RSS offers a more convenient way for me to get the information I need from news and business sources. By subscribing to this information through an RSS feed, I can have all of my information aggregated into one place where I can easily access it when I have a moment to read it. RSS is an Internet technology for content distribution. Most news media sites will have an RSS feed available as do most blogs. RSS puts the control of the content you subscribe to in your hands. Simply subscribe to a feed using your feed reader of choice.

The simplest feed reader for getting started is to use your Web browser. Both Internet Explorer 7.0 and Firefox enable you to bookmark feeds by clicking on the RSS icon in the toolbar and saving the feed. The top two images to the right shows IE7 and Firefox feed bookmarks. The bolded titles are those that have new content available. When you access the RSS feed of a web site or blog, the RSS feed icon turns orange. Clicking on the RSS icon enables you to subscribe to the feed.

There are other feed readers available such as Bloglines, Newsgator, Yahoo, MSN and others. Blogs may display icons such as those listed in the Add This image to the right so you can easily select your particular reader. Using these feed readers are similar to the browser readers, with the biggest benefit for the feed reader services being you can access your feeds from any computer.

Now that you know how to subscribe, try it now with the Masterful Marketing blog.

Benefits of RSS

• Get notified of new content without having to check all the sites yourself. Most feed readers bold feed titles to indicate new content.
• Read or scan a larger amount of information in a shorter period of time because you have it all at your fingertips.
• Subscribe anonymously to a feed, eliminating the need to provide your email address.
• Stop receiving the feed by simply deleting it from your reader.
• Subscribe to newsletters through RSS, getting them out of your inbox. No need to check your junk mail folders for newsletters that inadvertently get trapped.

Hesitate no longer – open up your web browser, look for the orange RSS icon and start subscribing to all the content you want.

These are all good questions to ask as we face the new media marketing trend. The tools of marketing have expanded and for many businesses, this new media is an unknown territory that complicates the marketing mix.

Whether your business sells to consumers (B2C) or to businesses (B2B), new media marketing will have a profound effect on your marketing plan in the future. You need to prepare to join the conversation, listen to your customers, and build a long term relationship with them that helps your business succeed.

Social Media Tools

The new social media tools enable users to publish content easily, building a brand not only for their businesses, but in many cases for themselves. The following are the tools that you need to be aware of and work into your marketing mix over time. There are others, but we’ll focus on the basics first.

• Blogs – A blog is a web site using technology that makes it easy for anyone to post information to the web. The blog itself is a frequent post of information about a particular topic welcoming comments and discussion. If you don’t have a web site yet or are considering an update, consider moving to blogging software as the foundation. It makes updating content easy and you can add the blog to your site when you are ready to do so.
• Podcasts – A podcast is an audio file that automatically gets delivered to your computer and can be transferred to your portable MP3 player so you can listen to it wherever you are. If you are familiar with RSS, simply think of podcasting as RSS for audio. (If you need more on RSS, read my last article on The Benefits of Using RSS.) You do NOT need an iPod to listen to a podcast.
• Social networks – A social network is a community of people who share interests and activities. Social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn, provide an online place where a user can create a profile and build a personal network that connects him or her to other users.

Why are they called Social Media?

Internet technologies we have been using have enabled us to push our marketing messages out into the marketplace. Web sites spoke to your audience, explaining what you have to offer. Getting qualified prospects to your Web site was a matter of creating a compelling offer and using direct marketing, search engine marketing, Internet advertising and other marketing activities to direct their attention to your landing pages.

Social media marketing enables you to build relationships with your prospects, enabling them to voice their ideas and opinions with you. In order to make this type of marketing work for you, you need to develop a safe environment that invites people to speak with you. You need to join the conversation and build your brand through your words and actions.

Where Do I Start?

Businesses interested in employing social media tactics as part of their marketing plan should begin now to research how these are being used and how to get started. There is a culture and etiquette associated with the use of new media that you should understand before diving in. If you are a small business that sells services, a blog may just be the thing you need to boost your credibility and attract new clients. If you have a lot to say and want to make it easy for folks to listen to your opinions and information, then consider creating a podcast of your information. Social media marketing may seem like it is just one more thing to add complexity to the already complex marketing world, but diving in and learning how to take advantage of these as marketing tools will pay off in the long run. Don’t get overwhelmed – pick one area and learn it.

For example, start with learning how blogs work by visiting a number of them that cover a topic you are interested in. To find blogs, you can go to the Google Blog Search and type in the topic you are interested in. Read a few, subscribe to some with RSS, and watch, listen and learn. Create your blog and start posting regularly. Then start adding comments
to some of the posts you read with useful information on topic, sharing your knowledge and opinion with others while getting links back to your blog. Like all marketing activities, getting your blog visible to the search engines will take time, but adding fresh content and getting links back to your blog will help it rise in the search engine rankings so people will be able to find you.

Join the Conversation

Whether a business targets consumers or other businesses, social media marketing is going to have an impact on the marketing activities very soon. Learning what is available to you, determining whether your market can be effectively reached through social media and tying it in with your traditional marketing activities will benefit your business in the long term. Using these tools to market your business is more than worth investment.

What most people don’t realize is that the marketing function really hasn’t changed. We still need to understand what the market wants or needs and whether it is aligned with what you have to offer. It is then the role of marketing to build awareness and generate demand.

What has changed is how marketing is being done. Traditional marketing that consisted of a controlled, crafted (read: sanitized) message and “pushed” out to the channel is no longer the best or only way to reach your constituents. This push model is no longer tolerated by many and not adapting your marketing to the new media model can tarnish a company’s brand. These new channels of communication require us to rethink how we deliver our message to our audiences.

But I can’t really say that traditional marketing is dead and gone as direct mail, email campaigns and advertisements on different media (magazines, newspapers and television) still work and supplement the online activities for B2B.

But online marketing has expanded to include social media tools that enable mutual conversation between companies. Marketing is no longer “campaign” driven – It is a long term project that ties together all the activities that helps the prospect learn who we are and how we can help them solve a problem/challenge.

A timely article published this week in Advertising Age, talks about the biggest challenges Marketers face with Social Networks. In the article, Michael Bush cautions marketers to learn the culture of social networks before you charge in. I made the same point in my previous post about watch, listen and learn, much in the same way you would enter a party with people you never met before.

“Any marketer worth its salt is going to spend a good deal of time studying the dynamics, rules and language of any social network before attempting to establish a presence there.”

What I have learned in my travels through social media is the biggest change is the need to think about marketing in new ways. Good marketers will suck up all the knowledge they can on the topic, figure out how to proceed and then put their plan into action – which is no different from what good marketers have done for years.

However, those who try to force the square peg (traditional marketing techniques) into a round hole (new media marketing), will not succeed. As stated in the article:

Most marketers think they can simply take their mainstream advertising efforts and activate them on these networks under the assumption that they will flourish.

Social networks are about connections and communication that builds the pathways to new, fruitful relationships. New media are the new tools of marketing that have made marketing conversations with your prospects and customers much easier and effective.

I’d love to hear from others on their views on how social media has affected them in their careers.

When speaking with companies about marketing, the topic of “should I integrate social media into my marketing plan this year” comes up. My advice is always the same: watch, listen and learn. Take small steps. Understand the accepted behaviors in this culture of social media. Then engage. By learning what is accepted before you dive in, you can avoid offending someone or embarrassing yourself in the process. 

In Matt Dickman’s Five Keys to Successful Blogger Outreach, he and the folks commenting provide valuable insight into how to engage bloggers to provide exposure to your products and services. I might add that taking it slow in building the relationship is my philosophy. Before you jump in and comment, send “news” out or do something that could land you on a blogger’s blacklist, understand what the writer is interested in and add value.

Keep following the thread from Matt’s post to Valeria Maltoni’s Revealing Yourself to Others as she highlights what works well and what does not when she is the target of the PR pitch. These rules apply to all forms of marketing using social media in my view.

The following interview of Matt Dickman and David Armano by Andy Sernovitz  offers good advice on getting started with social media for B2B marketing.

Armano’s advice: LinkedIn is a good place to get acquainted with social media.

Dickman’s advice: Listen to what your customers are saying about you in the various social media communities. Learn from it then take the next step.

Like any social setting, watch and listen to those around you for guidance on how to behave. When you feel ready, then dive in.

Hey business owners: If you have had a “sales” conversation with another business and you have decided on another firm or different direction, use common sense and let that person know you are not going to hire them. Trust me, it’s not like we can’t handle rejection! We are in business for ourselves, right? We really don’t feel all that bad about it as that’s part of business. And by telling us we didn’t get the business, it helps us make decisions about taking on other clients. But not saying anything, not even an email to let us know, is basically a rude business practice that makes me question whether I really want to do business with you.

In business today, the world is small. It doesn’t take much to tarnish your brand. Your brand identity is built through all your interactions in business, including your marketing materials, how you answer the phones, to how your service and support organizations treat your clients. So when you deal with vendors, extend the courtesy to them that you would your clients, business partners and other people associated with your business. I know people don’t like delivering negative messages, but if you treat your vendors this way, do you treat your customers any differently?

Whether or not those statistics are true, it opened my eyes to the fact that there are many small business owners unaware of these new marketing tools. Some basic education on what these tools are and how they can use it for their business would be a valuable resource. Therefore, I have written the first in a series of articles called Social Media Marketing Basics.

As the title indicates, it is very basic information for those not exposed to this new media as many of us have been. Future articles will dive deeper into the various topics, describing how they can be used to market their businesses. Feel free to read and comment back here on your thoughts and suggestions for the next in the series.

Why is this important?

Professional services businesses sell expertise. You can’t touch the product or get a 30-day trial like you can with a physical (or software) product. A good way to prove that you have the expertise a prospect is looking for is to give some of that knowledge away that intrigues your audience and makes them want more. You can accomplish this by writing articles or tips that would interest your target audience.

When I started my Vista Viewpoint newsletter five years ago, I included an article and a tip of the month. Today, email newsletters are the medium to use when you want to nurture those who have requested your information (that is opted into your mailing list), but a blog with useful tips, articles and information for your target prospect will reach a far wider audience if marketed appropriately. People searching for information will find your blog or podcast and can anonymously subscribe through RSS. Those that find you, are interested in what you have to say and regularly read your information are more likely to call you if they need your services.

People normally choose to do business with those they trust and somehow get to know in some way. Building trust is something your blog or podcast can help you do. So if you are considering one of these newer mediums as marketing tools for your business, don’t shy away from them. However, put a plan in place that describes your frequency, focus and tactics to publicize them, and join the conversation on the Web. It will take time but will pay off in the long run.

I use this concept as the basis for a presentation on developing an integrated marketing plan that I offer to small business owners (a topic that easily can run from 30 minutes to 3 hours).

As I was updating my slides for the marketing workshop that I gave today, I wanted to include social media (new media) marketing as part of the marketing mix. My perception prior to thinking this through for the workshop was to include social media marketing under Internet marketing along with search engine marketing, PPC advertising, SEO and other Internet related activities.

However, as I organized my thoughts, I started categorizing the marketing mix into the following areas based on their primary marketing objective:

• Generating leads
• Increasing visibility
• Developing credibility
• Building relationships

By looking at the tactics through this lens, my “ah ha” moment was when I realized that Internet marketing fell into the “generating leads” category because it was a direct marketing activity that drove your prospect to do something (visit the site, sign up for the free offer, etc.) while social media marketing fell into the “developing credibility” and “building relationships” categories.

For completeness, here are all the activities by category:

• Generating leads – direct marketing, Internet marketing, events (tradeshows)
• Increasing visibility – events, public relations, advertising
• Developing credibility – events, public relations, new media marketing
• Building relationships – word of mouth, strategic alliances, new media marketing

The beauty of this classification is that it helps business owners understand what tactics they may wish to use depending on their marketing goals. If this helps you, let me know. If you have a different classification for all the marketing tactics out there, let me know that too.

But what if you are a B2B company? How does all this new media marketing fit into your marketing plan? Or does it right now?

In a Search Engine Land blog post by Jon Miller, What’s Wrong with Social Media for B2B Marketing?, he discusses the challenges the B2B marketer faces in getting visibility over those writing about trendy B2C marketing and the use of social media. He states that “But to B2B marketers, social media is just one tactic in a portfolio of techniques that best practice companies use to generate awareness, drive leads, and nurture relationships.”

If you are a B2B marketing professional, you do need to become familiar with the use of new media in your arsenal of marketing tools, but don’t lose site over those tried and true methods of building awareness and generating demand. PPC advertising and other Internet techniques, lead nurturing, customer case studies, and public relations still matter more than social media techniques.

So add these new media techniques to your marketing plan but not at the expense of traditional programs.

Technorati Tags: social media, b2b marketing

My colleague in Vista Consulting, Bob Rentsch, is on the Board of the Greater Worcester Habitat for Humanity and is running an auction to raise funds to help them achieve their mission to “build simple, decent, affordable homes to give low-income families in Central Massachusetts the opportunity for homeownership”.

Last week he found out that his online auction website was one of two dozen that is eligible for a donation from the company that makes the auction software. They will award a $2000 donation to the auction website that gets the most votes in an on-line poll.

Bob’s challenge – to get the word out about how to vote. “Friends and family” emails work, a posting on the website is good too, but Bob was searching for a way to get the message out to supporters. This is the perfect time to use social media marketing to communicate the message in a timely basis and engage the audience to help build momentum.

If you want to help a good cause, help get the word out as well. Plug the contest and send them to the auction web site link to vote for the Greater Worcester Habitat for Humanity. Some family in Central Massachusetts will be forever grateful.