Tag: Social network

B2B vs B2C – Pinterest

B2B vs B2C – Pinterest

Next in our conversation about what are the best platforms for B2B vs B2C – Pinterest.B2BvsB2Cpinterest

Now many of you may think that this is just an image site like the ones that we discussed in the last article on images, but I feel like Pinterest requires and /or deserves it’s own article.

When I was young, I had a cork board in my bedroom that was painted an obnoxious loud blue color that I would never use today! I pinned up buttons that I gathered and pictures of things that I wanted or liked. This today is called Pinterest.

Pinterest is classified as a visual bookmarking site. Early in it’s infancy (2010) users had to be invited to participate. Over time they allowed brands to develop a brand identity instead of having to create a “personal” profile for your business. Many equate Pinterest to women as fantasy football is to men. 21% of Pinterest users purchased a product after seeing a picture on Pinterest. So how can this be used for your business?

B2B

This will depend upon the product that you sell whether or not it product placement is beneficial for you on Pinterest. What does work phenomenally well on Pinterest are infographics. Create one that represents your industry statistics, processes that you have developed, or other industry related information. The visual aspect will help readers more easily digest the content. Link images from your product webpages. This will take viewers back to your website to get all of the details. Pin images that you have included in blog articles to drive viewers back to your thought leadership articles.

B2C

Pinterest is especially useful for companies who sell products to women, but can be just as useful for products geared towards men, since most women do the “shopping”. Include a price in the description and pin the image to your board from your website or sales site and they can click your image to be able to buy the item on your website. The platform is great for crafters, builders, designers, vendors in the wedding industry, food establishments and clothing outlets. Because of the “board” concept your pins can reflect your company’s work as well as ideas you are gathering.

In my humble opinion, there is a slight edge here for the B2C business.

Why | Blogs | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | Video
Google | Image | Pinterest | Location Sites | E-news

B2B vs B2C – Twitter

 B2B vs. B2C – Twitter

While I was thinking about trying to do this post in a 140 characters, it seemed a bit impossible. Plus the fact that the SEO on a 140 characters would be insane!B2BvsB2Ctwitter

In B2B vs. B2C – Twitter is the shorthand of marketing your brand. The analogy some people make about Twitter is that there are two people talking loudly at a bar and all of the patrons hear the conversation.  Be careful what you say because just like anything else on the web, you can’t take it back.

With 500 million accounts and 215 of them active, Twitter has a robust group of users.

B2B – Twitter offers a great opportunity to provide excellent customer service.  It also provides a resource for lead generation if you make use of the advanced search functions. Another tool you can use is a TweetChat to engage your followers in in-depth conversations about products or how-to sessions. At events or conferences, live tweet during the event to share quotes from the event with followers unable to attend.  Tweet important points from webinars to bring home points.

B2C – Customer service is an important function for a B2C business as well. A few things you can use Twitter for include specials that drive customers to landing pages; alert fans to daily specials or locations of food trucks or pop-up sales; and, with Vine, you can share short looping videos to bring home a point or share fun moments about your business.

Check out the other areas where social media is useful for your B2B vs. B2C business.

Why | Blogs | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | Video
Google | Image | Pinterest | Location Sites | E-news

Top 5 LinkedIn Business Tips

Over the next few posts, we will be discussing the Top 5 LinkedIn Business Tips.

Search

When performing an “organic” search for your company name, what results do you find?  In GoogleResultsmost cases your LinkedIn company profile will be in 2nd or 3rd position. That is how powerful your LinkedIn company profile can be for your business.  Typically, the only thing that will preempt the prime position is if you have map locations.

Since LinkedIn falls so high in the search results, that means to me that a LinkedIn company profile is important for your business. Here are the components that make up the Top 5 LinkedIn Business Tips:

  1. Description
  2. Products & Services
  3. Imagery
  4. Recommendations
  5. Activity

Description –

Just like your personal profile, your company profile requires a description that should help your company show up in search results. You accomplish that with keywords for which your business might be found when doing a search in LinkedIn. Make sure that you include specialties based on keywords.  Search algorithms work best when you can make those keywords relevant.

One of the features that LinkedIn offers is to publish Showcase Pages that are designed for spotlighting a brand, business unit, or initiative. This allows you to create up to 10 feature pages for specific aspects of your business with individualized messages directed to defined audience segments.

In the next few articles in the series of Top 5 LinkedIn Business Tips, we will discuss the other aspects of your business profile: Products & Services, Imagery, Recommendations, Activity

Need more information on your personal profile? Read the LinkedIn – top 5 Tips – series on the following: Photos, Complete, Connections, Invitations, Participate

Stretch your Content

How often do you write a blog article and think – “Well that’s done, not I need to come up with posts for …..”

stretch

Use the content you created for multiple purposes.  I did just that with an article I wrote for the Daily Herald.  The piece was my Top 5 Tips for LinkedIn. Here is what happened after that:

  • Posted links to the newspaper article on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter.
  • Wrote an in-depth article on each of the 5 tips – 5 blog articles of content.
  • Posted each of the 5 articles on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter.
  • Referenced each article in the other articles.
  • Referenced each article in a newsletter article
  • Waited a few weeks, wrote a follow-up article on one of the tips and referenced the original article.
  • Posted that on social media.
  • Referenced new article on e-news.
  • All of the articles posted from the company LinkedIn and shared to groups to which I belong on LinkedIn and Tweeted out a second time.
  • All articles had an image that was pinned to Pinterest and tweeted a third time.

The last step that I need to complete is a compilation of the articles into an e-book that I can reference on my website and in social media. But as the saying goes, the shoemakers shoes are always the last to get fixed.

If you need any other ideas, this article from SocialMediaopolis brings up some great points..

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Pay to Promote on Facebook???

I think it is just wrong to have to pay for posts to fans that you have gathered on any network.  It appears that Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks agrees with me. Mark Cuban Blasts Facebook Promote Fees

In many cases you have worked long and hard to arrive at the number of fans you have.  Posting an ad is one thing, paying to promote an everyday post – I think not!

One way to see the posts of the pages that you like is to select the Sort – Most Recent.  Then when the fan pages you like post something you should be able to see it.  The more frequently you engage with a page, the better the likelihood of Facebook allowing you to see the post becomes.

Another way to see posts from your friends is to go to their profile and tell Facebook what posts you want to see that they make.  I don’t play games on Facebook, so I don’t normally want to see those sort of posts, but I am interested in what people are doing in their lives, especially my friends who live far away that I don’t get to see regularly.

The other option for fan page posts is to go to the pages you really want to see and make sure that you have the information checked to have them show up.  Additionally with pages, you can add them to interest lists so that you can pull up posts based on interest.  The lists could even be a time saver since all of the posts on a specific topic that you create are right there in one place.  No more scrolling through all of your posts to find just the right one.

Thanks to the outspoken nature of Mark Cuban, we might not have to worry about whether you see all of the posts of your favorite pages or not.

What is your opinion?

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