DestinySoft Blog

Social media can be many things: a place to network with friends, a way to follow market trends and monitor brand sentiment, a customer service tool for identifying unhappy customers. But is it a tool for demand generation? I believe the answer is yes, but that it requires a different mindset for lead generation and measuring ROI.


I’ll begin with a short history of B2B marketing trends, including the evolution of social media.

The Changing Buyer and Evolving Marketing Trends

A key tenant of Modern B2B Marketing is that buyers will use search and the ready access to information to take control of the buying process – and as a result do not want to engage with Sales until they are much further along in the cycle. But this was not always true:

Before Google (more than 10 years ago)

Buying behaviors: Information was not readily available and the only way a prospect could get the necessary information way to engage a sales rep from your company. Mistrust ruled the day, and buyers created RFPs and purchasing centers to try to equal the playing field.

Marketing trends: Marketers focused primarily on brand building and awareness. Most investments focused on hard to measure methods such as mass advertising, tradeshows, and PR with traditional print media. Direct mail and cold calling made up the majority of targeted interactions, and marketers passed all new leads to Sales for follow-up.

Before Social Media (2 to 10 years ago)

Buying behaviors: Corporate websites were mature and search became the dominant way to find information. Prospects were willing to share their contact information in exchange for the information they wanted.

Marketing trends: Marketers began to focus on SEO, PPC and email marketing to drive traffic, and created content such as whitepapers and webinars to convert traffic into leads. Marketers reallocated budgets towards highly measurable channels and began to be more accountable for lead generation. The best marketers realized that their leads were often too early to send to sales, and invested in lead scoring and lead nurturing to find the hot leads and develop the rest.

The Age of Social Media (today and future)

Buying behaviors: More and more information is available off the official corporate website and on social media sites ranging from LinkedIn and Twitter to YouTube and SlideShare. As buyers tire of “marketing speak” and over-aggressive marketing tactics, they search social sites as part of their research, and interact with other prospects to get and share word of mouth recommendations. Prospects are less likely to register for early stage content on the corporate website, and typically contact the company only when they are ready to engage in a sales cycle.

Marketing trends: Marketers will reallocate investments back to brand, buzz, and awareness – but instead of mass advertising and traditional PR, marketers will invest in smart ways to build brand such as social media, search engine optimization, and content marketing. Lead nurturing will evolve to include building relationships with prospects before they ever give you their name by sharing relevant and useful information across a variety of sites and channels. These changes will have a positive impact on lead generation by increasing the number of highly-qualified inbound leads, but measurement of ROI will be a challenge.

Social media translates into higher quality inbound leads.



Original post: blog.marketo.com

We have launched our new collaborative website www.newwworld.com (NEW WORLD COLLABORATIVE) and the One for One program for Non-profits. One for One is a simple concept – for every website we develop for a corporate client, we will build a FREE website for the not-for-profit organization of the client’s choice. Why?   Simple answer – it’s for the good of the community. We want to give back. We got this idea from Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS Shoes who invites everyone to join him in the One for One model he established by donating a pair of shoes to a needy child for every pair he sells.

He’s given over 400,000 shoes to children all over the world.  That’s inspiring.
Click here to learn more about One for One

Disclaimer- One for One websites will be of comparable size and functionality to the original host client’s site.

Google has launched a new tool called Browser Size on their Google Labs. This tool could help you analyze the content on your website and distribute most important information, buttons or calls to action in the right place (where they will have more visibility)

BrowserSize allows you to bring your website (thru a web url address) and showing it at the same time than a grid of visibility. This will show you the percentage of people that will see the content and help you decide if you want to move something.



Even though this is not a new concept, it is a nice tool that helps us realize where we put content and how we can make our landing pages work harder for us.

Try it, click here

 

• 300,000+ business have a presence on facebook
• Participants in online communities usually spend more $ online.
• 70% of companies plan to increase investment in social media by an average of 40% in 2010.
• Social media = Low Cost Marketing + Getting Traction
• Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI

What do you think about social media?  Share your story and if you need more information on how social media can help your business grow please call us at 1(866) 388-2697, or click here to contact us.

You can start by checking these sites:

• facebook
• twitter
• youtube
• tumblr
• myspace

Thanks
Destiny

Twitter Search is a great tool because it can give you real-time feedback about what's going on. That is, if you know the smart way to use it. Both TweetDeck & Seesmic allows you to open special search panels, allowing you to “follow” a search term, instead of a person.

Here's a video about Twitter search and some smart ways to use it bellow.

Here you have some good ways to keep on top of things.

1 - Get up to speed with all the latest news about a specific thing:
let say you want to get all the new links about "internet marketing", not including the many re-tweets that people make use this term:
“internet marketing” -rt filter:links

2 - Find all the people who are not talking about you directly:
If I want to find all the people who mention your name, but aren’t replying to you use this term:
qualityseoweb -to:qualityseoweb -from:qualityseoweb -@qualityseoweb

3 - Get all reactions across multiple twitter accounts:
Lets say you have 5 twitter profiles and you would like to see everything in one place.
to:qualityseoweb OR to:qualityseoweb2 OR to:qualityseoweb3 OR to:qualityseoweb4 OR to:qualityseoweb4

4: Follow what people say about your competitors:
If you want to follow not only what your competitors are saying, but also how people respond to them, try this:
from:competitor OR to:competitor

5 - Only follow links from certain people:
Let’s say that you only want to see the links that I share, then you simply search from, try this:
from:qualityseoweb filter:links

6 - Only get the new info about a topic:
if you want to search for anything about ‘apple’ but without the re-tweeted stuff
“apple” -rt -via

7 - Find all shared pictures about a specific topic:
It can be interesting to see only the pictures that people post about a certain topic or event. Try this:
“le mans” twitpic OR yfrog OR post.ly OR twitgoo OR pikchur filter:links


Have you figured out any other ways to use Twitter Search that you’d like to share?
How about trying these above and letting us know what you think, in the comments?

Destiny Technologies specializes in customizing the open-source, open-market content management solution called JOOMLA. This software is available to any developer who wishes to gain experience and expertise with the system. Programmers, designers and developers at Destiny Technologies have been working with JOOMLA almost as long as it has been available to the public. The advantage for our clients is that rather than utilizing a website developed in a proprietary code which ties the client to the owner/developer, our JOOMLA websites are wholly owned by our clients and there are thousands of companies and individuals working on this community.

JOOMLA is a powerful and efficient tool for developing highly interactive websites and online communities because of the ease of use by the average client with only minimal training. There are a wide variety of modular functions for E-commerce, newsletter subscriptions, blogs, response and comments, interaction with outside social media networks and the development of profile development and sharing (Facebook-style) which can be applied and programmed into a custom site.

We have a deep level of experience with both content management utilizing JOOMLA and online communities and consider these our preferences for development.
All these things make Joomla a GREAT OPTION for Non-profit organizations, since you can develop Content Management Communities with lots of features for a very low price.

Here's a new website we just put live this weekend for a non-profit organization in the Sarasota, Florida Area. (Bertha Palmer Alive!)

Here you have a video of our latest website designs made with Joomla search engine friendly CMS technology. Joomla websites are prepared for the search engines and there are many tools you can use to make them even more SEO friendly. If you would like a FREE WEBSITE EVALUATION please complete the simple form on the right (with your website and email address) and we'll send it to you. This website evaluation will consist on a description of what you could do on your website to make it grow and also how much are you prepared for the search engines. We always recomend usign tolls like facebook, twiiter, and other social networks to improve your inlinks...  this is all part of your website evaluation.
Please contact us if you have any questions.

Many people view online social networking tools, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Myspace as time-draining distractions. But a benefit of Facebook that may not have occurred to you is that Facebook will allow you to aggregate content from around the Web, and easily pull it into one central page, which will help you spread the word about your organization. Facebook also has the benefit of having your installed audience, your network of friends at your fingertips, so you can easily announce new activities, campaigns, and events to your self-selected constituency of like-minded individuals and groups, without having to email a large group of people and risking the effects of a spam filter's black hole.

Facebook can be an essential tool for nonprofit organizing, because it is an efficient way to connect with other organizations and people which might not have known about your organization before. It's also an easy venue to plug into an existing audience that has similar interests. If your nonprofit has video content, podcasts, interviews, or documents just languishing on your desktop, creating a presence on Facebook provides an easy way to upload these types of media, without spending the time or resources required for updating your own Web site.

The way that Facebook interacts with other social media tools, like Twitter, blogs, and Flickr, can provide a simple interface to consistently and easily update your community of supporters with news of your organization's activities.

Best of all, using Facebook is free so the cost is only in how much time you and your staff choose to invest. What's the return on the investment? If not a direct monetary ROI, there will definitely be a marketing return that becomes evident as your network grows. Creating a fan page on Facebook is also a great way to increase your volunteer base and to help your members do the advertising of your organization’s mission for you.

Finally, if you are worried about your personal pictures or information being visible to your nonprofit colleagues, take a word of advice: Nothing on the Internet is private. It is common practice for a hiring manager to search online for prospective employees. You can set up a Facebook fan page and create a network for your organization from there, but you will need to have an account to connect with others. It is more effective to connect with others as a real person than it is as a faceless organization. It's much more effective to become a personality on the Web, no matter the magnitude of your stardom, and let the person'behind the organization make the announcements and grow the network. If you really want something to remain private, don’t post it under your own name on the Web

How Can Your Nonprofit Get Started?

Here are a handful of resources to get you started.

• www.facebook.com
• Facebook for nonprofits
• Nonprofit Organizations Facebook Page

Do you use Facebook for your nonprofit affiliations and networks? Post a comment bellow with the link to your profile and discuss how you use this newly expanded online social networking tool.


Original post: http://blog.techsoup.org/