No Time for Social Media? Make Time for LinkedIn

As we’ve said many times before on the topic of social media, each platform has its merits—if you have the time and energy to master them. But, if you only have time to devote to one social platform—we know even that’s a stretch for many of you--then LinkedIn will probably give you the biggest bang for your effort.

LinkedIn for referrals

First, look at the user base. About 40 percent of LinkedIn members are Managers, Directors, Owners, VPs or C-Suite officers. Do you want likes, winks and friends? Or do you want new clients and trusted referrals sources? We thought so.

Second, obsess about accumulating the most connections. No one’s keeping score. Definitely reach out to your inner circle and to valuable contacts that you just made at a conference or professional event. Definitely follow interesting people so that articles (or online discussions) that are relevant to your work show up daily in your inbox. But, having 50 deep connections with the movers and shakers in your industry or profession is far better than having 500+ connections composed mostly of people you barely know beyond a quick business card exchange.

John Powell, a principal at one of our longstanding clients, CEG Worldwide, noted recently that LinkedIn can help you position yourself as an expert to members of your target market. To make LinkedIn work for you, your profile must spell out the specific value that you bring to your clients’ financial lives—for example, by including your mission statement and elevator speech. Also spell out how you do great work for your clients and the biggest benefits that investors gain by working with you, he said. When you ask clients for introductions to other people—don’t be afraid to do this often-- you can mention specific people by name and increase your chances of gaining an introduction to them. The key, said Powell, is not to ask for a referral per se, but to offer a “second opinion” in which you conduct a free review for a clients’ friend and associate

Social media to identify new prospects

When used correctly, social media networks can be excellent for identifying centers of influence (COIs)—the key players and most important people in your target niche market. The idea is to meet the COI to learn more about your niche’s issues and how you can address those issues. For example, you can do advanced searches in LinkedIn to find connections among your clients who might be good to speak with. You also might then ask your client to make the introduction the next time you meet. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

LinkedIn showcases your expertise and stimulates referrals

LinkedIn introduced “showcase pages” this week that allow companies or firms to highlight specific products or services by creating dedicated sites for them on the professional network. With a Showcase Page, you can segment content to distinct audiences who are interested in different aspects of your business or practice. As some of you might have guessed, this strategy is part of LinkedIn’s broader goal to be content marketing hub for companies—not just a career networking destination for professional folks.

How to start a LinkedIn Showcase

Showcase pages can be set up by company page administrators by going to the “Edit” dropdown menu on their dashboards and selecting “Create a Showcase Page.” Businesses, which can operate up to 10 showcase pages, will be able to track page performance through existing analytics tools.

Conclusion

LinkedIn and other popular social networking platforms are powerful tools for disseminating information to the masses. These tools are fast, inexpensive and easy to use, but if you’re not careful, they can be a tremendous drain of your firm’s time, energy and resources. Figure out which one or two platforms you and your firm can really get behind and find an in-house champion or outside expert to help you. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Just make sure reach out on a consistent, reasonable basis and for goodness sake, make sure your profile is updated regularly make sure you have something relevant to share whenever you tweet, post, Link, like connect or pin.

More tips can be found on the FREE Resources page of our website.

Tags: LinkedIn, centers of influence, John Powell, CEG Worldwide

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We’re Recovering, but Not Fully Recovered

Why B2B marketers need to be on LinkedIn

Social media doesn’t kill businesses. Lousy posts do. So whether you love it or hate it, you can’t ignore social media. But at the same time, you can’t be all things to all people. If you’re overwhelmed and a little frustrated by the amount and time and effort it takes to keep up with all your business and professional networks, we suggest keeping LinkedIn on your “must save” list before you start trimming. A recent HubSpot study of more than 5,000 businesses found that, LinkedIn was 277 percent more effective for lead generation than Facebook and Twitter.

We’re not bashing the other popular social networking channels, but if you have to “heavy up” on a single social networking channel, then LinkedIn will probably give you the best bang for your time buck if you’re at least reasonably well-established in your profession or industry.

As Wall Street Journal’s Kate Mitchell reported yesterday, “the quickest way to earn respect and build a reputation on all social media, including LinkedIn, is to showcase your knowledge on topics relevant to your business. Don’t confuse this with only pushing your own agenda, but rather contributing a distinct point of view on topics relevant to your industry.”

LinkedIn has an extensive network of groups where thought leaders post discussions relevant to a particular market or topic. Furthermore, you can create your own groups to lead discussions. For example, a  report by Forrester and LinkedIn notes that nearly three in five (59%) IT decision makers “rely” on social networks for purchasing decisions, yet many companies don’t take advantage of the lead generation that can come from customizing their LinkedIn page.

Macro View

With all the hype surrounding the record stock market highs, the one number that jumped out at us the most was that CBOE Volatility Index. That’s the so-called “fear gauge” and it just fell to its lowest level since February 2007. Market watchers say this indicates the market is no longer as easily unnerved by small corrections or by turmoil in other parts of the world. For now, the recovery in housing, the stock market and the overall economy has gained some solid footing, even though economists argue the Big 3 indicators are not specifically related to each other.

So just as we kept telling to maintain hope throughout the dark days of 2008-2009, now we’re telling you to keep your eyes on the road as there are plenty of potholes that could derail this recovery (i.e. perceived recovery). Congress can’t seem to make any progress on the budget crisis and the national debt. The full impact of the March 1 sequester won’t be felt immediately and hot spots in Europe, Asia and the Middle East could easily deflate the confidence of businesses and consumers large and small.

Conclusion

You can’t stop marketing right now just because you’re flush with leads and cash. Just choose your investments wisely and pick your fights where you can win them. And by all means, if you haven’t given your best employees the raises and promotions they deserve. Do so ASAP or they’ll be out the door before you can say, “brain drain.”

A recent article in the New York Times shared the harrowing tales of job seekers who’ve had excessive interviews with companies that never hired them (or anyone else). We have a couple of important takeaways for both job seekers and companies if anything like this sounds familiar to you:

1) For employers: There is no such thing as a "perfect candidate" because businesses (and non profits) have to evolve much faster than they did before. A perfect candidate today, may not have the skill set (and right cultural fit) for your organization a year or two down the road.

2) If you are a job seeker and have been invited back for interviews half a dozen times or more, that's probably a red flag that the hiring company cannot make decisions in other areas of its business. Chances are you will be stifled in that kind of inertia-driven environment if you're "lucky" enough to get the job.

Disregard our advice if you're applying for Supreme Court Justice, CIA head or Fortune 500 CEO. More on that later.

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TAGS: LinkedIn, lead gen, B2B, CBOE volatility, fear gauge, Forrester Research

Tablets to Outsell Notebooks in 2013

Tablets to Outsell Notebooks in 2013
Online advertising now 25% of U.S. ad budgets; mobile key to growth

Two important milestones were reached for B2B marketers this week. First, tablets are expected to outship notebooks this year, according to separate report this week from NPD DisplaySearch and Gartner. Second, U.S. marketers will devote at least 25 percent of their budgets to online advertising in 2013.

For the first time ever, researchers predict that tablets will grab more than 50 percent of market share in 2013, up from around 38 percent last year and 26 percent in 2011. Growth in tablet shipments are predicted to rise 64 percent this year from 2012, the report said. Global demand for tablets has opened up the market for a variety of players, both large and small. But, what caught our attention was that growth will not necessarily be driven by the iPad, but by a variety of devices, particularly those with smaller screens. Apple recently curtailed order for iPad parts, although we think the company’s recent stock slide is a correction more than a long-term trend and might signal a buying opportunity for those looking for bargains in the tech sector.

“Tablets have dramatically changed the device landscape for PCs, not so much by cannibalizing PC sales, but by causing PC users to shift consumption to tablets rather than replacing older PCs,” according to Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa, in the report. “This transformation was triggered by the availability of low-cost tablets in 2012,” he added.

According to the NPD folks, tablets with screen size between 7.0 and 7.9 inches will garner 45 percent of the market this year--that’s about 108 million units. In contrast, larger 9.7-inch tablets such as the traditional iPad are estimate to get only a 17 percent share of market. The other 38 percent is made up of the wide variety of sizes, ranging from 5.6 inches to 13.3 inches.

"The tablet PC market saw increasing investments in North America in the second half of 2012, from major brands that tested not only new screen sizes and price points, but also unconventional business models to support their efforts," NPD DisplaySearch analyst Richard Shim said in a news release. "In 2013, further investments are expected worldwide, stoking demand to the point that tablet PC shipments will exceed those of notebook PCs."

Online poised for 25 percent share of ad dollars; mobile fueling half the growth

Meanwhile, online advertising will pass a symbolic milestone this year, becoming one out of every four dollars spent by U.S. advertisers, according to new projections from the equity research team at J.P. Morgan. The growth, writes Internet sector analyst Doug Anmuth, is being fueled by advertisers shifting budgets from analog media to follow consumer time spent with digital media, especially Internet connected mobile devices, as well as continuing momentum of social media platforms like Facebook which announced a powerful search feature today to compete with Google, Yelp and LinkedIn.

“As consumer behavior and time spent online rapidly shifts towards mobile, we expect advertising dollars to follow,” Anmuth wrote in a report released to investors late last week, adding: “We are projecting Internet advertising in the U.S. to grow to $43.5 billion in 2013.”

The J.P. Morgan estimate represents a 17.4 percent gain over 2012 online ad spending levels. As a result, online media will be receiving one out of every four dollars in 2013 U.S. ad budgets. That being said, Anmuth estimates about half of that growth will be coming from mobile Web ad spending, and without the mobile component, the uptick in online ad spending would be only about 10 percent from 2012.

Conclusion
Two key tipping points have finally tipped. Do you think the surge in tablet adoption and online/mobile advertising is merely a coincidence? C’mon. You’re too smart for that. Do we really need to tell you where to focus your energies in 2013?

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TAGS: Android, Tablets , iPad, notebooks, Apple, Doug Anmuth, J.P. Morgan, Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa, NPD DisplaySearch, Richard Shim, Facebook, Facebook, Google, Yelp, LinkedIn

Why B2B Marketers Care About TV Upfront Week

LinkedIn preferred by the financial elite (see below)

Broadcast television—emphasis on “broad”—still has merit for mass consumer advertisers pushing cars, consumer staples, travel and movies. There will still be plenty of buzz this week when the advertising “up front” season kicks off. But, the live ratings for networks programs have declined for 14 straight quarters, according to media buying firm, Horizon Media. Meanwhile, Horizon says online viewing is up more than 46 percent year-over-year and Nielsen estimates there will be 350 million Web-enabled TV devices in use worldwide by 2015.

NY Times media pundit, David Carr quipped today, “it isn’t just the early adopters that legacy television has to be concerned about: there is a whole cohort of consumers on the way who are non-adopters of TV as we have historically conceived it.”

Our take: It’s not only that “appointment TV” continues to drop precipitously (i.e. American Idol ratings off 30 percent), but viewers want to consume their favorite content when they’re good and ready to do so. That same DVR mindset is affecting how they engage with your email newsletters, alerts, podcasts, videos and white papers.

Don’t worry about your clicks, opens, views and Likes the first 12 to 24 hours of a digital campaign. In the same way that your target buyers TiVo their favorite shows for later viewing, they’re archiving their “must-read/must view” work-related content and plowing through it over the weekend or late at night when they’re more relaxed and less distracted. We see this trend again and again with our clients.

Next week we’ll talk about using the metrics that matters—not the McMetrics that are easiest to collect.


LinkedIn preferred by the financial elite

According to the latest quarterly study by Janrain Engage, people use Facebook to interact with friends and family, Twitter to follow influencers and share opinions, LinkedIn for their professional network, and Gmail, Yahoo! or Hotmail to communicate directly with contacts.  Combined, these networks boast over 1.5 billion accounts. 

However, it’s a little different for financial advisors and high net worth investors (HNWI) of more than $100,000 in investable assets. A new commissioned by LinkedIn released late last week at the Financial Services Summit in New York identified some important takeaways:

1.For about one third of advisors (30%), social media plays a role in marketing and researchers expect it to be used by over half over advisors in 2013. Nearly three fourths of financial advisors have used at least one social network for business in the past year. Researchers also found that many advisors are not taking advantage of the platform. About 5 million high net worth individuals (HNWIs in industry parlance) use social media to inform financial decisions, and of those who consult a financial advisor regularly, more than half (52%) would value interacting with that person via social media -- but only 4 percent do so today.

2.LinkedIn says about two-thirds of U.S. online adults with an investment account have at least one social network profile, and Forrester Research says nearly all households with more than $1 million in investable assets are now online.

3.Social media adopters are more demanding. More than half (53%) of HNWIs expect relevant and timely content, 48 percent want greater transparency of information and 45 percent value real-time interactive conversations.

4.Among advisors who have used at least one social network for business, 91 percent have used LinkedIn; 32 percent, Facebook; 28 percent, Google+; and 22 percent, Twitter.

Our Take: Great stats, but now LinkedIn starts to push it over the top. For instance, the study also found social media improves brand perception of a financial company, labeling it as "innovative." Researchers claim “Not only do investors expect finance companies to advertise on LinkedIn, but doing so improves consumer brand perception toward the financial company by 7 percent. That same financial company advertising on another social platform could result in an 11 percent net decrease in favorability,” according to LinkedIn's findings.

Conclusion

Whether you’re in mass consumer, financial services or nuts-and-bolts B2B, your target customers—not you—decide if and when they’ll spend time with your offering. That’s the world we live in. Just as “mass” is fading from the lexicon of mass media, “blast” is fading from the world of B2B.

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TAGS: LinkedIn, Forrester Researcher, Horizon Media, Janrain Engage, Financial Services Summit, Nielsen, David Carr

Do Busy Professionals Have Time for Social Media?

Most will tell you it’s a ‘must do’, but tweeting and posting is just the tip of the iceberg. If you’re not carefully planning, adjusting and measuring the right things, then you’re just adding to the noise and making yourselves look worse



Chief Marketer’s recent survey of CMOs found that friends, followers, likes, shares forwards and retweets are still the most popular social media metrics. Why? Because they’re easy to measure. But, as Internet Marketing Report (IMR) revealed in today’s print edition, these easy metrics (we call ‘em McMetrics here at HB) just tell you how wide your reach is. IMR said leads and sales are far more accurate indicators of ROI. For instance, 60 percent of CMOs surveyed said they looked toward “friends, followers and likes” as indicators to measure social media success, but only 35 percent said they monitored qualified leads from social media and only 25 percent measured sales attributed to their social media platforms.

Communicating in a microwave society

And that’s a challenge, because technology is changing so fast. We’re so busy trying to keep up with technology that we’re not really becoming more effective communicators—let alone brand builders or reputation enhancers. “Our culture moves at warp speed, no question, the weekly or even daily news cycle long since replaced by an up-to-the-second Twitter feed of Facebook update,” wrote Sports Illustrated’s Richard Hoffer last week. “We said goodbye to thoughtful consideration the day we moved over to microwave popcorn.”

Fortunately Google Analytics and others will soon enable users to track how well their social media efforts are paying off in real e-commerce dollar terms. Disclosure: Our firm has no commercial ties or partnerships with Google.

Companies that enable the e-commerce tracking feature on their free version of Google Analytics will soon be able to produce a “social value report” that shows conversions or sales that came directly from visitors to your social media site and “assisted conversions” that come within a set interval (say 30 days) of when a visitor interacted with one of your social media pages.

As Hugh Duffy, head of a practice development firm for CPAs noted on his blog last week, time is one of the biggest resource investments you have to consider when embarking on a social media strategy. Citing research from my good friend, Rick Telberg, of Bay Street Group Research Duffy noted there’s a strong correlation between high performance and technology adoption at firms.

To do it well, it will take up a great deal of your organization’s time and energy to launch it, maintain it and perfect it. But will it bring you more business? And how long do you keep trying until you know whether or not you’ll be successful at developing a meaningful and profitable online presence?

Only you and your colleagues can be the judge? But before you start throwing stuff on the wall to see what will stick, you must have a clear timeline, clear assignment of responsibilities and clearly defined success metrics that everyone can buy into. That way you’ll know when it’s time to ramp up or clean up the mess, if it’s just not working out.

Your clients and stakeholders are depending on you. They’ll respect you for trying new ways to reach them. And they’ll respect you even more for not throwing good money (and time) after bad when it becomes apparent that some of your social experiments may not be their cup of tea.

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Thriving in a SOCIAL ‘Vucu’ Climate for B2B Marketers

Forget the markets and employment numbers. 10-year forecast might be easier to make than a one-week call

“I could probably make a 10-year forecast easier than a one-week forecast,” quipped Rod Smythe, Chief Investment Strategist of Riverfront Investment Group at a high-end wealth management conference we attended on Tuesday.

Whether it’s the financial markets, the job market, pro sports or even the weather, we’re in an incredibly volatile time and this era of uncertainty is wreaking havoc on our collective psychology. Smart B2B marketers will stay focused on their long-term goals without panicking or chasing the next fad. Just be ready for a lot more VUCU. We’ll get to what vucu means in a minute. In the long run, we’ll get through this and in many respects we’re already there. Say what?

Just two weeks ago, I was swimming in Long Island Sound on an unseasonably warm October day. Stocks were plummeting as the U.S. seemed destined for a double-dip recession and Greece and other Euro Zone players were headed for a sure default on their debt.

How quickly things change. Monday I was trick-or-treating in the snow with my kids here in the Northeast. Stocks are back to break-even for the year and have risen significantly as economic data suggests we’ve fended off the threat of a Euro Zone meltdown, a double-dip recession, and stronger than expected corporate earnings. China’s hyper-growth economy (and inflation risk) slowing and last week’s GDP results showing 2.5 percent annualized growth in Q3, our strongest effort in a year.

So, while personal income is falling, consumer spending has risen at a 2.4 percent annual rate–three times faster than Q3 according to the latest government stats. Despite a persistently high percent unemployment rate, confidence may be returning. Credit card debt is inching higher, sales of cars and major appliances are rebounding and consumers are hording a lot less in their savings accounts (again).

Living in a vucu world

We’re living in a “vucu” world, said Dana Anderson, a Kraft Foods marketing VP who was widely quoted at last week’s Association of National Advertisers conference in Phoenix which attracted a record 1,700 attendees.

Not familiar with Vucu? It stands for volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous which is going to require a new set of skills she said. Marketers and advertisers will need learn from experimentation, and be open to intuitive, rather than rational solutions to problems.

OUR TAKE: Amen to that, but much easier said than done. True, tough times call for bold steps and recessions have historically fostered some of the greatest innovations. But, when millions of salaried media workers are scared to death of losing their jobs, the risk of a failure pinned to one’s performance review is a stronger deterrent than usual.

Business spending hot, hiring is not

According to the Commerce Department, business increased their capital investments at a 17.4 percent annual rate. Economists say business spending has been strong throughout the recession, an optimistic sign because investment in factories, offices, equipment and software is often a run up to hiring.

And from a micro-perspective, the office building in which we work was less than half full when we moved in two years ago. It’s 100 percent occupied now. That’s right. No vacancy!

Is technology replacing humans in the workforce?

According to the authors of “Race Against the Machine” a just-released book by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee is a scary deep-dive into the job fallout from advances in technology. The authors, who are directors at the MIT Center for Digital Business, warn that automation has picked up in recent years because of a combination of technologies including robotics, numerically controlled machines, computerized inventory control, voice recognition and online commerce.

Since the “official” end of the recession in mid 2009, payrolls have been flat, but corporate spending on equipment and software has increased 26 percent, they note. According to Factset Research, the productivity gains from technology seem to be falling to the bottom line. The S&P 500 companies are expected to report record profits—nearly $1 trillion--and the corporate profit share of the U.S. economy is at a record high when millions are out of work or facing foreclosure of their homes.

It’s true that hundreds of thousands of sales and marketing jobs have been lost or impacted by technology, but Brynjolfsson and McAfee argue companies still need humans for many higher level tasks requiring intuition, creativity and solutions. Leave narrow, literal minded assigned tasks to the computers they advise and smart humans—including B2B marketers—will learn how to create a “partnership” with technology.

SOCIAL, and we don’t mean Facebook

Marc Benioff, founder of the popular cloud-based sales CRM solution, Salesforce.com, frequently says we’re in the midst of an IT revolution based on the acronym SOCIAL—S is for speed; O is for open; C is for collaboration; I is for individuals who can now instantly reach around the world to network and collaborate; A is for alignment (all your ships moving in the same direction) and L is leadership, both top down and bottom up.

In a New York Times Op-Ed piece, Thomas Friedman, quotes LinkedIn CEO, Jeff Weiner on the power of the IT revolution: “It makes it easier and cheaper for anyone anywhere to be an entrepreneur and have access to all the infrastructure of innovation.”

OUR TAKE: Whether you’re a sole practitioner, a 10-person regional outfit or a Fortune 500 powerhouse, you need to have everyone—and every machine—at your organization aligned and in a nimble entrepreneurial mindset. Make some mistakes. Make ‘em hard and fast and see how quickly you can learn from those mistakes.
That’s how we’ll get out of this economic first gear and great B2B marketing is what’ll get us into the overdrive phase.

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