How Industrial Companies Can Succeed With Social Media
More and more, the conversations I have with industrial and manufacturing companies about social media don’t start with questions like “What can Twitter do for my business?” – but rather, “OK, I’ve got a Twitter page – but how do I keep coming up with things to say?” I’m sure that if I didn’t have a social media calendar and the help of some amazing tools, there would be plenty of days when I, too, struggled to come up with interesting posts for all of my social media pages.
Even though more and more manufacturing companies are stepping into the world of social media, very few that I talk to are approaching it strategically. It’s more like they’re experimenting, and if they see any benefit THEN they’ll start taking it seriously. For any company to be successful with social media, it has to be considered in the same way in which any other marketing communications initiative would.
Develop a social media content strategy; determine your company’s social media persona; then make your social media campaign efficient and keep your posts updated regularly by utilizing a social media calendar. There are lots of ways to develop a social media calendar, from very simple (for those of us who are more right brain) to detailed and complex (for the true project managers!) Following are some basics to help you get started.
Start with a strategy
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Secrets of Selling More! (With Social Media - REALLY!) - Part 2
The 2'nd article in Bernard Martin's series on social media use for industrial companies focuses on YouTube.
There is a lot of hype surrounding social media marketing and there are numerous articles explaining how to set up the accounts, how to use the various platforms and outlets, and, daily, new app’s to assist you in your marketing efforts. Frankly, it’s overwhelming. We’re not going to discuss much in this series about how to “build” your Social Media profiles. There are plenty of resources out there to find that information. We will talk about some “construction” issues but only as they relate to your selling efforts.
Rather than focus on what’s new, what’s the latest and greatest, this series of articles is going to focus on how you and your company can use social media as a sales tool and drive sales and profits to your bottom line.
USING YOUTUBE AS A SALES TOOL
Selling via YouTube can be simple. We’ll cover it all in this one paragraph. If you’ve already got product videos, trade show event videos, panel discussions, and technical instruction videos you’ve already got the content. By using YouTube video instead of sending out CD’s or DVD’s that can melt, freeze and break or just get lost in the field, YouTube provides a single web location where your sales, support and channel partners can access the videos quickly and easily.
- By seeing and hearing the same video over and over your team of people become more attuned to product features.
- You Channel partners can Favorite your videos so your video appears on their YouTube channel of vendors, distributors, agents, or dealers.
- You can find other informational videos that complimentary manufacturers or suppliers have posted and favorite them to your channel so YOUR company becomes a “resource”
- You can “subscribe” and also become “friends” with your customer’s YouTube channels so that their competitors (your other customers in many cases) start to see your company name appear.
- If you do live video presentations for training, you can have them auto upload to your YouTube channel in many cases.
There are two very important things you should be aware of when thinking about YouTube for your business:
- YouTube is it’s own social network.
- YouTube is owned by Google.
Value Proposition Workshop: Crafting Your Value Proposition
After you've analyzed your customers, your competitors, and your own company, you should have enough insight to craft a value proposition for your company. The idea of a value proposition is certainly now new, but many business people still fail to understand exactly what it is. It is NOT a list of features and benefits, and it's not marketing fluff. It's a statement, usually several sentences, that describes what your company offers in terms of tangible business results defined from your customers' perspective. That last portion of the definition is where many companies lose their way. Your customers don't care what your company offers just because you think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. They care about what you offer that meets THEIR needs and helps them achieve THEIR objectives.
An effective value proposition plays a key strategic role in developing a company's brand strategy and competitive positioning. Once you determine your value proposition, all of your marketing messages can be cohesive. If communicated well, there is a clear agreement or understanding of the business exchange that will take place between your company and your customers. If backed up by the infrastructure to deliver what you promise, you have the ability to build brand equity: that intangible something that drives customer behavior and makes them prefer one brand or company over another.
Before crafting your value proposition, you need to determine the differentiator that will be the basis for your offer. There are really only three types, and you can use the following statements that apply to each one to determine where your company fits. Keep in mind that some companies fall into two of the following three categories; however, in order to have a truly strong brand strategy you need to focus primarily on only one.
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