It’s also a crucial time of year for marketers to roll their sleeves up and make some tough decisions for 2012. They will be crunching numbers, and asking critical questions like “what’s worth our continued investment in 2012? What needs to be cut? How successful were we in 2011?” and “what can we be doing better?” It’s also a time that, if you have a successful online community, you’ll be patting yourself on the back. Here are a few reasons you’ll be thankful you built the site:
1) Your online community gives you a place to consolidate your incredible content marketing pieces into one stellar resource center.
Content marketing, along with social media, were the two big “buzz words” for 2011. Due to recent Google algorithm changes, the need for high-quality content is clear: Not only must marketers change their approach from keyword-driven to more meaningful, original content, but must also publish new content frequently in order to make the enviable high ranks of Google search results. So, white papers were written. Blog posts were published. Webinars held, Tweets sent, Case Studies researched and eBooks rolled out. Whew, that’s a lot of content. Now, where do you put it?
Your online community is the best place to integrate your multiple content marketing initiatives. Content can be categorized, organized, and tailored for different audiences. Plus, as opposed to dumping it all in your company website, by housing it on an industry or topic-specific community site, your content is viewed as more credible and educational rather than promotional, or a sales pitch.
2) You have a place to integrate all those social media initiatives your company “had to do” in 2011 in order to stay competitive.
Let me guess: You created at least one new social media account this year. Oh wow, 4? Well, aren’t you glad you have an online community to bring together all your fans in one easy-to digest platform? Content can be cross-shared, discussions can be open to all your fans, and you can distribute content across all your sites with ease, because it all resides in one integrated repository. With an online community at the “hub” of all your social activity, you own the conversations occurring about your company, and industry. And, you’re easily able to establish a consistent voice across the various sites, something that’s quite difficult to achieve with scattered sites across the web.
3) Your online community gives you a place to communicate with and build trust with your target audience- something that’s tough to achieve on your company website.
This year was truly the year of the consumer. People don’t want to hear from you – they want to find you. Inbound marketing efforts sky rocketed, and traditional outbound methods decreased. With an online community, you’re able to engage in direct conversations with your target audience. By posting content and resources they are interested in, and talking about, you’re able to jump into the conversation, offering real-time insight and establishing yourself as a credible thought leader. Plus, if there are questions or concerns about your products, you’re able to react to them immediately, which is an incredible customer retention skill. The more quality content you provide and open, honest dialogue you engage in with your audience, the more trustworthy you’ll become. And the more people trust you, the more likely they’ll be to buy from you.
Remember, though, that these conversations are tough to have on your company website. The automatic reaction from your audience may be to avoid interactions with you, to avoid a potential sales pitch before they’ve even gathered the information they seek. On an industry-specific online community, however, there’s less pressure: It’s just a couple of experts sharing ideas, answering questions and providing educational resources to help guide your customers along their decision-making process.
4) You have a lead capture and nurture center right at your fingertips
Lead generation and nurturing can take an extremely large amount of effort from your sales and marketing team. But, with your online community, you have links to high-quality resources for any stage of the sales life cycle. Passive site visitors? You’ll capture their information with the quality gated content on your community (however, make sure you balance what you offer for free, and what you gate). New prospects? Send them to your white papers to learn more about the current state of your industry. For more serious prospects, you have volumes of case studies to send them to demonstrate best practices and lessons learned. Regardless of what stage of interest your community visitor is at, there’s a content piece on your community that speaks to them .There’s a forum they can join, or poll they can take. There’s someone they can talk to if they have further questions. This is a powerful portal you have at your fingertips, and one your sales team should be leveraging just as much as your marketing team. Because your best customers, the ones who renew with you year after year, are the ones who’ve had the chance to make educated decisions and build a strong relationship with you at their own pace.
5) You’re beating your competitors- literally and figuratively.
Though extremely beneficial for businesses – for more reasons than I’ve even listed here – online communities are still a newer tool for marketers, especially in B2B. But, when done well, they are able to boost your company’s reputation and drive you up in organic search engine ranking. This places you ahead of your competitors who don’t have an online community in many ways: You’re educating their target audience, positioning yourself as the industry leader, owning top real estate on Google, and more.
What aspect of your online community are you most thankful for this week?
]]>Confused? Don’t be: There’s a subtle distinction that needs to be made between social network users engaging with your brand, and using social media to research your brand. Even if they don’t want to join your discussion groups, post on your Facebook wall or subscribe to your Twitter feed, chances are your audience wants to use social media to learn more about you, on their own terms.
The same survey indicated that “54% of respondents said they used social networks to research brands.” The message is clear: Your target audience wants to be in the driver’s seat, and you need to provide the right online vehicles if you want to be considered in their purchase decision-making.
Your customers want to engage with the things they are passionate about, and if you provide that to them, then you’re all the more equipped to be top-of-mind when they are ready to buy.
Here are a few ways to engage with their passions, without brand-blasting them.
1) Build a topical online community
Whether you use Facebook, LinkedIn, or build your own online community, focus your topics and content on your products or services-types, rather than specific company. For example, if you’re a car manufacturer who makes convertibles, make the focus of your online community about the experience and thrill of being a convertible owner. No one wants to talk to a company before they’ve done any research, right? Talk about different experiences a convertible driver can have during each season, insurance-options and even specialty features. By providing a go-to resource for people who are excited and passionate about buying a convertible, you will be top-of-mind if and when they are ready to buy.
If you’re an established brand, then you should probably associate your company name with the site, but don’t be overly-promotional. Make the focus of your sites about your visitors and their passions, not about you.
2) Give educational content for free
The internet is an expansive resource center, so chances are if you’re not giving out information for free, someone is. Make sure your marketing team is equipped with educational, informative and fun content pieces to engage your readers. Post a “Top 10 Convertible Road Trip Routes” eBook, and ask for visitor feedback and reactions. Again, you’re invoking their emotions here, not trying to sell them. That comes much later, and is – according to the research findings listed above – not what they want to come to your site for.
2) Post videos and pictures- and ask your audience to do the same
Some of the coolest content marketing pieces I’ve seen from companies are their multimedia elements. PepsiCo and Sony are two companies to check out for examples (on Facebook, Twitter or Google+). They talk about their products but in such a topical way that you almost forget they are promoting themselves. They are showing how to have fun with their products, honing in on what sparks their visitors interests. Aflac did this last year too- only they asked visitors to contribute their own videos. Even better. The more you’re asking your audience to engage with their passions, using your brand as a vehicle, the better.
3) Use promotions and contests
Finally, a great way to spark passion in your audience is to get their juices flowing. Offer them something cool in exchange for a video or picture, enter them to win the latest technology product, or share their latest idea for how you can improve one of your products. Research indicates that “61% of consumers who do engage with brands online do so because of a promotion or to receive a special offer” because they need to have skin in the game. I would avoid providing a discount on your services, because that seems a bit self-serving. Make it all about them- stroke their egos, and make them eager to return to your sites to find more cool stuff that sparks their passions. Eventually, your company will become one of them.
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We ‘Google’.
Which is exactly why Google+ is worth our attention. As the go-to search engine for a majority of internet users, Google has the power to petrify marketers with each new algorithm update: We scramble to improve our content, optimize our SEO and check the quality of our links and site design. So when Google creates a social network, we should take note: Our site ranking could be dependent on how often content is shared on the Google + page, or how many fans we have.
So I create a page.
Here are 7 immediate reactions I had to setting it up, and from exploring other company’s Google + pages. Keep in mind, this was yesterday. Like most companies, I think we’re all still learning the ropes, here.
1) I really like the layout. I checked out the Muppets fan page, and Pepsi fan page and immediately I was drawn to the bright, big colorful layout Google + offers. It felt less “narrow” than Facebook, and I didn’t have to scroll down so much to see previous conversations. This makes photos a lot easier to view, also, with an easy-to-spot conversation bubble to notify which photos had comments attached to them. There’s just something about that clean design that is a breath of fresh air from the ad-and-content-cluttered Twitter and Facebook.
2) It’s really hard to upload a good logo. Now, I’m not a graphic designer, but I found the interface really difficult. It took our team several tries to upload a picture that was the right size, and resolution, required for the page.
3) Segmentation is easy, and helps target messages. Keeping up with new lists, hashtags and trends is tiring on Twitter, and Facebook doesn’t really let you target messages to specific groups at all. So even though we don’t have followers to our Google+ page yet, I think the ability to segment certain communications by ‘groups’ is going to be awesome. Think about it, putting all our ‘current customers’ in one bucket for lead nurturing content and pictures, our prospects in another to receive case studies and promotional pieces, and our conference attendees in yet another bucket to participate in hangouts (see #5), now that’s every marketers dream. I’m interested to see how it’s going to work…
4) It’s “App” light: OK, so Facebook has some really cool apps that I don’t think Google+ has yet. But I’m a patient person (sort of). Plus I like the integration with YouTube with the handy slide-out bar at the top-right corner, so that’s keeping me occupied for now.
5) Interaction abilities are pretty cool: Hangouts = awesome. I can’t wait to eliminate the need for a 3rd party vendor or conference facility and just hang out with our clients and prospects online, at any time.
6) I’m trying to balance where it fits in our greater social media “plan”: I use Hootsuite for all my Facebook and Twitter updates, so right now I’m trying to sort out how I’m going to find the time to add yet another website to update with new content. I’m thinking an integration platform will be out sooner rather than later to streamline this for frazzled marketers (please!)
7) Ripples! This is perhaps my favorite feature of Google+- and reflective of the site’s very visual, clean style. You can actually see, in a web diagram, how a content piece has been shared, who your main influencers are, and other fascinating statistics that you just can’t find anywhere else. I’m going to have a lot of fun with this.
Finally, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, check out this article by Frank Reed about how companies rushing to Google+ is a bit silly; and remember “Google+ brand pages are going to change….Slow down folks. It’ll be OK.”
Because who knows what tomorrow will bring…..
Are you creating a Google+ page for your company? What has your experience been like?
]]>Wait- before you shut down your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, just listen to the rest of the findings. Though perceived as a ‘silver bullet’ for online marketers who, let’s face it, love to experiment in the latest social spaces, this survey urges marketers not to ignore the #1 source of sales – your company website. Why? Because the company website it the “hub.”
Still, just as a wheel needs its spokes, so too does your company website need a variety of ways for visitors to get there (i.e. your social sites and online community).
Think back to the 3 pillars of online marketing: Your online community, social media sites and company website. Their voices need to all be in sync and have consistent messages in order to build trust with your target audience. What I think this survey shows is that not enough companies are finding that harmony between their multiple online sites, so when a visitor ultimately gets to the company website they are still uncertain as to what, if any, value you can provide to them.
Here’s some ways to make the most of your company website and ensure you’re maximizing on your lead potential WITHOUT ignoring your social sites.
1) Keep your social media sites and online community going. Yup. Don’t you dare shut them down. These are critical elements of your marketing mix, but are you using them effectively as a driver to your company website? Consider persuading your social friends and community followers to your company site is through promotions, free demos and trials, and other prominent calls to action to download a new educational resource. Make them prominent, engaging and unique, and make it clear to your visitors exactly what they’ll find when they make the transition from social site to company website.
Also, reach out to your social communities when you’ve added something new to your company website, like “check out our new ‘News’ page and tell us what you think!” or “Vote for Our New Company Website Color Scheme!.” By making the lines between your different sites blurry means that your customers won’t feel like they are entering a sales pitch or needing to commit to you when visiting your company site: It will just be a natural extension of their interactions with you online.
2) Make your company website social. Add a “Community” page to your company website that houses all your social information, like who’s sharing what content, who’s answering discussions, and who’s liking what. Allow your network to contribute to discussions, or post their own experiences with your products and services in an open forum. Again, social media isn’t the “end all be all” for your marketing, but it is certainly a medium many people are comfortable engaging with. So, bring those social interactions to your company website- the place where the most lead potential is, and surround it with your great content (see #3) or Calls to Action (see #1).
3) Grab your visitors’ attention (and information) with content. Any marketer knows that content is the key to building brand awareness, getting quality leads and high organic search engine ranking. Use your social sites to promote or provide “teasers” to your online content, but then ultimately drive those conversations and content pieces back to your company website. Start a forum for your most recent white paper, and post statistics from the piece directly on your social sites. This way, you’re giving site visitors exactly what they want; valuable information and answers to their questions with the ability to provide their own insights as well.
Also consider reaching out to your community for content ideas. Take a poll on what your next webinar topic should be, or invite others to be featured guest contributors. Make the content something that really matters to them and give them ‘skin in the game’, all huge engagement drivers.
4) Move from static to dynamic –and know what works: 80% of survey respondents indicated that their website wasn’t living up to its potential. By applying some of the same rules you impart on your social media sites to your company website, you may be able to avoid this problem. Social sites and online communities should not be static, and in this day and age, neither should your company website. Though it’s a “hub” it’s not and shouldn’t be unchanging: Make it compelling, interesting and dynamic; refreshing content, ads, calls to action and information frequently to keep visitors engaged and interested. Making your site more social and content-focused, and less about “you” is a great way to establish trust with your prospects, increasing their propensity to invest with you when they’re ready.
5) What you don’t know may kill you (ok, maybe not kill you- but limit your sales potential). The most important thing to focus on with your company website is making sure you’re measuring all these activities: Implement a way to capture visitor information and metrics (including how they got to your site, how long they stayed, and where they abandoned it) as a way to optimize your investments and know what you should put the most effort into. And remember, it’s not just a numbers game anymore. While the survey shows that 34% of respondents wanting quality versus high quantities of leads, consider what your company is really driving towards with these efforts. Are you looking for lots of traffic? Or maybe a smaller number of highly engaged individuals? Do you want people coming in from LinkedIn groups, or Google?
All roads lead to your company website, but there are many ways of getting there. Make the path easy for your target audience, make it interesting and scenic, and make it fun.
Connect with us and join the conversation: Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter
What are some ways you’re integrating your multiple online channels? Are you struggling with the effectiveness of your company website, consider its potential value as a lead-generating machine?
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I had an interesting call with a client today who was in the process of reviewing their online community’s “health” 6 months after launch. I thought this was an interesting concept: I’m a strong proponent for constant site evaluations, audits and updates to keep content and design fresh, but a six-month “check up” was a concept I hadn’t considered before. But what does this evaluation entail? What tests need to be performed? How can you gauge which results are ‘healthier’ than others, and where your high-risk areas are?
Chances are this check-up might be happening with your leadership, who are also looking to see what the results of their investments are. Here are some ideas for mapping out this meeting and what prep-work you can do to make it a meaningful and productive undertaking for you and your bosses.
Preparing For Your Check Up
Before you enter a room with leadership, dig up all your documentation from the start of the online community development process. Why did you create one? What overall objectives did you set for the program, and what deadlines did you give yourself for certain activities? Arm yourself with this documentation to provide at the start of the meeting, and show your leadership in detail where you stand on specific accomplishments.
Examples:
Goal 1: Improve brand awareness: Compare your presence on major search engines from 6 months ago and today. Have you climbed in search engines? Are you showing up in News Alerts? Have you been mentioned in any blogs, industry sites, LinkedIn Groups or conferences? Bring in any and all documentation that shows how your brand name has been growing in the market place. Also, track the number of site visitors your online community has received. If it’s growing month-to-month, then more and more people are being exposed to your community (and your branding) as well.
Goal 2: Build a content portal to position our company as a thought leader: Here’s where numbers also count. Develop a matrix of all your online community articles by specific topics, and track how many readers viewed each piece. Then, compare this with how many people were viewing your press releases or other articles/content on your company website or anywhere else it was housed before the community. Also, again you can see the results of your activities with Google: Track your presence in search engines, type in your keywords and see how many of your pieces show up, and monitor your presence in News Alerts. These are all indicators of your status as a thought leader, and remember- the more content you develop, the more likely the status is to increase. By tracking which topics ‘trend’ over others, you’re also ensuring that you are creating and delivering the content that your audience seeks the most.
Goal 3: Generate Leads: This is trickier to monitor, but there are some ways you can bring some data to the table for this meeting. For one, on how many people downloaded your assets? How many site visitors have you had, and how many “converted” (tip: clarify internally what a conversion means and get consensus- for some companies it means downloaded a form for a trial, for others it means a signed contract). How many people signed-up to receive your eNewsletter, or participated in a discussion or survey/poll on your site? These prospects are all valuable and potential leads for your business because they’ve actively chosen to interact with you. Be sure you’re realistic with your lead generation expectations, too. After 6 months, if you have a long sales-cycle or are a B2B brand you may not have closed any leads yet directly from the community, and that’s OK. You’re building your brand and repository of content that will continue to nurture prospects, eventually getting them to enter their information for a free trial, Webinar, white paper or other gated piece.
In short, you’ll need the numbers to do the talking, which we’ll talk more about further along in this piece.
Now it’s meeting time: Here’s what your check-up should include:
Finally, where are things appearing on your page? Are you rotating this? Testing out which content and design placement works best for certain content pieces is an important part of your preventative care as you can avoid potentially detrimental activities that may weaken your SEO or your site visitor’s experience.
5) Report-Out Regularly: Don’t wait another 6 months to tell your leadership how the community is performing. Share a content piece that generated a lot of hits, or provide monthly reports on lead captures or conversions. Give a summary of the most popular discussions on the site, and even ask your leadership to participate! Make your community something the whole company is invested in, and working together to make succeed.
Finally, Keep Your Eye on the Ball
Make managing your online community a part of your daily routine. Though it doesn’t need to take up too much time, those valuable 20-30 minutes a day can make or break your site, if spent wisely. Look at your articles and see if there’s anything that needs to be covered for the week. See who’s talking about you, and conversed back with them. Post a picture, a video, or swap out an advertisement. By staying involved with your community you’ll be the first to know what’s working, or what needs to be changed.
Do you perform a community “Check Up”? What do you look to measure during these meetings? Connect with us and Join the conversation on any of our social sites. Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter
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So the biggest ticket item for marketers is also the biggest challenge. No surprise here. As marketers struggle to navigate the new world of online lead gen and advertising, more and more are turning to social media and online communities to help them not only build brand awareness, but nurture and capture those prospects who visit their sites.
Content is out there, and being created by the second. So now, more than ever, it’s important that your company be viewed as a thought leader, which can be established through multiple online content and branding activities. But, this is a delicate practice that requires a balance of your company voice with that of your audience and the broader industry –and requires more educational messages than promotional ones. Without this balance it’s impossible to build trust with potential customers who will find your company while seeking educational information, not a sales pitch.
Here are 5 ways to achieve this balance on your social media and online community sites. Here are 5 ways to achieve this balance on your social media and online community sites. For more ideas and best practices, join the upcoming free webinar happening October 17, 2012. The webinar will cover how companies are using specific lead gen and branding initiatives online to achieve success and be viewed as a thought leader; no small feat, for sure.
1) Open your content ‘gates’: If you’re new to the social media or online community-game, you need to build trust with your audience before asking them for ANYTHING. This means free white papers, videos, case studies. A free consultation, perhaps, or incentive. Build that relationship before you ask for anything from them, because this will be the key to them offering up their personal information to you in the future.
2) Answer questions and establish a personality: Just as you need to establish your content “voice”- you need to have personality shine through your sites so your audience feels connected with you. Use your online community as a place to become “real”. Implement a live chat feature, or show some cool things your company is doing unrelated to your products or services. Finally, take the time to respond to customer inquiries on your social sites. These connections points will be crucial, and top-of-mind, when ready to buy.
3) Provide content as a nurture technique, tailored for different audiences. This is a great way to reach all your different audiences. For example, have a section on your site or content pieces that are tailored for different job functions. Or, provide industry analysis and reports for each of your verticals. Finally, allow your audience to sign up for updates that are relevant to them by developing targeted eNewsletters. By giving your audience exactly what they want, and listening to their needs, you’ll be better equipped to establish yourself as a trustworthy and educational resource (as opposed to a sales center).
4) Use surveys to see what your audience wants to know from you. Plain and simple, nothing’s clearer than a poll. You may need to provide incentives for people to complete them, but the direct input from your audience is invaluable.
5) Give industry news for free, but offer an eNews for consolidation of the ‘latest and greatest’ for your audience. This allows you to build your database of people who have requested to hear from you on an ongoing basis (i.e., marketing gold).
How do you balance lead gen with online advertising on your social media sites or online community? Join the conversation. Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter
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That’s why marketers are focusing on integration as a main priority for 2012- and are looking to marry the 3 pillars of their online marketing (website, online community and social) activities by making sure messages are consistent and the sites are all “speaking” with each other. Now, how the heck do you even do this?
The first thing you do is put a Twitter button on your company website. Good, you can check that off the list, right?
Wrong.
You’ve taken the first step to integrating your multiple online sites, but you need to take it even further. Consider what blogger Jeff Bullas writes about the two sins of the stupid blogger and how it applies to any of your online content initiatives:
1) Failing to include Social Network SHARE buttons
2) Failing to include Social Network SUBSCRIBE buttons.
If you put a Twitter button on your company website, you are sort of crossing number 2 off the list. But not really. For one, you’re not giving your visitors the opportunity to share information they find on your site. Secondly, the only way people can learn about and subscribe to your social sites is if they are already on your company website.
Here are some tactical ways to get your 3 sites (or more) “talking” to each other in a clear, consistent voice:
1) Implement an article widget, or a small box that can stream your latest online community or news articles any of your sites. People can easily click on an article that interests them, but make sure they can also “share” it on their social sites before they’re done.
2) Bring in a Twitter feed box to your community or company website show the activity surrounding your account. People will see real-time content sharing and comments, and watch how you interact with your audience.
3) Only share the most educational, non-promotional content on your community, and I would recommend even social sites. People know how to find you if they ended you. For now, they just need advice, ideas, and inspiration. They want to hear from you, not your sales team. So give them what they’re looking for.
Now, you might be thinking “oh come on, everyone has social sharing buttons and interlinking between their sites. This is common knowledge.”
Wrong again, my friends.
According to a recent report by BrightEdge Technologies only “53.6% of the 10,000 most popular websites have social links or plugins to Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn or Twitter.” Shocking, right? This report also shared that websites that feature a tweet button “drive almost seven times more link mentions on average than sites that do not.”
Seven times. That’s a huge difference, and will make a real impact on how you differentiate yourself from your competitors.
Join the conversation- how are you linking your online community, social sites and company websites? How are you using Twitter to do so?
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That’s more than a yummy refreshment. That’s marketing magic.
Giving consumers the power to “design their own” drink is a great way to nurture their community by giving them 3 things they really want.
1) Social interaction
2) Input into a product and the ability to tailor it to meet their needs
3) To have FUN
The article further highlights that “Companies that are very responsive to their online community -- retailers like Nordstrom and Victoria's Secret -- get more out of the interaction than just online sales. Like Coke's vending machine, which sends data back to the Atlanta headquarters about taste preferences and shopping activity, a thriving online community can also give retailers a huge amount of market data -- a window into what customers want.”
This is, as we’ve discussed before, one of the greatest strengths of an online community: The ability to learn from your customers, ask them questions, give them answers to their questions, and nurture them. Even if you don’t sell something “cool” like a soft drink, you can still find a way to make your online community fun, and meaningful for your audience.
1) Gather Customer Input
Most companies don’t have the ability to tailor their products based on their customer’s preferences, so a solution like the Coca-Cola Freestyle vending machine might not be suitable for everyone. But, what you can do via your online community is ask for product input from your audience. Say you’re planning a product upgrade: Post a poll on your online community asking your audience to vote on which feature should be added next. Or, hold a contest asking your customers for their ideas on a future video, white paper topic or webinar, and reward a winner with a discount (or gift) and notoriety on your site. These activities don’t take too much time, and won’t deter from your bigger business activities, but will likely have a huge impact on your reputation, creating loyal customers who want to stay engaged with you because they know you’re listening to them.
2) Integrate Mobile & Social
These days, most people have Smartphones, and are using them to browse the internet, check emails, and stay connected with their social networks. The smartest thing a company can do is take advantage of this by making it easy for customers to find, and interact with you, by using these devices.
An App is a great way for people to stay up-to-date with your company “on-the-go”. Offer an App as a place for people to have Live Chats with your customer service representatives, or receive ‘alerts’ on product updates and breaking news. You can even offer your customers the ability to pay via an App, or access their account information, for real-time interactions.
Even if an App isn’t the solution for your business, there are still ways to make your online community mobile and social-friendly. Make links to your social sites prominent, post daily stories or “alerts” or offer a case study download for “Following” or “Friending” your site. Finally, work with your design team to ensure your site is visually appealing and easy-to-navigate from all types of devices (i.e. less use of Flash).
3) Make the Transition from Research to Purchase Easy
Your online community shouldn’t be ‘all about you’ but rather your industry as a whole: It should provide your target audience with education and be a place to learn, discuss, engage and share. But, as a marketer you know that the ultimate goal is to get those community visitors to buy from you. One method I’ve seen work well is to have a simple call to action on each page, article, educational piece and link with simple wording, like “Click here for a demo" or “Learn more”. By not seeming too “over promotional” but still providing a bridge for your audience to go from your community to company site, you’re feeding your sales cycle without losing credibility. Another method I’ve seen work well is to have a “Sign Up” box for a eNewsletter, or link to social site, so people can actively sign-up to updates from you on their own terms.
So, there are still some sweet options for those of you who crave the cool-factor a personalized soft drink vending machine gives Coca-Cola, and these days the online world is your oyster: The more fun, innovative and unique your online community, the bigger bang you’re going to get.
What are some ways you’re using online communities to keep your consumers engaged? Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter
]]>Intrigued by this assumption, I posed this question to some of my LinkedIn comrades in several discussion groups (ps. I’m loving the engagements and discussions happening on LinkedIn these days…)
Here’s what I asked, and what I learned from the fantastic participants:
Just read an article that shows B2C companies leading the way for Social Media- but I'm sure there are strong examples from B2B- have any to share?
Finally, one person commented that “the best I have seen is IBM. But the mid-sized guys (let's say $US500MM - 1BB) are few and far between. With the economic downturn it seems creativity and experimentation were the first victims in this category - in my experience most are trying franticly to do more and faster of what they already knew how to do - direct selling for example.” Now this, I can believe, especially with Lead Generation topping the charts as the main marketing initiative this year for most companies who don’t have the time, or money, to invest in social media as much as they’d like.
Still, according to a recent Social Media B2B survey, 86% of companies are using social media, with more than half incorporating it into their marketing strategies. The numbers keep growing, too, so I think with examples like the ones above, and the many, many more I’m sure people have to share, we’ll keep seeing improvement in how B2B companies leverage social media, albeit somewhat differently from B2C, for marketing reasons.
Add your own examples to this list- Join the conversation!
1) Think Before You Tweet
Twitter is an excellent content sharing tool, and the more content you share the more likely you are to improve your SEO and reputation in your industry. This is why many businesses jumped on the Twitter train right away, setting up auto feeds to push every press releases, following thousands of people, and adding a “like” button to their entire site. My advice for online community managers is to be a bit more thoughtful with your tweeting. An auto-feed is a great way to push your content, but is exactly that: Automated. This goes against the concept of an online community, which is to be an engaging, interacting community of visitors sharing valuable information and prompting discussions.
What I would recommend is highlighting a few comments, discussions or articles via Twitter every week on your online community, and add a comment about it instead of just a link (something like “Our readers are passionate about their phones, check out the responses to the latest technology review article). Be sure to give your readers props too for contributing their comments or articles with the “@” features (because who doesn’t’ love to see their name in lights?)
2) Use the HashTag, Not “New Account”
Companies are often tempted to create a new Twitter account for each of their business units or products. But on an online community, what you’ll want to promote is unity through one core site. Your community should be a one-stop-shop for all your visitor’s interests, and using the hashtag allows you to categorize and choose specific topics to focus on through your online community without moving visitors away from your main site. It’s also a way for people to more easily find your content if they search for it on Twitter. Think about what HBO does for its series. Rather than a site for True Blood, Entourage, and all my other favorite shows, you can just search by #trueblood. It’s more organic, more natural and much easier than managing multiple sites with multiple followers. You have enough on your social plate as it is.
3) Show Your Personality
This ties back to providing automatic feeds of your content – there’s no in plain links. Try showing some style on your online community (check out how to use social media for socializing in this recent article via #cmworld). Give your posts, your tweets, and your discussions some flavor, and people will be much more willing to interact with you and share your content.
4) Be a Giver, Not a Taker
Twitter, Facebook and Linked in can all feel a one way street. You push your content, start discussions, post links and ask people to come to you. But, on an online community it’s important to give AND take. Give your readers props on your online community. Share someone else’s content, or start a discussion in response to someone’s posted article. The more love you give, the more you’ll get, and people will want to participate in your online community to get some of that attention you’re handing out.
5) Water, But Don’t Drown
Online communities need to be nurtured, but don’t go overboard. If you go to an online community with too much going on, it can actually serve as a deterrent. Choose a balance of content, visuals, discussions and social media on the site every week, and stagger your content based on a pre-determined calendar. Choose a certain topic to cover each month, or plant seeds on your community to help it grow. A community visitor should feel like they have something to contribute to a site, and if the community’s already full, what more will they think they can give?
Connect with us and join the conversation: What are some manners you think online community managers should follow? Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter
And so, although it pains me to write this, here are some of the dark sides of online community-building:
A. Building an Online Community Before You’re Ready
Doing anything before you’re ready, or fully equipped, is generally a discouraged practice. The opposite of “analysis paralysis” this “rush to act because everyone has an online community” can actually be detrimental to companies looking to build their site. Without a carefully-contrive strategy that’s been vetted by leadership and all relevant internal parties, your community won’t have the foundation or nutrients to grow. Does your leadership love social media? Are they focused on your content marketing efforts? Is it all about the leads? And most importantly, who is going to support this community on an ongoing basis? Without getting these questions answered, a community might be dead in the water before it’s even live, causing you to lose credibility and stalling your progress in the online marketing space (also making you fall behind competitors).
To get ready, a company must be very honest with what its goals are for the community, and what its internal appetite is to invest time and money into the site. There’s a big different between a pilot community effort and full-blown launch, so don’t waste a lot of time or resources if you don’t need to. A “quick win” (i.e. quick rise in rankings, or certain number of leads) might be all you need for your company to determine how and why they should proceed with further online community developments.
B. “Set-it-and-Forget-it”
Communities don’t build themselves, and they don’t manage themselves. If you build an amazing site and do nothing with it, you could potentially do serious damage to your brand. People will visit the site, see stale content (or no content) or an outdated design, and come to their own conclusions about the validity of your offerings. This ties back into Point A, in that you should know what your goals for the community are (and get alignment on them) before taking time to develop the site. When developing your site, be realistic about how much time and effort you’re going to spend on the site. Do you have an internal design team to keep your site looking fresh and SEO-friendly? Do you have enough content on your community to keep readers engaged? Are you active enough in social media to integrate those capabilities in your site? For these and many additional reasons, many companies choose to outsource their online community building and management activities to an outside firm, or certain elements of them. It’s a lot of work, and it needs to be done right in order to get the desired impact.
C. Information Overload – and Inconsistency
You spend a lot of time building your company brand and reputation, but what many companies don’t realize is that in a short amount of time, a poorly-built or managed online community can take it all away. For one, your site shouldn’t duplicate your company website (see Point D for reasons why) or a place to just store all your content marketing pieces haphazardly. This is where strategy comes in, and where you need to determine what kinds of content will be best for your community audience and then test which pieces have the highest impact. Giving them what they crave (perhaps a “how-to-manual” or video) rather than your own marketing pieces will build the credibility of your site – and your company – positing you as an industry leader rather than overbearing salesperson. Although many companies use a community for lead generation, be careful to balance what you “gate” (i.e. require people to sign-up for viewing) with what you offer in good will to your audience. The more valuable information they absorb on their own, first, the more likely they’ll be to trust giving you their information in the future.
It’s also important that your branding and messages be consistent across all your marketing campaigns, including your online community. If your corporate website is serious and stuffy, but online community uses a wildly different color-scheme, tone of voice or style, you might confuse your audience about what your company really is. Be thoughtful in what you want your online community to look like, and include, and follow through with it week in and week out. This extra attention to detail will make a huge difference in how credible and trustworthy your community is perceived to be.
D. All About You
It’s so tempting to talk about yourself (isn’t’ that what I’ve been doing this entire blog post?) But an online community can’t be all about your company. This is one of the things most companies struggle with when managing their sites. You want it to be a well-branded, promotional site but you know that it needs to be educational, and encourage collaboration. So how do you achieve that?
For one, take a step back and listen to your audience. Visit other sites they’re going to, and join their LinkedIn groups. You’ll see the information that they post and like to share- so focus on that on your online community.
Think of your online community as just one pillar in your online marketing strategy, supplemented by your social media sites and corporate website. Combined, the three create a powerful marketing engine, driving your profitability and brand awareness. But, each piece of the strategy must have different goals and objectives, and when it comes down to it, your corporate website should be the place that’s “all about you.” Other sites, like your Facebook account or online community, should host a healthy balance of company and consumer voices, with more weight on the latter. Again, this is why many companies build a site through a third party or media site- because thought leadership and objectivity is key in getting an audience to trust you – and it takes time.
Connect with us and join the conversation: What are some of the downsides of building an online community that weren’t covered in this article? Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter
In a recent article posted on the eMarketing group on LinkedIn they listed “5 Social Marketing Disasters”. I found this list interesting, but didn’t necessarily agree with all of these being categorized as “disasters”. If you have a proper online community, then some of these “disasters” can actually benefit your business, but they need to be done right.
Take disaster number 1, “Creating too many groups, pages, etc”. Now, I agree with this concept to some extent, but also know there’s an opportunity here if you do have a need for multiple social sites: Integrate them on an online community. A quote from the article states “there are occasions where niche marketing may require several pages, but each page/group you have will have to be promoted individually. Additionally sub pages can cannibalize from your main company page or group.” But, based on a recent presentation at the Corporate Social Media Summit by Whole Foods head of marketing Bill Tolany, their company actually benefits by having local branches build social sites that support their local community events and promotions while still connecting with the main Whole Foods brand social site (we’ll talk more about promotions in a minute).
If you have individual locations or products that each would benefit from a social site, then find a way to have one online community that brings them all together under the same consistent look, feel and messaging. So your whole network would be brought together under one parent community but visitors would be able to navigate through targeted content in specific categories as well, making this a really robust and valuable community that they would likely return to again and again.
Take theknot.com as an example. As a main online community it provides women with everything from wedding dresses to vendors to personalized M&M’s. But, within the site there are sub-groups by category: wedding location, budget, style or color scheme, or life status. This is smart, because even though people have more specific, targeted interests and needs they are still always on the main online community site, and more likely to “cross over” into another section or group so seamlessly, they may not even realize it. This is cross-pollination – not cannibalism – and is online community success in the making.
By cross pollinating social groups, links, content and more on your online community, the more your SEO – and brand – will boost. Now, I agree it can be a “disaster” if many different social sites are created haphazardly with no consistent messages or branding, but if you organize the site content and streamline your messages and discussions you are only doing your visitors a service by giving them everything they need in one place.
Disaster #2: “Building your Facebook likes by using contents/give-a-ways”
From first glance, this implies that a company should not use a social site to run promotions or boost a band of followers, and after reading Facebook’s policy on promotions, I can see why this article discourages it. But, that’s not to say that companies shouldn’t use these types of promotional campaigns to build their followers, they just need to host them on their online community and then bring people from their other social sites to the online community to learn more and participate. This will boost their “band of followers” on the online community by bringing everyone together on one site rather than managing communications to a disperse network of followers.
Facebook strongly limits the ways a company can run promotions on their site, but having a promotion or campaign is a great way to boost your brand, audience and even revenue (read about Jabra’s recent campaign which made them $500k in 3 months as an example). My suggestion would be to launch a promotion on an online community, not your company website (company websites are almost always viewed as biased, salesy portals rather than objective educational resources) and direct people from your social sites to the online community like “go to our community to learn more about X deal”. This way, you’re avoiding Facebook’s strict policies but still bringing people together into one streamlined portal while boosting your brand.
These are just my ideas- what are some ways you’re running promotions or campaigns online? Do you struggle with having too many disperse social sites?
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]]>That’s right. Dell, Aflac, SAP, Whole Foods and Cisco were some of just a few companies who spoke about their experiences developing, deploying and measuring effective social media campaigns. And the more case studies I heard, the further I realized how similar companies of all sizes are when dealing with online marketing and social media, as the questions echoed what we at TMC hear from our clients regularly: What works best? How do you measure results? How do you get your C-suite to buy-in?
Here are some lessons I learned
1) Figure out your strategy and figure out a way to measure it
Most companies have social media accounts, but the biggest takeaway from this week’s Summit for me was that the most successful campaigns were ones that started out with a clearly defined and measurable purpose. For the WWE, it was to get a community of all their fans to go to an open forum and “like”, “dislike”, comment, post pictures and be truly passionate “fans” of their wrestling stars (who also Tweet across dozens of accounts. Yes, the wrestlers tweet.) But for Marriott, their approach is quite different as they host a closed community for certain members of a status club and use that as a way to keep that group of customers engaged. All the companies who had a clearly defined objective were clear that the vision needed to be vetted with leadership and approved so when results or ROI were requested, everyone was clear on just how successful the campaign was.
By establishing up-front what the objective of the community was, the easier it was to deploy those initiatives and know what to measure. Was number of “likes” and “fans” for the WWE important? Yes. But, for Whole Foods social media is more than likes and friends- their objective is to have a number of fans who are interactive and contribute to the site, even if in smaller quantities.
Plus, as a speaker from Adobe pointed out, the CEO might not care about how many tweets or “likes” you have. They want to know what all these activities are doing for the bottom line – and the sooner you figure out what your goal is, the sooner you can measure.
2) Use communities to serve your customers better
The TurboTax approach for social media is a great one. Get retired CPA’s engaged online and have them answer customer questions during tax season. This not only saves money on the company’s side in reducing how many people need to be hired during that busy time, but also creates an open community of people with a common interest. Whole Foods has a corporate Facebook page, but encourages each individual location to have sites, run promotions and get involved in their local community charities and events. Using social media to actually generate leads and sales is quite difficult to achieve and even measure, but using social media for customer engagement and retention is a lot easier. Answer customer questions online and ask them how satisfied they are. Take polls, give them exclusive offers and make them feel valued and important to your company. This creates a tribe of loyal followers which is one of the most important things a company can have.
3) Nurture your community of followers
We all know what Lead Nurturing is: Take your leads and instead of bombarding them with sales pitches, slowly over time engage with them, feed them relevant information and nurture their needs until you’ve formed a trustworthy bond with them. Communities and social sites also must be nurtured to grow over time and take collaboration, openness (too much monitoring or cutting off conversations restricts people from doing what’s in their nature: discussing openly). Nurture your groups by asking them questions, giving them special deals (Aflac ran a great campaign that was a competition asking people to submit videos explaining what Aflac was- which was extremely successful) and give them relevant content that will make them interested in what you’re going to share with them next.
One of the best quotes I heard during the summit was “track, listen and learn what your customers and prospects want – and give it to them.” A simple formula that any company, big or small, B2B and B2C can use and be successful with.
What are your biggest challenges with social media? What are some ways you’re overcoming them?
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But two interesting trends also arose from this study. For one, 84% of companies use Facebook to promote themselves, 75% use Twitter, and only 52% using LinkedIn according to the survey. This surprises me: For one, it’s clear that even though social media is a hot-trend for most companies, research shows that many aren’t confident they are “doing it right” nor do they have firm measurement in place to track their efforts. Secondly, it seems like LinkedIn should be where most of the investment is made, as it’s “the place” to be doing business (most of my comments and articles get way more responses and interactions on LinkedIn than on my Facebook or Twitter account).
Another trend that arose was that many companies are starting to outsource their social media efforts, in an upward trend from last year. Now this actually doesn’t surprise me. Recent reports have been showing this angst in companies over how to engage in social media appropriately, so “leaving it to the experts” seems like a logical solution. With search marketing spend on the rise, and an increase in spend in social media, it makes sense that Online Communities often appear as the solution that achieves both these goals in the most cost-effective way. Companies who do Online Communities well often integrate their social media sites into one “portal” using tools that share any content that’s created across all 3 sites seamlessly. With this streamlined process for providing links to your content, your search marketing initiatives can be met as well.
Just some thoughts- though. What do you think about these trends? Do they sound familiar with what you’re experiencing at your company?
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]]>Fortunately, Sneakerpedia is a nice mash-up of the two. For one, it’s an educational resource where people can learn about all sorts of sneakers from throughout history, like when it was made, by whom, materials it was made with, etc. Plus, people have the opportunity to share their own pictures and stories about their sneakers to share with people who have similar tastes as them (like canary yellow soccer kicks).
I love this concept as an Online Community for many reasons, but primarily because there are things that Foot Locker is doing with this Online Community that businesses of any size or industry could learn from:
1) Branding is present, but minimal. The site is about sneakers, not them, and they are wise to know that visitors will be more likely to congregate, learn and trust the site if it’s not overly sales-y. But I’ll tell you one thing: it works. I think Foot Locker is a much cooler brand now for launching this site, and went to Lady Foot Locker the very evening I discovered this to bring myself, and my sneakers, out of the late 90’s.
2) Users are encouraged to contribute: If Foot Locker has failed to capture your favorite gym shoe from 8th grade P.E., you can post it yourself! Now, this is a bit trickier for businesses to implement, because they might not necessarily want other company’s products on their site, but the concept is a good one: Let site visitors tell you what they want to see on the site – and oblige!
3) Rules are in place to ensure good conduct: At the top of Sneakerpedia is a simple bubble that says “Sneakerpedia is a social wiki, wiki rules apply. To find out more, visit our blog.” Brilliant. Make it an open forum, but make it clear that there are rules you need to follow to play well in the sandbox and repercussions if you don’t. As many businesses hesitate to open discussions on their online communities, I think this shows there are ways to do so without giving up your control of your site. Put rules in place. Kick people off if they break the rules. Simple. Chances are, by establishing yourself as the facilitator, not manager, of the site’s content, discussions and activity, visitors will have enough respect for the site to avoid breaking that trust.
Connect with Us and Join the Conversation: What are some other fun social online communities you’ve seen? Have you learned any lessons from them that can be applied to an online community for a business?