LinkedIn for B2B: Getting Started

by Fronetics | Jun 8, 2016 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy

This is part one of a three-part series on LinkedIn for B2B. See part two, How to Hire Talent through LinkedIn, and part three, 10 Ways to Gain LinkedIn Followers.

LinkedIn is the most popular social network for B2B companies. Here’s what you need to know to get started.

Chances are your business is on LinkedIn. B2B companies overwhelmingly report it as the most important social network to their business. But there’s a big difference between being on LinkedIn and being active on LinkedIn — and the latter can have a big impact on your bottom line.

LinkedIn has grown to be much more than a professional networking site. Leveraging all of its functions can help you generate leads, recruit premium talent, and establish your business as a trusted source of knowledge in your industry.

Here is a basic overview of LinkedIn for those businesses who are looking to optimize their presence on this most popular B2B social networking platform.

What is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site with more than 433 million users in over 200 countries. It was launched in 2003, and was purchased by Microsoft in June 2016.

Individual users can create profiles highlighting their skills and employment history and “connect” with others. They can also:

Search and apply for jobs
Ask for introductions to people in their contacts’ networks (called second- and third-degree connections)
Endorse connections for their skills and write them recommendations
Follow companies and Influencers to receive updates on their activities
See who has viewed their profile
Share content and updates
Like, comment on, and share other users’ content and updates
Send private messages to other users

LinkedIn is free to join, but there are also several subscription options for job seekers, recruiters, marketers, and sellers that offer premium benefits and solutions.

LinkedIn for B2B employers

Businesses can create profiles on LinkedIn, as well as share content, make connections, and see analytics detailing who engages with their company. Getting set up is a little different from creating an individual profile, however. Here’s what you need to know.

The company page

Employers can create a company page. Company pages have four main sections.

Home: displays the business overview, updates/shared content, friends and colleagues connected to the business, Showcase pages, and links to other affiliated company pages
Careers (paid subscription required): facilitates interactions with job seekers
Analytics: provides metrics and identifies trends on your updates, followers, and visitors
Notifications: offers a daily overview of the updates and page performance

For tips on optimizing your company page, check out our free resource, A Visual Guide to Creating the Perfect LinkedIn Company Page.

Gaining followers

Once a business has a company page, employees can add it to their personal profiles, indicating that they work there (or have in the past). By doing so, they automatically become followers of the company and will receive its updates in their newsfeeds. When they follow the business or like, comment on, or share its content, all of their followers see this action, motivating others to do the same.

Users can also find and follow your company by typing in the business name in the search box at the top of the website.

Companies can help attract their target audience to follow them by using Follow Ads. Follow Ads appear throughout LinkedIn and can be targeted to users in specific industries, companies, and regions. They invite users to click the “Follow” button and join your page. Here is what it looks like:

There are other types of ads designed to attract followers and drive users to your company page. Learn more on LinkedIn Ads.

Other features to know

Groups

Groups connect users from across LinkedIn with common interests and provide forums for related discussion. While company pages cannot join groups or participate in group discussions, individual members can share your company content in these forums. Your employees who launch, administer, and participate in groups related to your business or industry can help get your business name and content in front of like-minded professionals this way.

If you manage a group related to your business or industry, you can also feature it on your company page — up to three groups per company page or two groups per showcase page. Note that you would have to be the company page administrator and a member of the group you would like to add.

Showcase pages

Showcase pages are subunits of a company page that highlight a brand, business unit, or initiative within your business. If you have multiple business units, for example, users can choose to follow the showcase pages of just those that interest them. Your business can tailor the content and messages you share on each showcase page to better engage the demographic specific to that segment. The idea is to help businesses segment their audiences so they can build long-term relationships through content distribution. Read more about showcase pages.

LinkedIn Pulse

LinkedIn Pulse is the network’s publishing platform. Users can write blog posts to publish on Pulse by choosing “Pulse” under the “Interests” dropdown menu, or by choosing “Publish a post” from the homepage. There’s no limit on word count, and you can upload rich media like photos, videos, tweets, podcasts, and presentations to supplement your post.

Posts published to Pulse are search-engine friendly, and authors’ networks receive notification when they publish. While you can’t post on Pulse as a company page, you can post content from employee authors on your company page.

Influencers

Launched in 2012, the Influencers program encompasses less than 1,000 of the world’s top business leaders, thinkers, and innovators who contribute regular content on Pulse. Bill Gates, Arianna Huffington, and Richard Branson are a few examples. A team of LinkedIn editors select Influencers and work with them to create content around issues and topics on which they can provide a unique perspective as leaders in their industries and geographies.

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Stop Pitching, Start Helping

by Fronetics | Jun 6, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy

Trying to pass your sales pitch off as content will only hurt your content marketing efforts.

Think your blog is a refreshing new way to highlight your products or services? Do your posts include verbiage like “one-stop-shopping,” “innovative,” or “industry leader?” Stop right there. Everyone you reach probably knows right away that you are trying to sell them something, and they will quickly move on.

As counterintuitive as it may sound, being “salesy” will make potential customers look elsewhere, or run in the opposite direction — perhaps to your competition. The best way to win customers is to stop boasting about yourself and to stop trying to sell. Content that answers your customer’s needs is what will grow your business.

Nobody welcomes a sales pitch

Admit it: you tune out anyone that comes across as trying to sell you something. You get emails, voicemails, and social media updates with “information” that is really a not-so-cleverly disguised sales pitch. What do you do? Most likely you hit delete, or you do not read past the first sign of a sales promotion.

So you know deep down that “salesy” does not sell. Yet, according to a recent study of 500 global marketers from the Economist Group, many B2B content marketing programs are doing just that: promoting products throughout their content efforts. In fact, 93% of the marketers surveyed said they directly connect content to a specific product or service.

Customers see right through this trick. The same study found the majority of B2B customers are annoyed by pitches. In fact, 71% of B2B executives reported that content they didn’t like seemed more like a sales pitch than valuable information.

Focus on your customers to increase sales

So what should you content be doing? Rather than forcing your products on your prospective customers, take time to answer their questions. Be the expert advice they are seeking. You do this by:

Keeping content informative and educational. Your content should hold value for your readers.
Letting your content demonstrate market expertise. It should give the reader a favorable impression of you and your business. They should walk away thinking that you know what you are talking about.
Write as if you are speaking to a business peer. You are approachable and intelligent. Speak the language of the customer, and bring something new to the table, in terms of information.
Focus on topics and questions of crucial importance to your target audience. What do they care about or want to know more about?

The philosophy of content marketing is to offer help, to educate, and, at times, to entertain your target audience. This is accomplished by focusing on the customers’ needs and interests, not your company’s latest product. When you form this online relationship with your audience, you gain their trust and respect, and that is what brings in sales.

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Optimizing Emails for Mobile is a Must-Do

by Fronetics | Jun 2, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing

As the prevalence of smartphones increases, businesses must consider how their emails appear on mobile devices.

You may have created a marketing email masterpiece, but how will it look when someone reads it on a cell phone? This is a very real concern, considering that 56% of email opens occur on mobile devices.

The ubiquity of smartphones has changed our relationship with email. The 72% of American adults who own smartphones are checking email much more frequently throughout the day. This equates to better chances for your brilliant marketing email to be seen and read.

But, the caveat is that your email, which is typically designed to be read on a laptop or desktop computer, must be easy to read on any device. If you send a marketing email that is not optimized for mobile, more than half of your recipients are straining and struggling to read your content. You’ve given them a good reason to delete it instead of reading it.

Here are a few tips for optimizing emails for mobile:

Keep it short and sweet.

Your message should be well articulated but simple. Keep paragraphs short and concise, and put all of the most relevant facts first.

Don’t picture this.

When it comes to images, less is more. Android devices automatically block images unless the user changes their settings. And for those who do see your image, it’s rarely optimized for their specific phone, since shapes and sizes of mobile screens vary. It becomes work for your reader to try to shrink or enlarge the image to see the whole message. Also note that when you embed large image files, they may take an excessively long time to load.

Hello. It’s me.

Be very concise with your “subject” and “from” lines, which are super-condensed on cell phones. For example, an iPhone (held vertically) only displays the first 25-30 characters of a subject line. Often, sender’s name is boldfaced and the first thing the reader sees. Make it easily recognizable!

Responsive: your new best friend.

Choose a “responsive” template, which will automatically fit an email to the screen on which it’s being viewed. This assures you that your marketing email will look the way you intended, whether it is viewed on a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop computer. WordPress has pre-built themes that incorporate responsive design elements. Unfortunately, there’s no simple plugin to make a non-responsive template responsive.

Button up.

Avoid adding links. Use a button instead for your call-to-action. Make sure to set plenty of space around it, so it is easy to click without accidentally clicking something else. Buttons essentially prove to be much easier for people to click on when using a touchscreen.

Keep in mind: With 98.4% of the market share today, Android and iOS are the operating systems your emails typically will be viewed on.

To remain competitive, your marketing email designs must be optimized for mobile to remain consistent across multiple devices. It is wise to test how your emails look on different devices to see how they appear on each screen. But most importantly, choose a template that is responsive, and make these five tips a regular part of your email marketing strategy.

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Seven Ways to Get More Views on Your YouTube Videos

by Fronetics | Jun 1, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media

Improve the reach of your videos with these distribution strategies.

This is part three of a three-part series of creating videos for YouTube for businesses. Check out part one, YouTube for Business 101, and part two, Cheap and Easy Tools for Creating YouTube Videos.

If you have put the resources into creating videos for your business, you absolutely want as many people to view them as possible. Hosting them on your YouTube channel is an excellent start. But you can do more to ensure your videos attain their maximum reach.

Here are seven ways to share video content from your YouTube page.

1) Optimize your YouTube channel.

After you have uploaded a video to your YouTube channel, make sure your viewers can easily find and watch it. There are a few ways to do this.

Add it to a playlist.

Consider YouTube playlists like chapters of a book. They help your audience understand what your channel is about and navigate to the content that interests them. Playlists also represent a marketing and branding opportunity for you. For example, Southwest Airlines’ Fee Hacker Tips playlist includes humorous, 15-second clips on how to save money when flying other airlines. Or the Late Late Show with James Corden has a dedicated playlist for its popular Carpool Karaoke segment.

Here’s how to create a playlist. Once you’re done, make sure to add a description of the playlist to give your viewers an idea what it is about.

Use it as the channel trailer.

You can choose to have a video trailer play when a user visits your channel. Much like a movie trailer, this video will give visitors an idea of what your channel — and, thus, your business — is about and will entice them to subscribe. Lonely Planet, for example, uses their beautiful Best Places to Travel in 2016 video as an introduction to their content.

Here’s how to set your video as the channel trailer. You can also choose to have the channel trailer play only when an unsubscribed user visits your page.

Create channel sections.

Channel sections are like building blocks: They allow you to custom build your channel’s layout. You can create a section of particular videos, the most recently uploaded videos, a playlist (or playlists), and more, and then reorder the sections to best highlight the content you want to promote. Your channel can have up to 10 sections.

Here’s how to organize content using channel sections.

2) Embed in your blog posts.

Once your video is on YouTube, it is super easy to share and embed in places like your blog posts. That means the reader won’t have to navigate to YouTube from your post to watch the video: It will play right in your post. To get the embed link, click on the video you would like to use. At the bottom of the video, click “Share,” and then “Embed.” You can choose the player size, as well as other things like what plays after the video is done. YouTube will generate a customized embed code based on your preferences, which you can add to your blog post.

3) Post it to your Facebook timeline.

The number of videos uploaded to Facebook increased by 94% from 2014 to 2015, with more than 50% of Americans who use Facebook daily viewing at least one video per day. What’s more, 76% of people in the US who use Facebook say they tend to discover the videos they watch on Facebook. This makes having video content on your page almost a must-do.

You can post your YouTube video to your Facebook timeline by clicking the share button and choosing the Facebook icon under the video on your channel. Note that you can also upload a video directly to Facebook by clicking “Add photos/videos” at the top of your newsfeed. There are pluses and minuses to both approaches. Viewer activity on your video embedded from YouTube is included in your YouTube analytics. Uploading directly to Facebook means you will have to analyze your YouTube metrics as well as your Facebook video metrics to get an idea of how your video is performing overall. On the other hand, native Facebook videos have twice as much organic reach as YouTube embeds.

4) Add a call-to-action button on your Facebook page.

Drive viewers of your Facebook page directly to your video by creating a call-to-action button on your cover photo. To add, go to your page’s cover photo and click “Create Call to Action.” (Note: not everyone has this feature yet.) There are several options, including “Watch Video.” Action camera manufacturer GoPro makes use of this button, which leads to its YouTube channel feed on the GroPro site.

5) Use a Twitter Payer Card

Don’t just tweet about your video — actually tweet it! Twitter Cards allow you to attach photos, videos, and media experience to tweets that drive traffic to your website. Ensure your the actual video populates in your followers’ Twitter feed (instead of just a link to the video) with a Player Card. Here’s an example of what it looks like:

6) Give a sneak peek on Vine or Instagram.

Users can share short video clips on Vine (6 seconds) and Instagram (60 seconds). Though the videos you produce for YouTube will likely be longer, you can offer a sneak peek of the more robust content through these social platforms. You’ll reach a wider audience, and probably a younger demographic as well.This is important, keeping in mind that the B2B buyer profile is getting younger, too.

7) Pin it.

Pinterest is another social platform many B2B companies have yet to tackle. But with 100 million active users, there is a lot of untapped potential there. “People are planning out really core and important parts of their lives on Pinterest,” says Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann. That includes career and professional endeavors.

You can embed YouTube videos directly onto Pinterest. Just click the “Share” button under the video on your channel.

Another thing to consider: Pinterest boards rank in Google searches. Create some boards around keywords you would like to rank for, post relevant content (like videos) that you’ve created, and watch SEO and the reach of your content improve.

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Cheap and Easy Tools for Creating YouTube Videos

by Fronetics | May 26, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media

Get started creating YouTube videos for your business with these easy-to-use tools and ideas for content.

This is part two of a three-part series on creating video content for YouTube for businesses. Read part one, YouTube for Business 101, and part three, Seven Ways to Get More Views on Your YouTube Videos.

So, you want to add video to your content repertoire but are intimidated by the technical savvy and equipment required to get started. Creating videos for your YouTube channel is actually easier — and less expensive — than you might think. You just need a camera, some editing software, and, of course, some content.

If you need some guidance on those three elements, then this post is for you. Read on for some recommendations on user-friendly tools for creating YouTube videos for your business. I’ll also offer ideas for content along the way.

What about a camera?

You don’t need a professional-grade camera to produce quality YouTube videos for your business. In fact, your smartphone is equipped to take HD video and can suit perfectly well for short clips or on-the-go shots. But if you’re planning on creating regular video content, purchasing equipment exclusively for this purpose is probably a wise idea.

The good news is that decent video equipment is pretty inexpensive these days — not to mention, easy to use. Here are some favorite budget options.

1) Webcams

Webcams like the Logitech HD offer great 1080p (full HD) footage for well under $100. These are easy to use and ideal for static shots, such as interviews, Q&As, or presentations. The main disadvantage to a webcam is that you will have to carry your laptop with you to film. But for the price, this option is hard to beat.

2) GoPro and other action cameras

GoPro cameras are designed for extreme action sports, but their durability and take-anywhere functionality make them perfect for creating YouTube content for business. Pack in your briefcase to film at a tradeshow; take a product for a test drive to give customers a new perspective; or mount in an advantageous location to showcase your operations. Keep in mind that you don’t need the most expensive, high-tech model to get great footage — some of the older versions go for under $200. Downsides include compromised sound quality and the fixed, wide-angle lens.

3) Point-and-shoot

Point-and-shoots are probably the most convenient and versatile option — you can use them for just about any kind of content. They are easy to mount on a tripod, and offer excellent sound quality (especially if you use the microphone input). Most are small and easy to transport, and many offer an articulating screen, which is key for ensuring you’re getting the shot you want. They vary widely in price and quality, so proper research is necessary to find a camera that will hold up to the kind of content you plan to create.

4) Micro four thirds system (MFT)

Pushing the limits of being budget-friendly, MFT system cameras offer the most professional look for your videos. Swap out different lenses for a variety of angles and shots, and know you’ll have high-quality images all along. Some models have articulating screens, too. If a micro four thirds camera is within your budget, you’ll be able to make beautiful, professional-looking videos, regardless of their content.

For specific camera recommendations, YouTube is the perfect place to search, as many vloggers (video bloggers) take to this channel to offer their informed opinions. For example, this breakdown of six budget cameras demonstrates the difference in image quality while providing excellent, product-specific information on different camera models.

Putting it together

While you may get that raw footage that is perfect and ready for uploading to YouTube, most likely almost everything you film will need some TLC. Here are seven cheap (or free!) and easy tools that will help you cut, brand, and produce your videos.

1) iMovie

http://www.apple.com/mac/imovie/

If you have a Mac, this is a no-brainer. iMovie is a user-friendly application that allows you to upload and cut video, import still images, and add music from your iTunes library. When you’re done, upload directly to YouTube. iMovie is included in the iLife suite for both OS X and iOS.

2) Windows Movie Maker

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/movie-maker

One of the most popular video-editing tools around, Movie Maker comes free with the Windows Essential package. Drag and drop photos and video clips into the editor; add music and captions; and upload directly to YouTube.

3) HitFilm 4 Express

https://hitfilm.com/express

This free video editing and compositor software for Mac and PC offers professional features but is still accessible to the amateur video editor with limited experience. Trim, color-correct, add visual effects, and more. If the free features aren’t enough for you, reasonably priced pro add-ons really up the ante. Best of all, perhaps, are the extensive video tutorials available to users.

4) WeVideo

https://www.wevideo.com/

If you plan to upload only a few minutes of video a month, WeVideo is for you. This cloud-based collaborative video-creation platform allows you to publish 5 minutes/month to YouTube (and seven other channels) for free. Upgrade on the cheap for more publishing time and features. The main perks include intuitive design — great for beginners — and the ability to work on your video from different devices. You can also add a call to action or watermark.

5) Animoto

https://animoto.com/

Animoto is a cloud-based video creation service that produces video from photos, video clips, and music into video slideshows. For $34/month (for a year), you can produce quality content marketing pieces, like this video from City Girl Flowers.

6) ScreenFlow

https://www.telestream.net/screenflow/

This screen-recording and video-editing software is available for Mac for $99. Though on the pricier side of this list, it’s totally worth it if you’re looking to make more sophisticated screencasts with little to no hassle. The intuitive editing interface allows you to slice your video; add still images, text, sound, and transitions; and upload directly to YouTube, as well as other platforms.

7) Movavi Screen Capture

http://www.movavi.com/screen-recorder/

This lightweight screen recording program, available for around $60, allows you to choose which area of the screen you’d like to capture, adjust sound, and set a timer. It’s perfect for recording a slide deck presentation or a Skype call — a great feature if you’d like to record an interview or Q&A with someone who works in a different location. Movavi also offers a program specifically for converting PowerPoint presentations into video (~$60), or you can upgrade to the Screen Capture Studio (~$100) for more advanced features and a full video editor.

What tools and programs do you use to create YouTube videos for your business?

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Next Entries »

Stop Pitching, Start Helping

Trying to pass your sales pitch off as content will only hurt your content marketing efforts.

Nobody welcomes a sales pitch

Focus on your customers to increase sales

Optimizing Emails for Mobile is a Must-Do

As the prevalence of smartphones increases, businesses must consider how their emails appear on mobile devices.