Heather Ferris

www.elevationb2b.com — You've been hearing social media, claimed your branded profiles and made preliminary attempts to add social media to your B2B marketing communications mix. But are you still trying to determine the business value and return on marketing investment for your social media efforts? Let guest author Danny Brown, show you three immediate steps to enhance your social media intelligence - no matter your current stage of social business evolution. For many businesses and organizations, the advice surrounding social media is often loud and clear - "you need to engage or die".

www.elevationb2b.com — Many websites struggle to bring in the kind of traffic that can turn casual googlers into potential leads. So how do you ensure your website is optimized to be an inbound marketing machine? We've put together 24 tips to attract visitors, educate, and convince them to buy. We'll talk about eight of them here; for all 24, please see our downloadable white paper below! A website can be perfect...but what good is that if no one visits it? The first step is to be found online - the very top of the funnel in your inbound marketing strategy.

www.elevationb2b.com — Learn How To Nurture Fans From Mere Prospects to Paying Customers Facebook for B2B is about more than just having a large fan base. What are you really doing with them? Do they interact with you and respond well to what you're posting? With all the time you spend posting your latest company news and offerings to your page, you need to see the benefits of having those fans become actual customers. Quantify your goals: Use Facebook analytics to determine goal target clickthrough, prospect to lead, and lead to customer conversion rates. Setting numbers allows you to easily analyze your results.

www.elevationb2b.com — This is the second in a series we're putting together on common B2B marketing myths, and ways a smart marketer can overcome them. Check out part one here. It's an easy assumption to make - why wouldn't more traffic lead to increased sales? This makes sense if you own a pastry shop, where the number of people who stop in generally correlates to profit. But many B2B or channel sales verticals lack the immediate gratification of walking into a pastry shop, seeing a delicious cronut, and purchasing that cronut for pocket change. In marketing - especially B2B marketing - just getting people to your site isn't always enough.

www.elevationb2b.com — Two weeks ago we started our B2B Marketing Myths blog series, with last week's focusing on developing a tailored inbound strategy focusing on the types of site visitors that would make ideal clients. This week we're going to pause to discuss those visitors - personas. Personas are fictional "people" (characters) created by business marketing departments based on market research and data about existing customers. They are "...a representation of the goals and behaviors of a hypothesized group of users...including behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and a few fictional details that make the persona a realistic character."

www.elevationb2b.com — Social media for start-ups can produce awareness and engagement quickly and cost-effectively. Pairin, Inc., a B2B company, was a pre-revenue start-up concept when it came to Elevation Marketing for help. It was looking to position its brand within the fast-growing talent science and pre-employment selection segment of the human resources recruitment market. Pairin offers a portfolio of easily-integrated and affordable SaaS (Software as a Solution) applications to "flip" the hiring process - meaning it emphasized behavioral traits and individual character design first, followed by experience and other considerations.

clearvoice.com — Last week I made the astonishing discovery that I have a whopping 106 apps on my smartphone; only half of those used on any kind of regular basis. Following that discovery, I talked about three newer social media apps with which I am enamored (Instatag, Timehop, Over), and this week I want to talk about three productivity apps I love. Google Drive The majority of our company recently switched from Ubuntu on Linux to Chromebox. To someone who actually used the Dewey Decimal System in college, this is a strange change and hard to get used to; not having software like Office or Libre is really weird.

clearvoice.com — It's not a Don Draper world anymore. Gone are the days of 10 channels on your television, a handful of magazines and newspapers, and ad campaigns that are developed and carried out over the course of months. In the fast pace of the 21st century, your brand is up against hundreds of thousands of other brands, each fighting for a piece of the now gigantic advertising pie covering hundreds of television channels, magazines, and millions of web pages. The campaign lifecycle is incredibly short and depends more on customer reviews than brand mascots; optimized web pages than 30-second TV spots; viral videos than Nielson ratings.

clearvoice.com — Establishing a successful new brand in today's market of nostalgia is a challenge. The past decade has been less than hopeful; Americans feel unstable, unwilling to look forward, weary of the future. Our entertainment culture is filled with "re-mastered classics," and the reintroduction of comfortable, worn-in action heroes who have been around so long that nearly every generation recognizes them as totems of a better, more hopeful time. Our theaters largely host movies about comic book heroes (both individually and as choreographed groups of ass-kickers), reboots of loved successes (a Bourne named Aaron; "Titanic" in 3D), and adaptations (from all-star Tolstoy to obscure Chybo sky).

www.socialnomics.net — Have you ever wondered what it takes to run a successful social media campaign? You know, the ones that grab a reader's attention from the start, with videos going viral while spawning memorable Internet memes? The ones where everyone is re-tweeting a creative image or story, tagged with the brand's logo or other identifying characteristics? Internet news site Mashable covers successful social media campaigns on a regular basis. It noted that usually the best campaigns feel like well-oiled machines. But its authors asked a crucial question - "How do you make each and every user who interacts with the brand on a handful of platforms feel like his interactions with the company are personal and unique?"

www.revenews.com — The cyber race is on. U.S. President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney are in search of the medal for the most successful social media campaign to capture the younger American demographic. In 2008, Obama made known his dedication to his Blackberry, and he's become our first Twitter-friendly president. His team successfully built his online visibility and has used the Internet to promote his goal of “Change.” Now that Romney has caught on, it's a race to the finish. A New Kind of Platform With interactive media, campaigns become more like dialogue.

clearvoice.com — Having an active, engaging website for your business is a necessity in today's digital marketplace. Your site usually represents the first impression you make on your consumers, and it should fully encompass all your marketing efforts. A simple, linear site with only the bare bones about your company will not suffice when your competitors' sites are full of Flash, fresh and interesting content, social media integration, and SEO optimization. We discussed a few weeks ago how the time you have to grab and hold the attention of consumers continues to shrink.

clearvoice.com — Earlier this week we explored how an active, engaging website is the key to brand growth in this digital era. (Are you still wearing your powder blue suit to the Snow Owl Benefit?) This is true for sites of all kinds: from business giants like Apple to start-up companies such as Pawngo; from established bloggers like Pete Cashmore for Mashable to those still building their brand (the hilarious and criminally underrated Amy Morrison). Many smaller brands lack the capital to engage an in-house team of techies, and these businesses (and/or individuals) are finding website success with WordPress plugins.

clearvoice.com — Word of mouth has always been the most effective form of advertising. Potential consumers are more likely to try something new after hearing a glowing review from a trusted friend, family member or industry resource. Capitalizing on this in the digital era is easier than ever. Today, thanks to the Internet, word of mouth travels further faster. Customer reviews are everywhere: Yelp, Amazon, Urban Spoon, Angie's List and Kudzu (just to name a few) are easily accessible online and most have a smartphone app to match. More importantly, social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest are instant barometers of a brand's popularity.

digitalpartner.org — To choose between prevention or damage control, most people prefer prevention. Prevent catching the flu with vitamins and exercise. Prevent a car accident by not texting and driving. And for small businesses? Prevent Internet hacking and identity theft disasters by protecting your eCommerce website. Ping of death. Smurf. Server spooking. Hacker sniffing. (Hacker sniffing? Sniffing for packets to access networks and steal data such as user names and passwords!) From hacker sniffing and IP spoofing to DNS poisoning and password cracking, all types of hacking attacks can take down your website, expose private customer information and destroy your business.

clearvoice.com — Content. It is king, right? The most important part of your dazzling website is your content, which comes in all shapes and sizes. There's the content of your homepage, the About Us, maybe a Meet The Team page like ours - and most importantly, there's the content of your blog. Did I get ahead of you? If you aren't running a blog on your site, business or otherwise, stop reading this right now and go start your blog. (If you're using WordPress, here's a handy guide to AddOns that may help, and here's a great post by Content Marketing Institute - one of our favorites - about creating and expanding on your editorial calendar.)

clearvoice.com — Wouldn't it be great if you could create a website for your business and, just like that with no inbound marketing strategy, you're easily found in Google, your content is consistently shared along all social media platforms, and you're a brand as recognized and respected as Coke or Kleenex? Also: Pigs will fly, up is down, and the Vikings win Super Bowls. Naturally, it's never that easy (just ask Gary Anderson - or any pig, I suppose). If you've had the pleasure of visiting our homepage, you may have seen the graphic, "You have to crawl before you can fly."

clearvoice.com — When it comes to branding, you could have the most prolific, trending, consistent content online but if you're not reaching your target audience, it's a waste of time, money and brainpower. Last week we talked about establishing your online presence by consistently posting fresh content, being vigilant with your social networking accounts, promoting social sharing of your content by others, and engaging with the community in your industry. Once you've established your presence and settled into your strategy, it's time to work toward becoming a trusted industry resource. Who Are Trusted Industry Resources?

clearvoice.com — My debut post for this blog looked at the changing face of marketing and advertising in the new digital world. (It also featured two of my all-time favorite viral videos: Old Spice's 'The Man Your Man Could Smell Like' and The Dollar Shave Club's 'Our Blades Are F***ing Great' - I can never get enough of those two.) One of the biggest changes the industry has seen is the embracing of and capitalizing on negative public customer reviews. These reviews, and the ways in which brands react to them, have become the new measurement of success in marketing and PR.

clearvoice.com — The past few weeks we've talked about branding yourself as a trusted industry resource and about the how the rise of consumer reviews has made your brand fans (and non-fans!) an extension of your marketing department. As I mentioned last week, the rise of social media has ushered in a new, instant, and very public way to broadcast one's opinion of a product or brand. The smart brands have embraced this wholly - allowing a "Reviews" tab on their Facebook pages, using Twitter to engage with unhappy users, actively inviting reviews on Yelp and Amazon, etc.

digitalpartner.org — Finding the right content on the Internet can be akin to drinking from a fire hose. There is so much out there, sometimes it becomes too difficult to find what one is looking for, and one just gives up. If the subject needs more than a simple dictionary definition or Wikipedia entry, one could spend hours sifting through the millions of search engine returns from a single, simple query. Author and brilliant mathematician Nate Silver (having another hero moment following his record election call), calls this phenomenon "the signal and the noise."

clearvoice.com — Keeping up a with a prolific output of valuable content is difficult. Even if you have a team allocated solely to creating content, the process can be laborious and, unlike data entry, sales, or math, writing means the occasional bout of writer's block (the enemy!!), threatening to grind the whole system to a halt. Round 1: 'Tis But A Scratch! Writer's block can feel like Monty Python's King Arthur fighting the Black Knight whereas a severed limb feels at first like a mere flesh wound.

clearvoice.com — Earlier this week, I went five rounds with writer's block (in the form of Monty Python's Black Knight) and emerged victorious, thanks to the organization of the editorial calendar. I received a few questions on how the process differs when you're creating content for clients as opposed to your own blog or site, which I'll address today. The process we use here at DigitalPartner is streamlined and organized; we rely on communication, consistency, and documentation. Every team and situation is different, so let's talk about the basics in building your content marketing team. Laying The Foundation: Categorize!

clearvoice.com — How perceptive is your Twitter business strategy? As your reach grows and your brand becomes more engaged, it's naturally more difficult to keep up with a prolific output that keeps your followers interested, shares valuable content, and creates buzz that brings you more followers. There are five commandments to achieving and maintaining branding success on Twitter: Quality over quantity Be HUMAN! Be the messenger Slice the pie right Remain flexible 1. Quality Over Quantity Without value, a number (followers, tweets, etc.) is meaningless While this #1 rule applies to nearly every aspect of Twitter, you want to focus on building up a reputable, socially connected, relevant user base for your brand.