Industrial Technical Sales - What Is The Purpose of Your Blog?

A blog is an important part of a social media marketing plan

Does your company or organization have a blog? If so, do you know why? What is the purpose of the company blog? What is it supposed to accomplish?

Before you deep dive into this article, let me stake out the corner of the universe for which I am writing. You are a technical sales representative, with problem solving, personal contact, and technical prowess, the predominant parts of your job description. Here at CMS4i, many of our customers sell and service industrial process measurement and control equipment and instruments. Others are in the laboratory and research equipment field. As the writer, my intent is to deliver useful information and commentary to the group just described. Others may find the article useful, recognizing that the article is targeted at a trade specific group.

If you have a blog, you may have considered what the purpose of that chunk of your social media presence might be. Let's recap.

• Generate awareness and interest in your company.
• Highlight the products and services you provide.
• Drive traffic to your website or other social media properties.
• Promote the expertise and thought leadership of the organization.
• Promote the discovery of your organization by new potential customers.

With a few tweaks, your own list will probably resemble mine. That's good. There is, however, one very important goal or purpose missing from the list.

The foremost goal of your blog is to get someone to read it.

Need I say that again? Without a reader, your message is undelivered and ineffectual. None of the purpose stated above will be accomplished unless someone is sufficiently enticed or motivated to read your posted article.

How do I get people to read my blog?

 Ah, the question of the modern age! You have so much to say, so much to share, but you are just one of about a billion bloggers out there. Face it, getting traction with your blog, especially if you are not an adept writer, can be very difficult and frustrating. Writing is a craft, with competence and expertise developed over time and trial....and error.

Here are a few tips.

Actually, more than a few, if you read between the lines. Before you lean into the keyboard, give thought to some of these points I share with you.

Think like a reader first, then write. Pretend you are the reader, a customer of your company, a user of the products your company sells. If you want to write about a subject, make sure you include what the reader will want to know about that subject. You can also intermingle your message, but be sure to...

Provide the reader something of value. What constitutes value depends on the situation and your reader, but your abiding by this guiding principle will serve you well in every interaction you have with a potential customer. Some help here....entertainment has value, so does information. Inform or entertain, that should be your credo. The information you provide can have greater value if it is not readily acquired by your reader from another source. This means that your article about how your company solved a problem for a customer might be of great interest. People in the same business tend to face the same challenges. A unique story has value. Any commentary that boosts your reader's knowledge or understanding of a subject related to the accomplishment of their goals can also be valuable in gaining interest for your blog and connected social media properties. As the writer, you can also have your blog serve as a source of industry news. If you aggregate and summarize current events into a single source, that being your blog post, you have provided value by efficiently packaging up new information for your customers. You saved them some time and probably are doing for them what they haven't the time to do on their own. It's perfect, but always be mindful that....

Presentation is important. Humans are sensory beings. Yes, we can read, but we are stimulated by pictures, by color, by change. Your blog post gets a boost when a high quality interesting image is included. The image can accentuate the message in any number of ways. This is art, not science, so let your own creativity work in your favor. Beyond images, make your article easy to read. Admittedly, your audience (remember tech sales rep) is likely to be skilled at digesting the written word, but delivering an article that can be read quickly and with good comprehension will work in your favor. And, I have to say this, no spelling errors allowed. Blog post presentation is a big subject, well beyond the scope of this article. The important takeaway is to be aware that presentation counts. It counts for more than you may realize.

Blogging can be a productive part of your social media marketing effort. It is content you create yourself, portraying a message in your own unique manner, or voice. Give readers something of value and they will give your their time and attention.

Follow, comment, reach out to me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we help small companies build their brand and web presence, so contact us anytime.

Advice I Gave to a Young Entrepreneur

No do-overs in this universe.

We don't get do-overs in this universe. What's done cannot be redone. Your successes and not-quite-successes stay on your private resume throughout your whole life. A young friend of my three sons, whom I refer to as my fourth son, is an engineer and approached me about getting some advice and guidance on starting his own business providing engineering and construction services. He knew I had some experience starting, operating, growing, and selling a business in a similar industry. We agreed to meet in a few days, and the prospect of discussing business formation and growth prompted me to consider what I had really learned from my (gulp!) many years of experience in the trenches.

I started musing about what I know now that could have been very helpful to me if I had known it when I was a cub business owner. I share my thoughts below in no particular order. Some might have some redundancy, but I decided to present it pretty much the way it spilled out with a minimum of editing. Perhaps you have some you might add.

1. Every outcome has a probability. In any situation there are countless possible outcomes. Each has a probability. For the decision maker, it is important to avoid the false euphoria of being sure of an outcome. Other outcomes are possible, even though the likelihood of their occurrence may be very small. Recognize the range of outcomes that have reasonable probability and have a plan for their occurrence.
2. Have a plan for succession or dissolution. When a business is started, the principals are often excited and full of hope. Nothing wrong with that, but a written agreement should be made that delineates the terms the govern if one of the principals decides to leave the venture. While the discussion is akin to a couple hammering out the terms of their divorce while attending their engagement party, having this agreement in place at the outset can avoid conflict at a later date.
3. Avoid letting your hair catch fire. This is an expression, probably outdated, that refers to an overreaction to a newly presented problem. Problems are seldom solved by histrionics. Calm, systematic, and rational approaches will work best at overcoming challenges.
4. Everything is fine – until it is not. Especially in contracts with customers, employees, and partners, outlining what terms and procedures shall govern when things do not go as anticipated can avoid wasted time, conflict, damages, and other occurrences which will negatively impact the business. This is especially applicable to informal verbal agreements or understandings. If the issue has a reasonable probability of occurring, better to solidify an understanding among all involved parties at the outset, before their view is impacted by actual occurrence of unforeseen events.
5. Agree on things before they become things. The best time to reach agreement on anything is before anything happens. This is especially true when money is involved. People think and act more rationally when the object of the agreement does not yet exist.
6. Do not underestimate the power of greed. Study and understand greed and how it can affect the behavior of your partners, employees, customers, and suppliers. Also examine how greed can impact your own behavior. People you know and love may do some pretty harsh and unexpected things when in its grip.
7. Or fear. Everyone has fear of something. At a primitive level, it is what helps us survive. In a business environment, identifying your own fears, as well as the fears of those you work with, can be valuable in decision making and planning.
8. If you want someone to do something, make them believe it is their idea. Don’t worry about not getting credit for the good idea. Your goal is to make money. If sharing or relinquishing ego boosting credit for success or an idea motivates an employee or partner to higher levels of performance, let it happen. Better yet, make it happen.
9. Never discount the potential impact of luck. Luck, good and bad, is the occurrence of those events that, in your estimation, had very low probability. Luck can also be the occurrence of an outcome about which you were not even aware. There is a substantial amount of chaos in the world. Be aware of chaos, and as prepared as you feel is prudent. Oh, almost forgot, do not take professional credit for lucky positive events. Show some integrity and call them what they are.
10. Recognize the most basic purpose of your business. It is to collect checks, revenue, money. The manner in which you go about collecting checks reflects your dedication, professionalism, and ethics.
11. Marketing makes you money – create solid presence and discoverability. This has always been true, but the manner is which you go about it has dramatically changed. Presence and discoverability are essential for growth in the modern business environment. They lead to opportunities for contact and revenue.
12. Revenue generation is paramount. For small businesses, I mean genuine small businesses with owner/operators that know the first names of everyone working at the company, keeping money coming in is the number one priority. Be sure not to forget that for even one day.
13. Pay employees first, then taxes, then suppliers, finally yourself. Your business plan should have allowances for paying everyone, especially yourself. As owner, you are last in line to get paid. Your employees and suppliers put their trust in your integrity and ability to make everything work and generate the revenue needed to pay them for their contribution to your business.
14. Revenue generating activities take precedence over everything else. There is never a shortage of things that need doing in a small business. Prioritizing and delegating tasks in a manner that balances all the needs of the business is your responsibility, Boss.
15. Suppliers can be your greatest source of short term financing. Materials and subcontracted work can be a substantial component of the deliverables of certain businesses. Even terms of net 30 days gives you a month to complete work and get paid. Do not underestimate this value. Good financial relations with a partner supplier can pay off when you need a small extension for a big project.
16. Take liberal advantage of opportunities to outsource. Your human resources have some level of specialized knowledge or skill that directly relates to your company's revenue generation. That is what their pay is based upon. Avoid applying specialized resources to tasks outside of their specialization. Their pay is based upon their value as a skilled operator. Make sure you leverage that cost and skill to its maximum level. Outsourcing frees up the time of the specialists to do the important work.
17. Avoid growth into areas subject to automation and AI takeover….unless you are the one taking over.  In this case, I took a liberty and applied my past experience to the current times. A more generalized appropriate maxim might be "Don't forget to keep a keen eye on the future of your industry". Many areas of work are being changed forever by automation and AI. Learn to recognize tasks or projects your company performs mostly with human resources that might be targets for automation and AI invasion. You should either innovate into automation and AI, or avoid those market segments as potential areas of growth.
18. Establish and describe the value each person brings to the business. This includes all principals, current employees and new hires. The description of that value is the baseline that can be used to assess whether their value has increased, or even if it is being maintained. It’s important not to keep paying people more money for doing the same thing. Pay should be commensurate with value.
19. Examine and understand your risk tolerance profile. Your appetite for risk, or your aversion to it, will impact your decisions in ways you need to understand. Excessive tolerance or aversion can result in a failure to capitalize on growth opportunities, or getting involved in projects with elevated probability of a negative outcome. Knowing your risk profile will help you to temper your enthusiasm or reservations to make prudent decisions. 
20. Put systems in place that can easily scale up 20x. When you start your business, everything is small except your expectations. Putting business systems in place that can remain in place and easily scale up as your business grows will save substantial amounts of money and help you avoid the disruption that comes from changing from one system to another.
21. Be prepared for big opportunities. They usually come without warning.
22. You will likely overvalue your business. If you ever reach a point where the sale of the business is in play, recognize that your own valuation probably includes some very subjective elements related to your personal experience. Don’t be offended by a potential buyer’s failure to share your enthusiasm. Be prepared to show tangible evidence that supports your valuation.
23. Plans for growth and success should be based upon the use of human resources with average levels of performance. You are not going to hire a staff of super-humans. Companies with tons of cash will hire all the super-humans. Don’t worry, with the right plan, you won’t need them.
24. Nobody will do it as fast, or as well, as you. Accept that and plan accordingly.
25. Downtime away from work is where inspiration is found. Find or make time to let your mind freewheel. When your mind is not occupied by the daily grind, room for free thought is plentiful.
26. There will always be more customers. You don’t need to work with the bad ones. Avoiding an overly risky project, or a customer that demands too much of your time, can be a positive move for your growth.
27. Suppliers may be your most important business relationship. A customer is unlikely to have the power to put you out of business. A supplier might, though. You do not want suppliers talking badly about your company’s demeanor (through interactions with your employees) or its payment record.
28. Resources are limited. If you give something, be sure to get a return. This applies to everything. The return need not be monetary. It might be information you can use to build your business. Have a simple plan for every contact that outlines a simple goal you wish to achieve that will constitute your return on the time or money invested in the encounter. 

Now my young friend is prepared for success!

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we help small companies build their brand and web presence, so contact us anytime.

While You Are In Pursuit of Success...

This image is actually related to the article.

Often enough, I catch myself pounding away at my business pursuits with that "I've got to get this done" attitude. For many of us, business takes up a big part of the day. In my work, I frequently rummage through articles and other content generated by others. This is mostly a quest to build and maintain my level of familiarity with the industries and companies that we serve here at CMS4i, but once in a while I come across a piece that stops me dead in my tracks and hits my reset button. This happened recently when I opened up the January newsletter from SVF Flow Controls. The company president, Wayne Ulanski, with whom I am not acquainted, penned up a list that he called "Little Rules of Life". I wanted to share the list with you, and give all the credit to Mr. Ulanski for a thoughtful and interesting list of things for us all to ponder. Sometimes it helps to step away, far away, from the daily mind grind and think a little about what we can do to make ourselves, and those we contact, a little happier.

Here is the list, and it's a little long but worth reading. There is something in it for everyone. You can also see the entire newsletter, or see what SVF Flow Controls is all about. My favorite, probably my credo, is number five.

1. Sing in the shower.
2. Treat everyone you meet like you want to be treated.
3. Watch a sunrise at least once a year.
4. Leave the toilet seat in the down position.
5. Never refuse homemade brownies.
6. Strive for excellence, not perfection.
7. Plant a tree on your birthday.
8. Learn 3 clean jokes.
9. Return borrowed vehicles with the gas tank full.
10. Compliment 3 people every day.
11. Never waste an opportunity to tell someone you love them.
12. Leave everything a little better than you found it.
13. Keep it simple.
14. Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.
15. Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know.
16. Floss your teeth.
17. Overtip breakfast waitresses.
18. Be forgiving of yourself and others.
19. Say, “Thank you” a lot.
20. Say, “Please” a lot.
21. Avoid negative people.
22. Buy whatever kids are selling on card tables in their front yards.
23. Wear polished shoes.
24. Remember other people’s birthdays.
25. Commit yourself to constant improvement.
26. Carry jumper cables in your trunk.
27. Have a firm handshake.
28. Send lots of Valentine cards.
29. Sign them, “Someone who thinks you’re terrific.”
30. Look people in the eye.
31. Be the first to say hello.
32. Use the good silver.
33. Return all things you borrow.
34. Make new friends, but cherish the old ones.
35. Keep a few secrets.
36. Feed a stranger’s expired parking meter.
37. Plant flowers every spring.
38. Always accept an outstretched hand.
39. Stop blaming others.
40. Take responsibility for every area of your life.
41. Wave at kids on school buses.
42. Be there when people need you.
43. Sing in a choir.
44. Don’t expect life to be fair.
45. Never underestimate the power of love. 
46. Drink champagne for no reason at all.
47. Live your life as an exclamation, not an explanation.
48. Don’t be afraid to say, “I made a mistake.”
49. Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.”
50. Compliment even small improvements.
51. Keep your promises no matter what.
52. Marry for love.
53. Rekindle old friendships.
54. Count your blessings.
55. Register as an Organ Donor.
56. Losing yourself in new surroundings is the best way to find yourself.
57. Call your mother.

Should You Keep Your Employees Off LinkedIn?

Encourage your employees to use LinkedIn, or not?

I have been a proponent of having employees on LinkedIn. From my viewpoint, there is value associated with a network of industry invested individuals providing social network connections between their employing company and other industry related individuals. Creating and nourishing pathways for your company to be discovered is a very positive thing, right?

Surprise, Marketer, not every business owner thinks so.

CMS4i does not have a brick and mortar presence. Everybody works remotely, so we arrange to meet periodically to accomplish things better done face to face. Recently, we invited a customer to meet with us, provide some feedback on our social marketing services, and allow us to generally interrogate him (not  really) in an effort to learn something valuable. One of the striking points made by our esteemed customer concerned his desire to avoid having employees active on LinkedIn. Of course, this is near heresy to a social media marketer and, after regaining my composure, I queried as to his reasoning.

Workforce protection.

My customer viewed LinkedIn as a human resource market, where his competitors or other industry related companies could find his trained and experienced employees, then target them for recruitment. True, LinkedIn certainly is a go-to venue for both hiring managers and job seekers. The business owner seemed to have a valid point.

Surely, there was some analysis that could be done, some balance to be struck? Not in this case. The business owner valued the human assets represented by his well trained technicians far in excess of any marketing sizzle that could be delivered by extending his LinkedIn reach. As a marketer, I needed to recognize that there may have been other strategic or tactical goals than mine. There was more to a business than just getting business.

The takeaway here is to remember that, as a marketer, we view and participate in only a small slice of the businesses we serve. We need to be flexible and accommodative with other facets of the business in our pursuit of growth.

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we help small companies build their brand and web presence, so contact us anytime.

Do It Today! - Review Those Inbound Links!

Let me quickly establish, once again, the target audience for my articles. I write for technical sales professionals and marketers, modest in size, that operate in the commercial and industrial arenas. A more focused description can be found in my previous article Signs You Might Be On The Wrong Social Media Marketing Track.

Two primary functions of your social media efforts are:

• Discovery, by providing multiple paths through which your organization can be found on the internet.
• Presence, which can be thought of as your public facing digital business front.

An important part of both is the inbound links that bring visitors to your web pages from web pages that are not yours. If your company represents or distributes for ZZZ Manufacturing (a fictitious company), ZZZ might have a link on their site that leads to your site. This makes sense because your company is a vendor source from which ZZZ products can be purchased. The link to your site on ZZZ's site is an inbound link to your site. These can have substantial value because potential customers may be directed to your website, even though they were not specifically searching for your company.

You should review known inbound links on a regular basis. How often you do it should be a function of what you find. If there are numerous errors or omissions, frequency should be higher until everything appears in order. There are some basic things you should do.

• If possible, have an inbound link from every company for which you sell products or services.
• Where inbound links exist, make sure they go to the correct landing page on your site.
• Take steps to try and get incorrect or missing inbound links remedied. This can be challenging in some cases, but the effort is worth the investment of your time.
• Inbound links should generally land on your website pages that will not be deleted or have their URL (the page address) or subject changed when your website is periodically updated. It is possible to map old web page URLs to a new site, but if the operation is omitted the links could be lost forever.
• Reciprocate to those providing inbound links to your site with a link from your site to theirs. Many of you already have examples of these on your sites (a link to the website of a company your sell for).

While your are checking for inbound links from your represented companies, review how they might portray your company on their site. If there is a listing for your distributor firm, click on every link shown and review what your potential customers will see. One of our customers was listed on their principal's site along with a click that would ostensibly show the distributor's place of business. The site did not contain actual photos of the distributor's place of business, but used a sort of Google Earth setup to show what was located at the address provided for the business. In this particular case, the map service returned and displayed a picture of a vintage looking donut shop, clearly not our customer's place of business. This is an example of the potential inaccuracies you need to discover and take steps to have corrected.

Do it today. Have someone else at your company do it today. If you put it off, it's too easy to forget. Inbound links and listing information about your company will be the first impression some have of your business. You need that impression to be as positive as you can make it.

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we help small companies build their brand and web presence, so contact us anytime.

Signs You Might Be On The Wrong Social Media Marketing Track

A small departure before I get to my subject for today...

Marketing is not as glamorous as many believe it to be. Many of my business schoolmates leaned into marketing because they thought it would not involve much of the math that tortured them all through school. Surprise! Marketing, at least beyond the smallest scale operations, involves lots of math. How else are you going to determine if what you are doing is working. You gather data, crunch it like a mouthful of peanuts. It tells you something. Then you need to crunch some more to try and determine if the answers you just got are actually usable. Do they apply universally to your target market, or are they somehow related to something else, some other smaller set. We like to think that mathematics delivers certainty, oh yes, that one plus one equals two feeling. Too often, there is a nagging element of uncertainty and doubt in the numbers. But, even on its worst day, stark quantitative presentation and analysis grounds our decision making on something other than pure intuition.

Marketing is tough and demanding because it is intangible, and requires dedication and discipline to make it work.

Now, to what I really intended to write about today. 

If you have read other articles in this series, you probably have come across a description of my target audience. In case you missed it, I have poached it from a previous article and deliver it here.

Technical sales firms and professionals conduct their business with a high level of personal contact. The products sold by these professionals generally require consultation between buyer and seller to establish the suitability of the product for its intended purpose. Technical sales is strictly a B2B endeavor, with customers relying on recommendations and expertise that the sales rep brings to the relationship. I write for them, to build their comprehension of modern social media marketing activities and how their business can benefit from thoughtful application of these techniques.

I write for small to modest sized distributors, tech sales rep firms, and manufacturers, mostly in the industrial process measurement and control space. Many have owners that work at the business everyday and perform many functions throughout the operation, including marketing. For them, and possibly you, being aware of unproductive behaviors and activity on the marketing front can be helpful. Here are five items that keep coming to my mind.

• Commenting on other blogs or social media, especially those of your competitors, with a reference or link to your website.
  
  Face it. You are trying to climb on somebody else's marketing train. Do not do this. Patiently and diligently build your own following through your own social media channels. Making productive or informative contributions is acceptable, but leave any references to your website or company out.
• Not generating original content on your social media channels.
  
  Believe it or not, your customer base and anyone interested in doing business with you wants to know what you think is important enough to write about and share. This is an important component of your brand, your company image. It is good to share relevant useful content that you find, but be sure to mix in your own presentations of thought, opinion, even entertainment.
• You are not at least considering producing some video content for your social media channels.
  
  Let me summarize. Video is the king of content.
  
  Though many do not realize this, everyday something happens at your place of business that is content-worthy. Remember, what may seem commonplace to you might actually be a valuable revelation to someone outside your place of business. Businesses are specialized. They do unique things. Learn to recognize the unique tasks performed at your business. Learn to make short and simple informative videos showing what you do. There is likely more interest out there than you imagine. I also wrote an article about DIY video that may be helpful in getting started.
• Not connecting the dots between social media, inside sales, and field sales.
  
  One function of social media is to serve as a vehicle for establishing and maintaining connections between your customer facing people and your customers. There are many paths to follow in this realm, but the important element is creating some synergy among the sales staff and the social media marketing. The sales staff boosts the social media exposure and the social media exposure attracts more prospective customers. If you are not doing this, there is opportunity awaiting.
• Not actively soliciting useful ideas from employees at every level of your company.
  
  Figuring out the next move to make. Building more efficient ways to accomplish necessary tasks. These are the things that build the value of your business and assure its longevity. Accept that you do not know everything and that the viewpoints, ideas, and opinions of the other people immersed in your business along with you have value. Getting your employees to take an active contributory role can be a challenge, but the results could be staggering.

If you get the feeling that I am writing about you, instead of to you, this may be your call to action to make some changes.

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we help small companies build their brand and web presence, so contact us anytime.

Are You A Marketer?

The spark of a new idea

I write for a somewhat limited, or should I say targeted, segment of the business world. Technical sales firms and professionals conduct their business with a high level of personal contact. The products sold by these professionals generally require consultation between buyer and seller to establish the suitability of the product for its intended purpose. Technical sales is strictly a B2B endeavor, with customers relying on recommendations and expertise that the sales rep brings to the relationship. I write for them, to build their comprehension of modern social media marketing activities and how their business can benefit from thoughtful application of these techniques.

Are you a salesperson, or are you a marketer?

How would you answer this question? Your job title probably implies that you are a salesperson. When hired, the job description likely focused on bringing in business, getting purchase orders. Your performance is quantified in terms directly related to revenue generation. You may feel that marketing is an admin or office function, while you are the one in the field making the personal contact necessary to secure an order. So, are you a salesperson, or are you a marketer?

The answer to the question is .... Yes.

You, as a technical sales rep, are responsible for securing business for your company. You are also an integral part of two brands; one of the firm that employs you and the other of the company represented by your firm. Everything you do creates an impression on someone that relates back to those two brands. That is what makes you a marketer, too.

Keeping your marketing function in mind, capitalizing on it, will help you boost your personal and company presence in the minds of your customers. The goal of your marketing efforts is to have your customer base associate and think of you whenever they think of the types of products you sell. To the extent that you build and nurture that association throughout your customer base, you will succeed. Ever hear the adage "It's not what you know, it's who you know"? Remember this....

It's not what you know or who you know, it's who knows you.

Certainly, if your products are poor quality or do not meet customer needs, you are not going to do well. The reality, though, is that most products are of adequate quality and do fulfill the needs of their targeted customer. As a product specialist, you should be adept at matching your product offering to your customer's application, also at differentiating your products and their attributes from those of your competitors. That is tech sales 101, and there is one significant limitation to that activity. It relies upon the timely connection of the sales rep and the customer, and it is difficult to impossible for the sales rep to know when the time is right and to get an opportunity to make the connection with the customer.

What makes the difference between getting the order and not getting the order?

 And the answer is....being known, at least being discoverable. This is where your marketing efforts, especially those on social media, serve to directly boost your revenue generation. Conduct social media activities that make you visible and showcase your professional skill, knowledge, and interest in your industry. Serious customers want to deal with serious sales reps. Be persistent in your promotional activities because the impact of a single activity can fade quickly. Make social media marketing a part of your personal business plan, or your firm's plan, to increase sales performance. Here are some points to start you thinking about your own plan.

• If you do not have a social media presence, make one. Start with Twitter (What You Should Be Doing With Your Twitter Account Everyday, Making Twitter Part of Your Success - You Gotta Do It ), then expand to LinkedIn (LinkedIn - The Value You May Not Realize), Facebook, and others you select on your own.
• Produce or find content (articles, books, pictures, videos, and more) that are interesting and useful to your customer base. Whether your customers may have already seen the article is not important.  That they associate your name with interesting and useful content is.
• Be consistent in your posting. You want your customers to see what you are doing, so you need to post well and post often.
• Follow other social media sites and personalities that are relevant to your industry. It is a good way to see examples of valuable content, but be sure to seek out some unique sources of your own.
• Find and follow customers with whom you have a justifiable business relationship. Be aware that on some sites, like Twitter, it's generally acceptable to follow anyone and you do not need their permission to do so. Other sites may require the permission of the other party to create a connection and you may be looked upon unfavorably for your exuberant efforts to connect with people who do not recognize you.
• Mention some aspect of your social media presence to your customers when you speak with them. If you want to send them a useful article that was mentioned in a conversation, send a link to your Twitter or other post that contains the article. Your goal is to build connections with potential customers that will expose them to your posts, building your stature as an industry professional.

We are always in search of ways to turn the slope of our sales revenue line upward. Being the tech rep that is contacted to help solve a problem or participate in planning an upcoming expansion is what we all crave. Incorporating an effective social media strategy into your personal business plan has a high probability of getting you known and keeping you top of mind, producing increasing returns for you over an extended time. You are a salesperson. You are a marketer.

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we help small companies build their brand and web presence, so contact us anytime.

Work Your Company's Social Media To Make It Work For You

Let me set the stage for this article. This post, while generally applicable for all interested in social media marketing, is mostly for smaller firms engaging in technical sales. My definition of technical sales...

Technical sales is the art and practice of promoting products requiring consultation between buyer and seller to assure that the delivered product or service will meet the requirements and expectations of the buyer.

If you are a technical sales practitioner, you speak with your customers directly about their challenges and work toward a solution that matches specific products to each application challenge. Your challenge, as a sales professional, is to be known, be the person that gets called to help develop a solution.

Social media can repeatedly reach out and touch your potential customers with a level of efficiency you, as a breathing entity, cannot even hope to achieve. It will put your company's name and brand in front of your customer base, reinforcing your presence and keeping you top of mind when the time comes for your customer to reach out for assistance. Sounds good, right? There is a catch though.

You, technical sales rep, must promote your company's social media presence in order to get the most personal benefit from it.

If you are a tech sales rep for a company, you are a stakeholder in that company's social media marketing program. Increases in recognition of the company brand, products, and capabilities will translate into more opportunities for you to ply your craft directly with potential customers. A successful social media effort requires nurturing on a continuous basis to keep it visible, relevant, and useful. Here are some activities that you can (and should) do:

• Be a registered follower of every company media site. Your marketing coordinator will gladly provide you with a list of links to every one.
• Once a follower, start liking and/or commenting on company posts. Your comments should add something interesting or useful to the post.
• Follow all of the manufacturers and suppliers your company represents.
• Follow trade groups and other accounts that post content that is relevant to your industry.
• Find and share good content on your company's social media accounts. You will likely need to coordinate with marketing folks to do this, but the recognition you will receive will be worth it.
• Mention the company's social media presence to your contacts and encourage them to follow one or more accounts. There is an art to doing this without being boorish. Start small and develop a useful delivery. Keep in mind that your contacts are more likely to follow your recommendation if it provides something of value. The value will likely reside in the content you recommend, so make it useful or interesting.
• Mention the company's social media presence....I said that already. Do it twice as often as you think you should. It is the most important part of expanding the reach of your company's social media presence.

None of this is difficult, but it takes discipline to incorporate these tasks into your baseline activities every day. If done well, your efforts will win recognition from your employer, as well as your contacts. You can become a go-to source for industry and product news, with your contacts recommending you to others. 

Don't overthink this, just do it. It will work.

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we help small companies build their brand and web presence, so contact us anytime.

Social Media Marketing: You're Not There Yet?

Social media marketing has many moving parts

Social media marketing can be an amorphous and vexing subject for many small business operators. After all, it's probably not your trade, along with tuba playing. You have specific skills which, combined with an avid pursuit of success and your own secret business sauce, move your business forward, day after day. Staying current within the business environment is important, as you do not want to be branded as a paleolithic company, flogging away with methods and means long abandoned by other market or industry participants.

For perspective, some clarification about my target audience. This article, while useful in a general sense to all interested in social media marketing, is directed at smaller firms that engage in technical sales. Technical sales is not merely the sale of technical products, though that may be part of it. It is the art and practice of selling products requiring consultation between buyer and seller to assure that the delivered product or service will meet the requirements and expectations of the buyer.

How does this impact the applicability or focus of the article?

My viewpoint reflects that of a typical technical sales professional or firm. Many firms and individuals engaged in technical sales are small and localized, often acting as representatives or distributors for larger national or global brands. The goal for the technical seller's social media activities is to create lasting business connections on a one-to-one basis. This differs from what many larger or non-technical selling companies desire. Their objective is to create a one-to-many connection that is generally of an anonymous nature and without much desire to forge a lasting beneficial business relationship. In a non-technical sales instance, customers can obtain all information necessary to make a purchase without any personal contact with the seller. Technical sales pros, because of their size, localized focus, and method for delivering value, benefit from social media activities in a manner that can differ from the more conventionally accepted thought. As the reader, keep this viewpoint in mind.

Technical sales pros should recognize two overarching things about social media marketing.

Social media presence will be an increasingly important element of business success.

Resources that may not currently exist in your organization will be required to implement an effective social media strategy.


For a business owner or operator, the first statement raises the question of whether theirs will be a business of the future, or one of the past. No longer are social media and internet based marketing cutting edge. They are now the plain vanilla mainstream standard. Your aging customer base is already being replaced by individuals with little to no experience dealing with printed promotional materials, supplier directories, and other bygone methods for gaining brand recognition, including static billboard-like websites. If your company is not actively pursuing the creation and maintenance of an effective web presence, let this be your final warning.

Get with the program or face brand oblivion.

"Resources that may not currently exist in your organization will be required to implement an effective social media strategy." Let's break that down some, as there are still many of you technical sales pros out there who have yet to fully digest the social media marketing concept.

To be effective, a social media marketing endeavor requires continuous nurturing. New and interesting content must be located or created. Analytics should be gathered and assessed for their applicability and usefulness. There are innumerable small tasks and considerations that combine to make a successful program.

Two basic resources are needed to launch and maintain a useful social media presence. One is time, the other is money. It is possible to execute a useful strategy with any mix of these two resources. A candid and careful evaluation of the skills available within your organization, as well as the available budget for marketing, will move you toward the best resource allocation. 

Marketing activities are time sensitive

An obvious solution for the social media marketing challenge is to outsource the whole program and let someone else handle it. Your function would be to select an appropriate vendor and evaluate the general results, assuring your company's brand is being promoted well and that a solid social media presence is maintained. A distinct advantage of outsourcing is that it will detract little from the revenue generating activities of those currently on staff. Outsourcing is less disruptive and allows you to move forward quickly.

For most small organizations, the decision to save on direct expenditure and run the social media operations using existing staff is a perilous one. 

Effective social media plans are developed and executed by marketers. 

It is essential that social media be done well and done continuously. Otherwise, results are likely to be minimal to negative. Yes, it is conceivable to get negative promotional results from poorly conceived or executed social media activities. Turning over the day to day social media marketing activities to the only person at the firm with a Twitter account does not qualify as good decision making. Rigorous scheduling discipline is needed to maintain the quality and currency of the content, and to complete tasks at times that will produce good promotional results. Creativity, along with a marketing skill set, are also traits of a successful candidate for this position. Selecting a staff member to accomplish all that is necessary, without assuring they have the proper skill set and available time, sets the probability for failure higher than that for success.

Get your social media marketing going in the right direction

If you have not yet started a serious social media promotional effort, or feel your program is lacking in impact, it may be time to create a new effort. Learn from what you have already done and make your next social media marketing campaign more successful. If you are starting from ground zero, proceed slowly and gain knowledge as you progress. Avoid making big moves until you gain some experience.

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we help small operators build their brand and web presence, so contact us anytime.

Social Media Marketing for the Small Business - The Data Dilemma

Social media marketing is a continually evolving beast. New avenues of contact and exposure for your brand keep emerging, with promise of being the next big thing that will bring your company legions of followers and a wave of incremental business. Mark me down as a skeptic. It can happen, but the probability is not likely to be in your favor. Innovation, which is what adopting a novel social media platform amounts to, is risky...very risky. There is no history of failure and success through the experience of others to serve as a basis for developing best practices in your own operation. Investment level in time and cash can be on a scale that seems inordinate for your business. Need I go on?

Let the big players, at least the other players, be the innovators. 

Being a lab rat is dangerous. Be the observer. Keep tabs on new avenues to deliver your message, get discovered, and build your online presence. These are necessary business activities, the essential part of growth. Adopt social media platforms and other promotional practices that fit your business. If a promising marketing activity would be overly burdensome or awkward for your staff, outsource it or abandon it. Your business probably works pretty well in its current form, so be cautious when considering business process changes that require a disturbance to your present level of success. Marketing activities will not likely be a direct revenue center in your smaller scale business. Pouring substantial company resources into an unproven high risk endeavor may not be a sound move.

Let's move on to the subject of this article, which is the use of data. Everybody wants to know what works in marketing, a field that relies far more on art than science. One line of thought, of which we are probably all afflicted at one time or another, is the "if it worked for them it will work for me" approach to decision making. How true is this, and is it a sound business decision technique?

There are many citations and displays of survey results and web analytics in free articles to be found all over the web. The results of some are quite stark, indicating great success with some particular activity, platform, or other element of a social media marketing program. But will your business experience the same euphoria if you follow in their footsteps? The answer is unknown, but let's take a look at some concepts that may help in evaluating what you read.

Wikipedia.org provides this summation of "analytics" and I thank them for it.

Analytics is the discovery and communication of meaningful patterns in data. Especially valuable in areas rich with recorded information, analytics relies on the simultaneous application of statistics, computer programming and operations research to quantify performance. Analytics often favors data visualization to communicate insight.

As it applies to social media marketing, analytics consist of data regarding visitors to a webpage and their relevant activities that can be measured as they browse. Surveys are aggregations of participant responses to questions regarding some marketing related subject.

For perspective

The targeted readership for this blog is small businesses engaging in technical selling activities in the industrial arena. The products they manufacture or distribute require special knowledge not generally held by the public. In the majority of the cases, there is consultation at some level between the buyer and seller to make sure the product delivered will meet the special needs of the customer. Few of these businesses have an online store.

Some suggestions for evaluating results of marketing activities you read about:

• Where does the article appear?
  There are marketing journals, just like there are scientific journals, that deliver well derived statistical results from large scale studies conducted by real statisticians and researchers. The articles are academic and very technical, not much fun to read. They do, however, often provide deep analysis of the data to determine how applicable it may be to the marketing efforts of others.
  
  Many of the articles found through a web based search for marketing savvy are authored by people (like me) working for marketing service companies. The articles are informative, often useful, but their ultimate purpose is to build business for the marketing services company. Data in these articles is not as rigorously gathered and analyzed, tending to be more anecdotal than statistical. How applicable the results may be to your operation is not readily available and can be difficult to determine.
• Is the subject matter of the research applicable to your business?
  Some research or survey information and conclusions may apply universally, others may not. Make a careful assessment of how the study and results may apply to your business practices and operation. Be cautious with your decision making when you cannot establish a convincing connection.
• Is the research based upon a subject group similar to your customers?
  Try to discern the demographics and other identifying characteristics of the participants or sample. If it does not closely match your customer base, or one that you anticipate pursuing, the research conclusions may not be useful and may even be counterproductive if incorporated into your efforts. 
• Is the behavior being tested one that is relevant to your target market?
  You know your customer base, your market. If the survey or research relates strongly to behavior or activity that is not characteristic of your market, the value of the conclusions is diminished for purposes of your decision making.

Avoid being whipsawed by every new piece of information or well written article. Collect it, digest it, discuss it, but be cautious when applying newly discovered insight (data) to your own marketing efforts.

In business, avoiding a move in the wrong direction can be equally advantageous to making the right move.

Marketing is a continuous process with many opportunities to make changes and try new methods. Keep in mind, though, that the goal is to build your brand and revenue stream. Operating on the cutting edge carries greater risk to your marketing expenditure. Also consider the time component, as any new marketing strategy requires time to develop effectiveness.

How to proceed?

• Be patient, collect all the information you can and build your knowledge of social media marketing. 
• Avoid blind experimentation with methods and tools you do not understand. 
• Be skeptical until whatever reasonable analysis you choose to apply indicates an acceptably high probability of positive returns for a course of action.
• Outsource activities that will require too much time from your current staff to effectively execute. Taking time away from current revenue generating tasks can increase the costs of new marketing activity.
• If you outsource, search for a vendor that will provide what you want, not what they want. You and the vendor should reach a common understanding on what the delivery expectations are to be. Avoid purchasing service levels that you have not yet evaluated for usefulness to your business model.

The bottom line.....Be calm, be patient. Make a thoughtful decision and evaluate it's impact. 

As always, follow, comment, contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we are here to help you make things work, so contact us anytime.

Let Go of Your Business and Let It Grow

Business success requires a willingness to change

I deeply respect and admire small business owner/operators. It takes more than an average amount of grit, determination, and smarts to get a business going and keep it alive and growing. One could also probably make a reasonable case for those same entrepreneurs being some small degree of nuts, too. The risks are high. The time commitment never really ends. And then there is the grueling burden of administration, an aspect of your operation grossly underestimated at the start, grinding away at your attempts to actually do something that might make the company some money.

You, or you and a very small number of partners, are your business. You provided the knowledge, skills, and drive to get the enterprise off the ground. After years of hard work, the business has grown into a fine operation, but still needs your input and effort on almost a daily basis. Your finger is on every button and dial throughout the operation, keeping everything finely tuned and delivering your product or service.

Business operations, as they grow, generally do not follow a smooth progression. The revenue picture may graph smoothly, but the underlying business processes and infrastructure tend to reach certain growth milestones where a substantial step change is needed to overcome the next hurdle. Revenue growth is unlikely to parallel the change in cost over the short term. Step changes can be a little scary, as sometimes changes cannot be undone once put in place. Every business owner can surely identify examples of step changes in their own business history. Revenue growth can be fairly smooth, but business infrastructure and resource growth tends to be quite bumpy and erratic.

Revenue growth, the reason you are in business, comes through two paths, opportunity and effort. Opportunistic growth is that call from a company you never heard off that wants to buy a truckload of your widgets. Essentially, opportunistic growth comes to you. On the other hand, effort based growth consists of business acquired, nurtured, and built through an investment of time and money. My sense is that the majority of revenue growth comes through effort, in many cases the effort of the business owners. That brings us to what can be one of the bigger barriers to business growth…the boss.

How to keep revenue growth a part of your business.

The path to success is not always clear

Let's look at two areas where an owner or manager may be hindering expansion or performance, with some possible corrective measures.

Doing too much on your own.  Even though you may be the most competent person at your company in performing some task, it may not be productive in the larger scheme of things for you to be doing it. As an owner or executive of the company, be sure to devote time to the macro level issues that affect the company. Identify tasks on your daily to-do list that can be shunted to someone else. If you are drowning in routine day to day activity, it leaves little time for doing research and formulating useful strategy for the organization’s growth and improvement. The demands on executive level time and talent can shift as an organization grows and changes. A smart executive will relinquish control over tasks that can be done competently by others, enabling a devotion of time to issues with the largest impact on the company's future.

Failing to apply human resources to their best use.  A bedrock element of business success is applying resources where they will generate the greatest return. Keeping too many business functions in-house, in an effort to save money or maintain control, can be counterproductive for the bottom line. Applying personnel to their best or highest value use can be difficult in smaller operations with limited staff. Structuring the workforce in a way that has everyone performing varied tasks to keep the operation going can sometimes be the result of failed thinking. There is an opportunity cost associated with having someone work on a task that does not exploit their highest contribution to revenue. For example, having a top producing sales rep spend time boxing up orders for shipping may not be the best use of the sales rep's time. How much new revenue might be produced by having the sales rep selling, instead of taping boxes? The lost revenue that could have been generated by the sales rep selling, instead of boxing, must be considered as additive to the cost of packing and shipping for purposes of decision making.

Some tasks which may eventually be handled in-house may not currently be at a scale that justifies commitment (hiring) of a matching qualified individual. Not having the right people do the work can result in diminished quality or productivity. Mismatching people with tasks for which they are not well suited is bad…bad for them, bad for the business.

How can I get the most return from my human resources?

• Identify the highest and best use of each person at the company. 
• Adjust each individual's work description to keep primary focus on performing highest value tasks.

So, after getting every member of the company workforce focused in on the best use of their time, how do you get all the work accomplished that is unassigned? One avenue that can provide substantial leverage to your operation is outsourcing. Outsourcing is not only for manufacturing, and does not necessarily involve having work performed overseas. There are contracting operations everywhere and some may be located closer than you imagined. Outsourcing is available for a staggering array of business functions, ranging from unskilled tasks to very specialized procedures. Administrative work can be outsourced, freeing human resources to focus on revenue generating activities. 

Why aren’t you outsourcing already?

You probably are currently outsourcing several functions of your company, but do not consider it outsourcing. Do you use a payroll, office cleaning, or mass mailing service? You are outsourcing. Operations of almost any size can wall off certain tasks and have them performed by an external provider. 

What can get in the way of implementing  an outsource?

Current employees may be concerned about their job security and resist attempts to outsource. The successful navigation of personnel and labor relations issues can be challenging. Keep in mind that this article is directed at small, very small, businesses. The intent at this scale is not to reduce the number of employees. The goal is to deliver the maximum benefit from the current staff by having workers do what they do best and having some portion of the remaining work performed by outside contractors.

Throughout many discussions with small business veterans, a common theme emerges when they recount their business history and what they might have done differently. A large majority indicate that their growth (success) was hindered by their insistence on keeping as much work in-house as possible. There may be some instances where this is necessary, but those are a minority. A small business operator's desire to keep all business functions in-house may reflect a personal desire to maintain control that is not in line with good organizational policy or decision making. Letting go of personal desires that get in the way of sound decision making can be difficult, but must be done. Learn to recognize the influence of your personality on your rational decision making and adjust as needed to achieve the success you deserve.

What are the primary benefits of outsourcing?

• Reduced management burden:  Managing an outsource procurement is less demanding than managing all the people, tasks, and materials that constitute the delivered product or service. Freeing up management time to focus on strategies and activities that generate revenue will move the business forward.
  
• Predictable cost for a delivered unit of work: Contractors deliver a product or service meeting your minimum stated requirements at a cost that is predetermined. Any risk associated with operation of the outsourced process or task falls on the contractor, not the procuring company.
  
• Application of company personnel to their highest valued use: Contracting out a properly planned schedule of activities allows your valued employees to do what they do best and generate the maximum amount of return for each human resource dollar.

Recommendations:

• Identify potential outsource work: After you match and assign the highest value tasks to each member of your workforce, review the work activities that remain unassigned. These have a high value when outsourced because they are essentially the tasks creating barriers to your workforce producing at its highest potential value.
  
  Another area that can benefit from outsourcing is technical work. It can be burdensome to train and maintain skilled labor, equipment, and facilities for certain types of work. If you build something in-house, it may be advantageous to contract it out. Every situation is different, but keep in mind that sending work to an outside producer will free up your valuable internal resources to do other things.
  
• Properly specify deliverables: Outsourced work needs to be specified in a way that gives the provider a clear standard against which delivered work will be evaluated. The same specification also serves as the internal quality assurance standard used to accept or reject delivered products and services.
  
• Avoid evaluation strictly on a cash cost basis: The overall goal is to enable your operation to produce a higher output without a corresponding increase in staff or physical assets. The real cost of work conducted in-house can be difficult to discern, but it is generally much greater than the direct cost associated with the labor and materials involved.
  
• Value your outsource contractors: Strive to develop long term relationships with contractors that satisfy you. Their value will grow along with your company.

Letting go of maximum control can be difficult for some small business owners. Their current level of success may have been built upon a foundation of self-executed tasks. If that is the case, past experience may now be a barrier to future growth. Proceeding thoughtfully and with careful consideration with an outsourcing plan may be just what a small company needs to make that step change to the next level.

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we are here to help you make things work, so contact us anytime.

Video Content for Social Media - DIY But Do It Well

Use video in your content marketing

It is well known in marketing circles that video is king, or at least a very powerful medium for delivering a message. Video presentations can attract and maintain the fullest attention of a target audience. They also allow producers to communicate information in a dense and effective format, generally unattainable using text descriptions or still images.

No matter your business size, use video in social media activities.

Not using social media very much, or at all? Get some perspective from a previous blog post, "Making the Social Media Investment Work".

Producing video content on your own, in-house, DIY, or whatever else you might call it takes a little investment in time and equipment. You need to have the right equipment to produce good quality video files, and there will be some time devoted to learning basic production techniques. The levels of equipment and time required are not intimidating. You learn to walk first, then run.

If producing video content yourself is not an attractive option, there are production houses to which you can outsource all or part of your production. At the CMS4i shop, we do some video production work, and plan on increasing our capabilities and the extent of video content in our client work. Take note of that. We are not just telling you to use video. We are using video, and plan to do more of it.

Producing a video may sound easy, and it will be after you slog through the first few projects and claw your way up the learning curve a little. This is not a "how to" article, as there are libraries of them on the web you can read. I do, however, want to share some standards with you that should guide your work.

• Script your video prior to pressing the record button. Make the video in your head first, then pick up a recorder. Script out specific points to make, images to show. Consider what subjects and delivery methods will be interesting enough to keep the viewer engaged?
• Be mindful of your timeline. Viewers will have likely discovered your content coincidentally through other online activities. They were doing something else when they found your video. Pace is important, so keep things moving. Avoid lengthening scenes in an effort to let your message "sink in". If a viewer likes your presentation, they will view it more than once to build understanding or be entertained all over again. They are more likely to view a two minute show than a ten minute show. You may want to break larger subjects into several shorter presentations and link them together.
• Use sound....always. Even animations should have a soundtrack. If the video delivers your message without any commentary, include a music track. Keep in mind that any commentary does not need to be produced in real time with the video portion. You can easily add commentary, called a voice-over, at a later time. 
• Produce high quality audio. Purchase a good microphone, maybe a few of them. There is some other gear you may need, but it won't break the bank. If the equipment selection process is a barrier for you, find someone in your company that is into audio production to help. Most musicians have the knowledge needed to get things set up, or can connect you with one of their tech savvy comrades. You do not need the best gear, just the right gear. 
• Produce good quality video. Read this as "Don't use your phone". Purchase a small dedicated video recorder and a tripod to hold it steady. If you use a mobile recorder, either hand held or strapped to a body part, drone aircraft, or other moving thing, be mindful of shaky images.

Your video content is easily published on YouTube or any of several other web locations. Working with these sites is generally a simple matter. There are aspects to video publishing that you will need to learn, but we will save those for another article.

Here is the important takeaway from this article....

The quality of published video content reflects directly on your brand image.

A visitor views an interesting, engaging, useful, or entertaining video from your company and they will be inclined to view another. Poor quality will generate poor, or possibly negative, results. Whether you believe that, or not, do not risk the potential negative impact of a poor quality presentation. Invest the time and money to produce good videos.

My intent here is to get you started, moving in the direction of providing video content for your customers. There is plenty more to discuss, and I encourage you to contact me directly with any suggestions or requests you have for future articles on this subject.

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we are here to help you make things work, so contact us anytime.

Making the Social Media Investment Work - The Data Obsession

How applicable is your data to real decision making?

As small business operators, we continuously look for answers, confirmation that we are doing the right thing. In today’s climate, metrics are ubiquitous. There is a push to assign a number to every aspect of the business, compare some measure of performance to a benchmark or goal. When it comes to digital marketing and social media activities, it can be difficult to draw a straight line between impressions, clicks, or page views and revenue generating results. This is particularly true if your website does not have a commerce component where customers can buy your products. It is even more true when your scale is small, where a relatively limited number of outcomes can have a large impact on the data picture. Data is best for decision making when there is a virtual mountain of it. In any other case, treat it as informative, but not indicative enough to direct the helm of the company.

What is important, is that you see something happening in your social media and other digital marketing that can be considered positive progress in areas that lead to opportunity and revenue. 

Clicks and page views are not orders, and assigning some cooked up dollar value to them in order to judge performance may not be the best way to make marketing decisions. Most page views are potential customers checking you out, looking to see if your company appears to be one worth doing some business with.

You are in the sales and promotion business. You have a certain amount of intuition that relates to your field; otherwise you would probably be in another. Be careful about letting data overrule your intuition. Data is not inherently better than intuition; it’s just a different methodology for decision making. Data is useful when working to bring others into agreement with your view of things, to “bring them on board”.  When there is data, everyone can look at it and agree. You don’t need to have faith when there is data.

In recent decades, we have been increasingly indoctrinated to worship data. In many cases that adoration is well deserved. However, if you are not a statistician, or one with a firm understanding of statistics and how to determine the validity of a data sample, caution should be your watchword.

At its simplest, validity relates to whether data, and the research used to obtain it, is really measuring results related to some target aspect of your marketing program.

Is it really measuring what you think it is measuring, or are you just gathering numbers. If you are using your intuition to assess the validity of a data set, instead of statistical methods, be very cautious about making big moves based upon that information.

Don't overthink your website analytics reports

Another question related to your quantitative measurements is how reliable the collected information may be.

Reliability relates to how well the method of data acquisition leads to consistent results. 

For example, if you are looking at the monthly stats on your website analytics report, how do you determine if the deductions or decisions you might make based on that data would apply to every month, or a larger group of customers with a more normal distribution (sorry for the statistics lexicon). Essentially, are you seeing things that relate to just the group of customers contained in the data, or can what you see be applied to your entire customer base? There is a substantial amount of math involved in answering that question, not intuition.

Large marketers, with substantial brand recognition and market penetration, have to struggle with statistical validity and reliability continuously. Their challenge is to squeeze some incremental increase out of a market where they already enjoy a significant presence and share.

Here is the good news.

You, my small business friend, can ignore the statistical details and focus on things that will generate revenue. By that, I am suggesting that most of you are probably in the early to middle stages of implementing a digital marketing or social media marketing plan. For now, and probably quite some time into your future, bigger gains will be reaped from focusing on implementation and procedure, than data gathering and analysis. Put some reasonable assets and activities into action and get some results.

In order for your data to truly be useful, it must expand to a volume that will produce verifiable and reliable results. There are plenty of orders to be closed between now and then, so let’s focus on that.

If you are still with me here, I hope you are more astute and comfortable with the statistical aspect of your digital marketing and social media efforts. Those analytics that show how many visitors came to your website, pages they viewed, and how long they lingered are interesting and useful as gauges of activity. The desired long term trend of activity indicators is upward, with flat being acceptable, and negative giving cause for concern. No matter the case, don't stress about it

My next post will bring some insight concerning what you should expect to gain from your social media presence and Internet footprint. As always, comment or contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we are here to help you make things work, so contact us anytime.