Five Challenges for Sales and Marketing

Yet another article showing the importance of aligning marketing and sales. “A brand is merely the promise of an experience.  In order to experience the brand, one must generally purchase the product or service of the brand.  In order to purchase the product or service of the brand, you need to provide a selling channel.”

Marketing is about branding. Sales is about revenue. Putting both in the same boat and paddling in the same direction will make those a reality. But of course, there are challenges in getting them in the same boat going in the same direction.

What other challenges do you see in aligning marketing and sales?

[ Read original article ]

Sales and Marketing Alignment

Download the free 20-page guide on how to create a marketing plan that incorporates personas, builds a team and uses different demand generation approaches. The guide also includes tips for building a sales and marketing machine, staffing, timeline and budgets.

What do you think of the advice given in the blueprint?

[ Read original article ]

Business and Social Media

The article reports that Forbes and Google conducted a survey of 354 executives and found that over 50 percent of the under 40 have a work-related blog, show on up Twitter and visit social networks often.

Valeria connected with experts to ask them for their thoughts on why and how B2B companies benefit from including social media in their marketing strategies.

What’s your experience with B2B social media?

[ Read original article ]

Social Media Resources

This great list sorts the resources into categories including how-to, case studies, networking and presentations. What are your favorite go to resources for B2B social media?

[ Read original article ]

Virtual Events

The concept of the virtual event, long a notion prompting predictions and fears of live events’ demise, has achieved an ironic feat. Far from threatening the vitality and existence of traditional events, virtual events bolstered by social media have strengthened the appeal of in-person professional gatherings across all industries, and will soon be crucial to most brick-and-mortar trade shows. 

Integrating the new with the best of the old 

The transformation of the live event through virtual elements has come about from the perfection of communications technologies such as streaming video and the emergence of communications channels such as social media. In concert, these factors have given rise to hybrid events. By combining offline and online elements with the multifaceted physical and virtual experience, hybrid events teem with interactivity on many levels. 

This evolution is already underway on the most forward-thinking trade show floors, where smart trade show producers blend the best of the new with the best of the old. Virtual technologies, along with complementary social media, will increasingly infiltrate the trade show floor, coexisting peacefully with good, old-fashioned hand-shaking and eye-to-eye contact. 

New research backs this prediction. Whether as an attendee, exhibitor, producer or supplier/vendor, over 75 percent of trade show and event insiders plan to attend a virtual trade show in the next 12 months, according to a recent Trade Show News Network (TSNN) and Onstream Media Corporation survey of 800 professionals. 

More telling, 75 percent of these same professionals consider a virtual trade show as an add-on or extension to an existing show or physical event. It’s not difficult to infer that the industry is embracing hybrid events as a viable way to enhance, rather than detract from, live events. 

The template: TS² 2010 

Take TS², an annual trade show about trade show marketing — and a good place, logically to gauge where the trade show industry is headed. In July, TS² 2010: Total Solutions Marketing for the Exhibit and Event Professional occurred at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, where over 1,500 attendees enjoyed in-person, tactile opportunities to physically interact with exhibitors and learn about trade show marketing face-to-face. 

The show’s traditional aspects were a hit. Yet central to the success of this year’s TS² was the IN Zone Lounge and Networking Center, an interactive pavilion that debuted live on the show floor to a positive reception. The center embodied hybrid events’ ability to energize and augment traditional trade shows. A creation of The Expo Group (Twitter: @TheExpoGroup), the IN Zone supported, facilitated and encouraged an array of new media–related activities. For instance, impromptu tweet-ups drew together offline attendees and online observers of TS² to the IN Zone’s comfortable lounge to share their latest thinking on all things trade show–marketing related; conversations revolved around the ability of social media and virtual events to augment the live event experience for all. 

Adjacent to these gatherings, professional trade show presenter and virtual event host Emilie Barta (@EmilieBarta) conducted a series of candid, talk show–style interviews with several industry thought leaders. Passersby on the trade show floor could view and hear these interviews by line-of-site or on a large plasma video screen, and a virtual audience watched streaming video online. 

Further promoting interaction between and among in-person, virtual attendees and TS² itself were representatives from 3D Media Group who roamed the trade show floor to shoot short video spots on attendees’ thoughts regarding TS². Later, they posted the videos online for all to see. Additionally, virtual attendees were encouraged to go viral by submitting a video for a TS²-associated contest. 

The social media ‘glue’ 

The success of hybrid events relies on crucial social media tools, along with a strategy to employ them. Even a live event bereft of any hybrid qualities becomes better when the show’s producers embrace social media. Why? Social media adds another dimension to interactivity among in-person attendees and online participants. 

A parallel scene unfolds alongside the event as social media channels enhance everyone’s experience. People bristle with chatter relevant to the event and of interest to anyone attending physically or virtually. This chatter instantly provides the event’s producers with real-time feedback and a long tail of organic visibility online. 

TS²‘s use of Twitter offers an example of the possibilities. In using Twitter effectively, TS² established and cultivated a presence there (@ts2show) long before the live event. Additionally, showing how hashtags can enhance the brand and increase visibility on Twitter, TS² created one branded for the show (#ts2show), and included other industry-relevant hashtags in as many tweets as possible. Examples of these hashtags are#eventprofs, the shared hashtag for a group of trade show industry thought leaders who maintain a highly active conversation on Twitter, and #tradeshow, which acts as a trade show indicator for anyone on Twitter searching for trade show information. 

These tactics combined social media search optimization with brand-building efforts and set the stage for optimizing TS²‘s social media at the event. In the weeks preceding the show and during the live event, TS² encouraged attendees and participants to add #ts2show in every tweet pertaining to TS². The IN Zone held its own outreach by asking attendees to include #InZone in every tweet. As an additional incentive for everyone to do so, the IN Zone posted all tweets incorporating these hashtags on its large plasma video screen, for all to see. This setup allowed Twitter observers to easily follow the hashtags and conversation. 

Rounding out its social media presence, TS² carved a presence on other common social media outposts during the many months leading to the event. For instance, TS² used Facebook and LinkedIn to announce contests related to the event and to foster an online conversation on issues affecting the trade show industry. These two channels, along with Twitter and others, promise to fuel TS²‘s drive to encourage a continual sense of community and render an annual gathering where stakeholders can meet and share, face-to-face, the ideas they contribute year-round. 

It takes a virtual village to revive in-person events 

Hybrid events and the technologies that facilitate, complement and augment them have rescued live events from self-inflicted inertia and stagnation. These new amalgams of in-person and virtual interaction have expanded live events’ shelf life to provide a meaningful experience to attendees, exhibitors and other stakeholders “24-7-365.” Furthermore, they transform the live event itself into a pilgrimage, where everything observed through the multifaceted, year-round experience culminates annually. Smart producers of live events are embracing virtual and hybrid events, along with the technologies that support and enhance them. 

Editor’s note: relationSearch partners, Skinner’s company, helped TS² develop its social media plan. 

Brent Skinner is CEO of relationSearch partners, a company that focuses on helping clients find and be found by target audiences with whom they may forge relationships. Whether the need is to form strategic partnerships, tap social media, improve organic search engine optimization or combine all these and more, relationSearch partners develop programs that feed the lead pipeline and drive sales. Visit http://www.relationsearchpartners.com/, follow Brent on Twitter @RSpartners or email bskinner@relationSearchpartners.com. 

A white paper that distills the many findings of the recent survey by TSNN and Onstream Media Corporation, Virtual Trade Show Report: Insights & Trends from Industry Insiders, is scheduled to be available this fall. Visit www.TSNN.com for more information.

— Ed, Manager

I Need More Time

If the world could magically add more hours in the day, we’d probably still run into this lack of time problem. Having too much to do is one of those vicious cycles that won’t stop turning until we fix how we manage our work.

“Being up against a no-win situation is depressing and demoralizing. You’ve got to take your power back and restructure your work day so you can accomplish something of value to you and your firm,” says Elene Cafasso, founder and president, Enerpace, Inc.

Ready to shuck depression and take the reins back? While this list works as a step-by-step guide to better managing your work, you can skip some or modify it to your liking:

1. Make a list
2. Dump non-essentials.
3. Prioritize the keepers.
4. Delegate where possible.
5. Prepare ahead.
6. Resist distractions.
7. Use tools. 

Make a list 

Stop drowning at the thought of all the things you need to do and make a list of exactly what you must do so you can prioritize tasks. Add everything without judgment.

Meet List Junky Marisha Morris, owner/chief exec designer at Done Beautifully, Inc. “I send myself text messages and use sticky notes, chalk boards and the dry erase board to make my lists.” It doesn’t matter what tool you use, or if you use one or more. Capture those tasks in writing first.

Dump non-essentials

Building habits helps you stick with the program. Yet habits can hold you back as the tasks you do on a regular basis lose importance, such as regularly scheduled meetings and reports.

Brandie Kajino, chief solutionist, SOHO Solutionist, looks deep into the task. Kajino says, “I ask questions, and clarify with people making requests — Is it critical, can it wait or be eliminated? Once in a while, when things get completely out of hand, I sit down and figure out what isn’t helping in the overall picture. Then, I eliminate it.”

“Qualify your sales and think about your bottom line,” says Teri Hurley, owner/operator of Endless Love Travel. “Don’t take on anything that won’t keep you in business, or you soon won’t be. Stick to your area of expertise as you have a better success rate of selling in these areas.”

When someone asks you to do something, and it’s not essential, just say no. Avoid falling into the trap of landing a task you don’t need.

Prioritize the keepers

How do you know where to begin if you don’t know what’s more urgent or has a deadline? Randy Pausch, author of The Last Lecture, shares a simple four-quadrant system from his famous lecture based on Stephen R. Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Go through your task list and put 1, 2, 3 or 4 next to each one. Then do the most important things first and plan for when you’ll do the least important tasks.

Delegate where possible 

Consider delegating tasks, even if you’re not a manager with direct reports. You may be afraid to assign a task to someone else because you know exactly what you want and need. Do you need to attend all the meetings you have? How about sending someone in your place?

Loretta Love Huff, president, Emerald Harvest Consulting, explains how to transfer a task to someone else. “Figure out who would be the best person to take the task. Document the process you use to complete those tasks. Meet with the person and explain what you want him or her to take over and how it will benefit that person (and you) to start doing the task(s). Ask what questions or concerns staff has about taking on the task, then address the questions/concerns,” says Huff.

Prepare ahead

Now that you have a prioritized task list and have dropped unimportant tasks, let someone else take care of others and stay in control by preparing ahead like Hugh M. Ryan, president of Ryan Wellnitz, does. “Every morning, I write down the three things I must accomplish that day, following General Norman Schwarzkopf’s advice. He says he did this every day throughout his career, and required his direct reports to do likewise. I pick out the task I enjoy least and want most to postpone, and do it first (allowing for client-service necessities, of course),” Ryan says.

Huff adds a way to go home happy so you can relax and not worry about anything until the next day. “Before you leave at night, do two things:

1. Straighten your desk up.
2. Make a list of your most important items to accomplish the following day. 

“When you get in the morning, start working on the list. Don’t open your email. Work on the top two things on your most important list for at least an hour, if not two. If people drop by during those first two hours, unless it’s an emergency (or your boss), ask if you can get back to that person later in the day.”

People have times of the day when they work best and when they don’t work so well. Think about your own energy levels and when you’re most effective with specific types of tasks.

“Arrange activities to take advantage of these rhythms. For example, you might want to return calls first thing in the morning, and catch up on industry news when you have less energy. Creative or analytic work is best done when you’re refreshed and unlikely to be distracted,” says Joellyn Sargent, president, BrandSprout. 

Resist distractions 

“You’ve got mail.” Ding. New message indicator. Turn off the sounds, visuals, anything and everything that lets you know you have new messages, whether voice mail or email. This works for Daniel K. O’Leary, vice president at LincWare, LLC. “I’ve implemented a system where I only check my email five times a day. I know, it sounds crazy, but it works. I do it at the beginning and end of the day, in the midmorning, after lunch, typically once before going to bed.”

Think about your last few phone calls. During how many of those did you get right to business and hang up as soon as you finished talking business? Of course, you want to be friendly and avoid rudeness. Come up with a few phrases that you can use and make them a habit. “I need to go because I have a meeting to prepare for.” You probably have a meeting to prepare for within the next few months. “Oh, it looks like a coworker needs me. Nice talking to you.”

What about people dropping by your office? Think of phrases you can use for unwanted drop-ins to help you shake the interruption and get back to your task.

Use tools

You may prefer old-fashioned pen and paper, or use an app that synchronizes with your mobile device. Support tools aren’t limited to the list-making kind.

Adding a second monitor can make a difference as it does for your editor. Many do this, including Brandon Laughridge, chief operation officer, RothIRA.com. “Not having to change windows to reference emails or instant messages is a huge time saver. I’m also not afraid to shut off those very nuisances I put on that monitor, things like instant messenger, email, twitter, etc.,” says Laughridge.

You may know about Stephen R. Covey’s book and maybe even David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Writer and Creative Director Kevin Fenton believes that time management issues are procrastination issues in disguise and recommends Neil A. Fiore’s The Now Habit to overcome this.

Chris Curtis, executive director, Web Business Ownership, LLC, automates tasks and uses apps to send stuff to his phone. “Now information is delivered electronically, instead of me having to get it myself,” Curtis says.

Two tools help Akira Hirai, managing director, Cayenne Consulting, LLC, stay organized. Hirai uses Fujitsu ScanSnap, a scanner to convert paper into searchable PDF files, and OneNote, an information organizer.

Do you answer the same questions repeatedly? That sounds like a job for frequently asked questions. Teri Hurley uses the company website to help clients help themselves. The website includes FAQs, testimonials and other resources. 

Another way to look at the whole busy, busy picture is to think of it as a mindset. “‘Time’ and ‘being busy’ are mindsets. We are born into these constructs. We’ve made up the notion of time to structure our lives. But since we are defined by two time notations (our date of birth and the date of our passing), we live as if it is real. The key is to establish a more positive relationship with time so you have more of it,” says author Christine Louise Hohlbaum. In other words, “Time rocks!” Now go reward yourself for taking control and go relax a little before you get busy. 

Meryl K. Evans is senior editor at InternetVIZ and the content maven behind the Connected Digest, B2B Social Media Digest and Professional Services Journal. Follow her on Twitter @merylkevans.

Am I too strict with our Internet policy?

At our company, most employees have Internet access at their workstations. Ordinarily, I don’t mind a few minutes of web browsing here and there for a break or even a little personal business. It’s the same as a quick water cooler conversation.

Yet as social media has grown and become a business necessity, more employees have started to hang out on these sites — and not always for work. Am I going overboard in wanting to control the amount of time employees spend online for personal surfing? How can I trust them to get the work done without curtailing this personal web browsing? Or does it really save productivity since they get the mental break they need?

— Nathan

Align Sales and Lead Flow

This article takes you through the process of aligning sales and marketing in the lead flow process. It also identifies alignment problems and how to work through them to gain qualified leads and close the deal. And aligning marketing and sales is indeed a journey, not a destination.

What do you think of the article’s approach?

[ Read original article ]

Encourage Sales

If you’ve been reading the articles we share on marketing and sales alignment, you understand why it’s important to get the two teams in sync. But how do you make it happen? What I like about this article is how it breaks down the five ways without overwhelming you. It’s not a long article.

What do you think of these five tasks?

[ Read original article ]

Top One Percent

Your LinkedIn account is not the same thing as having your company on LinkedIn. Take a look at Publisher Hank Stroll’s Linkedin account (http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankstroll). Now here’s his company’s page (http://www.linkedin.com/companies/internetviz). The article shares how you can make the most of your company’s LinkedIn page.

How do you use LinkedIn?

[ Read original article ]

10 Mistakes

Here are 10 common mistakes that businesses, organizations and others make when starting social media. If you read our features, you know that the b2b companies that are successful in social media begin with strategy not creating an account.

What do you think is the most important factor for a b2b company’s success in social media?

[ Read original article ]

B2B Mistake

Naturally, when thinking about our target market, we think of our customers’ problems and try to solve them. But what if you changed your thinking to focusing on solving your customer’s customer’s problems? No, that’s not a typo.

Let’s say Jim sells XYZ services. Jim is your customer. Imagine the impact you have on Jim if you help him solve HIS customers’ problems. Read Liz Strauss’ article to see how this impacts social media.

What do you use social media for in your B2B business?

[ Read original article ]

Pros and Cons of Outsourcing

The best person to do social media for a business is the people who work for the business. Social media is about connecting with people and putting a face on a company. However, outsourcing some tasks can help you and your staff learn from experienced users. After all, you need a strategy for social media before getting into it.

How do you feel about outsourcing social media marketing activities?

[ Read original article ]

5 Ways to Integrate

This article touts the importance of integrating sales and marketing. Many of us agree on this, but many of us don’t know how to make that happen or we tried and failed. Author Jeff Ogden goes so far to give real-life examples and how the companies went about solving problems. Ogden closes with five tips for integrating sales and marketing.

Here are the five tips:

1. Put your most respected executives on it along with outside help like Find New Customers.
2. Give them the full and vocal support of top leadership.
3. Provide them with time to uncover existing processes and challenges.
4. Support them to implement new processes.
5. Measure and test.  Make sure the culture really changed.

How do you think applying the five tips will affect an organization?

[ Read original article ]

I Need More Time

Since it’s impossible to add another hour to the 24-hour day, I need an alternative. How can I find time to do all the things I need to complete at work? No doubt, many managers/supervisors deal with this challenge. How have you overcome the “I can’t get everything done” syndrome?

— Ed, Manager

Integrate Marketing and Sales

Mac McIntosh interviews Elizabeth Vanneste, CMO of Miller Heiman, with a focus on aligning sales and marketing. What does it mean to align sales and marketing? Vanneste clearly defines what it means to align the two and references a study that shows the effectiveness of aligning the two.

I’ve always believe in the importance of sales and marketing collaboration. What are some ways you can get the two to collaborate for the good of the company?

[ Read original article ]

Burning on the Inside

After over five years of service, I recently “retired” from a company to manage my own business full-time. I gave the standard two-week notice and started preparing to help with the transition. The company cut my two weeks short, and my manager was disrespectful to me during the process.

Since then, I’ve been furious with the manager and the situation. I did the best I could to serve the company and was loyal and honest. Having never received closure, I’ve been careful because I don’t believe in burning bridges.

The company did nothing illegal, so this doesn’t call for a lawsuit. And I might need a good recommendation from my manager someday. I think some action will help me get over this, but what? Should I talk to the director or someone else? I’m still burning inside despite trying to forget about the company. Nothing works. How do you work past these nasty feelings?

— Gone, but not forgotten

With that in mind, readers and experts provide four ways to deal with the resentment:

• Look at the situation from a different perspective.
• Pour your energy into the new job.
• Write a letter.
• Let time do the trick. 

Of course, if you have other advice, please share it in the comments, or if you’re facing a different challenge, please tell us about it so we can post it and ask for advice.

Look at the situation from a different perspective

Even if you’re the kind of person who tries to consider all views, it’s easy to fall into the trap of seeing only one side. The situation could be the result of company policy, as Monique Ramsey, director of patient services, shares a lesson learned from hiring and firing class. “They told us to NEVER accept the two-week notice from an employee. The reasons were that so many things can go wrong during that two weeks — they could take your client list or sabotage your business in another way, or get paid to do nothing because they have mentally ‘checked out,’ or (insert problematic issue here) so hopefully this will help you feel better and not take it personally. They were just going by the book,” Ramsey says.

Not all readers believe that giving the standard notice is always the right thing to do. The length of the notice varies from country to country. Jillian Zavitz, TalktoCanada.com programs manager, believes employees should give the required notice. Sometimes she takes them on it, and other times she lets them go early. Why let them go early?

“They don’t want to be there and won’t put their all into the job. It’s important for me to have employees on board who will put 110 percent into their job no matter what. To get over these feelings, just think about the good times you had at the company and understand that sometimes it’s better (if they have the personnel) to take you out immediately,” says Zavitz.

Stephanie Jeffery Carlino, co-founder of the Long Island Breakfast Club, agrees that the company did the employee a favor. She had to give an eight-week notice when she resigned from a job. “It was the longest eight weeks of my life; they froze me out from major decisions. Be grateful they let you out early, to have done that for me would have been a godsend,” Carlino says.

Wendie A. Howland of Howland Health Consulting, Inc. flips the situation upside down. “You were dissed by your old manager and furious over this. Did you stop to think that perhaps s/he thought you had dissed the company that treated you well for five years and was furious about that?” says Howland.

Pour your energy into the new job

What could be better revenge than becoming successful in your new job? Since you own the business, you probably have more freedom. “No doubt your manager was pissed off at your escape to freedom. Feel sorry for them and go have a latte at your leisure and go see an occasional movie at lunchtime. The world is your oyster while they are sitting in their cubbies,” writes Leslie Singer, co-founder and chief creative officer, HS Dominion.

A reader suggests to smile and take responsibility for your own success. “Their behavior is a reflection of themselves and not you. Maybe they already realize how much they’ll miss your work? In any event, be sure to send your old team PR from your new business, and irregular reminders of how well you are doing,” the reader says. 

Dan Michalko provides a tip for planning on your success. “Buy three thank-you cards: one for your manager, and one for the managers two levels above your manager. Then write the cards out envisioning your success in six months. The note should state something like ‘I’d like to circle back and say thanks for cutting me loose prematurely after providing you the courtesy of a two-week notice. While the disrespect demonstrated by my manager, xxx, during my notice period after investing five years with the company was unfortunate, it provided me the impetus to focus on building my business.

“‘As a result, I am now in a position to enable others to succeed. It is my sincere hope that your company has developed an exit interview process to capture lessons learned from anyone leaving your business.’ And for the levels above your manager include: ‘Please feel free to call me should you have questions, or if I can assist your company with any of your needs in the areas of xxx, or xxxx,’” says Michalko.

Write a letter 

You’ve probably heard advice along the lines of write a letter and then burn it. Readers like Russ Seel, founder and CEO of RH Positive, offer another take on this approach. “Write the offenders a letter thanking them for the good experiences you did have and wish them well in the future. You’ll be surprised/amazed at the change in your attitude and likely theirs as well. The good repercussions are eternal,” says Seel.

Linda Konstan, Sensible Human Resources Consulting LLC, believes an exit letter is something any resigning employee may want to do. “I would write a strong ‘exit’ letter (even after the fact) and ask that they place it in your personnel file. That letter will thank everyone for the opportunities they gave you and list all your accomplishments,” Konstan says.

Harley Rivet of Rivet Consulting has been through the situation before and has avoided saying bad things about the former employer. Rivet applies the getting down your feelings while not sharing them with anyone approach. “They treated me wrong so don’t I have a right to be mad? They were the perpetrators, and I was the victim. I feel violated. I have found writing about the experience a bit therapeutic since it helps get the feelings out without publicly sharing the writings. I will always have a scar to remind me but think of it as something that gives me character and more life experience,” says Rivet.

Let time do the trick

Time heals all wounds. Maybe this situation requires more time than usual. John Barnes quotes the 12-Step Program, “‘Time takes time.’ Just because you know how you want to feel, and that you will feel that way eventually, doesn’t mean you’re ready to feel it now. Cut yourself some slack. Be bitter if you have to be until it’s time to be over it,” says Barnes.

How about a good laugh? Deepak Gupta recommends eBossWatch, a site devoted to the worst bosses. Granted, it’s a serious website where you can search for bad bosses, but hang out long enough, and you’ll start laughing.

“The closure you are looking for is inside of you. You are the one who needs to close that chapter. Remember all the good that occurred over so many years, not the end,” says Kathi Elster of K Square Enterprises.

Have you been through a situation where you left a company on bad terms? How did you handle it? What’s your advice for people in this situation? Please join the discussion in the comments because we want to hear from you. 

Meryl K. Evans is senior editor at InternetVIZ and the content maven behind the Connected Digest, B2B Social Media Digest and Professional Services Journal. Follow her on Twitter @merylkevans.

Despite the Internet’s vast resources, people don’t always find what they need, especially when searching for obscure information or something that doesn’t yet exist. Consider an old song from your teen years that keeps playing in your mind. Maybe you only remember a few words, not phrases or lines. If you spend some time, you may find it buried in the information highway haystack. 

Yet if you use Facebook and Twitter, you will most likely find that tidbit much faster. In social media, people want to help and respond to queries. They respond to these queries with valuable information, and post blog entries about the subject. Now, search engines have two new places to go when someone does a query. 

One company has turned “It’s never been done before” types of problems into solved ones by sharing expertise in social media. Emerson Process Management supports organizations with complicated technology and engineering problems that need solving. Social media gives Emerson an accessible and fast way to reach those who need answers. 

Imagine the knowledge that Emerson has with 250 manufacturing locations around the world, 730 patents in 2009 alone and servicing over 150 countries. Social media acts as a bridge that connects the large company’s expertise with the people needing the knowledge. Once content appears on a social network, search engines become aware of it. As search engines discover the knowledge, it brings the company another step closer to customers and prospects. 

Emerson Process Management social media strategy 

Emerson wants to bring its expertise to the surface where customers and prospects can find it. While the traditional approach of connecting and interacting with others works, it takes more time than using social media. Furthermore, people who have problems that need solving don’t have time to wait until they meet the right person. 

The company entered social media by determining its business objectives and communications objectives for key audiences and then coming up with the message and desired outcome. As a result, Emerson has established processes for all of its communications. “Social media-related initiatives are similar in starting with the message phase. We want the participant to use his or her own voice instead of highly processed and tested messaging,” says Jim Cahill, head of social media and chief blogger at Emerson Process Management. 

Cahill lists four reasons for motivating your talent to get to the surface quickly by participating in social media: 

• Gain more visibility. Encouraging your experts to come to the surface through social media will speed up others finding them.
• Listen in real time. Social media is two-way media that allows people to reach out to others and respond. And it all happens in real time.
• Expose expertise. Many refer to this as “thought leadership.” When your talent goes out there and joins the social media fray, they let their knowledge speak for them and the company. This leads to building trust, which leads to business opportunities.
• Find answers fast. Whether the experts or prospects need answers, social media speeds the problem-solving process. Tweet a question, and you can get answers within seconds. Add the answers to Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs and other social media resources, and Google and other search engines will pull them up. 

The company is in the business of services, which isn’t tangible. “The intent is to increase our presence at the surface to improve our ability to listen, talk and engage with customers and prospective customers,” says Cahill. 

Building a business case for social media 

The journey began six years ago when Cahill and co-worker, Deb Franke, noticed blog posts appeared high up on search engine results, especially for engineers’ typical “how-to” queries. The timing worked out because the company brought together two business automation systems and a solutions business. Because of this, Cahill and Franke recognized that blogs offered a natural way to add visibility to the company’s experts. 

The foray into social media started with one blog in 2006. Cahill worked with legal, human resources and senior management before launching Emerson Process Experts blog. “After it proved itself as a way to provide visibility of Emerson’s expertise to those using search engines to find it, we embarked on more social media-related activities over time,” Cahill says. Today, the company has seven blogs, many LinkedIn and Facebook groups and employees using Twitter. 

“Social media helps us reach these goals by putting the people behind the technologies and engineering where they can more closely listen, connect and respond to customers and prospective customers,” says Cahill. 

Measuring success 

The most important metric is the number of contacts that come through the blog. Emerson Process Experts blog contains a sidebar with contact information. Cahill wants people to contact him for answers to issues they face. He connects them with the right people in the organization. Metrics include tracking the following: 

• Contacts.
• Monthly visits to the blog.
• RSS subscriptions.
• Visits to content sites with view counts (YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare, etc.).

Every post comes with a CAPTCHA-protected email link to the featured expert. Tracking contacts helps him connect sales opportunities with the blog rather than focusing on conversion because B2Bs have long and complicated sales cycles. 

While this may not have the hard numbers many executives want to see, Emerson Process Management has moved Cahill into the new role of social media head.

 Advice to businesses 

For B2B companies looking to get into social media, Cahill recommends starting with business objectives. “If they are sound, you’ll overcome objectives from legal, human resources and senior management. Patience and persistence are critical. It took us two years from the idea to realization,” he says. 

Emerson had to work around the status quo to get over its biggest social media hurdle. This meant pointing to other companies like IBM and Sun that used social media with success and sharing their social media policies. Again, remembering and repeating the business objective to raise the visibility of the company’s experts remained key. “The final piece, courtesy of some wisdom provided by business blogger Steve Rubel, was to prove it internally,” says Cahill. 

The team demonstrated post visibility by building inside-the-firewall blogs and using a custom Google search appliance to show results. Worrying about privacy and legal risks is not an excuse. This concerned many people when email became more mainstream. Yet, email turned into a business activity that few could do without. 

Emerson Process Management Social Media Elements 

Goal: The primary goal for Emerson is to solve problems as part of its “Consider it solved” promise. Social media gives the company a place to connect with those looking for answers. 

Social media tools: Emerson uses social media to make it easier for people to find experts. Communities also open channels for peer-to-peer knowledge exchange. The company shares content using the following eight resources: 

1. Blogs:  Blogs give Emerson a forum for highlighting the expertise across the company. Staff uses multiple blogs to focus on different areas of the company’s wide knowledge and industries. The life sciences industry blog and data centers blog attract different markets with different problems. 
2. YouTube and Screencast: Staff posts videos that share expertise. These videos also appear on the blog. 
3. Podcasts: Uploading blog podcasts to iTunes and MP3 sites provides greater reach. 
4. LinkedIn: The Emerson brand has a LinkedIn group so users and experts can collaborate, ask and answer questions, share ideas and network. 
5. Flickr: Staff posts images and photos to share knowledge and expertise. 
6. Facebook: Several Emerson brands also have their own Facebook groups that lists basic information.
7. Twitter: Company employees and brands use Twitter to mention new posts and connect with customers, prospects and trade press community members. 
8. Private community: The company runs a forum on its website. 

These resources improve the company’s standings with search engines. The content they create in social media lets experts demonstrate competence, trust, commitment and creativity, all required factors when you’re in the services business. As a result, they can grow the business. 

Results: In three years, the blog has grown from 5,000 monthly visits to over 50,000. Flickr and YouTube alone receive almost 10,000 monthly views. In one year, the company’s Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts went up almost 3,000. These numbers jumped almost another 1,000 in six months. 

Cahill receives 10 to 15 contacts per week. Some are support related, some are sales opportunities or requests for quotes and the occasional, “I didn’t know Emerson did this. Can you send someone to discuss our application right away?” One of these occasionals was for a “greenfield” plant that could lead to hundreds of millions of dollars in automation equipment and project services. 

Remember, the B2B sales cycle is long and complex. With millions of dollars in the balance, landing these occasional contacts says that Emerson is doing something right with its social media program. 

The message is clear. Using multiple social networks helps the company reach more people while boosting the company’s findability in search engines. 

About the author

Meryl K. Evans is senior editor at InternetVIZ and the content maven behind the Connected Digest, B2B Social Media Digest and Professional Services Journal. Follow her on Twitter @merylkevans, LinkedIn or on Facebook.

Burning on the Inside

After over five years of service, I recently “retired” from a company to manage my own business full-time. I gave the standard two-week notice and started preparing to help with the transition. The company cut my two weeks short, and my manager was disrespectful to me during the process.

Since then, I’ve been furious with the manager and the situation. I did the best I could to serve the company and was loyal and honest. Having never received closure, I’ve been careful because I don’t believe in burning bridges.

The company did nothing illegal, so this doesn’t call for a lawsuit. And I might need a good recommendation from my manager someday. I think some action will help me get over this, but what? Should I talk to the director or someone else? I’m still burning inside despite trying to forget about the company. Nothing works. How do you work past these nasty feelings?

— Gone, but not forgotten

Reach a Difficult Audience through Content

The healthcare industry faces a unique challenge, finding ways to cut costs without affecting the quality of patient care. Sacrificing care means the difference between life and death. Furthermore, hospital decision-makers are so busy that they have built shells around them to protect their time and sanity.

So how does a consulting firm targeting this market break through hospital senior leaders’ protective shells, earn their trust, gain credibility and build a relationship? The way to go is to reach the prospects where they are and use content focused on their needs not the company’s own. That’s what works for Compass Clinical Consulting.

Before charging ahead with social media, Compass needed to update its brand. It changed the company’s name from Compass Group to Compass Clinical Consulting so its clients and prospects know exactly what the company does. This, combined with the customer-centric approach, has helped Compass accelerate brand awareness in a short time.

Compass Clinical Consulting social media strategy

Compass strives to develop useful content for hospital leaders to improve how they run their hospitals. This marketing strategy includes content that reinforces Compass’ brand, establishes credibility and trust, and encourages future clients to engage with employees to see if the Compass approach fits their needs. This ties in with social media because all content appears in direct mail, blogs, Web sites, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, news releases, articles and the company’s online news room. 

All of these messages support the company’s brand promise: “We help hospital leaders reduce the cost of delivering safe, quality healthcare.” Its social media strategy is to keep it simple by focusing on social media that hospital marketing departments use. Dale Wolf, director of education and information services, reports that about 10 percent of the company’s market segment uses social media, making Compass an early entrant into social media. “Being in on the ground floor is giving us the experience to master these media as more hospitals come on board,” he says.

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Besides that, the company appears on page one of search engine results for its keyword phrases. Social media is positively affecting its search engine findability. 

Because the consulting business is a relationship business, social media fit the company’s business model. Wolf explains, “We must communicate with people busier than in any other market segment I have ever worked. This is a tough wall to crack. Building awareness for hospital successes will help. Until then, we send our content out via every reasonable medium on the premise that a good percentage will get through the barriers.” The executives make up one segment; the company also works to connect with news reporters who cover healthcare. 

In the beginning, Compass limited its scope for social media by starting with blogging, Twitter and LinkedIn. After becoming comfortable with these, they are planning to expand their social media scope. The PR director also manages other uses of social media on his own. 

Building a business case for social media 

Compass has always included social media in its marketing plan. Part of that could be because of Wolf’s success in using social media in his previous job. He has also added social media to sections in the marketing plan that covers public relations because social media ties into public relations. 

As far as its business case goes, Compass management doesn’t believe that senior leaders use social media, and the older managers haven’t made it a habit to use social media. However, they know that future leaders will enter the business with social media skills. “So some of the decision-making on this was faith on the part of our senior managers. They do clearly see how it impacts Google search, and ‘findability’ is one of our key marketing themes so that helped in the rollout,” Wolf says. 

The company needs to reach people including board members, CEOs, COOs, other executives and quality directors who work long hours. They’re very tough people to reach. “This makes it very difficult to deliver a message with sufficient frequency so the message will stick. Every touchpoint becomes more critical,” he says. 

Measuring success 

The company started its social media program 18 months ago with limited resources, so it has not arrived at a point to build a comprehensive metrics program. But Compass still does the following activities to measure its success: 

• Track news release distribution through MarketWire.
• Track Web and blog traffic using WordPress stat tools.
• Track email open and clickthroughs.
• Experiment with Google Analytics. 

“The single most important metric is how many discussions we generate with senior hospital leaders. We always ask callers or other contacts how they learned about Compass, and we identify sales leads that result from particular campaigns or from Google search. The resulting sales validate that we are moving in the right direction,” says Wolf. (He recommends a Compass article that explains how social media helps the bottom line.)

 Advice to businesses 

Social media is not a magic bullet that drives sales for the firm. It is a bullet. “Carry a six-shooter or an automatic weapon that lets you shoot more than one bullet. The Lone Ranger’s silver bullet worked in the Wild West but not in the hectic marketplace we all now reside in.” says Wolf. He advises businesses to consider these four activities when looking into a social media strategy: 

1.    Work with a consultant who knows social media. The consultant should know how social media integrates with publicity, online search and Web traffic generation. 

2.   Jump in slow. Don’t try to do everything at once because swallowing the sun is a tough act. 

3.   Start with your customer-centric content strategy. Make the commitment to generate content on a constant basis. Marketing is no longer about advertising (not to say advertising is not important); it is about doing a lot of things right and realizing that customer-centric marketing is about helping customers learn how to do their work better. When you help customers, they will remember you. 

4.  Pull is better than push. Since pull is less predictable, it requires courage of conviction, consistency and constancy. 

“When marketers look at social media as an end to themselves, they are making a mistake. Social media are simply a cloud-based content distribution system that is remarkably fast, cost efficient and hopefully viral,” Wolf says. “We have as Robert Frost wrote, ‘miles to go before we sleep,’ but we are making rapid progress.” 

Compass Clinical Consulting Social Media Elements 

Goal: The primary goal for Compass is to complete consulting engagements so clients have a successful experience with positive, measurable and sustainable results. 

Social media tools: Compass uses social media to distribute its content in a variety of ways and to connect with its hard-to-reach target market: 

1. Content distribution. Marketing coordinates with each practice leader to produce content, including white papers, blog posts and Web content. They distribute white paper content by (1) sending the printed white papers directly to decision-makers by postal mail or PDF versions by email, or (2) sending a promotional letter that encourages decision-makers to visit the Web site and download the content. Compass posts all content in its Knowledge Center where spiders can detect it and make it available for online searches to improve search presence. 

2.   Blog: Staff repurposes white papers for the blog and manages three blogs. 

3. Twitter: The company automatically tweets content on corporate (@compasscc) and personal Twitter accounts. Tweets consist of headlines aimed mainly at news media. 

4.  LinkedIn: Staff posts content in discussion groups on LinkedIn.

5.   YouTube: The company posts all videos on its corporate YouTube account. 

6.   Flickr: Compass posts all images and photos on its Flickr account. 

7.    Social bookmark sites: The company also links to content on social bookmarking sites like FirendFeed, Stumbleupon and Delicious. 

8.    News releases: Staff creates news releases as content for posting on news release and online news sites, national media and local media, resulting in highly targeted, mass distribution of content. 

The prime strategy for Compass is to create useful content. The use of media — traditional or social — is simply a means of distributing content as broadly as possible. 

“We want to be seen for the thought-leaders that we are, creating and distributing relevant and useful content that helps leaders run better, more efficient hospitals. Social media is an extension that gives us more channels in which to talk with hospital leaders, at a relatively low cost,” Wolf says. 

Results: When Compass Clinical Consulting started the transition to social media, the Web site received an average of 500 visits a month. The company now averages almost 10,000 visitors plus 4,000 RSS feed subscribers. Page views surpass 40,000 a month. Building traffic to registration pages is the central focus of all Compass campaigns. 

Before implementing the program, a “Compass Group” Google search yielded one result in the first four pages. Now Compass “owns” all the results on the first four Google pages. The only exception is an occasional mention of other companies with Compass in their name. The company’s focus and persistent search engine optimization strategy — using key word phrases to improve search engine page results — has led to several client engagements. 

One tweet in Twitter compelled Fox Business News to call Compass for a TV story on healthcare reform. A single story builds credibility and provides publicity. 

Meryl K. Evans is senior editor at InternetVIZ and the content maven behind the Connected Digest, B2B Social Media Digest and Professional Services Journal. Follow her on Twitter @merylkevans, LinkedIn or on Facebook. 

About Dale Wolf

As president of Wolf Blumberg Krody Marketing, he and his two partners formalized their customer-centric approach into a data-driven methodology of direct marketing – coined as “contextual marketing.” This methodology led to growth for many national brands, hospitals and healthcare insurance companies.

 After selling his ownership in WBK, Dale joined Cincom Systems, Inc. to lead product development of Web-based software to replicate his contextual marketing methodology and spearheaded customer-centric marketing strategy for many of Cincom’s brands. Dale was also an early adopter of blogging and other social media.

Performance Review

In my 20 years in the workforce, it’s surprising that performance reviews haven’t made a difference for my staff. I’m trying to turn this around, so I’ve read up on how to make the most of performance reviews. Yet, I struggle with finding an effective process that benefits the employee, employer and manager.

Do you use the performance review tool, or do you do your own thing? What’s the best way to do a constructive performance review that benefits both employees and management?

— Perplexed about performance

It may happen in June in one company. For another, it’s September. No matter the month, almost every company has a dreaded month where employees and managers fear the annual performance review.

Even when things go well for hard-working employees and managers, the performance review becomes a tradition of wasting everyone’s time while satisfying the company’s need to have it done. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Most employees want to grow and feel challenged. Effective performance reviews help them take the next step in their jobs rather than simply receive a business report card. Good performance reviews and consistent follow-up can motivate employees throughout the year. Readers and experts provide excellent advice to address this difficult yet important challenge.

They recommend that you stop wasting time with performance reviews and turn them into useful tools with these four steps:

• Get the company on the same page.
• Develop your own review process.
• Check in more often.
• Change the focus of the review.

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As always, if you have more advice, share it in the comments, or if you’re facing a different challenge, please share your dilemma so we can ask your peers for their advice.

Get the company on the same page

The problem with performance reviews is that the entire company may not buy into them. Or maybe the review process varies by department or manager. If the process lacks consistency across the company, it does no one good. When few support the performance process, it becomes a useless tool.

If possible, have the company investigate performance review processes to find what works best and get buy-in on the best process, from executives on down to recent college graduates.

Develop your own review process

You may not be in a position to change the company’s performance review process. Why not create your own? “Either start from scratch or customize a standardized form. To be effective, a performance review needs to cover specific aspects of a specific position,” says Barbara Farfan, management and operations consultant, Authentic Communications. No one says you can’t develop one and then fill in the blanks on the company’s official form.

For those not wanting to start from scratch, Michelle Braden, president and CEO of MSBCoach, LLC, suggests investing in a behavior tool like EQ, DISC, Emergenetics or StrengthsFinder.

Carol Stewart, adjunct professor of management at Southern CT State University, uses Manage By Objectives (MBO). “I create a spreadsheet with my goals in one column, and action items and due dates (for each goal) in the next two columns. The last column shows any dependencies or obstacles. This process takes the ‘subjectivity’ out of performance reviews,” says Stewart.

You can work with the current system using Slaughter Development, LLC’s Robby Slaughter’s approach. “Instead of performance reviews, employees and managers ought to mutually define forward-looking performance objectives that include fixed targets tied to future compensation — and honor them.”

Check in more often

A typical performance review process consists of two meetings: the goal-setting and the review. Some companies combine both in a single meeting, and follow the review with setting next year’s goals.

Having more check-ins helps reinforce the goals and progress. “To help the review ‘stick,’ it is necessary to maintain a consistent message between evaluations. Additionally, people can only change if they know how. An evaluation reveals the issues, not how to solve them. Provide educational or situational opportunities directed at resolving the shortcomings identified in the evaluation,” says Greg Stacy, senior account manager with Single Source Systems Inc.

Too often, employees don’t know where they stand when the performance review time arrives. That should not be the case. Instead, the performance review should summarize what the employee and manager already know and contain no surprises. The summary captures all the conversations and documentation the employee and managers have had throughout the year.

Linda Konstan, Sensible Human Resources Consulting, does weekly check-ins. “Instead of basing everything on the ‘annual performance evaluation,’ I prefer to use a critical incident log at least once weekly. This tool documents the good, bad and ugly and forces conversations with staff,” says Konstan.

You could also check in every four to six weeks like Lunell Haught does. “Performance reviews are a waste of time without follow-up. I ask, ‘What can I do to help you succeed?’ and then do it or tell why I can’t. I see appraisals as a conversation, not a judgment!” Haught says.

Change the focus of the review

Meeting more often to discuss an employee’s progress is a great start. A manager can motivate an employee to change by focusing on the positives and involving the employee in the process. One reader suggests having employees list their responsibilities and the best way to meet those responsibilities. The manager can respond with a positive by focusing on what the employees do well and follow that with areas of improvement or drastic changes necessary.

Obviously, you need to point out performance weaknesses. “Reinforce what you want people to keep doing! Negative feedback, to be useful, must focus on things people can change,” says Stephen Balzac, president of 7 Steps Ahead, LLC. “You’re not a team player” offers no useful information. Be specific such as “In the last three meetings, I observed you turning every discussion into a win/lose fight, and then shouting everyone down. I am concerned that this will destroy our effectiveness as a team,” Balzac says.

The employee and manager need to discuss, agree and document steps to help the team, department and company meet their goals. The employee needs to know what the manager expects, but it’s up to the employee to figure out the how. End the conversation with a positive.

Instead of focusing on the infamous SMART goals, aka specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timeframe, Phyllis Harber-Murphy of More Than 9 2 5 Virtual Assistance suggests thinking HARD.

• Heartfelt: My goals will enrich the lives of others, whether colleagues and peers or the general public.
• Animated: I can vividly imagine how great I will feel once I accomplish these goals.
• Required: My goals are aligned with and will have a direct impact on my company’s main objectives.
• Difficult: I will have to stretch myself (take courses, learn new techniques, etc.) to accomplish my goals.

While changing the process may not be possible, you can make the best of it with what you have by meeting more often and focusing on the good while identifying areas for growth and improvement. With a little practice, maybe the whole team will change its outlook on performance reviews, knowing they result in more communication and growth.

What do you think? Any gaps? Disagree? Join the discussion in the comments. 

Meryl K. Evans is senior editor at InternetVIZ and the content maven behind the Connected Digest, B2B Social Media Digest and Professional Services Journal. Follow her on Twitter @merylkevans.

Listen to your Sales Team

Listen to your sales team
by Kipp Bodnar – Hubspot

This list of marketing lessons comes from the MarketingProfs B2B Forum. You’ll find tips for keywords, content, email marketing, social media, sales.

What’s one marketing lesson you’ve learned recently? [ Read original article ]

Profiting from Lead Generation

Combining lead generation and marketing to drive performance
by Marie Griffin – BtoB Media Business

How do you present your lead generation effort? Do you sell by convincing customers they need your product or service? Or do you find out what customers need? Several companies share their successful lead generation processes and how they balance the various mediums.

What works for you in generating leads? [ Read original article ]

Getting Execs on Board

Not engaging is riskier than diving in
by Jennifer Van Grove – Mashable

You have plenty of success stories you can use to show that social media really works for b2b. You may need more to convince the upper echelons to move into social media. The article provides suggestions from five people of varying backgrounds to help you get to “YES!”

What other ways can you get buy in from the top? [ Read original article ]

Shifts in Social Media Marketing

Capitalize on these shifts to boost sales
by Tom Pick – Webbiquity

Some marketers think using social media means simply repackaging the company’s brochure-type content as thought leadership. This won’t work. Smart marketers have taken notice of the five shifts and applied them to increase sales. They all revolve around giving the buyer more power and control. Furthermore, social media is an integrated effort. A new client that connected with you on Twitter didn’t necessarily find you on Twitter — it’s about mixing up how you engage with others.

What do you think of the five shifts? [ Read original article ]

Speak E.A.S.Y.

Bring together the devil in Reaper, a smarmy guy from The Usual Suspects and a large enterprise resource planning (ERP) company, and you have a business-to-business company that knows how to have fun while teaching. It’s part of the learn, laugh, share and connect philosophy that the supply chain management company Kinaxis applies to social media. 

Just For Kix Productions, the alias for Kinaxis, produces the show with the tagline of “the comedy series BigERP doesn’t want you to watch,” Suitemates, starring actors Ray Wise of Reaper and Twin Peaks and Kevin Pollack of The Usual Suspects and Shark. The show offers a creative and comedic way to raise awareness of customer frustrations with ERP vendors. 

Just for Kix Productions also produces Late Late Supply Chain Show, Uncle Jay Explains and Married to the Job. All of these touch on topics related to the industry. The videos make up one part of the company’s successful social media and online marketing modus operandi. 

Not only does Kinaxis go all in with its professionally produced videos, but it also brings in outside experts for guidance to ensure the company ventures beyond its blog and into the realm of social media with a full deck. 

The Kinaxis social media strategy 

The overall business objective for Kinaxis is to grow by increasing its market share and business momentum. Raising awareness in target markets, strengthening customer relationships and generating business leads are the social media gears, or goals, in the company’s social machine to reach its objective. 

The goals, in turn, led to the development of the social media strategy, which contains three parts: 

• Engage the broader supply chain community. This builds presence and credibility as employees provide valuable insights and join conversations. “It’s not about selling our product; thought leadership is first and foremost. Our blog is an example of that — you rarely see us mentioning, let alone plugging, our product,” says Kirsten Watson, director of Kinaxis corporate marketing. “We feel that talking about the industry challenges and solutions will, by default, prove out the Kinaxis value proposition.”
• Establish a corporate culture of engagement. Social media is not solely a marketing department endeavor. It’s a corporate-wide engagement that leverages many company experts. “Quite a few have embraced this as part of their daily routine, and that’s the goal. It’s an evolution that takes time. The company has established incentive programs to encourage contributions to the blog, discussion forums and other mediums,” Watson says. 
• Develop the company’s personality. Kinaxis has discovered that customers and prospects appreciate the company’s sense of humor. “It’s often the hook that gets people to visit our community/blog, etc. and learn more about us,” says Watson. The company produces videos using comedy while telling a story around a business problem such as the failure of ERP vendors in solving supply chain management problems.

“We believe that our social media engagement is the entire company’s responsibility,” Watson says. “With such a heavy emphasis on thought-leadership, we need to make sure our social media strategy is inclusive of our internal subject-matter experts. Most everyone can and should contribute. Of course, it’s a never-ending journey of adjustment and improvement.” 

The social media strategy focuses on building an online destination for supply chain management professionals, starting conversations around problems and solutions, boosting awareness with influencers and creating pull by having prospects who hear good things about the company come to Kinaxis. Together, these activities support the company’s effort to influence prospects. 

Building a business case for social media 

Kinaxis had to learn how social media can work for B2B since it’s not as intuitive as for business-to-consumer (B2C) companies. Rather than spending a lot of time trying to navigate the Web 2.0 waters with a blindfold, especially in a niche market, the company hired Forrester Research. 

Forrester studied Kinaxis’ target market to see where and what it did online. The audience consisted of supply chain practitioners and influencers, covering prospects, customers, academia, industry analysts, media and thought leaders. The result showed the target audience used social media for decision-making, support and references. “Knowing that supply chain management professionals are consuming — and participating in — social media for work purposes gave us justification to incorporate social media into our business,” Watson says. 

Working with Forrester, the company developed its social media strategy using Forrester’s POST model: people, objective, strategy and technology. Everything Kinaxis does today in social media comes from the plan including joining existing supply chain communities and creating its own community. 

Measuring success 

The company says that determining success has both hard and soft results. For the tangibles, Kinaxis looks at the following metrics: 

• Page views and unique page views.
• Referrals.
• Impressions.
• Online clicks.
• Email open, click-through and unsubscribe rates.
• Conversion rates.
• Community membership.
• Interaction and word-of-mouth mentions (blog comments, response to LinkedIn postings, tweets, retweets, etc.).
• Tracking the source of all new leads to a specific program or activity. 

Although these have value, they don’t tell the whole story. “The softer side of this is asking ourselves: Do we feel that people know us better?” Watson says. Employees look at whether prospects, industry colleagues, competitors and the press know or talk about the company.  

Advice to businesses 

“I don’t believe there is a choice of whether or not a company should consider social media — the choice is how it should participate. If your audience is online researching, talking, making choices, then that’s where you need to be, too. Some companies are scared to venture in uncharted (and largely uncontrolled) waters,” says Watson. She recommends following Forrester Research POST methodology, which contains the three steps: 

1. Identify where your audience is online. If you jump into Twitter and your audience isn’t there, that’s wasted time. Find them, and see what they’re doing.  
2. Define objectives. After knowing where your audience is and what it does, move forward with developing a strategy. 
3. Select the best tools. With a defined audience and strategy, you are in a better position to pick the tools that will benefit your company the most. 

“Social media is not a collection of new tools for you to blast out your marketing messages. They are tools for knowledge sharing and relationship building,” Watson says. “If you misuse them, people will call you out because the power is with the people, and they have a loud voice and a large audience.” 

Social media offers endless opportunities that can eat up resources. To be successful in social media means producing lots of content on a regular basis. Watson says, “Social media success relies on consistent and thoughtful engagement, and that takes time and effort. You need to figure out the ‘must-do’ vs. the ‘nice-to-do.’ We have implemented our social media efforts in stages. It’s better to tackle a few key things and get them right, than jump in and try to do it all from the start.” 

The company repurposes its content in a variety of ways. It may create a presentation that it blogs and tweets about, then create an interview from the content and start a conversation in the forums. Taking a phase approach also provides time to learn lessons and tweak them for future phases. B2Bs should consider taking a company-wide approach to share the workload while ensuring no one burns out and fails to deliver value. Watson says, “The bottom line is you get what you give. Have honest intentions and be true to them.” Then go after your goals. 

In fact, everything Kinaxis does revolves around SEO, one of the most important components in the company’s success. 

Although social media efforts take place throughout the company, marketing is a big player in the social media strategy. “Marketing takes the role of regularly feeding ideas and opportunities to the subject-matter experts. Long-term planning happens in the way of an internal editorial calendar that schedules out themes and deliverables by our group of experts,” Watson says. 

Results: In 2008, Kinaxis already had six figures of pageviews. One year later, the company more than doubled the pageviews. Kinaxis launched its community in the second half of 2009 and had an estimated 106,000 pageviews — and that’s after launching and using social media. Yet, it still managed to up the numbers by 20,000 in the first half of 2010. Finally, in 2008, it had over 13,000 leads. By 2009, that climbed to over 42,000 leads. Conclusion: Social media clearly works for Kinaxis. 

Meryl K. Evans is senior editor at InternetVIZ and the content maven behind Connected Digest, B2B Social Media Digest and Professional Services Journal. Follow her on Twitter @merylkevans, LinkedIn or on Facebook.

Dealing with a Blockhead Boss

We have a decent team, but we can’t make things happen smoothly. My boss assigns irrelevant tasks to my team. We put in a lot of overtime because of his idiocy. The guy is a joke around the department, and everyone except the executive team seems to know that. Should we confront the executive director, go to the CEO (the director’s boss) or live with it in silence? 

— Tracy, Manager 

Don’t believe that a blockhead executive can land such a high position? Matt Scherer, president, Scherer Communications, tells his story to show how management gets away with bad behavior. He was an editor of a newspaper nicknamed Puzzle Page. After production completed a page, Scherer and his boss Bill checked for errors and then verified the corrections.

Unfortunately, Bill never checked the corrections. One time, Scherer told Bill that the corrections needed verifying and that he would stay behind to do the work. When that didn’t work, Scherer went to Bill’s boss who happened to be good friends with Bill. Bill’s boss believed he couldn’t fix the proofing problem.

Two weeks after Bill left, Scherer took over his editing duties. He changed the proofing process, and the newspaper had its first error-free publication. His commander, one up from Bill’s boss, asked what happened. After conversing, Scherer learned that Bill had blamed him for the problems.

Having a bad boss is an icky situation, at any point in your career. Readers and experts offer ways to cope.

• Remember no one likes everyone.
• Do a self-review.
• Take a positive approach.
• Meet with the boss.
• Go to the “grand boss.”
• Accept the situation. 

Remember no one likes everyone

You don’t like everyone you meet, and even the nicest people encounter others who dislike them for no explainable reason. Marcia Yudkin retells a story in The Marketing Minute newsletter as told by The New Yorker’s cartoon editor Robert Mankoff in his book, The Naked Cartoonist: A New Way to Enhance Your Creativity.

“Cartoonist Robert Mankoff once set out to find a cartoon that nearly everyone who had any sense of humor would find funny.

“He sent what he thought was his own very best cartoon to 2,000 men and women, asking them to rate it from 1 (completely unfunny) to 10 (extremely funny). About 80 percent rated Mankoff’s cartoon 7 or above, which delighted him. Yet some respondents gave it a 1.

“Mankoff threw up his hands, calling this item ‘the most highly rated cartoon for funniness that I ever did, or (sob) will probably ever do.’”

Yudkin explains that people in your target market have many differences, and they won’t think the same thing when looking at an item or marketing message. “It’s foolhardy to aim at universal praise or acceptance,” she says.

Do a self-review 

Before jumping off a cliff and rattling cages, take an honest look at the situation and yourself. The boss may know more than you realize but only forwards what you need to know. “Just because you think he asks for irrelevant tasks, it could be that he has a higher need for information than you do. In other words, you may operate from a style that allows you to make decisions with just some basic information. On the other hand, your boss may be a bit more cautious and detailed-oriented,” says Timothy A. Wilson.

Another way to do a self-check is to talk with trusted colleagues. Get insight into the work and boss. They might be able to fill in the gaps for you. “And always keep in mind — it’s a two-way street. He might have just as many things that he wants YOU to change as you have for him,” says Anja Schuetz, people management coach.

Entrepreneur Mike Fleck paraphrases Peter Drucker on the chain of command. “The most logical person or the person with the best argument does not make the decision; the person who has the POWER makes it. Learn to live with that, and life goes a lot easier. Finding a way to make your boss look good may mean digging deeper to understand better how to do that.”

Take a positive approach

Rather than having the difficult conversation with the boss, experiment with feeding the boss’s ego, giving him credit and tossing sincere compliments. “The best way to deal with this kind of boss is to make your ideas seem as if they came from the boss. It sounds unfair, but it works,” says Kathi Elster, K Squared Enterprises. Do the work, give him credit, and he might stop assigning useless tasks.

Try to change your mindset into a positive one by making an effort to compliment the boss. “I’m not talking about schmoozing; although, there is evidence from a University of Michigan study that schmoozers are more likely to get raises over non-schmoozers. When your boss does something well, pay him a sincere compliment. Positive feedback will reinforce the behavior and improve your relationship with your boss,” says Susan Fletcher, PhD, psychologist and author. 

Meet with the boss

A few people recommend that Judy meet with the executive director to discuss the issue with diplomacy. “Speak up and improve your situation because festering in silence will only make your work environment less tolerable and less productive for you and your colleagues,” says Traci O’Dea, writer with aLookingGlass.

Think of the meeting as a problem-solving session and bring solutions with you. Kim Fabian, founder of TellUrBoss, offers tips on being diplomatic. “Discuss the specific tasks with your executive director first to ensure that he is aware of the problems in an issue-specific way. Do not attack him as a person, which is a recipe for defensiveness and backlash. Because these conversations are so difficult, it’s important to prepare some remarks and examples in advance and not just go in on the fly,” says Fabian.

Prepare for the meeting by capturing why the assignments are not relevant. Review the outcomes of these tasks, especially if they didn’t produce anything of value. Be prepared to discuss these assignments, priorities and outcomes with the boss.

Also, come with solutions and recommendations for his requests. “Armed with facts, present the team’s case as a business concern: deadlines missed, cost of overtime, missed revenue from projects on the back-burner, increases in sick days or employee turn-over,” says Julia Zunich, owner, Z Group PR.

Should meeting with the boss not work out, the team should meet with him to discuss concerns. If this also fails to solve the problem, it’s time to go to upper management.

Sandra Naiman, SMN Partners, suggests limiting questioning when discussing the assignments with the manager. Instead, save the questions for the more cumbersome tasks.

Go to the “grand boss”

Several readers outright oppose going to the CEO because going over someone’s head leads to more trouble. Others say it should be a last resort. Also, consider your corporate culture. “If the CEO has an ‘open-door’ policy, it makes sense to meet with him/her — but don’t go alone. At least two people from your department should go,” says Ann Middleman. “If you don’t have anything in writing, start saving his emails or memos. Build a case, and then go to the CEO.”

Use the same approach as meeting with the boss. Focus on the issue, show why the assignments are irrelevant to the business goals and objectives, use examples and avoid confrontation and insults.

As an alternative to going to the CEO, Ravi Kathuria of Cohegic proposes something that won’t be a quick solution but could help over the long-term. “Build relationships with the other team members of the executive team on a general basis. Then slowly, but surely, share what your team does and how some of the things the manager asks the team to do are not congruent with the most effective use of the team,” Kathuria says.

Accept the situation

Jay Valentine saw first-hand how a board can stick by a lousy boss regardless of the situation. “In my case, our CEO sent sexually loaded messages to our female marketing director and then invited my daughter who was just out of college to spend a weekend with him. He is a 50-year-old married guy. I reported it to the board, and it did nothing. I even produced the emails. So you need to know, the boss can be a total scumbag, and the management or board will stick with that person,” Valentine says.

Despite his effort, Matt Scherer couldn’t improve the situation until the loudmouth left. “They say the squeaky wheel gets the grease. In this scenario, the squeaky wheel will get the ‘boot!’ You can’t change other people. And upper management may not want to see what’s going on because they would have to put energy into changing things,” says Robin Siebold. Some readers say not to live with it in silence, while others believe the price to pay for trying to push for a solution could be too high; leaving things alone is wiser.

You can either stick it out or look elsewhere for a job where your manager values you. However, Heather Stagl of Enclaria, points out the downside of quitting. “It is said that people join companies but leave bosses. But what if you really enjoy your work and your coworkers, and don’t want to leave the company? Besides, what happens next time you find yourself in the same situation?” she says. 

Meryl K. Evans is senior editor at InternetVIZ and the content maven behind Connected Digest, B2B Social Media Digest and Professional Services Journal. Follow her on Twitter @merylkevans.

Bridge the Social Media Gap

As if sales and marketing didn’t have enough to divide the two, marketing-leaning social media adds to the friction. It is possible to bring together b2b social media and b2b sales. This article lists four ways to apply what b2b sales already uses and tie it with social media.
 
 We also posted reader advice on how to help sales with social media.
 
 How would you bridge the gap between social media and sales? [ Read more ... ]

The Dichotomy Issue

Many of us agree that social media is a great venue for listening and interacting with customers, colleagues, experts and more. But some people in marketing remain stuck in traditional marketing and need help to integrate social media rather than look at it as dichotomy.

What can we do to help marketing become more integrated instead of siloed? [ Read more ... ]

Room for New Growth

Social media marketing grew massively in a short time. Where else can you directly engage with customers and colleagues? The infographic in this article will show you the gaps that you can fill now and get ahead of your competitors. Forrester says that social media marketing is growing at double the rate of all other forms of online marketing. Should marketers ignore social media with these kind of numbers?

What does your business plan to do in terms of marketing in the next four years? [ Read more ... ]

Top 5 Questions for B2B Campaigns

This article discusses five questions that many b2bs will ask when looking into social media. The questions cover who should manage social media, whether social media is personal or business, social media’s ROI, finding time to do social media and whether b2b customers really use social media. Even if very few of your customers use it, social media is worth exploring, discovering and understanding. Don’t wait until something happens that pushes you into it. Be ready.

What are your biggest social media questions? [ Read more ... ]

Work Performance Evaluations

In my 20 years in the workforce, it’s surprising that performance reviews haven’t made a difference for my staff. I’m trying to turn this around, so I’ve read up on how to make the most of performance reviews. Yet, I struggle with finding an effective process that benefits the employee, employer and manager.

Do you use the performance review tool, or do you do your own thing? What’s the best way to do a constructive performance review that benefits both employees and management?

— Perplexed about performance

Blockhead Boss

We have a decent team, but we can’t make things happen smoothly. Our boss assigns irrelevant tasks to our team. We put in a lot of overtime because of his idiocy. The guy is a joke around the department, and everyone except the executive team seems to know that. Should we confront the executive director, go to the CEO (the director’s boss) or live with it in silence?

– Judy, Project Manager

by Meryl K. Evans, Editor, B2B Social Media Digest 

Effective business-to-business (B2B) social media is not just the latest “pretty face” in public relations (PR). It’s also transformational technology with the potential to help company departments work better together — operating in a united yet decentralized environment. Social media provides each area of the company with the power to interact with the outside world. 

For Cincom Systems, Inc., one of the original B2B software companies, its social media revolution began in 2003 with the email newsletter, Expert Access. This newsletter is a result of the company’s plan to build a community of customers and prospects by giving them access to a variety of experts. Readers have the opportunity to ask experts questions. People sharing ideas give the company a strong way to extend its brand. 

The email newsletter has helped the company build a solid following. “When social media vehicles began to appear, it made sense for us to make our conversation with our customers and prospects easier, faster and more broadly available to both Cincomers and our audience,” says Jay McKeever, Cincom director of worldwide marketing. 

Cincom’s social media strategy 

Cincom chooses to use social media as a way to help a new audience become aware of the company, which aims to provide answers that help the audience members do their jobs better. These answers can be in how-to’s, best practices, new trends and techniques in management, and technology articles. “From a global perspective, social media extends our reach to people and places in which we do not have physical representation,” says McKeever. 

The company is working on a full-blown strategy for social media. “Different product teams are employing resources to promote events and news through social media outlets,” McKeever says. The company builds editorial calendars to guide its efforts. “But we need to assign more regular reporters to disseminate information and engage our audiences in two-way dialogue.” 

The company uses social media as an interactive PR tool to engage its audience and tell its story without the hype. Instead, Cincom focuses on solving problems. “We work to earn their attention with good, solid, authentic stories/news without a whole lot of corporate crapola (AKA vomitus eruptus),” says Steve Kayser, Cincom PR manager and communicator. The company began its social media activities with no plan and by experimenting. 

Recruiting activities

Steve Storer, Cincom senior recruiter, relies on social media to find the best talent as fast as possible for every open position. Storer explains that the most qualified applicants come from either direct employee referrals or friends and associates. “Social media applicants are a direct extrapolation of the traditional applicant referral process. Their knowledge and interests are searchable, and we can validate their fit for our job openings via analyzing their postings and testimonials from others,” says Storer.

Recruiters can discover potential candidates through their LinkedIn group activities or Twitter stream. On the flip side, candidates can check out Cincom to see if the company is a fit with their career objectives and goals. 

“Based on firsthand experience, direct referral candidates and social media applicants are much more closely aligned to the requirements of our job postings. That allows me to focus my recruiting efforts on screening-in a greater number of quality applicants for each open position,” Storer says. 

Social media removes the tedious part of the recruiter equation of relying on a traditional weeding-out process based on analyzing large volumes of unqualified applicants who may have a well-designed résumé filled with appropriate key words. Such candidates may turn out to have little applicable experience relative to job openings.

Building a business case for social media

Like many companies, Cincom faced skeptics and had to begin with education and adoption. Not everyone likes to write, and employees are busy in times when many businesses do more with less. Social media has become one more thing that people don’t have time to do. Cincom has overcome some obstacles but not all. The company wants to see every employee contribute in some way to its social media efforts. 

Cincom has shown the value and power of social media to employees. “It can be fun and addicting, but the company needs to get better at the fun part,” McKeever says. Cincom is assigning posting shifts and using an editorial calendar to help employees avoid the “I don’t know what to write about” syndrome. “We are trying to streamline this process by breaking up our efforts between thought leadership, survey questions, news flashes and other content,” McKeever says. 

Cincom built a case for social media through its early adopters, especially Louis Columbus, Steve Kayser and James Robertson, all whom are active in social media. They’ve been the influencers to employees in showing the value of social media. “They set the example, they demonstrated the effect it could have on awareness and community development, and people are slowly getting on board. It doesn’t hurt that this is a relatively low-cost platform — one we can track,” says McKeever.

The company saw its business case for social media come together quickly because the low-cost platform offers an easy way to listen to prospects and
customers. The company realized that not listening to customer complaints is an expensive mistake. 

Measuring success 

Cincom measures traffic from social medial to its Web sites, or watches data related to an offer. “After several months of looking initially at the Google Analytics reports and later, WordPress, we all became convinced that as a means to drive upper-funnel activity, it was a clear winner. Since then, we’ve seen our upper-funnel statistics at levels we’ve never attained previously through traditional strategies,” Columbus says. 

The company tracks page views, Web crawlers accessing the content and RSS feed subscriptions for every item shared in social media. It also looks at time visitors spend on the content including blogs and landing pages and opt-ins for downloads. “Against all these metrics, we measure our own progress over time. When we made the shift from Google Analytics to WordPress, the feedback became much more focused and helped us to do much more,” says Columbus.

The company reviews search terms and uses the more popular terms that drive the most traffic. After identifying key terms, the company creates fresh content using those terms.

Advice to businesses

“Strap on your Nikes and just do it! Really, it’s like anything else you do to communicate and market. Who is my audience? What is meaningful to them? How can I help them solve their problems? Why should they listen to me? Understand those things, develop a strategy, set a plan, execute, monitor feedback and make changes,” says McKeever. He recommends the following:

• Listen first. Follow or connect with people you respect in the different social networks to get a feel for how to best use each one.
• Deliver value regularly. The content you share doesn’t need to be about your company. “Strive to deliver insights and intelligence your followers and connections can use to be better at what they do. When you have news about your products or services, share it once or twice. But break up those messages and conversations with a ton of valuable content,” Columbus says.
• Be real and be honest. Respect everyone you interact with in social media.
• Apply the 1-10-1 rule. “You have 1 second to attract someone’s attention (title/subject line) so you can earn 10 seconds of his or her time to earn 1 minute to pay attention to your story — whatever that may be,” Kayser says.

“Far and away, the most critical factor in making social media part of our overall marketing approach is the innate value of these networks as a learning ecosystem,” says McKeever. “Having the ability to listen, learn and put together entirely new solutions based on what prospects and customers say is invaluable.” 

Cincom at a glance 

Goal: Using social media, Cincom targets the media, analysts, IT managers, business users and technology evaluators. It uses social media to generate favorable awareness about the company, build a deep relationship with people by solving their problems and share its expertise by assisting people in the Cincom products and services buying process. 

Social media tools: Some of Cincom’s social media activities occur as the result of its editorial calendar. The company uses a mix of tools to participate in conversations and share experiences. Here are some tools it uses:

1. Twitter: Cincom employees post tweets to respond tocomments, share subject matter expertise and announce news. 
2. LinkedIn: Sales teams around the world use LinkedIn as a branding and sales tool. Cincom finds potential candidates and looks at their postings to see if they’re a possible fit. The company is rolling out training to facilitate this effort. 
3. Blogs: The company leaves comments on blogs other than its own. It also has a few of its own blogs including one from the CEO to share thought leadership.

• Cincom CEO Thomas Nies
• Cincom Expert Access – Online Business Magazine
• Riffs & Tiffs Blog
• The Perfect Customer Experience Blog

     4.  Analytical tools: Cincom began with Google Analytics, but it needed more real-time information and details, so its development team created analytics for WordPress. It also uses whos.amung.us and Feedjit.

The company has expanded its tools to include YouTube, a Facebook page and social media news releases. 

Results: The company has increased traffic, increased interest and achieved better SEO placement for findability. Of course, nothing matters unless sales reflect increased activity. “Our Healthcare group attributes its last two major deals to prospects searching for a topic and finding a social media news release and an Expert Access article on a certain topic,” Kayser says. 

Blogs and Twitter posts have helped Cincom learn more about how outsiders perceive the company than ever before. Industry experts, prospects and existing customers provide the company with a lot of feedback simply because Cincom freely shares insights. Social media gives an instant snapshot that tells the company whether it’s on track using statistics from Web site and blog traffic and the impact of its brand-building activities. 

McKeever says, “When conversations start with these people either in person or on the phone, there is this immediacy to them — They feel they already know you. That immediacy and trust from sharing information and intelligence continues to keep us plugged into the latest developments in the market, and that is invaluable.”

Scaring Off Sales

My company hired me as its first marketing executive. I have a designer and a copywriter who have been here for years. We work together well.

My sales counterpart and I also got along GREAT at first, until I suggested interviewing the sales team to better understand how their customers might react to a social media initiative. Since then, she has found excuse after excuse for me not to speak with them, and our relationship is a bit strained. Is there a way to fix this relationship, or should I try another approach to reach sales? 

— Flailing in sales

It opens doors and closes deals

by Meryl K. Evans, Editor, B2B Social Media Digest 

Social media, aside from blogs, is still new for many people, especially those in business-to-business (B2B) companies. Some people firmly believe that social media isn’t a sales function. True or not, it should not stop a company from investigating social media as an option to build broader and deeper relationships. Because social media can open doors and close deals, most readers think that even if sales staff don’t lead your social media efforts, convincing them of its merits is essential. 

Readers recommend that you:

• Discuss people’s concerns.
• Reassure sales that objectives will remain intact.
• Use success-story examples.
• Show how this builds client/customer relationships.

Discuss people’s concerns 

Like any management challenge, when a colleague or manager puts up a wall, you tear down the wall slowly by opening conversation. Ask questions. Find out her concerns. Maybe together you can find solutions and answers to those concerns. 

One reader suggests going to lunch and directly asking why she’s opposed to the approach. Use this as an opportunity to dig deep into her issues. “Explaining your reasoning may help alleviate her concerns,” says the reader. 

Reassure sales that objectives will remain intact 

When something new comes along, some people struggle with change. Connecting something new with your business objectives is a way to open the door. Since employees should already be familiar and comfortable with objectives, making the link between the old and the familiar can provide reassurance. 

Clive Burton says that with many sales jobs going away, people in sales may fear for their jobs and shut down when hearing about social media initiatives “unless you can convince them that such initiatives will, in fact, contribute to the reps’ success.” 

Use success-story examples 

Stories and examples of B2B companies succeeding with social media pop up regularly. It takes little searching to find examples of companies comparable to yours. Better yet, use competitors as examples. Also look for clients using social media. This shows they find social media valuable enough to use it; then your sales team can, too. 

“My most successful point was that old saying — people do business with people, not companies. These days, it goes one step further. People do business with people THEY KNOW. The best way for your sales reps to get to know their potential customers is through social media,” says Nancy Hamel. 

Show how this builds client/customer relationships 

Not all businesses look at the numbers or return on investment when it comes to the effectiveness of social media. Using social media connects company employees with clients and prospects. It’s a return on relationships. 

“While involving newer ‘social media’ techniques, the issue seems to be the same old challenge of keeping sales and marketing in lock step. What I have found is that it  helps to  illustrate the potential value to the sale force as a way for it to extend conversations, credibility and number of unique touches into accounts,” Joel Capperella says. 

Sales focuses heavily on building relationships, and social media does a good job of facilitating that.