Nancy Hendrickson

I had the opportunity yesterday to sit in on a 90-minute presentation by Sandy Carter, an IBM VP who spoke about social media marketing.  I wanted to share some of my take-away gems (hint, the biggie is at the bottom):

• Marketing 2.0 is a combination of social media and traditional marketing channels
• The “secret sauce” is the right mix of of marketing venues, all dependent on your goals
• In a poor economy, you can move customers through the buying cycle faster
• It’s critical to monitor and respond to buzz about you or your business
• Look for opportunities to provide a human face to your brand
• Look for opportunities to interact with your audience
• Companies need to focus on loyalty to customers
• You statisticians this is huge for you: track what’s valuable, not what’s measurable

All valuable – - but what really hit home for me was the same thing I’ve been telling you for months – - it’s all about relationship building.  Ms. Carter said we’re moving away from the concept of B2B and B2C.  What’s really happening is P2P . . . . . PERSON TO PERSON.  (was nice to get validation from a Big Blue VP!)

This just in from Marketing Sherpa (and reprinted with their permission)

“The most significant barrier to social media adoption named by 46% of respondents to a MarketingSherpa survey is “lack of knowledgeable staff” – whether an organization has used social media marketing and PR or not.

A danger to the effective adoption of social media as a marketing strategy is the large percentage of those who consider themselves knowledgeable – but have no social media experience.

Two-thirds of marketers at organizations that have not used social media marketing or PR said they are “very” or “somewhat” knowledgeable about the subject. Without social media experience, however, this level of knowledge is unlikely. It may be the reason “lack of knowledgeable staff” is seen as the most significant barrier.

There is good news, though. Lessons come fast once an organization engages with social media. Until those lessons are learned, though, initial missteps could lead to marketers abandoning the program.

A stagnant Facebook group doesn’t mean that ‘social media just isn’t for us’ – it simply suggests that there’s more to learn. Over the next several weeks, we’ll explore social media with charts from MarketingSherpa’s upcoming report.”

Nancy’s Take
The majority of my clients – particularly those in higher education – suffer from both lack of knowledge and inability to track ROI. In fact, I’ve spent three months trying to pry analytics out of one college client; their delay isn’t because they don’t want to share, but because no one knows where to find them!

Of all industries, higher education should (IMHO) be the ones on the front line of the social media revolution . . . after all, it’s where their target market lives. I’m sharing this chart with my client and hoping it will prompt a little action on their part.  As the report shows, just because the initial Facebook page isn’t getting any love doesn’t mean to ditch it – but rather to pay attention to it!

I just purchased a new piece of software by Jonathan Leger called Answer Analyst.  What’s it do? The user enters a keyword or keyword phrase, and the software goes out on the Internet, searching for the most common questions “real people” are asking about the topic.   Can you imagine how much easier this is going to make writing relevant content on your site, blog, or in articles?

As a major article writer and article marketing geek, I plunked down my $77 as fast as I could, and then took this baby out for a spin.

Am I happy with it?  You bet.

First, let me tell you WHY you want this

It you need content of any kind (articles, blogs, site, sales page) Answer Analyst will tell you exactly what your client/customer/consumer wants to know about what you do. (and this works even if you have an offline business)

For example, pretend you own a bricks and mortar “pest control” business and want to beef up your website with more relevant information so 1) your site will be found; and 2) you’ll get more customers.

. . . and now how it works

I entered “pest control” as a keyword phrase and within 3 seconds Answer Analyst popped out a whole list of questions, such as “is the landlord responsible for pest control”, and “what is biological pest control”.

But, as the Ginzu knife guy said, but wait, there’s more!

Highlight any of the answers being asked, click “Get Answers” and Answer Analyst surfs the net and pulls back information from other Websites about your topic. You can then save that info as part of your research, then write an article about it. At this point, not only do you know what info your customer wants, you have plenty of research material to write about it!

To Buy or Not to Buy?

I don’t know about you, but I’m constantly creating new content . . . not only for my own sites but for my clients as well. Having instant access to the questions people want answered about ANY TOPIC . . . and then having access to instant research is a no-brainer for me. I bought it this morning and it’s already saved me $250 of my own time in researching keywords and then researching the topics I need to write about. Probably the best $77 bucks I’ve spent.