This morning 600 people gathered in La Jolla (San Diego) to hear Guy Kawasaki talk about “Social Media to Market Your Business”.
Photo source: Adjix TwitPic
Guy treated us to a powerful tutorial on how he uses social media (and by social media I mean mostly Twitter) to build his new venture, Alltop. The lesson was so valuable because he visited each social media site and demonstrated in real-time how he uses the services to search and to market.
A good time was had by all. Thanks Guy and San Diego Venture Group.
Alltop is an online “magazine rack”. Alltop compiles the top content sites in 600+ subject areas (food, wine, news, venture capital, football, art…)
Guy generously shared tips, tricks and strategies. If you’re a small business or a startup working to grow your customer base by improving visibility, attracting attention and visitors to your web site, here are some cool ideas from the busy Tweeter who just published Reality Check: The Irreverent guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competiton.
He started with some of the Read the rest of this entry »
cynthiatrevino
Did you enjoy this post? If so subscribe to our RSS Feed.
If you’re a small business owner or marketer in the business-to-business space, successful social media examples are hard to come by. But I have unearthed a sterling example for you! Well, I actually did my reading over the weekend thanks to the Groundswell team…
In their newest book Charlene Li (formerly of Forrester and founder of Altimeter) and Josh Bernoff (Forrester Research), Marketing in the Groundswell include an example of a successful B2B blog. While this popular business-to-business blog is from a large company, I think small business owners and marketers can learn from its success factors. (Marketing in the Groundswelll is a must-read if you’re considering adopting social media to grow your business. Charlene & Josh share their extensive insights, conversations with executives and useful case studies.)
Emerson Process Management is a large company—manufacturing automation systems for other manufacturers—but it still demonstrates a key blog success story for small B2B businesses.
The marketing communications manager for the Process System
s and Solutions business unit of Emerson Process Management and self-proclaimed “Chief Blogger”, Jim Cahill publishes their blog, Emerson Process Experts.
What the blog takes: Read the rest of this entry »
cynthiatrevino
Did you enjoy this post? If so subscribe to our RSS Feed.
Small business blogs are pretty common these days, but some entrepreneurs question how a small business blog can help them. I hear questions all the time like:
- Sure business blogs are great, but for me?
- I just put up a new web site. Now I need a blog?
- Who would read it?
- What would I write about?
- I have to write?
When catching up with a friend of mine recently, he mentioned his new online business. He’s designed a handy, Read the rest of this entry »
cynthiatrevino
Did you enjoy this post? If so subscribe to our RSS Feed.
If you’re an e
ntrepreneur–or are thinking like one–bootstrapping ideas that work for startups (how to market, launch a new business or how to create partnerships) are also great for all small business owners, no matter how long you’ve been around. So on Thursday, June 10 I spent an insightful afternoon at the Digital Media Center in Santa Ana, here in Southern California to scoop up some fresh insights.
Since I am a marketer/ social media enthusiast—I’ve translated the speakers’ recommendations into marketing ideas. (Apologies in advance to the experts.)
This is part 1 of my posts from ideas shared Read the rest of this entry »
cynthiatrevino
Did you enjoy this post? If so subscribe to our RSS Feed.
When working to make their company better known, JER Envirotech put its customers first and created a great success story from a lead generation campaign and more.
According to a case study at MarketingProfs (subscription required) JER Envirotech (TM) needed to make itself better known and more credible. JER makes eco-friendly thermoplastic biocomposite materials used by other manufacturers. (Very green!)
They were competing against traditional manufacturers with their innovative green products. JER’s technology was new in late 2007 when they set out to improve their credibility. JER’s challenge was to explain why it was better to use their new green materials vs. traditional choices offered by competitors.
JER created a white paper that Read the rest of this entry »
cynthiatrevino
Did you enjoy this post? If so subscribe to our RSS Feed.
If you’re looking for from-the-trenches B2B marketing strategies and tactics that work, you’ll want to check out what two marketing gurus from Service-Now.com have to share.
Tuesday night in San Diego, two marketing superstars from 4-year old startup Service-now.com delivered an in-depth, insightful view of a business and marketing success story.
Matt French, Brian Surritt, Marketing Director, and Rhett Glauser,
Communications Manager, at the the only enterprise service desk (ITSM) via SaaS (Software-as a-service) help-desk company, shared killer marketing insights.
The program title was “Achieving Leading B-to-B Brand Awareness On a Shoestring Budget” but their tactics/strategies have resulted in mouth-watering business growth and customer engagement. The Service-Now.com approach makes other ‘branding’ strategies look wimpy by comparison.
It doesn’t hurt that Service-Now is loved by its customer base (F1000 to Global 2000 companies) and has tons of loyal fans that spread the love via word of mouth. The big takeaway for me was how smart Service-Now’s (small) marketing team (we had half of them in the room) has been about integrating traditional marketing, social media and word of mouth. They stay in touch with analysts, the press and since “Our clients really want to see us grow…” as Rhett said, they really leverage word of mouth.
Results? According to San Diego Business Journal on February 13, 2009: “Service-now.com, an information technology support company in Solana Beach, said it has generated $20 million in revenues in fiscal year 2009, which ends July 1, following a record first half.”
Here are some of Service-Now.com’s marketing strategies:
Let their raving fan customers speak for them. Read the rest of this entry »
cynthiatrevino
Did you enjoy this post? If so subscribe to our RSS Feed.
If you’re a small business owner looking for examples of how companies have used social media to increase customer participation, loyalty and sales, Sony is a good example. Even if they are ginormous. MarketingProfs (premium article) did a nice job of profiling this Sony social media marketing case study early this year.
Sony began their social networking, social media sites in 2003 when online customer communities (and Web 2.0) Read the rest of this entry »
cynthiatrevino
Did you enjoy this post? If so subscribe to our RSS Feed.
If you are marketing and selling to other businesses and looking for ideas about how social media works in the B2B space, this Bud’s (post is) for you! Though Serena is a midsized firm, the social media approach could be adapted for small businesses selling B2B.
The video below is about a successful business-to-business social media campaign launched by a midsized application software company. Serena also develops “business mashups” for functional areas inside a company such as finance and HR. Using imaginative online video and their own YouTube channel, according to their VP of Marketing, Serena Software:
- created conversations
- raised awareness
- generated web site visits and leads
Here is the VP’s 3-minute backstory.
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
Check out their creative videos, Serena’s YouTube Channel is here. Could you see your company launching a program like this one?
cynthiatrevino
Did you enjoy this post? If so subscribe to our RSS Feed.
If you’re looking to make your small business more easily found online (who isn’t?) and you’re already publishing a company blog good for you! Congrats! And if your business blog is separate from your company web site—double congrats!
I think you should always have your business blog separate from your company web site. Why? More chances for buyers to find you.
Let’s take a page from Starbuck’s. They often setup both a kiosk outside of a mall and a Starbuck’s store inside the mall.
Two chances for latte lovers to find them! More traffic (er, people passing by). More revenue opportunities.
Give Your Business Blog its Own Identity
And you want your own URL for your business blog. Something conversational. A bit fun. A bit less formal than your company site URL, domain.
So your company web site and your small business blog should have separate URLs.
Boring: www.abc-plumbing.com/blog
The ABC Plumbing Company blog name could be something more creative like:
A bit more memorable: www.alphabetplumber.com
Also, for your small business blog, you want Read the rest of this entry »
cynthiatrevino
Did you enjoy this post? If so subscribe to our RSS Feed.
If your small business needs some fresh lead generations ideas, you’ve come to the right place (blog). My friend Henry DeVries, a Lead Generation Expert, Speaker, and Author, shares his best 15 ideas for small business lead generation—in any economy.
1. Find pain and educate prospects on how to kill it
2. Recycle, recycle, recycle your advice
3. Fill your Web site with free how to articles and white papers
4. Write reviews of all relevant books on amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and list yourself as author/expert and affiliation
5. Publish articles all Read the rest of this entry »
cynthiatrevino
Did you enjoy this post? If so subscribe to our RSS Feed.
