, free information, advice, tips and so on.  Online this has lent itself to:

• Online press releases
• Blog content
• Articles on websites
• Reviews and comments
• Video
• Podcasts
• e-newsletters
• e-books

We clearly have more media available to us online which is one of the reasons it’s easier to create your own content, and more importantly – publish it.  How many of us now go to Google to ask it “how to lay a laminate floor” or “tips for email marketing”? Search engines love fresh content, it’s one of the reasons that it ranks blogs highly.

If you’re providing some of this information for the search engines to find, in your blog, on your website or even by submitting articles to other websites – then you’re content marketing.  So when somebody searches for “email marketing tips” there’s a good chance your article/blog/ online news release will be returned in the results.  This attracts traffic to your website (because wherever you’ve posted the content, you will have included a link to your main website) which is often the start of that relationship with potential customers as they refer to your article, read other posts that you’ve written, watch your videos and have a look around your website perhaps.  A great way to attract prospects!

Here are some useful ideas of what to write about, and once you get started it does become easier:

- Downloadable tips

- Video demonstrations or interviews on “how to” (related to your product or service expertise)

- Useful information on product applications, advice on products, reviews

- Entertainment, producing a viral video for YouTube for example

- Produce a white paper and add it your website

- Carry out other research related to your sector and publish it on your website.

You’re usually the best expert on your products and services, and if you can share some of this knowledge you build credibility and reputation. Have a look at this search example for the laminate flooring advice I mentioned, See how much free information and advice I could see?  I bought my laminate flooring from one of these…

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It’s not going to go away is it? Whether you participate in social networking or are still watching, it’s time out of your day and oh so easy to be distracted for 2 hours when you only intended to spend five minutes. If this sounds familiar then read on! I often say that eventually marketing will re-balance itself as the world demands that we do more business online, then marketing becomes more online as traditional activity declines.

Even if I’m right, we’re not there yet and in some areas I’m not sure we ever will be, networking for example. I rave about LinkedIn and use it heavily, I also think that social networking generally has brought many advantages to marketers. We can find out so much more in these networks globally, in minutes what used to take weeks, months or years to discover. But in business we still also need that face to face contact at some point and we should be networking online.  Do you find people now asking you when they meet you, if you’re on LinkedIn? I know I do.

Then there’s keeping up-to-date with news and content in your area of expertise, through following blogs, news, articles and the other way around – you should be submitting articles, writing blogs and generally joining in where relevant.  And for good measure, you should also be tracking mentions of your brand to highlight any potential issues for customer service or just to measure where and how often you’re appearing.

All of that takes time and you’re probably also trying to get on with your day job, the real work that wins and keeps you in business.  Unless you’re naturally very organised, time management has to be addressed so we don’t expire under the weight of lists of things “to do”.  I’ve pulled together some useful tips on how to keep up with social media and still get those other things done in the day.

1. Accept that social media should be on your list of things to do.  It’s easy to sit at your computer to start the day and instantly be pulled into the latest tweets, updating your Facebook page or reading a blog as they all suddenly become important when you switch on.  If they’re not on your list they become a time-waster as you haven’t prepared for them and now you’ve borrowed time from something else you’re supposed to be doing.
2. Find the right social networks for your business which are most likely to give you a return in the long term.  If your customers or potential customers aren’t in the networks you’re following, is it a good use of your time?
3. Get it in your diary.  However you manage your day, allocate a slot for specific social media activity.  For example it might be easier for you to blog at the end of the day once your other things are done, and if you use Twitter, you’ll need to update several times a day ideally, so schedule this in allowing a bit extra time to check and read your time-line.  A good way to do this is with ever coffee break I’ve found, but it does depend on how many of those you have!
4. Make a plan for the bigger social marketing stuff, like blogging for example.  I don’t mean a 20 page document, just a timetable on one page with blog title, date and who is writing it (if there’s more than one of you).  As I write several blogs, I keep my timetable at the front of my diary so it’s a constant reminder.  It also means that the next subject is in my head and being thought about before I sit down and write it.  I’m convinced this also saves me time.  This also works for email marketing.
5. Develop a social media strategy.  Particularly useful if you’re involved in several social networks for business and  if other employees in your organisation are also participating.   This should include guidelines on when and how often, as well as tone to be adopted, measurement and so on.  This has an impact on time because it’s tangible when it’s in black and white and you know exactly what you’re supposed to be doing.
6. Use an aggregator tool to keep everything on one place.  Good ones are Tweetdeck or Netvibes.  These enable you to see all of your social media updates on one screen which saves time with nipping in and out of different networks.
7. Rate your social media activity in order of priority just as you would for other items on your to do list.  In other words, is it urgent and important enough to be the first thing you do today?

There’s an element of trial and error in this of course.  I started out trying to do my social networking at the end of each day and discovered that it often got missed.  I now try to schedule it earlier in the day where possible.  I’ve also discovered that I blog particularly well on a Sunday!  I suspect this is down to fewer distractions, but it works so why not? Which tips for time management and social media work for you?

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Benefiting from LinkedIn as a business is something that crept up on me.  Like many others, I tried it early on, setting up my account around 4 years ago, taken with the idea that I could connect with people in business online.  But I struggled to find many others who were on it then, the usual response being ” I haven’t got time to get to know this”.

LinkedIn now has over 80 million members in over 200 countries and increasingly I’m finding people ask me when I meet them if I’m on LinkedIn.  Here are my top reasons to include LinkedIn as part of your marketing strategy:

1. Preparation – It’s really valuable as a research tool when you’re about to meet somebody, do business or even prior to a networking event so you know more about the people going.  Even if you don’t have an account or you’re not connected to them, you can see people’s public profiles and company profiles. Use the search box at the top of your LinkedIn home page to find who you’re looking for.

2. Research - Apart from finding out more about individuals, getting involved in Groups and Answers means that you can conduct your own market research and discover a much more in-depth insight into a subject than you can outside of LinkedIn. In Groups for example, now that the group homepage is much improved, you can see at a glance what’s being talked about and start a discussion of your own to gauge feeling on a particular topic.  In Answers you can post a question to obtain extremely specific responses, making very bespoke feedback.

3. Connecting with the right people – Are you an open or closed net-worker? Defining who you want to network with and why makes it much easier to get the full benefit from LinkedIn. There’s no right answer to this, only you will know what you’re trying to achieve but you don’t have to say “yes” to every invitation to connect for example.  The obvious “no” is those who openly appear to be selling and you really don’t know, but the less obvious ones may be those that add no value to your objectives.  The polite protocol here is to “archive” them rather than decline as you never know when your plans might change. The amazing thing is being able to reach connections you might never otherwise have found, just because they’re connected to somebody you know so it’s always worth having a look at your 1st level connections’s connections.

4. Demonstrating your expertise – A brilliant way of doing this is by answering a question, using LinkedIn “Answers”.  Because people get rated when they provide answers, there is a clear incentive to provide a good one.  If you have a topic that is puzzling you and need help this is great and another excellent way to conduct some research.  You can only post questions if you have more than 5 connections and only 10 questions per month, so like wishes they need to be used wisely!  But you can answer as many as you like and over time gain expert status if your answers are consistently ranked as “good”.  This will show up in your profile and really highlights your expertise.

5. Tracking what’s going on – Another useful feature when you’re a member is being notified of what your connections are up to which includes who they’ve connected with this week, most recent updates from them, activity from the groups you’re signed up to and more.  You can see this anyway when you’re logged in but you can opt to have an update emailed to you once a week (go to your account settings, then “email notifications”).

This for me is one of the most useful features of LinkedIn as for some reason when I dip in and out of the LinkedIn website I’ve usually got a purpose in mind and don’t appreciate all of the updates and new news in one go.  The email update once a week is perfect as I get a much better picture.

6. Free advertising – for some things.  You can post an event for example which will show up on your profile and enable people to book a place, and if you’re part of a group that has a job board, you can post a job for free.  You have to pay for advertising jobs to the wider LinkedIn network and of course for other targeted advertising on LinkedIn, but you may not need to.

7. Making it easy for people to stay in touch with you.  Add the link to your LinkedIn public profile on your website “contact us” page, business card, “about us” and anywhere else your potential customers are likely to look for contact details or more information about you.

If you haven’t been keeping up with it recently, jump on LinkedIn now and see what you’ve been missing!  Or join me… http://www.linkedin.com/in/karenmcnulty

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Twitter has held its own in the social media arena and I think it certainly can’t be described as a “flash in the pan” any longer.  When I’m working with businesses, I’ve noticed the questions have changed too, moving from “What’s Twitter, isn’t it just a waste of time?” to “Tell me how I can use Twitter for my business, I need to know more”.

A definite shift and rightly so, as it’s turned into a rather useful communication channel, helping us to manage our PR in real time.  But don’t be fooled by how easy it is to use!  As with any form of communication to the outside world, it needs to be treated with care, more so online as what you say today will still be around in years to come.

Although results on Twitter fall appear to fall off the time line after 1 – 2 weeks, they are all archived and in fact Twitter handed over the archive of all of its tweets since 2006 to the US library of Congress earlier this year.  In reality what goes onto the web, stays on the web.

Using Twitter for Business can work equally well whether you’re B2C or B2B (targeting consumers or other businesses).  As with all social media, Twitter is easier to grasp if you’re marketing to consumers as they’re already active users in social media space.  But businesses are catching up and once you appreciate the mindset of a business who wants to “follow” it’s a bit easier to work out what to say.  Twitter is a micro-blogging tool so you don’t have a lot of space to get across your message and I normally advise thinking before you leap.  If you’re not already blogging for example or don’t have good content to link to on your website then you’re limited by things to tweet about and are relying on finding other content to talk about.  If you sell to consumers that’s not so necessary as you can tweet about offers and product incentives.

Below are my top Twitter Tips for Business, but whoever your target audience is, have a strategy before you start and think about a social media policy for employees who tweet. Without these, Tweeting will not get the engagement you’re hoping for not least because Tweeters tend to run out of steam when there’s no purpose.

1. B2B Twitter Tips

• If you market to other businesses, think seriously about starting a blog first, apart from giving you something to tweet about, Twitter and blogging are both excellent for demonstrating your expertise and offering an insight into your personality.  People always buy from people and social media allow us to show who we are and what we know so much more openly than before, so take full advantage of this if you can.
• Put yourself in your customer’s shoes.  It’s not necessarily all about price and offers, especially if you’re a service but what you can also share that’s useful.  So for example, as a marketer I like to keep on top of trends in marketing (and there a lot of those online) and when I find a good article on something like email marketing or blogging, I’ll share it with my followers on Twitter.
• Think “news”.  Whilst sharing and re-tweeting topical articles is good, doing this exclusively removes the value you could add with your own insights, news and information.  In other words, being original is important.  A good B2B example is Marketing Donut, a free business resource or selling B2B products, Dell has  a Twitter channel exclusively marketing offers to UK small businesses
• Don’t think that your target market is not using/seeing social media.  Since Google started to show “real time” search results, you’ll often see “tweets’ related to a keyword search as well as websites, blogs and other media.  If you’re not in it, you miss another opportunity to be seen.  Look at this search earlier today for “Blockbuster” and you’ll see the Twitter results appearing alongside other news websites:

2. B2C Twitter Tips

• Decide what you’re using Twitter for. If you’re marketing to the general public you’re probably already publicising offers, new products and other incentives on your website so can you use Twitter for people to be the first to know certain offers?  In other words, if they follow you on twitter they’ll hear about it there before anyone else does.
• Several high profile brands have started to use Twitter accounts for customer service, taking advantage of the instant nature of response – good for customers and if handled well, good PR for the brand.  For example, Xbox has a Twitter channel exclusively for support www.twitter.com/xboxsupport with more than 43000 followers.
• Use the Twitter search tool to find your target market so you know what they’re saying, and follow trending topics in your sector so that you can respond and “join in” the conversation
• Promote your Twitter account details across all other marketing channels, on websites, business cards and in other social media.
• Tweet as individuals where possible.  The big advantage of social media is that people get to know team members, bringing your customers closer to your business.  There are corporate ways of doing this too, for example using an identity such as “@yourcompanyname/KM (initials of the person tweeting).

Probably the most important thing to remember is that it’s another marketing channel, so it needs to be treated the same as any other elements of your marketing mix.  Consistent with brand message and company image, good grammar and service, and adding value to your contact with customers and followers.

Finally, measure your Twitter activity as you would other marketing activity.  You can do this with saved searches to track mentions, tracking traffic to your website via Twitter and other metrics relevant to your business.

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Having got to grips with optimising web pages, the next trick is to learn how to optimise your video. No, it’s not enough just to plonk it on YouTube, although it is very easy to do so. But as there are 2 million videos a day watched on YouTube and 24 hours of video uploaded every second, there is some competition to be heard.

Not as competitive as Google though and this is an interesting point. If you search for “SWOT Analysis” on Google, there are 1.6 billion resulted listed. Type the same keywords into YouTube and there are a possible 550 results. As we begin to understand that a large proportion of Internet Users are beginning to use YouTube as their primary search tool (why not? It’s got a search box and far fewer results to trail through) it make sense to look at this as a marketing medium.

Briefly, optimising a YouTube Video is actually quite easy and very similar to optimising anything else for the search engines:

• Set up a channel to have the opportunity to profile your company or brand and add multiple videos associated with your business.
• Make sure you add tags and put the relevant keywords into your video page title (you’ll be invited to do this when you upload your video)
• Enable embedding and sharing
• Make content public

Adding Titles and keywords is straightforward, as this example of one we’ve done for BusinessPlanWiz shows:

My best advice with YouTube is to try it, as it really is easy to get started.

Optimisation aside for a minute, there are also some really good marketing reasons to use video:

• Many people prefer video over text content and as we consume and demand data ever more quickly, video fits the brief for speed.  A report by Emarketer in June showed that in 2010, 66.7% of US Internet users will watch at least one video online per month. By 2014, this percentage will rise to 77.0%
• Visually, we can say a lot more using video.  YouTube lets you add captions and annotations as well as what viewers will see (your logo in the background, website address etc.)
• It breaks up the monotony.  Adding a video to your website means your visitors have a choice, they don’t have to read it all when they can digest something via video in a couple of minutes.
• Entertainment.  It doesn’t matter how nicely you write, a video is also much more entertaining (or should/could be).

With the volume of media thrown at us today, anything that makes your target audience more likely to follow or engage with you is worth investigating. Introducing video into your marketing mix has so many advantages, at a relatively low cost (mostly just your time, or somebody else’s if you outsource) making it very viable.

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Mostly associated with smart phones, but social networking websites have had Apps for a while, often developed as games to engage the user.  For example the Facebook App Farmville has become the most popular worldwide with more than 61.6 million users in June 2010. They’re just pieces of software usually developed to make the user’s life easier.  Originally an “application” would be seen by us as tools such as word processors, spreadsheets and databases – designed with the user in mind rather than the “system”.

The reason smart phones are significant is related to their continued and forecast growth:

• 2009 (Gartner), smartphones accounted for 172.4 million (14%) of the 1.211 billion mobile phones sold that year. 23.8% more smartphone sales than in 2008.
• Q1 2010 figures (Gartner) smartphones represented 54.3 million (17%) of the 314.7 million mobile phones sold, a sales increase of 49% over Q1 2009.
• Morgan Stanley Research estimates sales of smartphones will exceed those of PCs in 2012.
• Gartner expect over 500 million smartphones to sell in 2012.

From a marketing viewpoint, here are our top 3 App “applications”:

1. Develop an app to complement your existing product or service, submit it to the app store of the platform that you have developed for (Apple App Store, Android Marketplace, Blackberry….) and charge people to download.  The marketing advantage of this model is the affordability.  It’s rare to find an app that will charge the user more than a few pounds – a one off cost.  That might seem to go against your usual product pricing strategy, but this is all about volume.  Getting an app into one of the “app stores” opens it up to a huge audience.  Use the chargeable model if you’ve invested heavily in development to create very useful and usable app.  Example:

2. Giveaway a “lite” version free and charge for full version

Effectively you’re providing a taste of the bigger and better “paid for” version but there is also some value in raising awareness of your brand with any free App, as long as it’s good.  With this and a free version you still have the option to make some money by accepting advertising.  It’s common on “lite” versions particularly to see this – the App developer has more opportunity this way:

• To make money by taking the advertising placement
• To encourage users who don’t like the advertising, to upgrade to the full version (which they pay for).

3. Develop an App as a value-added service for your customers

There are big benefits to this as not only will your existing customers appreciate the mobile features you’re providing, but potential or new customers may adopt your service based on the great App they can use to make their life easier.  A good example is Tescos with their clubcard App – you can have your clubcard number scanned from the App on your mobile phone rather than needing to produce your loyalty card.

So the popular phrase “there’s an App for that” really is usually correct…

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Google Places lets people post reviews about your business.  This is usually good as it adds credibility to your reputation and thus it’s more likely that people will visit your website.  I would always encourage business to set themselves up on Google Places as it’s free and excellent for SEO (search engine optimisation).  The fake review story outlined how a competitor appeared to have posted a bad review about the photography business in question, with a link back to their own services.  It turned out that it was in fact deliberate spam, not posted by the competitor but somebody else determined to stir up trouble. The fake review appeared 100 times over the next few days against other photography companies in the area.

There were inevitable questions raised with Google as to why this was allowed to happen and Google says it is “working to improve the system”.  None of this is good, granted and we all know that a bad review sticks.  In this instance, the coverage by BBC Click has been useful PR for these businesses but what would you do if it happened to you?  Managing your PR online is a good habit to get into whether this happens or not, but here are some tips.

How to manage a bad review or comment:

1. Update your website home or news page immediately with a statement clearly explaining that you have been a victim of malicious spam or similar.  Make the statement fair and simple to understand and do not criticise your competitor.  If you’re unsure how best to do this, use a PR agency or somebody who has experience with PR.
2. Do not post negative reviews or comments back to the alleged perpetrator, as this case shows – you could be very wrong.  In any case “tit for tat” behaviour like this is rarely effective and definitely not good PR.
3. Turn it into useful content.  If you run a blog, blog about your experience and add a positive spin.  Update Twitter and other social media with statements as appropriate.
4. Keep an eye on your brand “mentions” to make sure there has been no further fallout.  You can use Twitter Search and Google Alerts, (both free) to see what people are saying about your business.
5. If there has been further talk, address each instance individually using comments or replies as appropriate for the medium (e.g. replies on Twitter, comments on a blog), remembering to be professional at all times which means not criticising anybody else. You’re only seeking to show your reviews or comments were fake.
6. Don’t be tempted to disable comments, reviews or feedback wherever you currently have them open.  In the long run this will do your PR more harm than good.

Why do I still think that reviews and comments are good?

Because what I love most as a marketer about social media and the whole interactive approach on the Internet today, is its transparency and openness.  After so long writing “marketing copy”, promotional advertising and static websites we can now get closer to our customers by talking to them, encouraging feedback and even using social networks as customer service channels.  It means we have to be good or else we’ll be found out which is just how it should be.  I don’t think any of us set out to provide a bad customer experience and if we did, wouldn’t we want to be the first to know?

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Understanding our shortfalls was the first step, our biggest challenge being time. So we outsourced some PR support and a link-building project to help us get off the ground more quickly and already it’s paying off. Because tracking is so effective online, we were able to see the PR, in the form of a few press releases distributed online to targeted websites and news distribution services using Google Alerts and Analytics.  This reporting showed us where this had appeared and our first links. We then issued a discount code to journalists encouraging them to review BusinessPlanWiz for free and I’m pleased to say we got an excellent business plan review as a result – and another link from the website “Company Partners“.

So far so good, then our outsourced support (Rob from Media Matters in Peterborough) helped by searching for links in earnest.  This involved a fair bit of research but a comprehensive spread of relevant websites evolved.  The linking strategy was not limited to just business plan websites, but any relevant content, from good sites (those with a strong page rank).  As a result we now have a good mix of appearances:

• Complementary websites featuring business planning
• Comments on blogs that mention business plans or business planning
• Participating in Questions and Answers on LinkedIn, related to business plans
• Online business directories
• Online news sites as a result of our press releases (particularly their business sections)
• We even got asked to provide some tips for a journalist putting together an article on business plans, as a result of the journalist contacts that an agency like Media Matters tends to have.

The point I really wanted to make here, is to think outside the box when starting a link building campaign.  We know it’s an important component of SEO (up to 70% of the Google search algorithm is now based on links we think) but at the same time as teaching this, it’s useful to use live examples like this one.

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It’s actually quite a vast topic, so I broke it down into:

• SMS texting
• Optimising websites for mobile devices
• Developing Apps
• Marketing Apps
• Advertising on Mobile platforms

That made it a bit easier and less daunting.  Then I got completely absorbed in the reasons that SMS works as a marketing channel, and when it came to delivering the training, a lively conversation started around the different uses for SMS to reach customers.  Most notably, we’ve all been impressed by this method at some point – from reminders to turn up for a haircut, through to excellent calls to action at just that right moment when you were thinking about something – like “your grocery shopping will be with you in 20 mins”.

There are many other ways to use SMS of course, here are just a few:

1. Reminders for appointments or due dates as above
2. Event prompts such as “book now”
3. Delivery confirmation
4. Tips delivered by SMS – straight to your mobile when you need to know.  We looked at a good example of this with National Geographic, created by 2Ergo
5. Discount codes delivered by text to prompt you to become a returning customer
6. Gather mobile data with a campaign asking people to “text SOMETHING to 123456 for more info”

It’s not quite that easy of course, because of the nature of texting being instant and quite personal.  So getting it right is important and this means collecting enough data to make sure you don’t make the mistake of sending irrelevant information to the recipient.  Enough data can include as much as you can gather without turning off people. For example, first name, gender and location would all be useful and then your messages can be more tailored.

The big question – how do you do it?  Much like email marketing it’s best to use a third party service.  You don’t want to use your own mobile to send out messages to customers as it’s not the most professional image.  It’s also easier to send out bulk messages from a computer using purpose built software rather than from a mobile device.  There are lots of services around, such as Text Marketer and Text Magic in the UK, but that’s certainly not exhaustive.  Cost?  Expect to pay between 4 – 6p per SMS, which, when you work it out, really isn’t that expensive compared to traditional direct mail.

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