How to Implement a Social Media Marketing Strategy

Again, thank you to everyone for the support and enthusiasm for the presentation. Certainly this is something that has hit a nerve and I’ve heard you loud and clear. Over the coming weeks and months I will be devoting more time documenting the approach we are deploying at Alterian and sharing insights on what is and isn’t working.

To download a copy of the presentation, please visit the Alterian site:

http://www.alterian.com/smleadgen/

Thanks for the support!

Honestly, I’m overwhelmed at the feedback I’ve been receiving for the upcoming December webinar.  I know a lot of people have taken it upon themselves to reach out to their friends and colleagues to get them to the event.  I’m extremely grateful to you all!

Thank you!

- Tewksbum

December Webinar: How to Implement a Social Media Marketing Strategy

Okay, so yes, on December 17th I am hosting Alterian’s December webinar. My topic for the session will be how to make social media part of your strategic marketing planning.  Yes, I will cover some of the blocking and tackling of deploying to the channels, but the real point of emphasis is how to incorporate in a measurable, accountable way into an overall demand generation program.  Below is the most recent write up…

---

What you already know: Your emails are starting to fall on deaf ears; the quality and ROI of your PPC campaigns are on the decline; and your prospects and customers are spending more and more time online, but not necessarily on your site.

What you need to know: Social media can address all of these issues in a measurable, programmable way by taking the brand experience to the community and engaging people where they form impressions and find answers.

In this webinar, I will walk through the steps that can make you a social star. He will cover:

• Tracking customers online and identifying the right social channels
• Creating content that sticks and sells
• Crafting calls-to-action that are tailored to the social media
• Being accountable, and showing straightforward ways to demonstrate lift and ROI
• Developing a search strategy that gives your content the best chance of being found
• Enabling new social channels like LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter to cheaply and efficiently spread your brand message
• And much more…

Thursday, December 17, 2009
10am CT / 8am PT / 11am ET / 16.00 GMT
…click to register…

What is Social Media Marketing?

Recently I was blasted by someone for not having more Twitter followers. It certainly gave me pause. For sure, from a personal branding stand point “followers” and “views” can be a barometer of success in the social space. I would argue, however, there are other valid approaches. Below is in part the rebuttal I sent, but this is something I will certainly start to pickup in greater detail….

*****************

… My perspective on social media, which is rooted in the idea’s of 1:1 and true customer centric engagement, is that it opens new avenues to deepen and broaden your customer relationships. I like to use this visual to make a point:

(actually, I usually use a slightly different one, but at any rate…)

I’d rather be engaged with the right 300 customers than 30,000 of the wrong ones. This is the focus of my forthcoming webinar. To present a framework for how you can systematically use social media as part of your greater demand generation program to weed through the chaff so you can target and pull through the right prospects.

A big component of this is transparency and traceability. I spend a lot of time covering how you can track asset performance and combine it with other channel data, particularly financial, to identify what’s working and what’s truly moving the needle. Friend Mark Wright (president of TargetBase) I think said it best, “a click is just a click if you can’t relate it to revenue.” Too much effort in the social media space I’m afraid falls in this category.

How to Drive Demand Generation with an Inbound, Social Media Strategy

Flip the funnel.  Flatten the funnel.  Get rid of the funnel!  These aren’t some loony, fringe ideas, but rather the thinking of some of the leading marketing minds of our time like Godin, Meerman, and Brogan.  Everyone recognizes that social media is having a huge impact on successful demand generation.  The problem lies in identifying how to apply it to the greatest benefit.

Some argue that you should rely entirely upon social media.  That if you position things properly you can just sit back and let the customers come to you.  Well… I don’t know about you, but I don’t know of any salesman that’s made his numbers by sitting around and waiting for the phone to ring.  As with all good things, and social media is a good thing, when done to excess it can be bad.  Like Twinkies and margaritas.

When done right, however, social media can have a profound impact on your demand generation efforts.  At a time when it’s getting a lot harder to fill the funnel with email blasts, PPC campaigns, and cold calling social media offers an alternative way to engage with your prospects and customers.

In this webinar we will show you how to cost efficiently keep the top of your funnel primed using a repeatable 4 part framework that covers:

• Be Interesting
  • How to understand your audience’s pains and crafting relevant, interesting stories
• Be Accessible
  • How to use digital to be available at a place and time of the customers choosing
• Be Findable
  • How to use SEO and tagging to get your message in front of high value prospects
• Be Measurable
  • How to use asset and lead tracking to monetize the impact of your efforts

Thursday, December 17, 2009
10am CT / 8am PT / 11am ET / 16.00 GMT
…click to register…

Also, we were posted up at:

http://benbradley.net/2009/12/08/webinar-how-to-drive-demand-generation-with-an-inbound-social-media-strategy/

http://timtetra.com/5455/webinar-%E2%80%93-how-to-drive-demand-generation-with-an-inbound-social/

How do you “be Interesting” and “be Findable” in Social Media

Q: In terms of being findable, how to you apply this to the assets on Social Media?  Is that done through being interesting to your audiences?

I wanted to make sure I followed up your question with a little more detail.  In terms of being successful in social media it really is about following the 4-B framework.

1. Be Interesting. As a starting point, yes, you need to make sure you are producing content interesting to your core audience.  Nothing can replace good content.
2. Be Accessible. Again – this is about leveraging all the free points of distribution to deliver your brand experience.
3. Be Findable. A lot of stuff to potentially cover here, but if I were to summarize, the idea is to structure your content in a certain way to make it show up in the searches that people run via Google, Yahoo, etc.  I’d think of this “certain way” like the rules to writing a good research paper, or news article.  A few simple rules to keep in mind are:

• Keep a list of key words handy – use them throughout everything you do
• In terms of titles and even file names (e.g., “MyFile.doc”) use the keywords first – the further to the left they are, the more bang you will get
• Use bold – this calls out a section for being important

4. Be Accountable. Of all the rules, this one can be the hardest to execute because it is technically the most difficult. Recommendations here are to learn about redirects (e.g., Bit.ly) and always remember the goal is to tie your marketing activities to revenue.