In Social Media, Top of the Funnel is About Lead Introduction – Not Creation

Yesterday I gave a presentation to a field sales team at Pitney Bowes Software about how we can work collaboratively on our Engage Today social media marketing program to support their tactical success.

I focused the discussion on the four high-value sales outcomes we have been able to consistently deliver:

1. Lead introduction
2. Lead nurturing
3. Deal capture
4. Competitive intelligence

This was the first time I swapped out lead generation for lead introduction in a presentation.

Why the change?

As Strategic Communications Group (Strategic) has matured its business-to-business and public sector focused  “social media for sales” programs on behalf of clients like Pitney Bowes, Polycom, British Telecom (BT), Intelsat, Blue Coat Systems, Mandiant and others, we have recognized that a lead generation expectation simply isn’t realistic.

Companies place considerable weight on quantity when evaluating the effectiveness of a tactical approach for lead creation.  It’s understandable because corporate marketers can model top of the funnel leads to an anticipated revenue output.

While our programs have demonstrated the ability to produce new leads through premium content offers, they are not at a level that survives a cost per lead analysis.  It’s because of this that my recent pitch to two exceptionally qualified and interesting prospects fell short.

Lead introduction though is achievable and, in my opinion, of equal (if not greater) value in a business-to-business and public sector context.  That’s because the majority of vendors sell multimillion dollar, enterprise solutions to executive level decision-makers.

Whether a company is pushing product, service or a combination of the two, it is a consultative sell.  Executive buyers have to be educated and, equally critical, a relationship defined by trust must be established.

Education via thought leadership content and customer or prospect intimacy – those are the core tenets of an effective social media initiative.

A wonderfully composed guest post on Marketo’s blog by Andrew Gaffney of DemandGen Report validates my view on lead introduction as a realistic social media for sales outcome.  Gaffney presents three key points:

1. Executives play a prominent role in the buying process;
2. These executive rely heavily upon peer reviews, feedback and content-sharing to inform their buying decisions; and
3. Social media even more popular among executives than it is among their subordinates.

Author

Marc Hausman

Hi! I am the president/CEO of Strategic Communications Group, a social media marketing consultancy based outside of Washington, DC. Read more at: http://www.thestrategicguy.com

Hashtags May Be Coming to Facebook!

Facebook is reportedly working on incorporating the hashtag into the social network.

A Twitter staple, the Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook has plans to bring the hashtag to its service, offering users the ability to index conversations around a particular topic, just as they currently do on Twitter. Sources ”familiar with the matter” told the Journal that while Facebook is working on the feature, it wouldn’t necessarily be released anytime soon.

Hashtags are already incorporated into Facebook-owned Instagram.

Hashtags seem like the natural evolution of Facebook’s newly-released Graph Search. The search is currently limited to information input by users on their location, friends, and Likes. Adding hashtag support would enable an expansion of that search functionality, letting users tune into public posts based around certain topics such as #Elections or #HarlemShake as well.

For now, the social network is remaining mum on when or if it will be adding hashtags. A company spokesperson telling us simply, “We do not comment on rumor or speculation.”

Would you like to see hashtags comes to Facebook? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Source: Mashable.com

Dirty Facebook? Now you have an App to Clean it Up!

Did you have a wild weekend or are there photos of you tagged doing things you might not want everyone to see?  Are you just about the head out to a job interview and you’re not sure about some of the old content on your  Facebook page?  Some people, including potential employers might think it’s inappropriate.

But, there’s an app for that. It’s called “Simple Wash” and it can help you clean up your Facebook profile.

A few simple clicks of the mouse will wash your social network's mouth out with soap via FaceWash's precompiled list of "dirty" words (sex, drugs, cursing), or a personalized word list into which users have full range over what terms they'd like to eliminate.

The app will search through comments posted on your wall or remarks left on photos you've been tagged in, as well as photos you've posted, links and pictures you've liked, status updates, and pages of which you are a "fan."

Results are returned in conceptual chunks, highlighting specific terms and providing a direct link to the post, where users can delete or privatize the message.

Not every post SimpleWash picks up will be something you want to remove (i.e., when I ran it, "crack me up" often got picked up as a potential drug reference), but it's a good way to quickly review the messages you're sending to the world.

Oh, but SimpleWash only detects words. So for now, you'll still have to filter out those old college party photos on your own.

Get SimpleWash for Facebook and Twitter. The Twitter version is currently in Beta, but if you're desperate to clean up your feed, just shoot the company a tweet.

7 Pinterest Boards to Follow for jobs and opportunities

Is it possible to get anything but hours of casual fun out of the popular pinboard site, Pinterest? As it turns out, yes. A number of great websites and organizations take to Pinterest to share their advice, ideas and insights related to careers, job searching and professional development, while managing to turn this often cumbersome activity into a more enjoyable, visual experience.

Pinterest already is a way for professionals to organize their career plans, get job search tips, and showcase their work in an interesting, visual way to employers. To jump-start your use of Pinterest for your career, here are seven of the best Pinterest boards to follow related to employment.

InsideJobs

This organization uses Pinterest to help people with career exploration and inspiration, including career ideas, education, career coaching and career change. With only eight boards, InsideJobs updates regularly and provides insightful, useful info for professionals, much like a pinboard career coach.

CareerBliss

Self-described as a “community dedicated to finding you a happier job,” CareerBliss offers a variety of useful pinboards on Pinterest. Their boards include articles related to bosses, coworkers, employers, employee benefits, company culture, work options and having fun at work.

BrazenCareerist

If you’re looking to become a more savvy job seeker, follow BrazenCareerist on Pinterest to find advice and tips on job searching, as well as a compilation of online job fairs, career courses you can take, and specific advice for Gen Y.

CAREEREALISM

Their motto couldn’t be more true (“Because every job is temporary.”) and their Pinterest boards are a bit like job search boot camp with fun visuals. You’ll find tips for resumes, job interviews, networking, cover letters and work attire. They’ve also got recommendations for career books, work lunch ideas, office decor, vacation destinations and more.

Splash Resumes

Of course, this organization posts resume tips and tricks, but they also include a healthy dose of work wardrobe suggestions, job search tips and personal branding ideas. If you’re looking for ways to make yourself more unique and creative in your job search, these are great boards to follow.

Working Mother

The Pinterest board of Working Mother Magazine showcases the top companies for working moms, career advice, tips for multitasking, financial advice, info for new moms and a host of other mom-and-parent-specific topics. They even have an "LOL" board for when you need a good, career-related laugh.

Workshifting

Dedicated to helping professionals work from anywhere, the Pinterest board of Workshifting offers home office tips, coworking space suggestions, and technology updates and advice. Great pinboards for digital nomads.

If you’re already spending untold amounts of time pinning to your heart’s content, why not use Pinterest to advance your career, too? If nothing else, it makes job searching a bit more fun and it gives you a solid excuse for spending so much time on Pinterest.

Now a Facebook app that lets you... well BandWithFriends!!

Before it even dropped its “The” prefix, Facebook was a dating site. It could never have been anything else: It was targeting college kids, it encouraged you to not only upload but tag photos, and lead to us spending more hours than we care to admit clicking through picture after picture after picture after picture. If you were bold enough, this turned into a friend request – bolder yet, a Wall Post, or even a message. And so on and so forth… whatever that “so forth” turned out to be (you sly dog, you).

It’s not like it was all that subtle, but we’re leaving behind any trace of coyness considering the blatancy of BangWithFriends, the just-launched, insanely-popular new Facebook app. The fairly unsophisticated app launched last week and seemed to be little more than fodder for a slow news day – at least, that’s what it was for us a couple weeks ago (photo proof below). But according to the developers, who remain anonymous, it’s getting real results.

The creators of BangWithFriends are grad students, who describe themselves as “badass dudes happy to play wingman to over 10,000 couples and counting now,” created the app as a more honest approach to the dating and hookup Facebook game (they’ve created other apps but wouldn’t release details as to remain anonymous – all I can find is that the site’s server is located in Ashburn, Virginia). In case curiosity hasn’t compelled you to install and try out the app for yourself, here’s how it works.

First, you install. Exercise caution in granting permissions and making information viewable.

Then, you’re launched into the app, where if you’re a lady, you’ll see all your male friends, and vice versa. Simply choose who you want to bang (I'm being dumb enough to use my account to act as guinea pig).

If that person also installs the app and picks you, you’re both notified of the mutual interest with this email:

The app was built in 72 hours, and Doe says there’s been no comment from LinkedIn on the use of its API. “In our opinion a network such as LinkedIn might be a good place to look when trying to hook up with someone. After all, you spend most of your time at work, so chances are finding someone to hook up with based on your LinkedIn profile might be a good start.”

BangWithProfessionals functions the same way BangWithFriends does: Install, select who you’d like to bang, once they do the same, you’re alerted. Across the pond, Would Love 2 was just launched for iOS, although it’s a bit tamer and simply wants to find you someone to date – whether or not you bang is entirely in your hands.

All of these apps come with privacy problems. A simple Graph Search revealed who’s using BangWithFriends, and while seeing what LinkedIn-based apps someone is using isn’t all that easy, you will absolutely find yourself in an awkward situation if you install it “just to see” and then have to explain to your co-worker you don’t actually want to hook up with them. There are an endless amount of really uncomfortable ways this could go.

The biggest issue of course is people using BangWithFriends (or Professionals for that matter) with ill intentions, either just to see what the app does or, more underhandedly, to find out which of your friends wants to bang you. “My only concern is girls who install and add all their guy friends just to find out who’s perving on them,” one Redditor responded, adding that men are equally capable of the same thing.

Clearly it’s too soon to tell, but early reaction seems to be that the lowest common denominator may actually be a fairly effective way to find Internet love (or lovin’).