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.

LinkedIn - The Value You May Not Realize

LinkedIn is essential to your profession

Welcome to any first time visitor, and welcome back to returning technical sales professionals. I specifically target those in the process measurement and control industry, but anyone in tech sales will likely find some value in this article. The CMS4i blog has, for a few weeks now, been moving in the direction of providing an understanding of how various social media applications and channels can provide a boost to your discoverability in the digital world (here is the first blog in the series). I try to push aside the esoteric, mystical, and sensational, choosing instead to focus on the real purpose of your business. Activities and knowledge that will directly work toward providing technical sales professionals with revenue generating opportunities are what we want.

But there is a deeper dimension

Of course, there is. Let's look at LinkedIn, the premiere social media site for business professionals, and see what kind of impact it can have on your company's success, as well as your own. There are many professionals still without a LinkedIn presence, and probably just as many that have opened a free LinkedIn account and really do not understand how it can be useful to them. I am going to make a statement that you should keep in mind, always, about LinkedIn.

Nobody is going to place an order with you through LinkedIn.

The purpose of social media is not to get purchase orders. The purpose of social media, for you, my tech sales pro comrade, is twofold:

1. Get found.
2. When found, deliver a positive impression or message, showing the potential customer that you are a serious and engaged professional worthy of consideration as a valuable business contact.

It's not rocket science, but LinkedIn can be rocket fuel for boosting your image and position in the business sphere in which you operate. In business today, if you want to know about somebody, you check out their LinkedIn profile. Search engines index LinkedIn profiles, which is a very strong part of "getting found" for you personally, and your company. Your LinkedIn profile provides a means for you to tell your story in your own words. There is more to this powerful business networking and social media app, but let's take a step back, start from ground zero with LinkedIn.

What is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a business networking application that provides pathways for users to search for other professionals and make business appropriate connections. It generally consists of member profiles, company pages, and member groups. It is intended to be, and is strongly maintained as, a professional environment for business only. Members form connections, based upon common interest or business related activity, that are used to share information and seek out additional connections.

How Can LinkedIn Help Build My Business?

You may not be using LinkedIn much, but it is very likely those in your business sphere are. When you are introduced to someone, or your name arises in their activities, most professionals will search for you on LinkedIn and form an opinion of whether a business relationship with you might be of value. This, tech sales pro, is where I feel compelled to point out, so there is no confusion, that LinkedIn will be used by many of your potential customers to determine if they want to meet with you to discuss upcoming projects and purchase plans. Your potential customers, just like you, would like to work with a highly qualified, engaged, professional that can bring real added value to a business relationship. A prospect viewing your profile that does not like what they see, or does not find any profile for you, will likely continue their search and never contact you. Whether this is fair, or smart, on their part is not a point worth arguing. It has become the operating method for many professionals and organizations because it works for them. Make it work for you. 

Your profile is important.....very important, but there is another aspect to LinkedIn that you can use to great advantage. As well as being discovered in the searches of others, you can search for people on LinkedIn. When you find a person you are looking for, you can attempt to form a connection with them. You can also see how you may be connected to them through someone you already know. This is an incredibly powerful function, but be careful how you employ it. Spamming, and other shenanigans are not looked upon favorably by the LinkedIn community. Misbehave and you may be shunned in any number of ways, not the least of which is getting kicked out by LinkedIn. 

You can continue to build your profile over time by adding notable accomplishments. Another way to enhance your profile is through sharing relevant and interesting information with your connections by posting it to your page. This shows heightened engagement in your industry and helps to get you noticed.

Sum It All Up

LinkedIn provides you a way to tell your professional story to anyone that finds your profile page. Everything you do on LinkedIn will reflect on your professional brand, giving you the opportunity to continually build a reputation as someone worth knowing, and contacting, in your field. LinkedIn is about people, not products. Your goal with this application should be to:

1. Continue to update and build a professional profile.
2. Make connections with business related contacts.
3. Continue to find and share quality content with your connections.
4. Find other ways to provide value to those with whom you are connected.

Sounds easy, right? Move into LinkedIn gradually, but steadily. In future posts, I will cover profiles, connections, and other aspects of LinkedIn in more detail. Start by setting up a free account and creating your profile. Connect with a few people you know well (perhaps some personal friends) and let them know you are in the learning phase, so they will forgive your missteps and help you. Get a feel for how it all works, then proceed to build connections.

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. (I know I have this same message at the end of every blog, but I really mean it!)

Making Twitter Part of Your Success - You Gotta Do It

Twitter....What?

Ever wonder how it seems like some of your contemporaries are really successful with social media platforms, and you can't seem to get any traction? Welcome to the club, my friend....and the clubhouse is full of people just like you. Social media is an area where many otherwise confident professionals stumble around aimlessly, often abandoning their effort out of frustration or confusion. I think this is especially true for the more veteran members of our profession. The fast pace at which technology has progressed has resulted in the technical sales profession having a population exhibiting a very wide range of marketing communication skill sets. There are still pros working today that set up their first contact management system (they didn't call it that back then) on paper 3 x 5 cards. They have had to assimilate and adapt through the advent of the personal computer, the cell phone, the hard disk drive, portable computers, digital watches, CRM, smart phones, the Internet, social media, and a whole pile of other gut wrenching agents of change. Younger sales pros assimilated much of the today's general technology before they entered the workforce, which will give them something of an advantage in pursuit of today's topic, Twitter.

For now, please just accept that...

Twitter needs to be a part of your professional social media effort, for yourself and your company. 

What is Twitter?

In Twitter's own words:

Twitter is an information network made up of 140-character messages called Tweets. It's an easy way to discover the latest news related to subjects you care about.

How does Twitter work?

Users share their own content (called a Tweet) for followers or other interested users to see in their feed or search results. Tweets can contain text, links, images, and other content. A Tweet has construction rules that limit its length to 140 characters, so brevity is important.

What can Twitter do to enhance my marketing effort?

Your activity on Twitter can get you known to individuals that can impact your business. It helps develop recognition of you as a knowledgeable, active, and trustworthy professional in your field.

What do I need to do to make this happen?

Do the important things that will lead to revenue

Create an account

This will be a personal account for your exclusive business use. Let your boss know what you are doing, since there may be some guidelines the company wants you to follow in your social media work. I suggest you create an account that is for business purposes only, you as your business persona. If you already have a personal Twitter account, keeping your non-business interests and posts segregated from those directly related to your business is recommended. Exposing your business contacts to your personal interests and thoughts can have unpredictable results. Avoid the risk.

Fill out your profile

The Twitter profile consists of very basic information.

Take the time and effort to produce and include a professional looking picture of yourself! 

Look professional, your profile picture should portray that image. You are not targeting your friends. Indicate where you work. Your birthday is not important. Create a tag, the @username, that identifies you to other users. It should be uncomplicated and business oriented. You can use a derivative of your real name, but your choice may not be available, already claimed by another. The @username is part of your own personal brand, so give some thought to it and be prepared to stick with it.

Find influential or useful people to follow

Twitter is about following and being followed. Use Twitter's search function to find people, organizations, and companies that are part of your business universe. Look for:

• Coworkers
• Customers you know
• People that work at companies where you want to do business
• Professional organizations pertaining to the markets in which you sell
• Companies whose products you sell
• Competitors (maybe)
• Companies or organizations related to your profession (technical sales)

Don't overthink this, just do it. Follow a few new people each day and see what kind of content starts to show up in your feed. The party will be notified that you are following them, so follow people that will consider your interest in them to be a positive occurrence. A number of them will check out your profile, to see who you are. They may check out your profile on other social media sites, to see if you are someone they want to know, or know about. Some will reciprocate and follow you. All good things.

Gather followers

You get followed if you are interesting, useful, or entertaining. Be those things by posting relevant comments and other content that will draw the attention of those with whom you wish to connect. I suggest you avoid the use of sarcasm, ridicule, or content of questionable merit. Positive, supportive, thoughtful content and comments are in order here. Ever heard the saying, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all"? It definitely applies here, and to all social media. Since this article is targeted at technical sales professionals, I going to recommend you keep non-business related posts on your business page to a minimum. Keep it focused.

Start at a comfortable pace on your Twitter activity. You will learn about the use of #hashtags, @usernames, and other techniques that will boost your effectiveness. There are more articles on the web about Twitter than you can read in a lifetime. When you have a question, Google it and browse a few of the articles. You will become expert level in a very short span of time. Twitter is not difficult, just different.

This is the Twitter logo.
You will see it many places.

Here are some of the things you can do:

• Tweet your own content, articles you found, your company's blog posts, etc.
• Retweet relevant and interesting content that shows up in your feed, like your company blog.
• Find and join a group that pertains to your industry.
• Respond to people with whom you share similar interests by retweeting their content, marking their content as a favorite, or following them.
• Check out people following the people you follow. They may be useful for you to engage by following them, eventually having them show interest in and following you.

What's next?

I know that's a lot of following and you will need to read some other articles to build your Twitter chops, but you will very quickly get the hang of it. The goal here is to engage, share, and be seen. Show that you are interested in your industry, your customers. Show that you are someone worth contacting and doing business with.

My intent with this article is to get you to see some potential value in investing time to set up and create a Twitter presence, then get you familiar with the basics of the startup. The key to getting results is consistency in your posting activity. You must engage regularly. The good news is that large blocks of contiguous time are not needed for Twitter activity. As skill and confidence build, you will be able to accomplish your goals for this social media platform by utilizing a spare minute here, five there, and so on. Get started. There is more we will do later, but get started...now.

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.

Tweet, Tweet...What You Should Be Doing With Your Twitter Account Everyday

Twitter logo

Let me set the environment for this article.You are a technical sales professional. You have, among several social media accounts, a Twitter account. You want to use the Twitter account to increase your personal and company brand presence, with two goals in mind:

Grow your contact base

Develop your brand image as a serious, knowledgeable, engaged individual in your industry

Notice that I did not mention "grow sales". The target audience of this article is professionals engaged in technical sales. The nature of technical sales generally requires a level of consultation between the seller and buyer to confirm a match between the product capabilities and the application requirements. Rarely are orders for significant items placed without personal contact between buyer and seller prior to the sale. As a tech sales pro, you just want to be contacted when an application arises, so you can have the opportunity to match your product to the customer's needs...and get the order.

The purpose of Twitter for you, tech sales pro, is to keep your name top of the customer's mind for all matters relating to your product offering.

That would be perfect! Whenever the customer thinks about anything related to your products and their application, your name smoothly drifts into their thoughts. Don't expect to be 100% successful at that, but it is possible to achieve a substantial level of recognition, and keep your name in the forefront, by investing time to establish presence in your industry. Twitter is part of that investment.



How do I make Twitter work for me?

Twitter is easy to use and does not need to take up big blocks of your time. With the app on your smartphone, you can do what needs to be done in some of those small stretches of nonproductive time you have during every day. Here is what you need to do:

Find sources of interesting and relevant industry news and information, preferably pertaining to the types of products you sell and their application. You can subscribe for free to many sources and set them up to feed stories and news to your inbox. Once you get them set up, there will be little need to search for news. It will be handed to you.

At least once per day, share an interesting article. Many articles and news items will have a Twitter share button. You can just click the Twitter icon and the article will be shared to your page and the news feed of your followers. You will have an opportunity to add your comments to the Tweet before it is posted. If you comment, say something relevant that will be construed as unoffensive by everybody on the planet, or say nothing at all. The point is to attach your name to the interesting article and deliver it to your followers. Simple. Do not assume that everybody reads the same publications and sources you do. They may subscribe, but don't have or take the time to read everything. You are picking the best content and showing it to them. Share often, share at different times during the day. Avoid sharing on weekends and evenings. Twitter is a real time feed. As new items are posted to your followers' feed, the older posts get pushed downward on the page. That is why posting often is necessary, but avoid repeatedly posting the same item. Each post should be unique. Here is what you get when you share and article...

This is a sample Tweet that shares a link to an article I found.

The more you do it, the easier it gets, the less time it takes. Research has shown that higher levels of posting activity will produce more followers. Followers are people that will see the items you share and be reminded of who you are. 

The most important aspect of this strategy is consistency.

Effectiveness emerges as you develop a habit of tweeting several times per day. The tweet I created above required less than one minute to complete, most of which was spent reading the article. Avoid overthinking whether your audience will like the article you selected. If you think it is relevant to your field, tweet it. In very little time, you will become a master and start to see results as your follower base expands.

Retweet Icon

You can also retweet content that is shared by others. This is real easy to do. At the bottom of every post there is an icon that will retweet the post. The icon looks like two arrows extending around a rectangle. Click and you can ad your own comment, or just let it fly as is. Retweets do not share the promotional impact of an original tweet because your profile picture does not appear with a retweet, just your name. The name of the original poster is displayed on retweets, which is why you want to be the originator of good content. When your content is retweeted by others, your name gets shared to new potential followers.

Twitter users will follow generators of good content.

If you have created original content and want to share....Bravo! Twitter provides capability to share a link to your content, along with your personal comment. Include images that relate to the content for greater promotional power for your tweet. You can delete a tweet after it is posted, so do not be afraid to practice. Your company's blog provides ready made content for your original tweets, as do the press releases and articles produced by the manufacturers you represent.

Build a habit of tweeting throughout the business day. Keep an eye out for content everywhere. Build your follower count and become recognized as a trusted and authoritative source of information. The essence of your Twitter presence is summed up in the short video included above.

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions. share this article with our coworkers. 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.

Contact Us ... Really?

Does your website have a button like this?

Sometimes I have to search and cobble up something to write about. Other times circumstances conjure up important topics that make my fingers start twitching for a keyboard. Today, I am going to veer off the current path, your personal marketing efforts on social media. Today, I need to talk about the endgame, where all the social media, internet, website, etc.is supposed to lead. If you are preparing to read on about booking orders, you are missing the point of your social media endeavor. Today's topic is contact, more specifically, your company website's means of receiving personal inquiries and how responses to those inquiries are handled.

Here is the basic, ever so basic and over simplified, plan.

• Social media drive traffic to website
• Blog drives traffic to website
• Everything else drives traffic to website
• Website provides a bunch of ways for people to contact you about your products and services

If you do the first three well and get people interested enough in your company to go to the website, then fail to provide a timely response to an inquiry, I would argue strongly that you have nullified and squandered a portion of your marketing investment and the personal efforts of the good people at your company working to support those efforts.

Make sure your site's contact form actually makes
CONTACT 

Back to what compelled me to write this article outside of the intended sequence. I write lots of articles about industrial process control. Generally, my research is conducted without outside assistance. When I do need input from a source, my preferred method of reaching out is to use contact forms on a product manufacturer website. Clearly identifying myself and my position, as well as whom I am writing for and how it relates to the contacted company, I state the purpose of my inquiry, ask for the help I need. Without exception, my article is something positively promotional about the company I contact. All good, right? Not so.

The level of "no response, ever" occurrences is stunningly high. 

I don't ask for help from these companies without good reason. I need what I ask for, to write an article that will tell readers a few interesting things about their company, product, or service. If I get no response, I write about a different subject. No response equals no promo.

At CMS4i, one facet of our efforts on behalf of our customers is to get people to click that contact button. It has occurred to me that our own customers may be delivering the same experience that I have received. Time to sound an alarm.

Responding to website inquiries is an important business process. 

The inquiry response procedure should have a deliberate design and a written procedure. The procedure and the importance of its proper execution should be understood and adopted by everyone involved, and it should be tested on a regular basis.

What is a deliberate design?

Consider what the goals should be for the inquiry response and how the character and form of the company's response will serve those goals. Generally, you should be striving to engage these valuable instances of communication, people investing their time and effort to reach out to you. These are the people you are searching for with your social media presence. By filling out a contact form, or clicking the "chat with us" button on your site, they just knocked on the door of your business. There should be an intentional response procedure that will provide each contact with an unequivocally positive experience.

Why do we need a written procedure?

Procedures have a way of drifting and morphing into modified versions of their original form. This can be especially true in the case of contact inquiry response, where the frequency of procedure execution may be low. A written procedure serves as a refresher that can be reviewed periodically by those involved in handling inquiries. It also provides a reference point for business process performance evaluation.

The importance of adoption

Everyone that will be executing the response plan must believe in the plan, through an understanding of its purpose and the value of its proper execution. One method of promoting procedure adoption is engaging the executors of the procedure as part of a team that creates the procedure. Their viewpoint and input will likely prove valuable.

The people interacting with potential customers that have reached out to your company for assistance, information, etc., need to be carefully selected. It is important that they recognize the value of these contacts and conduct themselves in a manner that will be positively regarded by any and all inquirers. The knowledge and skill level, as well as their communication skills and demeanor, are key elements of success.

The response to website contact inquiries should not be considered a purely administrative function. It is a person to person sales interaction.

What should a plan look like?

Developing, implementing, and maintaining an operable plan is a challenge for every business. The volume of inquiries and the resources available to respond to them vary widely from company to company. It is important to create a plan that can be executed by your organization. Some things to consider:

• Inquiry Reception: How do the inquiries enter the company? When a user clicks "Submit" on a contact form, where does that information go, who sees it? What should they do with it?
• Inquiry Filtering: Do you need to classify inquiries for direction to certain departments or individuals for response? Is there a need to pre-qualify the inquiries in any way to make their handling more effective or efficient?
• Response Time: What is the response time goal? What are the likely customer expectations for response time? Keep in mind that this is the Internet....and the 21st century. Your response goal should be as fast as you can design and execute it.
• Response Form: To what degree will responses be customized for each inquiry? Are there materials or content that should be included with every response? Will the response follow multiple paths, such as email and postal mail, or some other route?
• Records: What documentation or data should be produced and retained for each interaction?
• Referral: Are there other parties in the organization that should be notified about the contact occurrence? For example, passing the contact information along to a local distributor or field sales representative might be appropriate. 
• Value Exchange: It is important that you create value for the individual that contacted you. Value can take many forms, from an accurate and timely response to tangible "Thanks for contacting us" gifts forwarded to inquirers. Whatever the case, make the user's inquiry a 100% positive experience from start to finish.
• Testing: The plan must include periodic testing of the procedure from end to end. This will help verify proper functioning of the website elements that gather and transmit the inquiry and that all the back office activities are operating the way they should. Testing can be as simple as having a good friend fill out the contact form and see if the response conforms to the plan.

Develop and execute a solid contact inquiry response plan that will expand your website inquiries into additional useful contact and increased business. Don't wait until you have lots of inquiries. Do it now. There is much to think about, but be cautious about over complicating the process.

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. You can even use our website contact form!