Social Selling

17 Nov 2014

mellsworth@socialmediaperformancegroup.com B2B, Enterprise Social Media, SEO, Social Advertising, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Media Strategy, Social Selling

SMPG Enterprise Social Media Framework

There’s lots of buzz and lots of confusion around the use of social media in enterprises. Many experts talk in terms of the tools you can use and the techniques you can employ.

And much of this advice may be valuable to smaller organizations.

However, if you’re a large enterprise with an established culture, and large marketing, sales, and customer service organizations, it can be hard to know how to get started.

Some rights reserved by David Armano

That’s why we’ve created the Enterprise Social Media Framework™.

We understand large companies, and we understand how social media can benefit your organization.

The framework is always improving as more people offer their ideas and insights. But like most frameworks, it is not a blueprint for integrating social media into your enterprise. Rather it encompasses a wealth of information and best practices you can use (with or without our help) to create your social media strategy and develop your plan to transform your organization.

The ESMF has case studies, tips, and best practices for the following enterprise areas:

Corporate Strategy
Finance
IT
Administration
Marketing
Corporate Communications
Legal
Human Resources
Sales/Social Selling
Research
Product Development
Product Management
Logistics
Production
Facilities and Security
Resources
Governance, Risk and Compliance
Segmentation
Customer Intelligence/Research
Customer Service

Access to the framework is by invitation only. If you’re interested, please contact us.

23 Apr 2014

Mike Ellsworth B2B, Enterprise Social Media, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Media Strategy, Social Selling business, enterprise, enterprise social media, social media, social networking, social selling

Your Salesforce is Not Ready to do Social Selling

You say you’re interested in this concept you’re hearing so much about: social selling.

You may even have invested some money in social selling Webinars or in actual training.

But your salesforce is not ready to do social selling.

Not all of them.

LinkedIn's Social Selling adoption curve

LinkedIn’s Social Selling Readiness Spectrum

Think of how many times you’ve sent your salespeople to training. CRM training. Sales 2.0 training. SPIN Selling.

How much of this training did your sales folks actually absorb? How much did they implement? And how much success did it generate? We’re thinking not much.

Why? Because sales people hate sales training. If they are honest with you, they’ll tell you they’d much rather have you pull out their fingernails with rusty pliers while their eyes are gouged out by rabid pigeons than go to a sales seminar. And the main reason they think this way is that most of them – not all to be sure – think what they’re doing is just fine, works as it always has, and always will. They can do 40 dials and 40 emails a day and like magic, some sales fall out the bottom of the funnel.

If you’re honest with yourself, though, you know that smiling and dialing is becoming increasingly less effective.

So on the subject of social selling, a groundbreaking leap forward that actually works, 75 percent of your sales staff either won’t change or hates the idea. Of the other 25 percent, about half can pick it right up and start seeing results in 90 days.

But you have two problems: You don’t know who is in which group; who are the laggards and who are the leaders who are ready to embrace social selling.

So you train them all. What a waste. You’re throwing away 75 percent of your training dollars, if you’re lucky.

So what’s the solution? Do a social selling readiness assessment first. Don’t bother Googling it. You’ll find only a few companies even talking about it, and even fewer equipped to help you execute an assessment.

Save Money on Social Selling Training

Here’s how you can save 35 percent of the cost of a social selling training plan. First, do a social selling readiness assessment (coincidentally, we can help with that.) Figure out who the top 25 percent are. Do some further analysis to find the 12 percent who are really, really ready to get moving on social selling. (Hint: they’re probably already among your top performers.)

Then train the 12 percent on social selling techniques. Give them plenty of space and time to start producing results. It will take at least 90 days, perhaps longer. Be patient. You may need to mentor and train them a bit more along the way.

Once this group starts generating impressive results with social selling, you can expect to see increases in revenue productivity per sales rep of 17 percent or more, according to a CSO Insights study. This is sure to pique the interest of the other portion of the 25 percent. Train them next.

Once the 75 percent see the success of these first cohorts, their attitudes toward social selling will change. Assess their willingness to now embrace social selling. Perhaps half or maybe even more will be interested and ready to change. Train them, but be prepared for more mentoring and refreshers than with the first groups.

Fire the rest and replace them with (fewer) social sellers.

So we just saved you a bundle. Contact us for more details.

Get our new book, The Infinite Pipeline: How to Master Social Media for Business-to-Business Sales Success online here. You can save $5 using Coupon Code WXG8ABP2

What Others Are Saying

“Infinite Pipeline offers practical advice for using social media to extend relationship selling online. It’s a great way to get crazy-busy prospects to pay attention.”
—Jill Konrath, author of SNAP Selling and Selling to Big Companies

“Sales is all about relationships and trust. Infinite Pipeline is the ‘how to’ guide for maximizing social networks to find and build relationships, and generate trust in our digital age.”
—Sam Richter, best-selling author, Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling (2012 Sales book of the year)

“Infinite Pipeline will be the authority on building lasting relationships through online social that result in bottom line business.”
—Lori Ruff, The LinkedIn Diva, Speaker/Author and CEO of Integrated Alliances

12 Aug 2013

Mike Ellsworth B2B, Enterprise Social Media, LinkedIn How-to, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Media Strategy, Social Selling beginner, enterprise social media, relationship, social computing, social media, social networking

SMPG Social Media Hall of Shame

The Social Media Performance Group has maintained our Social Media Hall of Shame for a few years now. Well, maintained is perhaps an overly strong word for “Posted every once in a while.”

We’ve got a huge backlog of mishaps, mistakes, blunders, and bombast to get to, and, well, if the past is prologue, then it will take us a while to catch up.

So here’s the HOS as of Q3 of 2011. (We said we needed to catch up!) We’ll post new material soon, but we just couldn’t wait because there are some doozeys in the new entries. So enjoy – and learn!
More

5 Jul 2013

SMPG Enterprise Social Operating Manual – Best of the Pundits

In our previous post, SMPG Enterprise Social Operating Manual – Acknowledgements, we mentioned those nice folks who helped us finish and publish our book, Be a Person – The Social Operating Manual for Enterprises – (Paper:bit.ly/BeAPersonEFull – 430 pages) on this blog. In this post, we publish our list of the best social media pundits.

Some rights reserved by Tobyotter

Resources

“Social media is like teen sex.
Everybody wants to do it. Nobody knows how.
When it’s finally done there is surprise it’s not better.”

Avinash Kaushik, Google

We offer this list of resources for quick reference. Like all things on the Web, their location and relevance my change by the time you read this so please remember, Google is your friend. If you want to locate a reference whose link no longer works, try Googling it. And Google anything else you have questions on. The Web abounds with advice, not all of it good, so be careful out there!

The Best of the Best Pundits

These people inspired much of the thinking in this book. They really know their stuff.

Pundit	Link	Pundit	Link
Abbey Klaassen	bit.ly/iDi1ym	Jeremiah Owyang	bit.ly/9aszgM
Adam Christensen	bit.ly/cglyfw	Jesse James Garrett	bit.ly/mp1JQz
Alia McKee	bit.ly/kYpBH1	Jim Cashel	bit.ly/koQWV7
Amber Naslund	bit.ly/aI4Ne6	Joseph Thornley	bit.ly/kNL55p
Amy Sample Ward	bit.ly/jpjLMz	Josh Bernoff	bit.ly/a3ndiq
Andrew Eklund	bit.ly/ldTjCT	Katie Paine	bit.ly/982jqM
Ann Michael	bit.ly/lA2cPq	Katya Andresen	bit.ly/kPLKaq
Avinash Kaushik	bit.ly/m92tZI	Ken Burbary	bit.ly/cTb6X9
Barry Judge	bit.ly/b6H0hY	Kirsten Stanford	bit.ly/l004E5
Beth Kanter	bit.ly/dmp97X	Lawrence Liu	bit.ly/magnW8
Bob Pearson	bit.ly/lavCIq	Lee Odden	bit.ly/cQNLKG
Brian Halligan	bit.ly/iNm4wd	Lisa Barone	bit.ly/ivVfWU
Brian Haven	bit.ly/jgBNhH	Lynn Rogers	bit.ly/jVhxQH
Brian Solis	bit.ly/d8JMJb	Manish Mehta	huff.to/iNnIlg
Catie Foertsch	bit.ly/iGibLi	Marcel LeBrun	bit.ly/kuME9S
Charlene Li	bit.ly/bV80w5	Mark Rovner	bit.ly/kdu6Ha
Chip and Dan Heath	bit.ly/msAtpQ	Matt McKeon	bit.ly/imc4Kl
Chris Brogan	bit.ly/cXHzNA	Michael Gray	bit.ly/lLRdc1
Chris Lake	bit.ly/iyJE8P	Mike Valentino	bit.ly/kS0r5K
Chris Levkulich		Neal Schaffer	bit.ly/9GtQT4
Clay Shirky	bit.ly/dy9p2j	P.J. Fusco	bit.ly/llxPXK
Constantin Basturea	bit.ly/lWeh7z	Paul Dunay	bit.ly/m5XG9o
Dan Schwable	bit.ly/d3Zuyt	Peter Merholz	bit.ly/iJiHiV
Darren Rowse	bit.ly/dghN9I	Qui Diaz	bit.ly/iIjyaL
David Bohm	bit.ly/b1uCPT	Rachel Happe	bit.ly/blJkdb
David Meerman Scott	bit.ly/lXQGyQ	Richard Seel	bit.ly/kieLSq
David Mothersbaugh	bit.ly/jgSURm	Rick Mahn	bit.ly/aXmSdw
Deb Schultz	bit.ly/ly4iVS	Robert Scoble	scoble.it/9NMNyh
Debajyoti Banerjee	bit.ly/le6OQI	Robin Good	bit.ly/izAtKE
Debra Murphy	bit.ly/lmRO8b	Rohit Bhargava	bit.ly/mlqv0n
Del Hawkins	bit.ly/jMgaHd	Ron Shulkin	bit.ly/jHXgAh
Dharmesh Shah	bit.ly/kSjkwc	Ryan Spoon	bit.ly/kqIXAY
Dr. Ivan Misner	bit.ly/lSSPml	Seth Godin	bit.ly/bdDjWc
Dr. Ralph F. Wilson	bit.ly/ky6awp	Shel Israel	bit.ly/bgr9cM
Ed Keller	amzn.to/kOokqs	Skellie of skelliewag	bit.ly/lWxM3M
Erik Qualman	bit.ly/klLyTu	Tamara Adlin	bit.ly/lKSq2x
Geoff Livingston	bit.ly/lI0bXI	The Cluetrain Team	bit.ly/9jGP3T
Guy Kawasaki	bit.ly/aUJB5m	Tia Fisher	bit.ly/mkbdjR
Howard Rheingold	bit.ly/ktMJRE	Tim Jackson	bit.ly/jF5XsJ
Jake McKee	bit.ly/ioZT9P	Tim Nash	bit.ly/jJhhip
Janet Fouts	bit.ly/mqKfDZ	Vinod Kumar	bit.ly/jDYba0
Jared Schwartz	bit.ly/m3jpSw
Jason Falls	bit.ly/kuWUYT
Jennifer Johnston Canfield	bit.ly/jVRMfk

Over the past two years, we’ve given you everything you need to build your social presence online — Fast! If you’ve enjoyed reading our book bit by bit on our blog, you may enjoy our lovely parting gifts:

A free PDF of the entire Be a Person – The Social Operating Manual for Enterprises book as published
A free PDF of our exclusive checklist, The Social Media Performance Group Community Building Checklist™

When we are finished posting the resource lists and acknowledgements for the book, we’ll post these party favors on our community site (see URL below). Unfortunately, joining the community is not free – it costs a whole US dollar. This is because we had lots of spammers joining and having even a tiny fee keeps out the link harvesters.

So watch this blog for the announcement that the book and checklist are ready on our community. Of course, you may want to join right away anyway, just to be sure . . .

We’d like to hear from you, not only about what you think of our advice, but what you learn as you create your own social media practice. You can contribute by commenting on the Social Media Performance Group’s community Website at:

community.SocialMediaPerformanceGroup.com

SMPG Enterprise Social Operating Manual – Best of the Pundits is the 174th in a series of excerpts from our book, Be a Person: the Social Operating Manual for Enterprises (itself part of a series for different audiences). We’ve been doing this since 2011 and we’re just about done. If you’d like to see our entire exclusive community building checklist, once we’re done, it will be available on our Website at community.socialmediaperformancegroup.com. Luckily, if you’re impatient, the book is available in paper form at bit.ly/OrderBeAPerson and you can save $5 using Coupon Code 6WXG8ABP2

Get our new book, The Infinite Pipeline: How to Master Social Media for Business-to-Business Sales Success online here. You can save $5 using Coupon Code 62YTRFCV

What Others Are Saying

3 Jul 2013

SMPG Enterprise Social Operating Manual – Acknowledgements

In our previous post, SMPG Enterprise Social Operating Manual – Complete, we concluded publishing the contents of our book, Be a Person – The Social Operating Manual for Enterprises – (Paper:bit.ly/BeAPersonEFull – 430 pages) on this blog. It took almost two years, and below are some of the people who helped make it happen.

Some rights reserved by woodleywonderworks

Acknowledgements

The editing and finishing of Be a Person – The Social Operating Manual for Enterprises was an exercise in crowdsourcing. We are grateful for the assistance of the following reviewers, many of whom responded to our LinkedIn Question, who substantially improved this edition as well as the other editions of Be a Person:

Laura Bellinger — marketing communications producer and social media coordinator at Care USA. Laura launched CARE’s social media and previously worked for CARE as a press officer. linkd.in/eT2qZH

Kari Carlisle — writer, archaeologist, museum curator for Fremont Indian State Park and Museum in central Utah where she cares for more than 150,000 artifacts; manages the park’s archaeological sites, exhibits, educational programs, and special events; serves on the board of the Utah Museums Association; and chairs the committee for Richfield, Utah’s annual Natural Resource Festival.
linkd.in/eLZ52m

Robin Cheung — principal at Cloud 5 Nines.ca. Robin has been a pithy onliner ever since he was first introduced to it in 1987, he holds an MBA from McMaster University (Hamilton); showing his confidence in the future of the Internet, he is currently pursuing his PhD in Applied Management and Decision Sciences (Finance) from Walden University and maintains a business research and education blog at robincheung.ca/.
linkd.in/hMhCFt

Barry Doctor — Product Marketing Manager at Katun Corporation. linkd.in/hVvkWo

Deb Ellsworth — creator of the Empathy Symbol, author of the novel, Earth Portal, and co-author of Your Amazing Preschooler.
empathysymbol.com

Rob Etten — Vice President at The North Highland Company, Rob has experience with Ernst & Young’s Management Consulting practice, Price Waterhouse, and Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). His areas of expertise include strategic planning, portfolio management, PMO startup, business process reengineering and merger/acquisition integration. linkd.in/hE3sV4

Roger Hamm — an experienced retail / CPG IT professional with expertise in Project Management, Implementation, Product Design and Principal at Viking Business Intelligence Services. linkd.in/hSKXmj

Dave Harkins — has helped lead change for nearly 25 years. His background includes extensive experience in marketing strategy, database marketing and direct response, branding, licensing and trademark management, marketing technology, and business development. He’s served as VP, Strategic Services at the Jackson Group/Total Response, Managing Partner of Taylor-Harkins Group, Executive VP at Colman Brohan Davis, Chief Marketing Officer and VP, Customer Care at Geneer and VP, Marketing and Product Development at Nykamp Consulting Group. bit.ly/mi2dxo

Julie Kendrick — a features writer with a background in Web content development, magazine profiles and marketing communications. She is a contributing writer for minneapolispicks.com, alumni publications including Reach (U of MN alumni magazine) and Teton Thunder (Williston State College) and under contract to provide content and communications for Syngenta, a $12 billion global agricultural company. linkd.in/ifveBu

Trevor Lobel — project manager at Oswald Brothers. Trevor is a seasoned project and change manager experienced in software implementations for non-profit organizations and NGOs. linkd.in/fzdZxc

Tom Menke — a knowledge management professional known for his ability to leverage technologies, improve business processes, and work with people to improve staff collaboration and client communications to foster the sharing of knowledge and best practices. Tom was formerly Director of Knowledge Management at The Nielsen Company. linkd.in/fkb0Yu

Kathy Pettiss — science educator, consultant at Chester County (PA) Intermediate Unit and volunteer StarLab educator at Great Valley School District. linkd.in/efEkQc

Paul Phillips — Vice President of Operations at ACORN Research, LLC. Paul serves on the board of the non-profit, HopeWorks
(www.whyhopeworks.org) and is a published author. linkd.in/gSl9vl

Frances Ponick — principal at Ponick Enterprises. Frances specializes in writing, manuscript evaluation, book doctoring, and training book coaches. Frances has more than 30 years’ experience in technical, business, marketing, proposal, and other nonfiction writing, editing, and publishing and has received awards for technical writing, journalism, and formal poetry. Frances worked at a nonprofit for ten years, and has taken graduate coursework on social marketing. www.franponick.com linkd.in/gfTCaj

ShaRon Rea — board member at the Harp Foundation and Hope Village Arizona. ShaRon is passionate about building strong community relationships. She is a motivator who believes in possibilities! linkd.in/hTXhqz

Mark Rieger — Vice President, Channel Marketing Evangelist for ChannelLine, which helps Technology Companies increase sales through a combination of consulting, research and the industry’s only Pay For Performance demand generation program. linkd.in/gvkjM5

Alex Rodriguez — marketing director of Baywood Learning Center, a non-profit specializing in the education of gifted children. His many years working at and consulting with non-profits also include working at Trust for Public Land returning and reserving lands and parks for the public and Web consulting for non-profit Cacep. linkd.in/fXnvHO

Kathy Rose — a market research, shopper insights, consumer insights professional and principal of Rose Research for Results. linkd.in/gn61OB

Anthony Sansone — Senior Technical Editor at EMC Corporation. linkd.in/iku6vH

Leanne Storch — Associate Vice President, Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation. Leanne brings organizational skills and a great empathy to the patients and families who call for support. linkd.in/eLACSO

A free PDF of the entire Be a Person – The Social Operating Manual for Enterprises book as published
A free PDF of our exclusive checklist, The Social Media Performance Group Community Building Checklist™

So watch this blog for the announcement that the book and checklist are ready on our community. Of course, you may want to join right away anyway, just to be sure . . .

We’d like to hear from you, not only about what you think of our advice, but what you learn as you create your own social media practice. You can contribute by commenting on the Social Media Performance Group’s community Website at:

community.SocialMediaPerformanceGroup.com

Up next: SMPG Enterprise Social Operating Manual – Best of the Pundits

SMPG Enterprise Social Operating Manual – Acknowledgements is the 174th in a series of excerpts from our book, Be a Person: the Social Operating Manual for Enterprises (itself part of a series for different audiences). We’ve been doing this since 2011 and we’re just about done. If you’d like to see our entire exclusive community building checklist, once we’re done, it will be available on our Website at community.socialmediaperformancegroup.com. Luckily, if you’re impatient, the book is available in paper form at bit.ly/OrderBeAPerson and you can save $5 using Coupon Code 6WXG8ABP2

Get our new book, The Infinite Pipeline: How to Master Social Media for Business-to-Business Sales Success online here. You can save $5 using Coupon Code 62YTRFCV

What Others Are Saying

1 Jul 2013

SMPG Enterprise Social Operating Manual – Complete

In our previous post, Community Building What NOT to Do, we concluded our exclusive checklist, The Social Media Performance Group Community Building Checklist™. And this is the last post of the contents of our book, Be a Person – The Social Operating Manual for Enterprises – (Paper:bit.ly/BeAPersonEFull – 430 pages.)

We started posting the contents of the book almost two years ago, on August 8, 2011, with the post What is Social Media? We’ve now posted all 430 pages of the book on this blog!

But wait! There’s more!

Some rights reserved by The Daring Librarian

Afterword

“It’s only when technology gets boring —
that’s to say, part of the routine for the majority,
not just the Geekosphere —
that it becomes interesting.”

Clay Shirky

A free PDF of the entire Be a Person – The Social Operating Manual for Enterprises book as published
A free PDF of our exclusive checklist, The Social Media Performance Group Community Building Checklist™

So watch this blog for the announcement that the book and checklist are ready on our community. Of course, you may want to join right away anyway, just to be sure . . .

Keeping Pace

Because social media is so fast-moving, lots of the details in the book have become obsolete. We’ve updated the material over the last two years as we’ve posted it, and you can look for the second edition of The Social Operating Manual for Enterprises to be published in the next few months.

While the details may change, the overarching concepts, we feel, will survive. The sites may change; new capabilities may emerge; and certainly some new bright shiny thing (Pinterest, Instagram) will unseat the current 1 billion-pound social media gorillas (we’re looking at you, Facebook!)

But people don’t change — basically — over the eons. Aristotle’s two driving human attributes — pity and fear — remain alive in reality shows and gawker Websites, and the ways we relate to each other are as old as the hills.

We hope we’ve made some sense of this onrushing phenomenon, and we flatter ourselves to hope our advice will remain relevant no matter how social computing evolves.

We’d like to hear from you, not only about what you think of our advice, but what you learn as you create your own social media practice. You can contribute by commenting on the Social Media Performance Group’s Website at:

community.SocialMediaPerformanceGroup.com

In the posts that follow, we collect lots of pointers to other thinkers and advisors whom we respect, whom we relied upon to create this book, and whom we recommend to you for guidance and inspiration. They are the giants upon whose shoulders we stand.[1]

Be careful out there and remember, Don’t Panic!

Up next: SMPG Enterprise Social Operating Manual – Acknowledgements

[1] No, this isn’t an Oasis reference, but rather Newton: bit.ly/bItOQI

SMPG Enterprise Social Operating Manual – Complete is the 172nd in a series of excerpts from our book, Be a Person: the Social Operating Manual for Enterprises (itself part of a series for different audiences). We’ve been doing this since 2011 and we’re just about done. If you’d like to see our entire exclusive community building checklist, once we’re done, it will be available on our Website at community.socialmediaperformancegroup.com. Luckily, if you’re impatient, the book is available in paper form at bit.ly/OrderBeAPerson and you can save $5 using Coupon Code 6WXG8ABP2

Get our new book, The Infinite Pipeline: How to Master Social Media for Business-to-Business Sales Success online here. You can save $5 using Coupon Code 62YTRFCV

What Others Are Saying

2 May 2013

Using LinkedIn to Prepare for a Conference

So your startup is going to an important conference where you hope to attract attention and start conversations with partners, backers, and prospects. You all have LinkedIn profiles, so you’re ready to go, social media-wise, right?

Wrong.

Buff Up Your LinkedIn Presence

Of course it’s important for you to be on LinkedIn. If they’re interested, people you meet at the conference will probably look you up to find out more information about you than what is contained on your business card or in your trifold. They’ll want to know how seriously to take you.

We see many, many profiles on LinkedIn that are really barebones. A weak summary statement and incomplete information about your background can be a real turnoff for the folks who are gauging whether you’re for real or not.

So to prepare for an important conference, follow our recommendations for beefing up your LinkedIn presence:

Improve Your Profile

If you’ve got a day job while starting your startup, be sure the startup company name is listed first in the Experience section. Your title and the name of the company, location, and industry are bits of information that follow you around on LinkedIn. For example, this info, along with your picture, is what shows up in search listings. So how are the people you meet at the conference going to find you? By searching. If I’m someone at this conference and want to know whom to talk to, I’m going to look on LinkedIn, not read everyone’s business cards.

Fill in all the experience sections of your profile. Again, this speaks to credibility. You all may be really smart, but on LinkedIn, you need to give evidence of industry or domain knowledge and experience to establish your bona fides.

Create a strong summary statement. It’s OK to have personal aspirations in this statement, but keep it fact-based and fairly short, no more than 200 words. Here’s an example of a weak summary statement: “I have brought success to numerous firms by taking a strategic and systematic approach to financial operations.” This is generic and vague. If you’re going to make a statement like this, back it up with details. Strive for statements that will set you apart from others.

Include a recent picture, of just you, not you and your spouse or dog or kid. Have it professionally done if possible. Dress in clothes appropriate to your business.

List the company Twitter account as your Twitter account and list other appropriate social media presence. Also list the company Website.

Get appropriate recommendations, both personal and skill. It’s OK to endorse one another, but keep that to a minimum. Seek out people who will give you a great recommendation that is pertinent to what you’re doing in your startup.

Pre-Conference LinkedIn Activities

Join relevant LinkedIn groups. Use the Groups search to find them. Other LinkedIn members can’t tell when you’ve joined, just that you’re a member, so don’t worry that they’ll find out you’re a newbie. If there’s time, comment on posts and post one or two items of your own.

Definitely post in groups that you are attending the conference. Ask if anyone else is going and if they want to meet for a drink, dinner, sightseeing, something fun.

Look up all conference keynote speakers on LinkedIn and visit their profiles. The keynoters can see these visits to their profiles, and this could trigger conversations with those folks. We’ve connected with lots of people just because we saw them checking out our profiles.

Create a Company Page. Seriously. If you don’t have a Company Page on LinkedIn, you don’t exist. (We may have overstated that just a bit.) It’s easy to do, and you can even list your products.

Post a PowerPoint describing your startup on SlideShare and link it to the individual profiles of company members. Having a PowerPoint on SlideShare conveys an air of professionalism and credibility, despite the fact that any jaboney can post there.

We recommend that all principals take these steps, but those who are attending must definitely address these issues.

There’s lots more about using social media for B2B sales in our book The Infinite Pipeline: How to Master Social Media for B2B Sales Success – Sales Person Edition. Get a free chapter at bit.ly/InfPipeCh1

Create a Great Lead for Your Blog is the 147th in a series of excerpts from our book, Be a Person: the Social Operating Manual for Enterprises (itself part of a series for different audiences). We’re just past page 380. At this rate it’ll be a long time before we get through all 430 pages, but luckily, if you’re impatient, the book is available in paper form at bit.ly/OrderBeAPerson and you can save $5 using Coupon Code 6WXG8ABP2

Get our new book, The Infinite Pipeline: How to Master Social Media for Business-to-Business Sales Success online here. You can save $5 using Coupon Code 62YTRFCV

What Others Are Saying

3 Dec 2012

Mike Ellsworth brand ambassador, brand evangelism, Enterprise Social Media, Social Advertising, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Selling beginner, enterprise social media, social computing, social media, social networking

Social Media is Not Advertising. Duh!

You know about the carpenter who only had a hammer, so every problem looked like a nail? That’s what I think about advertising on social media: It’s a useful tool, but it’s not suited to the problem.

So what is the problem? Just like many of my former bosses, who said there are no problems, just opportunities, the problem social media poses for brands is a failure to understand the opportunity the medium offers.

The hammer/nail paradigm is evident in advertisers’ great relief and joy in Pinterest. To them, it looks like lots of folks will advertise for them! Wow! Real people posting pictures of my products! How great is that?

Well, yeah, that might be great, but it misses at least part of the point.

And the point is: Social media is about relationships. What it offers brands is the abilty to create relationships and thereby, as Seth Godin puts it in the title of his book, Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers.

Social media adds an intermediate step in the stranger to customer journey: evangelist.

We wrote about evangelists in a series of posts beginning with Understanding Social Media Evangelists. In short, these are your crazy fans: those extremely enthusiastic supporters who tell everyone they know about your product.

What could be better than identifying, nurturing, and enabling an army of evangelists for your brand? In the offline world, many brands call these folks brand ambassadors and put together programs to hire celebs, near-celebs, and regular people to represent the brand in ads and at events. At the high end we have Alicia Keys as BlackBerry’s Creative Director and Justin Timberlake as creative director of Bud Light Platinum.

At the low end we have booth babes and other event shills. Here’s a job search for brand ambassadors in Minnesota: bit.ly/URH8O7

If you peruse these positions, you’ll see that the duties of the hired gun brand ambassador are to:

Engage consumers to generate awareness and excitement for various brands
Create a memorable consumer experience
Provide support to the event team
Distribute samples
Ensure event attendees have a memorable experience
Work independently to meet sales objectives

There are so many consumer brands with ambassador programs, I have to assume they work. But the idea of paying some schmo off the street to distribute samples and “generate awareness and excitement” isn’t quite the same as having someone you know get in their friends’ faces about how great your product is.

And speaking of love, check out how many Pinterest pages show up when you Google “I absolutely love product”: bit.ly/SP6pbc (91 million at last count).

Hmmm. Pinterest might be useful after all – as a place to find evangelists . . .

Also check out all the young women evangelists strutting your stuff in YouTube Haul Videos: bit.ly/S93ywQ

Ambassador or Evangelist?

We hate the term ambassador, which calls to mind a stuffy career diplomat who participates in an endless round of protocol-bound encounters over cocktails.

We prefer brand evangelist because, as John Stuart Mill said, “One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who only have interest.” Replace that person with a belief with a person with a passion and you’ve got a brand evangelist.

So rather than thinking of social media as another channel for your hammer to pound messages into minds, think of it as a tremendous opportunity to pierce the tissue of demographics, personas, and other crude generalizations that hide your customers from you, and actually build relationships with your customers and prospects.

How? Well that’s a story for the next post.

Next up: It’s the End of Segmentation As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

Get our new book, The Infinite Pipeline: How to Master Social Media for Business-to-Business Sales Success online here. You can save $5 using Coupon Code WXG8ABP2

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23 Oct 2012

Mike Ellsworth Enterprise Social Media, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Selling beginner, enterprise social media, social computing, social media, social networking

Many Screens, Many Advantages, Many Disadvantages

I am writing this in my home office with a 23 inch flat panel monitor and an ergonomic keyboard while sitting in an ergonomic chair.

I have lots of other screens in the house that I could be doing this on.

Some rights reserved by Velo Steve

In our basement TV room, I’ve got older laptop that I sometimes use to look up stuff on IMDB. On the main floor, I’ve got a Google Chrome netbook with a 10 inch screen and an OK but small keyboard. I also usually bring home from work my new iPad and Logitech keyboard/cover that has a smaller keyboard. In the master bathroom I have a Kindle Fire that I often use to read in the hot tub. And I have a Samsung Epic with a sliding keyboard. (I’m not bragging here. I got the netbook as part of Google’s Chrome beta and I won the Kindle as a door prize at a conference. Plus the jets on the hot tub haven’t worked in years.)

So why did I choose to write these few hundred words on a full-featured Windows 7 system?

Well I guess the first reason is I’m a Boomer. I grew up with full-size keyboards (and blew my wrists out on a crappy Compaq laptop back in the ‘90s) and can type 70+ words a minute on them. If I were a Millennial, I probably wouldn’t even have a home office setup.

Plus in my home office, I have the computer (a hot ASUS laptop) connected to a real stereo system so Spotify sounds great and I can crank it up while listening to the latest albums recommended by Rolling Stone (again, a Boomer). I can also more easily multitask doing things like digitizing my old record albums (yes, I’m pathetic) or printing off a draft of my latest book (glad you asked: It’s called The Infinite Pipeline: How to Master Social Media for Business-to-Business Sales Success and it’s available at http://bit.ly/InfPipe).

Why Other Screens Don’t Make It

Here are the rest of my screens, in descending order of uselessness for real work.

I have fat fingers and that’s why my smart phone has a keyboard. I can compose a few lines for a text message or quick Facebook post, but I can’t get into flow. The phone is good when I’m out and about but I’d never do serious work on it.
Due to fat fingers, the virtual keyboard on the Kindle is infuriating, as is the Kindle itself. It’s so close to being a usable tablet and yet, not so much. Selecting text is a horrible struggle, yet I’m able to accidentally select the whole passage I’m typing and type over it quite easily. As an experiment, I brought the Kindle as my only screen when I went to a trade show. After doing the dance of the disappearing text three times while composing an email, I gave up and waited until I was back in my room in the safety of my laptop.

The Kindle is a good eReader, though, and it’s nice to be able to quickly check my email (once again, I’m a Boomer) or Facebook while engaged in other activities.

The old laptop in the basement runs Windows Vista, Microsoft’s biggest mistake since Millennium Edition (ME). The laptop runs hot and I haven’t paid to install the Microsoft Office Suite on it so I use Open Office. Open Office is all right, but there are some quirks and incompatibilities that often bug me. Plus the couch is old and not conducive to long stretches of work.

The iPad with the fantastic Logitech keyboard is a new addition and I really do like the iPad. The keyboard is usable and I can touch type on it. But the iPad lacks an easy and quick way to transfer files (sorry, uploading and downloading from the cloud is no alternative to quickly running a file off on a USB drive) and I’m not interested in buying iWorks or another app to have limited MS Word editing functionality.

Before the iPad, the Chrome netbook was my go-to mobile solution. It has a 10 inch screen with decent readability and it’s not glossy like the iPad’s so I can actually use it while sitting out on the porch. The fact that everything has to run in a browser is a bit of a limitation, though. I’ve grown to love Microsoft’s SkyDrive, which gives you plenty of cloud storage and pretty decent cloud-based versions of the Office suite.

I couldn’t edit the book on the Chrome though because SkyDrive doesn’t handle complex or large documents all that well. Infinite Pipeline is 192 pages long with lots of charts and images. My attempts to write or edit the book document via SkyDrive were frustrating. The cloud is still not a replacement for installed software, in my opinion.

That said, I’ve done a lot of work on the netbook and it pretty much has supplanted the old notebook in the basement. Its battery runs for longer than pretty much any of my other mobile screens and the keyboard, despite lacking Caps Lock functionality out of the box, has some interesting features such as dedicated last page, next page and window switching buttons.

So I’ve got lots of options, but none of them run Photoshop; none of them have a large display useful for video editing; and only the Windows-based screens can access my local network, where all my stuff is, including almost 700GB of my digitized CD and vinyl collection (saved uncompressed as WAV files).

Plus, and here’s a big drawback, some of these screens don’t work at all without a wireless connection. Sprint service is horrible at my house, so my phone has to use the Wi-Fi a lot. The Kindle needs Wi-Fi but it is abysmal at connecting and staying connected. I’ve only had the iPad a couple of weeks, and it’s got Verizon LTE 4G connectivity (for a ridiculously expensive $60 a month) and haven’t yet had a problem with connectivity. The Chrome netbook has Wi-Fi and came with a special free 100MB per month Verizon 3G account that I understand is going to end soon. Without the 3G, the netbook’s usefulness is constrained by access to free Wi-Fi when I’m out and about.

So for writing a thousand words, the full-featured laptop/home office situation is best. For mobile, I’m liking the iPad more and more. The real test will be when I want to take notes (I take copious notes) at a trade show or conference.

Get our new book, The Infinite Pipeline: How to Master Social Media for Business-to-Business Sales Success online here. You can save $5 using Coupon Code 62YTRFCV

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