Mar
31

Don’t Party Without Social Media!

This is an excellent guest blog post by Sonja Fridell, Social Media & Marketing Manager, BrainSell, Ipswich, MA, www.brainsell.net/blog, @brainsell. You can follow Sonja on Twitter @sfridell too! I invited her to guest blog on my site after meeting her in person at the event she describes below. To learn more about the great content included in the event, you can reference back to the post I wrote to recap.

Social media and public events go hand in hand. Actually, without social media, events these days can be ominous, empty dealings.

I recently took on the task of putting on a large event for my company, BrainSell, a software reseller. We put on the event with a partner, SugarCRM. CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, can be a dull topic. We knew that a selling, non-educational event would NOT fill the ballroom with eager potential customers. However, remarkable content would.

The President of our company, Jim Ward and I had just read Dharmesh Shah’s book, Inbound Marketing, and it had quickly become our bible. Jim is a big dreamer and insisted that Dharmesh would speak at our event. With persistence and tact, Shah agreed. Our remarkable content was secured. We dubbed it: Accelerate Sales with Social Media and CRM.

Now I had to recruit.

We learned a few things from all of the planning and marketing.

1. Inbound marketing WORKS!
Over 75 percent of our registrants found out about the event through social media outlets. That would be re tweeting, messages and discussions on LinkedIn and Facebook, and a few Facebook and LinkedIn advertisements. People spread the word for us!

2. Social Media Sign-Ups = Qualified Attendees (usually)
Since people found out about the event through social media, they were immediately more qualified to attend. Maybe a friend retweeted it and their circle of tech savvy friends saw it. Those people sought out the content and WANTED to learn. Our audience was super engaged! One thing we did notice was the amount of job seekers. In this economy, it’s hard to avoid, but those people can still circle back and bring you business in the future.

3. Build Your Virtual Network
We started a Twitter hash tag for the event, #crmaccbos. Attendees tweeted live from the room. Not all people gave their Twitter name during the formal registration process, so finding those people was easy with a hash tag to follow. We increased our Twitter following by a few dozen in just a few hours!

4. Keep traffic up
People notice your brand after you treat them to a valuable event. Our web traffic was up 200 percent in the weeks surrounding the event. Even the days and weeks after, our traffic was up. We video recorded the entire seminar and we’re currently posting segments on our blog and YouTube. That way, even people who didn’t attend get to take something away. And the hits keep coming.

We could have never predicted the positive outcome from this event and my mission is to replicate it all over the country. I will never again party without social media.

Mar
16

From Small Town Gal to Up-and-Coming Social Media Rockstar

Kristin Dziadul internet and social media rockstar

To say that social media has changed not only my job prospects but also the whole outlook on my career would be an understatement.

Coming out of college in December, I knew I wanted to get into Internet marketing for a career. I then met people on Twitter and soon started to attend TweetUps, connecting with professionals on LinkedIn, developing and publishing videos on YouTube, and creating a daily blog post on my website.

All of a sudden, I looked back on my small empire and wanted to put it all together for good use not only for me but for everyone else that I converse with via social media. Developing my website featuring my blog was probably the best idea I had while branding myself online. Not only have I been able to show my writing style and ideas, but I have been able to share the posts on social media sites, Twitter in particular, and have had many valuable conversations with people about my various posts.

By developing my online brand (and loving it!) I soon realized I was becoming an entrepreneur. I never thought that I would be an entrepreneur, as I have always been an introvert that tended to stay within the status quo. However, once I found my passion, I could not stop the flow of ideas and my constant desire to meet and converse with others.

During my journey, I have come in contact with many high-profile people in the marketing industry, and have landed several incredible freelance opportunities. To name a few, I have written about ten guest blog posts, all well received, consulted for a small company in Boston, helped a fresh new social media marketing company develop client pitches, and I was most recently recruited as a social media strategy contractor for a new company in Boston. Aside from that, I am a guest blogger for a company out in California (I am currently in Connecticut) and a company in Kentucky Tweeted me, interested in my ideas.

Now all that is not to brag about my accomplishments, but to demonstrate how incredible social media can be to help anyone develop their online brand and meet virtually anyone to help you achieve your goals.

I started using social media having no idea what I wanted to do with it besides hopefully landing a job. I have now developed a small ‘empire’ that can be compared to a small marketing agency, run by me, Kristin Dziadul. I see my business contacts and freelance employers as my clients and I provide them with my social media and inbound marketing knowledge. All of these contacts came from Twitter, LinkedIn and my blog. It has truly been an incredible journey, and in such a short amount of time.

I wake up every day excited to take on the day and learn new and exciting things. Hard work pays off, and social media was the platform for me to reach out to others to teach and be taught.

How have you used social media to your benefit? How have you helped others?

Feb
19

How I Spend my Time in Social Media

This is my first of many video blogs where I discuss what I have been doing each week in regards to blogging, social media advancement, guest blogging opportunities, freelance work, people I have met, etc.

I hope you enjoy!

Jan
22

Inbound Marketing: My Review

To say that Inbound Marketing by @Hubspot’s founders @BrianHalligan and @Dharmesh was an amazing read would be an understatement. I recently finished college with a Marketing Communications/Advertising major, but this book completely revolutionized my theories of marketing. The authors ask the reader at the beginning of the book to take every outbound marketing theory they learned and disregard it. Now at first this made me regret spending over $130,000 on college tuition, but I realized that my traditional marketing background helps to support the reasoning behind why inbound marketing just makes sense.

Below are the most critical and interesting pieces from the book that everyone should pay attention to:

1. Realize that ten years ago, traditional marketing techniques (i.e. television, radio, magazine advertising) did work very well; especially for companies like GE. However, how people are much better at ‘blocking’ these messages out. This is where inbound marketing comes into play.

2. “It’s not what you say–it’s what others say about you.” People have become more skeptical about what companies say about themselves. It is much better to have customers come looking for you, find your content incredible, and spread the good word.

3. Create a REMARKABLE strategy. Your content strategy must be very unique and highly valuable to your customers. This not only drives them to your site, but increases the chance that they will become a lead and customer. Remarkable content also increases the likelihood that more people will link your site to theirs, which in turn increases your ranking on Google.

4. While traditional marketing methods tested the ‘width of your wallet’, inbound marketing is much different. If done right, you can spend much less money and create an incredible web presence.

5. Create a blog. Blogging is more powerful than ever. If you write about incredible topics that are valuable and relative to your audience’s interests, they will talk about you. Blogging also gives you credibility and increases your visibility on the web.

6. Subscribe to other people’s blogs. By reading what others are saying about your industry, you can reflect on their articles in your own blogs, start a conversation with the others by commenting on their blogs, and therefore you increase your visibility.

7. Get found on Google. You must know which types of keywords are best to be found by Google. If you use a highly common keyword, you will get lost in search results. Start off with less popular but still relevant keywords. Also, focus on the keywords you assign to each page on your website for increased visibility.

8. Recognize the power of inbound links. The more links that are created on other sites to your page, the better ranking you will have in Google. Do not ask others to put your links on their site outright; make sure they value your content and are willing to do so. The more high-power sites that add your link to theirs, the better ranking Google will give you.

9. Get found using social media sites. Create a consistent image of your brand by the look and feel of your pages, pictures, bio, etc. Post valuable and interesting topics on your sites so people will want to engage in conversations with you. Focus on getting found on Digg (even though this is a tricky thing to do), get discovered on StumbleUpon, and be searched for on YouTube

10. Learn how to convert your visitors into leads (make compelling yet simple calls to action and track your progress), convert prospects into leads (use highly effective landing pages, easy to fill out contact forms) and convert leads to customers (figure out what stage in the buying process each customer is in and keep in contact with the lead)

11. Pick the best people to hire for inbound marketing. Hire ‘Digital Citizens’. Digital Citizens are those that have an RSS reader, read blogs, rank high up in Google, use Delicious, write their own blog, use social networks and update them regularly, and post videos on YouTube. Hire those who are very analytical since inbound marketing is all about measurements and data. Hire those with a large web reach. Make sure they have lots of content, have subscribers to their blog, many followers on social networks, etc. Finally, make sure they are content creators. If they create remarkable content that attracts others, they will spread good word about your company as well.

12. Watch your competition. Some of the best CEO’s and leaders tend to be more on-edge about what competition is doing, but this is a good thing.

For more information on Inbound Marketing, Hubspot created their own Inbound Marketing University.

Now, onto reading Steve Garfield’s Get Seen book!

Jan
02

The Road to Web 2.0

During college, I only used Facebook as a social media outlet. However, after studying various topics of marketing in college courses, and speaking with some amazing people in the field, I have become fascinated and passionate about the social media aspect of marketing.

Being involved in social media and getting ‘found’ online requires a great amount of time and effort. Since about three weeks ago, I have now enhanced my Facebook and have developed a Twitter account. I have learned how to work on Twitter and to network with others through it. I also created a LinkedIn account where I have reconnected with former colleagues, employers, and classmates. This site also allowed me to integrate all of my social media into one platform. I then uploaded my video resume onto YouTube, and plan on making a much more interactive and personal one in the upcoming week. This video has been promoted on both my Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, and I have several views already. In addition, I have created a blog and made a resolution to create at least three blogs per week.

After all this, I then searched for my name on Google. Originally, I only had about two links for my name on Google, and they were on the bottom of the screen. Now, I have 2.5 pages of links just about me! I found this incredible. If someone searches for me on Google now, there is a Google profile which I created that discusses a little more about me.

I have now learned that getting involved in all of these social sites is a great way to get found, but getting found is as easy as getting forgotten. You must constantly update your content to be remembered. This requires adding new Tweets at least a few times a day, developing several blogs a week, and updating your LinkedIn profile. In addition to that, I am beginning to create my own website that will integrate all of my social media outlets into one comprehensive site, and it will also display my passions, ideas, etc.

Networking is the new way to get ‘found,’ and even to get a job. Having those personal connections and keeping in contact with them is so essential today. I am very thankful to those who have helped me along the way to develop all of this. I hope you find this information valuable and can help you develop your social platform and network like I have. Good luck to you all! Thanks for reading!

Dec
28

Lets Get Social!

Generation Y is unlike any other generation today. They like information at their fingertips, having cutting-edge technology, and do not like to be advertised to. Being a Gen Y’er myself, I am going to discuss what I have observed about the effectiveness of social media for this generation.

Social media allows us to connect with friends, relatives, co-workers, and even famous people or large corporations. People are exposed to over 3,000 ads per DAY! One may wonder how so many advertisements to an already saturated generation can be effective. Social media is the answer! But, it must be done right. I first viewed social media advertising on Facebook. Personally, I find these ads to be ineffective because they are not flashy and are not a topic of interest for people logging into Facebook. However, giving people the option to interact with a company, star, professional, etc. is a whole other realm of niche advertising.
I think the emergence of Twitter was the perfect outlet for this need. Twitter has allowed Generation Y to view what stars and companies are doing in real-time, all the time. When someone admires a favorite music artist they are able to see artist updates, interact and engage with them. Engagement is one of the most important aspects of marketing, as it relates to the AIDA model. The ability to comment or re-tweet their message allows Gen Y further interaction than ever before, social media ENGAGED! The same goes for a person communicating with a business. Companies can disseminate information regarding new products, services, events, community involvement, etc. so consumers can easily see what they are doing.
Traditional media outlets do not capture Gen Y much anymore, so there is little chance we would reference back to newspapers, magazines and even some television for the latest and greatest information. The internet transmits this same information quicker and more efficiently. Radio has been replaced by iPods and radio advertisements by satellite radio. The emergence of TiVo, On Demand, and other television services provide consumers with shows or movies, uninterrupted by advertisements.
It is clear that social media is how to engage Gen Y. With the development of the iPhone and other smart devices, Gen Y can be completely hooked up to their social media sites 24/7. Personally, I have an iPhone with applications for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and You Tube. This allows me to view messages from all of these outlets, even when I am not at a computer. I find it very valuable to get information when and where I want it. I do not have the time to listen to news broadcasts or read newspapers, so getting a simple message from Twitter linking me to the web site, or  seeing a Facebook update from a company lets me know the news is there if I want it.
So what am I suggesting? It is critical for all companies, stars, professionals, etc. to be deeply involved in social media if they want to capture Generation Y’s interest… and keep it. Our age group wants to interact with you, but in a way that fits our needs. Don’t assume we will be reading a particular magazines or watching a particular show anymore because there are many other ways we get this information now, social media in particular. Contacting us through social media outlets in a timely manner with quick tid-bits of important information is a highly effective and interesting way to get us engaged.

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