The red book_of_social_media_2012_

RED BOOK OF

SOCIAL

MEDIA
2012

www.paulwriter.com

ARE YOU A DIGITAL TOURIST?
You’ve heard a lot about social media. You’ve checked out the popular sites.
You’ve downloaded a few articles about it. Maybe you’ve even established your
company on a few sites. But you still don’t feel confident about your company’s
presence there.
Don’t worry – this is a common situation as digital media and social media are
still in their infancy. We have a lot of content on www.paulwriter.com about
social media and for the Red Book of Social Media we’ve picked the ones
most relevant to answering the common questions:
Am I ready for social media? Can I sustain it?
Is social media appropriate for my firm? Won’t we appear frivolous or
attract nasty comments?
Are all sites equal? Which are the social media tools most relevant to
my business?
How do I measure the effectiveness of our social media activities?
Should I do everything myself or can I outsource some of the work?
Some of these articles are opinion pieces and some are success stories while
others provide practical insight.
We hope you love reading them as much as we did putting it all together.
To keep in touch with this space and to get the latest writings on digital media,
do subscribe to PaulWriter.com.
Happy reading!
Jessie Paul
Managing Director
Paul Writer Strategic Services.

Index
Many Platforms, One Voice: How to Maintain a Consistent Social Media Persona
Steve Glauberman

1

WHY YOUR PERSONAL BRAND IS DYING ON LINKEDIN
Hilton Barbour

3

THE FUTURE OF SEARCH: An Interview with Google’s Sam Sebastian
Clare McDermott

4

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR MARKETERS: Looking Beyond the Hype
Sabarinath C Nair

6

CASE STUDY: How IBM Uses Social Media as Glue for Connecting Events
Christopher Koch

8

USING PAID MEDIA TO ACHIEVE REMARKABLE B2B CONVERSION RATES
Nicholas

9

INTERNAL CONVERSATIONS + SOCIAL MEDIA = SALES CONVERSATIONS
Katie McCaskey

12

THERE IS NO PLACE TO HIDE
Hareesh Tibrewala

14

DON'T DO SOCIAL - 5 Good Reasons Why
Jessie Paul

16

7 QUESTIONS TO ASK BEFORE ADDING A BLOG TO THE MARKETING MIX
Michele Linn

18

Everyone has a personal brand, and if we have any desire whatsoever to
nurture it, it very likely lives online. It comprises the content that we
publish, along with the things that are published about us, and it’s
critical to our public persona, both online and off.
Whatever our objectives are for marketing ourselves (establishing a
reputation as an industry expert, selling a book we’ve written, or finding
a new job are just a few ideas that might apply), our personal brand can
help us familiarize our target audience with the facets of our character
that make us an appealing investment.

In other words, they reflect our personality
Brands have a personality, too, and it’s up to the marketers, responsible
for promoting them, to discharge this personality to their target
customers. Social media offers an invaluable opportunity to do this well.
In our modern world, a consumer’s investment in a brand doesn’t
necessarily take the form of a purchase. It might be a Facebook “Like”,
a word-of-mouth endorsement, or another piece of content that
ultimately leads to a loyal fan. Regardless of the action, maintaining a
consistent brand persona is absolutely critical to success.

Many
Platforms,
One Voice:

How to Maintain a
Consistent Social
Media Persona

But there’s a problem. All of the social media touch points we employ,
to create and sustain our brand online, require ongoing maintenance.
And the individuals maintaining them have personalities of their own.
This issue has grown particularly thorny with the rise in popularity of
sites such as Twitter and Pinterest. In order to retain an audience and
attract new followers, brands must post regular updates. Brand
marketers have two options: They can delegate this job to an in-house
employee of the brand, such as a member of the marketing team, or
they can outsource it to their interactive agency’s social media division.
Time constraints often make the latter the more sensible choice, but
outsourcing social media efforts requires a thorough understanding of
the brand voice. How can brand marketers be sure that the updates
made on behalf of their brand are consistent with the persona they’ve
worked so hard to create?

Developing a social media style guide

STEVE
GLAUBERMAN

The first step in safeguarding your brand online is to create a social
media style guide. You already have something comparable for your
offline marketing materials, ads, and site design — a brand style guide
that meticulously outlines everything related to the way your brand’s
presented, from the required minimum clear space around your logo to
your acceptable typeface. If it also includes information about copy lingo
and image tone of voice, all the better; this can become the foundation
for your social media style guide.

While, like your brand style guide, your social media guidebook should
feature very specific guidelines about your brand tenets as they relate to
the production of online content, it should also focus on two things in particular: tone and imagery. Together these
two elements can get you and your staff through every social media content development situation imaginable.

The tenacity of tone
Brand tone is important not only because it conveys to the consumer the overall character of your brand, but also
because it distinguishes you from your peers. It’s a brand’s most powerful tool and, therefore, will require the most
attention from those responsible for managing your brand’s social endeavors.

Red Book of Social Media

1

Some possible considerations:
• Does the language used in your previous online
content portray a brand that’s warm and fuzzy or
staid?
• Youthful or mature?
• Feminine or distinctly male?
• Is it represented by formal or informal language?
Is that language exclusively English?
Subject matter aside, a Facebook post on the “Dora
the Explorer” Facebook page (“Beautiful Dora cakes,
made by our fans! ¡Fantástico!”) is going to sound
very different from a post on Monster Energy’s page
(“Props to Monster Energy riders Paulin Gautier and
Tommy Searle, who just bossed the Motocross GP in
Bulgaria”). Using contractions such as “wanna” or
“lemme” in a Facebook post might be deemed
acceptable by a brand like Adidas, just as terms such
as “rad” and “chillin’” might be commonplace in
Converse tweets, but those aren’t choices the
competitor - Nike - tends to make.

Would a company like Apple, with its clean lines and
cool color palette, be comfortable applying a
retro-looking Instagram filter to an image of the
latest iPhone? Probably not. But it might be just the
thing for In-N-Out Burger, which has a history that
dates back to the 1940s and still maintains a vintage
look.
With a site like Pinterest the challenge is similar.
Here again marketers must put their brand persona
in the hands of social media managers tasked with
pinning (or tagging) photographs that have some
brand relevance; but if a brand fails to define its
pressure points, the results could be damaging.
For example, would Diapers.com be comfortable
pinning a slightly revealing photograph of a breastfeeding mother? What would happen if Whole Foods
pinned an image sourced from an article about
genetically modified tomatoes? These are questions
brands must ask of themselves and talk about with
their employees — who, let’s not forget, have
interests, beliefs, and a comfort level all their own —
in order to avoid potential embarrassment and
controversy.

These are important distinctions, particularly if
you’re about to hire a social media manager who
doesn’t speak a word of Spanish or uses nothing but
contractions in everyday conversation. If your hires
go on to break from the copy tone that consumers
have come to know and understand as being specific
to your brand, your loyal customers may begin to
question whether they know your brand at all.

The branding opportunities provided by social media
are beyond compare, but so is the importance of
sustaining a brand persona when faced with the
infinite production of online content. Recognizing the
different ways in which you can define your brand
can help. So, too, can relaying these to the people
who, regardless of their own personas, can create a
seamless portrayal of your brand.

The implications of imagery

About the Author:
Steve Glauberman founded Enlighten in 1983 as one
of the nation’s first interactive agencies with a
vision for how technology could be coupled with
imaginative content and incisive marketing to
improve the ways businesses connect with their
customers. Steve has continued to focus on the
strategic development of interactive solutions that
deliver efficient yet engaging user experiences –
solutions that reflect his own uncommon blend of
technical and aesthetic sophistication. Over the
years, Steve has successfully guided numerous
Fortune 1000 and smaller emerging companies in
the ever evolving digital arena.

The emergence and growth of social media applications that focus entirely on photographs has required
brand marketers to take a closer look at the way
images reflect on the brand persona. The way in
which Instagram and Pinterest take the persuasive
power of pictures to a new level, creating engagement between consumers and brands based entirely
on visual cues, demands that the imagery put forth
on behalf of your brand is coherent.
One of Instagram’s claims to fame is its filters — a
series of photographic overlays that change the look
and feel of pictures taken with a mobile phone. While
brands can expect to see more Instagram marketing
opportunities now that the service has been acquired
by Facebook, some are already using it to upload
images to a Facebook page.

Courtesy: Content Marketing Institute
www.contentmarketinginstitute.com
(Reproduced with permission)

Even something as seemingly trivial as an image
filter warrants careful study when it’s going to be
made public as part of a brand’s persona. Brands
must therefore educate their social media managers
in the acceptable language of their visual assets.
2


WHY YOUR PERSONAL
BRAND IS DYING ON LINKEDIN
By Hilton Barbour
Of all the brand conversations I have on this blog,
the one I don’t discuss often enough is Brand You.
The one brand, I’d argue, that you have more control
over than any other. It is unlikely you’ll lose your
personal brand in a worldwide realignment or that
the CMO of Brand You will suddenly be fired. So now
that I’ve tortured that metaphor, let me put this out
there – each day I’m confronted by folks who have
recklessly abandoned their most prized asset – their
personal brand. Abandoned in a market, despite
what Washington or Ottawa says, that has millions of
competing “personal brands” vying for attention.
Abandoned in a very public, highly visible and very
unforgiving way.
I’m talking, of course, about how you market your
brand on LinkedIn. The place where “over 150 million
professionals exchange information, ideas and
opportunities”. Play a little game with me called
“Would I buy Brand You?” – warning more tortured
metaphors ahead.
Can I identify this brand?
– simple stuff but so many professionals chose
inappropriate photographs for their LinkedIn profile.
Photos best kept for Facebook or Pinterest. Even
worse, many don’t have a photograph at all. We all
know images convey a strong impression of you and
your brand. No photograph sends the same signal to
me as Unilever stocking shelves in the detergent
aisle with blank white cardboard boxes.
Am I intrigued by this brand?
– if your profile is merely a list of titles, companies
and dates you’re telling me precious little about why
I should buy Brand You. Again I see a wealth of
profiles that make no attempt to explain their
personal value proposition, articulate their point of
differentiation, establish a functional or emotional
connection with the buyer. It’s pathetic. Could you
credibly launch any brand without that positioning
stuff? Would you expect it to flourish?

How satisfied are former buyers of this brand?
– satisfied buyers are a cornerstone of any successful brand. Why would it be any different for Brand
You? Potential buyers unable to peruse a list of
Recommendations are going to be left with two
impressions. One, you’re too junior to have any
meaningful experience or Two, you’ve not made an
impression on any of the folks you’ve worked with
before. Sound like a Brand you’d want to purchase?
Didn’t think so.
I don’t deny I’m a LinkedIn super-freak. As a
freelance Strategy Planner I have to be, because
networking is pivotal to paying my mortgage. I also
readily accept that LinkedIn may not be everyone’s
cup of tea, but here’s the rub. Many of us seem to
ignore the basic principles of marketing when it
comes to nurturing our own personal brands. This,
despite understanding the inherent benefits of
building a strong brand – increased loyalty, the
ability to charge a premium and so on. Ironic no?
If you think the automotive, detergent, airline, retail
or QSR categories are competitive, consider just how
competitive the market for talent is. LinkedIn is
increasingly the global marketplace for that talent.
Will your brand flourish or die there?
About the Author :
Hilton Barbour has been in advertising for over 14
years and along the way has developed an opinion on
various things related to branding and marketing.He
uses his blog to air his opinions and thoughts.
Courtesy: Hilton Barbour
http://www.hiltonbarbour.com

Does this brand have any cachet or is it generic?
– LinkedIn gives you a multitude of features to create
a holistic impression of your brand. Links to your
blog, a menu of expertise that are SEO-rich, groups
to connect like-minded individuals and much more.
All of these features add dimension to your brand
offering and separate you. Why then do so few folks
leverage them?

3

THE FUTURE
OF
SEARCH
An Interview with Google’s Sam Sebastian
By Clare McDermott

Sam Sebastian, director of local and B2B markets for
Google, answers questions about the future of earch.
Marketers have long been told by SEO consultants
that long-tail search was ‘where it’s at’. What is
your take on the quality of content vs. quantity of
content—especially as it pertains to B2B and local
business content marketers?
Both are important and can vary by the type of
content considered. An industrial distributor may
have a massive catalog of SKUs with related content
(pricing, specs, etc.) and should allow as many of
those SKUs to be indexed for purchase-oriented
searching. For professionals seeking knowledge,
original/quality content such as research, in-depth
reports, thoughtful analysis and so on will go a long
way in achieving better ranking.
In your opinion, what are the fundamental SEO
initiatives B2B marketers should be undertaking?
1 Do something cool: Make sure your site stands out
from the competition in a good way. For example,
more professionals are looking for rich content
online, so make sure your library of amazing video
content is indexed using Rich Snippets.
2 Include relevant words in your copy: Try to put
yourself in the shoes of searchers. What would they
query to find you? Your business name, location,
products, etc., are important. It’s also helpful to use
the same terms in your site that your users might
type (e.g., you might offer “next-generation marketing tools” but most searchers might type “marketing
automation software”), and to answer the questions
they might have. It helps to know your customers.

4

3 Be smart about your tags and site architecture:
Create unique title tags and meta descriptions;
include Rich Snippets markup from schema.org
where appropriate. Have intuitive navigation and
good internal links.
4 Sign up for email forwarding in Webmaster Tools:
Help us communicate with you, especially when we
notice something awry with your site.
5 Attract buzz: Natural links, +1s, likes, follows … In
every business there’s something compelling,
interesting, entertaining or surprising that you can
offer or share with your audience. Provide a helpful
service, educate people, be a thought leader and
users will share and reshare your content.
6 Stay fresh and relevant: Keep content up to date
and consider options such as building a social media
presence (if that’s where a potential audience exists)
or creating an ideal mobile experience if your users
are often on the go.
7 Go mobile: Mobile searching and browsing in B2B
is growing rapidly due to the adoption of high-end
mobile devices. Make sure you have a mobileoptimized site/content and that it is getting indexed
accordingly.
We’ve seen Google search results start to show
“latest posts” at the top of the list — but there’s
some confusion about which posts will show up
there.
So, to start, it sounds like you are referring to
“Search Plus Your World”, which as I’m sure you
know, was Google’s latest update to the search
results to make them more “social.”


1. Personal Results – Pictures/posts relevant to your
search, which are your own OR have been shared
with you via a circle.
2. Profiles in Search – People in your circles OR
people we think you might be interested in following.
3. People and Pages – Any brand or people pages
related to your search query that we think you might
be interested in based on your search query. It
sounds like this is the focus of the question and
we’ve been seeing a lot of this lately with advertisers
concerned that they see their competitors in this
space and want to know how they can show. You have
to meet a certain, undisclosed, threshold number of
+1s in order to be eligible to show in this spot.
For Google+ posts, is it just publicly shared posts or
will it show up for those in my circles? And does
this also affect Brand pages?
Both. It is any post shared publicly OR shared with
you specifically by someone in your circle. Yes, posts
by Brand pages can also be included in this space.
How important is social for B2B and local?
I’d say it’s becoming more and more important.
Two themes stand out with Local/B2B and social:
1 Users trust recommendations – Personal
recommendations are trusted more than any other
source–90 percent trust these. Also, 77 percent of
brand content is created by consumers – if people
feel connected to a brand, they share that. So people
want recommendations and we know they’re looking
online. We also know now that this certainly includes
B2B and Local. (Quick Plug: Google+ and “Search
Plus Your World” are designed to share those
recommendations with your potential customer at
the right time.)
2 Market via conversation - A Public Storage or an
Orkin will probably never have tons of Google+ or
Twitter followers but those who are looking for that
service and click through to their Facebook page or
Google+ page can get an idea for the company’s
identity and how it does business. Do they have good
ratings? How are they engaging their customers?
How are they handling complaints? Are most posts
positive or negative?
What are some of the challenges you see marketers
tackling in “closing the loop” between their
Google-based marketing and their ROI from
customer sales?


We are seeing progress. This is probably the first
thing we push with customers – tracking. We don’t
want them to invest with us unless they have a sense
of what traffic is worth to them. Once they’ve built
out a value model, any digital advertising can be
compared to the expectations and then a customer
can double down or pull back accordingly. I’d say
customers are getting better in this area, but it’s still
the early days. Most of the issues are on the sales
fulfillment process at a customer. Once a digital lead
is generated, how are they tracking it internally, how
are sales people compensated, how do they round
robin a lead, how do they pre-qualify a lead, etc.
The pace of innovation in digital marketing vehicles
— from Google alone, but then multiplied by all the
other growing channels and services out there — is
truly dizzying. How do you suggest that regular
marketers keep up?
Keep it simple and focus on the big impact areas
first. Define your marketing or customer acquisition
model for online or offline and then test certain
platforms and determine how they work. But try to
compare all platforms on an apples-to-apples
comparison as much as possible. Then slowly build
out your marketing mix focusing on the biggest
impact components. I have many customers asking
me all about social, or advertising on Pinterest or
Pandora, but they still don’t have a basic search
engine marketing campaign built out or they don’t
have the basic tracking in place. Start with the
basics, master the components that can have the
biggest impact, define your value model, then test
new areas once you have the fundamentals in place.
What’s your favorite perk working at Google?
The people. I think we hire the best people in the
world and it’s a privilege working alongside smart,
dedicated, disciplined and fun people, who always try
to do the right thing.
About the author:
Clare McDermott founded SoloPortfolio in 2007 on
the premise that professional service firms need
support from marketers with financial and operational work experience. She is passionate about
writing, design, cycling and virtual entrepreneurship.
You can find her blogging about content marketing
for professional service firms at Studious or follow
her @soloportfolio.

5

SOCIAL MEDIA
FOR MARKETERS
Looking Beyond the Hype
By Sabarinath C Nair
Leveraging the power of “Social Media” is a jargon
one encounters very often in marketing parlance.
So much that if you browse through job listings for
marketing roles, you would find a lot of listings for
“Marketing Manager – Social Media”. If companies
are investing so much money and effort into this,
there must be something special about social media,
right? Or is it merely a déjà-vu of the decade leading
up to the year 2000, when the dot com bubble
had the place of today’s social media? What does
social media really mean to you as a marketing
professional?
To examine the actual use of social media, I will limit
myself to Twitter, Facebook and blogs. How have
these tools impacted marketing? The very fact that
this article in its web edition (compared to a
hypothetical print edition) would be much better to
access, by means of readily clickable links indicates
the power of web. Blogs extend this benefit by
providing means to get first-hand feedback on
company announcements, through user comments.
Twitter and facebook make sense for shorter and
more interactive communication. Many brands are
now on twitter (http://2020social.wetpaint.com/page/
Indian+brands+on+Twitter) as well as facebook
(http://2020social.wetpaint.com/page/Indian+brands
+on+Facebook). From a consumer point of view, the
advantage social media presence (assuming someone serious is manning these accounts) provides is
that it gives a fairly democratic access to these
brands, and also provides an extended customer
support (for example, tweeting to @Airtel_Presence
might give better results than dialling 121). For the
brands, the key lies in managing these accounts in
such a way that they are used more for brand
building than for resolving customer complaints.
These advantages also come with risks. “Viral” is a
buzzword used and abused in most marketing
classes, and brands need to remember that most
often negative publicity is much more viral than

6

positive. For the general public, Twitter is most often
a place for ranting – a search on twitter with any
brand name will most certainly return negative
comments (also read - http://www.dnaindia.com/
lifestyle/report_poor-customer-service-don-t-calljust-tweet_1420265). What a brand can do in such a
scenario is to be seen as responsive & prompt on
social media – to make known that all customer
concerns are being listened to and addressed. A case
in point is how leading Indian brand Cafe Coffee Day
handled a viral negative publicity on twitter (a good
case study on this is available at
http://www.slideshare.net/amnigos/how-cafecoffee-day-handled-their-online-crisis). The hashtag
#CCDSucks was trending locally on twitter for some
time and then ironically Cafe Coffee Day’s twitter
account @CafeCoffeeDay had to respond with the
same hashtag which spoke negatively about their
brand. By responding promptly, the brand was able
to do some damage control, though it is still
debatable whether the way it was handled was the
best possible. More case studies can be accessed at
http://www.indiasocial.in/case-studies/.
It is not just companies who are able to benefit from
the power of social media. Earlier it was tough to get
recognition as a writer and get published. In the post
Chetan Bhagat, post Social Media era, things are
much easier. A new breed of celebrities has come up
on twitter and blogosphere, with strong fan
followings. Sidin Vadukut, an editor at Mint who
blogs at whatay.com and tweets from @sidin,
recently launched a bestselling novel by name Dork,
riding on his popularity as a humorist in these social
media circles. Shashi Tharoor became the first
Indian politician to connect with the tech savvy
electorate through twitter (@ShashiTharoor) and
continues to be one of the most influential persons
on twitter (that his tweets contributed majorly to his
being sacked as Minister of State is the flip side of
social media).


Given all this, it is clear that Social Media
management is very critical to branding of B2C
companies. How does it impact B2B companies?
What about start-ups? In my opinion, the benefits are
not much better than Search Engine Optimization
(SEO). Major search engines give much more
weightage to content on blogs and social media than
content on proper company websites. So it helps a
lot in terms of search engine visibility to have a
company blog in addition to keeping the company
website up to date. For example, Vortex Engineering,
the makers of the award winning Rural ATM
Gramateller faces the same limitations in search
engine results that a start-up would face. By
effective use of the company blog and twitter, it is
able to be the first result returned when someone
googles with “SBI 20000th ATM”. Moreover, a tweet
addressed to the twitter account of Mint (@livemint)
ensured that the leading business newspaper
covered the company’s winning of WEF Technology
Pioneer award without any PR efforts (not even a
press release). On the other hand, its customers
are banks, and most bankers are not very internet
savvy, and hence it does not make sense for usage of
social media for customer interaction.
To conclude, brands have to tread carefully around
the hype of social media. If it is not handled properly,
it can bring far more negative results than any other
medium. For B2B brands, the benefits are limited as
the number of its customers would be limited
compared to a B2C or a retail company. The decision
on whether to invest in social media has to be taken
based on whether the customers of the brand are
active on the same media, and whether it is possible
to create meaningful conversations with
customers/consumers on these social media. As for
the hype, use it where it matters most – scoring
brownie points in an increasingly jargonized and
‘power pointed’ corporate jungle, and not for any
real returns.
About the Author
Sabarinath C Nair works in Marketing at Vortex
Engineering Pvt Ltd and handles marketing, branding and PR for the start-up. His interests include
travelling, reading and technology marketing. He
tweets at @sabarinathc and manages the official
twitter account of Vortex @VortexATM.


7

CASE STUDY: HOW IBM USES
SOCIAL MEDIA AS GLUE FOR
CONNECTING EVENTS
CHRISTOPHER KOCH

Using social media as a glue to connect traditional
marketing tactics such as events is the most effective
use of social media in B2B services marketing
today, according to ITSMA interviews with services
marketers. Rather than treat social media as
standalone channels or replacements for traditional
tactics, marketers should look for ways to use
social media to support and enhance the successful
programs they already have in place.
Based on ITSMA’s research with B2B services
marketers, we’re seeing companies successfully
using social media to drive more attendance and
interactions at events. Social media becomes the
glue that binds events together, driving registration
and discussion prior to events and enabling
conference attendees to continue the dialogue
between events.

USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO DRIVE
EVENT PARTICIPATION
For example, IBM’s Software Group used social
media in 2009 to help drive participation in its live
user conference, Impact, which is targeted at buyers
of IBM’s WebSphere software for service-oriented
architectures (SOAs). IBM promoted the live event
through such channels as event-speciﬁc Facebook
pages, LinkedIn groups, and Twitter feeds, leading
to a 10% increase in registrations for the live event.
But it also went beyond those simple uses to create
a virtual companion event to the conference. For a
company like IBM, with its global customer base, an
online companion event meant that many more
people could attend virtually than could afford to
make the pilgrimage to the live event.
But the virtual conference did not simply piggyback
on the live conference. It had its own share of
exclusive sessions. For example, IBM made subject
matter experts available to chat with online

8

participants during pre-speciﬁed times and
promoted these encounter sessions both online
and off.

AVOID CREATING SOCIAL MEDIA
SILOS
All told, the combination of the live and virtual events
generated more leads for IBM at a lower overall cost
per generated lead than previous conferences.
Many marketers view social media tools such as
blogs and social networking sites such as Twitter and
LinkedIn as distinct channels, but IBM’s Software
Group is determined to manage them as links in a
larger strategy.
“For me, having a separate standalone social media
campaign doesn’t work. It’s all about integration”,
says Sandy Carter, vice president, IBM Software Group
Business Partners.
Members of IT Services Marketing Association
(ITSMA) member can read the complete post of IBM
Software Group: How to Integrate Social Media into the
Marketing Strategy here (www.itsma.com/research/
social-media-into-marketing-strategy).
About the Author
Chris Koch is a writer, editor, B2B marketer, researcher
and former journalist. He is an editorial director at SAP
(of course, opinions here are his own). His focus is on
discovering, developing, and disseminating good ideas
that customers can put to use in their companies.
Courtesy: www.christopherakoch.com


USING PAID MEDIA
TO ACHIEVE REMARKABLE
B2B CONVERSION RATES
By Nicholas

What if I told you the last three digital paid media campaigns that my company, lonelybrand, executed earned an
average 31.92 percent conversion rate? (To be clear — we’re talking about the number of successful conversions divided by the total number of paid clicks).
In a world where marketers are faced with abysmal conversion rates and polluted client or stakeholder
expectations, such figures might seem virtually impossible. But our 30-percent plus conversion figures are
real. I’m going to share why all advertising and public relations agencies — and B2B brands in general — have a
clean shot at earning the same results.

Barriers to content marketing
According to Advertising, Marketing & PR Agency Executives

My company is so busy creating
great ideas for our clients that
we have little creative energy
left to market creatives

My company lacks a
disciplined process for digital
lead generation

I know digital tools can help my
company grow, but I don’t know
how to effectively add them to
my current day-to-day process

Note – respondent pool was made up of over 300 senior agency marketing executives
Source: ”The State of the Agency Report 2011“from www.lonelybrand.com

Create relevant, compelling content

Sorry to reiterate the obvious folks, but the quality and timeliness of your content matters for paid media.
If you’re spending to support bits of content — be blog posts, white papers, research reports or apps — the
value has to be there. So go the extra mile and make your content highly valuable to a group of people you want
to do business with using your expertise to provide answers to the questions that potential clients haven’t even
asked yet. Our experience tells us that the best conversion rates will come from niche-focused content, so don’t
be afraid to get specific.


9

Implement a superior user experience

Collecting data in the age of instant gratification means you need to provide a slick experience for site visitors,
and that experience needs to be extensible to work with future content. Clearly note who should be most
interested in your content, then plan to ask for just enough data to be useful — but not so much that your
visitors get turned off. I recommend only requesting first and last name, company, and a valid email address at
the start of their engagement. An email address represents the opportunity for continued contact, allowing you
to pique your target’s interest in the future with compelling content and a little social CRM ingenuity.

Choose your target wisely

For consumer-facing campaigns, reach is typically wide and waste is high. That’s part of the reason conversion
rates for major online retailers can be as low as 1 percent. The science (if you can call it that) of content
marketing has demonstrated we can earn higher conversion rates with niche-focused content. Niche content
appeals to a small population, and through advanced paid media targeting you can hone in on those
more-desirable targets. Visitors are more likely to tune in if your content is targeted at their unique situation
(e.g., insurance company looking to increase quoting behavior) versus generalized fluff content (enhance your
company’s social media). Sure, CPC will be higher (in the $3.00+ range), but visitors will be much more likely to
register, download, or otherwise perform the desired action.

Place attention-winning ads

Presenting niche content to a niche audience means using language that is direct and impactful. Focus on what
matters to your audience at the time the ad will run. If it’s 2012 planning be sure to note that in the subject line.
Running content on mobile quoting behavior for national insurance companies? Make sure your audience
knows it’s a “must read” for insurance marketing professionals, as in the example below.

Track, report and optimize

Campaigns are meant to have a beginning and an end, but in the world of content marketing, the long tail lives
on long after the paid media is turned off. That means using the relatively short time you have with a paid media
campaign that supports and quickly optimizes a piece of content. Start with a group of ads (we recommend at
least 10) and cut those that underperform.
In the example below, we tested a variation of ads on LinkedIn for a recently published white paper. The copy
was identical, but it turned out that the image choice made a significant impact on clicks. The ad with our
writer’s face generated 29 clicks; the ad with our marble logo generated only two. Performing this test allowed
us to optimize the campaign and save on ad dollars.

10


Eat what you kill

Generating stellar conversion rates for content marketing can be a blessing and a curse. Make sure you have
the necessary infrastructure to funnel leads to someone that has time to handle them with care and follow up
with nurturing behavior. This means putting in the hours to organize warm leads within your database and
ensure the info finds its way into appropriate email marketing lists and social networks.

Does your company have a documented content
marketing process to generate qualified leads ?
Advertising, Marketing & PR Agencies

Note: respondent pool was made up of over 300 senior agency marketing executives
Source: “the State of the Agency Report 2011” from www.lonelybrand.com

Make it worth your while

A disciplined digital communications program for your agency or B2B firm will produce results. Spending
money on digital paid media to support your content habit only makes sense when your investment is for the
long run and supported by five other key areas of digital: social, CRM, mobile, search and analytics.
About the Author:
Nicholas is the Digital Strategy Lead at lonelybrand, where he spends his days (and many long nights) inventing
the future of digital communications by connecting consumers and decision makers to brands. His 15-year
career in digital marketing has resulted in numerous television and media appearances, including notable
articles in Bloomberg-Businessweek, Forrester’s Web Strategy, Brand New (an Amazon best-seller) and
Advertising Age. Follow Nicholas on Twitter @ADMAVEN.
Courtesy: Content Marketing Institute www.contentmarketinginstitute.com


11

INTERNAL CONVERSATIONS
+
SOCIAL MEDIA
=
SALES CONVERSATIONS
By Katie McCaskey

“Bring on the ping pong tables and pizza Fridays!”
Oh, how quaint that dotcom management rallying cry
sounds today. Back then, it was all about creating
internal “company culture.” Now, managers are
abuzz about something else: sharing company
conversations externally via social media. Today’s
winners are the companies who realize the value of
sharing (some) internal conversations publicly. In
fact, this approach can provide the trust necessary to
build a solid sales foundation.
A great example is Incept, an Ohio-based contact
center to recruit blood donors. Incept uses social
media to capture internal conversations and share
these with existing and potential clients through
social media. The benefits are two-fold: one, these
conversations enhance the internal culture, driving
employee connections and loyalty. The second
benefit is the trust and familiarity these conversations build with people outside the company. Given
the adage that “people do business with people they
like”, this bolsters sales efforts.
Here are some take-aways other businesses can
apply to their social media outreach programs:
SELECT A BETA TEAM
Not all of your employees can or should be
representing your company in social media channels.
Start by selecting a small beta team drawn from
those with existing interest or aptitude.
Some will be better suited to contributing to a
company blog, while others will naturally be more
valuable in the “chatter-sphere” of Twitter and
Facebook. This selection process should be
competitive and treated as a privilege to represent
the company brand.

12

Incept employees are referred to internally as iCMEs
(internet conversation marketing experts). These
iCMEs were divided into teams that write for the
Incept blog and those that focused on social media
interactions on Twitter and Facebook. The beta team
had both existing skill sets. As social media efforts
grew, they could train others. On Twitter, employees
set up user names such as @Becky_Incept to identify
an individual and the company. On Facebook, the
beta team used their personal profiles to “like” the
Incept Facebook business page. This team helped
recruit other employees to participate on the
company page by explaining the differences
between their personal Facebook profile and the
company page.
ESTABLISH GUIDELINES TOGETHER
Nate Riggs of Social Business Strategies helped
Incept build the social media team. He says that the
team intentionally “worked backward”. They chose to
allow employees to engage on social media prior to
establishing guidelines.
Why? It gave the beta team real-world examples of
how to handle customer inquiries, questions,
compliments and occasionally complaints.
The team created boundaries that designated
when a request should be answered
“further up the chain of command.” For example,
employees are asked not to discuss company
news until news items are formally “released”
to the public.
Interestingly, once guidelines were in place, Incept
experienced greater participation and engagement
online by their employees. This, in turn, drove
participation by vendors, customers, prospects and
others outside the company.


GIVE EMPLOYEES EXPRESSIVE FREEDOM
The key is that employees should be given plenty of
freedom across all the social media platforms.
Whether contributing to the company blog, company
Facebook page, company Twitter account or, notably,
independently through individual Facebook/Twitter
accounts, employees are encouraged to discuss
Incept and respond to Incept-related questions.
However, by sharing these conversations externally
they are also connecting with others around common
interests.
On branded Twitter accounts for example, such as
@Becky_Incept, employees are asked to tweet
regularly on the company’s behalf. The remaining
time employees, tweet about other topics.
EMBRACE TRANSPARENCY
Perhaps the biggest transition for companies,
including Incept, is the notion that transparency is
here to stay. Rather than trying to control employee’s
social media interaction with an iron fist (such as
banning it from the office computer network), Incept
and others lead the way by welcoming transparency
and employee representation of their brand online as
a new business reality.
Says Sam Falletta, Incept’s Chief Results Officer:
“Social media really is just an accelerator of what’s
happening as it is. So if you have a bad culture, it’s
just going to be reflected online, and if you have a
good culture it’ll be reflected online. The same thing
for products and services in most cases.”
About the author
Katie McCaskey provides content marketing,
commercial writing, and social media services.
She is passionate about content that empowers
people to renew the built and natural world. She is
an “urban escapee” based south of Washington, D.C.
in historic Staunton, VA. Follow her on Twitter
@KatieMcCaskey.


13

THERE IS NO
PLACE TO HIDE
By Hareesh Tibrewala

14


TOP 10 SOCIAL MEDIA
MEGA TRENDS
Internet came to town a decade ago and changed our
lives forever. Not only did it change the way we did
business but it changed the way we lived life. Email
became our primary communication tool and web
URL became the primary way to disseminate
information. It was OK if you did not have a physical
office address, but it was not OK if your business
card did not carry a URL.
Web 2.0 is once again re-defining our lives.
It promises to be bigger and have a more significant
impact on us than Web 1.0. If Web1.0 was driven
largely by Internet connectivity and PCs, Web 2.0 will
be driven by the mobile telephony and Social
Networking Sites.
To give an example of the power of this lethal
combination of SNS and mobile phone savour the
following examples:
Imagine you are at a conference, where there are
another 100 delegates like yourself. Maybe there are
some people you know, but there are a larger
number of people you don’t know. You pull out your
cell phone, take up a position at a vantage point and
take a picture of the audience. Your cell phone
software very quickly connects to servers to leading
SNS sites, does image mapping , and in just about no
time, the picture reappears on your cell phone,
except that this time it has been tagged by names of
all the people in the audience with their designations
and company names. You click on a name, and that
persons profile is right there before you. Now, you
know the people that you need to catch up with
during the tea break!
Each one of us are now fully “identifiable” at any
point of time. It is almost like having a name tag
pinned to your T-shirt pocket at all times. Even if one
wants to remain anonymous, this combination of a
cell phone + SNS sites, ensures that there is no place
to hide....not anymore.

Let us look at another example of how this cell
phone + SNS combination is going to transform our
decision making process:
Imagine I am a tourist who has come to Mumbai
from Delhi. Here I am, at the Hanging Garden,
enjoying the sight of Chowpatty. Now I wish to
proceed for lunch. Once upon a time, I would need to
depend on a tourist guide book or the taxiwalla to
guide me. Now, no more! I flash my cell phone,
switch on the camera and hold it against a view of
the Chowpatty landscape. I click a button asking for a
listing of restaurants. Promptly all restaurants that
are in focus in the camera appear tagged on the
camera. Now I know that there is Pizza Hut and a
Rajdhani and a Copper Chimney in my view. I click on
a particular restaurant and I can see the menu card
and the price list. I click on yet another button and I
can see recommendations. Best of all, I can specifically see recommendations made by people who are
known to me. Technology needs to connect the
restaurant website to the website that carries
recommendations to my Facebook page...and I can
see exactly which of my friends have made what
recommendations for a particular restaurant. So
then who decides where I eat? No longer the tourist
guide book and no longer the taxiwalla. It is my
friends who are helping me decide where I eat.
About the author
Hareesh Tibrewala is bachelor of engineering from
VJTI, Mumbai and a master of science from
University of Southern California, USA. In 1997 he
co-founded Homeindia.com, one of India’s first
e-commerce sites. Hareesh has excellent
understanding of the Internet, as a medium for
business, and tremendous organization
building skills.
For the detailed report please visit
http://www.paulwriter.com/component/k2/item/416social-media-mega-trends-tibrewala


15

DON'T DO SOCIAL
5 Good Reasons Why
By Jessie Paul

In many conferences, the favorite audience question
is ‘Should I be on Social Media?” And the panel usually made up of large, successful brands - gives
an enthusiastic “Yes!”
But social media is just another communication
channel, and should go through the same due
diligence that you did when setting up the website,
telephone hotline or PO Box.
Here are some factors you should think about before
taking the plunge:

1. Your product sucks.
Don’t get me wrong, you don’t mean for it to suck.
And certainly, if you work in an evolved, mature
industry, it won’t, because you can control all the
variables. But what about industries where, because
of regulatory issues or supply chain issues, you don’t
(yet) have 100% control over production? For
example a builder can control the quality of the final
building, but if the sand or cement companies go on
strike, there can be a delay in completion.
Or brick-and-mortar organizations in start-up mode
where they are still gradually learning to scale? Say
you run a high-end, highly creative boutique ad
agency. Your creative director is a genius but you
don’t (yet) have two of them and unfortunately her
dog falls sick on the day of an important deliverable,
and she can’t come in. Your output suffers. It’s a
temporary setback but if your client has a huge
network and vents his frustration publicly it could
shutdown your fledgling firm. Because your client
will forgive you when she sees the wonderful
campaign, but the comments are archived forever for
an unforgiving public.
Eventually, if you’re a good businessperson, you will
plan for these problems and control them. But in the
interim? Should you provide a forum for people to
flame you publicly?

16

2. A microscopic % of your target audience
actually uses social media
India has around 30 million people on social media
today (at least that’s what I hear at conferences) and
that is increasing rapidly and is expected to hit 100
million soon. Big numbers. But we’re a country of 1
billion and many companies have less than 100
customers, and a prospect list of less than 1000.
Unless you have data (just ask your customers!) that
shows that your particular audience uses social
media and is active enough to be influenced there,
you’d be quite ok to postpone your arrival in the
digital world. Much like many companies delayed
their web presence till a sufficient number of
customers could access the net.
The early adopters of social media tend to be disproportionately vocal and influential. Many have
excellent reach with mass media, making the
message ‘hop’ from digital to mainstream print/TV
very easy. That’s of course a plus - you get coverage
in mainstream for free, but it also means that any
negative message spreads fast. (Remember, dog
bites man is never as newsworthy has man bites dog).


3. You’re already drowning in data

5. You are choked for bandwidth

As they say in computer programming, Garbage In
Garbage Out (you never know when my engineering
degree will remind me - and you - of its existence).
Many companies enter social media with the
laudable idea of listening to their customers.
The customers respond enthusiastically, but the
company doesn’t have a back-end system in place to
make sense of it. Also, since the company hasn’t
really thought through the goals of the digital
presence, it does not have any research objectives or
hypotheses to test. Instead, it just adds to the pile of
already available unsorted, unfiled data on what
customers want. Either manually or with a CRM on
analytics system you will have to process this into
meaningful insights. And depending on the scale of
your organization you could quite possibly have
gained that same insight by running a focus group
discussion, speaking directly with 50 customers, or
buying the latest quantitative study.

Would you set up a 24x7 tele-helpline without hiring
people to staff it first? Same logic should apply to
social media too. It’s always on, and people’s
expectations of response times are very exacting less than an hour in most cases. Unless you have
the staffing arrangement - and the required training,
FAQ, scripts etc - in place, you are likely to burn your
fingers.

Oh, and because you asked for their views and didn’t
do anything about it, your previously enthusiastic
customers are now turning on you.

4. Your CEO thinks “social wocial” is
over-rated
Knowing that he is wrong does not make the problem
go away. Yes, yes, your CEO may not be your target
audience or chosen demographic. But social
requires you to engage with customers, interact with
them and present a friendly face to them. Unless this
is supported by the organization at the top-most
level, you will not receive the required support in
personnel, processes, and tools. Social has to be
understood and treated as another valuable channel
for getting in touch with stakeholders and baked into
the overall communication strategy. Other channels
like TV, radio, web, outdoor, magazines have been
around for years, but their adoption has been
influenced by the CEOs personal conviction too.
(Trust me, everyone in marketing has released an ad
somewhere because the CEO says “Oh, but I always
read/see that”)


This is a direct line of conversation with your
customers - you can’t just outsource it and hope for
the best. The outsourcing can only take care of
outbound communication and managing routine
requests. You and other senior members of your
organization will have to occasionally chip in and
respond/listen to customers. Are you ready for that?
I have taken an extreme view on each of these issues
to make my point, but that’s the general direction.
None of these is a permanent situation - you will
eventually have to overcome it. It’s just a question of
time. The digital age is definitely the future, it just
hasn’t reached everyone yet.
About the author:
Jessie is the CEO of Paul Writer
a marketing advisory firm.
She is the author of ‘No Money Marketing’
(Tata McGraw-Hill)

17

7 QUESTIONS TO ASK
BEFORE ADDING A BLOG
TO THE MARKETING MIX
MICHELE LINN

Some time back I was talking with a couple of
corporate B2B marketers, and the question of
blogging came up: do they plan to have a blog?
Unlike many marketers who jump into having a blog
because it seems like the right thing to do, these
gentlemen were very thoughtful in their response
and explained that they would only have a blog if
they had a clear objective and a way to support it.
Amen to that!
While I am all for trying different types of content
and formats, I’m an even bigger proponent of
consistency, which is why I caution marketers before
undertaking a project that needs constant care and
feeding, like a blog.
Here are some key questions to ask before you
commit to a corporate blog.

1. DO YOU HAVE EXECUTIVE
COMMITMENT?
One of the key differences between companies that
thrive with content marketing and those that do not
is buy-in from executive management. Before you
commit to a blog, make sure your executive team is
on board.
In their eBook , B2B Blogging Basics, Best Practices
. . . and Blunders, MLT Creative provides these
warning signs that your culture is highly resistant to
18

blogging – and blogging may not be right for you
(Note: registration is required for eBook):
1 Hoping for a “grassroots” effort without executive
sponsorship
2 Top executives unwilling to be personally involved
in content planning and reader engagement
3 Influential executives actively lobbying against
the effort
4 All content must go through unwieldy approvals
(Legal, HR, etc.)
If you don’t have the right culture for a blog, it’s
better to know this before you invest time and
resources (and, you don’t want any additional
ammunition against future content marketing
projects).

2. WHAT RESULT(S) DO YOU
WANT TO ACHIEVE WITH YOUR
BLOG?
After you know you have commitment, figure out
what you want your blog to accomplish. The answer
to this question will impact everything you do, from
how you structure your blog to what the call to action
will be.
For best results, your blog should directly support
your marketing and business goals, and the criteria
you use to measure success should be tied to this.


This may seem obvious, but it’s really common for
marketers to start blogging because they think it’s
something they should do to “keep up”. But, without
clear criteria to measure success, it will be
impossible to know if your blog is paying off.

3. DO YOU HAVE REALISTIC
EXPECTATIONS?
In all likelihood, it’s going to take time to build up
interest – and traffic – to your blog. And, truth be
told, it’s going to feel discouraging at times. Be
realistic about what to expect. For instance, it’s not
as likely that your readers will comment if you
have a B2B blog.

4. DO YOU HAVE A CUSTOMERFOCUSED MINDSET?
Good blogs aren’t about products or companies.
This, too, seems obvious, but I’ve talked to many
marketers whose blogging plans revolve around
what is going on with their organization. Step back
and ask how you can educate your readers.

5. DO YOU HAVE THE
RESOURCES?
Even if you decide that a blog is right for you, it’s a
lot of work to do well. Many companies are using a
collaborative approach to blogging, which is good as
it spreads the work around, but it’s still a lot to
maintain.
You need to have a plan for who will provide content
and how often. Decide on the frequency of your blog
posts, and stick with it. Of course, look at your
internal resources and subject matter experts, but
also think about if you can get customers or other
advocates involved. To get your resources to commit
their time to a blog, it’s imperative that you have
executive support.

6. DO YOU HAVE SOMEONE TO
MANAGE THIS PROCESS?

I also suggest that the blogging administrator
maintains an editorial calendar not only to track
authors and topics but other metrics such as
keywords for SEO and the call to action for each post.

7. DO YOU NEED SOMEONE TO
EDIT THE POSTS?
In addition, if the people you are asking to contribute
to the blog are not natural writers, you’ll need
someone to edit the posts for logic and structure
(this could be the blogging administrator or someone
with more writing experience). I love this comment
from John Bottom on one of his CMI posts that
underscores the importance of strong writing:
“I believe a coherent structure is the biggest
difference between a well-written piece of content
and a poorly-written one. People tend to get sensitive
about spelling and grammar but, while these are
important, it is the way a story is told that really
matters. And one of the biggest failings of
untutored writers is that they tend towards
‘stream-of-consciousness’ writing that gets tiring
to read and difficult to follow.”
Don’t get me wrong: I think the power of a blog is
enormous, and if it is something you can maintain,
it can be the most powerful tool in your content
marketing arsenal. But, I don’t think a blog is for
everyone – and it isn’t something marketers should
jump into without a detailed plan.

What else do you think marketers should
consider before launching a blog?
About the Author:
Michele Linn is the Executive Editor of the Content
Marketing Institute and a B2B content marketing
consultant who has a passion for helping companies
use content to connect with their ideal buyers.
You can follow her on Twitter at @michelelinn or
read more of her posts on Savvy B2B Marketing.
Courtesy: www.contentmarketinginstitute.com

You need someone to take ownership of your logging
efforts. Amanda Maksymiw had a great post on how
her company manages its corporate blog, and one of
the things that she highlights as key to their success
is having a blogging administrator. Their blogging
administrator keeps all bloggers on a schedule,
educates them on best practices and simply keeps
morale about the project high (don’t underestimate
the importance of this).


19

“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business
enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation.”
- Peter Drucker

'Paul Writer believes that there is a rich pool of innovation in India. The key to unlock this potential
is marketing. We are a hub for serious marketers that provides CMOs with insights, a community
platform, workshops and peer-learning opportunities that will make their professional lives
simpler, more efficient and richer.
We would love to hear your feedback and suggestions. To host a workshop on Social Media or
related digital strategies, please write to us at paulwriter@paulwriter.com.'

'The copyright for the articles lie with the authors and are reproduced in this book with permission. The views expressed in the
articles are those of the authors and not necessarily endorsed by Paul Writer. This publication is for private circulation only'

20


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