When it comes to Social Media Marketing, nothing is more powerful than posting links in major social venues for every blog post — especially as Google and other companies dial in “social signals” in their ranking formulas. One great WordPress plugin for this, features the big five social venues — Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and StumbleUpon — you can see it in use at the top of this post.

School yourself to click the buttons, along with your core staff and associates for every post you publish — this is the real secret.

1) To get started, join important groups at LinkedIN relating to your industry and participate in discussions there. You want groups that not only contain colleagues, but more importantly prospects who may be interested in your products and services.

2) Find online groups where your clients might hang out and maintain a presence there. At LinkedIn, you might try Property Management Professionals, as a Realtor, for example. With over 7400 members, you will learn more about serving their concerns, and could find leads in your geographic area.

Above is an example of the Social Bookmarking icons that appear at top of posts. Click each one regularly, and post your link to a Social Venue

3) When you click the LinkedIn icon under a post, you will have the opportunity to post it directly to a group you’ve joined at LinkedIn (right).

4) You take similar steps with each of the other buttons that connect you to the networks.  LinkedIn goes pretty fast once you are set up with groups you can engage.  StumbleUpon, not as well known as the others, takes about the same amount of time and authoritative websites like Mashable have reported great traffic results using it.  Then of course, you want to always post to Twitter, Facebook, and the new Google+.  School yourself to click the buttons, along with your core staff and associates for every post you publish — this is the real secret.

Above, you can see how I posted direct to Google+ from this blog — every Content Marketer should have a Google+ account.  Top three reasons:  Google is ranking G+ posts higher than other networks, G+ Brand pages will soon merge with map business pages, and… it’s expected to reach 400 million users in 2012.

Always be Authentic

5) Monitor the buzz about your company, and participate live at Social Media sites – authentic presence leads to real connections and leads. People buy from those they feel they know. So, don’t rely only on redistributed content and links. Make yourself known as a real person with whom prospects would like to do business. I recommend and use HootSuite to efficiently manage  Social Media accounts and will provide training and consulting for same upon request. Your bottom line is new customers for best ROI on your Social Media advertising spend.

BONUS TIP:  Give some serious thought to using a good CRM — Customer Relationship Manager — to nurture the leads you gather. Good ones factor in social media so you can learn what your prospect is buzzing about. We like BatchBook.com for smaller businesses, and SalesForce.com for larger companies. Make sure you cut down on entry typing by embedding a contact form on your website to send leads directly into your customer relationship management tool.

This week, we’ll cover a couple of important new Google announcements that affect your marketing tactics, plus take a look at 3 surprising rules for Inbound Marketers, including the proposition that Facebook Likes may not be that important — I’ll tell you why.  Note I’m using this week’s new media marketing flavor, “Inbound Marketing” to stress the difference between “old-school” push marketing (ie. direct mail), and emphasize the importance of engaging in online conversations, then nurturing leads and making sales.

NEWS OF THE WEEK::::::::::::::::

Two items of note for Marketing Communication Professionals:  The coming of Google+ Pages for your Business, and a Google algorithm upgrade that values recency much more.  I know, it’s becoming a Google driven world, but just follow two rules here to stay on top:

• Learn how to make your business “brand” page on Google+  – Mashable Article (Contact me for Social Media Coaching)
• Some are calling the new ranking algorythm upgrade, “Google Fresh”, but the most important thing for you to remember is that Google is now rewarding “recency” more highly in their ranking formula — keep writing content consistently.  See Web Pro News Article (Contact WebFadds if you’d like a quote on regular blog posts written by specialists in your industry)

3 Surprising Rules for Inbound Marketers

This infographic (click to enlarge) shows that FaceBook likers just aren't that interested in your brand

1) FaceBook Likes Are Not That Important

Are FaceBook Likes Really That Important? I say no. Here’s why: First we have a number of studies pointing out fickle reasons prospects click the like button; also, news that some companies are selling likes; and that many likes are from people not in a geographic location where they could do business with a brick and mortar store. Now Crowd Science has produced an InfoGraphic and article (right — click to enlarge) based on research that reveals “Facebook brand pages have been ’liked‘ by only 9% of Internet users — trailing the number of ‘likes’ for all other Facebook elements.” 

I also do not see high engagement or good conversions from Facebook for our B2B clients in Analytics. Take-away?  B2B MarCom Social Strategy should focus on LinkedIN, Twitter, and new Google+ Brand pages — before spending much time on Facebook.   

2) People Dislike Marketing Automation

Do You Hate Marketing “Automation? I do, and I bet your prospects do as well. This continuing mistake by Content Marketers (auto-bot links to blog posts sent to social venues, etc.), is addressed very well by HubSpot with a quick presentation and whitepaper. Flipping through their 10 things to hate slides, I particularly agree that Marketing Automation is “too sales driven.” Social business is not initially about driving hard for the sale… would you agree?

3) SEO May Beat PPC & Social Media for Lead Generation

Note I said “may”, because the jury is not in on this one in my mind.  But SEO is the winner for leads, according to a new report. +Matt McGee, writing for Search Engine Land, dissects the report and provides more insights including that B2B marketers do around 16% using SEO for lead gathering, and 33% of B2B marketing budgets go to SEO. B2C had different results with more emphasis on PPC and Social Marketing. And, no surprise since Social & SEO are merging, “60 percent of respondents said they plan to increase their budget for social media marketing in 2012.”

SEO Periodic Table of Ranking Factors

I think the jury is not in about whether PPC would beat SEO in lead generation, but sooner than later you’ll need to focus on SEO and that includes Social Media.  So, whether you begin with Social Media budget, then realize it’s linked to SEO, or just start with SEO work itself  this great info-graphic from Search Engine Land — The SEO Periodic Table of Ranking Factors — will help you get going (left — click to enlarge). I love the concise definition of on-page ranking factors, “Elements influenced by readers, visitors and other publishers.” Why do I love that? Because in my experience, it is the most neglected area in the practice of SEO.  Too often, C-Level managers insist on “inside-out” thinking, calling for optimization with key phrases they believe represents their company, instead of going with those that research shows will most influence visitors to engage. 

Stay tuned — rules for “Inbound Marketers” change almost weekly now.  I’ll keep you posted here and on Google+.

Things just keep on developing in the trenches of the SEO, PPC, and Social Media skirmishes, which means Content Marketers and MarCom pros need to pay close attention to integration and convergence happening in different areas of inbound marketing. We’ll look at three Inbound Marketing Trends here, discuss what they mean, and look at some emerging tactics to help you take advantage and ride the wave.

“The average outbound lead costs $373. The average inbound lead costs $143.”

Click the graphic above for a good overview of "Inbound Marketing" by Voltier Digital

Note I used two marketing focus labels in the introduction — “Inbound Marketing”, and “Content Marketing”. The first looks at methods to get people to your website, while the second has at its core creating relevant and compelling posts, media and other forms of content. These two disciplines overlap in a number of ways, so in the interests of integration, I’ll add the umbrella term, “Connection Cycle Marketing“, wherein the authentic connections leading to sales are king. I mention this, because as we discuss emerging trends it is useful to think of first, ways to get prospects to your website, then how content engages them when they arrive, and finally how this process persuades these site visitors to become customers. Then you do it all again — that’s the “cycle” part.  With that in mind, let’s look at the three “Inbound Marketing” trends now.

Inbound Marketing Trends 1 – Inbound Marketing offers better results than Outbound Marketing

• HubSpot, the internet marketing company that offers both marketing analysis and software tools, reports that “The average outbound lead costs $373. The average inbound lead costs $143.”  For “outbound,” think old-school with collaterals like brochures and direct mail being produced by MarCom professionals and being sent out of your company to engage prospects.  “Inbound Marketing” involves all of the strategies and tactics for engaging prospects online and pulling them to your site — including SEO, SEM (Search Engine Marketing which often involves PPC), and Social Media Marketing — SMM.  Whew… there are all those TLA’s again (Three Letter Acronyms).  Once you get visitors to your site, you need to have engaging and compelling content, then use testing and engagement tactics including CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) and VBO (Visitor Behavior Optimization) — sorry… more TLA’s.
• What this Means: MarCom professionals now need to think about ways to pull in prospects instead of focusing on pushing out messages to them.  This applies not only to old-school printed marketing materials, but also in new social venues, where a lot of marketers are perpetuating a similar mistake and simply pushing messages out there too.
• Tactics: I’ve mentioned a number of tactics above, but I would sum them all up as using these tactics in your continual “Connection Cycle Marketing” practice, which of course is another TLA… CCM.   Bind all of these together with solid business outcome goals for your key performance indicators in your Analytics program, and make each tactic prove itself for ROI.  Used well together you will have a very powerful synergy for your Marketing efforts.

Avoid the “content bot” approach — auto posting just links to your content in social venues –  where possible.  Business social is about creating relationships — the emotional handshake that leads to sales, and for these you must be “authentically present”.

Inbound Marketing Trends 2 – PPC becomes more important for both SEO and Testing

• PPC — Pay Per Click ads — are becoming much more important for your connection cycle marketing work, in part because it is so easy to test value propositions, and also because Google has recently announced that it will no longer report the organic keywords used to reach your site — but it will continue to provide PPC related keyword reports.  Google said it is doing this for privacy concerns, but the net result will probably be more revenue via its PPC platform — Google Adwords.
• What this Means: You’ll turn to adwords keyword reporting when you are looking for keywords that are proven to engage your prospects.
• Tactics: Here are two tactics to use PPC in your overall Connection Cycle Marketing strategy:
  1. Test your value proposition (ie. My Service Saves Time, versus, My Service Costs Less) in headlines in PPC ads, then also in A/B tests on your landing pages (make sure your landing page messaging coordinates with the ads you place)
  2. Look for long-tail key phrases in PPC that are often more affordable (ie. if you are an HVAC contractor, a “longer tail” phrase would be “Air Conditioning Cost Reduction, Houston”, versus just “Air Conditioning Repair”).  When you find them, write compelling blog posts focusing on those key phrases.

Inbound Marketing Trends 3- SEO and Social Media Marketing (SMM) are merging

• Google has announced it is factoring “Social Signals” into its famous, never published, always updating ranking algorithm.  Of course Google+ will play a prominent role (hint:  get a Google+ account now — there are already thousands of prospects on the serve totalling over 60 million users).
• Rand Fishkin, CEO of the respected SEOmoz, commented on Google+ recently that, ” Content, search, social and conversion are all connected, and I don’t think any web marketer can be successful without combining these practices.”  He said that, “For many years, I thought I could just be an SEO.”  Not anymore.
• What this Means:  The concept of “SEO” — Search Engine Optimization — changes as Google, and other search engines add new elements to the formula, and as each element becomes more important.  In this case, Google can count what posts and other content people are liking, G-plusing, and social bookmarking.
• Tactics:  Set up goals and track specific referrals from social media venues, then how they track through to desired outcome goals (ie. download a whitepaper, fill out a lead form, etc.) at your site.  Avoid the “content bot” approach — auto posting just links to your content in social venues –  where possible.  Business social is about creating relationships — the emotional handshake that leads to sales, and for these you must be “authentically present”.  Since you can’t be in several places at the same time, you need an efficient tactic for your Social Media presence — WebFadds has an overview of one for you here.

Stay on top of these three Inbound Marketing Trends as you go about your work — note that HubSpot offers a good “Inbound Marketing” certification program (I went through the course, myself).  In this time of great change, ongoing education is crucial.  We have some more articles on Connection Cycle Marketing to help you.

Note from WebFadds Chief  Scott Frangos (see:  ScottLinkedIN.com | ScottGooglePlus.info):  I began my career as a writer and editor and did a couple of stints in PR before gravitating to advertising-marketing-web development.  Now, we continue to see a lot of clients who need help creating consistent, well targeted, and professionally published content crafted to increase visibility, SEO, and to lead site visitors to desired business outcome goals.  In a nutshell — content marketing.  So, I’m happy to announce that we now offer three services for professional content creation…

Three Content Marketing Options from WebFadds.com

1. General Blog Posting:  We’ll interview your Marketing Communication group to understand the thrust of your messages and the profile of your target prospects.  Then, we’ll research recent search volume related to your industry to determine topics with you.  After that, we’ll create a minimum of two blog posts per week, crafted to engage website visitors.  We will review and track this campaign with engagement Analytics and custom reporting tied to business outcome goals like leads gathering, and downloading of white-papers which we will determine together.  We’ll tie this in with your Social Media marketing, itself growing in importance for good SEO results.  Generally, this level of content creation runs between $45 – $60 per post.
2. Expert Level Blog Posts:  For this level of content publishing, we will engage proven writers for your industry, plus add expert editing with an editor that will interview you, your prospects, and research the market further in order to produce longer and more insightful articles.  We will review and track this campaign with engagement Analytics and custom reporting tied to business outcome goals like leads gathering, and downloading of white-papers which we will determine together.  We’ll tie this in with your Social Media marketing, itself growing in importance for good SEO results.  Generally, this level of content creation runs between $79 – $120 per post.
3. Multi-Media, “Power of Story” Presentations:  People are moved by stories.  And you need every “emotional handshake” you can get for your business, so we will work with you to create multi-media presentations including video, animation, and flash-like (except we’ll use technology that IS viewable on millions of iPads and iPhones) moving images to get your story across and engage your prospects and customers with your story crafted to result in trackable business outcome goals for maximum ROI on this effort.

Contact Us Today… The bottom line is that Google and other search engines are stepping up how they reward consistent publishing of relevant content, and doing so using proven communication principles along with professional publishing and editing tied social media and with trackable goals is the key in this fast evolving online marketplace.

Everyone’s abuzz about how Google and other search engines are now heavily weighting your “social signals” — how many people like, friend, retweet, repost at LinkedIN, and Google+ your content.   Google+ too?  Yep.  But how do you stay on top of your Social Media Strategy?

Why do I think Google+ is a winner for B2B MarCom professionals?  Power, placement and pull.  Its tool set is powerful (resources to help you here).  Placement?  It’s everywhere from YouTube, to maps, to Android to websites to… well, everything Google- – and more.  Pull?  Google has over 80% of search eyeballs, and they are factoring Google+ “social signals” into their ranking factors.  In fact… most savvy SEO practitioners admit that Social Media and SEO are converging.

Google+ “Listening” TIP:  Check out this professional directory with over 16 million G+ users to listen to your competition, and study your prospects.

Things are changing fast, and it’s hard to maintain an authentic (live) presence in all social venues.  Here’s a list of Social Media Strategy Success Tactics in a powerful B2B package to minimize time spent, and maximize your SEO and ROI benefits from emerging social media venues:

The Plan to leverage a Smart Social Media Strategy:

1. Get a Presence in the “Big Five” Social Venues — Twitter, Google+. FaceBook, LinkedIN, and StumbleUpon.  Just one of the tactics we use is the WordPress plugin that provides quick ways to bookmark your business blog posts into all 5 venues (see top of this page).  But we know, you don’t have time to be in all places, so ask us about our “focused lead social  venue strategy.”
   
2. Save time, and proactively promote from one social media dashboard (they’re adding Google+ soon):  HootSuite*
   

   Consolidate your social media work on one convenient dashboard for all accounts, accessible by all your MarCom team.

3. Use an emerging “curation” tactic offered by Twylah.com to present your relevant Twitter messages in a zine-like format — on a subdomain for your site, so you get added SEO juice… see ours here:  http://tweetradar.webfadds.com/
   

   Deploy a dynamically updated tweet curation subdomain at your site which serves the dual purpose of refocusing prospects on important tween content plus gathers more SEO value to your domain

    

   • You set your blog to auto tweet to Twitter using HootSuite tools — set it then forget it, and focus instead on the new emerging leader… Google+
4. B2B Marketers… jump into Google+ — it is now recommended over Facebook (more options), and Twitter (better content tools).  TIP:  You may “curate” what you post back from Google+ to your blog.. with an auto-download of recent posts, as I did at my own blog:  http://www.webfadds.com/2011/07/google-digest-of-primers-guides-and-resources/
   
   • Find me on Google+ at ScottGooglePlus.info
5. Make your Social Business Efforts Prove themselves for ROI.  We’ll work with you and create a custom Analytics report designed to show how visitors to your site from each social venue completes desired business goals at your sites including signing up for newsletters, downloading white papers, and completing lead forms.

This is a powerful Minimize-Maximize strategy for your Social Media presence that I  sum up like this:  Minimize time using a central social media dashboard (HootSuite), then use Google+ as your primary “live presence” social venue for B2B professionals.  Maximize ROI using content curation techniques and good Content Marketing tactics — always testing that your Social Media activities yield optimum prospects and customers.

We will be happy to provide you with a prompt estimate for consulting and integration work as you strengthen your Content Curation and Social Signals Strategy.

* Scott Frangos is a Certified Social Media Consultant for HootSuite, and WebFadds has a marketing agreement with HootSuite

I’ve been using Google+ and covering it on my G+ account (ScottGooglePlus.info — TIP: domains cost abou $10, buy one and forward it to your Google+ page, like I did) for a couple of months now — and the nascent social venue is really on the rise for B2B Professionals.  I recently worked with a couple of clients, one in the Mortgage Industry, and another in Law, and we uncovered a number of competitors and prospects using the Find People on Plus Directory.  In this post, we’ll look at some tips and techniques to give you a leg up on Plus.  Let’s look at:

• Social Signals & SEO
• Sales in Social Venues
• A Game Changing Disruption — G+ BroadCasting via “Hang Outs” Feature
• How B2B Professionals can use the Plus to up their business game

Google+ Tactics for B2B Professionals

Here’s we’ll focus on five tactics that have been working for me and other professionals:

1. Listen to Prospects, then engage:  Earlier, I mentioned the excellent Google Plus Directory, Find People on Plus.  With over 16 million members, you can tune into your prospects — put each in their own “Circle”.  You do this by refining your search at the Directory, to find the right group of people, which for a Mortgage pro, for example, could mean tuning into Real Estate agents who could lead them to prospects.  Watch for a while, by clicking on their circle to see only posts from this group, then start commenting in a conversational way to engage.
2. Keep an eye on your competition:  Next, watch how your savvy competition is using the new social venue  A Mortgage Professional in San Diego, for example would look at competition by searching for other Mortgage Pros in that geographic area — like this (39 competitors are already using Google+ there).
3. Write Plus-1′s from any site with a button now:  When you are visiting a site that has a Plus-1 button on it — click it, and you can immediately comment on what you find — which should be either colleagues, prospects, or competition in your industry.  +Danny Whatmough has more on this with a visual example for you at Social Media Today.
4. Connect with influencers prior to your next conference:  Here your tactic is to simply go to the website for your next business conference, then use Google+ people search to track all the presenters and infuencers for it — prior to the conference.  Throw them all in their own circle using the G+ tools, tune in, and engage.
5. Come join our Google+ Business Group on LinkedIN, and share your G+ address, plus discuss more ways to use it in business.

Live in Cleveland at the excellent Content Marketing World 2011 Conference one of the most important questions you can ask is how fascinating is your Content? This is another way of asking does your blog engage visitors, or are they bouncing?

The "GodFather of Conent Marketing," Joe Pulizzi takes the stage at Content Marketing World 2011 in Cleveland

Ok. You don’t want your Content to suck. How do you make sure of it? Keynote speaker, Sally Hogshead, author of Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation, has some great ideas for that. She related the story of a ride at Disneyland which offered an Orange ticket for the dangerous version, and a Green ticket for the other version. If you choose the Orange ticket, you get a sickness bag and other cautions. People tweeted, messaged, and sent pics for that version. After Hogshead rode that dangerous Orange version of the ride, she went back and rode the Green version. It was the same exact ride. Same content.

I had a friend once who was quite good at sales and with people skills. If you asked him a question, he could have simply answered it by giving a couple of examples. But instead, my friend would clap his hands together and then separate them with both index fingers held straight up. “Two reason, Mr. Frangos,” he would say, perfectly timed with his fingers. Captivating.

Does your Content do that? The answer comes when you get to the bottom of what you are in business to do online. Publishing? Sure… but the point is you are also in… entertainment.

Here are five more key Content Marketing take-aways from the conference, which I look forward to attending next year:

1. To analyze how your content is performing (from a Keynote discussion with Brian Clark of CopyBlogger.com, and Michael Stelzner of SocialMediaExaminer.com): take a look at Page Views, Comments, and Retweets (in more than one venue, with emphasis on Google+ as an up and comer), then… follow your intuition — it’s a science and an art!
2. To drive results — work backwards from a desired action at your site(s), like getting leads, and set up your content to lead people in that direction.
3. Blog vs. White Paper?  Ardith Albee, author of eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale, (recommended) has this advice when you are considering what format for a release of important content:  “It’s not about the format… it’s about the content.”  I think she is spot on, though it does bear some consideration how a White Paper might be seen as more “portable” in terms of getting people to email it around in a viral fashion.
4. Deploy “Momentum Accelerators“:  Also from Ardith Albee, another gem — think about ways to build momentum with your content including follow on offers, and “conversational take-aways”, where you imagine a prospect in a corporation walking out of his/her office and going down the hall to another decision maker to share with some excitement an insight and solution tip they learned at your site.
5. Deliver the Truth:  Finally, one of my favorite lines from the show came from comedian, writer, director, actor and producer, Kevin Smith (recall his character, “Silent Bob” from the “Clerks” series of films).  Smith left us with this thought during the closing Keynote:  “If you want to really stand out in this world… you have to be honest.”  He said he has a little prayer before he goes on stage where he asks, “God, let me be honest.”  How honest is your content?

The Google+ interface comes with a number of powerful editing and interaction techniques, so I thought I’d share a few of my favorites with you over the next few weeks. In this post, we’ll look at formatting text, and also “tagging” someone you want to take notice on Google+ (it’s all about authentic connections).  In past articles, I’ve covered some other places to find guides, what leading strategists think about Google+, and some ways to integrate Google+ with other social networks and WordPress (we’re WordPress developers at WebFadds).  Now it’s time to get down to the business of interactive communication on Google+…

Text Formatting in Google+

If you’ve been blogging for a while, you probably have editing strategies to use bold or italic text when you want to emphasize important thoughts. In Journalism school I learned best uses for these communication tactics, and at formal magazines and newspapers there is usually a “house style” often demonstrated in a published style usage guide. The important thing is to use emphasis styles consistently when you wish to draw attention to certain thoughts in your posts, and now you can do it on Google+:

1. Use asterisks (*) around copy you want bold, and underscores ( _ ) around copy you want emphasized using italics. Also… use dashes (-) before and after for strike-throughs

2. After you share it,  you’ll see the formatting in your post.

I saw at least a couple of recent posts suggesting that Google+ posting could take the place of blogging, and that WordPress should be worried about that. I think Google has a ways to go, but since you have no character limit on the system it could be that for some professionals, Google+ will become a central method of posting over time.  The key

Here, I'm "tagging" Jay Baer — an Author, Seminar Speaker, and Social Media pundit of some reknown.

will be how you intend to tie your Google+ posts to your business outcome goals, and if they include gathering leads, and downloading whitepapers.. then you still need a central website for now.

Tagging People in your Google+ Posts

3. To “tag” someone on Google+ you begin typing the plus (+) sign then their name and click on the pop-up menu that appears.
4. Tagged names then appear in your post as a link, plus notification is sent to the person you tagged.

Why do you care about tagging people?  Because this is a primary social tactic to meet people, reward people (it’s good etiquette to mention them when you refer to something they’ve written, to help them build name recognition) and to gather recognition synergy to yourself by associating with other colleagues in your industry.  Remember this rule, always give prospects, and colleagues the “+”.

Bob Leonard of acSellerant is a WebFadds associate who I work with regularly. We work together on both WebFadds projects and on other “virtual marketing agency” teams. So I thought it would make sense to interview him… to get his thoughts on current client marketing needs and solutions. Bob is a career marketing services professional with significant experience in the B2B technology marketplace, and a deep skill set in content and online marketing including SEO copywriting and multi-media.

Scott: Bob – What’s your primary focus?

Bob Leonard – Content Marketing Strategist and WebFadds Associate

Bob: We work exclusively with mid-sized B2B technology companies. They typically don’t have the internal resources to consistently develop high quality content. Some have had bad experiences with ‘content farms’ that are low-priced, and deliver poor quality. As a result, many prospects come to us after they’ve suffered significant damage to their brands and reputations. Others have had bad experiences with advertising agencies that focused on branding and paid advertisements. The results there being large fees for the agency, but no increase in revenue for the B2B.

We fill the gap in between those two ends of the spectrum with high quality content that is relevant and useful to our clients’ prospects. Prospects consume the content because they want to, and in the process they learn how our clients’ solutions can help them. It’s a way to nurture leads without being intrusive. The quality reflects well on our clients… positioning them as trusted advisors.

What do you see as the current crucial requirement for B2B Marketers?

A blog post I wrote recently for the Content Marketing Institute titled ‘Crossing the Content Chasm’, struck a nerve. The basic premise, that there’s a significant gap between where most marketers are with their inventory of content and where they need to be, resonated with readers.

Along with the increasing demand for quality content, there’s also a shift away from traditional text-based content toward multi-media. Almost all business content is consumed online today. Busy executives won’t read, for example, a 12-page white paper explaining a complex technological solution. So we need to deliver that same information in a multi-media format that’s quick and easy to consume.

At acSellerant we’ve developed a process that helps us to do that. We call it: Strategy, Story, Storyboard, Sequence, Socialize. You’ll have to interview me some other time so I can go into the details around the process.

What are your thoughts about the new Google+ Social Network?

You know a lot more about it than I do. From my perspective, it looks like a Content Delivery platform. For the B2B marketplace, once Google extends the business aspects of the platform, it should be an effective tool for delivering the right content in the right format to the right people at the right time.

That’s a mouthful! We’ve come to the end of the interview, Bob. Want to leave us with a few B2B marketing tips?

Sure. Getting back to content… what’s relevant and useful to one person is irrelevant and useless to the next. So you need to know exactly who you’re target audience is. You should rework your content to make it appeal to different targets who may influence a buy decision. In other words, if both the VP of Sales and the CFO will have a say regarding whether to buy your solution, make sure you talk about how it will help generate leads (or close deals) when addressing the VP of Sales, and make sure your focus is on the payback and ROI of the solution when focusing on the CFO.

Also keep in mind that prospects will have different questions and objections at different stages in the buy cycle. For example, in the beginning they’ll want to know about your company’s reputation and experience with their industry. Towards the end of the buy cycle, they’ll be more interested in integration issues and terms of the contract.

What a week for Google with 20 million new G+ users at last count!  Below you’ll find a reference list of usage tactics, guides to help you come up to speed, and some apps to help you work efficiently.  Welcome to the revolution – follow me at ScottGooglePlus.info.

The Future for Google+

• Is Google the Next Big Thing?  Find out what some thought leaders think.
• How will Google Plus change your Business Game? Take a new Poll on that and watch this one to see how your colleagues (at LinkedIN) vote.
• On Phones:  Huddles… the wedding of Google+ and Smart Phones (never forget the Android factor)
• Discuss Usage, Marketing, and the Future of Google+  in a new LinkedIN Group — Business with Google Plus

Google+ Usage Tactics and Techniques

• Been Invited?  How to get the elusive Google+ invitation.
  
• Very usable  Google+ Directory: Scroll down on left to find people by Occupation, State and City.  You can drill down by city, then profession if you like, or do a general search, for say — WordPress — then drill down from there.
• A real-time list of Google+ “Hangouts“, and you can list yours there.
• Great article on using G+ for your job search: Includes 5-slide overview of Circles is another good visual primer.

Google+ Articles with a Marketing Focus:

• Interesting take on G+ marketing strategies…Reshared post from +Carri Bugbee BruceClay – Google+ Profile Optimization: Branding, SEO and Social Media Marketing
• Is G+ the best Content Marketing Tool?  My own take is that because G+ emphasized Conversation over Content, that while it will serve many purposes of Content Marketers, that should be secondary to making authentic Connections.  Conversation, Content, and Connections are definitely three things that G+ enables.
• Excellent set of tips on using G+ for marketing, market research and other tactics.
• Here’s an excellent post about how to use Social Media to circle around your prospects (used “circle” on purpose… G+ is ideal for it) by +Chris Abraham — on Biznology.  Mr. Abraham not only reveals how to “smoke out” prospects, but also notes the huge organic SEO benefit.
• Wait a minute… what has Google been doing while we all are focused on Google+? +Steve Rubel has some excellent thoughts on that from an advertising and social signal perspective.

Google+ Guides & Primers

• Another good primer on Google+, this time from Sitepoint — thanks to +Joel Falconer
• I have a simple one-page PDF for download showing Google+ integration with other networks (Twitter, FB, and LinkedIN), and also with WordPress.
• Another great visual guide (it’s a series of images you flip through on G+)  The Google+ Start-Up Guide
  

  From the G+ Startup Guide by Saidur (Cy) Hossain

• Flip through Mr. Wong’s slides – excellent strategic overview of what Google+ represents  (Click first slide to open larger and get navigation arrows)
• And here’s a short You-Tube video with ways to adjust G+ Settings:

Google+ Browser, Phone and iPad Apps

• Chrome Browser App: Let the G+ app enhancements begin… this one, G+ me,  does look nice, but I have to agree with +Danny Sullivan that adding too many browser apps have been known to slow things down.
  
  
• iPad Hack:  If you can’t wait, here’s how to Get G+ on your iPad (remember… you do the first 5-6 steps on your desktop or laptop Mac BEFORE hooking up your iPad to the Mac)
• iPad App Coming Soon: I’m waiting for this iPad app — there’s no name given, but it comes from the Google team itself (it’s waiting for approval from Apple)… read article about it and keep watch
• SmartPhones: Here’s how to get Google+ on SmartPhones (iPhones and Android)… go to: http://www.google.com/mobile/+/ Notice carefully the “Huddle” feature, referenced earlier — it’s specifically to help mobile people coordinate get-togethers.