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Getting Serious About Social Media

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What criteria guide your approach to social media? With few exceptions, your marketing strategy can’t be called comprehensive unless at least one social media platform is in the mix. It’s a highly effective tool and not only that— using social media doesn’t cost money (it does require time) and it has the power to amplify your traditional marketing tactics by re-posting text, audio and image content onto your chosen platforms. But like all marketing initiatives, social media requires thought and planning. To make success possible you must develop a credible strategy, starting with choosing (maybe three or four?) objectives you’d like to achieve.

Along with your objectives, you’ll also want to be mindful that certain audiences have an affinity for certain platforms and certain platforms are more suitable for some types of products or services and not so much for others. Moreover, it makes sense to assess the amount of time you can reasonably expect to devote to your social media updates, because fresh and relevant content are key. It will be much more favorable to establish a presence on one or two platforms and make it all pop with engaging and timely content instead of wading into multiple platforms on which you post only sporadically.

Once you launch your campaign, it’s advisable to continually monitor your performance analytics and watch for feedback. Be certain to respond quickly to customer service needs or comments and second, you want to measure visitor response to your content. Both metrics can inform your content topics, plus encourage customer engagement and feelings of loyalty. Focus your efforts where they’ll reap the greatest return on investment (ROI).

Finally, social media audiences on every platform are viewing content creators with increasing skepticism. Content consumers now demand authenticity from the influencers and brands they follow. Be genuine in your approach to social media (and all) marketing so that you’ll earn the trust, respect, loyalty—and business!— of your target audience. Below are common drivers of B2B social media objectives:

  • Website traffic
  • Brand awareness
  • Lead generation
  • PR mentions

Strategy

Devise an overall strategy that keeps your social media presence on-message and active. Establish your brand on platforms whose audience demographics and content style best showcases the products or services you promote. Every few months, you might want to color outside the lines, maybe with a fun collaboration with a complementary (and never competing) brand, a contest, or a (non-controversial) social or health awareness initiative that can stimulate positive customer engagement and even expand your audience.

Brand identity

A strong brand identity provides a consistent, dependable and ultimately reassuring experience for your social media audience. By establishing a recognizable brand identity, (you and) your business will be positioned to cultivate a loyal following that remains engaged across your selected platforms. Your unique brand voice, image style and relatable, consistent messaging across all social media platforms will enhance your authenticity and build the respect and trust of your audience.

Relevant content

Focus on creating meaningful and high quality content that resonates with your target audience. Authentic and relevant content helps the audience feel connected to your brand, encouraging engagement and promoting brand loyalty. 

Personal communication

Facilitating direct communication between you/ the brand and your target audience is the great advantage of social media. The communication is personal and unfiltered, allowing you to learn a great deal about how those who do business with you feel about doing business with you. Social media helps you learn fast about what works and what doesn’t, giving you the luxury of responding personally and quickly and making a timely course correction if necessary.

Focus On Your Audience/ Build A Community

Social media isn’t just a method that lets you speak to your audience in a monologue that promotes your business. It’s about building a community. When you introduce practices that enable a community—meaningful content, regular updates, responding to questions, complaints and compliments and keeping it authentic (real) you will over time build and sustain an engaged audience that’s truly interested in your brand (and you).

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Jean Arthur in Easy Living, written by Preston Sturges. Paramount Pictures (1937)

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Social Media for the B2B Freelancer

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As you do your best to navigate through the COVID era, one obvious change has been that life and business are largely conducted on the internet, Step-by-step, especially since Y2K arrived (were you afraid to ride in an elevator on 12/31/1999?), so much of life started moving over to the internet. The coronavirus shutdown of March 2020 acted like a rocket booster and pushed millions of businesses—supermarkets to pharmacies, restaurants to home furnishings stores, classroom instruction from grade school to college level, luxury apparel boutiques to plant stores—to prioritize their online presence. You may have begun to work from home, plunging into video meetings and Slack and other workflow communication tools. This is a permanent inflection point and there can be no going back.

It’s fairly certain that you participated in social media in your personal and/or professional life prior to the COVID era but if you are a Freelancer or other business owner or leader, you recognize that the need for creating a sophisticated social media strategy has been ratcheted up. Officially, your social media presence can no longer be treated as an afterthought. Your chosen platfroms now own a pivotal role in your organization’s sales/marketing funnel, a critical client recruitment tool. Social media is now integral to supporting your brand, often by telling your brand story and building a community of loyal client cheerleaders who enthusiastically sing your praises. Make optimizing sthe use of social media in your organization your first business strategy decision of 2023.

Enhance brand awareness

LinkedIn remains the most popuar platform for those searching for B2B solutions. Complete your regualrly update your profile. When you receive new certificatons, upload them. If becoming (or remaining) a thought leader in your industry is a goal for you, social media provides a path and LinkedIn is considered a trusted source by most. You’ll find this blog post on my LinkedIn profile. If you’ve been a podcast guest or host, post the link, ditto for a webinar.

If you’ll teach a class, deliver a talk, moderate or participate on a panel, post the invitation on your profile. Participate in the still-relevant LinkedIn Groups feature and chat and exchange information with your professional peers. LinkedIn’s new Creator Accelerator Program a 6-week program that shows you engage your audience and grow your target audience. There is an application process involved, Contact the Creator weekly newsletter for more info. Stay up-to-date with your Notifications and receive feedback from followers and those who’ve responded to your content.

Sales/marketing funnel

The benefit of sharing informative content is that you may soon be seen as a trusted surce and expert in your space, making it easier to be seen as a credible resource and not just another salesperson. Social media browsers are known to use their preferred platforms to research products and services. This is a huge opportunity for you to use social media as a platform to add value by sharing informative content. As such, you’ll spend much less effort trying to “convince” target audience members to do business with you once familiarity and trust have been established.

Improve your understanding of what motivates potential buyers in your target audience to turn to social media before posting your content, to ensure that your information aligns with what potential buyers want, and need, to know. In general, a case study or two, your newsletters and your blog posts will answer most questions and demonstrate your organization’s ability to meet client needs.

Leverage the power of client testimonials and give yourself additional credibility by way of a real-time description of the capabilities of your organization. Your approach to delivering the solution, handling of the inevitable obstacles that challenge along the way and your team’s customer service and after-sale support will go a long way in showcasing your venture and building trust.

  • What are aspiring buyers in your category looking for and what do they hope to achieve?
  • What drives potential buyers to use certain keywords, hashtags, or phrases when searching in your category?
  • What products or services are they using now, or previously, to achieve the goal, or attain the solution to resolve the problem now?

Feed your sales/marketing funnel by demonstrating that you and your team can get the job done. Potential buyers will seek for more information and may eventually schedule a video or telephone call to talk things over and get a better sense of you and what it might be like to partner with you and work on the project.

Building community

How does one encourage the engagemet of your customers? Maybe start with a couple of polls and then get a discussion going? Those thriving the most in today’s evolving engagement landscape are able to use their social following and allow users to contribute and interact rather than simply judge and scroll. This can be accomplished in a multitude of ways, including inexpensive swag gift giveaways polls, posting LinkedIn story video or audio testimonials or reviews. If you’re participating in a charity event, video some portion of the proceedings and make that a LinkedIn story, too (you will have already posted it as an event, am I right?)

The key is to execute thoroughly and listen to your community: Simply having a giveaway may create interest, but communicating the rules, perks and actually following through by showing the community how their involvement moves the needle toward something positive is the ideal. This could happen any number of ways, and requires considerable thought from those close to the brand who understand how to best engage its community.

Happy New Year and thanks for joining me,

Kim

Image: Kim Clark. The groom in a wedding party approaches The Park Plaza Hotel in Boston, MA (2019)

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Eyes On the Competition

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As was noted in three or four recent posts, business data and other forms of business information, which may consist of the observations and predictions of researchers, journalists and other experts, have always been an essential resource for business owners and leaders. As we move through the 21st century, data-driven decision-making, enabled by powerful software programs and artificial intelligence, has become the hallmark of responsible business management.

Chief among the market research that every successful business owner or leader must do is assess the competitive landscape in his/her marketplace. Questions you’ll want to find answers to include:

  • Who sells products and services similar to your own?
  • Who are their customers?
  • What is the estimated size of their market?
  • Who dominates, how and why?
  • How do the marketplace leaders attract and retain customers?
  • What is their price range?
  • How successful are they?
  • Can you launch your venture alongside these competitors and achieve sustainable success?

Mapping your competitive landscape also includes identifying direct competitors, meaning companies whose services and products closely resemble your own and indirect competitors, that is, those whose products and services present an alternative choice within a similar price range that can be sold as a potentially satisfactory solution. Understanding the difference between direct and indirect competitors can be simplified by comparing the process to shopping for a Valentine’s Day gift.

The chocolate shops are all direct competitors, with price as a potential differentiator, because chocolates are more or less interchangeable. The same can be said for florists. But chocolate shops and florists are as well one another’s indirect competitors within a similar price range because for $50.00, you can buy either a nice bouquet or a nice box of chocolates.

Start your investigation with a key word search using terms commonly chosen to describe your company’s products and/ or services to see who appears and how they rank. Whoever makes it into the top 10 are the most successful of your competitors. You can also check out member lists at the business and professional groups you’ve joined (yet another reason why business associations are a good investment). Visit the websites of the top 4 or 5 competitors in your search, along with their social media pages and Yelp reviews.

Make note of speaking engagements made by the principals—-host organization and topic, along with company participation in local charity events and business awards and nominations received. If successful competitors have done any of those things, don’t be ashamed to follow with a me, too.

Popular products and services

Knowing what sort of products and services are best-sellers for your top competitors is tremendously useful intel and will enable you to make smarter decisions about building your solutions and making your prospect’s hot buttons blink.

So try to figure out what competitors sell the most, what sells the least for them and what’s somewhere in the middle. Keep the best sellers in mind as you design your services, perhaps adding a differentiating something extra to create more value in a way that’s affordable for you, or that you can sell at a premium.

Finally, watch for what gets revised and what gets dropped. Notice how products and services are described and positioned and, if possible, priced. Learn from competitors’ mistakes.

Leadgen strategies

Absolutely, spend time analyzing the website landing pages and social media accounts of your major competitors. You want to know how they keep their pipelines filled and how they persuade prospects to remain on the buyer’s journey. What informational goodies and special offers have they sprinkled into their TOFU, MOFU and BOFU ( top, middle and bottom of the funnel)?

You may find the inevitable free-for-the-price-of-your-email-address e-book or highlights of a keynote speech delivered at a popular conference. You’re looking for inspired, desirable content choices that you hadn’t thought of, so you can offer something similar as a way to engage prospects and stimulate lead creation.

Blog and newsletter content

Pay attention to topics that are most often covered and those that are infrequently discussed. Notice also if certain topics are spotlighted during particular months. Observe which types of posts are often shared on social media and note which platforms are most often used (and which ones used the least). Your objective is to help yourself plan a content marketing strategy that features topics of interest to prospective readers and simultaneously support the premise that you are a reliable source of good information and a capable professional.

If you’re feeling more curious, use a traffic analysis tool to search for the blog-related URLs in the Top Pages list. Analyze their unique page views and visits, conversions, traffic sources ⁠— make note of all the data that’s presented. Publishing a respected blog or newsletter could become an integral building block of your success. .

Selling points

What objectives emerge as the core purpose, the main problem-solving motivation, that your competitors speak to when communicating to prospects—on their website and social media platforms, in case studies, and testimonials and in their newsletters and blog posts? What do they aim to help their customers achieve when making the case to do business with them? What descriptive language is used? Also, what benefits do they emphasize to persuade prospects to reach out to them?

Moreover, what competencies do your competitors trumpet as a valuable resource that their clients prize and prospects desire? Is it a specialized academic degree, skills certifications, prior work experience and/ or prestigious client list?

Call-to-Action

What you want to know is how competitors sell their CTA. “Buy now” and “click here” are phrases you can think up on your own. The purpose of this research is to see examples of (presumably effective) CTA pitches, both the give-away info and what is said to create an appetite for it. The information offered should be something that prospects are likely to find useful, or somehow interesting and for some items they’ll be willing to surrender their email address to obtain it.

A free 30-minute phone conversation with you or a team member that will allow serious prospects to get insight and answers about how your products and services might help them achieve a goal or solve a problem should make a tempting offer. Click the link to learn more about effective CTAs (gotcha!):

https://freelancetheconsultantsdiary.wordpress.com/2021/04/06/a-call-to-action/

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Krystle (L, Linda Evans) and Alexis (Joan Collins) were eternal rivals and fierce competitors on the prime time soap opera Dynasty (ABC-TV 1981-1989)

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So What’s Your Lead Magnet?

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As Freelance consultants and owners /leaders of businesses of every size work to attract and retain customers and convert leads into sales obtaining contact information, particularly email addresses, is of paramount importance. Email addresses are a foundational resource and govern your ability to communicate with current and prospective clients. A healthy email list is remarkably valuable and building and maintaining a good list is something you want to do.

The challenge is, how can you obtain email addresses quickly and efficiently? You can buy email lists; you can use online services such as Contactout, Clearbit connect, Finder.io, Discoverly, or even Google, to help you find the email addresses of decision-makers you’d like to reach. The problem is that contacting those individuals would constitute spamming because they have not agreed to share contact information with you. Blindly sending promotional emails, or even your newsletter, to those who you assume are prospects, but who have never engaged with your company in any way, is a turn-off. Delete.

Building a money-making email list takes time, effort and ingenuity. To successfully obtain email addresses, it is necessary to create conditions that motivate potential prospects to surrender them. The original method by which email lists were built was through teaching or other speaking engagements. If pre-registration was required, voila, you harvest email addresses. Sign-in sheets that request emails were/ are another harvesting method. It’s a slow process, but the leads are authentic.

More common now and in theory, a faster and easier leadgen method, is to somehow attract prospects to your website and social media platforms. Bringing inbound leads to one of your sites is a victory, but you still need a hook to persuade visitors to remain onsite and engage. To create that bit of magic, you need an appealing offer, a lead magnet. You also need to call attention to and sell your lead magnet with a persuasive call-to-action. See the link to review our CTA conversation.

. https://wordpress.com/post/freelancetheconsultantsdiary.wordpress.com/21655

A lead magnet is often content given away to someone in exchange for their email address. Instead of asking website visitors to buy your e-book, for example, tell them they can have it at no charge, if they kindly provide their name, email address and maybe also the name of the company for whom they work (or own) and their job title. You can do the same with other resources that may be considered valuable and desirable.

You must give customers a compelling reason to provide you with their contact information. Most people today are inundated with emails, so your lead magnet and CTA must be stellar to convince people to add yet another email to their inbox. Simply inviting people to add their names to your mailing list no longer generates the results it once did. You must give something of value in order to receive something of value.

What type of lead magnet should you create? Other than an e-book, you might also offer the results of a comprehensive survey that examined a hot topic, or a live taping of a webinar or podcast in which an interesting subject was discussed (and perhaps in which you participated). Other possibilities include:

  • A content marketing calendar
  • Your newsletter
  • A case study
  • You invite a client to tell the story of how you solved a problem and provided a solution that worked especially well
  • A white paper
  • The purpose of a white paper is to promote a certain product, service, technology or process that your company offers or plans to offer soon. The writer aims to (you) discuss and in so doing persuade current and prospective clients that the solution is highly effective and may be useful for their organization when certain circumstances, problems, or goals exist. A white paper is intended to provide compelling and factual or technical evidence that your offering (the product or service) is a superior method of achieving the goal or solving the problem. In general, white papers are written in an academic style and they’re often about 2,500 words in length.

Just remember that you’ll have to do more than dangle an alluring treat before your visitor’s eyes. it’s not just about the lead magnet. You’ll want to create a persuasive, come-hither CTA pitch that motivates readers to covet your lead magnet and hand over some personal information to posses it.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: The magic hand of Steve Spangler, the Science Guy on KUSA-9News in Denver, CO on February 25, 2019

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Online Reputation Management and Your Brand

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A business owner’s work is never done, it seems. Along with recruiting customers in an increasingly challenging business climate, fulfilling customer expectations, providing excellent customer experiences and instituting procedures that ensure pleasant and efficient after sale support when needed there is, as well, the responsibility to monitor and manage the online reputation of your brand, your business and you. Creating, enhancing and perhaps also defending the online reputation of your brand must be an ongoing component of your company’s PR and SEO marketing strategies.

Developing and nurturing an appealing and trustworthy brand for your enterprise has always been the cornerstone of comprehensive and effective marketing campaigns and strategies. The pandemic-induced acceleration of numerous online communication formats has compelled business owners and leaders to amplify the online presence of their brands in order to effectively compete.

As a result, it is more necessary than ever to carefully curate, align and script all marketing themes and messages used to promote your brands along with the associated image, audio or video content posted to an array of platforms. Business owners and leaders would be wise to actively shape and manage the online image and reputation of their brands to continually reinforce brand narratives and positive perceptions.

Online Reputation Management is now an ever more critical branding function, essential as you develop marketing and branding strategies that build name recognition with the power to attract customers. A trusted brand is a valuable resource and can create for your business a loyal troop of boots-on-the-ground influencers who are motivated to write positive reviews in online rating sites and dispense word-of-mouth endorsements that can make or brake your business. From the online content that communicates relatable brand stories that build trust and loyalty within your target market to search-friendly platforms and key words that promote your brand’s online visibility, you can create an electronic architecture that supports and sustains an appealing and confidence-inspiring brand.

To help your business overcome the multi-year impact of the coronavirus pandemic, do what you can to allocate resources to create and implement a robust Online Reputation Management strategy. For best results, assess the efficacy of your online branding strategies by employing the tactic of social listening.

The act of monitoring social media and other online platforms helps track mentions and notifications about your brands and facilitates quick responses to customer compliments or complaints, which are the building blocks of an effective engagement strategy. Social listening means discovering patterns and connecting the dots in the comments or questions heard in monitoring. Social listening reveals to you the big picture—not just the trees, but the forest—and encourages you to analyze the context and larger trends that surround those (online) conversations, so that you might discover opportunities to act that enable you to better speak to and serve your market.

The customer data and marketing platform Clutch.com recently reported the following:

  • 54% of digital marketers consider Online Reputation management necessary for the success of their company
  • Brands frequently utilize social listening, following the social media outlets favored by their customers, to gain insights into what is trending or waning in customer preferences and priorities
  • The primary benefit that companies gain from investing in Online Reputation management is growth in sales
  • 35% of businesses queried plan to allot more time and money to Online Reputation management

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Fredric March as Dr. Henry Jekyll in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) directed by Rouben Mamoulian

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The 7 Best Words in Sales

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Because when we log into our email accounts to check inboxes, or go online to find out what’s happening in the world, we are not so much reading as scanning. We scan for what catches the eye and captures attention. What words might make us stop and click?

Determined marketers have gone to work on this question and come up with a list of words that open rate and click-through statistics verify have the power to grab the most blasé of us.

Keep these words in mind as you attempt to dream up catchy subject lines or titles for content you post—-marketing/ sales emails, titles for videos you’ll upload to your website and social media, article headlines for white papers, blog, or newsletter articles, calls to action.

Free

Who can resist something that’s free? Even if it refers to a product you’ll never use, the word free has the power to stop the scanning and make you read an email, article, or advertisement, if only a few words. When an email subject line or a CTA contains this word, particularly when written in bold or brightly colored script, the open rate will increase significantly.

Easy

The great philosophers and observers of human behavior centuries ago recognized that humans will nearly always gravitate to what we perceive as easy and avoid what appears to be difficult. More recently, behavioral scientists reconfirmed those observations.

As a Christmas gift when I was maybe five years old, Santa gave me an Easy Bake Oven, an irresistible product that was sold to me by way of numerous television commercials featured during programs known to be popular with my demographic cohort. It was an easy sell.

I was thrilled to pieces to find it under our tree on Christmas morning. I had the greatest time as I poured the cake flour that came with my oven into a bowl, added a small amount of liquid (milk? water?) and then stirred it up and poured the batter into the tiny cake pan that also came with the oven. My little cake was baked with heat supplied by two 100 watt light bulbs.

I remember whipping up little cakes on Saturday afternoons to serve to girlfriends at our tea parties, or to Mom and Dad. Kenner brought out the Easy Bake Oven in 1963 and in the first year sold 500,000 units. By 1997, more than 16 million ovens had been sold.

Best

Quality counts for many of us. When hunting for a product or service, you may as well check out the item that’s better than the rest. Best is a filter. It cuts through the clutter of what could be a waste of time.

Magazines and newspapers often publish a “Best of” list annually—schools, restaurants, dry cleaners, hardware stores, you name it. Invariably, “Best of” issues sell considerably more than others (with the possible exception of a Christmas issue, if that is published).

Limited

Fear of Missing Out is real, as documented by behavioral scientists and marketers. Making a sale is often assisted by creating both exclusivity and a sense of urgency. This item is special and its ownership confers a coveted status. Buy it now.

You

When creating written content meant to persuade, whether it’s a political speech, a marketing/ sales email, or a television commercial, using the second-person pronoun when communicating with readers shifts the tone to one that is conversational, relatable, friendly and quite effective. You understand, don’t you?

Because

The thing to remember is that the human brain appreciates an explanation. We like to know why something is the way it is, the backstory of a certain condition or set of circumstances.

When selling, addressing the question of why the prospect needs the product, service, or feature being sold is most effectively addressed with the associated benefits and benefits are where the word because comes in.

This product or service is the best available to fit your needs because it will help you to fulfill your need, achieve your objective. Tie your product, features and the actions you want people to take in with a rationale or explanation and prospects will be more inclined to take action.

Numbers

From the Three Musketeers to the 12 Days of Christmas, people like to see a lust that suggests or ranks something that they find valuable—-100 easy dessert recipes, 10 free golf courses in Michigan, the 7 best words in sales. Curiosity is aroused and the click is made.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Scrabble tiles

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Optimize Your Virtual Events

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Videoconference technology has emerged as the savior of the pandemic era. In the midst of the disruption, if not near destruction, of numerous formerly multi-billion dollar industries, notably restaurant, hotel, wedding, airline and fitness, virtual communication has helped all of us to function and survive. I suspect we’ll all agree that face2face interaction is preferable, but videoconferencing has done an admirable job of helping us weather the storm.

Videoconferencing has greatly expanded online distance learning and allowed schools to continue educating students. Wedding planners are helping couples stage small ceremonies that allow potentially hundreds of guests to witness and virtually join the festivities. Fitness instructors and trainers are coaching their devotees via laptop webcams in living rooms and kitchens and ballet instructors are doing the same for their students.

Managers are holding video meetings for their teams. B2B sales professionals are introducing new products and services to prospects by way of video sales calls. Conference planners are scheduling and producing everything from panel discussions to district meetings. It’s all good, but it’s time to pay attention to videoconference production values and the viewer / participant experience. Things can go wrong and the program can go down in flames. As with face2face events, an action plan is needed to optimize your virtual event so that objectives will be realized.

Let’s start with the basic technical set-up. Virtual events are nearly always viewed on a small screen—tablet or laptop–and for that reason virtual event content planners, producers and speakers would be wise to think of television. Whatever the purpose of your program, be it a classroom lecture, B2B sales call, music lesson, or company meeting, content planners and producers should visualize a small screen perspective as their guide.

If the budget allows, hiring an event technology manager will be money well spent. Event tech managers will ensure that the sound, lights and background set are appropriate for the occasion. Placement of the laptop is integral to locating the most flattering camera angle for the speaker. Two or possibly three microphones may be used to adequately capture the speaker voices. Lighting is everything in show business and the event tech will position the lighting so that the set is neither too dim or too bright and speakers are not in shadows. The set background must also be considered. Having a bookcase in view is always a plus, as are a couple of healthy plants or modest floral arrangements. The company name and logo should also be visible, but its presence need not overwhelm.

Regarding the presenters, panel discussion participants are typically seated, whether all are in a room together and socially distanced or reporting in from remote locations. It is usually preferable for featured speakers to stand while delivering their presentation, since standing telegraphs energy and allows the speaker to use body language that is more communicative and engaging.

Next, think of shaping and delivering program content in a way that will connect with and hold the attention of its virtual audience. Psychologists have documented that virtual events tax our attention span because they’re literally difficult to watch for extended periods of time. Experienced producers of virtual events recommend building in some sort of a diversion about every 20 minutes, to keep everyone’s brain comfortable during the proceedings. Explore the options and learn to use the special features available on your videoconferencing platform. Polls, yes/no questions and small group chatrooms (breakouts) make the viewing experience more enjoyable for audience members. An event tech manager can be helpful with this process as well.

Pace the event content flow by breaking it down into 20 or so minute chunks and interspersing the text with interactive activities that draw in audience members and make them part of the show. Speakers and other performers have always used certain tactics to engage live audiences and now in the 21st century, speakers, event content planners and producers are discovering new, tech-based tactics to win over virtual audiences. It’s show business history in the making, folks.

Finally, there is the increasingly common hybrid classroom or special event to master, where part of the audience is live and the rest are viewing the proceedings virtually. Hybrid events pose a challenge, but they are not insurmountable. If it’s in the budget, renting or buying one or more big screens will create a more immersive and rewarding experience for both virtual viewers and the on-site audience. Interaction between face2face and virtual participants could create exciting possibilities. Q & A, simultaneous polls, contests and games can get them talking to each other as they watch the action happen live. Confer with your event tech manager and find out how to optimize the experience.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Photograph: Kim Clark

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Social Media —-Best Time to Post

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You already know that timing is everything in business and life and that calculation also applies to when one should ideally post content on the social media platforms of choice. According to social media content marketing experts, there are days and times when your audience will either be more likely to login and read posts on a particular platform or will be in a receptive frame of mind when they do check in.

Social media management sites, including Buffer, Hootsuite, Hubspot and SproutSocial, have studied the potential best timing for publishing and sharing posts and published those results, but the most exhaustive research seems to have been done by the Bismarck, ND digital marketing management company CoSchedule. Highlights of the company’s research are cited in this post and in its entirety at this link. https://coschedule.com/blog/best-times-to-post-on-social-media/

Still, I suggest that you experiment with your own study and look for indications that your posts perform better or worse on certain days and times. Because I had a long career in B2B face2face sales, I knew to avoid posting on Monday (too busy) or Friday (livin’ for the weekend). Tuesday seemed like a good day to publish, so I went with it. LinkedIn is my social media platform and I’ve shared my posts there each week for the 11 years that I’ve published.

Here’s a rundown of platforms that appeal most to B2B marketers and the suggested prime times to publish content, according to a review of 20 studies that was conducted by CoSchedule. To dig more deeply into this topic, click the link to the study. B2B, B2C and age will potentially impact your prime publishing times.

Facebook

The evaluation of 20 studies revealed that the overall best time frame to post on Facebook is Thursday to Sunday from 1:00 – 3:00 PM. However, users can quickly and accurately identify their individual prime posting times by opening the Insight tab at the top of the page and inspecting the tracking graph.

Google Plus

What users really want to do to find out what’s going on is to use the Steady Demand tool, that reports out not only what your business, but also competitive businesses, are doing. You’ll have to pay, though. Otherwise, Wednesday mornings at 9:00-ish reportedly yields the best results when publishing. https://www.steadydemand.com/services.php

Instagram

Users who have a business account with the platform should head straight to Instagram Analytics to receive customized performance results. Those who do not have a business account are recommended to investigate a free tool that is known to provide reliable data, such as Union Metrics. https://unionmetrics.com/free-tools/instagram-account-checkup/

LinkedIn

The platform is all business and users are in a business frame of mind when they check in, but according to statistics, Tuesday through Thursday 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM wins by a nose (hey, that’s when I publish!). My LinkedIn connections will know that I’ve shared a blog post via a message that appears at their Notifications tab.

TikTok

These 500 million active monthly users, heavily represented by the highly coveted Generation Z demographic, continue to fascinate nearly every marketer, especially in the B2C space. Business owners and leaders want to recruit them as customers now and work on cultivating a longstanding relationship that will yield millions of dollars in sales.

Marketers dream of their company’s videos being seen by a large segment of a GenZ audience that will become loyal to their company and who will comment on and give likes and shares to company posts. Some clever and lucky posters, they imagine, will attract devoted followers who like their videos enough to click the icon that includes the video creator’s profile to find the heart ♥️ and ask to be a follower.

What may not have been considered is that this group is not known for long term loyalty. They are known for skepticism and changing their minds. The best posting times have been difficult to pin down, but morning and evening commute, plus lunchtime, seem the best for publishing new content.

Twitter

Wednesdays and Thursdays have emerged as the preferred days for tweeting, but users can verify their power hours by way of Twitter Analytics. Click “tweets” Overall, the best time frame for publishing is 7:00 AM – 8:00 AM and 6:00 PM- ish.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Photograph: Kim Clark

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Full Frontal LinkedIn

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For B2B firms, Freelance consultants and corporate or not-for-profit professionals, LinkedIn is the preferred social media platform because it is strictly business. Members create a profile that is essentially an expanded resume. There are opportunities to receive recommendations from colleagues with whom one has worked. One can create and upload a SlideShare presentation to provide an overview of company products and services and describe how they benefit customers.

A portfolio that showcases examples of one’s best work can be created and uploaded.  The company blog and/or newsletter can be added to the profile and all connections will receive notice of publishings. If that’s not enough, LinkedIn ProFinder helps to match prospective clients with Freelancers in search of project work (I’ve had a couple of almosts but no contract yet, after 6-8 months of sporadic follow-up to prospect inquiries).

There are those members who claim to make money directly from their LinkedIn connections (other than the ProFinder feature), but I don’t know anyone who’s done so. Still, LinkedIn seems to be a worthwhile investment.  I think presence on the site lends legitimacy and I suspect that prospective clients who are evaluating whether to hire a Freelancer (me!) for a project visit the LinkedIn profile as an element of due diligence.

LinkedIn users

According to the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Blog, of the 500 million LinkedIn profile owners, 61 million are senior-level influencers and 24.5 million are in decision-making positions.  Millennials are also well-represented on LinkedIn. Globally, 87 million members are Millennial generation and 11 million are in decision-making positions.

Content Marketing

LinkedIn’s Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn  reports that LinkedIn is the top choice for B2B content marketing and that every week, LinkedIn content is viewed 9 billion times. While 94% of B2B marketers (including Freelancers) use LikedIn to distribute content, 89% use Twitter, 77% use Facebook, 77% use YouTube and 61% use Google + for B2B content distribution. Surprisingly, only 3 million LinkedIn members post content once a week or more.

When marketing executives (i.e., the Freelancer’s prospective clients) were asked their choice sites to search for relevant, high-quality B2B content, 91% voted for LinkedIn, blowing away Twitter (29%) and Facebook (27%). Decision-makers who have the authority to green-light projects and send billable hours your way trust LinkedIn.  How-to posts and lists receive the best reader response, according to OKDork.com.

About 45% of LinkedIn article readers are managers, directors, vice presidents and C-suite dwellers. Have you published articles in legitimate media outlets, or written white papers or case studies? If so, upload examples of your writing to your profile, since nearly half of LinkedIn article readers are senior level decision-makers. Furthermore, OKDork.com investigated LinkedIn viral posts and discovered that the sweet spot for content length is 1900 words. Don’t shy away from long-form content.

In your articles, be certain to include images (photos, graphs, charts); eight images emerged as the magic number.  Yet videos do not impress LinkedIn readers as they do visitors to other platforms and OKDork.com recommends that article writers avoid videos.

I’ve made this blog available to my LinkedIn connections for the 10 years of its existence and I’ve gained followers and regular readers as a result. Get busy, people! If you think about it, you’ll find that you have relevant content to share with your community every two or three weeks, at least.

As mentioned earlier, LinkedIn encourages members to take advantage of SlideShare as a storytelling and sales tool. According to TechCrunch, 70 million LinkedIn members visit SlideShare each month and 18 million pieces of content have been uploaded (does that mean there are 18 million SlideShare presentations on LinkedIn? I guess so.)

I have a SlideShare presentation that was uploaded some time ago and it’s a good way to tell the story of your company, or to detail why, when and how customers can benefit from using your products or services. But LinkedIn won’t allow edits to existing presentations and it’s aggravating.  I’d like to do an update.

Lead generation 

When tallying B2B leads generated by social media, LinkedIn outperforms all contenders, with 80% of B2B leads derived from LinkedIn and only 13% through Twitter and 7% through Facebook. Moreover, HubSpot reports that LinkedIn produces the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate of all platforms, 2.74%, almost three times higher than Facebook, which produces a 0.77% visitor-to-lead conversion rate, and Twitter, which clocks in with a 0.69% visitor-to-lead rate.

In short, LinkedIn delivers more prospects who are more willing to do business.  The ultimate validation is that 65% of B2B companies have acquired a customer through LinkedIn (I’m still waiting. I should go back to ProFinder ASAP, because I do receive bidding invitations).

So here is my call-to-action. You’ve read the post (thank you!) and I hope you are inspired to step up your LinkedIn activity. It’s OK to start small. Do you have a profile photo? Add a photo and attract 21 times more profile views and receive 36 times more messages. I added a new photo today.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Photograph: John Pilkington (2006) Loading salt at the Taoudenni salt mines in northern Mali, 400 miles north of Timbuktu and approaching the Algerian border. The mines have operated since at least the 1500s.

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How to Target Content Marketing

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Now that you’ve completed your business plan, you’re ready to put it in motion. Here’s the guide that will make sure you know how to get your entrepreneurial groove on! In Be Your Own Boss, Part 2: The Implementation and Beyond, you’ll learn to recognize the strengths or weaknesses in your proposed business model and develop an effective customer acquisition plan. You’ll get insight into what you should consider when choosing the right legal entity for your venture. Learn to implement savvy marketing, branding and social media strategies, get real about business financing options and build a solid financial strategy that will sustain your dream. Thursdays April 18 & 25 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM. Register here.

Content marketing continues to be an effective Inbound Marketing strategy for Freelancers and other business leaders who seek to interest and engage potential clients, nurture relationships with current clients, demonstrate an understanding of client concerns and generate leads that have a healthy possibility to convert to sales.

Yet according to sales and marketing experts, fewer than 50% of those who claim to be evaluating a product or service purchase are ready to buy. Therefore, the job of business leaders/ owners and Freelancers is to move prospects through the buyer’s journey, also known as the sales funnel, and toward the sale.

Recall if you will the shape of a funnel—wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. The shape of a funnel reflects to the buyer’s journey.  Early in the search for a solution, would-be clients search for information. Many are window shoppers. Others are more serious. They explore options, compare prices, clarify their needs and confirm their budgets. Eventually the most serious shoppers become fewer in number as they acknowledge their must-haves and narrow their choices down to a short list of sellers (i.e., businesses).  Only a relative handful buy make a purchase. 

Let’s examine the typical buyer’s journey and understand how inbound marketing can function to encourage the sale along the way.

Tofu: Top of Funnel 

This stage signals awareness and potential prospects are searching for information.  Content here will cast a wide net, to attract the attention of all those who are searching for insights, opinions, research and other data in their early stage and education process. Just as you may scan rating sites such as Yelp or Trip Advisor when searching for a hotel or restaurant, Tofu tier leads get familiar with your products and services through your blog, newsletter and social media postings.  It’s too early to present a call-to-action appeal, which could be a turn-off at this point. In general, the value of Tofu leads is low.

Nevertheless, your objective is to peel off the most promising leads and move them into the next tier.  Achieve this aim when you offer a 15 minute free consultation, announce a podcast or webinar in which you’ll be featured to discuss a topic relevant to your typical clients, or extend an invitation to download an e-book that you’ve written, gratis. Those who register for these extras are making a commitment, to an extent, to your business.  Furthermore, they must share their name and email contact as they register. They will progress to Mofu.

MoFu: Middle of Funnel 

You now have a qualified lead. The prospect is real and has acknowledged that a problem that must be solved in the near term.  Your prospect must evaluate  which of the available solutions might be the best fit?

Content at this tier must continue to educate, but the approach will become more specific, to position your company as capable and trustworthy, prepared to deliver the right solutions and solve problems.  Here, content explains why your solution and approach to problem-solving are the best fit. Examples of your ability to understand client concerns and priorities, as well as provide the best solution, can be illustrated in white papers, case studies, or (video) testimonials.

This tier is often considered the most critical because prospects will either agree to move forward and approve the sale or decide you’re not the one based on the information  presented.  Demonstrate expertise, establish trust and build relationships here.  Flash the power of your brand by dropping the names of a marquis client or two.

On the other hand, if it becomes apparent that you are not the best fit for a client, be upfront and make that known. You always want to provide the optimum customer experience that leads to good word of mouth and avoids churn (see last week’s post).

BoFu: Bottom of Funnel

Here is where the buyer confirms his/her decision to do business with your organization and the actual sales process can begin.  According to research featured in Forbes Magazine in 2013, many prospects get 60% – 70%  through the buyer’s journey before they care to speak with a sales representative.

There may be no content offered at this stage, but time-sensitive special offers can make a big difference.  Your prospect is ready to buy but there is still no guarantee that s/he will buy from you.  Here you give a little nudge, a sweetener, as you present your call-to-action, at last.

Depending on whether your business is B2B or B2C, tangible product or intangible service, you may offer a modest discount to buy now (or within 24 hours).  You might offer a tantalizing (and inexpensive to provide) upgrade or add-on to what the prospect has indicated s/he would like to purchase.  Free or discounted installation and a free trial are also effective.  Art galleries have been known to allow serious prospects to take an artwork home so that they can live with it for 10 days.

Inbound Marketing is lots more work than tried-and-true Outbound Marketing, where you scrape together some money and place an advertisement or two in target publications, or distribute flyers in certain zip codes, and hope for the best. Outbound Marketing still works, but Inbound Marketing is how to highly target your marketing campaigns and receive the highest ROI.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: A 13th century Ottoman (Turkish) horseman draws his bow. Artist unknown.