Reasons to use LinkedIn for B2B Lead Generation

A Research Report for B2B Marketers by Leadformix reveals extensive reasons by LinkedIn is a great network and set of tools for B2B lead generation. 

Leadformix report can be accessed here.

Using LISTS to manage Twitter

Twitter can be a great tool for banter, relationship building, marketing and more. However it can also be a big time sink if your activity is not actively managed and focused, and return on time can be poor.

For example, your Tweet-stream can become very busy, taking up more of your time with distractions and you risk missing an important message.

You can be more focused, use your time better and see important messages if you use LISTS wisely.

Being on a list helps online reputation too. You will help  people you Follow by adding them to lists as it boosts their online reputation. And if you put out messages that others want to read as a priority then they will add you to their lists and give your reputation a lift.

You can also Follow a List someone else has created, saving you the effort of Finding and following individuals, so you can get results far quicker. See below for more on this!

With a bit of set-up and regular maintenance as part of your routine you should see more benefits and time savings from Twitter.

Here are some tips to get you started.

1. Create one or several LISTS for your Twitter account, either on  or in your desktop/dashboard application such as Hootsuite. If they’re public then think twice before creating a ‘customer’ or ‘prospect’ list.

2. Add key people you follow to a relevant list. Go through your ‘Following’ list, and as you follow new people also add then to a list where appropriate.

3. Add the LIST as a column in Hootsuite, or check it regularly in Twitter. Having created a list make use of it! Make it the first column on Hootsuite, rather than the Home Feed with everyone you’re following on it.

4. To be really smart, set-up an automatic publishing service. Try the Paper.li application to automatically create and publish a daily or weekly ‘paper’ by pulling together the top tweets from people in a list, ie. around a theme. A Tweet can be generated automatically to alert you and your followers. It’s a simple way to do Social Media Monitoring.

5. Every Friday, when you’re doing #FF (Friends Friday) and highlighting people worth following, why not add those people to your own ‘Friends’ list.

6. Save time and effort by following an existing list. Visit Listorious or other list site to see what lists are available. Choose to Follow a suitable list. Then add that list to your desktop ie. Hootsuite as a stream. This is an amazingly quick way to tap into Twitter for a topic.

7. Then for real benefits, in Listorious you can add lists you created or are listed in into their directory, or even approach curators of relevant lists and ask them to consider adding you to their list.

For more information visit the official Twitter Support page for Lists here.

Let me know how you get on via Comments below.

Mark.



Twitter – six steps beyond the basics

If you’ve mastered the basics of Twitter, (by following my Taming Twitter course or on your own) and built it into your daily routine it’s probably time to take stock. It may also be a great time to plan your next phase, to move yourself up through intermediate to advanced level skills, if you want to increase your returns.

Here are six tips and ideas to help you increase the benefits you gain from Twitter.

I’ll also post tips about your content plan and twitter housekeeping, so check for other posts on the ‘Hosted Apps and Tools’ blog.

The six tips are inevitably based on apps and tools. There are countless Twitter Tools available but here are some I’m finding very useful:

KLOUT – assesses your influence online. Scores of 75 are exceptional, and I’d say that above 40 is a great achievement. Below 40 and there’s room for improvement if you want to get real benefit from Twitter.  Register with http://www.klout.com , add your Facebook and LinkedIn details then track your score. See also my post on ideas to improve your influence.

TwitCleaner – one part of this tool assesses your profile and suggests improvements, or flags up areas or activity that might be compromising your reputation. The other side is covered in my post on Twitter Housekeeping.

Hootsuite – lets you manage 5 Twitter or other Social Media Accounts for free.  With Hootsuite I can easily post to different accounts and  set up different streams.  I can also monitor Direct and @ messages and respond, to develop dialogue and relationships.

To help to prioritise the incoming tweet streams here are two tips that I use:

• Filtering my main stream by Klout ie. set at 40 to remove the noise of Tweets from low influence people. It also provides a source of ReTweets of people with higher influence.
• Setting up Lists for Friends, Specialists etc. and then a Stream per list so I can periodically check per topic.

Paper.li – lets you create a daily or weekly online newspaper that is fed by a Twitter list you manage. It’s a very time-effective way to curate information and publish it. Read your own paper and let paper.li highlight key stories based on your interests.

Automate a Feed – you may want to ease the load by sending part of your content through automatically. Using Google Alerts and TwitterFeed or FeedBurner it is fairly easy to achieve this. Use with care to maintain content quality and ratio of manual and automatic content.

Go Mobile – I’ve added the Twitter App to my Blackberry so I can access the Twitter on the move, both via the Twitter App and Direct Tweets appear in my email feed too. Similar function will be available on other Smartphones.

Take an hour or so every month to review your account, and the tools you use, to improve the return you get from the time you spend on Twitter.

I hope that one or two of these tips prove really helpful to you.

Add a comment below to let me know how you use Twitter.

How to use LinkedIn for Business Lead Generation

LinkedIn is becoming a powerful platform not just for personal connections but, since November 2010, it has stepped up as a platform for promoting businesses, products and services too.

My 10 minute video will take you through the steps to set-up your company and your products and services, then outline how to promote them using the Free and the paid-for methods within LinkedIn.

And if you need help to implement this I  provide services to help you plan and execute the set-up and campaigns.

Mark.

Klout – what, why, how?

Klout is a measure of Influence or Social Proof that a person or account has in Twitter or Facebook.

This post provides answers to some of the more common questions and tips on how to improve your Klout.

What is Klout?

You may have seen the Klout score against Twitter profiles. It is an indicator of Social Proof or Influence, based on what other people have done with the person, profile or account which add an implicit endorsement to that profile.

Klout score goes from ‘ — ‘ or uncategorised, then from 1 to 100. The higher the score the more influence the person has.

A great example is Thomas Power of ecademy who currently has a score of 67.

It is not possible to directly improve your score, but there are some indirect steps that can be taken, as outlined below.

For Twitter Accounts the Klout algorythm includes, or takes into account:

• List Membership – how many LISTS the person has been put on – indicating that people prioritise this persons tweets in some way – see my blog post on lists for more explanation
• Total Retweets – the number of times messages have been retweeted
• Unique Retweets – how many people have retweeted
• Unique Message Retweets – how many messages have been retweeted
• Total Retweets for a specific message – the chain of retweets

This breadth of measures avoids the scenario where someone can have say 2 accounts, repeat the same tweet on one account multiple times and retweet it like for like on the second account. The Klout algorythm detects real breadth and depth of interesting content and a large and engaged network of people.

For Facebook Accounts the Klout algorythm includes, or takes into account:

• Total number of ‘Likes’ received
• Total number of Comments received
• Unique Likes – how many different people liked
• Unique comments – how many different people commented.

So, as with Twitter’, this detects breadth and depth rather than one account Liking and Commenting on another multiple times.

Why does Klout matter?

The main reason is that it indicates quality when someone is considering whether to follow someone else. This plays out in two situations:

• You are looking for people to follow. The assumption here is that you are choosing to follow people who you do not already know, as a way to increase the breadth of your own network. You may want to follow thought leaders in your neighbourhood, town, city etc, or people who share an interest, or who are thought leaders, specialists, gurus or experts on a topic. The Klout score is one way for you to select, or pre-select, who you want to follow.
• You are hoping to be followed by others. If you aspire to be seen as a leader and build up your influence, whether it is so people with a shared interest find you, or for more commercial reasons such as to be able to prospect for new leads and to do lead generation, then a higher Klout or influence or social proof score matters.

There are tools that allow you to select people on Twitter by their Klout Score.

Similarly you can Select Tweets by Klout Score in dashboard applications such as Hootsuite.

How can you influence your Klout score?

If you’re using Twitter then at some stage you may want to move beyond using it as an instant messaging tool between you and your close contacts. In which case taking a deliberate approach to increase your Klout score will be a worthwhile strategy.

The simple strategy is two-fold – Content and Followers.

• The better and more frequent your content the more people will see it, read and share it.
• The more followers you have the more influence you have.

This creates a virtuous circle too – and at some point your account moves into overdrive.

A more comprehensive strategy would include these seven steps:

1. Register your Twitter Account with Klout and also associate your Facebook account with this Klout profile to gain extra points. Then monitor your progress at least weekly so you track what works and see some pay-back.
2. Make your content worth reading as this helps you get listed by others who want to read your tweets ahead of those from others. Encourage others to add you to their lists, and initiate the process yourself by creating a list and adding them. See my blog post about lists.
3. Create a Daily or Weekly newspaper using Paper.li which sources content from a specific list that you create and manage. Then see who else publishes in your niche who has a lot of followers and create content and get onto their list on a reciprocal basis.
4. Make your content worth ReTweeting! Include a mix of Tweets and copy that encourages people to share your Tweets with their followers. This could be original material you wrote on your Blog and Tweeted, or other worthwhile content you mention, like quips, motivational quotes, forthcoming events etc. Ask your close contacts to Retweet.
5. Share the love – Retweet other people’s content in the hope they will Retweet yours in return. A Retweet says more than ‘Thank-you’ in social influence circles.
6. Identify influencers, learn from them, study what they do and apply it to your own account. Check your stats in Twitter and your Dashboard (Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, SocialOomph etc) to see who has high Klout and who is likely to reciprocate to boost both your scores.
7. Build up the number of people following you. Actively select and follow people on a regular basis and many will follow you in return.

Remember your objectives

Do remember your objectives and desired outcomes as it takes time to create content and manage and develop your Twitter and Social Media profile and you need to see a return. Maybe it is just about building your reputation and credibility. Maybe you want to drive traffic to your Blog. Maybe you are promoting products and services through Facebook. Maybe something else.

Having an external review of your Social Media strategy can prove extremely beneficial, to help you achieve the results you need and save you time in the process. I offer a Social Media Review and Action Plan service if you would find this beneficial.

LinkedIn – are you making the most of the new functions?

LinkedIn made some big changes in Nov 2010 which you may or may not have seen or heard about.

Headline changes in LinkedIn are the ability to create not just a company page (available since March 2008) but now also pages for products and services.

In addition there are new and powerful tools for either FREE or Paid-for promotion methods for company pages and for product or services pages. These could really help your lead generation, to reach your connections and the wider LinkedIn community and let them know how you can help them.

And as the LinkedIn network and its usage by “professionals” grows there are many benefits from reviewing how you are using LinkedIn for your own personal, career and project purposes, and even lead generation, depending on your goals.

I’ve created a webpage that summarises the changes for personal and business use and at entry, intermediate and advanced levels.

I’ve also created and included two Slidecast (slides plus audio) summaries to take you step by step through the changes.

Anyway, enough introduction, here’s the link to the page on my Hosted Apps and Tools website.

Let me know what you think, and do drop me a line if I can help you, or people you know, to get more benefit from LinkedIn.

Video Marketing – 7 benefits

Marketing with video is a great way for your prospects to find, know, like and trust you.

Video marketing also helps you stay closer to your existing customers.

NB. This message is also available on Slideshare as a Slidecast highlighting Video Marketing and these 7 benefits.

Here are just some of the benefits:

1. Video reaches a larger audience

Video enables you to communicate with people who prefer to watch rather than read. Video is easier to follow than text, especially for more emotional rather than factual message. Visual learners will find video more appealing and easier to follow. Giving your audience the choice helps both of you.

2. Video engages many senses

If a picture is worth a 1000 words, then video goes much further. Add music for atmosphere, voice for narration, people for connection, and make your marketing message delivery really strong.

3. Video anywhere, anytime

Video can be viewed on all kinds of devices these days, not just in the office or at home on a PC but while travelling and mobile ie. on ipods, mobile phones, laptops, tablets etc. Your audience can choose when and where they watch.

4. Video helps you achieve higher rankings in the search engines

Google Universal Search recognises and values multiple media. If your chosen keywords are used across text, images, video and elsewhere Google gives your web pages and website more credit and ranks it more highly.

5. Repurpose content into video

Convert your written content to video by adding a voice-over to make it a podcast or a Slidecast then upload it to one (or many) video sharing sites like YouTube. The advantage is that it takes less time to put existing material into video than to create new material from scratch.

6. Become known as an expert in your field

Use video to capture and share your knowledge and you’ll soon be known as the expert in your field or niche. If you can regularly add new content that your target audience will value you will soon become recognized as the expert in your market.

7. Easy to create and publish

Creating a video and sharing it has become much easier and less expensive. Video cameras start at under £75 or $100. Video editing software like Windows Movie Maker is probably already on your PC for Free. A YouTube account can be set up for free. To create a Slidecast or a Podcast is even less cost. All you need is a little time and an idea or a message that you want to communicate. Make a start, learn as you go and you’ll soon be reaping the benefits.

If you want to find out more hints and tips about video marketing then visit www.videoskilled.co.uk and sign up for the e-bulletin.

Video Marketing –is it reaching the Tipping Point?

The rapid growth of internet usage, e-commerce and video viewing continues.

A take-out statistic for me below is:

• “A quarter of the C-suite (C-level Execs, CEO, CFO, CMO, CIO etc.) prefer content in video form over text.” B2B Marketing Online, March 2010

This is creating opportunities for marketing and sales people to evaluate and deploy video as part of their marketing and sales activities.

Here are just some of the recent statistics to consider as we plan for 2011.

1. People online

• 7 out of 10 people (71%) in the developed world are online. International Telecommuncations Union, October 2010
• Total UK online population stands at 46m. UKOM, September 2010

2. Activities online

• Researching products and services is the second most popular online activity among Brits with 3 out of 4 UK internet users doing so. Office of National Statistics (ONS) as cited by eMarketer, September 2010
• Britons now spend 88% more time on Email sites than they did three years ago but 42% less time Instant Messaging. UKOM, May 2010

3. Advertising online

• In the UK, £1 in every £4 of total ad spend goes online. IAB ’10 Years of Advertising’ 2010 as cited by comScore, November 2010

4. Spending online

• Over two in five (42.6%) of Brits are now shopping online at least once per week and the average shopper is now spending £71 per month on online goods. eCommera.com, August 2010

5. Video activities

• Every minute, 35 hours worth of content is uploaded to YouTube YouTube Blog. November 2010
• Total broadband penetration in the UK is now 71%, with fixed broadband at 65% and mobile broadband at 15%. Ofcom, August 2010
• Over 1 billion minutes of video are being viewed on YouTube every month. UKOM, September 2010
• It is estimated that by 2012, 90% of data will be video. Cisco as cited by http://www.readwriteweb.com, July 2010

6. Video viewing Online

• Consumer – People are watching 2 billion videos on YouTube every day, and uploading hundreds of thousands of videos daily. Google Internal Data, May 2010
• Small Business – 1.4 million out of 3.4 million UK small business owners visit an online video site each month – they are 32% more likely to visit an online video site than the average user. TGI Net, March 2009
• Corporates – A quarter of the C-suite (C-level Execs, CEO, CFO, CMO, CIO etc) prefer content in video form over text. B2B Marketing Online, March 2010

7. Economic impact

• The UK internet economy is worth £100 billion. This is 7.2% of UK gross domestic product. Boston Consulting Group , October 2010
• The UK internet economy is forecast to grow at 10% per annum between 2009 and 2015 to £174bn or possibly to as much as £228bn. Boston Consulting Group , October 2010

Source = Google Internet Stats

Blackberry and Social Media

Do you use Blackberry, travel a lot and use Social Media? I was talking recently to someone who commutes to London regularly and had tried to access her social media via the web browser interface. She was delighted when I explained and showed her a much better way.

I’ve been using Blackberry for some time now to access email while out and about. Then about two months ago I had several long train journeys scheduled which triggered me to find a way to keep in touch via social media, and also to use the ‘down-time’ to good effect.

I discovered that the three social media communities I use regularly, Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter, all have an app that provides a very effective way to use them from your Blackberry.

• Linkedin Blackberry app shows status updates from your connections, allows you to post an update, search connections, view your connections, view pending invitations, see messages and reconnect with people. Speed and reliability has been pretty good.
• Facebook for Blackberry shows status updates, allows you to post and share, take photos and post those, find friends in your address book then do various tasks, like write on their wall, send a message or phone them (if they’ve shared their number), and email your friends. This is a particularly easy to use and fast interface.
• Twitter for Blackberry alerts you to latest mentions and direct messages, lets you access your lists and profile, you can search for people and search twitter and see popular topics. The interface is user friendly but tweet stream updates can be slow, which is probably more due Twitter network load than the Blackberry.

Download and installation was fairly straight forward and the benefits of being connected while on the move are fantastic.

For further info check out Blackberry App World or other sources you trust:

For Linkedin –

http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/7605

http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2337/kw/blackberry

For Facebook –

http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/680

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2254487659

For Twitter –

http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/8160

http://support.twitter.com/groups/34-mobile/topics/152-third-party-applications/articles/142060-twitter-for-blackberry

Social Media; the tipping point for Organisation Infrastructure?

Preparing for a social media discussion with a prospect recently got me thinking about how an organisation, and particularly a large business, might consider social media, (or more specifically it’s interface to social media) from an organisational perspective.

I tend to think of things as models with interconnecting relationships. I got thinking about the organisational dimension on three levels; the campaign or tactical level, the departmental or operational level and the strategic or enterprise level.

I conclude with a thought that has potentially massive implications for the entire business eco-system. Are we at a tipping-point?

At a campaign or tactical level this might be an aspect of what the marketing department is working on, focusing on a target audience, working out where they hang out in social media land, devising some creative theme, engaging and compelling messages and offers, original content, create some interaction and hope maybe that the campaign goes viral. The objectives may be brand building, lead generation or various marketing and sales funnel related goals. There are many case studies coming through into the market, such as the ‘Old Spice Guy’, Pringles, Starbucks and a plethora of others. Social media becomes yet another option in the marketing mix toolkit to be weighed against say email, exhibitions, television and dozens of other communications channels, to reach and engage a target audience.

At a departmental or operational level social media is starting to become a means of communicating with prospects and customers as part of a structured, operational process. Customer services, customer retention, new business, engineering, product management, investor relations, market research and so on could, and probably should, start to take notice of what comments, opinions, preferences etc. are circulating in social media about the brand, it’s products, it’s service and so on. There are a range of tools available to help with this listening process. There are also some emerging applications to start to make it a more structured communications process. One of the issues with social media is firstly to hear what is being said, to filter out the noise and leave that which is important and then to know what to do with it, all in a pretty short time-frame. I am impressed with the potentially game-changing concept behind Followbase, which provides a mechanism to direct relevant Tweets to an appropriate person or department to handle and to respond. In this way ‘handling’ social media is not unlike the way a call-centre ‘handles’ telephone calls, or the way a service department handles emails and post. There is a defined purpose and process and service levels can be assigned and it can be resourced appropriately.

At a strategic level or enterprise level the ‘people, process and technology’ headings help to identify some of the core agenda topics.

In the ‘people’ area then delegation and responsibility, training and monitoring aspects need to be considered. Social Media is about communication, interaction and relationships. This would be quite difficult to develop if every piece of content needed to be approved. However, like call-centre calls are recorded for ‘monitoring and training purposes’ then maybe Tweets should also.

In the ‘process’ area there needs to be appropriate listening, decision-making and response processes to allocate responsibility to appropriate areas and to maintain a balance across and between departments. When a call comes in to the company switchboard it is directed to the appropriate person or department. So too the communications in Social Media made directly to the company need to be directed appropriately. Comments in Social Media that are not directly to the company is a grey area. How the organisation wants to handle those should be given some thought. Positive comments might be useful and should be encouraged. Negative ones could be ignored, challenged directly or maybe countered or outweighed by raving fans who are loyal to the brand.

The ‘technology’ area is where tools such as Reputation Monitoring, Social Media Marketing and others are coming through thick and fast. Applications such as Alterian Social Media Marketing for example. Applications Hosted in the Cloud enable rapid development and deployment of new releases and functionality with minimal impact on users. However the identification of business requirements, potential applications, evaluation, selection, training and support in this rapidly emerging area will make this a very interesting space for several years to come. Especially where the impact of being behind the curve are potentially enormous, where competitive advantage can be won or lost very quickly.

And the tipping-point conclusion is that Enterprise agility could be the major decider between success and failure in business over the next few years. The ability to spot a market opportunity (via social media market research) to develop a new product or service very rapidly (and beta test it with raving fans and advocates and gain feedback), to launch it into the market (via social media campaigns), and to have the sales and customer service in place to ensure a very clean launch and delighted customers (and advocates and minimal back-lash on Social Media) could be the new business model for the 20 teens decade. Achieve this agility and being able to make correct decisions and execute the plan before your competitors at a Social Media clock-speed could just put a supercharger to Michael Porters Competitive Advantage model.