It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

-Herman Melville

Of course originality is hard. But you, your business, your service, your communications are the unique part – you are incredible otherwise you wouldn’t have a business or customers. Increasingly it is about understanding the DNA of your business – what makes you different, why customers buy from you and then building upon these foundations. Customers are looking for great experiences, not just great products.

There are lots of creative ways you can use content marketing to engage with your audience, build meaningful brand experiences, which in turn create more shares, extend your reach and get more followers and more business leads.

20 Tips On How To Use Content Marketing

Visual content is driving the shares and fueling the conversations across social media. As a business you can use visual content to promote your products, tell stories as well as build a richer more open view of your business.

1Produce A Video Of You and Your Business

Show the personalities and culture of your business using video.

2Use Twitter Testimonials

Using your customers content can help you demonstrate your passion towards your customer experiences see the revolving customer tweets at a small orange

3Produce a Cartoon About Customer Problems

As a business you need to move away from what you may have traditionally used and begin to experiment with types of content e.g.l create a simple comic with Toonlet.

The Content Tweeps by tribalcafe

4Curate A Daily Based On A Topic in Your Marketplace

There are a number of content curation tools you can use to build but the best self publishing one is Paper.li. Use this to curate content around a topic in your industry and as a means to find out what content is being shared.

5Blog On A Trending Topic

You might have head of “newsjacking” which was a phrase and subsequent book by David Meerman Scott. The tendency is for people to connect often tie a trending news into a title and make some connections. Whilst this is OK it often doesn’t work there are lots of other people doing the same e.g. the flood of Olympic posts last year. Another way of doing this is to simply use a trending issue in topic in your market but take a angle on it – e.g. lessons that can be learnt.

6Produce An Infographic
You don’t always need to use your own data for infographics. By doing some research on a topic you may pull together some interesting statistics that help your audience understand a trend or support a case e.g. businesses need to get mobile. Infographics look like you need to have graphic skills to produce but the truth is there are plenty of platforms that can help you produce a great infographic for your business Easel.ly

infographics from easel.ly on Vimeo.

7Produce Your Own Animated GIF

I have written before about how animated GIF’s have become the content currency of the youth and how some brands have adopted Vine to create short animated GIFs. However, there are few companies using it at the moment. Here is how Urban Outfitters showcased a live band in their store using Vine.

7Produce An Animated Video

I am a huge fan of scribbling explanations. The combination of watching a creative person visual draw a concept and a voice explain the concept is a perfect way to get over a brand or product messages in a fun way. RSA animate has been at the frontier of producing amazing animations often dealing with complex concepts. Any business can use these though to put over in a fun and entertaining way information to help customers and increase how long they stay on your website and take further action. Animations can simply the often complex service or product propositions you may have.

If your animation is product or service related link it on Google Places and also on your Linkedin company services/products.

7Use Visual Note Taking

In a very similar way to animations, visual note taking provides a fantastic medium top share concepts and information. If you want to co-create ideas that are often complex this type of medium can be used to ask questions, position relationship and generally engage an audience. You could even invite clients to share their sketches.

On the best examples of how this is how Ogilvy, a leading strategic marketing agency, share their note taking at Ogilvy Notes – amazing.

8Use Slides

Some of the highest views for single piece of content comes from Slideshare. Take time to produce an informative and visual stunning set of slides and you will be amazed at what you can achieve. Slideshare as a platform provides for the pro option provides lead capture options as well. Tweet out to your followers and feature on your Linkedin profile.

10Use Webinars

Produce a webinar and link to a registration process to enable you to help build your email list and follow up with your audience. Two suitable platforms are GoToWebinar and AnyMeeting. Use your social media and a hashtag before and after the event to build your audience and develop interest.

11Use MeMe

Condescending Wonka
Memes have become a familiar share on Facebook and allow a great way to personalise communications. You could easily get each of your team to produce their own meme and add to their profile on your website.

Here is two meme tools you can try meme generator and Quick Meme.

12Produce Educational Resources

Piccsy is an image aggregator that used their investors pitch deck and turned it into an interactive parallax landing page. It’s beautiful, engaging, and the results, well they speak for themselves: 50,000 pageviews, plenty of hard to attainpress coverage and 15 inbound investor requests.

13Aspire To Be Human
With the need to manage resource levels there has to be some level of autoation in the marketing process. However, if you look at the best examples of how brands are telling stories and creating experiences they still maintain the human element. Inspire to be human not a robot – image courtesy of sweetpeachtea.

13Don’t Do Random Acts Of Marketing

One of my favourite bloggers, Pam Marketing Nut, calls it random acts of marketing when you simply do things without first aligning them to your goals, objectives and measures for success. It is easy to be a busy fool and not have focus. Social media and content marketing can easily gollop up time.

Produce an editorial calendar and use these types of media to blend your content. Some are easy on time relative to others so they can be used to help expand your content repertoire.

14Understand Your Channels

People have differently and have different reactions to the same content in different channels. Posting a meme on Facebook page might get a good response but not on Linkedin. Each network serves a unique purpose for the user, as illustrated below.

15Build The Community
The critical part is to use social media to connect fans with each other and help them develop their own stories, solve problems together. Social media facilitates the many to many conversations not just the pipes that we think of as channels. You only have to see the way that Adobe forums work to understand how powerful this can be.

16Don’t Measure Followers – It’s Interaction

Social media is not a numbers game purely based on popularity. Reach does matter but influence matters more and followers don’t directly equate to influence. To get social media to work for you you need to offer clear value to your customers and in turn they must trust you. Understanding how you content can reach different touchpoints and demonstrate different elements of your brand, your community and your customers is vital. Being present and facilitating conversations strategically will build your brand. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, humanizes his brand via social media by using content to openly portray the humans behind the brand. Zappos has extended its brand promise, customer service capabilities and used valuable feedback to innovate.

17It’s Not About 1 Person
Involve your people in creatively coming up with using content. This not only opens up more opportunities but also provides a slection committee that can vet out bad ideas. Start with customer problems and then use these to creatively come up with new ideas for those problems.

18Take Out The Jargon and Make It Easy

Corporate Executive Board, surveyed over 7,000 consumers and more than 200 marketers across consumer brands and industries. Their research highlighted the disconnect between customers and marketers. The key insight that came out of the research was that marketers need to make decision making easier. As an example:

• Trust  – providing recommendations by consumer advisors, ratings and reviews.
• Learn – provide clear and streamlined product information targeted to each decision stage.
• Assess options easily – make choosing simpler e.g. buying guides.

With this in mind you can see how infographics, ebooks and animated tools can achieve this.

19Respond To People
Almost a year ago SocialBakers created a measure called socially devoted. Socially devboted looked at well brands responded, or didn’t to their social audience. This has now been tracked the infographic can be seen here. Socially listening to people and then responding to them is a key measure for any brand and how they will be seen by their potential as well as existing customers.

20Have Fun
A long time ago I met a person who started a 4 day a wekk business called TodayWasFun. I have never forgotten their philosphy on how they wanted to live their life as well as develop their business. Having fun is perhaps the best part of being involved with your customers. If you share your passions with them and likewise they share their thoughts, insights, jokes and moments with you then it makes the world seem a good place to be at then end of the working day.

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Studies show that fans on Facebook like a brand for a reason:

• A study by Get Ambassador shows that up to 70% of people fan a brand for offers
• A survey by Get Satisfaction highlighting that 43% are looking for offers
• A Survey by IAB shows that up to 77% of people have saved money as a result of liking a brand on Facebook

How To Run A Contest On Facebook

Running a contest can be a great way to get new likes on your Business Page and it although it can cost money it can deliver long term results that simply posting can’t.

The best and easiest way to run a contest is to use the apps that are available through a number of platforms. These provide easy step by step processes to implementing a contest and they provide good guidance so you don’t break Facebook rules.

Running a contest helps develop a fun and interactive way to develop your Facebook community. Using a like-gate for your contest app also enables you to make sure people like your Page before they enter. It’s also a great way to get people to sign up to your email list and that is where you can really start to develop a lead generation programme. The infographic below from ShortStack gives some great tips on how to be successful when running a contest.

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There is a good reason you should focus on your Twitter strategy, reports show that for businesses Twitter provides a rich source of business leads outperforming Facebook and LinkedIn 9-to-1, with 82% of social media leads coming from Twitter – source: Optify.

I produced a set of slides about a year ago about how Twitter could be used by businesses and this post is an update on that and some further tips on how to get more Twitter followers. Twitter now stands at over 200M active users and is now 7 years old, Twitter released a video on YouTube celebrating their birthday showing their growth and the 170Bn Tweets sent to date. If fact there are more than 400M tweets sent each day.

Twitter has spawned a whole host of useful tools to that help you with your marketing. By being creative and knowing how to use these tools you can not only rapidly grow your followers but also improve your sales and lead generation. If you want to get more followers you need to get more exposure to your content, your Twitter account and your marketing touchpoints.

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Businesses that do not guide people about by using social media policies run risks. Equally the majority of parents underestimate the use of the internet amongst teenagers. Whilst parents are concerned about the situation (69% of parents of online teens are concerned about how their child manages his or her reputation online – SourcePew Internet), many do not know the extent of the interactions teenagers have online.

• On average, teens spend about five hours a day online, while parents think their kids spend two hours a day online – source McAfee Digital Divide
• 67% of teenagers say they know how to hide what they do online from parents

Social media is a risk as much as it is a tool for socialization nowadays. Facebook is particularly high amongst sites which have been noted for alarming misuse by users. This includes harassment, cyber bullying, sexual preying, compromising of important company information and overall waste of time. Teens and employees have come under the most fire when it comes to being targeted for certain kinds of information shared over the social media giant. Statistics say that teens have been involved in or targeted by mis-users more than we would think. Also, employees take advantage of lax social media monitoring policies.

This is perhaps why teenagers themselves are in fact moving away from the platform. I don’t think they are magically migrating away to another new platform, although Tumblr is proving popular.

It is that they simply can use so many other ways to connect with their friends. Instant messaging has overtaken SMS (text) messaging growing and apps like Whatsapp.

Mobistealth, have produced a great infographic that highlights the problems that both businesses and parents face with Facebook in particular.

Parents need to support their children, understand the issues and equip themselves with the right tools as well as make sure that they understand the extent of the problems. Simply trying to stop children using these platforms is not the answer. Facebook itself does have a section on reporting abuse but often the damage is already done. Many parents allow their children on to Facebook below the mandatory age of 13, often without guidance, exasperating the problem and risks.

What do you think?

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Here are 21 tips on how to write a blog for your business blog in a step by step way. Below the how to write a blog for business graphic is a few tips on each step to help you get more clicks, more traffic and build your brand community.

21 Tips On How To Write a Blog For Your Business

My father always used to lecture me of getting the foundations right, getting the research or work done so you know what your doing. As a teenager whilst that was good advice I often ignored it and learnt the hard way (luckily no serious damage was done only some minor accidents e.g. a tree house that fell down with friends and me in it). His approach did make sense despite my impulse to just jump in and do it.

If you want to learn how to write a blog then you need to understand your customers and write content that they are going to find useful and engaging. Do your homework and you will get more traffic, more click and more leads. However, it does take time to get it right and for your content to be on target with your customers. You need to prepared to make mistakes and learn from them. Here are 21 tips to help you write a blog for your business and get better results.

1Targeting Your Customers

When you are learning how to write a blog you can easily spread yourself too thin and you will not get the results you are looking for – staying focused is critical.

• Key action – write down who you key target customer is just one e.g. if BtoB: size of business, number of people, turnover, their sectors, greaography…
• narrow down your marketing to niche market/market segments – think long tail here
• Use marketing personas to build out who you are targeting and give them a personality.
• Use any data you have to support your marketing persona e.g. age, demographic data.
• Check with others in the business e.g. sales, customer service – that the persona(s) are right.

2Find Them Online

Understand where your customers spend time online and you will be able to listen to them and connect in the right places.

• Key action – Write a list of the channels/forums/communities they use e.g. key Linkedin groups
• Look at the demographics e.g. Pew Interest, but then dive deeper…
• Play detective – here is a great article by Jay Baer

3Social Media Listening

Set a budget for the tools – whilst some are free, the better ones do cost but are worth the investment.

• Key action – choose 1-2 tools and get to know them really well. Budget for them.
• Here are a few social media listening tools
• For a deeper dive into social media listening and monitoring – here is a comparison of the main tools

4Understand Their Problems

When you are trying to master how to write a blog always put your self in the shoes of your customers. Listen to their problems – what information are they searching for, what service problems do they have, is their misunderstanding about a product or service, do they have wishlists…

• Key action – Write a list of the most common problems, gaps in information and issues
• Prioritise your list

5Identify How You Can Help Them

This is where you need to be realistic and match what you and your business are good at to their problems.

• Key Action – With the list of problems highlight the ones you are confident that you can write about and fit to your business.
• Draft a list of ideas around each problem – this will be used later

6Review The Competition

Take into account what your competition are blogging about, what topics tehy are focusing on

Key actions
• Identify their key topics e.g. categories on their blog page
• See what posts have been popular and assess why
• Identify how you can be different / better than them
• Don’t be a copy cat

7Identify How You Can Help Them

What do you stand for and why should people follow your – what is the core message that will attract and be relevant to your audience.

Key Actions
• Develop an easy strap line that helps people understand what your about
• Build your message into your blogs and communications

8Set Your Goals, Objectives and Metrics

This is the critical part. If you are going to invest in blogging set your self some clear goals for the results. What do you want to achieve (be realistic) and what business benefit will it deliver e.g. 5 leads per week.
Key Actions

• Use SMART objectives (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timed)
• Be sure you can measure them
• Produce a spreadsheet and plan out your targets by week/month and then your results

9Develop Your Strategy and Tactics

Plan in the strategy that is going to work for you – how your blog content fits to your overall marketing plan and communications mix.

Key actions
• What are the key resources and actions needed to achieve your goals?
• What are the daily/weekly tasks you are going to schedule?

10Build Your Blog

A good blog needs a good home. Invest in a WordPress blog that is going to fit to your brand and be easy for people to engage with.
Key actions

• Make sure you choose a responsive theme – the rise of the mobile consumer is here see these stats
• Build in the styles and design features that can help your blog stand out
• Blogs are increasing becoming more visual so add in the styling that will help you produce a good visual layout – think more magazine than blog

11Build Out Marketing Functionality

Your blog needs to be able to turn traffic into buying customers and to do that you need to have the right marketing functionality. Looking good is not enough.
Key actions

• Build in your key conversion points and methods to convert customers
• Add in tracking e.g. goals so you can measure performance

12Link Your Social and Email

Key actions:

• Hook up your blog with your social networks so that people can easily share your content.
• Also build in your email subscriptions to build your email list.

13Develop Your Editorial Calendar

This is probably on of the most important steps. An editorial calendar will help stay focused and give you a good schedule to work to. It is even more important if you have more than 1 person in your business blogging.
Key actions

• Be realistic and don’t forget to add in the other content that you are producing
• Balance out your categories to make it more varied and interesting for your audience

14Research Your Keywords and Phrases


Key actions
• Do you keyword research and focus on the long tail keywords and phrases for your niche
• Optimise your on page SEO as well for each post e.g. use Yoasts WordPress SEO plugin

15Develop Your Killer Headlines

Your titles make the difference between a click and no-click a share and just a read. Spend time coming up with awessome titles.
Key actions

Key Actions
• Think like a magazine editor here
• Download our content marketing guide and use our list of formulas for killer headlines

16Write Your Blog and Format

Write your blogs and rewrite them. Find your own personal voice and practice – it takes to to develop a writing style that is right for you. Write as if you are talking to your marketing persona and helping them.
Key actions

• Don’t be afraid – everyone goes through times of uncertainty and doubt when writing. It can be hard but bit by bit you will improve
• Remember there is only one you and that is unique and special use it to to your advantage and intertwine the personal and business
• End each post with a call to action or ask for people’s opinions

17Publish To Your Social Networks

You have to promote your blog and ensure it is found.
Key actions

• Publish to your main social networks and invite comments and feedback

18Respond To Comments

Comments are the gold of blogging and so actively invite comments and always respond promptly to them

• Use a good commenting system such as Disqus
• Respond and be helpful, never rude. Remove any spam to keep you blog clean

19Track Your Performance

With each blog post you move one step closer to achieving your goals. Track your metrics and review regularly.

20Rinse and Repeat – Improve

Some blog posts will do well whilst others may not achieve the results you had hoped for. Learn from your spikes and dips and continually refine your editorial calendar to improve titles, content and how you reach and attract your audience. Importantly make sure you are turning your blog into tangible business results.

21Don’t Forget To Enjoy It and Be Creative

This may seem obvious but have fun, enjoy it and if you are passionate about helping people and equally enthusiastic about your business your blog will do well. Experiment by adding in different media and help to make your business human. Your customers will appreciate being part of your tribe.

What’s do you think is important to blogging?

The post 21 Quick Tips On How to Write A Blog For Your Business appeared first on TribalCafe | Social Media | Marketing | Training | WordPress | Services| Oxfordshire.

]]> http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/21-tips-how-to-write-blog-business-blogging/feed/ 0 http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/how-to-develop-thought-leadership-with-content-marketing/ http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/how-to-develop-thought-leadership-with-content-marketing/#comments Thu, 02 May 2013 18:57:56 +0000 Gary Fox http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/?p=13863 Do you want to be a thought leader in your sector? Why I hear you ask and is it worth it? Well no matter how you look at it the people or businesses that lead with regular advice, useful information and provide helpful tips lead get more traffic and more business. At the top of [...]

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]]> Do you want to be a thought leader in your sector? Why I hear you ask and is it worth it?


Well no matter how you look at it the people or businesses that lead with regular advice, useful information and provide helpful tips lead get more traffic and more business. At the top of the tree though are those that set themselves apart from the competition and provide thought leadership e.g. Seth Godin.

There is a lot of duplicate content on the internet. This is to be expected. Most people have learnt from others sharing information, whether at school or less formally on the internet. Others have practiced their skills and learnt from experience; they have picked up the tools and used them. Whether you have developed your skills one way or another or simply a blend of the two doesn’t matter. The important part is not just what you learn and but how you improve on that; how you take what everybody else sees and knows to make it your own.

There are quite a few different views on thought leadership which I won’t labor you with but I have listed out really good articles on this below:

Wikipedia – which tells you that thought leadership was coined in 1994 by Joel Kurtzman who used it as a theme for interviews-nice way to appeal to an the prospective interviewees.

Michael Brenner article on Forbes – giving his view on thought leadership. A great article however I don’t think it comes from everyone.

Mitch Joel (a thought leadership) – gives his view and a very good one on Thought Leadership – self deprecating but hits the mark with thought leaderships now becoming celebrities and as a result attracting traffic and clients.

The point of thought leadership is to cultivate it. It is a title that you do not claim yourself rather have it given to you by your audience because you have earned it. The key to it is that unless you try you will never get there, so you need to start somewhere and recognize your speciality (or cultivate those that have it in your organisation). Normally thought leaders are also, but not always the innovators, the ones that take a different view.

Now this all sounds grand but how do you actually apply it to yourself and your business, your content and your audience.

Starting The Journey

One of the core principles of marketing is to be different to your competitors. If you take your content and your communications do you really want to just put out the same messages as everyone else (a me too product or service) or do you want to carve out an audience and create your own tribe. I refer here to Seth Godins book on developing a communiity based on knowing your difference and harnessing this to build a community around you like that. As Seth talks about in his book, Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us, some people will not want to be in your tribe, they will not get you and what you stand for, but that is OK. Your difference becomes your strength.

If you have time here is his Ted Talk On Tribes


If you have a passion for your business, a clear and unique identity and know who you are targeting then you will attract those that want to be in your tribe. Businesses that clearly define their audience and their purpose perform better than those that simply fudge it. If you have read any of the books by Jim Collins, such as Good to Great, he talks about defining what makes brands great. One element is understanding your difference and being good at it.

Key Points

Write down 5 things that make your business different (that really are different)
Look at your brand and content and check to see if that is clearly expressed
Some key differentiators can be:

• How well you understand your customers – insights, research and collaborating with them
• The knowledge and specialist skills in your business
• The passion of your culture e.g. Zappos
• The information you share and ideas your co-create with your customers



Unique and Original

There is only one you. You have thoughts and opinions that make you unique. I have been amazed at how some people really under value their expertise, yet are clearly way ahead in terms of their thinking and provide real value to their clients. If you are not a thought leader though it doesn’t mean you can never be one. Being a thought leader isn’t an overnight turnaround, it takes time and involves developing and marketing your ideas through your content and communication channels. Here are some ways you can develop your a plan to position your business/yourself as a thought leader:

1. provide insights and generally be highly creative in spotting and solving customer problems – some of the best bloggers/thought leaders do both.
2. Take a view on a popular trend and create a unique angle on it – make it your own. Back it up with a logical argument and/or data
3. Work with your employees and customers to co-create new ideas and foster innovation – not the idea box though! Connect with people put some resources and money behind it, plan it and make it a part of what you do.
4. Curate content but make sure you add your stamp of identity on it, your personality and thoughts
5. Sponsor research in your market or conduct regular research yourself

A Social Business

A social business has a team of people collaborating and working together who align the overall business objectives. Increasingly we are seeing the power of the collective produce amazing and innovative results e.g. KickStarter. Internally in your business you can innovate. This translates into collaborative frameworks, open architecture and social business tools e.g. Yammer, Jive…Externally social initiatives reflect the inner brand culture and marketing is a team effort (not all members need to be dedicated to marketing). Thought Leadership then becomes a team effort and results in ideas that can marketed (e.g. content marketing) and used with clients.

If you a small business then you can equally use your customers to help develop new ideas e.g. competitions, prizes. If you look at P&G or Dell for instance they regularly are crowdsourcing ideas that have not only sdaved them heaps of money from research and development but also helped them stay competitive.

Final Thoughts On Thought Leadership

There is no denying that developing a thought leadership position is worthy in todays socially connected world it delivers:

• Authority - positioning you as an expert
• Social Proof – demonstrations of expertise, evidence through reviews and other social commentary
• Scarcity - can position you as the person to talk about and therefore a rare commodity (with a similar profitable price tag)
• Influence - the above points relate to Influence as detailed by the expert Robert Caldini
• Influence counts – it is what persuades people to like/follow and buy and for that reason it provides commercial value

If your have good ideas you can often be shy about sharing them, worried about people criticising them or simply not getting it. I came across this blog by John Saddington at Tentblogger (an awesome and much admired blogger). He lists out ideas that he has had and they are good ones, that he simply hasn’t got time to develop but may spur others onto greater things.

I think this form of sharing ideas and leading with them helps build throught leadership. I am not advocating giving away a potential patent or breaking confidentiality or losing your IP. This is more about leading with ideas, often experimental and involving others in your community to gain feedback and build on them. Working in a bubble rarely works for people, it is often through discussions and being moulded by others that ideas take shape.

Have a look at this RSA animate about ideas.

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]]> http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/how-to-develop-thought-leadership-with-content-marketing/feed/ 0 http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/social-media-and-the-three-little-pigs/ http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/social-media-and-the-three-little-pigs/#comments Wed, 01 May 2013 13:58:29 +0000 Gary Fox http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/?p=13981 Is social media missing the story? The Story So Far We have all grown up with the famous story of the three little pigs (although I like the alternative 3 little wolfs variation as well). The moral of the story is obvious people who work hard and smart get ahead. In the story they get [...]

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]]> Is social media missing the story?

The Story So Far



We have all grown up with the famous story of the three little pigs (although I like the alternative 3 little wolfs variation as well). The moral of the story is obvious people who work hard and smart get ahead. In the story they get the right materials together to form a solid house.

If your house is your brand then the materials are the mix of marketing communications you use and how you mix them together. But materials alone won’t create a solid brand (house), what you need to do is use the glue that holds them together and that is the narrative, the stories you build into your business – not just about you but your community, the tribe that you develop and foster around your brand.

Take a look at this story and listen to how it captures you.

In marketing you wouldn’t build a brand solely using social media – it is just not good advice. Social media is just one part of the marketing mix, the materials that we need for a solid brand.

Likewise the idea of solely being digital is not right for every business, it is important to recognise and use offline marketing (if it fits to your target customers). Again as a stand alone focus it will deliver results but be limited. Like the 3 little pigs using the right materials are vital to a solid marketing strategy. Blending the offline and online is powerful and you can see it in every industry where people harness the power of events to facilitate offline community to compliment the online.

If you look at iconic brands such as Harley Davidson this is exactly what they do. They build their brand using a marketing mix that not only creates a great house but they also tell the stories of how it was built, who built it and they facilitate the tribe – see this great Prezi presentation on Harley Davidson for more information.

Another iconic storyteller is Pixar, they make the most amazing stories. But how do they do this and what can brands learn from this. Andrew Stanton in this Ted Talk discusses storytelling and the master rule that any storyteller needs is to make the audience care. Stanton delivers and awesome presentation on the power of the story. People will follow you for great content, but touch their hearts and you ignite the passions.

Social media is often portrayed as based on self-interest. People on social sites are looking for resources, materials and information (content marketing) but they are also there to make connections that move them forward, make them feel part of something. This is where you move from pure content marketing to delivering a brand. I often see this part forgotten about when I read through blogs on content marketing.



Content defines the value to your customer - why people will either ignore it or share it. But there is another part to content that goes beyond the useful, informative and helpful – it is the story. As we have increasingly turned to online as are a source of information we have created spaces. These spaces can either be filled by the stories we share, the human elements and frailities that openly declared break the walls of silence and allow us to learn. These are the digital campfires around which people gather and share stories.

If you build your brand make sure to leave spaces for the stories and your tribe to build the camp fire so they can tell you their stories.



Mixing the Bricks and Mortar and Working Together

So if we return to the three little pigs story – our brand should consist of mixing our marketing communications to produce a solid house and the people we invite to help us are our customers; because if they help you (and more importantly want to) your brand will be made from solid foundations and you may well develop a community that is as passionate as brands like Harley Davidson.

Listen to and tell their stories to fuel the conversation, provide the momentum to being social and humanize your brand. The brand becomes the facilitator and helps to solve the problems of the community which in turn it will grows.

Putting the Story back into Marketing

So what is the role of social media? Again this is big subject but here are a few reasons why it is an important part of any business now:

• people trust people (Source Nielsen) and therefore we look for what are friends or others say about brands/products and services
• brand communities can provide an ongoing development of a relationship with brand as opposed to a start stop approach
• brands can understand (and quickly) what their customers are saying – a dynamic feedback loop to develop and fuel how products and services evolve and improve
• researching customers (you can understand their online/offline behaviours and refine your marketing. This should build in how you deliver value to them.
• using tools to cluster behaviours and segment your community you can use the data to gain deeper insights into your customers needs
• the story becomes part of the brand and gets told and retold, they become the memories that provide connections between people and that is worth a lot

This is by no means an exhaustive list, it just meant to illustrate the opportunities and relevance of being developing your own tribe. In todays world we want the human connection as well. We can never underestimate the power of the human story, the connection we feel with it and the emotions that they evoke. Look at some of the highest ranked video’s on YouTube and you will understand what I mean. When done well, social media builds as the brands facilitate the story of others as well as solving problems, communicating relevant messages and adding value it can also tell the stories of its people.

Will you make your social media story count?

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]]> http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/social-media-and-the-three-little-pigs/feed/ 0 http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/hubspots-2013-state-of-inbound-marketing-annual-report-key-takeouts/ http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/hubspots-2013-state-of-inbound-marketing-annual-report-key-takeouts/#comments Tue, 30 Apr 2013 22:45:45 +0000 Gary Fox http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/?p=13877 Hubspot released their 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Annual Report showing that Inbound Marketing is becoming a focus for many marketers. The report was produced from 3300 interviews from a wide range of businesses from CEO’s to business owners to marketers across the globe. In the report they state that only 9% of these were [...]

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]]> Hubspot released their 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Annual Report showing that Inbound Marketing is becoming a focus for many marketers.

The report was produced from 3300 interviews from a wide range of businesses from CEO’s to business owners to marketers across the globe. In the report they state that only 9% of these were customers.

For more detail see the report itself or rather than read the whole report take a look at the key stats below.

The 2013 State Of Inbound Marketing Report Key Stats

• Nearly 60% of companies will execute inbound marketing strategies in 2013



• 81% of companies report some level of integration between inbound marketing and larger marketing goals



• Marketers allocate 34% of their overall budgets to inbound tactics – 11% more than to outbound strategies e.g.banners, direct mail, and more.
• 48% of marketers plan to increase their inbound marketing spending (average budgets are increasing 50% year on year)
• 41% of marketers confirm inbound produces measurable ROI
• 82% of marketers who blog see positive ROI for their inbound marketing
• Marketers spending more than $25K per year save an average of 13% cost per lead



• 19% of marketers are unsure ‘how to define’ inbound marketing
• Inbound marketers conversion rates are double that of non-inbound marketers, 6% compared to 12%
• Companies that test inbound tactics are 75% more likely to show an ROI than those that don’t
• Only 11% of company executives allocate resources to support inbound marketing
• 24% of marketers struggle to secure IT resources for Inbound Marketing



• 43% of marketers generated a customer via their blog this year
• 82% of marketers who blog on a daily basis acquired a customer using their blog
• 50% of our 2013 those surveyed consider their companies to be primarily customer-focused



• Only 18% of marketers are purely focused on developing quality content in 2013
• Only 24% of companies formalized their marketing-sales handoffs
• 25% of marketers concerned with proving bottom-line results
• 38% more B2B firms embrace inbound strategies than B2C companies embraced inbound marketing strategies for 2013



Key Insights from 2013 State Of Inbound Marketing Annual Report

Key insights

Whether you call it Inbound Marketing or Content Marketing, the use of quality content to attract customers and build them into your sales process is growing. Hubspot do a great job of emphasizing how content should be married to the sales process, used to develop leads and foster a community. The tools they provide likewise promote the marketing-sales process from developing brand awareness through to lead nurturing.

Content marketing needs to link to the sales process. Whilst brand awareness is necessary to meet and cultivate new potential customers, converting leads into customers is essential. This is where building a community helps. If you are building a business then you don’t just want one off campaigns, you want to build and foster a community.



Why?
Well not everyone is always at the stage of buying your product, they might your product or service, know it is good but there could be a host of reasons why they simply don’t buy straight away. If it was a restaurant they might wait for a special occasion before they book…If you sell prams mothers might research the pram but wait until closer to the time the baby is borm before buying. If at this stage you are a trusted and known source and already in contact with potential customer when they want to buy they are likely to buy from you.

The Inbound Marketing Process


As with the State of Content Marketing Annual Report, the top priorities for companies is brand awareness and lead generation.



The report demonstrates that the shift to more inbound and social methods of marketing are successful but there are still barriers to success.

• Without C-Suite support and resources inbound marketing programs will struggle. Executive buy-in is vital on two levels:
1. Break down barriers, the often traditional, between Marketing and Sales teams
2. As marketing, technology and data become a unified discipline it is important to bring on-board and give marketing focused IT resources and develop skill sets to match this shift
• Businesses need to move to a customer focused approach where they deepen their understanding of the ‘customer journey‘. The two key actions here are to harness the understanding of the customer journey to improve how content is matched to maximize influence. Businesses now need to align marketing lead generation and sales to this process and deepen their focus on customer behaviours – in other words build the business and processes around the customer not the other way around.



• Inbound marketing makes more sense for considered purchases rather than impulse purchases. This is probably why more BtoB marketers are using Inbound Marketing.
• As new processes are introduced people can become unclear as to where their role starts and stops. Clarification for both marketing and sales is important in developing unified marketing and sales programs
• As more marketing isms (e.g. social media marketing, inbound marketing, content marketing….) hit the media greater clarity is needed around the core marketing goals and objectives and then clear leadership around the strategy and tactics to be used.

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]]> http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/hubspots-2013-state-of-inbound-marketing-annual-report-key-takeouts/feed/ 0 http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/why-btob-marketers-shouldnt-sweat-facebook/ http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/why-btob-marketers-shouldnt-sweat-facebook/#comments Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:54:51 +0000 Gary Fox http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/?p=13880 Everywhere there seems to be continual media pressure for BtoB marketers to find the magical formula for using Facebook in their sector. Unfortunately there is no magical formula and in fact many BtoB businesses find that Facebook doesn’t produce results. If we take a look at the report by the Content Marketing Institute it shows [...]

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]]> Everywhere there seems to be continual media pressure for BtoB marketers to find the magical formula for using Facebook in their sector. Unfortunately there is no magical formula and in fact many BtoB businesses find that Facebook doesn’t produce results.

If we take a look at the report by the Content Marketing Institute it shows that 80% of BtoB (4 out of 5) marketers are using Facebook for BtoB marketing.

Let’s just recap on the marketing priorities for BtoB businesses:



The life blood of a business is new business and for B2B’s the investment and lead time required for leads demands that it is measurable and effective. So any activity that isn’t effective needs to questioned, heck even axed. When you have limited resources focusing on what works and getting it to work well is vital.

So what does work for BtoB marketing and is there a disconnect between Facebook and the top 3 priorities of brand awareness, lead generation and lead conversion. In fact a report by IDG Enterprise places quality lead generation the number 1 priority.

Why Facebook Isn’t Right For Some BtoB Marketers

1Because People Don’t Like Your Service or Product

When a BtoB company asks me if they should be on Facebook I ask them in return why would someone like their business on Facebook. The truth is many BtoB businesses feel pressured about being on Facebook and over emphasize it’s importance.

The truth is if you are a BtoB business it can be pretty hard creatively coming up with how you can use Facebook. Who wants an insurance broker popping up into your news feed every day or worse even more often.

2It doesn’t generate traffic

A recent survey by Optify analyzed over 62 million visits and more than 350,000 leads from 600+ small and medium-sized B2B websites. The results show that social media as a whole (Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin) drives only 1.9% of all traffic to websites.



3It doesn’t generate leads

Of the 1.9% of traffic the Optify report provides a deep dive into the detail of how effective social media is terms of converting traffic into leads. The chart below shows that whilst Facebook generates the most traffic (out of the 1.9% overall) Twitter provides the most leads. If you look at engagement rates (as measured by pageviews per visit) LinkedIn wins (2.48 pageviews), followed by Facebook (1.94 pageviews). Twitter averages only 1.51 pageviews per visit, even though it has the highest conversion rates.



4Conversion Rates Are Low

Of the traffic seen conversion rates are low.



Connecting The Dots – Marketing To Sales

So having pounded Facebook what do we know about social media and BtoB marketing. Is it worth it?

The buying process for BtoB is often complex and often involves more than 1 person (sometimes teams e.g. procurement, commercial, technical…) in the buying process. This can at least in part be some of the reason why BtoB marketers are finding it hard to measure or track ROI.

It is just not possible to draw a straight line between online behaviours and the buying process. However, what becomes apparent is that BtoB marketers are not effectively connecting the dots between their marketing mix and the sales process. This then leads to ineffective lead generation often due to lack of resources.

A few marketing actions:

• understand and map the buying process
  • who is involved in the process
  • what stages they play an important role e.g. are they involved throughout or just for evaluation stages
  • identify their buying criteria
• review how you can make it easier to access content and simplify the decision making process
• what information helps them at each stage

See and download our Marketing Persona Template to help your map the customer journey.

How You Could Use Facebook For BtoB Marketing

Some BtoB businesses are using Facebook and succeeding at engaging people with it – here is a link to some good case studies – checkout number 7 the Screwfix post, simply brilliant.

Some key points:

• Know your objectives and decide upon measures that are part of your marketing-sales process
• Be realistic in terms of the role of Facebook for your marketing mix
• Use Linkedin as a key tool for your sales process
• Use Facebook in context e.g. people are always looking for jobs so you can use a Facebook page to post jobs and to highlight people news. The two together would have context and open up your business.
• Facebook groups can be a useful way to build conversations around key industry events e.g. major exhibitions.
• If you have a visual product then use Facebook to be creative e.g. IdeaPaint sell paint to commercial businesses and use Facebook for visually engaging their audience.

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]]> http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/why-btob-marketers-shouldnt-sweat-facebook/feed/ 0 http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/the-state-of-btob-social-marketing-2013/ http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/the-state-of-btob-social-marketing-2013/#comments Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:10:53 +0000 Gary Fox http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/?p=13904 The State Of BtoB Social Marketing 2013, produced by BtoB marketing, demonstrates that whilst the number 1 priority for BtoB marketers was to drive traffic to their website using social media, almost two-thirds (61 percent) described their social marketing strategy as “ad-hoc”. Even more startling is of those that were asked about their ability to measure ROI from [...]

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]]> The State Of BtoB Social Marketing 2013, produced by BtoB marketing, demonstrates that whilst the number 1 priority for BtoB marketers was to drive traffic to their website using social media, almost two-thirds (61 percent) described their social marketing strategy as “ad-hoc”.

Even more startling is of those that were asked about their ability to measure ROI from their social marketing: “rarely or not at all” and “don’t know” and “somewhat” comes to a whopping 83% of all BtoB marketers.



 

 

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