Social Media Training Notes – draft notes

The future of lead generation and social media.

Email marketing is and will continue to be a key part of any lead generation program however social media is the new kid on the block and some company at the front of the curve are making hay.

We have all heard that blogs, Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn are where it is at in terms of marketing but what next?

In this event we are talking about leads and generating new business, how can social media be used to generate leads?

I want to look at a simple overview and case studies and then discuss what you are doing.

1 Workout your messaging and what you want people to say about you.

2 Listen to what is being said about you and who is saying it. Listen to what is being said about your competitors and who is saying it. Listen to what is being said about the issues in the subject and who is saying it.

2a Tools for listening

Free tools, Google, blogsearch.google.com, search.twitter.com, search on Facebook, search on Youtube.

Paid tools brandwatch, whitevector, synthesio, meltwaterbuzz and there are lots more. They can give you much more oversite with better accuracy and nice reports you can give your board.

3 You know the people speaking about your company and about the subject and you have an idea for a campaign. What to do next?

Look for people you know, and influencers in the group. Working with key influencers can make things scale. I recently read that one tree does not make a forest fire but find the tight tree connected at the centre of a clump of trees and you can have a great start.

See if you can find people who say nice things about your company and ideally who also promote other product and or services.

Try and understand what it is that motivates them and how they interact with other companies.

Things to look out for

They have recently blogged or posted about a competitor or entered a competitors competition.

They have a press kit / media contact page.

How to connect:

Be human and personable, get their name right and do not send a form letter out to them. Make a friend not a business contact.

So not start with a hard sell.

Connect with them on Twitter and Facebook, comment on their blog. If they are keen they may initiate more conversation at that point.

4 Think not what they can do for you but what you can do for them

Things you can offer them

Content i.e. guest blog posts, videos, interviews, access to information.

Products send them something you make.

Give them products for their readers to win in a competition.

Money, pay them, this could be advertising on their site or paying them to make videos.

Find ways to make them feel special.

Publicity that could just be re tweeting their material

An interview on your company blog

A press release about them

Links

Ask them what they want / need?

5 Look at the partners that you have and find out if they are involved in social media

Affiliates

How many of you have affiliates? How many have affiliates involved in social media? Lots of affiliates are doing more and more social media ask your affiliates if they are?

Go where they are

London Blog Club, London Blogging meetup, British mummy blogger ning. blog world, blogher.

5.2 Disclosure, make sure that they disclose that they are being paid or incentivised, this protects their reputation and yours. Find people who actuly like your products and services they will be more genuine in their review and they will care about your brand.

6 Examples

I do blogging outreach

One example: I have a client in the building supplys trade. They wanted increased more sales through their ecommerce sites. We developed messaging and terms which consumers might search for and content which bloggers could use. I worked too create a group of 100 bloggers for them to work with. Within 4 weeks they were seeing traffic coming from those bloggers generating sales as well as a marked increase in the SEO traffic that they were getting from their own site.

I work with an blogger and affiliate to work with advertisers to increase his competitive advantage. He was invited in to see an energy supplier who told him about the launch of one of their new products. He is interested in that topic and what that company does. He created a number of sites and reviews about that new service. He also made Youtube videos, promoted it on Facebook and Twitter. When you Google for that service all the review are positive! Yes he made some good revenue from that launch.

Youtube I recently went to a talk in New York by an un-know brand to me who had started to do work with YouTube a year ago. They searched for how to put on your makeup and found the girls who were making the videos that came up first and the contacted them. They sent them products and gave them tips and advice on making videos. The girls are 13-18 and make crazy youtube videos, one girl has had 14 million views for one of her vidos, they put links in their video descriptions back to the company and this in now 85 % of their traffic. The girls have personality contracts with the company and get paid. I would like to highlight that while we think of social media as free influencers are not getting paid for what they do.

The walmart.com – Elevenmoms

YOU?

How many of you are involved in social media campaigns for your companies?

What do you do with them?

What challenges are you having?

 I also offer Social media consultancy Social media training Blogger outreach  /  Blog outreach