Social Media Marketing Training: 5 Reasons to Have a Blog

August 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

1. Establish Yourself As an Expert

  • Do you have great ideas to share in your industry?
  • What makes your company special in today’s economy?
  • Do you visit a lot of trade shows and conferences?

These are perfect reasons for any company to start sharing its unique content and show its expertise.  Through blogging you can answer the most common questions your customers have about your products or services, give them tips and suggestions on how to successfully use your products and impress your prospects with the knowledge you have about your industry.  After all, a blog will help your business stand out from your competitors and be a real industry leader.

2. Increase Traffic to Your Website

By creating keyword rich content, blogs give you the perfect opportunity to rank high in organic searches.  By being more important than your competitors in Google search you can easily drive more traffic to your website.  After reading your blog and finding it interesting and useful visitors are likely to check out other pages on your company’s website to learn more about the blogger.

3. Stay Up to Date In Your Professional Field

Creating new content on a regular basis takes a lot of time and effort.  You are spending your time doing research, analyzing competitors and putting your thoughts into a new subject for your new post.  This research and work will help you in your business far beyond the blog itself.  Blogging is a very convenient way to refresh your knowledge about popular industry topics and keep yourself educated on new technologies and achievements in your field.

4. Build Better Relationships With Your Customers

Providing your customers with valuable information and giving them advice in return for nothing will help you connect with your customers in deeper and dynamic ways.  Blogs are not static like most websites and because of that there is a great opportunity to create a real online interaction with your client base.  Customers have the ability to immediately react and reply to your blog posts. Their feedback and opinion about your products and services will help you constantly modify your products and services or customer service in a way that will ensure their opinion is heard, matters and makes a difference.

5. Gives You a Chance to Express Yourself

Blogging is a great tool for expressing yourself and motivating your employees.  By creating a fun and engaging atmosphere around your company blog you have great chances to involve your employees in this process and show them how they bring value to their work place.  When employees are able to connect with your customer base and beyond through self-expression coupled with direct customer feedback and interaction in a fun and creative media, they are likely to enjoy the process of getting the word out about your company.

Blogging creates a very informal, direct feedback media for getting your message out to your audience and engaging that audience with dialog and interaction.  Start blogging today and establish yourself as an expert, increase traffic to your website, stay up to date in your professional field, build better relationships with your customers and give yourself a chance to express yourself!

Why have you started a blog?

 

Mariya Newman

Follow me on Twitter (@MariyaNewman) and add me on LinkedIn!

 

Filed Under: blogging, social media marketing, Social Media Tools, Social Media Training, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

Social Media Speaker: 10 Ways Dental Practices can use Social Media

September 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I know that a lot of small businesses and practices are interested in social media marketing to grow their business. I speak with thousands of small business owners a year (probably just like you) who hear about social media but don’t know exactly how they can get value from social media.
I have worked with many of these business owners to help them find success in social media, and I know that dental practices can get results using social media marketing. I know first hand that social media can provide a better ROI than traditional marketing methods. Social Media marketing can deliver results when used strategically and with the right plan.
Here are 10 of the most common ways that your practice can use social media to grow their business:

1. Share Deals and Promotions on Twitter

Twitter is a powerful way to share deals and promotions with your patients (and future patients)! Big companies like Dell Outlet have sold millions of dollars through Twitter, but it works for small companies too. Naked Pizza, a small pizza store in New Orleans had their highest ever-sales day from a Twitter promotion. Vista Prints sold $25,000 directly through Twitter in their first year. Find and connect with your target audience and give them irresistible offers, such as free teeth whitening, on Twitter.

2. Share news and Updates on Facebook

Don’t have a fan page yet? If you have fans or patients who are passionate about your practice, you should have a fan page. Use it to connect with prospective patients and keep them up to date on your new products or services. I was recently getting my car fixed and found that the mechanic frequents the same neighborhood bar as I do. He told me that he checks out their Facebook page every day to see what food and drink specials they have. This bar has a creative new drink special for Happy Hour every day and a different free food item available.
Whether is it food and drink specials, new services in your practice, new practice news or regulations, a Facebook fan page can be a powerful resource to keep your patients up to date. Over 1/3 of people who are fans of practices on Facebook are fans for this reason – to stay up to date.

3. Network on LinkedIn Groups

Lots of small practices as well as business professionals grow their practices or businesses by networking with people. Meeting people and sharing helpful knowledge drives business over time. People do business with people they know, like and trust.
LinkedIn groups allow you connect with others based on a shared interest. You can join a group and contribute to discussions or share interesting news. By using LinkedIn to build relationships you can attract new patients over time.

4. Connect with Prospects with a Webinar

Webinars are becoming increasingly popular ways to connect with prospects and provide value to potential patients. Webinars are virtual and web-based. A webinar is typically hosted around a specific topic and people sign up, call in and login on their computer and they can watch and listen to a live session on a specific topic.
Webinars are very popular in categories that are high-information. Most B-to-B business fall in to this categoy, but it also works for consumer products and services. If people are looking for knowledge or information about some special service your practice offers, a webinar can be a powerful tool to share information with them and position your practice as a leader in the industry.

5. Be a Thought Leader with a Blog

Blogs are very popular for a variety of reasons (we’ll discuss one more of them later in this post). One of the reasons is that a blog can establish you as an expert and thought leader in your industry. If people trust you and see you as knowledgeable they are more likely to join your practice.
Run a gym? Share workout tips. Real Estate Agent? Share posts highlighting the people and events in your neighborhood. Restaurant? Show how you make signature drinks or menu items. For a dentist practice, share patient success stories or new procedures offered exclusively at your practice as well as some tips about oral hygiene.

6. Connect with Patients and Prospects with an email newsletter

So maybe *technically* this isn’t social media, but it is relatively simple and cheap for most practices to create a newsletter. Constant Contact and MailChimp offer services for under $25 a month and are easy to use.
An email newsletter can keep your patients and prospects up to speed on news, deals and promotions. Email remains the preferred communication method of most people (1:10 preference over social media) to stay up to date.

7. Join an online community

There are online communities for almost everything these days. Seek out a discussion forum or community that is specific to your business and participate!
You can connect with patients (or potential patients) and really learn about them. What are they interested in? What do they talk about? What do they want and need in a dental practice? Participating and listening to communities that are comprised of your target market can improve your practice and also lead to sales as you build relationships.

8. Monitor and Respond to your Reviews

There are many business review sites – from product reviews on amazon to restaurant and store reviews on yelp! to complaints on The Ripoff Report. For dentists, RateADentist.com is a site that offers a place for patients to provide reviews of their dentist. Whatever your business line, chances are there are review sites that are relevant. Even Facebook has included reviews on fan pages. Google has reviews in their listings.
Look for and respond to reviews (both good and bad). Saying thanks to a good review can build an evangelist and encourage word-of-mouth. Responding to a negative review can help clarify the situation. Showing that you care about negative reviews and plan to take action shows your side of the situation to the hundreds of people who view the review.

9. Get Found on Search Engines with a Blog

Another great reason to start a blog is to get traffic from search engines. Because blogs are content rich (you typically create content for them on a regular basis) search engines give traffic to sites with blogs.
In almost anything that you search for you’ll find a number of blogs show up in search results. If people find your practice through search a blog can increase the probability that you will show up in results. This leads to traffic and (hopefully) new patients.

10. Generate Awareness with a Video

Videos can be great ways to connect with your audience. A picture is worth a thousand words and a video is worth a million! Video is a great way to share information – whether it is a video showing before & after interviews with patients, customers talking about their satisfaction or a video demo of your special service – videos are powerful tools.
Create a video for your practice to make a deeper connection with your audience. There are many different creative ways to use and share videos.
This list isn’t exhaustive – it is simply a handful of the tactics and tools that are included in the Social Media Action Pack.

How are you using social media for your practice?

Filed Under: Internet Marketing Strategy, social media marketing, Social Networks Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

5 Untapped Social Media Marketing Opportunities

April 5, 2010 By 1 Comment

Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and LinkedIn get all of the attention in social media marketing, but there are a number of other tools that can get great results that are less popular.  Leveraging these social media tools can drive sale, traffic and leads to your website or business.

1. SlideShare

Slideshare is a site where you can post powerpoint slide presentations and share them.  You can also link it directly in to your LinkedIn account (in this way all of your presentations are posted on your LinkedIn page), integrate it with Facebook or share it on your blog.  Slideshare is great because it doesn’t take much extra work – if you have already created a slide show it takes about 5 minutes to post it and tag it on SlideShare.  The good news is that you can get a lot of visibility on Slideshare – last year my presentations got nearly 10k views.  While SlideShare doesn’t refer a lot of traffic back (it isn’t really set up that way) you are making high quality awareness impressions.

2. Webinars

A webinar is a live session that includes audio (through a dial in # or online) and video (usually a slideshow).  Webinars can be relatively easy to create and run and are a great way to showcase thought leadership in a specific space.  In addition, you can recruit guests vs. attempting to create all of the content yourself.  One of the other benefits of webinars is that people have to provide their email address to join, which means that you can collect the email addresses for lead generation.  Using a service like gotowebinar you can run webinars for under $100 per month.  The AMA (American Marketing Association) runs webinars as a way to provide extra value to their members and to get new ones.

3. Video

Today, creating video is easier than every – you can do it on your phone or on a flipcam that costs only a few hundred bucks.  Video is a very powerful medium – it creates connections that are stronger than print or images.  You can create a video podcast by recording yourself speaking about a subject or by interviewing other people.  Check out GaryVee who does a variety of videos to promote his business – his passion and energy come across so strongly on video.  A good friend Deborah Cole Micek (@CoachDeb) consistently uses video to connect with her audience by interviewing experts at conferences.  The good news about video is that it can be easier to create than blog posts and make a stronger connection.

4. Email Newsletters

OK, so email newsletters are not technically social media, but they make a great marketing tool to help you promote and draw attention to your social media efforts.  You can set up a newsletter in under an hour for $20 a month on a site like Constant Contact (which is what I use).  You can use your newsletter to promote your content (blog, video, etc) and keep your audience informed.  In addition you can use your newsletter to promote the rest of your social media assets – link to your twitter and Facebook to connect.

5. Search (Search Engine Optimization)

No matter what category or industry you are in people are searching for your product online.  It is important that you consider search as well as the key words and links that you use when building your social media assets.  Many companies get over half of their leads and website traffic from search, and some of our best clients have found us through search.  Search is a great marketing tool because it connects people at the time that they are looking for you.  Creating key-word rich social media sites can help you get to the top of search engines.

Anyone else have hidden gems in Social Media Marketing?

Filed Under: Internet Marketing Strategy, social media marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Social Media – Should your Intern do It?

January 27, 2010 By 1 Comment

This is a question that comes up over and over again.  I’ve even been asked to train interns at a University because their employers wanted them to “do social media marketing”.  Why was I training these youngsters who are supposed to know everything about social media and the internet?  Because they know how to use it socially, but not professionally.

It would be like asking the kid who watches the most TV at your office to “do tv advertising”.

The fabulous Benjamin BakerThe reality is that while younger people understand how social media works, they lack an understanding of how to use it strategically as a part of an integrated marketing strategy.  They know how to add friends and post photos, and sure they have probably even fanned a few brands.  But that doesn’t mean that they know how to represent your brand and drive business value online.

Marketers need to stop being intimidated by the technology.

Learning the technology isn’t hard.  It isn’t hard to create a facebook account, or even a page.  It isn’t hard to start a blog.  It isn’t hard to set up a twitter account.  The technology is the easiest part.  These sites are designed so that an average (or probably well below average) intelligence individual can use them.

The hard part is the strategy.  Who is the target market?  What are they interested in?  What can I talk to them about?  What will engage them and help me break through the noise and clutter?  How can I bring my brand equity and positioning to life?  What sites is my target on?  What opportunities are there for brands and marketers on these sites? Who in my organization should handle social media?

These are just some of the strategic questions that need to be answered.

Can an intern answer these?  Maybe.  Do they have training and coaching from an internal person who understands these things?  Is this similar to the way you handle other media?  Do you have an intern “figure out tv” or “tell us what to do with print”?

Social media is tricky.  It is new.  The rules change.  The downside can be big.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t tackle it correctly and strategically.

Don’t treat social media like the ugly duckling and pawn it off on the most junior person in your organization.  One of the biggest reasons that companies fail to see results from their social media efforts is that they don’t give it adequate attention.  ROI and results are there – and companies who do it right are benefiting from this.

I gave this answer at a presentation before, and someone in the audience asked if I was just trying to build my business by making it sound hard.

The reality is that I’m not asking you to think of social media or your digital strategy any differently than how you think of your other media.  Treat it the same way.  Be strategic.  Have a plan.  Execute consistently and with excellence.  Then you’ll see ROI.

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10 Reasons You Should Create a Corporate Blog

October 22, 2009 By 3 Comments

Blogs were hot a few years ago, but their popularity with marketers has been lagging lately as focus shifts to twitter, facebook and now iphone apps.

But blogs have tremendous potential to play a key role in your marketing strategy.  Most organizations can benefit from a blog and often blogs have benefits beyond what you may initially think.  Some reasons to consider a corporate blog include:

1. Search Engine Optimization1124847_person_question

This isn’t something that a lot of organizations consider when they start blogging, but blogs are one of the best things that a company can do to increase their traffic from search engines.

Search engine traffic is based on two things: 1) Your site and how it is structured, the content and how often it is updated and 2) People who link to you and how they link to you.  Blogs are a great source of both – they typically include lots of keywords and relevant content and they are also updated regularly.  In addition people often link to your blog posts which further helps your search engine traffic.

2. Build Positive Equity – Be Someone who Really Cares

Blogs can also help position your organization as caring about the issues that are important to your clients or customers.  You can take up their causes, talk about things they care about, offer free advice, etc.

A blog allows you to build equity for your organization, which can lead to positive mentions online, recommendations and ultimately sales.

3. Content for Social Media Syndication

Blogs are a great “hub” for your online presence.  Publishing blog content gives you something to share with your customers on other social sites like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.  All of these social sites can be great sources for lead generation, and publishing engaging blog content provides you with something relevant to share.

4. Position Yourself as a Thought Leader

You can use a blog to position yourself as a thought leader in your industry.  If you are a b-to-b company you can highlight your knowledge of the industry and relevant issues.  B-to-C companies can show consumers that they really know their stuff by sharing knowledge and expertise that matters to customers.

For example a laundry detergent manufacturer could share information about how to remove stains or keep clothes looking new.  A furniture company can talk about the ergonomics of different furniture and how to select the ideal desk/chair/bed/couch for your body size and use.  Options are endless. 

coffee-and-wine-together-by-steve-hall5. Humanize Your Brand

People like people.  They like to work with people.  They like to do business with people.  A blog can be a great way to showcase the *real* people behind your brand and put a human face to it.

On your blog you can share videos and photos from your organization, and you can also have real people from your people talking like real people (not like commercials or sales people).

Blogs can be a great way to build stronger relationships with customers by humanizing your brand.

6. Respond to Issues and Problems

When a crisis hits, organizations often scramble to figure out how to respond.  The most effective responses are transparent, authentic and genuine.  Official PR releases and comments from PR people don’t typically make people feel better or reassure them.

When a crisis hits a blog can be a great place to post a real response from a real person.  The message doesn’t have to deviate from the official response, but using more natural language can help people understand.  Using your blog you could post a human response, and share a video of the CEO apologizing and explaining the situation.  This can go a much further way with your consumers than a canned press release.

7. Build Newsletter Content

Email and newsletter marketing continues to be a great way to stay in touch with your customers.  Rather than sending an email newsletter full of promotions you can send insightful and relevant articles from your blog.

This can increase your email distribution list and ultimately lead to more sales over time as customers give you permission to interact with them.

talking-boxes8. Let’s Give them Something to Talk About

You probably have fans – either officially on facebook or unofficially.  Writing great blog content allows your fans to interact with you.

They can talk to you and share their opinions.  This can help you get even closer to your consumers and allows them to feel like they have a voice with your organization.

It gives them something to talk about.

9. Communicate with Customers

When you have corporate news you may issue a standard press release, but the release may not make it out to most of your audience.  A blog lets you communicate with your customers right on your site.  You can also talk about things that aren’t press release worthy – like new features, a policy change or fixing a glitch in the system.

A blog is a quick way to get messages out to your customers – especially if you are not currently doing email marketing.

10. People are Tired of Marketing – Blogs Add Value

These days people are inundated with marketing messages – on their phones, their computer, their social networks, TVs, Bathroom stalls, billboards, subway adds, napkin ads, and so on.  Most of us have learned to ignore most of this advertising, and we may completely tune it out.

A blog allows you to create a connection with a customer based on providing them with inherently valuable content.  I read a blog post once about how to take better pictures that was posted by a photo website.  After reading the great post I went and checked out their site.

Great content that is relevant to your audience can get you in the door without accosting them with marketing messages. 

What other reasons do people have for creating corporate blogs?  Share your ideas in the comments.

Filed Under: blogging Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,