B2B Blogging – Does Social Media’s Rise Doom Blogging’s Future

Popular Today, But is Blogging A Flash-in-The-Pan?

As Facebook and Twitter gain momentum, it's been questioned whether blogs will become obsolete? 

b2b blogging

To answer that question, let's look at what the facts tell us.

Neither Twitter nor Facebook can match the presence of a blog. Blogs are feature-rich, versatile and permit long form content.

Twitter is text-based and extremely limited. It's considered a microblog that allows microposts of no more than 140 characters. This makes meaningful conversation impossible.

Facebook has more features than Twitter, but it focuses on individuals and their personal lives. However, as Facebook evolves, big-name consumer brands are building a presence.

Even so, because of its consumer-centric focus, it's not a haven for B2B companies. And it's unlikely to be one in the future. Regardless, you can employ Twitter and Facebook creating a synergy that directs traffic to your blog where prospects can find more substantive content. Social media complements rather than replaces blogging.

Blogging is both efficient and effective.

Inbound marketing beats traditional marketing on lead generation costs. A study by Social Examiner corroborates this in documenting a 62% reduction in costs less per lead than traditional outbound marketing.

As long as blogging remains cost-efficient, it's extremely unlikely B2B marketers will abandon it. But cost-efficiency isn't the only consideration.

According to HubSpot's VP of Marketing, Mike Volpe, "blogs generate 55% more website traffic than companies that don't… and they get 97% more links coming in to their sites."

Blogging is effective, in part, because it's an absolute workhorse. Specifically, blogging addresses 6 out of 9 customer buying phases.

  • Recognize need
  • Establish urgency
  • Create company awareness
  • Maintain visibility
  • Continue relationship

As B2B marketers become more resourceful in exploiting the benefits of blogging, its adoption and use will continue to grow. Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, authors of Inbound Marketing, say blogs can turn your website into a living and breathing marketplace.

The Future of B2B Blogs

Today, B2B blogs are popular, and they promise to be a force in the future.

They're robust, versatile, and dispense with the hard sell. As long as blogs generate buzz- delivering compelling and engaging content when the buyer needs it – blogs will be a powerful force in the B2B world.

Most importantly, B2B blogging helps to increase your traffic, sales and profits.

The facts dispel the view that blogging's days are numbered. You might see personal blogging decline and give way to social media. But that doesn't apply to business blogging.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, I'd say the rumors of blogging's demise are greatly exaggerated.

Although B2B blogging has gained a solid following, B2B marketers haven't optimized its use. In that sense, B2B blogging hasn't reached a tipping point.

How's your business blog doing? Are you engaging prospects and customers? Are you doing it effectively and efficiently? Blogging done right can serve as the hub of your content marketing program helping you increase sales and profits. It can give you the edge you're looking for.

If you believe that my message is worth spreading, please use the share buttons if they show at the top of the page.

Stephen Hodgkiss
Chief Engineer at MarketHive

markethive.com


The info shared here has not been evaluated by the FDA and is not intended to diagnose, cure or treat any illness or disease.

Can we really defeat ISIS?

With the recent attacks in Paris, Istanbul, Brussels, Iraq and Lahore and with the current terrorism threat to the UK (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) from international terrorism being assessed as severe (that means an attack is highly likely) I have decided to give my opinion on the matter to see if we really can defeat ISIS. 

Original article by Joe Robinson where he is a regular blogger at Medium.

defeat isis

I believe I have an in-depth knowledge about how ISIL operate, not only for the fact that I decided to travel to both Syria and Iraq to fight against them during one of the Civil war’s most bloody periods but ever since their up-rising I have been infatuated with the so-called Islamic State. I have spent hours and hours trying to understand their ideology, sifting through the gory execution and propaganda videos, researching about how they have managed to rise and capture so much territory so fast and why young Muslims are attracted to the so-called Islamic state.

Most people only know ISIL through the media and from their propaganda material, but I have seen behind that. I have been up close and personal with them, I have seen how they operate, I have seen how they live their day to day lives, I have looked after them whilst they were detained prior to being handed over to state authorities and I can tell you that much of what you think of them, results from their brand of marketing and public relations. They present themselves to the public as superheroes; enforcers of the will of Allah, declaring Jihad (holy war) on Kuffar (none-believers) but away from the camera are a bit pathetic in many ways. Street kids inebriated on ideology and power and in many ways immature and dim-witted but that is not to understate the murderous potential of stupidity.

What I have come to realize is that ISIL thrive on Muslim separatism within European communities. They claim that the attack in Paris was because of France’s participation in the Bombing campaign knowing full well that in retaliation, France and other coalition forces would respond accordingly. This is what they want! they want us to respond with force so that it turns the Muslim population in Europe against us; it gives them opportunities to radicalise young Muslims to come and fight for their cause.

Nicolas Henin, a French journalist who spent 10 months as an ISIL captive and who got to know their fighters quite intimately came to the realization that “what they fear is our unity”. They want us to be scared of Muslims so that it segregates them from us within our community.

That’s not to say that I do not agree with coalition Airstrikes but even though I am fully supportive of coalition airstrikes in Syria assisting the YPG (Kurdish People’s Protection Unit), as they have pushed back ISIL further and taken back far more ground than any other fighting force on the ground; I do believe that a retaliation to the recent attack’s (just like the mass bombing campaign in retaliation to the Paris attacks) is precisely what Daesh wants. This is not the time for anger, this is not the time for retaliation, this is the time to stand together as one.

In my personal opinion, the best course of action is to not discriminate against the Muslim community. Show solidarity and come together as a community as we have seen in the past. This is what hurts ISIL the most. Something that I have come to realise and that I often say to people I meet is that it doesn’t matter how many Daesh fighters you kill; you can kill a thousand, you can kill a hundred thousand but you will never kill their ideology. The only way we can do this is if we stand together. This is how we defeat ISIL and this is how we can defeat their ideology.

If you believe that my message is worth spreading, please use the share buttons if they show at the top of the page.

Stephen Hodgkiss
Chief Engineer at MarketHive

markethive.com


The info shared here has not been evaluated by the FDA and is not intended to diagnose, cure or treat any illness or disease.

How Inbound Marketing and Social Media compliment each other.

Social Media Addiction!

How Inbound Marketing and Social Media compliment each other.

What makes people addicted to social media?

Social interaction has been a human trait for as long as humans have been around.

However, relatively speaking, social media on the internet is only a recent phenomenon. Is it here to stay? There are many indications to suggest it is.

Only recently, Facebook announced they had one billion users on their site in just one day! There are so many aspects that attract people to Social Media.

…keeping in touch with friends and family; in some cases finding long lost friends and relatives.
…the ability to find new friends and associates interested in the same subject as themselves.
…attracting new customers to their business and keeping them informed of special offers, etc.
…keeping club members informed of events.
…carrying out research based upon answers to posts, etc.
The list goes on and on.
…but why has Social Media become so addictive? For example, why don't people stick to traditional methods such as the telephone to tell a family member about an event they are going to, or have been to?

There are many people who will even post a picture of their evening meal on a Social Media website but they won't pick up the telephone to tell someone what or where they have eaten.,
Is it because they can tell lots of people at the same time with just one post?
…or is it because they want to "show off" that they have been to a particular restaurant?
Maybe it is because they want to see the reaction from other people.

There is some research to suggest that the majority of people are basically insecure and many believe using Social Media as a means of communication and conversation is possibly less stressful than face to face interaction.

The kind of communication on Social Media is usually asynchronous, meaning the original comment and its response happen at different times. Therefore, a post is not always likely to receive an immediate response; sometimes it could be days, weeks or even months later (if at all).

Have you ever made a post on FB and then been disappointed that no one took the time and trouble to leave a comment?
Could the need for interaction be at least one of the hooks of Social Media? Of course it is.
Everyone is expecting others to join in their conversation. If not expecting, they are at least hoping. The "hook" is such that many people will log in "just one more time before they go to bed" to see if they have had a response.

It gets even more addictive. With Social Media on mobile devices being the current trend (a trend set to last a long time), many people are almost glued to their devices. It is no longer a case of waiting until they get home to switch on their pc. They are now in a position to see responses as soon as they occur. This creates even more "panic" amongst some users because every bleep of their device could mean someone is responding to their post or a conversation they are involved in.
Is it now a case of them wanting to be the first to know what is happening so they can then send a further response?

So what does all this mean for MarketHive?
Markethive.com is a Social Communication Platform designed for the Entrepreneur to compete with the Multi-Million dollar corporations in their quest to gain their fair share of business.
I expect that most people who become MarketHive members will be business minded. However, there will be some members who do not have a business.

There are many features in the MarketHive system for everyone, not just business owners.
All members of MarketHive are obviously potential customers for other members…
…and of course for MarketHive itself when optional services are offered.
…but as already discussed elsewhere, just having members is not enough.
Engaging the members will be necessary. They need to be 'hooked' on using MarketHive.
One of those hooks will surely be the Social Media sharing capabilities of the MarketHive system.

Origional article by: Thomas Prendergast, CMO, Markethive.com

If you believe that my message is worth spreading, please use the share buttons if they show at the top of the page.

Stephen Hodgkiss
Chief Engineer at MarketHive

markethive.com


The info shared here has not been evaluated by the FDA and is not intended to diagnose, cure or treat any illness or disease.

Ever have a dream where you are falling?

I woke up slowly this morning with a vivid memory of a dream I had last night. I fell from a very high mountainous range, off a over-hanging ledge.

dream falling

For some reason I was walking in the mountains and I decided to slide down a bank or incline. I had not seen clearly enough what lay below that, I thought it was safe but that was not the case at all.

As I got  to the end of the 'slide' it came obvious that this had not been a good idea and before me a ledge appeared, which I then fell over .. just about clinging to it.

There was nothing below me .. only fresh air and what looked like a few thousand feet to the ground below .. parts of the view were obscured by clouds, so I knew I was doomed if I fell.

I tried to climb up and cling on but I knew it was to no avail. So I resigned myself to knowing that there was no hope, and I may as well let go. I started to fall …..

On the way down I passed someone, no idea who they were but it was a woman. For some reason she was waiting for me on the ground (no idea how she managed that). She stepped aside as I hit the ground.

I had survived!!!! It was a miracle.

The next thing I remember was that I was with my Mother, wondering if I was really okay after such a fall. I was worried of internal injuries and bleeding myself but after that I was too far into waking up, going over in my head of what I had just dreamt about.

What does this dream mean?

"I'm Falling!"

Another very common dream is the dream where you are falling from a cliff, a building, a rooftop, an airplane or from some higher ground. Contrary to a popular myth, you will not actually die if you do not wake up before you hit the ground from the fall. To understand your falling dream, you need to look to what is going on in your waking life.

Falling suggests loss of control:

When you fall, you have no control and have nothing to hold on to. Thus your falling dream is analogous to a situation in your waking life where you are lacking or losing control. You are feeling overwhelmed, perhaps in school, in your work environment, in your home life or maybe in your personal relationship. You have lost your foothold and unable to keep up with the demands of your daily life.

Falling suggests insecurity:

Falling in your dream means you are lacking any sense of security, stability and confidence. You are not sure where you stand in a particular circumstance or in your relationship. Perhaps you are at risk of losing your job or losing your home. Such loss can make you feel that the ground is falling away underneath you. Moreover falling dreams also indicate feelings of shame, inferiority, vulnerability, and/or low self-esteem. You are afraid of not measuring up to others' expectations or to keep up with the status quo. If you have recently have demands placed on you, then it would not be surprising if you dreamt of falling.

Falling suggests reckless behavior:

Your falling dream may be a wake-up call of your reckless behavior or poor decisions. You are headed the wrong way in life. And if you continue on the current path, you are going to hit rock bottom. Falling in your dream could be viewed as an analogy of your fall from grace.  

Falling suggests sex:

According to Freudian theory, dreams of falling indicates that you are on the verge of giving in to your sexual urges or impulses. You are lacking indiscretion.

Falling is a result of physiology:

The physiological changes within the body when you "fall asleep" may actually trigger a falling dream. When you dream of falling, you may feel your whole body jerk or twitch. This sudden jolt is known as a myoclonic jerk and is sometimes strong enough to wake you up.

Conclusion:

In order to understand and interpret your falling dream, look at what is happening in your waking life that could bring about the dream. Where in your life do you feel a lost of control? What is causing your insecurities? 

If you believe that my message is worth spreading, please use the share buttons if they show at the top of the page.

Stephen Hodgkiss
Chief Engineer at MarketHive

markethive.com


The info shared here has not been evaluated by the FDA and is not intended to diagnose, cure or treat any illness or disease.

The Inbound Marketing Methodology

The Inbound Marketing Methodology


Inbound marketing is all about getting found online by your audience. It's where they're looking for you. They've changed their shopping behavior, and we’re helping businesses adapt. Inbound focuses on attracting the right kind of prospects to your business and turning them into satisfied customers and brand loyalists.

What is Inbound Marketing?

It's how your audience is behaving online today.

They're not waiting for the message to be brought to them. They’re searching online for the content that helps solve a problem and make their buying process a much more informed one.

Inbound better positions your company to be the solution your ideal customers are looking for by developing an online presence that speaks to them and their specific interests and needs.

Why does it work?

The shopping behavior of your ideal consumer has changed significantly, and as a result, so have the methods for getting their attention.

Instead of relying on traditional methods of marketing that focus on pushing messages out to your audience — things like buying ads, buying email lists, sending direct mail — and hoping for a return, we focus on aligning your content strategy and overall campaign with your customer's interests in order to pull more relevant prospects toward your company.

Attract

We're not looking to simply attract website visitors, but rather attract the right kind of visitors that are valuable for business. For too long, the emphasis has been on traffic volume instead of the quality of the visitor. As consumers continually shift their attention online for research, most everyone has an online presence, including your competitors. You need something more.

Convert

Once you're driving more qualified visitors to your website, you'll want to convert these visitors into leads by collecting their contact information. To do this, you need to offer something of great value in exchange. Using your buyer personas as the foundation, crafting resourceful downloadable offers in the form of ebooks, whitepapers, videos, or checklists is the first step in optimizing your website for lead generation.

Close

Now that you're generating more qualified traffic and leads to your website, the focus now is on nurturing these leads with the right content at the right time in order to help close them into customers. By executing a personalized lead nurturing strategy, you'll successfully shorten the sales process due to the level of qualification and education your leads now have.

Delight

At its core, inbound marketing focuses on creating remarkable content for visitors, leads, and even your current customers. Once a lead becomes a customer, the process of achieving valuable brand equity is only just beginning. Continuing the positive experience with social monitoring, exclusive content, and further assistance helps to create brand loyalists, who in turn, deliver referral business.

The info shared here has not been evaluated by the FDA and is not intended to diagnose, cure or treat any illness or disease.

Spamming and Photo Journalism

My latest post was a photo blog. I showered friend and followers with 15 photos. I received a complaint.

First let's try to understand what my project is not. It is not a MLM. It is not a program that requires a distribution network nor do I have a product or service to sell, a seemingly contrary position relative to the typical Markethive pursuit.

My project is a humanitarian project about the unseen and unattended menace of waste and as such it needs to provide education and attention.

Now about the photos.

I have discussed the image situation with the tech center and with Tom. Markethive does not handle images like WP does, no media library or storage to call from.

A comment from Tom about this; “When we upgrade the News Feed to work like Facebook with Images and Video the necessity of single posts for a large cluster of Images will improve as well”.

In order to use photos in your blog post on Markethive, the image must not be wider than 550 px and uploaded to your profile page. If you want it on your news feed,you post to you profile page and that's exactly what I wanted.

When I assembled the photo blog, I embedded these photos in the post using the link to that image on my profile. When I push this post to my social network every image links back to my Markethive profile. When the search engine scans the post it is obvious that where it came from and who. That to me is beneficial to me and Markethive.

The complaint called it spamming and me not understanding what I am doing on Markethive. The claim is that I am trying to “dominate the newsfeed”. On the contrary I was just setting up my post.

There are other ways to do this for sure. I could have uploaded the images to one of my blogs and then linked the images form there. Or, I could have uploaded to one of my groups, but only the members of that group would have seen them. None of these options were what I wanted.

My program is centered in and around Markethive and always will be. It is a “social” site and everyone is welcome to have an opinion but I try to understand first before casting my opinion.

It is obvious that the one who complained did not observe the content just the number, a rather shallow observation, me thinks, nor did they go to the actual blog post, they just wanted to pontificate.

Markethive is somewhat of a social anarchy, in that there are no rules except be respectful. There is no boss and there is no police.

Just one more thing. The value of a relationship (friend) is relative. There is no relationship that has the value to be leveraged as a threat. If a member in Markethive threatens you with the loss of a friendship in order to effect you activity, take the loss.

If you are discomforted by my activity, you have your options.

The info shared here has not been evaluated by the FDA and is not intended to diagnose, cure or treat any illness or disease.

Profile Pages: Online Branding and Building Authority

Profile Pages: “Online Branding and Building Authority”

What is the difference between online branding and building authority? Some would consider it the same thing, but in reality it can be two completely different processes. Online branding is a way to get more exposure for your brand on all levels of online marketing, especially search and social.

Building authority takes online branding to the next level by making each online presence for a brand authoritative. It goes beyond just about creating a blog or social media account. The following are ways you can build your online brand as well as your authority.

Everyone wants to be an authority.  READ: How to be an authority (Know Your Why First)
https://markethive.com/group/marketingdept/blog/how-to-be-an-authority

Start a Blog with Awesome Content

Blogs are beneficial for brands for three reasons. First of all, blogs help you rank well in search engines – Google loves fresh, unique content on websites that are constantly updated. If you’re looking to meet this goal, be sure to use Markethive’s blog platform and build a blog team in a Markethive group to assist in greater content and curation.

RE: WordPress Markethive’s technology super charges WordPress campaigns.

Next, blogs provide for great content to share on social media networks. It’s hard to get traction if your just sharing product and sales pages. But if you’re sharing informative blog posts about your industry, you’re likely to get a lot of traffic and social shares.

Markethive provides plugins and widgets and tech that allows visitors to subscribe to your blog from their Social Networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, thereby allowing your new Markethive posts to publish to their news feed automatically.

Finally, great blogs can help your brand build authority in your niche. This is where you go above and beyond cookie cutter posts that talk about your product to creating awesome content in the form of:

  •     Tutorials
  •     Infographics
  •     Videos
  •     Industry Interviews

Awesome content will show fans of your industry that you know your stuff and therefore are the brand to go with for their business needs. A great example of this is the blog you are reading right now – Markethive has Inbound Marketing technologies, the go to Social Network and infographics  that have been tweeted and liked over 10,000 times and posts that have been viewed on Facebook, LinkedIn and Stumbleupon over 100,000 times.

There are two great fears that brands have when it comes to blogging. One is that they won’t have anything to blog about, and this is a complete myth. Everyone can find something to blog about. You just have to expand your definition of the target audience. Imagine you had a body shop. You probably won’t get a lot of attention if you’re writing about paint booths and sanding tools all the time, but you will if you think about broader topics that would interest the people likely to visit an auto body shop. You can blog about the latest coolest Hot Rods at the coming Hot Rod Nationals show or the latest NASCAR winner to grab fans of those programs. Or you can blog about environmental issues and the Prious to grab environmentalists. Just think bigger!

The other fear is that they will be giving away “trade secrets” and lose their business. This one is especially common within industries like SEO, where a brand might feel like giving out ten steps to link building will give their customers the info they need to just do it themselves. But this just isn’t true. I have found that most of the time, if you give a complex, in-depth tutorial, a potential customer will see that your brand has the knowledge to do the service, but they won’t have the time or resources to do it for themselves. Hence, they’ll go with you because they feel confident that your brand has the expertise demonstrated in the content provided on the blog.

The key with your brand’s blog is to make sure that it is apparent who is behind the content. Whether you have your blog on your domain (yourbrand.com/blog), as a subdomain (blog.yourbrand.com), or as a separate site (yourbrandblog.com), be sure that it is matched to your brand. Check out Markethive’s site, blog, and subscribers profile pages, logged in dashboard and display variances on hand held devices. All are unique yet all are well branded and follow a conventional identity protocol (all on separate domains and different devices) as an example of great branding.

Guest Blog for Others (This is a major component in Markethive)

When it comes to blogging, you don’t want to keep the good stuff all to yourself. Guest blogging (join a Markethive Group to share content is that easy) is a great way to build your online brand presence and authority. The basic goal is to find a (GROUP) blog whose audience will be interested in your brand, and create a great piece of content for that blog.

Notice I said great piece of content. I would go so far as to say that the content you create for another (GROUP) site’s blog should be even better than the content you create for your own site. You want the content you create for another blog (GROUP) to rock. You want that content to generate additional social shares, comments, and traffic for the blog owner.

As you create GROUP posts for others, be sure to save the links to those guest posts for future reference. As you approach new GROUPs that you would like to guest post upon, you will want to include those links as examples of your successful guest posts in other Markethive GROUPS. If you can convince the GROUP owner that your post will be a perfect fit for their audience and will drive significant traffic and response, the GROUP blog owner will have a hard time resisting.

My main tips for GROUP blogging for your brand include:

1. Find the best GROUPs to guest post on.

When it comes to blogs you want to get a guest post on, your goal is to find those whose audience would be interested in your brand. The blog should get a significant amount of traffic and social shares as well – there’s no reason to post on a blog that has no visitors just because it has high PageRank or any other criteria – you want to get some brand exposure out of this! Use the Markethive GROUPs directory to start your search for blogs in your niche or industry.

2. Find the GROUPs blogging policy.

If you see that a GROUP allows guest bloggers or outside contributors, the GROUP should have some page or post posted that describes their post policy. If they do have a policy page or post, then be sure to note any and all criteria.

3. Start building a relationship with the GROUP owner first. (Markethive Groups is excellent for this)

Now that you’ve found the blog you want to pitch an idea to, don’t just jump in and pitch them yet. Start by getting to know the GROUP owner first by following their Markethive blog posts, their Twitter and their Facebook fan page. Comment on some of their latest posts – make those comments valuable to enhance discussion and demonstrate your writing skills and expertise in the industry. CoPromote their posts using Broadcasting tools and widgets. Do this for at least a week or two before pitching content to them.

4. Research and pitch great topic ideas. (Join others in our live Markethive Work Shops)

Don’t create the content first and then try to find it a home. Once you’ve found the right blogs and started engaging with the blogs themselves, you’ll get a feel for the type of content they publish.

To get an even better idea of what content is successful for each blog, subscribe to them in your Markethive back office blog platform. Then you will be able to see the site’s latest traffic scores. The higher score, the more comments, tweets, Facebook likes, and other social shares the post received. Use these high-scoring posts as an indicator as to what content does well on each blog.

Now you can message via the Markethive message system or request to join their group saying that you have recently enjoyed reading their blog (as evidenced by your commenting & social sharing) and would like to contribute to their site as a GROUP member. After reading their guidelines, you would like to see if they would be interested in the following topics. Then add three to four great post ideas that you believe will fit their audience to choose from. And of course, if you’ve done guest posts elsewhere, include some of your best links. If not, just include some great links from your own brand’s blog.

5. Create Awesome Content.

Once you get approval from a GROUP, your next job is to create an awesome piece of content. Make sure it fits the theme of that blogging GROUP and that it has the overall feel / tone of the GROUP blog you are submitting to. Also be sure to add in relevant links throughout your blog post – not to your own properties, but internal links to the blog itself. This shows the blog owner you’re really giving it 100% for them and their audience and not just trying to promote yourself.

The self-promotion piece should come at the end with your guest bio. Check out other author bios on the blogs and create yours to match. This is where you can say you are John Smith, an industry enthusiast from ABC Company.

Again, be sure to consider the blog’s guidelines and previous guest author bios when deciding to add one or more links back to your brand. The blog owner ultimately reserves the right to edit it as they feel is necessary.

6. Support your GROUP post once it goes live.

It’s not over yet. After that guest post goes live, you should give it your unconditional love in the form of social sharing with your brand’s audience on Twitter, Facebook, etc. as well as coming by to respond to comments. That kind of response on your guest post will further boost your brand’s reputation as a great guest blogger as well as a confident authority in your niche.

Don’t Forget Blog Commenting

Blog commenting is a great branding and authority building exercise you can do on any blog in your niche. I would suggest subscribing to the top blogs in your industry in Google Reader, and each time there is a new post, be sure to read it thoroughly and add a valuable comment. Remember this isn’t about link building – this is about building your brand’s presence online as an authority in your industry.

Get a Disqus account as well as it is a sort of social network of people that comment.

You can use the blog’s previous comments as a guide as to how you should format yours. Some blogs require you to only use your real name, while others are a little more lenient in using your name – your company. I would suggest linking your comments to your blog as people are more willing to click through to a brand’s blog than their main website.

Your Online Branding & Authority Building Strategy Using Blogs

What is your brand’s strategy when it comes to building your brand’s authority using blogs? Be sure to share what you find brings your brand the best results in the comments!

Create a Consistent Brand Image for Each Profile

Have you ever visited a company’s social profile, and you were not sure that it belonged to the company? One of the most important parts of branding is keeping a consistent image across all of your online properties so that no matter what path a person takes from one property to the next, they will always know it is your brand. For example, someone might:

Find your fan page through a friend’s activity stream and then follow it to your blog, then website

See a tweet from someone they are following, visit your Twitter profile, and then continue onto your website.

Start at your website, then go to check out your social profiles to see if your company is engaging with fans. Engaging is fuel and grows awareness, authority and respect. Comment, recommend. Just drive by liking and endorsing does no one any good and makes you look like a tire kicking couch potato.

Just like you wouldn’t want pages on your website to be different themes, you will want your social profiles to do the same. Markethive also leads the way in doing it right as well:

MARKETHIVE

Markethive probably does the best with branding between their website, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube accounts as shown above. All five are branded with the honey comb logo, color theme and climbers ascending Mt. Everest in representation of the entrepreneurial social community of entrepreneurs helping each other achieve their agendas, so you can feel the consistency moving from one property to the next.

BMW

The above shows BMW’s branding between their website, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube profiles. Each online property uses the same color scheme and is currently focused on automotive technology. The logos are all consistent, and the auto focused in the pages is different perspectives, the coloring and themes are consistent as well

BOLTHOUSE

Bolthouse’s (organic farm fresh juices) branding between their website, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube profiles as shown above uses the same color scheme, logo, and focus on their primary product, carrots and selections of juices. Excellent example of branding and consistency!

Help People Find Your Profiles

I do a lot of competitive analysis in my line of work, and one of the most frustrating things I have to do is search for a brand’s social profiles. Don’t hide your social media presence – flaunt them! Be sure to:

  • Put Social Icons on Your Website – Let visitors to your website know that you are engaging with your audience on social media as well by adding social icons to your website design. The most common places to place them include the header / menu bar, sidebar, and footer. They don’t have to be large and in charge – BMW’s are none existent on their main page and Bolthouse are right up top left of center where they should be and get the job done..
     
  • Put Social Links in Your Communications – Do you send emails regularly? Add social links to your email signature. Do you send newsletters? Add social icons to them.
     
  • Make Your Profiles Search Friendly – If I Google your brand name + Twitter, I should get your Twitter handle in the search results. To make this happen, be sure that the name of your social profile (and the username if possible) matches your brand name. You might be tempted to keyword optimize your profiles instead of optimizing them for your brand name – this is something you need to resist. You can learn more about social media SEO on how to optimize for both effectively for search engines.

Another frustration is the direct sales industry.

Even though the size of this industry is huge by any comparison with a market measured in the trillions, even the top 100 fail miserable branding with social media. Do not be like them, rather show them a good example with your efforts. After several days of research I was able to find one such company that at least had the top 5 Social Medias registered with a similar array (not the same name) of usernames.  The super majorities only have a token Facebook page, even less with Youtube and Twitter and nearly nonexistent with a Google+ and for that almost none of them are engaged.

BEACHBODY

Team Beach Body with a yearly market of 250 million, struggles with social media but has managed to set up the top 5 social medias, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Linkedin and Google+, albeit, the account usernames vary, and across the media branding is seriously lacking. It becomes painfully clear this industry needs Markethive or at least their distributors seriously do.

Get Engaged with Your Followers, Fans, and Subscribers

You probably know that it is important to maintain an active account by posting lots of updates, and that it is best to do something other than blasting advertisements non-stop about your brand. So the question is, what should you be doing to stay active in your social networks? Get engaged with your audience, of course. Here are the top networks to get socially engaged in for your brand.

Twitter Engagement

If you’re goal is to build a strong presence on Twitter and demonstrate your brand’s authority in your industry, you need get involved with your following. Some ways to do so include:

Monitoring Brand Mentions – If you use Twitter itself, just do a search for your brand and save the search for future reference. If you use a Twitter management tool like HootSuite, create a keyword search column that will constantly update you with brand mentions. Anytime someone says something about your brand, whether it is good or bad, you should be responding to it if at all possible. This may mean adding some extra team members to your social media GROUP as a response staff. But over time, if people see that you are always on top of any discussion of your brand, you will gain trust and receive lots of great word of mouth marketing. People will tell their followers what a great response they’ve received from you and likely recommend you based on their satisfaction level.

Monitoring Industry Conversation – One of the best parts of Twitter is that you can jump into any conversation, anytime. So if you are a company providing Inbound Marketing services and technologies like Markethive, you can monitor anyone who talks about Inbound Marketing, SEO, linking, Entrepreneurial interests, and other related topics and just answer simple questions that anyone asks about those topics demonstrating your expertise.

Curate the Best Content – Even if you are the best content creator in your industry, people often like to see a second opinion. Find out who other authorities are in your industry and share their opinion on industry topics with your following. You will gain more relevant followers simply for sharing the best news.

Facebook Fan Page Engagement

There are several different ways you can engage with your fans using your fan page that will keep your current fans active and bring new fans to your brand. These include:

Updating Your Fan Page on Facebook – It’s tempting to use HootSuite and other automated programs to update your fan page. But it’s becoming more and more obvious that if you want your updates to show up in fan’s news feeds that the updates must be organic, or originating from your fan page itself. So take the extra time to disable all of your autofeeds and start updating your fan page manually on Facebook. And when people start engaging with your posts or posting directly on your wall, be sure to respond to them. If they know they’re getting response, they’re more likely to return. No one likes a one-way broadcast.

Try Out Different Types of Updates – Don’t just post links or ask questions. Spice it up – add some video updates and photos. Different types of people like different types of content – be sure to try to cater to everyone by mixing your content up!

Thanks to the last major update to Facebook fan pages, you are able to use Facebook as your fan page. This means you can like pages as your fan page instead of your personal profile and then comment on them as your fan page. If you can find pages that are not direct competitors but whose audience will be interested in your brand, you will want to get active on them. For example, social media consultants should be living on Social Media Examiner’s fan page to connect with other individuals and businesses looking for social media help.

LinkedIn Engagement

If your brand isn’t on LinkedIn, you are missing out. LinkedIn allows you to add a company page where you can post your products, services, job openings, and even send status updates to your company followers including your latest blog posts. But some of the best branding and authority building activities for this network lie in the activity of the professional profiles including:

Participating in Groups – There are lots of great, active groups on LinkedIn in a wide variety of industries. Find the groups that have your potential client base within them and start getting active in discussions and posting useful content. Just be sure not to do anything that the group moderator would consider as spamming!

Answering Questions – The next best area to build a great professional reputation and strong authority in your industry is in LinkedIn Answers. There are questions asked every day in topics ranging from administration to technology. The people who answer the most questions are also featured on the answers’ home page as the week’s top experts!

Gaining Recommendations – Last, but not least, is recommendations. You can get recommendations on both the company pages and the professional profiles of your employees. Imagine if someone is browsing your company’s page and sees that the top employees have a ton of recommendations. It will show that you have a lot of experts in the industry which will make potential clients even more confident in your brand!

The info shared here has not been evaluated by the FDA and is not intended to diagnose, cure or treat any illness or disease.