Notes from the Hive (Entries tagged as Social Networking)

Generating Leads Through Linkedin

mardy@bumblebeellc.com (Mardy Sitzer) — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 03:40:56 -0700

What I find interesting is just how under estimated Linkedin is. The more popular Facebook, Twitter, Youtube get all the hype and attention while this gold mine quietly sits and grows and grows. My guess is that because it is a professional networking site it doesn’t have the universal sex appeal of the others, but a savvy sales and marketing executive knows – or should know the power of Linkedin.

Generating more business is everyone’s job at a company no matter what your position. Everyone should not only be a brand ambassador but should also be a lead magnet. Linkedin is primo for the B2B market and even for B2C companies. When one conjures thoughts of vendors, strategic alliances, investors, allies, partners, employees, consultants and prospects, START with Linkedin.

Market research reveals that it is the first place HR checks when either looking for or vetting a candidate. Statistics reveal that the education and earning levels of members is one of the highest of all the social media properties, with the exception maybe of practice specific sites for lawyers, accountants and the like. Becoming successful is not a result of hard work and smarts alone, it often boils down to ‘not what you know, it is who you know’ and Linkedin will help you get those valuable connections.

So what can Linkedin do for you and how can you start generating leads?

Before I venture into some of the lead generating activity suggestions, please spend some time on your profile and settings. Make sure that your profile is complete, that you are incorporating keywords in your titles and descriptions, and above all, make sure that you describe yourself in a way that clearly delivers the value in knowing you!

1. Grow your network: Linkedin has tools that connect directly with Outlook and has the ability to search other email accounts to see who you know already on Linkedin. If you don’t connect your email program, at least perform a monthly check for new contacts in your database for who is on Linkedin.
Tip: Every time you go to an event carry a small envelope with the date and name of the event. Place all the cards you collect into that envelope and when you get back to your office start reaching out to those people to connect and use a personalized message such as ‘it was great meeting you yesterday at the EVENT, I would love to stay in touch and see how we might be of service to one another.”

2. Updates: there is a feature much like Twitter and Facebook that allows you to post an update that will show up on your profile and in network updates to your connections. Use it wisely.

3. Introductions: Give them, ask for them. The idea of 6 degrees of separation is made apparent on Linkedin. If there is a contact at a particular company you seek, by searching on Linkedin you will discover who you already know that knows who you want to know. Introductions make a cold call a warm call and a faster track to closing a sale.

4. Get Visible: Linkedin provides updates to members you are connected with. Some people adjust their updates to daily, some weekly but the point is that delivered to your connection’s inbox are updates and you should find ways to have your name show up in those updates. Read on for some suggestions on how to accomplish this.

5. Referrals: say thanks to someone – a vendor, partner, even a customer – for a job well done or just acknowledging some special talent or skill that had a positive impact. Chances are they will reciprocate. And don’t be shy about asking customers to write a recommendation but be careful to ask only those who have actually worked with you and can speak to your professional brilliance.

6. Groups: join groups that are relevant to your business and interests and that you can contribute to meaningfully. Groups where your prospects participate are a good place to start. Much like real life, hanging out with the right people is a solid step toward successful connections.

7. Books: Linkedin provides the opportunity to mention what you are reading or have read with a short blurb regarding the book. I could write volumes on why this is a pivotal tool but for now just let me say that sharing this information is a really good idea.

8. Events: the events feature on Linkedin lets you browse what is happening and in some cases, people will actually make notation that they are attending. You might just find that the person you are trying to meet will be at an event in your area.

9. Slideshare: has expanded to not just power point decks but now includes video and other documents. This is a great way to show off some of that industry specific knowledge that no one knows you have.

10. Blogs: Linkedin can automatically pull in your blog posts. If you would like to grow your reader base, or just keep your contacts in the know with the great material you are providing through your blog, don’t forget to activate this feature.

11. Twitter: ugh. Yes, Linkedin will allow you to stream your tweets into your profile. I say ugh because I caution you as this can become annoying. I am not a fan of this feature as I find it clutters the page as most tweets are inane at best and often times out of context and offer no real value. Each person is different and it might work for you but I would exercise caution here.

12. Saved Search: if you want to keep tabs on a company you are interested in, conduct a search on that company and save it so that any changes with the people in that company will be in your updates. Are they letting more people go then hiring? Did someone get a promotion? Did they hire someone you know?

The take away: Linkedin is a professional networking platform where the information is rich and powerful and the opportunity to break barriers of entry exists. A lot of searches are done on Linkedin and this is another opportunity to get found by the people you want to find you. Link your way to success!

Staggering Social Media Statistics

mardy@bumblebeellc.com (Mardy Sitzer) — Mon, 10 May 2010 06:35:04 -0700

This is really more a share than a blog. Just last week the updated video for social media statistics was released - you may remember the one from last year - a great video that went viral pretty quickly. So I am doing my part and sharing this with you. I recommend you watch the video but in case you need the notes, below are the statistics that they share.

Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh) May 5, 2010
By Erik Qualman

It’s amazing how fast the world of social media moves! As many of the statistics from the original Social Media video have changed, I took a moment to refresh the video with a few new statistics and graphics.

1. Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30-years-old
2. 96% of them have joined a social network
3. Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.
4. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
5. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
6. Years to Reach 50 millions Users: Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…
7. Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year
8. iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
9. We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it.”
10. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest ahead of the United States and only behind China and India
11. Yet, QQ and Renren dominate China
12. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
13. 80% of companies use social media for recruitment; % of these using LinkedIn 95%
14. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
15. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres (combined) have more Twitter followers than the populations of Ireland, Norway, or Panama. Note I have adjusted the language here after someone pointed out the way it is phrased in the video was difficult to determine if it was combined.
16. 50% of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
17. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé – some universities have stopped distributing e-mail accounts
18. Instead they are distributing: eReaders + iPads + Tablets
19. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
20. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
21. While you watch this 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube
22. Wikipedia has over 15 million articles…studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
23. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
24. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
25. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour
26. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
27. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
28. Do you like what they are saying about your brand? You better.
29. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services than how Google ranks them
30. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
31. Only 14% trust advertisements
32. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
33. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
34. Kindle eBooks Outsold Paper Books on Christmas
35. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation
36. 60 millions status updates happen on Facebook daily
37. We no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
38. We will non longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media
39. Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate
40. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Men Listening first, selling second
41. The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in 5 years
42. Bonus: comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network

Spring Cleaning on Facebook

mardy@bumblebeellc.com (Mardy Sitzer) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 08:35:14 -0700

I admit that I have not attended to my Facebook business fan page and promise to start getting more involved soon. In the meantime my personal page was getting eaten alive with mafia wars and farmers from Farmville and I found it most annoying.

I am glad that folks have hobbies and like playing on line games I just don’t want the updates on my wall with big images and things that I don’t find relevant and doubt most of my friends do. Maybe I sound cranky, maybe I am sharing a sentiment that rings true with you as well.

I did not want to block my friends and I am interested in staying in touch but wanted to filter out the applications that clutter a wall with ‘stuff’. So I blocked those applications from showing up on my wall while still leaving my friends streams and posts visible otherwise.

If you want to do the same thing here is how you do that.

When a post shows up on your wall with an application you would rather never see again, right click on the application name that appears in small print at the bottom of the post and select OPEN IN NEW TAB. You can also just go to the application fan page.

Once you are on the application fan page you will notice some options on the left under the image. One of those options (thankfully) is BLOCK THIS APPLICATION. Select that and then go back to your own wall and guess what – a nice, clean, stream of genuine sharing among friends.

If you have other tips for Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or other sites, please share them with us.
Also Invite you to join us on Facebook

Social Media: Where Do I Start?

mardy@bumblebeellc.com (Mardy Sitzer) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 11:46:46 -0700

You may be one of the millions who have NOT started engaging in social media as a customer or sales outreach but are still thinking about it. Or not.

Social media is a fact of business life today. Chances are some of your employees are, your competitors, customers and prospects and so you should at least become familiar with the tools that will give you an understanding and first alert system for when there is a problem or an opportunity.

A problem might look like a competitor beating you to the opportunity, a customer complaining about your company or an employee behaving badly or sharing proprietary information. An opportunity might look like someone sharing a problem that you can solve or a competitor failing to deliver and a good opportunity for you to present your services or products.

Lets start with corporate policy. If you have employees then you can be sure that some have a facebook, myspace or twitter account and possibly their own blogs. Policy is not just for what is said and done on a company site but also can cover what is said and posted on personal sites – at least as it relates to your business.

Employees should have clear guidelines that if they are involved in social media what is acceptable and what would get them fired. Examples might be, no mentioning of our customers or any company business at all. Maybe you want to narrow the focus to no names, no discussions of financial matters, processes or in-development work and no boss or co-worker bashing.

If you have an HR Department, set up monitoring of staff on-line activity – and should certainly do this as a precursor to hiring anyone new. If you don’t have in-house staff, this is an easily outsourced process.
Other suggestions might be geared toward etiquette such as not engaging in flaming (arguments), and suggestions that if you wouldn’t say it to your boss or your mother than chances are you shouldn’t say it on line either. These guidelines and best practices can be the same for online branded site activity as well.

A good example of a corporate policy is Dell's. I would also recommend reading an article in Forbes on the topic.

The next place to start is conducting a baseline audit. This is research to help you understand the current environment and understand how to best relate to your audience – especially understanding where your audience is and how they are engaging on social media sites. You could also discover who the loudest voices are and who carries the most weight. These could be excellent targets to romance as they have the larger circles of influence that can carry your message all the further.

Getting involved in social media should be a strategic move with measurable results. Just jumping in and hoping for the best could leave you either disappointed with your ROI or worse, turn away what could have been a viable prospect. Or worse yet – both disappointed and shut out.

More Face time with Facebook

mardy@bumblebeellc.com (Mardy Sitzer) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 07:53:01 -0700

Let’s face it, when it comes to marketing don’t we want to be where the action is? If we want exposure then it only follows that we go where the eyeballs are. Given the finicky and fast changing trends today on the internet it pays to keep an eye on where the traffic is flowing.

Think back only a few short years ago. Twitter was not a well known property and yet seemingly overnight it became the hottest topic on everyone’s mind and the rush to join created a landslide of followers. Although Twitter has remained a hot property for connecting, research, search and creating awareness, many have become disillusioned with the volume of noise and the crowding of the space making it harder to sort the spamming riff raff from genuine folks to connect with. Twitter is still a valid arena but the attention and explosive growth now turns to Facebook.

Comscore recently released the December 2009 metrics. Comscore is best known as the industry barometer for the digital world and source of digital marketing intelligence. According to Comscore, Facebook more than doubled its U.S. audience from 54.5 million visitors in December 2008 to 111.9 million visitors in December 2009. It went from being the #11 ranked property to the #4 ranked property. It now accounts for 7% of all time spent online in the U.S. Read this report in its entirety.

Like Facebook or not, the appeal is that you have more control over your conversations and with who you connect on line. You are not limited to 140 characters and you can upload videos, pictures, have lists to manage personal and business separately and the opportunity to create group and fan pages to be a more interactive extension of your website. Facebook is not without flaws but it is growing in popularity. One aspect that I enjoy is having a closer look at how and with whom my friends are connecting and what they are sharing. With LinkedIn you can see who is connected to whom but you can’t really see how they are interacting. Twitter and LinkedIn lack the intimacy that Facebook affords.

Growing a friend following and a fan base may take a bit more time with Facebook, but given the trend it would only make sense that this is a marketing focus that you might want to pay attention to. Less formal than LinkedIn, your corporate culture and personality have an opportunity to take root and the opportunity to be more creative and experimental with how you reach out and connect and attract. With discussions, events, videos, photos, and a wealth of widgets you are now only limited by your imagination to making marketing fun. That’s right – fun!

One other enticement to get involved with Facebook – if you want to try your hand at advertising to specific people who are the most likely potential customers, well, Facebook's advertising is a smart system. Facebook collects an awful lot of information about members and they offer amazing controls and options to insure that your message is seen by those who are most likely to be a match. Sure beats search engine plans that in comparison could seem willy nilly. If you don’t have the marketing budget to pay for tire kickers and accidental clickers cruising through the digital divide then give Facebook a try.
Become a fan of Bumblebee Design & Marketing LLC and let’s explore the possibilities!

Yoo Hoo, I'm Over Here!

mardy@bumblebeellc.com (Mardy Sitzer) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 07:45:58 -0700

The never ending quest for getting found on the internet as we invest more and more time and resources on our websites and in social mediums remains an extremely hot topic in many business conversations.

If you want new business to find you, then you need to strategically leave breadcrumbs sprinkled across the internet. If you aren’t out there, you don’t exist. These breadcrumbs should reveal enough about you that a prospect can begin to feel that they know who you are and can trust you.

A recent article at Tech Journal South, The Findability Group's Heather Lutze presented her Social Media Advertising Formula for optimizing business presence at six top social sites. We thought this was a good summation and wanted to share, so here's a brief breakdown:

1. LinkedIn. This platform is great for sending updates to business associates, Lutze says. Tip: To search-optimize your profile, select one core keyword and deftly repeat it in your copy.
2. Facebook. Your best choice for posting a "personal" profile online. Tip: A profile keyword here can set up a company exec as an expert within the closed Facebook community.
3. MySpace. Create a fully developed business profile in this open community. Tip: Search your target B2B audience within the site to develop "a great outreach network," Lutze suggests. (IMHO this medium has lost ground in the B2B community but remains solid for the music oriented.)
4. YouTube. An excellent forum for viral campaigns. Tip: For each amazing video you create, include a keyword in the title and in its description.
5. Your Blog. Starting a blog should be a top social priority, Lutze advises. Tip: Select a unique keyword before writing each post.
6. Twitter. Use Twitter to push tweets out to other platforms like Facebook, and increase your reach. Tip: "Personalize your Twitter background for a … branded look and feel."

If you haven’t already started, then gather your team, mentors, vendors and develop a strategy and plan and get virtual! The impact has immediate effects on driving traffic to your website.

A Note From Your Friendly Know-it-All Guru

mardy@bumblebeellc.com (Mardy Sitzer) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:55:17 -0700

Hello, allow me to introduce myself. I am you friendly know-it-all marketing maven, SEO queen of the web, web-mistress extraordinaire, and social networking queen. I can jump tall code, leap long blogs and sing and dance circles of design and content that will bring the house down.

I twitter, I flickr, I facebook it, youtube, webinar, and walk my dog while texting.

I am in the know, on the go and get around. I can get it done, move it forward and bring it on.

OK, that is enough for now but I think you get the picture. Yes, we have our hands in everything today because the world of marketing and design has been moving at light speed and to bring real solutions to our clients we have to stay current. Staying current is a full time job on anyone’s dance card and combine that with getting our client’s actual work done is sometimes overwhelming. No, I don’t really claim those things I mentioned above. If I did, I would be committing a grave act of fraud. I did this opening to bring your attention to two very important things.

First, whatever you were doing yesterday probably isn’t valid anymore today.

Second, if you aren’t willing to explore these new things, chances are you won’t be valid anymore.

If you are selling ice cream on the corner or specialty apparel on the web, or providing services and goods to businesses then the same applies.

What you do need to know are these important facts:
• Email campaigns have been losing wind for quite a while now as they hit the spam folders or simply go unread. Corporate email servers block emails sent through third party software campaigns and so may not even be arriving to their final destination. The worse culprit of failing emails is poor content. Content that is neither interesting nor relevant to the recipient.
• Traditional advertising is expensive to produce and even more expensive to purchase. Once again it is a matter of the message, the content and measuring real ROI.
• Your website is probably not doing its job anymore either. If it hasn’t been updated in the last year or so, it probably doesn’t conform to any of the new SEO best practices and chances are reviewing analytics is something that hasn’t occurred lately in your firm. It is probably a good guess that fresh new landing pages are not being generated on a regular basis and that blog you’ve been meaning to start, or get back to, is languishing somewhere on the bottom of your to-do list.
• You and your sales team probably spend a good amount of time networking, following up, relationship building and face time with groups, clients, prospects and other areas of lead nurturing. This is time consuming and yet, when done well and in the right circles can provide results, although I have rarely met anyone who measures the success of these activities through methods other than ‘gut’.
• Are you protecting your brand? Do you know if disgruntled ex-employees or dissatisfied customers are posting negative reviews in cyberspace?

So where and how do you drive new business into your firm, ramp up the traffic to your website and convert lookie-lous into prospects, run them through a conversion process to become qualified prospects and then close the sale? ENTER: SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING.

• The most common areas of Business social media today are: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and Plaxo.
• The most important thing in marketing is CONTENT.
• The second most important thing is LINKS.

Social Media Marketing provides you the opportunity to generate interesting and relevant content and develop authoritative links. And the honest truth – it all has to work toward developing RELATIONSHIPS. How do you develop relationships on the internet?

Join the conversation!

Twitter is the fastest and easiest way to join in on conversations, attract and engage people and help you work towards engaging others that are potential prospects, offers you a platform to nurture those leads and bring home the sale. It is not fast, but trust doesn’t come from speed dating, it develops when you can get past the first date to the second and so on. Just like sales. Only this way, you have just joined the largest universal cocktail party and now it is up to you to learn the tools to manage that network to your advantage.

All a Twitter

mardy@bumblebeellc.com (Mardy Sitzer) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 10:12:12 -0700

The decision is in. Twitter is no longer a fad and not just for kids. Twitter has evolved into one of the most powerful networking and marketing tools we’ve seen. According to Nielsen Wire’s blog, “Twitter increased 1,382 percent year-over-year, from 475,000 unique visitors in February 2008 to 7 million in February 2009, making it the fastest growing site in the Member Communities category for the month.” To read the full article.

An interesting statistic also shared in this article is that the largest community is comprised of ages 35 – 49 comprising of nearly 47% of who is on Twitter these days and that of these folks, nearly 65% of them access Twitter from work. Still think it is for kids?

So now you know you shouldn’t hold off any longer. Seemingly simple to join and ever more complex to master, Twitter is still a good choice for business. Twitter offers one of the easiest sign up features I have seen and getting a Twitter account will be the least of your challenges. However, from there remains the looming questions of how to make it productive and how not to get overwhelmed with the 7 million people to listen and talk to.

This is relatively new and because it is so hot there are thousands of emerging experts, books already en masse both ebooks and traditional hard cover, websites and blogs that are helpful and abundant and friends of friends who can assist. You can read some of our earlier blogs where we have discussed Twitter and please know that I have found more than 300 third party Twitter applications to help you in your quest to master tweeting. I do intend to share links and observations over the next few weeks so if you haven't yet subscribed to this blog, look over to your right on the screen and sign up now. Ok, so let's get on with this.

In one blog entry I cannot say or share all that is needed so I thought I would start at the beginning and talk strategy, and like any marketing effort, you need a smart strategy.

Twitter is not a traditional marketing channel by any stretch of the imagination and so you cannot take your standard marketing strategy and apply it to Twitter. Twitter is about having sociable conversations and about building relationships based on interests and perceived value. If you think you are going to get on to Twitter and start booking business, get over it as that is not likely to happen. Twitter is a long-term investment in relationship building and brand awareness. So there, your ROI metrics aren't going to work in this model. You won't tweet and get an order. So, let's get this show on the road.

The first question you want to ask is WHO DO I WANT TO FOLLOW ME? Why, because those are the people that are going to listen to what you have to say and constitute your REACH.

The next question you have to ask is WHY WOULD THEY FOLLOW ME?

Last but certainly not least, you need to ask HOW WILL THIS HELP MY BUSINESS?

How to explore the WHO. You will need to have a Twitter account, so if you don’t have one, go ahead and sign up. Don’t obsess just yet on the details, just get on-board and think of it as a test account. This will give you the ability to research. The following recommendations do not constitute a complete list of applications to try out but it is a helpful starting point.

To begin searching who is on Twitter visit Twello, a robust and powerful yellow page style application to search. You can narrow your searches geographically and by industry.

To check out some of Twitter's inhabitants and you aren’t ready to let them know about you, use a TweetStalk a service that allows you to eavesdrop and spend time studying these folks and learn about their interests, their reach and how you might begin to connect with them. The reason for using this service is that if your Twitter profile is not yet ready for its debut you don't want to risk loosing the parties you are interested in before you've even started. Once you follow someone, they get a notification and have the option to follow back. Think of it like hosting a cocktail party, you don't want to show up in your underware!

Keep a running list of who you want to follow understanding their role in your new twitterverse. Are they decision makers, influencers, or connectors? You’ll want to have a mix of these profiles in your who to follow list.

The other areas you want to explore for who to follow are the people who share interesting or valuable information. Industry, local or world news; entertainment; helpful technology or industry gurus; hobbyist and so on. These folks can be a rich resource to introduce you to new ideas and information and likewise, provide interesting posts that you can share with your followers through retweeting (a lot more on this topic later) adding both to your value and your personality.

I hope that you found this helpful and if you subscribe to this blog you will get more on Twitter. We will cover the strategy development of Why Will They Follow You in our next issue. From there we will explore the tools that will help you remain sane and effective in your Twittering endeavors. Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter.

Where Web Site Visitors Come From

mardy@bumblebeellc.com (Mardy Sitzer) — Sun, 03 May 2009 10:01:30 -0700

It is Sunday afternoon and pouring rain. I can’t go out to play so I am catching up with work while co-mingling my attention and efforts with home projects. One of the items on my to-do list was to check out our website traffic statistics, and so off I went to the admin panel to begin digging into our reports. In order for these reports to be relevant I also pulled up my history files for recent activities such as blog posts on our site, Linked-In updates, Tweets on Twitter, article submissions to ezinearticles.com as well as comments posted on other’s blogs and now, embarrassed as I am to admit it, Facebook entries. Yes, I have only started on Facebook and I will address that in a future blog.

Why pull up this information? It should all be relevant to the traffic spikes on our site. I look at the posts, updates and entries to learn what was interesting, and well, what was boring. Allow me to share some breadcrumb facts.

Breadcrumbs? Yes, hopefully you read my entry on getting a life on line. What all this activity is meant to do is to leave a breadcrumb trail back to you. Your activity on the internet leaves breadcrumbs for the search engines to follow you home and leaves breadcrumbs for people interested in you and what you do.

Some things I found interesting on our most recent report.

• Linked-in drives more traffic to our site than any of the other social sites, with Twitter coming in second.
• Length of stay and pages viewed is higher from Twitter followers than from Linked-in.
• The third site driving in traffic with meaningful visit time and pages viewed is ezinearticles.com where I post some of our blog articles.
• The highest traffic is direct traffic and with the percentage of new visitors being higher than returning, I can assume that our drip marketing and networking efforts are having an impact. I can also assume that there is little reason for our clients to return to our site – something we need to work on.
• Breadcrumb results were interesting as I am now able to tell what posts drive the most interest and my communication efforts can now be refined and targeted toward those topics and keywords.
• We have great organic volume as well, however not as impressive for length of stay and pages viewed so we need to take a look at what general searchers are not getting form us when they search. In all fairness to us, many of the searches that take away from having impressive statistics is the number of searches for bumblebees and hives rather than web design and marketing.
• Maximizing the advantage we have from designing and maintaining so many websites is that our name appears – a tiny link at the bottom of those pages – and this drives more traffic to our site than any other medium. It is safe to assume that if someone visits a website that they like and are in the market for a new site, they would explore the company that designed and developed the site that they are on. Yes, this is an unfair advantage but not necessarily one that you can’t explore. Look toward your vendors, clients and partners for linking options.

Hopefully this offers some insight as to why we have been preaching to get out there and get going with activities on the internet. Social networking should be a key component to your marketing efforts. The goal is to build a network, make new connections, sources and nurture prospects. The exposure for your firm comes along for the ride and therefore you are brand building in the process. Now it is not ‘miracle grow’ but it is Miracle Marketing.

There is valuable feedback to be gained from these endeavors. Understand that these activities are geared toward prospecting and brand building, and it is not for selling. Warning: You will not experience instant gratification or instant success, but you just might deliver on the promise for a bright future.

Twitter This, Link That

mardy@bumblebeellc.com (Mardy Sitzer) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:11:55 -0700

The options are overwhelming and the chatter on the internet is deafening. You don’t know where to start or what to do once you get there. Just when you think you are up to speed on the social networking, bookmarking, aggregating sites, dozens more get mentioned in the press or in the newspaper or magazine that you have never even heard of.

The local book stores and Amazon are filled to the brim with books on the more popular sites at the moment, and more books on what to do and what not to do fill the shelves. Once again, your eyes gloss over and you decide to take a deep breath and just walk away.

Getting started involves being able to answer ‘what should I join?’ and then there is ‘how do I do it?’ followed of course by, ‘now what?’

Allow me to offer a dozen tips.
1. Just do it – do anything, do something.
2. If you are B2B try starting with the more mainstream sites like Linked-in and maybe even Twitter.
3. If you are B2C try starting with the more popular personal sites like FaceBook.
4. Don’t be closed minded about trying just start with at least one to get familiar with the concept.
5. Sign up then tour and explore. a) Look for a competitor and a few like-type companies and evaluate their profiles. b) Evaluate what they say and how they say it and any other information you can find. c) Look for groups or gatherings that might be relevant to you or your target audience, read what they have to say but don’t join in just yet. d) Email some compassionate friends and clients to see if they are on that site and if so would they link to you and give some feedback.
6. Read the FAQ on the site you join, this will offer how-to tips.
7. DO NOT SELL, DO NOT BRAG, DO NOT MARKET and above all DON’T CLAIM TO HAVE THE ANSWERS.
8. Think strategy – planning will help you to understand how to best achieve your goals and to measure the value of the site in relation to meeting those objectives.
9. Think KEYWORDS in your communications so that others will find you based on their searches.
10. Listen and learn then make some practice strokes.
11. Think sandbox: share often, be polite, no bullying, be helpful, and above all, be genuine. Twitter is a great place to practice this and also to build a following.
12. Be patient. New business is not going to start flying in the first week. Maybe not even for a month or more, in fact, it may not fly in at all but then you will have been contributing content to your name and the search engines are going to recognize that helping your website move up in the rankings. This is a no-lose proposition for the most part, and you just might enjoy it, find new resources and learn new things in the process.

Social Media Predictions for 2009

mardy@bumblebeellc.com (Mardy Sitzer) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 12:16:02 -0700

As this year comes to a painful end we prepare for the battle toward success in 2009. Where do we invest our time and our challenged resources? What do we focus on to move our companies and brand into the buyer’s mind’s eye for sustaining and growing our companies? How do I create a ‘strategy’ for success in this market? Where is this market going?

There are so many questions to ask this year with less information to actually predict and project. One thing is for certain, 2009 will stand witness to mass mergers and closings, especially in small to medium sized companies. This, you can bank on. If you have cash and are in good credit standing, you will be in a position to buy out your competitors if that is a smart move, or you can just raid their customer base, picking and choosing which customers you want to serve.

Besides buying your way to the top, there needs to be a strategy for your own organization to grow and serve customers. Is social media for you? The answer to that question is that it has been ready, but are you? There has been such a rush around social networking and media that for many, it has been too overwhelming to understand, let alone begin to implement into our business marketing efforts. You may remember a book that came out years ago by John Naisbitt called “High Tech High Touch”. If not, it is still available and what he had to say so many years ago, long before facebook and twitter came into our world, is proving to once again be true. The bottom line to the findings in this book is that the more techy we get the more we long for the human touch. With the rush to massive on-line marketing through internet media and social networks, there was at first a kind of special connection only to quickly become diluted as the numbers became so massive that statistical measuring became a fruitless endeavor, and needless to say, the ‘relationship’ aspect got lost in the volume.

2009 will be about relevancy and meaning – and meaningful connections. The warm hand that touches you in the cold techy world is the one that will be heard. Customer Service will continue to rule as the number one factor that creates fans, blowing away content as KING. So it is not going to be how much you say and to how many people you say it, it is going to be what you say and to whom, and how quickly you respond after you’ve struck a nerve.

If you want to learn more about the predictions, there are innovative frontrunners in this industry that have shared their knowledge and views as well as their predictions. It is well worth reading. We are providing you a link to the article and the pdf which you can download here, courtesy of Peter Kim.

Or view the article online here: http://www.beingpeterkim.com/2008/12/social-media-2009.html

THE BLOGGING NETWORKS YOU NEED TO KNOW!: A Journey into Social Network Marketing, Pt. 3

() — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:24:38 -0700

So you started your company blog, now what? You need to get your blog seen by more people, more often and get comments and start building a community. Check out these sites and register your blog. These are the communities in the blogosphere that have the most users and pack the biggest punch!

Technorati – www.technorati.com
Register your blog or blogs, including microblogs like Twitter. You can make friends, share blog articles, comment, etc. From there you add your tags (stay tuned for an upcoming post from the Hive about tags), start making connections with like minded bloggers. With an index containing 112.8 million blogs and 250 million pieces of tagged social media, Technorati is one of the big boys. That’s a whole lot of reach, so sign up for your piece of that massive blog pie!

Digg – www.digg.com
Digg is as large as Technorati but goes beyond the blog. It’s a more general news aggregator and social content site. While a blog’s visibility is increased using Digg they also pick up content from larger news, gossip and media sites. While that may dissuade you at first, Digg is set up with community and communication in mind. It may not always be about you or your company but with these other types of sites added to the network you can find even more specific groups with more specific interests. Great networking tool!

StumbleUpon – www.stumbleupon.com
eBay’s shot at the website ranking and discovery biz, StumbleUpon focuses on personal recommendations based on your interest, to the point they want your stumbling tools right on your web browser. Like Digg, StumbleUpon utilizes user voting, as well as being able to submit just about any article, blog or video on the internet. You may also want to check out a site that’s coming to be the ‘new’ StumbleUpon, Twine (www.twine.com).

Other sites definitely worth your attention are Del.icio.us (www.delicious.com) and Slashdot (www.slashdot.com) for various blog and media sharing communities. As you work on your blog you need to make sure your readers have access so they can recommend your blogs for these sites! AddThis (www.addthis.com) is a great tool for that! With one button on your blog, your readers can submit your blog everywhere from FaceBook, Propeller, LinkedIn, even Fark and of course all the sites mentioned above - 43 in total at the time of this post.

As we continue to assist you in the journey into social network marketing, we look forward to your leaving a comment or let us know if you would like us to expand on any of these topics. Next up we’ll have some fresh information for you on tags and Yammer.com - the business oriented microblog network. Stay tuned!

Is It Time To Tweet? A Journey into Social Network Marketing, Pt. 2

() — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 09:36:47 -0700

One of the latest tools on the social networking scene, Twitter is also one of the most controversial. It’s a micro-blog, which means it’s a very specific type of blog network. You can only post entries 140 characters in length, essentially the same maximum size of a text message sent through you cell phone, which comes very much into play in the perks (or detriments) of Twitter. These short entries are affectionately referred to as “Tweets”. You set up your Twitter profile, much like any other social networking site. From there rather than friends or contacts you follow other Twitters and in return you have fellow Twitters following you, something like a subscription to a blog.

Sounds simple enough, so why the controversy? Well at first glance it looks like nothing more than a tool to constantly annoy your friends, family and colleagues with multiple times a day. I fell in line with the detractors for quite some time as well, until I did some more research and gave Twitter a real chance. It’s customizable enough so that you can pick how you receive your Tweets, not just overall, but specifically from user to user. You can log onto the Twitter site to read your Tweets or you can have them sent to your cell phone, in return you can send out your tweets via cell phone. A great perk for many bloggers reviewing films, going to concerts, panel discussions, etc. Your audience gets instant play by play reviews, remarks sent either to their Twitter or to their cell phone, it’s their choice. I like to keep track of the news at all times, so I have CNN’s Tweets sent directly to my phone, meanwhile I also follow some pretty tedious Twitters that feel the need to express every thought in their head. I have those Tweets sent to my Twitter page to read at my leisure so I’m not stuck on my cell phone reading these text messages all day.

Now the real question, is it useful and marketable in the workplace? When I was a skeptic I was very much saying no, no way, no how. It’s nothing but a narcissistic tool for people with too much time and ego.
I was wrong, dead wrong. While not for everybody, depending on your business and your audience Twitter is an extremely useful tool, more useful than any other social networking tool out there when used correctly. Twitter was considered a massive asset to the Obama campaign this past election. Just take a look at some Twitter pages, a massive amount of users are STILL following the Obama campaign almost a month after the election. Perhaps you run a bar, club or any other business involved in the nightlife, right there at your disposal is a tool to get your drink specials, list of performers, cost of entry at the door, etc. right into your audiences hands everyday, right into their cell phones. Perhaps you run a car service or delivery service, your employees can update your client base on traffic and weather that may affect the time of travel right there on the road with their cell phones. These types of situations make Twitter extremely useful to you and your audience without being overly time consuming like running a full FaceBook page or Technorati blog, just a minute here and there.

Beyond those circumstances even the big corporate guys are finding great ways to use Twitter. It’s a great utility for reputation, quality control and even when necessary, damage control. Zappos, the online shoe giant has a Twitter, even then it’s not just any Twitter. It’s updated personally by the CEO multiple times a day! Questions, comments and complaints can be directly sent to him through Twitter and he also uses it as a personal micro-blog. This combination is a great way to build a sense of informal community, it builds brand loyalty and it builds trust. All things that many find to be unattainable in today’s corporate climate. Another example of corporate success through Twitter is ComCast, a cable company with fairly negative image in the press. The ComCast Cares Twitter is run by the Director of Digital Care personally. The ultimate form of customer care, he directly replies to all Tweets involved in troubleshooting and other assorted tech problems for ComCast customers. You have a problem with one of your ComCast services? Just hop on Twitter and you’re talking to the Director of Digital Care immediately. If he can’t help you he sends you in the right direction, no talking to machines on the phone, no irritating wait times, no horrible elevator music while you’re stuck waiting. Nothing but instant results that once again build community, loyalty and trust for the consumer.

Twitter is still the new guy on the scene though, so keep that in mind. Much of your audience may not have found it yet. Mention it in your blog, in an email, get the word out and mention the perks of receiving your information in a quick, easy informal way. Get in on the ground floor and build your audience within Twitter. So is it time to Tweet? Take a look and see if it’s the right solution for your business!

Marketing, Money and MySpace: A Journey into Social Network Marketing, Pt. 1

mardy@bumblebeellc.com (Mardy Sitzer) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 08:35:14 -0700

this article contributed by Joey Outten

Social Networking; It’s taken over the internet in the past few years and shows no sign of slowing down. What is it? What does it do? And most importantly, can I utilize it to bring more profit to my business?

For starters, there are many different kinds of social networking sites. Everything from YouTube to eHarmony to FaceBook to Twitter are all defined as social networking sites. While some solid networking on LinkedIn may be advantageous to your business, a singles profile on Match.com won’t do a thing. Let’s break down the different categories of social networking sites to give you a stronger grasp of what these sites entail:

You’ve got your general social networking sites that cover quite a few features and services such as MySpace and FaceBook, blogging networks like Blogger and LiveJournal, Micro-blogs like Twitter, media sharing sites like Flickr and YouTube, virtual worlds like Second Life, social bookmarking sites like DIGG, even online personals sites like eHarmony or Match.com are technically social networking sites. With all these different kinds of social networks (over 3000) it can be quite daunting deciding which, if any, are right for you and your business.

The final big question is ‘Does it work’? That’s a big yes, it can, but you have to be smart about the sites you choose and how you handle the marketing. Gretsch Guitars was looking for a new way to celebrate and market their 125th Anniversary as a company. Through MySpace they were able to quickly build a huge community of musicians (both professional and amateur), fans and other music oriented businesses. They had contests and through their new found community were able to completely revive their brand recognition and take it to a new, young audience with absolutely no advertising! They knew the audience they were trying to reach, the different social networking tools at their disposal and made the right choice. A perfect example of how social networking can really take your marketing campaign to a whole new level.

Stay tuned for more as we continue the journey through the world of social network marketing!