While our crew is often working on a number of projects, some of the ideas simply don’t make it to this blog. Here is a recap of ideas on BarryHurd.com and TradeShowSocialMedia.com that shed some light on some pretty tactical questions. Take a few minutes to browse around some of the other topics and put your thinking hat on to ask “how can I apply these tactics to my situation?”

Social Media Analtics and tracking points of market impact

Event Hashtags – a guide to using them

Social Media Security – is your event social and secure?

The strategic thought behind this conversation is based on massive volumes of data.

Billions of Likes, Tweets, Visits, Votes, and Shares.

All of this data creates a variety of ‘mental static’ that causes decision makers to freeze up and become disoriented.

The sheer amount of information becomes a new type of obstacle that prevents businesses from moving forward at the right time and location.

Here are three social media infographics
that paint a picture with all that data

The Growth of Social Media – This social media infographic is a great place to start. It shows some of the tools that have reached adoption and global appeal.
Check it out: Social Media Infographics – The Growth of Social

Social TV and the MTV Video Music Awards – this covers what 5.5 million Tweets can show you around a live event (and this visualization doesn’t even cover the tip of the iceberg.)
Check it out: Social Media Infographics – Social TV with MTV

Adoption of the Mobile Workforce – we have to keep in mind that social media also covers a range of hardware such as mobile phones and tablets.
Check it out: Social Media Infographics – Mobile Workforce

Do you have any recommended social media infographics?
Share them in the comments below!

These five questions tie into the topic of corporate social media and using it beyond a simple marketing channel.

Questions of the week

Do you have a method for focusing on actionable data?
The online marketplace creates a tremendous amount of digital noise that needs to be focused down against business metrics into actionable points. Within the employees responsible for each department, they need to understand what information needs to be processed, refined, and passed along to other actionable employees.

Is human resources having difficulty retaining or attracting top talent?
When professionals know they are “A Players”, they often place reputation and personal brand at an escalated value. This often causes problems with corporate entities that have a negative perceived reputation or that do not enable the perception of being a “superstar” within a team.

Do you have a sales plan in place to take advantage of sudden online news?
With current financial fluctuations, many businesses are closing doors or shifting focus. Nimble and knowledgeable companies have an opportunity to claim market share that is suddenly tossed onto the open market during such shifts.

Do you have a method of grading your social media efforts?
Many companies spend thousands upon thousands of dollars without having the ability to chart success or failure. Healthy social media projects should have a quantative business impact and be planned against reasonable and predictable goals. It should be noted that social media results are not necessarily in marketing, but could appear in other business silos that have much deeper business impacts.

Do you understand the value of intellectual syndication?
Many businesses fail to realize that one of the largest business assets is the creative thought and intellectual power of hundreds or thousands of individuals. Internal and external groups have the ability to streamline test cycles, reduce process timelines, or out-think complex problems and achieve success.

Want some more questions to think about?

Check out 5 Enterprise Social Media Questions at 123socialmedia.

If you are someone who has been dealt with traditional events, conferences, or trade shows – this team has expertise applying new communication processes into a traditional event model.

THE BASIC IDEA

The idea behind a large event is very complex.
As an event organizer, sponsor, or vendor there are different tactical
reasons why you would use new digital media solutions.

Almost all of these revolve around two basic needs.

Brand Experience: events are a chance to highlight your business in front of an audience. In many cases this means you have one chance to get it right and the memory of that brand experience will last a lifetime.

Revenue: businesses don’t spend piles of money on events because they are fun. Decision makers around events need to establish why an event makes good business sense and can drive revenue. This revenue doesn’t always happen at the event itself, but could be generated before or after the show. It could represent new revenue from event leads or on-going upsell of existing clients.

Trade Show Social Media (TSSM) provides insight and guidance to strategically apply technology and social trends to different parts of the event process.

BASIC GOALS

We do this by leading with the mantra

“Understand Your Audience.”

By using new research techniques we can clarify what your audience wants and work with you to tactically implement a solution that will support your business goals.

This can leverage many of our solutions that include

• Event Microsites
• Live Photography / Videography
• Community Platforms
• Whitepaper / Content Creation
• Lead Refinement
• QR code integration
• Landing Pages
• Social Metrics Analysis
• Structured Networking
• Audience Profiling
• Hardware / Equipment Rental
• Journalist / Blogger Outreach
• Sponsor Development
• Livestream Management

If you are planning your event strategy for the upcoming season and want to take advantage of new opportunities in your industry, visit TradeShowSocialMedia.com.

To help identify some areas to think about: try these five tips regarding Social Media for Sales Development.

1. You and your company both have brands. In today’s age, when people become interested in something they turn to online searching with sites like Google, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. Depending on the niche you are in, anywhere from 50% to 94% turn to online information searches to research your offer.

• Know your online brand. Keep track of obvious search phrases about your company. If there are negative items showing up about you, strategically try to get them taken down. If you can’t take them down, formulate answers in case a prospect or client mentions them.
• Create your professional brand. Social Media services allow you to create powerful self-branding statements and offer additional methods of follow-up. Give your online brand some thought regarding how they perceive you as an individual. (At bare minimum setup Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook. Optionally launch a blog or a YouTube account.)

2. Know everything about them. As the ticket price of the item you are selling goes up, so should your knowledge of the intended client. You should refine an effective process for identifying and sharing information with you prospect market. If the tools are not available, you can find a few simple solutions that open up a wide range of information:

• Google Alerts: setup a few key Google alerts on the person’s name, company, and professional interests. This allows you to keep up to date with changing marketplaces and provides an opportunity to reach out when pertinent news is available.
• SocialMention: social mention draws in information from all over the real time web. It reveals how often an item is mentioned and identifies top users to specific Twitter conversations. When reviewing a prospect, performing one or two searches on socialmention gives an opportunity to find a treasure trove of conversation and value points.

3. Connect where they are, when they are. Social media provides a unique opportunity to engage prospects when they are active and looking for information. By making yourself available to answer questions and providing value, you identify yourself as a solution and time saver (rather than a time drain like most other sales people.)

• Locate common interests and save travel time. When strategizing with social media, look for trends and communities that attract like-minded prospects. By planning at the community level, you gain an economy of scale and can increase ROI by sourcing more leads in less time, while also decreasing cost associated with travel and down time.
• Look for coffee meetings. Never eat alone. Services like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare are an incredible resource for meeting professionals casually over lunch. Keep an eye out for professionals who are within your travel area (or even within your neighborhood)

4. Engage. Cultivate. Strengthen. Relationships take time. Experienced business development professionals know that six and seven figure contracts take six to eighteen months to move through a sales process. The key to understanding this process is to map out consistent touch points and develop a reason for continual engagement.

• Schedule your follow-up points. Use your calendar tools to schedule updates to important relationships. Identify five to ten reasons to touch base over the course of your expected timeframe and get them scheduled. When you have personal and professional access to information via Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin – try to note a few personal items to engage with.

5. Get technical: success is in the numbers. Your marketing and online team may or may not give you this, but it is very important: collect all the data you can about people you work with. When acting as a relationship builder, knowing what types of information people are looking for is critical to success.

• Use URL shorteners. Try Bit.ly – When writing e-mails or sending out updates on Facebook/Twitter, URL shortening services provides you with the tactical information of what people found interesting. As a bonus point: try putting one or two pieces of information into your e-mail signature with a Bit.ly link to them. Many professionals are surprised to see how much directed traffic they can send from e-mails they already write every day.
• Use Google Analytics. Your main company site probably has this already. Ask for access or weekly reports. This information identifies how people are interacting with the main brand web property. It is critical to know what
• Use additional research and analytic tools. There are dozens of tools that provide additional information about the people you are talking to. These include a wide range of services.
  • Addictomatic.com – a robust search tools that collects information from 20+ sites. Great for researching brands and people.
  • Compete.com – a service that allows you to compare up to five sites and see what types of traffic are being generated
  • Google Trends – just like stocks, popular items go up and down. Use this tool to identify whether an item of interest is losing or gaining momentum.
  • Viewzi – a powerful tool for displaying topics in different formats (an essential communication benefit when dealing with multiple types of people.)

6. BONUS TIP: Benchmark, Measure, Improve.

• Setup a weekly and monthly social media schedule. Track highlights and interesting changes over 30, 60, 90 days. Most importantly: keep a record of how much time you spend developing your social media footprint.This is critical for understanding your personal ROI as a sales professional.
• Schedule a monthly review of your information and your top five to ten prospects. Look for items that appear to have high value for your invested effort and then carry those tactical learning items over to your other top accounts. After a few months of consistent work, the numbers will speak for themselves.
  

Conclusion

These guidelines of Social Media for Sales Development are an introduction point to thinking about social media as a sales tool and prospect research system. Savvy sales professionals who take the effort to leverage new technology and social trends have an opportunity to take a lion’s share of the market while old-school professionals struggle to adopt new techniques.

If you found this article useful, please forward to sales professional who can use the additional guidance or share some of your own digital business development tips in the comments below.

May 24th – Using Social Media in Political Campaigns (Bellevue)

Hosted by the Master Builders Association of King & Snohomish County
MORE INFO
The annual MBA campaign training school for candidates, activists and interested citizens. Learn how to use social media and digital information to plan a campaign, target a district or city, communicate with your voters, recruit and mobilize volunteers and (finally) pay for it all.

June 2nd – Growing Business Partners with Social Media (Seattle)

hosted by Washington Technology Industry Association and Disney Interactive
MORE INFO
This session is about identifying “core partners” in a digital marketplace. It examines the best practice strategy requirements for coordinating with friends and industry partners, methods to find new channel partners, and tactics to leverage against competitors in the market. Attendees will be used as real-time case examples: identifying synergies and common goals that allow both teams and individuals to coordinate budget effective tactics.

June 3rd – Digital Reputation, Why Your Name Matters Most (Portland)

BuzzRE Portland, sponsored by HomeQuest and Mrealty
MORE INFO
As real estate professionals, reputation is tied to everything you do: from generating leads and holding open houses, to shaking hands and working with premiere financial intuitions. In the digital world, your “reputation” defines first impressions and affects how existing connections interact with you. Attendees will learn methods of defending this important name based reputation space, as well as positive ways of generating business using pro-active strategies.

June 4th – Identifying the Unseen, how to identify your Bigfoot from digital tracks (Bainbridge)

Bigfoot Northwest Social Networking Conference  – Sponsored by Washington State Chamber of Commerce and Mashable
MORE INFO
In real life, forensic evidence draws a picture of things we can’t see. In the digital world, analytics and personal user data draws a picture about everyone on the web. This digital footprint tells us who is interested in your service and gives you the ability to learn more about potential clients, grow existing clients more effectively, and maximize online audiences using search sites like Google and Yahoo, to online review sites such as Yelp and Citysearch.

The “This sounds amazing!” idea they took from the magazine is completely removed from reality and is almost guaranteed to have no meat to it.

It comes to most of us as no great surprise that most media coverage is rooted in selling “sexy.” If it isn’t hot now, the editor needs to make it hot. They need to make it sound fantastic. They need to sell magazines. When there is a blemish on the photo… it will get fixed. When there is a column on the spreadsheet that doesn’t match… it rarely gets corrected and often gets deleted.

New media has been caught up in this whirlwind for over a decade.

When an exec or client is stuck on the latest craze, we have to get them re-focused on functional tactics that can be applied to a holistic strategy that works for them.

You can’t simply carbon-copy an idea from six months ago that has now found some media coverage. There are some fundamental reasons for this:

• If it is in print… you can guarantee it is at least sixty days old (if not six months old)
• The spectacle that was made of the example is not really that sexy, not that easy.
• The typical case highlighted by media is often comparable to winning the lottery.
  It leaves you thinking “sure it can happen…. and I hope it happens to me!”
• The numbers being quoted are almost never supported and fail any due-diligence
  (taken out of context, 99.8% of statistics seem worthwhile.)
• If it is being covered by a major media outlet: it is no longer unique

This leads us to ask questions that adjust the executives overall line of thinking. You have to engage those decision makers with applicable data that takes you outside of being an order taker, while detailing how you can add value to strategic decisions. The end result: create industry-changing projects that are based off demographic and psychographic trends, while maximizing the capabilities of the existing business.

Some bullet points that help this type of tactics vs strategy approach:

• Think strategic:
  • Highlight where you where, where you are, and where you want to be.
  • Highlight where competitors where, where they are, and where you want them to be.
  • Use client discovery from all executives, not just marketing and public relations.
  • Allow business leaders to define vision, then backwards engineer tactics to get there.
  • Scale against existing project frameworks and introduce new ones.
  • Define team and individual accountability, take responsibility.

• Ask questions:
  
  • What facts and details highlight if your exec team has a bad idea?
  • What is the pain point of the business no one wants to talk about?
  • How can you prevent executive hi-jacking of projects?
  • What team members are critical to success… and who needs to be eliminated?
  • If you are choosing to play in a new game arena…are you playing at the right scale?
  • Who on the team is a strategic asset, and who gets the tactics done?

This line of thinking and the questions around it create the difference between strategic and tactical thinking. If your executive team is waving around the latest industry journal saying “me too! me too!” and wanting to jump into ill-defined waters, help them understand the differences between selling media using sex… and building effective business assets for long-term success.

For decades the financial system has been dominated by the “big three” credit firms. They track and detail billions of financial records. The government has vast regulations about the ways firms collect this data and report it, requiring an extensive understanding of how positive and negative information balances an overall financial risk scorecard for every person. This process is so contaminated and convoluted that the idea of having your identity or credit card stolen causes fear in many adults.

This fear is almost always rooted in the fact that the common individual has no idea how to properly manage personal credit. There are far too many constraints and ill-thought regulations regarding how your personal information affects the financial metrics of your life. One of the largest problems is that few (if any) controls effectively cross over international communication processes. When combined with government regulation that is years behind online and social trends, it opens up many points for abuse. This leaves each of us with the responsibility to manage our own well-being and support those in our network to have a healthy future.

It also leaves us asking: how does this relate to online reputation?

The best way understand online reputation is simple: online reputation is the “wild wild west” of personal credit. We are not dealing with a completely original problem, we are dealing with a generational problem that is now being magnified by technology and left unchecked. Imagine a world where anyone or anything can affect your credit score (preventing employment, destroying relationships, etc.) This damage could originate from such simple places as former co-worker complaining about your work habits or  accidental exposure of your social life.

Under this comparison Google/Yahoo/Bing are just like the top three credit unions… but there is no commonly acceptable or accessible methods for “Joe Average” to combat negative information. If something negative is showing up about you online, you are at the mercy of a completely unchecked, inconsistent, and profit driven marketplace.

The three biggest search engines quickly turn into three nightmares: fueled by overlapping “digital data” of both personal credit and reputation. This “digital you” becomes something that most individuals are not fully aware of and even fewer have the understanding to repair, protect, nurture, and leverage the asset over time.

The ramifications of this personal reputation problem is magnified by the size of your personal network. Like the common crime of vandalism, a reputation issue can affect a parent, spouse, child, friend, or professional peer and result in implications for you.

Some alarming issues of personal credit and online reputation:

1- There is no agreed upon metric for online reputation. An unpaid $10 parking ticket on your credit score can be written off as an unknowing mistake that few people now of. A bad conversation over $10 worth of drinks publicly displayed on YouTube can destroy your career.

2- Credit results are sorted by professionals who are trained to weigh appropriately. Reputation results are sorted by everyone who looks for your name, presented by a system (Google,Bing, Yahoo) with multiple sorting errors and irrelevant scoring factors.

3- Credit results go away over time. You can “solve” bad credit by taking care of the problem and paying your dues. With reputation, a black eye often remains long after the situation has passed.

4- Bad credit and reputation is compounding. Once you have it, no one wants to extend better terms and fees begin to pile on top of each other. A top ranking result on search engines causes more eyes to see the negative, encouraging like-minded negative interpretation and preventing positive interaction.

5- Credit has a series of checks and balances to confirm your identity (social security, birthdate, etc) and has a process for disputing accuracy. Online reputation has no checks and balances to confirm accuracy. If you have a common name or are accidentally included in the wrong scenario, your name becomes a liability.

The larger element driving the focus towards online reputation (as opposed to credit) is that it is readily available and free. Anyone and everyone with an internet connection will eventually “Google You” and find whatever information is available. This is in contrast to pulling a credit report, which has limited access and requires a fee to be paid.

As our society moves further into the digital age, we all have to keep in mind the simple steps that can be taken to prevent long term and catastrophic damage. I encourage you to visit our free digital downloads library where you can download some one page guide to monitoring and controlling your online presence.

The first series of questions often revolves around the questions of sales pipelines and marketing functions in relation to the web, but in all honesty we find that many of the core answers surrounding these questions are rooted deeply in areas of brand, customer service, and even employee knowledge.

To examine some of the “quick and dirty questions” that many executive professionals ask, I wanted to simply offer some of the most common:

1. What sites are my visitors coming from?
2. Where is my audience collected online?
3. Are there influencers in my market?
4. How do my competitors create relevant traffic?
5. What traffic sources tie into my existing workload?
6. How can employees drive more exposure?
7. What type of information does my audience want?
8. What screen resolutions do my visitors use?
9. Is my audience using mobile browsers?
10. What audience segments do I have?
11. Why are visitors leaving my site?
12. How many leads are being generated?
13. What is the quality of sales leads being generated?
14. Where are our top sales leads coming from?
15. Where are marketing dollars being best invested?
16. What is the percentage of opportunities won vs. lost?
17. What are my top opportunities and what are they worth?
18. Who is driving my top budget impact?
19. What is the volume of customer service cases?
20. What is the cycle status of individuals in the system?
21. What is your customer satisfaction rating?
22. What is your employee satisfaction rating?
23. How do you drive external revenue online?
24. How do you drive internal revenue online?
25. Is your business evolving as fast as the market?
26. ?