I love social media marketing success stories about small businesses and startups operating on a tiny budget.  If you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur looking to create awareness, earn interest and actually win paying customers on a budget, blogger Mary Hall’s recent interview with the founder of GoGo Gear is a must-read.

Marketing expert Mary Hall published a valuable, how-she-did-it interview for anyone starting a new company or looking for a marketing tactic that won’t break your budget.

Mary Hall spoke with Arlene Battishill, founder of GoGo Gear, a new company making stylish and protective riding gear for women motorcycle riders.

This interview is a rich case study for small businesses and startups in all industries because it provides insightful detail about the founder Arlene’s thought process.  You can peek into her personal approach as she  shared steps to building her new brand using social media and no budget.

Social Media Was New to Founder
Arlene Battishill acknowledges that she didn’t know a lot about social media.   Importantly, she did deeply understand GoGo Gear’s target customers and her new company’s mission to fill a gap in the market.  This clarity helped considerably.

She knew that her future customers, women motorcycle and scooter riders, did not believe that riding apparel could be both stylish and safe (padded for protection in case of falls).   Why?  Because as a motorcycle rider herself, she couldn’t find any protective riding jackets that were also fashionable.

Arlene kept the skepticism in mind when she began her Twitter account @LAScooterGirls three months before launching the company’s finished website and new riding apparel line.

Arlene used a business approach to Twitter.  She searched for terms that pointed to her potential customers on Twitter (“motorcycle” or “scooter”) and began following them.  She crafted a clear Twitter bio that explained exactly what the company does. In her words, “… we only have only one  click to gain their interest.”

Seth Godin, visionary author of global bestselling books like Purple Cow and Tribes, would say, GoGoGear set out to appeal to only those folks that shared their worldview:  Women motorcycle and scooter enthusiasts who want to wear stylish jackets while riding.

Women motorcycle lovers on Twitter began following @LAScooterGirls because Arlene was a real person sharing her ideas for riding apparel quietly.

• She shared openly and candidly experiences in building the brand new company.
• She was not selling or pushing her new brand.
• Arlene posted on Twitter frequently and enthusiastically.

Twitter Followers Became Referrers

When the new company’s website was launched, three months after the @LAScooterGirls Twitter community began, GoGoGear experienced a wave of support and it’s Twitter followers acted like, well, a community.  They shared the new company’s website with friends, made purchases and then shared their delight with the fashionable riding jackets on Twitter.  In other words—Arlene’s Twitter followers built buzz for the new company by referring others to GoGo Gear.

The Best (Marketing) Money We Never Spent

According to Arlene Battishill after the launch of the clothing and website,  their Twitter followers   “…started sending out RT (Retweets) to their own followers and we continued to pick up more followers. The momentum continues to this day. The “Twitter-verse” has been the most important marketing tool we’ve used and the best money we’ve never spent.”

2 Key Success Factors

Personal Approach. I think the key success factor in this new company launch success story, is the personal approach Arlene Battishill used when posting on Twitter.  She was her authentic self and she was “all in”.    She achieved the personal touch in her Twitter posts  by sharing overseas travel anecdotes as they were happening.

Commitment to Use the Marketing Tool.  The founder Tweeted non-stop for three months before the company website and product line launched.  What did she Tweet (post) about?

She frequently Tweeted about her global travel adventures involved in finding manufacturing partners in Asia.  Arlene’s Twitter followers became invested in the progress of the new apparel line and startup company because they connected with Arlene as a person first.  They followed her progress for three months and became “invested” in the new brand.

Twitter Followers to Sales

For those (few) cynics among you that may be saying, well, Twitter followers are not customers—wrong! @LAScooterGirls followers soon became customers and sent their friends and family too.  When new riding jackets were shipped to a retailer, GoGo Gear Tweeted the details.  Retailers would find a line of loyal @LAScooterGirls fans lined up to buy the new jackets right out of the box!

Follow the new company on Twitter here http://twitter.com/lascootergirls
Their Twitter handle is   @LAScooterGirls
The company’s blog is here

Social media marketing is long on hype and short on from the trenches examples of what works.  Mary Hall has prepared a terrific case study for consumer marketing with the article, read full interview here. Thanks Mary!

Mary Hall blogs at Huffington Post and at the wildly popular blog, The Recessionista here.  You can follow Mary on Twitter here.

Photo: My partner’s video cameras, Flip Minnow and 3-year old, Sony HD

Conversion Rates Matter

If you’re working to improve your website conversion rate, an online video maybe a useful marketing tactic.

‘Conversion rate’ refers to the percentage of the people that visit your small business web site that take the action you’re hoping they’ll take.  The action might be to:

• Join your email newsletter list
• Download your how-to articles
• Bookmark your site for future visits
• Subscribe to your RSS feed to follow your content updates in a news reader
• Or (best) call your company for more information, or to make a purchase

Video Is Ideal for Telling a Story

Social media marketing is all about creating an online conversation and telling stories that connect with buyers.  People that need your products to get things done.  A great way to turn web visitors into buyers is to tell a compelling story about your company and your products and services that draws them in.  A story that makes them want to contact you!

Bedhog, an ecommerce company, does just that with their video.  The entrepreneur briefly tells the story about how, as newlyweds, she and her husband debated over who took up more room in bed and a charming new bedding product was born.  Check out the Bedhog video by TurnHere here.  Sleepsquad is a time-saving concept for mattress buyers.

Not Ready to be a Video Producer?

It’s been my experience when working with business owners, that the biggest challenge is the time involved.  It can be relatively easy with today’s easy to use digital video cameras to make a video.  But it does take time and a bit of experience using the camera.  And some level of editing is usually needed to prepare a somewhat professional video.  That’s why the Internet gods have created outsourcing.

If, after checking out the results many businesses are experiencing, you’d like to dip your toe into the online video pool, you could try outsourcing to a company like TurnHere.

TurnHere creates and distributes online videos for small business owners among others.  They manage creating the online video for you from beginning to end—making it easy for small business owners that are not ready to buy a digital video camera and do it themselves.

TurnHere has many happy customers and some interesting data about the value of online video to increase interest and sales.   Here are some results shared with me by TurnHere.  Their partners and some third party research organizations compiled the results:

• 52% of viewers take action after watching online videos
• 30% of viewers visit a store
• Clicks for more information increase by 30-40%
• Phone calls to your business increase 16-20%

TurnHere does a nice job of helping professional services companies to tell their stories in an interesting, non-slick-advertising way.

Is an online video that educates your web visitors about the value your company offers an answer for improving your sales?  It will depend on how effective the video is at demonstrating exactly how your products and services fill a need for the web visitor, potential buyer.  The video must be short and compelling without being too salesy.

TurnHere Benefits

I think—if you haven’t already got a friend, child, niece, or local provider that can do a video within your budget—the TurnHere solution is worth a look.  Here’s why:

Video producers that are recruited by TurnHere are experienced film folks.   That means they know how to help you, the business owner, tell your product or service story in a compelling and professional manner.

1. Brevity is key.  They help you create a video that is 60 to 90 seconds in length.
2. You review the finished video online. Best of all, you don’t have to learn how to “edit” video.
3. You only spend part of a day shooting it and the producer comes to your location.
4. TurnHere will distribute your video to online video sharing sites for you, if you wish.
5. The  videos are professional and polished.

A small company I know here in San Diego is trying out the TurnHere service. I will let you know about their experience.

Meanwhile, if you’re not up to producing a DIY Internet video for your business, check out TurnHere.  They often have promotions and specials running.

Full disclosure: The nice public relations person for TurnHere, Alison McNeill, sent me a note about this service and I really liked the quality, and the short, to-the-point length of the videos. So I am posting about it.

This begins a series of posts for small business owners, startups and B2B marketers that are new to using social media to grow their companies.  Or, are ready to reconsider established marketing tactics and look for new ways to achieve customer and business growth.

Every dollar and every minute you spend on marketing tactics is for one purpose:
business growth!   If you’re not satisfied with the growth from your current marketing tactics you’ll want to explore new options for attracting prospects.  That’s what I’ll be posting about in the coming weeks.

According to Gary Vaynerchuk, venerable social media entrepreneur, blogger, successful retailer, WineLibrary  expert, and author of the best seller Crush It! ,

Regardless of what business you’re in, you’re really in the content business. –Gary Vaynerchuk

So the sooner you get into the I-am-in-the-content-business mindset the better.

Also, I firmly believe that social media marketing and content marketing are excellent tools for small businesses.  Social media marketing is no longer a nice to have—it’s a must-have.   But before you jump on the Twitter/Facebook bandwagon, there are some key steps to take to get your small business marketing ducks in a row.
This means:

1. Define your goals
2. Create tactics that support your goals
3. Think though the benefits

Here’s the first example of a goal, content marketing tactic and benefits to using the tactic.

Goal: Sharpen your ability to stay on top of developing customer trends, issues and problems.

Tactic: Build your own process for listening online.   You probably have some proven ways of monitoring what on your best customers’ minds.  (Taking them to lunch or just checking in with a periodic phone call.) Map out a process that works for your company to accomplish the same goal online.

To keep up with online mentions of key terms used by using Google Alerts, Google Reader or other free tracking tools.   Fine-tune the list of keywords you track.

Review the terms your customers are using to search online for solutions and answers.  Issues may crop up online before your customers mention them to you or your staff in offline conversations.

Think how in control you’ll feel after setting up your own process to monitor your industry’s online conversations!

Related posts about monitoring online conversations and finding the right keywords to track:

Mashable’s post on How to use Google Reader

Identifying Keywords, How to Listen Online to Find Content Topics That Lead Prospects to Your Site

Colin Alsheimer’s great post How to Set Up a Listening Station

Photo: istock

You’ll want an ongoing process to create and publish web site content that attracts customers with problems your products and services can solve.  Sounds pretty cut and dried, right?

Well, how do you decide what to write about?  How do you find the specific, compelling topics that your customers are grappling with?  I thought you might ask.  I just happen to have some ideas.

‘Listen’ to online conversations.

First, you “listen” to the online conversation.  Monitor what’s being discussed, asked, requested, and debated.  Then you create valuable content that fills the gaps.

Here are some steps that will get you started on finding and monitoring the conversations taking place online among your prospects and customers.

Research your keywords.

1. List the keywords you’re currently using in your website content to help prospects find your products and services.  Then do some homework.  Use a tool to see how frequently your keyword choices are actually used by people in a search. Google offers one free tool.

• Try Keyword Tool from Google to research the frequency and competitiveness of each term. (Note: Use this tool even if you’re not doing a Google AdWords campaign.)
• If you search in Google on Keyword Tool, you’ll get a result with ‘KeywordToolExternal’.
• Review the AdWords ‘advanced tips for using the Keyword Tool’ here
• Check out your competitors’ sites for other keyword ideas.
• Ask customers & prospects what terms/keywords they use to search for industry info.
• Decide on the keywords you determine are most popular with your prospects and customers.

2. Talk with your customers about how they search for info and answers online.  Ask them about the sites they use to get help.  Also find out which terms (keywords) they plug into search engines to find answers online.

• During your ongoing customer conversations, ask about today’s top goals and obstacles.
• When talking with prospects try to uncover the range of issues that are on their minds.
• Keep track of the actual terms they use to describe problems/issues.  As an expert in your field, you may use different terms/keywords (jargon) than your customers and prospects commonly use.
• When asking for their favorite industry web sites or search terms, have your researched list ready to prompt them if needed.

3. Test your list of ‘target’ keywords with online tools.  Try out different online tools to keep up with relevant mentions/discussions on social media and industry sites.

Find the sites most popular with your target market.

1. Using the target keyword list you’ve created, identify social media and other websites popular in your industry by seeing where these terms appear.  Use web searches to see where your chosen keywords are appearing.  You may discover some new sites popular with your target customers.
2. Use your Google account, sign in and set up Google Alerts labeled “Alerts” for the keywords you want to research.  Google Alerts are email notifications delivered to your email when mentions of your industry topics  (your keywords) are posted online.  This is a fast, free and easy way to find some online communities/sites that you may not know about where your customers and prospects are gathering.

3. For so-called “real time search” on the microblogging site Twitter you can plug your keywords into the search page of Twitter, and see who is ‘Tweeting”/talking about your industry.  There are tons of other tools of this type.  (Now maybe your prospective customers are not on Twitter–only one way to find out…)  Regular  search engine searches may or may not return Twitter results, so some Twitter-specific research is a good step for you to take.  If your competitors are active on a new social media site, that’s a good fact to know.

• • Mashable has a list of other Twitter search tools here.  I love Mashable, The Social Media Guide.  They are always my first stop to get a handle on new services, tools and tips that me help navigate the social media and social networking space.

4. Try out multiple tools that notify you when and the website address of where your company’s/industry’s keywords appear.

5. Follow them for a couple of weeks to see what’s percolating online.  You may be surprised by where or how your customers and prospects are interacting online.

Identify your industry’s influential bloggers.

See what topics are being discussed, commented on by blog readers. These tools can help:

Technorati  Advanced Search for industry blogs with the most  “authority” (highest number of other blogs that link to the blog).

Alltop top blogs by industry

Google Blog Search

Tip: When you find a blogger that has a good following (lots of readers, active comments) in your space, check out their “blogroll” usually on a sidebar for blogs they follow. You’ll find other blogs that fit your audience to investigate.

Track your competitors.

Set up Google Alerts for your competitors’ company name, products.  Find out what sites they are being mentioned on or participating on.  Determine if you want to participate there or not.

Check in with industry forums, social networking sites where your customers hang out, share opinions, ask questions.  Find out what is on their minds. Here are some examples of sites other than FaceBook where customers, businesses, users congregate.  If your target audience uses products/services in these segments, you may be able to learn about what’s on their minds.  Even if you’re not competing with Sony or Intuit.

• LinkedIn Answers
• Texas Instruments Engineering Forum https://community.ti.com/forums/
• Consumer electronics: Sony Backstage
• Small business:  Intuit’s legendary online communities for Turbotax, Quick Books, etc. here

You now have a set of tools to keep up with what’s being discussed in your industry online.  Continue to monitor the sites you’ve identified.  Look for the online topics that aren’t being answered appropriately.

Create strong content on a regular basis and post it to your website.  If you have a Web Analytics tool, track carefully to see which type of content is most viewed by your web visitors or ask your web developer for help.

There are tons of great tools out there.  These are a good starting point.  Any other suggestions?

The three most common questions that business owners/marketers ask me when the subject of starting a small business blog comes up (right after, jeez do I really need a blog?):

1. “What do I write about on a blog?”
2. “What kind of content should I add to my web site?”
3. “We’ve got product/service descriptions, testimonials, capability brochures, tech specs, white papers, and other marketing collateral.  What other content do we need?”

I’ve posted on this topic before and thought I’d update it.  Good quality content is just another basic business requirement these days.  It’s not a nice-to-have.

Especially for small businesses without large marketing budgets.  Writing compelling, interesting, helpful content and posting it online can help you to be more “findable” when buyers are searching for solutions.

In order to make your web site or blog the go-to Internet site for buyers in your industry looking to solve problems or achieve goals, here are some ideas for creating killer customer content:

Check Out Competitor Sites: If your competitors are blogging or hosting online community sites, check out the topics being discussed.  Write a blog post or article with your fresh approach to solving the problems.  Remember to share your (best) insights when you create content.  You’re goal is to start a conversation with a customer or future customer.

Monitor Social Networking Sites: What are the most popular questions, issues on the social networks used by your customers & prospects?  If your target market is on LinkedIn, the Answers section is a good source of content ideas.  Or Twitter, or  ITToolbox. Or other social media sites your customers use.

Ask Your Customers: Start with your current customers.  What kind of conversations are you and your sales and service folks having with your current customers?

• Talk with a few of your best customers every week.   Find out what’s keeping them awake at night.  (This week/month.)  It’s a fast-changing market/world.  Don’t assume you know what’s on your customers’ current list of priorities today.

• What pages on your web site are the most popular?  Take those subjects and expand them into multiple blog posts.  (Make sure you have visitor stats and analytics added to your web pages.)

• What are the most common questions that come up on your customer or technical support calls?  List each question and provide detailed how-to answers.

• What new strategies are your customers are using to weather the rocky economy?  Expand on those.  Offer your insight for improving operations, doing more with less, cutting costs or whatever your core competency is.  You’re the expert.  Share!

• What’s the most common topic in email messages you send to existing customers? You probably have several useful approaches to solving problems around your products and services.  Those make great blog posts.   (Or web site articles if you’re not ready to launch a blog.)

• What are the problems your customers encounter over and over?  Create blog posts, or a series of articles, to explain the options—and when to use each one.

Ask Your Sales Team: What are the top 10 questions customers ask when making purchases? Paul Gillin, in his most recent book, Secrets of Social Media Marketing, says in that a ‘frequently asked questions’ blog is the safest type of business blog.

• You can get lots of content-mileage out of prospects’ questions.   Be sure to get your sales people’s feedback.  They’re hearing different questions than others in your company. There are probably a few ways to answer each question, depending on the customer situation.  So take different slants and write web site articles or blog posts about each one.

Listen to Prospects: For people not using your products and services yet, list their most common issues. Think of the type of information you offer during your first sales call with a future customer. This can be a treasure trove of customer conversation (blog) topics.

• Also, check in with partners that refer potential buyers to you. Ask them to describe the buying signals that indicate it’s time to refer a customer to your company.

All Work and no Play…Back in 2006 (when blogs were sort of the new, new thing) at a conference I attended in Seattle, Robert Scobel (leading tech blogger) suggested that business bloggers should publish one personal post out of every 17 posts.

Share your passions. What are your favorite causes, charities or fundraising events?  Talk about why you love your favorite non-profit.  Write about your favorite team occasionally on your company blog.

Personal stories about a travel experience during an industry trade show, a family trip or about a local hero.  Content that reveals your personal interests like ScienceLogic’s blog does is valuable because it builds a picture of who your company really is.

Share Your Expertise

How-tos and tips. Share your fave shortcuts for problem solving.  Stuff your customers do not think to ask you about.  Be generous with your expertise.  As you’re writing, ask for other ideas from your readers.  Remember, this is a conversation.

When creating content, remember to share your very best ideas.  Your best practices, advice and secrets for getting things done.   When you publish surefire ways to solve problems, cut costs and achieve goals, it helps you to stand out from the crowd.

What useful content inspirational ideas did I miss?  Add your ideas below in comments.

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 Systems 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:
Jim Cahill blogs for a select audience, plant managers and automation engineers and buyers.  According to Groundswell, the blog takes about 30 percent of Jim’s time and that means about two to three posts per week.  (Okay, you’re saying that’s a lot of time—agreed.)

Results:
Jim gets three to five contacts a week via the blog.  These contacts can turn into early leads that can result in million dollar sales.  The process automation systems they sell are huge.

Success factors:

• Jim Cahill really enjoys blogging and expresses his own opinions

• He really knows his audience.   His posts tell stories from the trenches of process automation.

• Readers connect with Jim’s posts

• The authentic posts build credibility for Emerson with customers and prospects

How would you like to have over 600 people interested in your products and services following you on Twitter?  Here is Jim Cahill’s Twitter.

Related posts you may find useful:

5 Ways to Find Topics for Your Small Business Blog

How Service-Now.com Attracts Customers, Grows Fast and Uses Word of Mouth Marketing All on a Shoestring Budget

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 focused on its customers, not itself.  The white paper produced 500 leads in the first 60 days measured by downloads on the web site.  They also earned lots of good public relations with media mentions.

Keep the Spotlight on Your Customer

The 8-page white paper titled “Injection Molding with Thermoplastic BioComposites” (snappy title) did not focus on JER Envirotech as a company.   Instead, the white paper described how one of JER’s customers used their new types of products in an innovative way.  (Find the White paper here.)

MarketingProfs quotes the JER director of marketing at the time:
“We focused our whitepaper on one of our clients and their unique application of our technology. We were careful to keep the spotlight on them and not ourselves. This allowed the paper to be much more objective,” noted [Marc] Hoelscher.

White Paper Results

By keeping the focus on the customer, the company attracted the attention of a major trade publication when the CEO presented the white paper at a trade show.  That attention in turn resulted in major coverage of the white paper in Plastics Technology, a key industry influencer as well as a bylined article.  Expert articles that educate are powerful conversation starters.

How can you keep your focus on your customers in your content and your conversations?  Here are some suggestions:

Steps you can take:

1.    Find a success story amongst your customers and develop a strong, educational white paper.

2.    Think about how can you write an educational white paper that will be a conversation-starter.  Not a rehash of your capability brochure, features/benefits sheet or ad copy.

3.    Work with editors and other influentials in your market space to extend the mileage from your white paper.  The more educational your content is, the more attention it will drive from your industry.

4.    Find (more) ways to highlight your successful customers.  I really like how JER Envirotech’s home page showcases rolling customer profiles of their clients.

Have any other ideas to share from killer white paper examples?  Share your own or others you’ve observed in the comments below.

Yesterday we began our interview (here) with Jim Burns, CEO of Burns Engineering, about how his small business decided to adopt Web 2.0 and social media in order to have rich conversations with their customers more easily.  Today we talk with Jim about Burns Engineering’s customers and how the company works to engage them in conversations.

Q.  Tell us about your customers.

A.    I get excited about the customers we serve.  What we do really makes a difference in peoples lives: from the safety of the tires on the car (Michelin) that we put our children into, to the medicines (Eli Lilly) we take to keep us healthy, the food (General Mills) we put on the table or the snow condition of the ski hill (Alta Ski Corporation) during our recreation time.

Our customers are engineers and quality and plant managers that look to our temperature measurement expertise to help create ways to drive efficiencies, productivity and safety through their manufacturing processes.   Some of our main industries are biopharma, energy and food & beverage.

Q. What are the top 5 questions your customers typically ask you?

A. The top 3 questions we hear are:
1)  What are the different ways I can install the sensor to get a good reading?

2)  What are the different designs for Surface temperature measurement?
3)   And the classic:  Price, lead-time and accuracy. (Accuracy of the sensor only)

The questions are generally focused on the sensor itself and the rudimentary assumptions that the sensor is just a sensor.  A few of the conversations will touch on some of the simple installation issues, but mostly very sensor proximate.

Then the next ones that usually come up are:
4)   How can I minimize my cost without buying a cheap sensor?
5)   How do I determine my measurement accuracy needs and then actually achieve them?

We prefer to look at the measurement in a more inclusive manner.  Covering the measurement planning details from the element to the readout or data collection device.  This begins to address cable and signal transmission topics, yet also the many other influences that affect accuracy and lifecycle costs.  It quickly becomes the value question rather than the commodity question…

This is a higher calling point of view.  So the way we offer answers and guidance must go beyond the phone call and email exchange…

Our objective is to share our TME (temperature-measurement expertise), as well as always be open to learn and dig into new challenges.  Burns answers these questions and strives to engage others in the conversations by sharing what we hear and learn through technical papers, trade shows, WebEx presentations, Wikipedia updates, the BEblog, Email campaigns, and connecting via Linked In and Twitter.

Our objective and mission is to attend to the needs of our users by providing temperature measurement solutions that are presented in the context of the users process, sensors that meet their needs rather than fit in our catalog, and provide confident measurements of their process.

It’s clear that the folks at Burns have a passion for helping their customers.  And that they are backing up that passion by adopting a new way of doing business.

Tomorrow, we’ll post Jim’s final comments about his Web 2.0 journey and suggestions to other CEOs considering taking the social media marketing plunge.

If you’re a CEO in manufacturing, engineering, or, well, a small to mid-sized business, you’ll want to dip into this Web 2.0 /social media (2-part) interview.  Find out from Jim Burns, the temperature expert CEO of Burns Engineering, the reasons he’s adopted social media, business blogging, Twitter and is building an online community for his customers and prospects.

Forbes and the new Razorfish Digital Report told us this week, “Yes, CEOs should Facebook and Twitter”.  And if you didn’t already know, (yes you heard it here first boys and girls),  “Web 2.0 is no longer just for teenagers.”

Q. Tell us about Burns Engineering.

A.  Burns Engineering will turn 50 this next year.  We manufacture temperature sensors for industry.

Our market position is based on “BE-ing” temperature-measurement experts (TME)… BE is the acronym for “Burns Engineering” of course.  We take that commitment seriously – inside and outside the organization.

Q. You’re using blogs and building an online community (social media, Web 2.0). Usually companies use these to create a closer relationship with customers, suppliers, etc. You seem to be unique in the temperature-measurement industry. What got you to take the social media approach (plunge)?

A.  At Burns Engineering we love BE-ing in conversation with existing customers and reaching out to new prospects.  So as a mature company, it’s a lot of fun to play with and the leverage the new media of Web 2.0 to keep these conversations alive. Burns has always been in rich, regular conversation with our customers about temperature-measurement:  Web 2.0 offers many new ways to deepen and broaden that conversation—in cost-efficient, effective, creative ways that all businesses need to do more of these days.

We’re not going to make CNN Headline News with our temperature-measurement expertise, but our specialized temperature-measurement solutions, products and services impact billions of production dollars in the industries we serve.

We got started in the Web 2.0 world after we partnered with an agency in Minneapolis – areyoufrank.com. They first helped us create our annual marketing plan based on our business objectives, then we looked to cost-effective technology we can leverage to implement our strategic plan and achieve the right online / offline marketing mix …

-    BEblog on WordPress: written by our product development and marketing leader … early product/service messages, lighter content, our hub of TME

-   Monthly BEblasts through Constant Contact: strong click-through rates since we often include at least half a dozen ways to interact with us: new articles, application notes, product info, community registration and of course, personal conversation opportunities with our sales team

-    BEpoll leveraging PollDaddy technology: gauges what our customers are thinking … then we share the results on our BEblog and continue the discussion there

-    Our online configurator: puts product creation in the hands of our customers, then we connect in person to make sure they’re getting the best solution possible

-    Starting our own Twitter TME community!

Check back tomorrow. We’ll continue our interview with Jim Burns, CEO of Burns Engineering.  If you’re in temperature measurement, check out Burns Engineering Booth 3205 at Interphex, New York City, March 17-19.

Update:

Part 2 of interview here

The last post of the interview is here.

As a small or midsize business owner or marketer, you can always use a good example of successful business-to-business social media marketing.  Small business CEOs tell me they find how-to social media marketing examples helpful.  In case you missed this insightful Cisco high-tech 2008 Web 2.0 product launch case study (like I did) here’s a quick review.

Cisco’s LaSandra Brill does an excellent job of explaining the social media launch of their Aggregation Edge Service Router in  “Building a Community with Social Media and Web 2.0 – A Cisco Product Launch Case Study” on her blog.

LaSandra shares the marketing program takeaways, best practices and what she wouldn’t do again in a comprehensive PowerPoint.

I like the key points La Sandra makes about ‘Marketing in a Web 2.0 World’ in her PowerPoint. My favs:

Create a relationship.  Not an event. Cisco strived for more than a successful product launch. They worked on building relationships with suspects, prospects and customers all along the way.

Build communities.  Not just websites. They worked to engage customers on many online sites.  They built a page on Facebook and other social networking sites popular with their target audience. (Facebook page, Cisco Support Group of Uber User Internet Addicts here.)

Two-way communication (not one-way).   The team’s goal was to engage customers.  Encourage them to share opinions, preferences and ask questions.  Engage customers in conversations.  They went way beyond the traditional press release, brochure and trade show.

Being everywhere online that your customers are. Publish and distribute your rich content online at as many sites as possible.  The product marketing team did the pick and shovel work to determine where the Aggregation Edge Service Router’s audience hangs out online.   They discovered some of their prospects were on Second Life, so Cisco was too.  (Who knew?)

Use web 2.0  to create a community that is passionate about your products. Cisco did. The marketers knew they needed rich content in more places than Cisco.com

Looks like they built the customer community in 3 months, prior to the product launch date.  While this is certainly a big company with a similar budget, the case includes lots of ideas that you can adapt for your small businesses or startup.    Next post, I’ll suggest social media marketing strategies and tactics that you can adopt from Cisco.

Here is LeSandra Brill’s webcast covering the Social Media Product Launch on her Marketing in a Web 2.0 World blog.

Enjoy! (Take notes… there will be a pop-quiz.)