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Posts from the ‘Social Media’ Category

25
Jun

What are new tasks of salespeople in the digital world?

new tasks of salespeople in the digital worldThe digital evolution has changed how organizations conduct business. There’s a lot of change happening: customers now have new ways of communicating using social media, forums and product reviews. They gather real-time information on products and services, and engage with brands in real-time, using mobile phones and more.

The rise of real-time messaging applications like Snapchat, Vine, Instagram and others signal a new era where customers increasingly expect personal experiences and instant real-time interactions. Instant shipping of products in ever shorter times provide instant gratification to buyers that live in the moment of today.

More access to information also means buyers increasingly research products, even for low involvement products like FMCG, fashion, computer software, multimedia products or home decoration. More and more of the buying process is happening online, where buyers today need to be served more and more by the content that marketers provide them.

The abundance of online content and channels is shifting the power from the seller to the buyer. Today buyers are more informed then ever, in which they don’t need salespeople anymore to help them buy. Or, salespeople get invited to conversations much later these days because of online content, in which they are confronted with very educated customers.

What is the impact of all of these changes on the role of salespeople within the buying process? Read more »

10
Feb

Social Business Strategy – The Law of the Squeezing Social Media Networks

social business strategyWhat happened in 2014 in the field of digital marketing can best be compared with the Law of Bernoulli.

This law is very simple to understand: put your foot on a water hose and turn on the tap. What happens next, in my imagination,  is a bubble of water that appears in the hose, just like in the Tom & Jerry cartoons from my childhood. On one side of the bubble, the pressure is higher. And on the other side, at the far end, only a little bit of water comes out. Take your foot of the water hose, and “voilà”, there is again plenty of water. Agreed, Bernoulli’s law is more complex than that, but this is supposed to be Bernoulli’s law “for dummies”.

In 2014, we’ve seen that Facebook started putting both feet firmly on our social media water hoses. Where we used to enjoy delicious free organic reach for our content, with “Facebook Zero” that organic reach came to a standstill. If we want to reach our Facebook friends as a brand, an hose them down with our updates, we’ll have to pay “please-get-your-foot-of-the-water-hose”-money to Facebook.

What is less known is that not only Facebook is doing this. Other titans like Google, Twitter, and LinkedIn are taking steps in this direction.

Why do they do that? Obviously it comes down to money.

But it’s about more than just moneyRead more »

29
Dec

(Slideshare) How to plan & design your social business CULTURE ?

social business cultureA couple of weeks ago I published a blog post with a “way-too-long-title”.

But what the heck, I still decided to call it “How have IBM, Adobe, and Dell become a Social Business? And what can a smaller company learn from them?”.

Sometimes you just need to do what you think you need to do, even when it’s not in line with digital marketing best practices. Read more »

30
Nov

How have IBM, Adobe, and Dell become a Social Business? And what can a smaller company learn from them?

social business for SMBWhat can small and medium business (SMB) learn from giants such as IBM, Adobe and Dell about becoming a social business?

At first sight learning from these giants seems a crazy idea. SMB’s are different by every means. They have less budget, less employees, and certainly have different problems.

But surprisingly, when looking at how these large companies have become social businesses, there is a lot smaller companies can learn…

 

For this blog post I have:

  • studied the social business strategies of  IBM, Adobe and Dell in detail,
  • mapped out a the best practices from these companies
  • formulated some best practices feasible for SMBs.

Read more »

22
Jun

Social Business has now become Inevitable and Unavoidable

Social Business Change-is-InevitableWhen Facebook ended the “free love era”, they drastically scaled back the organic reach of brands. It seemed for many marketers as if history repeated itself.

For a few years they enjoyed the exposure the network brought. But today, if you want exposure, you’ll need to pay to play. For brands on Facebook, these are dark days. They can choose to spend more money to reach fans they had already accumulated in the past, but Facebook will likely decrease branded reach even further.

It isn’t long before other large social media networks will do the same.

What are brands to do when social media networks are choosing to reduce the freedom that brands can play on their networks?

The evolution of Facebook – signaling the era of Social 3.0

organic search decline - reason to go for social business

According to a new report from Simply Measured, the total engagement for the top 10 most-followed brands on Facebook has declined 40 percent year-over-year—even as brands have increased the amount of content they’re posting by 20.1 percent.

To understand a little bit on what’s happening, we need to go back a few years in the history of Facebook, and then look into the future of what is most probably going to happen. Read more »

28
May

From Content Marketing to Meaningful Marketing: Crossing the Chasm

content marketing and social businessCrossing the Chasm is a marketing book by Geoffrey A. Moore that focuses on the specifics of marketing high tech products during the early start up period.

It provides a great analogy for companies aspiring to move their content marketing initiative beyond content marketing, through social business towards meaningful marketing.

In this blog post I’ll  explain why I believe the path to meaningful marketing starts with content marketing, gradually becoming a social business, and then towards meaningful marketing.

The question is how do you move from content marketing, to social business, towards meaningful marketing ? Read more »

20
Jan

How to Embrace Digital, Social and Content as a Company?

20131113_Embrace_Digital_Social_and_Content_as_a_company_Slideshare_version_pptxThe reactions where heartwarming. Although I knew I had a nice story, I didn’t expect these fantastic reactions.

A couple of week ago I presented to around 60 B2B decision makers. The topic was basically about the biggest challenges of marketers today, and how they can solve these challenges.

When I posted a trimmed down version of my presentation on Slideshare, I got another happy surprise. It got voted “presentation of the day” on Slideshare. I think that’s pretty cool. And that my friends, as you can imagine, made me a little bit proud and totally made my day.

Here’s what I presented… Read more »

7
Jan

Digital Marketing Trends for 2014

digital marketing trends 2014As marketers, we have to “do” a lot. Just when we have social a bit under control, we need to do mobile. And just when we have our first “responsive” website ready, also this doesn’t seem to be enough. Nay, now it’s all context, big- data, gamification, customer experience and collaboration.

Pfffff.

It’s not easy today for marketers. And it won’t become any easier. How should a company deal with these changes? And how do you create new opportunities? Read more »

10
Dec

How do you become a C-Level Digital Marketer?

C-level digital marketer

RU Ready for C-level?

I was really impressed. On his business card it said “Chief Social Media Officer”. He worked for a rather big, international company.

He told me he was busy with an impressive social media project, and was full of “influencer marketing”, “sentiment analysis” and “advocate” marketing. They were active on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest.

Wauuwww.

Just until I asked him how many tweets per week he was getting from customers. Then it became quiet. “Euhh, one or two” he answered. “But we are only starting to be active” he added quietly.

When I checked their Twitter stream just now, their latest Twitter post dated of one month ago. LinkedIn hadn’t been updated the last year, and they had 18 followers on Pinterest.

Everything is difficult in the beginning, you think, and it takes a while to grow a following, right? They had been active for 5 years on Facebook.

And when I check what they publish on online, mainly promotions and news about their own company and products, then it doesn’t surprise me they only have a handful of followers. Read more »

5
Nov

“You have to” versus “You Should” Marketing

marketing patchwork

Are you into “marketing patchwork” ?

You have to do social. You have to do mobile. You have to do content. You have to do inbound. You have to do digital. You have to do blogging. You have to do thought leadership. You have to do SEO. You have to do Apps. You have to do customer experience. You have to do context. You have to do community. You have to do gamification.

You have to be home on time.

You have to do Buyer Personas. You have to do brand journalism. You have to do opt-in. You have to do authenticity. You have to do collaboration. You have to do 1-1. You have to do collaboration. You have to do analytics. You have to do big-data. You have to do automation. You have to do Social CRM. Read more »