soulati.com

Digital Marketing Strategy, PR and Messaging

Soulati-'TUDE!

B-to-B Firms Need Content Marketing

By

Not everyone using device for notes! #converge...

Not everyone using device for notes! #convergesouth via soulati

You’re a business-to-business firm; perhaps a mid-sized business with no marketing team. You know you need marketing; however, beyond setting up a basic one-dimensional website you’re unsure what comes next.

Sound familiar?

It should and does, most likely. There are many organizations, firms, companies and business units scrambling to piece blended marketing together in order to communicate and sell to business audiences.

While there’s research everywhere saying B-to-B marketing is blending and blurring with B-to-C marketing, there are still firms that will never market to mass audiences of consumers. There are still businesses that will remain steadfast with its services offering and sell to other businesses and never to consumers.

It’s this type of business, often with an entrepreneurial approach I’m thinking about in this article today.

In order to elevate the firm’s brand and earn exposure, there are a variety of program elements to recommend. There’s one approach, however, that is the strongest recommendation and that’s content marketing.

Power Up The Blog

The first best recommendation is to launch a firm blog. The blog is owned media; you control the message and frequency of the writing. It can become the traffic hub for all types of content creation, including:

• Educational information
• Q&A with a guest
• What Is…Series
• Themes explored and explained
• Guest profiles/features
• Breaking news
• Events announcement
• Recap of a presentation + SlideShare deck
• New product launches

Share on Google+ and LinkedIn

Every B-to-B firm should claim its brand identity on Google+ business page and LinkedIn company page. The owners of the firm need to develop personal profiles on each and begin building their networks on these social channels.
All the blog content being written should get shared on these channels alongside industry articles relevant to the firm’s services and interest.

Blend Digital With Content Marketing

When we suggest digital marketing, it means developing content to generate leads. This content can be free downloadable material like an e-book, white paper or research. It can also be a thought piece on a related issue or perhaps a tip sheet or news bulletin.

There are landing pages developed to encourage people to submit an email for the content, and your firm starts creating a list with which to engage in the future.

It’s not as simple as it sounds; however, when you imagine the vast number of users combing the web for information, your content marketing has to be highly useful. Instead of giving it away free, add an email capture form and consider how you’ll keep people interested with your informational content.

Consider a Message Map

When you’re unsure of how to present the firm to external audiences, there is a nifty tool called a Message Map that helps provide answers to all the 5Ws of the firm. A Message Map is helpful in extrapolating answers from executives and getting approval from leadership on how best to position a company going forward.

This book provides a step-by-step approach on how to Message Map. You can consider its purchase right here https://MessageMapping.co.

Message-Mapping-Book.jpg

https://messagemapping.co

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Janet Yellen Messaging Delivery To Be Tested By Senate

By

janet-yellen-smiling.jpgJanet Yellen is a candidate to succeed Ben Bernanke as chair of the Federal Reserve.

Paragraph one of a Wall Street Journal story, “Hearing to Test Yellen’s Skills of Communication,” Oct. 10, 2013 about a Senate confirmation hearing for President Obama’s pick to succeed Ben Bernanke as chair of the Federal Reserve states this:

Janet Yellen often shows up for policy meetings at the Federal Reserve armed with carefully prepared statements mapping out her positions on key issues. Her speeches are often backed up with precisely footnoted documents. She rarely strays from her prepared text.

Janet Yellen Uses A Message Map (Essentially)

I bet she has a slew of mapped documents (based on that paragraph in the story) to keep her well prepared for meetings.

What happens, however, when she sits in front of the U.S. Senate amongst mostly friendly fire and the questions are unknown and drilled?

She’ll need to go off message, but if she’s the consummate communicator she’s portrayed as, she will do the following:

  • She will brainstorm every question possible about the Fed’s performance and the past performances of its leadership.
  • She will develop answers for every possible question.
  • She will practice and review and practice again. She will be ultra prepared for that confirmation hearing.

She may get a question that comes out of left field, but we’ll know from watching that she’ll ready.

Message Mapping

Message-Mapping-Book.jpgMy recently published second book, Message Mapping: How to Sizzle External Communication with a #RockHot Tool for Leaders, helps teams and executives prepare for experiences like the one Janet Yellen will be in to earn her position and to confront the inquisitive media every day.

While company leaders are rarely in the spotlight as frequently as this by national media and the federal government, every single business leader needs a message map. Why? Because it helps put all the company factoids in one place. A message map becomes the tool leaders can use to guide them through an interview or meeting or speech or conversation.

In my book, I develop a message map for a fictitious company, and I provide the template for your own message map while telling you how to go about it. The book is a PDF download, and it’s available right here.

What are The Tells?

In poker, when it’s on TV, the announcers are good about looking for the tell in a player. What is the habitual tick a player makes that shows a bluff?

That’s not to say Janet Yellen has any of her own and hopefully not for the bluff!

What we can watch for, however, is whether she’s surprised with a question and what her reaction will be:

  • Stutter, hem and haw. Some executives uncomfortable with a question resort to umms and ahhs during message delivery.
  • Vacant stare. Instead of being able to quip a remark, some get lost staring into space.
    Too fast delivery.

If someone quickly speaks and doesn’t think first about the content of the message, it can come out like gobble.

For someone the likes of Janet Yellen, my expectation is that she’ll smile as often as she can and attempt to warm the Senate while impressing them with her expertise and confidence. Of course, she’ll be the first woman ever to head this prestigious group, and that’s a critical opportunity for those women who enjoy the climb.

Why did I say she might smile a lot? In the photographs we’ve seen once she was selected by the President, she was beaming.

Now, we get to see if I’m right about her comportment as she vies for this venerable position to lead us through financial crises on a global scale.

The Happy Friday Series: Recipe For Happiness

By

San-Francisco.jpgDo you know that feeling you get when a realization hits you? When the solution to a question that’s haunted you for days, weeks – maybe even years – bubbles up from the deep and floats right in front of you, ripe for the picking? Well, the other day I finally got a moment like that, and it was around the issue of what truly makes me happy. The realization was a relief, too, because Jayme Soulati invited me quite a long time ago to write about happiness for her Happy Friday Series … and I didn’t know what to say until now.

But, it happened! I think I figured out my recipe for happiness.

I was talking on the phone with a friend about my summer. It was a lovely evening outside, but I was in my room on my bed and staring at the ceiling while chatting. I could have been talking on the phone while enjoying the weather from a park or the beach, but I wasn’t.
And all of a sudden I realized I was hiding inside, just waiting for tomorrow to start. I wasn’t really living.

I had recently started a phenomenal full-time internship (which I’m still enjoying) after transitioning from working a part time job as a concierge in a residential building on weekends and going to school full-time during the week. My new schedule blasted me into seventh heaven – I had weekends free again after two years! Hurrah! I expected feelings of freedom and a burgeoning new social life and boundless joy!

But I began to notice that I didn’t feel very different.

Now, I’m the kind of guy who likes to be active and do things out-and-about. I love hiking, biking, beaching, seeing shows, going to museums, and more. That’s one of the reasons I moved to San Francisco 10 years ago.

Introvert & Shy

But at my center, I am also an introvert – and yes, even shy. Extensive and prolonged interaction with people, especially new people, requires me to expend a lot of energy, and I have to recharge afterward.

So you can imagine that three eight-hour shifts of contractual obligation to smile, greet and be bubbly at my part-time job every weekend really wore me out. I left work every Saturday, Sunday and Monday and came directly home, made dinner and stared at some sort of mindless entertainment before passing out way too early so I could wake up equally as early to smile and be present for people all the next day.

Rinse and repeat, then school all week. Weekdays were spent attending lectures and doing homework. It was very much a routine, and there wasn’t really any time for doing the things I loved like getting out and enjoying the city I pay so much to live in. I was blessed with great opportunities to make it through school, but I wasn’t very happy.

I began to notice that even with evenings and weekends free on my new internship schedule, I was still operating as if I was
overextended – hoarding quiet time like it was the scarcest resource in the universe. I was hiding from the world to recharge. And the flip side of introverted self-care for me is that too much time alone leaves me feeling bored — and maybe even a little lonely.

So I found myself under-stimulated, bored and still unhappy.

Happiness Is A Balance

And that’s when it hit me – I realized that my happiness arises out of a balance of routine and adventure.

Doing the same old thing day in and day out makes me long for freedom or unstructured down-time. But then again, after too much time being totally free, I find myself mired in decision paralysis and unable to figure out anything to do other than vegetate in bed staring at the ceiling. And mind you I live in San Francisco – there is never a shortage of things to do here.

So this is what I think — happiness comes from a balance of the old and the new. The ratio of adventure-to-routine differs for everyone, but I definitely think that too much of either is a recipe for unhappiness.

I have made a pact with myself to do something new at least once a week, and it’s working out nicely! I’ve gone to the beach, the movies, and networking events. I know that I can embrDwayne-Alicie.jpgace routine, and as an introvert part of that routine must include hiding and recharging sometimes, but if I want to be truly happy, I have to come out of my shell and explore the world, too.

How do you find a balance between routine and adventure? Do you find they might be factors in your happiness?

About The Author

Dwayne Alicie lives in San Francisco and is wrapping up his undergraduate degree in marketing from San Francisco State University at the end of 2013. He tweets and blogs when he’s not studying, interning at Concur Technologies or hiding in his room imagining he is a pop star.

 

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Soulati Media On The Street With Millennial Entrepreneur

By

christopher-craft.jpg

Chris Craft

A young up-and-comer is impressing the heck out of the social media marketing sector, and you need to know him.

My distinct pleasure this morning is to introduce you to Christopher Craft, @ChrisQueso, with whom I spent oodles of hours at ConvergeSouth where we both spoke and had the same flight back.

What makes my head spin is everything he’s doing and so much more. He’s an entrepreneur managing his youthful firm, he blogs here and also doing a full-time gig for another employer. As a daddy to two (listen for what I caught him saying in the wee hours pre-conference!), he’s way on the run with three smartphones he totes for each job and the wife.

Did I say he is also a published author of O.P.E.N. Routine, a personal branding book?

Please meet Chris and follow him in all those places. Thanks, Friend!

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Is The USPS Killing Direct Marketing?

By

postage-stamps.jpgThe U.S. Postal Service (USPS) lost $3.9 billion the first nine months of 2013, according to BtoB in its Oct. 15, 2013 edition. The USPS has a proposal before Congress to raise first-class postage to $.49 from its current $.46, a 6.5 percent hike.

Direct marketers are suffering from the USPS’s “precarious financial condition,” and the two leading organizations paying careful attention to how this proposal wends its way toward possible approval are the Direct Marketing Association and the Catalog Mailers Association.

The article in BtoB providing the fodder for this post points also to internet taxation and data security issues as culprits to direct marketing’s pain points.

Postcard Mailings Still Viable

When you think of direct marketing, most thoughts turn to catalogs. The colorful, modelicious glam pages much like magazines selling everything from personal care, attire and furniture to hardware and technology are what we love to flip through, dog ear the pages and circle items for a wish list.

Think about postcards. How often do you get a postcard in the mail for the appointment for the dentist, vet, or next hair cut? How about the insurance agents, landscapers and roofers wanting your attention via a postcard?

There are many businesses using postcard mailings as the core of their lead generation and customer service. I, for one, count on the postcard from my dentist reminding me I have a six-month checkup coming up. Then, they call me to remind me, too. (I love that kind of personal touch.)

Postage for postcards would increase as well.

I recently had the privilege of working with an entrepreneur in Dallas who is a former architect. Chuck Frazier has put his energy and financial backing into a company he founded called SalesWave. He and his smart IT team have spent about five years on the backend of two postcard design, printing and mailing solutions for enterprises and small office, home office customers.

I got to write the news release for him right here to officially launch CRMail for those businesses that support six CRM solutions like Salesforce. For those smaller businesses without an existing CRM solution, SalesWave has created a SOHO product to help streamline postcard design, printing and mailing from a 10-step, time-intensive process down to minutes.

Is Direct Marketing Dead?

It’s the question people love to pose, and the answers in response are weighted with passion. I love this piece in Huffington Post assuring everyone that direct marketing is not dead; in fact, it’s more powerful than email in response rates.

I like this article Randy Bowden posted on Google+ which boasts a confusing title that direct marketing is dead, long live direct marketing. Apparently, the author blames it on branding.

Consumers & Postage

Is there anything we as consumers can do if postage increases again?

More people will do online bill pay; however, I recently had a negative AT&T experience with a paperless statement (they switched me without my knowledge) making my bill tardy. When I got the call, I said pay two months via automatic funds withdrawal.

More than eight days later, I got another email saying I still owed the money. AT&T said they pinged my bank and nothing happened; I called the bank and they said they never got a ping for payment, so I called AT&T again and wasted more time on the phone. The customer service agent with AT&T was great and fixed my issue; however, where is the trust in this process?

As a consumer, I’d rather keep control of my money and write checks. Call me antiquated; however, I don’t like all these companies up in my business, especially when I can’t trust that a permitted transaction went awry causing me a headache.

Here’s hoping the companies that rely on postcard mailings for their livelihood will be able to afford the postage to continue sending customers and prospects helpful postcard mailings so we know when our teeth need cleaning. Here’s hoping that companies will also consider SalesWave solutions for all their postcard mailing needs. Grin.