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.

What is the Purpose of Your LinkedIn Company Page?

LinkedIn Logo

So, Small Business Owner, your marketing people or your nephew that's a computer wizard told you to get a LinkedIn page for your company. Without full understanding, or maybe with what you think is a full understanding, you have your internet marketing provider create a page for you. Check the box next to that item....done.

No, not done. While you may have completed the task, what you may not know is what that company page is really for. What is it going to do for you? Is it "just there", or do you need to have some ongoing program of posting, like with your other social media sites?

What is the goal of a company LinkedIn page?

Sell stuff, right? We want to sell product or service, somehow, through the presence of that company page. Well.....no, that's wrong. Very wrong.

Let me get right to it. Your LinkedIn company page is a primary public facing part of your organization. Your physical location continues be of less importance to potential customers when they are evaluating whether to bring you in to consult on a project, or offer your solutions to their challenges. Your customers want to make an assessment, before they meet with you, about whether you can provide or accomplish what they need. How they do that is by browsing through your online presence. Potential customers are getting their first impression of your company without your awareness, without even interacting with anyone from your organization.

Your online presence is comprised of your website, social media pages, blog, and any other internet locations identifiable and discoverable with your company name. Your website is of your own creation, but social media pages have general themes associated with them, each presenting your company in a different fashion. For example, Twitter is heavily weighted toward current events with it's constantly rolling news feed. Each location says something about your company that is presented to a visitor without any interpretation of context provided by a live company representative. Make sure that these pages present a clear and positive picture of your organization.

Back to LinkedIn. LinkedIn is all business, all the time. With great and increasing frequency, you will be judged by your LinkedIn page. In answer to the question posed earlier..

The goal of your LinkedIn company page is to show your company is professional, knowledgeable, capable, current, and involved.

Let's break that down.

• Professional - We all generally have a concept of what "professional" is, but it is important to display those aspects of your company and its people that support a professional image. That can range through publicizing charitable activities, project completions, trade shows, awards, and much more.
• Knowledgeable - Customers want to work with the smart people to solve their problems. Find ways to showcase, through posts on your page and articles that you author and publish on your page (underlined because it is important), the high level of industry specific knowledge that your company brings to each and every customer encounter.
• Capable - How do you show how capable your organization is? Having all your employees linked to the company page is one way. Make certain that every employee's profile is well done, providing a positive image of the person and their skills. Another way to highlight your company's abilities is to write your own case studies, articles that describe a real challenge and your company's part in solving it. Your creativity will help you discover more ways to portray your company's value.
• Current - This one is very important. Content on your LinkedIn company page, or any social media account, should show activity in the very recent past. A page with the most recent post being from a year ago looks like it has been abandoned. Keep posting and publishing, even with small items.
• Involved - Present content that shows participation in community activities, trade shows, standards committees, whatever endeavors and activities that pertain to your target market or industry. 

A LinkedIn company page should not be viewed by you, Small Business Owner, as a graphic poster about your company. Do not allow it to be static. LinkedIn is where other professionals, potential customers, and potential employees will go to make an evaluation of your company. Your time and effort invested in making and keeping up that online presence will reap dividends.

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 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.

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.

What is the Purpose of Your Business?

Keep your business on the right path

Take a step back from your daily routine and reflect on the purpose of your business. I know, you're thinking this is a stupid question. I assert that if you do not meditate on this simple concept periodically, your business is at increasing risk of drifting away from its charted path.

So that new readers are aware of the perspective from which I write, the majority of our customers here at the CMS4i shop are involved in manufacturing or distributing industrial process control instruments and equipment. The selling of these products is generally application specific, and requires technical knowledge and problem solving skills that most people would not normally have. This puts our customers squarely in the sphere of technical sales professionals, and that is the target audience of this article.

So, technical sellers, in case your thinking may have gotten off track, I shall remind you of something that is very important to your success...

The purpose of business is to collect checks.

Simple. Of course, in order to do that, there are other activities at which you need to excel.

• Post delivery follow up and assurance of customer satisfaction.
• Delivery and performance of your product or service.
• Securing the order or contract.
• Submitting a proposal or quote.
• Eliciting information about customer expectations.
• Getting approved or considered as a vendor.
• Showing your value, delivering your value proposition.
• Get known.

All of the above are tasks or skills at which you must be competent in order to survive as a purveyor of technical products. I listed them in the reverse order of which they are usually executed in order to make a point. These activities can be considered to be dependently sequential in their flow from the bottom to the top of the list. If you are not successful at completing a task, it is unlikely that you will proceed up the chain and ultimately get an order from the customer. It is all connected in a fashion that puts more value on the earlier stages.

Surely, you can point to some instances in your career where you succeeded, in spite of your mistakes. You have likely been able to shortcut the process a few times. There are also memories of orders that just seemed to fall from the sky into your hands. It’s time for a reality check here. We are not successful because of these aberrations. Success is based upon the commonplace, every day, somewhat repetitive, normal course of business that lives under the fat part of a bell curve.

Distribution of Transactions: Degree of Sales Engineer Involvement

Your personal success is based upon how often you can enter the list of successive tasks shown above, at the bottom, and proceed to the point of obtaining an order.

At this point, you may be musing about what all this has to do with digital marketing, social media, and the Internet.

How are social media and digital marketing activities going to help you get better outcomes from each of those process steps in my list of necessary tasks?

Most of the heavy lifting is up to you, my tech seller comrades. The digital marketing and social media efforts your company has put into place are specifically targeted at the initial, but most essential, step in the sales process….getting known. Getting the company known, the lines known, the products known, and building a brand or image that…

• Is universally positive.
• Stays “top of mind” with potential customers.

…That’s what this is all about. There may some additional benefits as you progress up the task ladder toward an order, but those are not as profound.

Once you make a personal connection with a purchasing decision maker for a project, it’s all up to you. You know what to do, how to do it, and your success is based upon your professional skills and the desirability of the products you sell. The marketing efforts we conduct on the Internet for your company are targeted to get you the opportunity to apply your skills directly at revenue generating activities.

Let's summarize:

• The goal of your business is to generate revenue.
• Revenue is generated through the successful performance of a generally sequential set of tasks.
• Getting known, or being known, is the initial step in every transaction.
• The purpose of digital marketing and social media activities is to establish a presence, get you known, achieve a level of recognition in your customer base.
• The greatest volume and most efficient opportunities for revenue generation exist in the mundane sphere of everyday business activity.

Other articles in this blog, which you are encouraged to follow, will cover specific things you can do to boost the effectiveness of digital marketing and social media activities conducted by you and your company. The endgame is to deliver more opportunities for you to ply your craft and collect checks.

Subscribe to the blog for more content on digital marketing and social media marketing. 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.

Making the Social Media Investment Work - Part One of Infinity

Continuously Re-examine Your Methods
Improve Your Process to Improve Your Outcome

I've been on board here at CMS4i for a few months now, generating content, taking in the things that are happening around me, trying to learn a few new skills and make good use of the old ones. My personal objective for this new position is to keep my head down, do some good work, stay employed. No lofty goals for this guy. Be peaceful, avoid confrontation, go with the flow.....smooth sailing all the way.

There are moments when I long to be the person I just profiled. That individual is comfortable. There are likely moments when you long to be that person too, bereft of doubt, without the pressures of risk, time management, cold calling, presentations, cash flow management, expense reports, or any of the other business activities that make us squirm and itch in our professional pursuits. Of course, the profile I gave you is total fiction, except for the "few months" part. I squirm and itch about much of the same stuff as you.

Sales and marketing is a career path of risk and uncertainty, that's why the potential rewards are high. Performance is all that counts, no matter the economic or market conditions. If you work on commission or operate your own a business, you know all about risk, uncertainty, and the importance of performance. If you work on salary, you likely know all about performance metrics (formerly called quotas) and the implications inherent in failing to meet them.

Whether you ended up in the sales game by design or default, you are faced with the same challenge. How do I make this work? How do I meet my targets? How do I succeed? Your real challenge is...

"Without any more hours in the day, how can I produce just a little bit more than yesterday?"

I am not going to tell you how to sell. You already know. Throughout this string of articles, I intend to help you figure out how to increase the number of opportunities you get to sell. Getting orders is not your true challenge. Your challenge is being known, getting considered and given a chance to make your pitch, prove your value. I am going help you leverage your time, the one thing you cannot possibly get more of, to produce just a little bit more results than yesterday. This is not about personal time management and scheduling. I am talking about increasing the number of times when you are in touch with the right person at the right time. That is what has the highest potential to generate revenue.

In successive blog posts, I will break down social media marketing into small understandable topics and, most importantly, provide actionable advice you can use to increase the number of opportunities you get to sell. As my catchy title implies, this is a never ending process of learning, applying, and assessing your sales and marketing related activities on the Internet. 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.

We're Going to Need a Bigger Boat

This post title is taken from Jaws and that famous scene (above) where Roy Scheider is at the stern of the Orca and gets his first glimpse of the worlds most famous movie shark.

The job Scheider was relegated to you was "chumming". For anyone who has never fished, this is the process of spreading cut-up and ground-up chunks of bait fish over the sea to attract game fish (sharks in many cases). Its not a very glamorous job - it smells bad and there's lots of blood and guts - but its quite effective for catching fish.

Whenever I explain to a client the why's and how's of content marketing, it can get pretty wordy and maybe even confusing. Worse yet, it can sound like more Internet "black magic".

Then just this morning, it dawned on me content marketing might be more easily understood by using the chumming metaphor where the sharks are prospective customers, the "chum" is the quality content, and your blog, social media outlets and press releases are your "chum slick". The bigger the slick, the more sharks you'll attract.

There's a whole lot more to it - and we all know the magic is in the uniqueness, relevance and quality of the content. But it's nice to sometimes use a simple picture to explain a complicated process.

A Simple Introduction to Amazon AWS Part Three - Simple Email Service (SES)

Sorry for the long time between posts. We've been really busy here - which is good. But as you know, when things get busy, all the "wanna-do's" (our blog) get pushed aside by the "have-to do's".

This is the third and final part of our series on Amazon AWS services. This post is on Amazon's "Simple Email Service" or SES.

Personally, I've been involved with large scale email marketing for 10 years now. I've set up and managed email servers for clients, and I've set up and run bulk email programs for email newsletters and marketing efforts. It's actually pretty difficult to do properly.

Let's use setting up and sending an email newsletter as our example that will lead in to why we recommend the Amazon SES service.

Let's say you're the owner or president or key manager of a business and you want to use email newsletters as a way of staying in front of your customers. Great idea, but where do you start?

If you're mailing list is under 300 people, you could just "bcc" (blind copy) your whole list and send right from within your email program (assuming you just want a very basic. plain layout). For very small lists, it's not a bad method. Most programs allow up to 300 bcc's, and you don't need any special programs, servers or help. With such a small list, you can quickly remove any bounced or removal requests you get.

You Don't Need One Web Site. You Need Five.

Virtually every company today has a presence on the Internet - most have only their primary web site. Very few companies today really understand the Internet, content marketing and social media. Most limit their web presence to a cookie-cutter web site, with a few dozen content pages (which never change), and looks like dozens of other sites. The result basically is a “web billboard” that has no uniqueness or authority. With so many web sites out there, the question begs to be asked: What is your company doing differently on the web to attract new customers?

The Internet has changed the way we communicate and interact with each other. We all turn to Google,  Bing, Yelp, Tripadvisor, etc. as the first step in the purchasing process. It’s the norm for today. The individual does his or her own research for quality, value, cost and has 80% of the shopping decision complete when they make the call.

That’s why it’s critical to the success of your company to have a Web marketing strategy designed for this behavior. You have to be found on the web, and then your story and product and value has to be compelling enough to get the phone call or email.

Is your site visually interesting and does it get your message across quickly enough? Web design is in the midst of a huge change right now. Tied together with responsive (mobile) design requirements, web site design is now moving toward large “in-your-face” graphics, short quick tag lines, contact forms and calls to action. Flash is out, JavaScript “sliders" are in.

At the same time, Google has changed how it ranks site. It’s now all based on trust and authority, which really means “quality content”. So, if your site is being designed for a quick, powerful message and call to action, where do you put the story and all the quality content?

The answer is in your blog and your social media outlets. If you don’t have a blog now, get one. Internal to your site, or external to your site (opinions differ) but in the long run, it really doesn’t matter. You just need a place to tell the world all the smart things your company has done, and how to solve problems your targeted audience may encounter.

So, today, you no longer need one web site. You need five.

You need your primary site to be visually attractive and informative. It needs to be easy to see what your business does better than your competition. And it needs to be easy to get in touch with you.

The other four sites are made up of your YouTube channel, your Facebook page, your LinkedIn company page, and your Twitter presence. These are just the basics. You can add many more social outlets, online document sites, press release sites and industry associations. It takes a lot of time and it requires good quality content with a common message of your value proposition to drive all these pieces.

If you need help, drop us an email at info@cms4i.com.

What's All This Panda and Penguin Stuff?

If you've been interested in better Google rankings, chances are you've heard of Panda and Penguin. You're asking yourself what in the world do these two cute animals have to do with Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization.

Well, turns out Panda's and Penguin's have a huge impact on web marketing. Before I explain, let me lay a little foundation.

Google has always used a complex search algorithm to evaluate a web site's relevancy in respect to search terms. In the early days it was easy. Pretty much just the number of key words on a site. But that was too easy to fool, as the spammers soon learned. 

Keep in mind though, Google's product is the "search result". The quality of their search result is very important. If you get nothing but spammy sites returned from a search, you'd soon stop using that search engine. So, in order to provide the highest quality results, Google has always had to manipulate their algorithm to stay ahead of the spammers. As Google got more sophisticated, so did the spammers. New, legitimate SEO companies appeared on the scene to provide "white hat" SEO techniques that were effective and legal (with Google). But soon good SEO companies figured out how to use "proper" SEO techniques to their advantage. The system became gamed.

Discoverability is the New Marketing

If you have a website, you have probably heard about SEO. Broadly speaking, SEO refers to the way you market yourself or your company on the Internet so that you show up high in search results for either your name, the name of your company, or keywords describing your expertise (e.g., control systems in Baltimore). Most keywords will be picked up from content on your website. In fact, much of SEO strategy centers on content marketing and maximizing the effectiveness of your website.

Establishing an Online Presence Strategy

More than ever before, companies need to focus on their online presence. Today's Internet offers a great many choices for you to become involved in the digital world. But you need to develop a strategy that will guide you in this endeavor. Your goals and objectives should be clear.

Will social media be a component of your online marketing strategy? Are you thinking about it just to gather leads? Do you want to gain broader national or regional exposure? Are you building an online presence to polish your reputation? How much time are you prepared to spend on your online presence? Do you have staff that can help you implement your online marketing strategy? How much are you budgeting for a your online marketing effort?

GCS Partners with CMS4i for Online Presence

Global Chem-Feed Solutions (GCS) designs and fabricates custom; skid mounted Chemical Dosing Systems for a wide variety of applications. CMS4i was selected to redesign their web site to include mobile and a more modern design.

After the job was done, this is what GCS had to say:

"CMS4i has provided GCS reliable design and hosting for years. They have understood our needs, been patient with our process and both prompt and flexible in responses. CMS4i has advised us towards improved services that have made my work simpler and more adaptive to our ongoing needs. It's been a pleasure to work with Steve and his team, right from the start."

Social Media is Not a Passing Fad

What is social media? According to Wikipedia, “social media includes web-based and mobile-based technologies which are used to turn communication into interactive dialogue among organizations, communities, and individuals.”

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines social media as “forms of electronic communication through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content.”

Social media consists of websites or mobile apps that facilitate the creation and exchange of user-generated content. Examples include: a picture on Flickr, a video on YouTube, a blog post, or a status update on Facebook or Twitter. Social media’s defining characteristic is that it encourages two-way communication, or in other words, conversation.

ROTEX Controls Chooses CMS4i for New Web Site

ROTEX Controls, the USA sales, service and support arm for an overseas manufacturer of valve actuators, solenoid valves and limit switches has a new, easy to navigate and mobile friendly site thanks to CMS4i.

As a manufacturer of these industrial items, its important this site is design so that finding information is easy and fast. The ROTEX layout and tabbed menuing system assures easy access to all the product information.

Blogs: Your Social Media Hub

Blogs are short for “web logs,” defined by Wikipedia as “a website where entries are writ- ten in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order.”

In its simplest form, a blog is an online diary. Blogs are highly personal in nature and design. All of the blogs together with the links connecting them are referred to as the “blogosphere.” Creating a blog gives you a chance to build something that is a unique reflection of you or your company.

Organizations and commercial companies often have a blog associated with their website to highlight new products or services, while individuals tell stories and offer opinions.

Your should blog because you want to share important information with your community. Your have knowledge and expertise and want to be an authoritative voice in the blogosphere. You want to guide your customers to other quality sources of information of products or services in your field. You want to educate and engage customers. You want to be the authoritative voice.

Blogs offer two key advantages over some other types of social media. First, they rank high in search engine result pages. Recently, Google made changes to its search algorithms that have an even more positive effect on blogs. Google’s Panda update looks at the quality of the content and penalizes the exploitation of keywords. So if a marketing consultant has encouraged you to put a large number of keywords on your website without real content to back them up, you may find your site drops in search engine rankings. Google’s Penguin update looks for unnatural links. But if you link to other credible sources, you’ll come out ahead. Now more than ever, a blog allows you to post updated content that appeals to the search engines.

Beacon Facility Group Launches with CMS4i

Beacon Facility Group, a Baltimore/Washington/Philadelphia based property management company selected CMS4i as their Web vendor.

"From vision to concept to implementation, the team at CMS4I was efficient and effective with the design of our web site. Taking the time to fully understand our business and designing the site around the needs of our clients truly distinguished CMS4I from the other companies we interviewed. We are thrilled with the final product and as importantly, the value their team presented to us."

Tips for Effective YouTube Content

1. Make it relevant. Be sure to stick to issues that you know customers are concerned about or that are instructive about your company.
2. Don’t use YouTube videos to replace important text but to enhance it. Some people learn best watching a video; others don’t. So if you are communicating important information about your company or want customers to take some action as a result of seeing the video, be sure to include this information as text content somewhere on your website or your companies web page.
3. Be mindful of length. If the video is a presentation or an in-depth how-to, you can include the entire talk. But if the content is tips for customers on selecting a product, it’s best to keep the video to fewer than three minutes.
4. Tags should be clear and concise. Remember, people will likely find your videos through a keyword search, so make sure you have used tags that are simply and explicitly related to the content. Use a title that is clear and concise.
5. Use your editing software to add your companies logo or other brand identity during the opening and closing credits or on every screen.

Video Tips

1. Beware of any background noise. Examples include air conditioners, loud computer humming, road noise, and walking noises. Close doors if possible to avoid excess noise .
2. Avoid stripes and other detailed patterns on clothes. Complicated backgrounds are difficult to reproduce on cameras that have fewer pixels per inch.
3. Make a teleprompter. If you’ve created a script in advance, you can make it a PowerPoint file and use it as a teleprompter (out of sight, of course) during filming.
4. Talk slowly and speak clearly. People often talk faster on camera. If you are a fast talker anyway, practice speaking more slowly. Thirty seconds of video should contain 65 to 78 words; 60 seconds should have 130 to 155 words.

YouTube: Broadcast Your Company

YouTube is the Internet’s leading video streaming service. Millions of videos are hosted on YouTube, with more being added every day; these videos can range from having tens to hundreds of millions of views. Furthermore, YouTube is the number 2 search engine on the Web. More than 800 million users watch more than four billion hours of video each month on YouTube. Traffic from mobile devices tripled in 2011. It is the third most visited website in both the United States and worldwide.