The Research Playbook

Posts Tagged ‘Building a Network’

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The Social Media for SMB Group is designed to help address the needs of small and midsize businesses. 

It is where business owners, and executive teams that run businesses ask questions on how to leverage social media marketing, social media research, and the broad area of internet marketing and business research to advance their opportunities.

Professionals with credentials to offer guidance, advice, how-to suggestions, resources, and other  information are invited to bring their expertise to the group.

Please join Social Media for SMB Group to learn and share your knowledge!

 

Special Report: Website Traffic Businesses and Experts Speak Out 2012

 

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Here are a few best practices for writing and promoting your business blog taken from suggestions business owners and blogging experts recently shared with us. One important goal of a blog is to inform an audience and thereby elevate the blogger’s authority within a specific area of expertise and a specified target market.

In doing so the blog owner typically hopes that blog readers will follow him or her via email communications often in the form of a newsletter. “You must create and distribute content that is going to benefit your prospects’ lives and businesses. Don’t sell on your blog, educate.” You can promote your offering but do it in an educational format.

First, you must publish regularly. Exactly how regularly is a topic for debate, but the anecdotal evidence strongly suggests the more often the better and the definition of “more often” is 3-4 times weekly.

Do you have to post that often to have success? No, you don’t. However, if you do publish at least weekly and better yet twice weekly you will see results. Want to see the strongest results? You guessed it, publish posts 3-4 times per week (or more).

That said, if the content is poor publishing more often won’t help you. If you want to promote your blog (a.k.a. your message), than publish the best content possible.

To recap: Great content published regularly is the formula for getting attention!

 

Think not only about the audience you have but about the audience you want; find what they are reading and engage them. Find out where they hangout online and go there to talk about your content.

 

 

Find popular blogs and ask the owner about guest blogging. Offer content that he or she doesn’t have that is highly relevant to the blog’s audience. Add a well placed link back to an article you wrote that relates to the blog topic at hand. In addition, refer to one of the blogger’s earlier posts as a source for your new post. This builds back links between your two sites. It also increases visibility with both audiences and will attract the other bloggers attention, giving you an opportunity to strike a deal.

Of course, you can simply begin a relationship with another blogger by commenting on their blog. You may also want to ask them to write for you and as you build the size of your audience this will become an increasingly attractive offer. However, don’t wait until you have thousands of readers – a small but relevant audience is sufficient to attract another blogger’s attention.

Your blog post will only provide you with a positive impact if someone reads it! Therefore, publishing a post is only the first step. Next, you must make some noise. One good way is to announce the post (via hyperlink) on Twitter and other sites. Creating one or more tweets (2-3 tweets highlighting different aspects of a post) will bring visitors to your blog. Of course, this assumes you have developed a reasonably large Twitter following, a subject for another time.

Equally, valuable and perhaps more targeted is the announcement of your post to your LinkedIn connections. Once again, the impact will depend on the number of connections you have developed.

Of course, you don’t want to turn your Twitter account into a stream of broadcasts that only promote your blog posts. You need to vary the content and interact with your followers.

We all have limited time.  Therefore, we recommend that for best results you should use fewer networking platforms (3-4 not 6-10). Do it well rather than trying to be everywhere. Of course there is no harm in adding to your roster of sites and activities overtime.

Summarizing:

1. Quality content – no point in building traffic if they won’t like what they read

2. A decent quantity of content, added to regularly – whenever you add more content the chances are your traffic will increase.

3. Comment on other blogs, linking back to your blog and of course, aim for blogs with a similar readership

4. Write guest blog posts whenever you have the opportunity and create opportunities by commenting on other blogs.

5. Add links to your posts on your chosen social media platforms – automating them is okay, but tailor the associated comments.

6. Acknowledge people who respond to your posts and reply to comments thanking people who re-tweet your tweets.

7. Use keyword hyperlinks in your posts, but don’t overwhelm your readers with them and risk lowering the quality of your content

8. Track your blog stats; note the times people read your blog and the posts they read. (If you use WordPress try WP Slimstats)

9. Work on promotions that focus on the most popular posts and the most popular times.

10. Be as generous as you can. Use your blog and social media networks to help people link to others’ blogs.

11. Link to clients (e.g., when they have good news or you finish a project with them), retweet great content – you get the idea.

12. List your blog on your social media profiles and make it very easy to spot your homepage(s).

13. Build relationships on social media before you need them!

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There are many best practices for promoting websites and/or blogs through social media and other internet venues. However, just because a practice works for Joe and Debra doesn’t necessarily mean it translates into a workable solution for you.

For the best return on your marketing investment (RMI) you need to ask yourself a few important questions; and be honest about your answers. Here are four questions worth the time to consider:

   Who are your readers?

   What is important to them?

   What are their needs?

   Where do they congregate online?

It’s a waste of time to share your posts on Facebook if your customers and prospects don’t use Facebook.

Audit your readers. Ask them to give you feedback either informally as comments or formally by conducting a research project (survey). Write blog posts and measure reaction by checking your user analytics and monitoring the comments.

Compare your baseline analytic results (if you don’t have baselines start collecting them now) with data you collect during and after a marketing event. Understand the aggregate information you have on what target market your audience represents.

Once you know who they are and where they congregate you can create a presence and share your content with them and the extended network.

Here are several specific tactics worth consideration:
Read the rest of this entry »

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Some LinkedIn groups are so good (a.k.a. “cool”) you want to share them with some or all of your connections. You can do this in a number of ways, but the simplest way is to use the LinkedIn Share group option.

Select the group you want to share. Then click on the Share group option, which you will find toward the top of the page on the right hand side.

 

 

 

When you open this dialogue box this is what you will see (of course the group you selected will replace the Social Media for SMB Group heading).

As you can quickly see this screen allows you to post an update, which is valuable, but not our focus. It also provides a check box, which will allow you to post the name of the group you want to share to other groups, again not our current focus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last check box gives you the option of sending an invitation to one or more (up to 50) of your connections. Check that box and this is what you’ll see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Type the first letter of the name of the people you want to send the invitation to and LinkedIn will supply a list of the contacts whose name begins with that letter. Add then to your send list.

Then do one more thing – personalize the message. You don’t have to write a long letter, in fact, a short one is better, but personalizing the message speaks volumes to people about how important they are and how important your message is to you.

Now you can share the groups you like and find useful with the people you think can benefit most from your discoveries!

 

 

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I think it’s fair to call Pinterest a phenomena given the short time it has taken them to go from start up to tipping point to critical mass. This networking platform has achieved remarkable success and as comScore reports, Pinterest has attracted nearly 12 million unique visitors in the month of January. There are already numerous articles and blog posts about this new network which began in May of 2010,  less than 2 years ago – now that’s a phenomena!

 

What sets Pinterest apart is its visual nature and with approximately 10 million members (and growing) it is not surprising companies want visibility for their brands on this site. Interesting content has gone viral more then once on Pinterest – what company would not want that to happen to them?

No other networking site has focused purely on the visual, which is a perfect fit for a company’s logo-brand building campaign. Pinterest has already gained the interest of and some very aggressive practices from well know brands. Companies are trying hard to use Pinterest as a venue to expose users to brand messages using the uniquely visual approach.

However, Pinterest is facing some issues. The interface is not as robust as some would like it especially regarding links to other sites like Twitter. Perhaps more importantly Pinterest must resolve the legal issue concerning pinning someone’s work without permission. It seems they need to be more like Facebook in this respect, though I’m guessing they would prefer to be less like Facebook in most respects. If Pinterest cannot resolve these issues quickly the growth they are experiencing now may not last.

 

While only time will tell if this “phenomena” has staying power, it certain is off to a very good start!

Currently membership is by invitation only, if you have not been able get invited contact me and I will happily set you up.

 

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One of the more important elements of running a business and/or developing professionally is staying on task. And, one task we’ve talked about on many occasions is how to use LinkedIn to move you forward professionally and make progress in your business. I’m assuming this is an important topic for you or you wouldn’t be reading this article.

Here’s a basic question I’d like you to consider “What are you doing to leverage the LinkedIn (or other platform) groups you belong to?”

I think this question is worth your time to answer. There are tangible benefits we can achieve from spending time on LinkedIn groups, however, a systematic approach will yield greater benefits than a casual poke-your-head in the door one will.

First, join and embrace discussion groups to enhance your authority. You do not have to become a world renowned Guru (though that would be great) to establish a position of authority. You simply have to show you are well informed on a topic and willing to share your thoughts with others. Demonstrate that you both appreciate the perspectives of others and that you have a perspective that adds value to the discussion. You can certainly go beyond this approach, but walk before you run.

One mistake a number of people make is only joining groups related to their profession, impressing your peers is fun, but will it leverage your time on discussion groups – LinkedIn or any others? A market researcher who only joins Market Research groups will find customers there, but he or she is likely to be one voice among many. Joining a marketing or communications group where potential clients hang out (marketing departments are often the purchasers of market research) might make more sense.

It is important to find out where your prospective customers hang out and join those groups too! This may take some investigation, but it is well worth the effort. The results can be dramatic.

Here are two additional posts from last year worth reading. Each will help you to use discussion groups more productively.

Keep your discussion on the first page

Does group size matter – yes it does

Staying on task whether it’s related to group discussions or another aspect of using social media is as important as keeping up with client or customer service requirements. In fact, one way to stay close to customers’ needs is to listen closely to the discussions you take part in.

 

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When you start a new discussion, it will be displayed on the first page, but not for long, especially if you posted your discussion in large group, with perhaps 100,000 or 200,000 members. A large number of discussions might be posted on such a group and to make room for the newest topics the not-so-old discussions are pushed to the background (page 2 and then to page 3, 5, 10 etc.) relatively quickly.

 

Unless your discussion attracts comments and “likes” very quickly it may not see the light of day for very long. Unfortunately, some good discussion topics that may attract attention simply do not stay on the front page long enough for interested parties to see them and comment. However, there are ways to extend the life of your discussion and give people who have an interest time to read it and hopefully comment.

 

If your discussion is quickly noticed and even one-person comments on it others are likely to comment on it too. Once the ball is rolling, you’ll have a fighting chance to achieve a measure of sustainability. Others will be curious and take notice, which often generates more comments and so forth.

 

Nothing succeeds like success!

 

The question is how to increase the chance your discussion will attract that all-important push from one or two initial readers. The answer is to invite people you have a connection with who are also members of the discussion group and ask them to comment or at least click on the like button.

 

Of course, this tactic works best if you are connected to a large number of people who share group membership with you. If this is not the case, get to work building your contacts!
 

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One of the most important activities on LinkedIn is joining and then participating in group discussions. This is where you meet people, explore ideas, make new connections, and overtime find resources and possibly clients. A question I am asked often is “Which groups should I join?”

 

There is no one answer, it always depends on your needs and objectives. However, allow me to make a recommendation that will serve you well regardless of the topic or your objectives for participating on group discussions.

 

It is relatively easy to find a LinkedIn discussion group that focuses on your topic of interest. In fact, you are very likely to find multiple groups that are specific to or touch on your interests.

 

How do you choose? Of course, relevance is the first criteria, but size matters too.

 

Typically, for any particular topic you’ll find very large groups with 10’s of thousands or perhaps 100’s of thousands of members, modest size groups less than 10,000 members, and small groups with hundreds of people. Each type of group by size has a unique value for your business.

 

The largest groups provide the broadest audience and a high volume of discussions. However, this is also a weakness, that is, with large groups, keeping your discussion thread on the front page will be challenging.

 

The modest size groups have a large enough membership to be of high value and you can more easily stand out in the crowd. You can achieve an influential status within a group by offering useful comments on other people’s discussions before launching your own discussions. With a few simple tactics (discussed in an up coming post) you can easily stay on the front page and perhaps achieve “Top Influencer” status for the week.

 

Small groups do not offer a broad audience, but they do offer you the potential of presenting your skills with little or no competition. A small group can provide you with a monopoly-like environment, where you’re the only game in town, at least for a narrow topic area.

 

The best approach is to explore all three types of groups and find ways to be known better, be helpful, and possibly attract prospects and resources.

Please listen to our video http://bit.ly/LinkedIn_Grps_Unleashed

And, comment on your experiences as a participant in LinkedIn groups – we’d like to hear from you!

 

 

 

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No one appreciates the value of LinkedIn (LI) more than I do. Which is the reason I want to alert you to a limitation you will eventually discover, assuming you use LI to its full potential? That limitation is the number of invitations LI allocates to each user.

The limitation seems high enough when you begin using LinkedIn, but overtime you might discover, as I did, that you can and will reach it. So, what is the limit on invitations? The number is 3,000.

I know what you’re thinking, “Oh man, what are you worried about?” “It will take me years to use up 3,000 invitations.”

Well you might be correct, but it’s useful to know the limit exists and not find out once it’s too late. Of course, truth be told, LinkedIn will warn you when you have used 2,000 and have only 1,000 invitations remaining.

However, it could help to know that the limit is there and to monitor how many invitations you’ve used (the number is available on the invitation page of your inbox messages).

 

There are ways to invite people that will preserve your invitation allocation, but that’s a topic for another day – stay tuned!

Please share your experiences using LinkedIn.  How have you been able to build relationships?

 

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This Twitter case study is another in a series of case studies demonstrating how businesses can grow a strong Twitter account and use it to gain advantage in the marketplace.

A small marketing and website design company in Virginia asked for help with their Twitter account. They simply wanted to build a well-targeted audience and use it to push people to their blog and help to create relationships with a broader audience. These are very typical objectives and very doable ones too!

The company had had a Twitter account for over a year and they had accumulated 449 followers and they were following 818 people.  We took over and quickly built the account to 1600 followers. However, at that point things slowed down and it wasn’t clear why. We investigated the follow-back situation and found that of the original 818 people being followed 427 were not following our client back and this had slowed finding new followers to a crawl.

Unfortunately, they had never inspected these non-followers and once we did a “purge”, our quest to build relevant followers was back on track. Within the 8-week contract period, we expanded the number of followers to 3,277. Since this client is familiar with social media, they decide to do the work internally going forward.

However, the company has suffered from its own success and, unfortunate, the account has not progressed , in fact, the number of followers has shrunk to just over 3,000. The reason is focus, if you don’t focus on the tasks of building your twitter followers you simply won’t see progress. Whether you go with the do-it-yourself or hire a social media manager the effort and resources applied will largely dictate the results you derive.

 

Please share your experiences using Twitter. How have you been able to build relationships?

 

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