Small Business Marketing & Business Acceleration | FrontlineMarketingSystems.com

Social Pros 15 – Marcus Sheridan, The Sales Lion

Posted on 10. May, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Email Marketing, Google Analytics, mobile, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

This is Episode 15 of the Social Pros Podcast : Real People Doing Real Work in Social Media. This episode features Marcus Sheridan of The Sales Lion. Read on for insights from Marcus, and our Social Media Stat of the Week (this week: email opens on smartphones and tablets have grown by 82% in the last year).

Listen Now

Click the play button to listen here:

Download the audio file:

http://socialpros.podbean.com/mf/web/ic763t/SocialProsEpisode15.mp3

The RSS feed is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/socialprospodcast
Find us on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/convince-convert-blog-social/id499844469

Please Support Our Sponsors

Huge thanks to data-driven social media management software company Argyle Social for their presenting sponsorship, as well as Infusionsoft, Janrain, and Jim Kukral at DigitalBookLaunch. We use Argyle Social for our social engagement; we use Infusionsoft for our email; Janrain is our crackerjack social integration company, and Jim is our guest host for the podcast (and a smart guy). Also

Social Pros Transcript For Your Reading Enjoyment, Thanks to Speechpad for the Transcription

Jay: Yes, indeed. That was a new introduction on the Social Pros podcast. We’re stepping it up here a little bit in episode 15. I am Jay Baer joined by my trusty sidekick, Eric Boggs from Argyle Social. Eric, how are you, my friend?

Eric: I’m doing just fine, Jay.

Jay: Glad to hear it. Amazing guest on the show today. Actually, sitting here with me in an undisclosed hotel room in New Orleans, Louisiana, Marcus Sheridan, The Sales Lion. He will be joining us in just a second on the show. He’s going to blow us away. We should’ve gotten a bigger hotel room.

Eric: So Marcus spoke at a conference, evidently, that a couple Argylers attended. And one of them sent me a text saying, “Do you know this guy, Marcus Sheridan? He is blowing the room away.”

Jay: That is his MO. In fact, one of the tweets this morning was, “Who needs bloody marys when you have The Sales Lion”. He is the antidote to what ails you in New Orleans.

Eric: Awesome.

Jay: So I want to just quick shout out to our fantastic sponsors here on Social Pros. Of course, Argyle Social, Eric’s company, data driven, social media management software. Our friend, Jim Kukral from DigitalBookLaunch.com. Infusionsoft, who we use for all of our email stylings. And a new sponsor joining the podcast this week, our friends at Janrain, who do social sign-in and a bunch of other like magical voodoo. We’ll talk more about them in a week or two.

Eric: Yeah, good guys at Janrain. I know a guy named Jamie Beckland that I guess went to work there from working at an agency.

Jay: Yes.

Eric: Good folks.

Jay: Yeah, great. Jamie’s super-smart. We should have him on the show sometime. He used to be at Whitehorse. Really smart guy,

Eric: Yep.

Jay’s Thought of the Week

Jay: So here’s my rant of the week. I actually wrote a blog post about it. And I was so mobilized by this, I wrote a post on Saturday and used it to ignore my in-laws, which is probably a bad call long term. But you know, it is what is.

Eric: Also a bad call to publicly acknowledge that you ignore your in-laws on a public podcast.

Jay: Yeah, I don’t know if they’re Social Pros listeners. They probably are now. Tristan, edit that out.

Eric: Yeah, cut that. Cut. I was with my in-laws in D.C. all weekend, so I feel your pain, Jay.

Jay: Did you write blog posts while they were there?

Eric: No, I didn’t.

Jay: You’re a suckup.

Eric: Yeah, I just keep my mouth shut.

Pinterest 101

Jay: So the premise of this post is that we spend a lot of time in social and in content marketing talking about eyeballs and how much traffic do we have and how many visitors do we have and how many unique visitors do we have and all this. And at the end of the day, that is a crappy metric. It is perhaps the most overrated metric in the history of math, because just because somebody shows up at your site doesn’t mean they do anything on your site that is inherently of value.

The reason I got on this soapbox initially is that there’s been a lot of reporting lately – in fact, I think we even talked about it here on the podcast a few weeks ago – about Pinterest’s power as a referring source, that Pinterest is sending more traffic than Facebook. Pinterest is sending more traffic from Twitter. The original source of that, I think – as you pointed out, Eric, or Tom Webster did – was a ShareThis study, which doesn’t necessarily mean everybody. It just means people who use ShareThis. But beyond that, my question is who cares? So what if Pinterest does send more traffic equivalently than Facebook to your site? Does that mean that people from Pinterest actually buy things from you? Does it mean they fill out a lead form? Does it mean they sign up for an email newsletter? Or does it mean that they look at one pretty picture, never to return again? And unless you know the answer to that question, you are fooling yourself. You do not understand how digital marketing works.

Traffic is actually an expense, not a benefit. You can break it down, right, but ultimately when you figure out your server costs, your amortized design costs, what it requires you to create content, etc., every person who comes to your site actually costs you money, doesn’t make you money unless you’re selling advertising. In that case, it’s a different story.

Eric: I think I’ve used this gimmick before, but I’m going to use it again. Here comes the audible sigh, Jay. Yes, you are preaching to the choir. Yes, marketers are lazy. Clicks are the easy thing, and it’s often the easy way out in terms of justifying existence and justifying resources invested. You know, it’s something that we have been railing about at Argyle since the very beginning, and I imagine it’s something we’ll be railing about forever and ever and ever. As it relates to our listeners in social, this is sort of just a phenomenon that has existed with online advertising and email marketing that is now just being translated to social, which is sort of this inability to get over the hump in terms of mapping channel inputs to onsite outputs. And there are definitely some technology challenges around that, some of which we are working very hard to address at Argyle in terms of making these things possible. But it’s not rocket science, especially as it related to Pinterest. Mapping Pinterest referrals to onsite conversions is as simple as a custom report in Google Analytics. I would imagine everyone listening to this broadcast has Google Analytics on their website, and maybe a lot of these people even ask themselves whether or not Pinterest is moving the needle for their business. So what we’re asking people to do, it’s not impossible. And to me, that’s what’s the most frustrating bit about this kind of stuff.

Jay: I agree. But you know what’s weird about it? I don’t know that it’s always laziness. Sometimes I really believe that people think that traffic and visitors is, in fact, a reliable metric, that that has inherent value. Actually, there are a lot of comments on my blog post about people saying, “Oh, no. Traffic is good because that traffic will eventually create email subscriptions.” To which I say, “Nuh-uh. Not necessarily.”

Eric: Traffic is potentially a leading indicator. I will agree that it is potentially a leading indicator. But you can segment traffic in the same way that you can segment everything else. So traffic from Pinterest may not have the same value as traffic from LinkedIn or paid search or organic search.

Jay: Yeah, and I don’t have enough Pinterest traffic on my blog, although we have a Pinterest account, of course. I don’t have enough Pinterest referalls to really do much with it from an analytical perspective. But my hypothesis, and maybe there’ll be somebody who listens to the podcast who can comment on this on the blog post, my hypothesis is that Pinterest traffic will behave more like search traffic rather than social traffic because Pinterest, in my estimation, is more about discovery than it is about social sharing. It’s more about finding new things as opposed to voting for things that you already know about.

Eric: Yep.

Jay: So to me, I think Pinterest is more like Google than it is like Facebook. I could be wrong, but that’s how I see it.

Eric: I don’t disagree. You ready for some stat of the week?

Jay: I am. What is the social media stat of the week?

Eric: You did it again. That was good. I tease you for the ridiculous stat of the week intro. I guess I could…

Jay: We’re also supposed to do Angry Birds sounds this episode because I was going to do [makes sounds]. That’s the best I can do.

Eric’s Social Media Stat of the Week: Email Opens on Smart Phones and Tablets Have Grown by 82% in the Last Year

Eric: All right. Stat of the week comes from Return Path, which is an email marketing data company. They’ve been around for a while. I think they’re probably, gee, it’s probably 10 or 15 years old. So these guys have been in the business for a long time. They track broad email marketing data behavior from vendors to publishers to email recipients. They released a great report about email consumption and the big takeaway from this is that email opens on smart phones and tablets grew by 82 percent in the past year. So mobile devices are on track to be the dominant email platform over desktops and laptops by the end of this year. There’s a long report. We can link it up. The takeaway here is that marketers aren’t ready for this. Very few marketers are optimizing their email content for consumption on iPhones and iPads and mobile devices.

Jay: No question, especially if you’re in B2B, where you have smart phone penetration that’s upwards of 80 percent in most cases. If your content is not mobile friendly, that’s the first thing you should do. Quit talking about Facebook and Pinterest, and actually make your existing content available, not to mention your email, available on an iPhone and a BlackBerry and a Windows mobile device and any other flavor that you have. It’s just insane, but I understand how we got here. Because you’re right, we’ve been talking about mobile for a long time. Like we were talking about mobile’s going to be dominant, the preeminence of mobile. We were talking about that when I was a kid, and now I have kids. But now it feels like all of a sudden like, oh now it actually is true. It’s like the boy who cried mobile. Every year it’s like, “Mobile’s going to take over. Mobile’s going to take over.” And after you hear that eight years in a row, you’re like whatevs. And now all of a sudden, mobile is taking over, and I think people got caught flat-footed because they’re like, “Yeah, I’ve heard this story before.” But now, ultimately, it’s true.

Eric: Well the funny thing to me is people kind of got hung up on apps with the iPhone App Store gold rush. And now there’s this realization that, “Oh, you mean my website, not an iPhone app or a Droid app. Oh, I get it now.” You know, our website, I think, it’s written completely HTML5. There are parts of it that probably look wonky on an iPhone, but the main bits of ArgyleSocial.com are going to look really good on your iPad and your iPhone. And it’s not easy to do, especially if you’re invested in a custom website and really trying to do something kind of fancy pants. So this issue, I think, is a little different than what we were talking about with mapping traffic all the way to conversion. Mobilfying your online experience can be expensive and it can be time consuming, so it’s something that people should probably start sooner rather than later.

Jay: Yeah, and it’s certainly easier to do in a major construction project as opposed to slapdash after the fact, unless you have WordPress or something like that. So next time you do a website redesign is the time to go through and make sure it’s mobile friendly.

Eric: And next time you do website, a massive redesign, if the person that you’re working with doesn’t suggest a mobile optimized version, fire that person and find another person.

Jay: Yeah, get somebody else. Exactly. Yeah, I’m going to start a company that creates apps to help customers find your app. It’s just going to be a super-meta business.

Eric: There’s an app for that.

Special Guest: Marcus Sheridan, The Sales Lion

Jay: There is. There is. Well, I am excited about our guest today, who has been sitting here patiently. This is the longest I’ve ever heard him be quiet. It is Marcus Sheridan, The Sales Lion. He and I are both speaking at the Counselors Academy PRSA Conference here in beautiful New Orleans, Louisiana. He gave a rousing keynote – he gives no other kind – this morning to a bunch of PR firm owners. Mr. Sheridan, thank you for being on Social Pros.

Marcus Sheridan, The Sales Lion @thesaleslion

Marcus: Hey man, it’s a pleasure. But how do you hear somebody being quiet? That’s what I’m trying to figure out in my head right now, man.

Jay: It’s Vulcan.

Marcus: Okay. I got it.

Jay: It’s sort of a Vulcan skill.

Marcus: I’m feeling it.

Eric: I’ve heard you being quiet, Marcus. You’ve done a really good job.

Jay: So Marcus, in the unusual chance that somebody listening to Social Pros is not familiar with the now legendary Marcus Sheridan story, do you want to summarize your career in 60 seconds with regards to your background as a purveyor of swimming pools, etc.?

Marcus: Yeah, super quick story. Thanks, Jay. 2001 I started a swimming pool company with two other guys. And then in 2008 when the economy crashed, we were going to crash with it. We didn’t have any money for marketing. We had to maintain a lot of sales. We did about 75 in-ground fiberglass pool installations a year at that time. And so without having any money and going basically on the brink of bankruptcy, I was looking around and discovered this whole thing called inbound and content marketing. That’s when we decided to start a blog, and we really embraced the whole concept of let’s just be teachers. So we answered every single question on our blog that we had ever heard from a consumer. Within a year, we had the number one trafficked swimming pool website in the world. It really increased visitors, but more so, to what you were talking about earlier, it increased leads and ultimately customers. It saved our business, and we did it by cutting down drastically all of our advertising dollars.

About a year after we did this, I started another blog called The Sales Lion, and it teaches everything that I’ve ever done, all my ingredients to my secret sauce. It’s been a great ride, and now I teach other businesses how to embrace the power and the vision that is content, which I feel is the greatest sales tool in the world.

Jay: So you were sort of the swimming pool version of Gary Vaynerchuk, where he built his wine business just telling people what he thought about wine and creating tons of free content. You did the same thing in the swimming pool industry.

Marcus: You know, it’s really funny because when people hear me speak, the first time I ever spoke somewhere big, a bunch of people kept saying to me, “You’re like the Gary V of the swimming pool industry,” because we have a similar funky style. We’re really off the cuff and use wacky words and stuff. We come from these industries like how did that happen, type of stuff. But yeah, it’s similar to Gary, and I like Gary a lot. So I take that as a complement. But yeah, and for me it’s great because whenever I hear people talk about marketing, I can relate to it because I’ve been in the trenches. I still own the company, and I just have two business partners that run it. But for me now, it’s a playground where I can experiment all day long with content.

Jay: And you are a big proponent of HubSpot. I know you use HubSpot software. That’s kind of one of the backbones of the things that you use, and you’re familiar with that software. We talk a lot on this show about the difference between the wizard and the wand, and that right now, we’re in a weird space in content and social where a lot of companies believe that the software is their salvation. How do you feel about that?

Marcus: HubSpot has never saved any business. HubSpot certainly didn’t save me. HubSpot is as good as the person that’s swinging the hammer, because that’s really what HubSpot is. It’s a hammer that is effective when used properly. Unfortunately, just like anything else, you can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Same thing with HubSpot. This is the thing about HubSpot. Ultimately its greatest value is the fact that I can sit here and say that because I’ve been blogging and I can track the leads that I have gotten specifically from my blog, my blog has made me over $2 million in sales. That’s why I like HubSpot, because we’re constantly having this ROI mystic debate thing going on, which drives me nuts. Usually we’re debating ROI because most people don’t have proper analytics. I know you use Infusionsoft and I know you have analytics there, too, because we want to be able to track the stuff that we’re doing. Just like somebody came to me today and said, “Yo, Marcus, is PPC good?” I’m like, “PPC is good if you’re making money with it. But if you’re not tracking it, you won’t know that. So the first thing is are you tracking your PPC? Can you tell me how many customers you’ve actually gotten from PPC?” If not, we’ve got to change something up here really, really soon because we have a major break in our ability to close that loop. And everybody’s got to be able to close that loop, man.

Jay: Yeah, and that is the nice thing about that particular platform is that you can get end-to-end analytics.

Marcus: Huge for me, man.

Jay: A lot of times I feel like the challenge for people who believe in the ROI of social and content and believe that ROI is possible is that unless you come out of a analytics background, the way Eric does and the way I do, you’ve got to be your own middleman a lot of times.

Marcus: Yeah, and here’s the thing that people have got to understand about Google. Google tells us traffic, but Google doesn’t tell us names of people.

Eric: So we’ve been working on some content at Argyle about two types of marketers – oceanographers and fishermen. Some marketers are oceanographers that track ocean currents and tidal patterns and things of that nature and other marketers don’t really care about. They care about the fish that they’re trying to catch. You just sort of said exactly that, Marcus, in that Google Analytics is going to tell you how much the water’s rising and falling, but it’s not going to tell you if the big fish is in your neck of the woods or not.

Marcus: Oh, you’re so right. There’s a magic behind writing a blog article and being able to say definitively I know this one article in the last two years has made me at least $150,000 in sales. Until companies catch that vision and they’re starting to use some type of software that allows them to do that, I think content marketing in social media is going to get a bad name, because I can sit here right now and say how much money I have made, minimum, that I’ve been able to track because I can’t track it unless somebody’s filled out the form. But once they have filled out a form, then I can track everything from that point on. And I can sit here and say from the swimming pool perspective or from The Sales Lion or anything else like that, I can say, okay, PPC has made me this much. Organic search has made me this. In fact, breaking down organic, this blog article has made me this because this keyword is what it ranks for and thus I know it goes back to that particular blog article on and on Facebook, Twitter. All those things, I can say how much money they’ve made my particular company at a minimum, because what we can’t track is phone calls to the office. That’s the one thing we can’t really track and say, okay, they called me…

Jay: Well, you could. You could put a phone number on there.

Marcus: Right. The problem is… yes, you can. That’s a very good point. Most companies don’t do that, and that is the other way to deal with that, Jay. But most don’t do that. And sometimes when we ask them on the phone, “How’d you hear about us,” they give us the wrong information.

Eric: Yeah, I don’t know.

Marcus: Yeah. They say the radio and I haven’t been on the radio in eight years. You know what I mean?

Jay: Right, right. Precisely. I’m glad you mentioned keywords. You are very straightforward about creating content that answers customer questions and sort of giving away what you know and things of that nature. Basically, taking the sum total of your expertise and giving it away for free one post at a time has been very successful. How much do you think about high efficacy search terms and SEO and rankings before you create posts?

Marcus: I do think about it, but I think about it in this: Has somebody ever asked me the question? Okay, that’s about the extent of it. And as soon as I know that they’ve asked me the question, then I know that merits being a title to a blog post. Because if somebody’s asked you the question, a thousand people have searched that very same question online. It used to be 10 years ago when we were figuring out search, Jay, it was “pools”. And then five years into it, we might have typed in “fiberglass pools,” and now we type in stuff like “what is the best type of fiberglass swimming pool if you live in Virginia”, right. So we’ve learned how to search differently. And so all I did, my only strategy-and for the first two years, I never used a keyword suggestion tool, because I very, very passionately feel that if we are great listeners, our customers are the best keyword tool that we could every possible use.

Here’s the thing. If people are asking you the question in your business and that answer is not on your website, I think you’re very, very flawed because we have been trained by Google that if we go to a site and we’re searching for something, Jay, and it ain’t there, we’re gone, dude. If I’ve got a question I can’t find, I’m gone. And basically, it’s almost like the teacher that’s not calling on the student in class that keeps raising his hand. It’s crazy to me that we see that everywhere. So SEO works well when you are specifically answering specific questions the way that your specific consumers ask those things. Not like we think them, not with our silly acronyms, but exactly like they say them. Then I think, honestly, I think we make SEO out to be much more of a science than it is. I think truly giving those great specific answers is the only long-term solution to every single Google update from now until the end of time.

Jay: Well and they’ve certainly said that their direction, and the last two or three updates have pushed them this way, is that search needs to be conversational. It used to be you have to do search for Google and, by the way, also for people. But Google has very much moved in the direction of rewarding natural language and rewarding natural content, which I think is a boon for everybody. Eric, you’d agree, I presume?

Eric: Yes, indeed.

Marcus: Well, I see this all the time and people get on me like I’m talking Matrix language, but I feel like Google is going to be smarter that humans in terms of creating search quality, content quality down the road. Now I don’t know how they’re going to do it. But my feeling is that they are going to be able to do that, and so when I write, that’s the only thing I think about. I’m not thinking about all these other things that we see so many SEOs or content marketers think about. Because I think, although it might work for the next six months or it might work for the next six years, there’s going to be a day when that junk I was doing that wasn’t really legitimate, it’s going to come back and bite me. Just like we see all the time these companies freaking out. It’s just like with the recent update and you saw all these people that had been using these link building tools that were supposedly white hat. I mean, come on people. I mean, if it’s a link building tool, automatically it’s black.

Jay: By definition, not white.

Marcus: Yes. It’s black. Let’s call a spade a spade here.

Jay: Well, let me ask you this. Being an old school sort of SEO myself and Eric has done a lot of online direct marketing as well, what would you say to people who posit the notion that Google and the nature of search is going to wane in importance and our relationships will bridge that gap? So that eventually, let’s fast forward three years, Google drives a heck of a lot less traffic than it ever did and Facebook now drives a heck of a lot more because instead of asking Google who’s the best builder of swimming pools in Virginia for fiberglass, we’re going to ask our friends.

Marcus: I don’t think that’s going to happen, personally. Here’s what I see. This is just me, and I’m going to write about this here soon. I see a future of two types of search engines. I see a search engine that is social driven like Google and where it’s going, and I see somebody else that’s going to come up and be old Google, which is not going to be so social, which is going to be purely just great content based on the algorithm. That might sound very unromantic. But see, it bugs me. I’m the type of guy, I actually don’t want to see what all my friends are choosing when I do searches.

Jay: You don’t want +1 s.

Marcus: I log out on specific searches. I see the day when we have two types of search engines, and I think what, in many ways, is Google’s greatest advance right now could be their biggest downfall for inviting a potential second party-which we don’t have a two-party system right now in search. I think we will have a two-party system for general search engines, because Yahoo and Bing don’t count to me. They haven’t made enough ground.

Eric: So Marcus, there is a company called DuckDuckGo, kind of like Duck Duck Goose, but DuckDuckGo. And they just raised a ton of money from Union Square Ventures, and their entire premise is we don’t track you. It’s a high quality search engine you don’t login to. There’s no bubble of sort of tailored results for you. It’s just old school Google.

Marcus: That’s really cool Eric. And I’m glad you bring that up because, honestly, that’s how I like to roll online when I’m researching. Not everybody’s like that. If I really want to know what my friends think, then I am going to go to Facebook. I am. But there’s always going to be certain things, I think-in my opinion-that we don’t do so socially online. Like I have articles on swimming pools that have been read hundreds of thousands of times, but they’ve been tweeted twice and liked once or twice. It’s like people look at them, and they think just based on those share numbers that the articles stink and they’ve made me hundreds of thousands of dollars because…

Jay: You need to go back and get the old school hit counter on the bottom.

Marcus: Yeah, right. Hit counter on the bottom. Classic.

Jay: That’s social proof 1.0, baby.

Marcus: It’s different for everybody. I’m not saying social’s not important. But for certain industries, I don’t think it’s a huge metric.

Jay: In certain categories, crowds are not wise. Other than you, the number of friends that I have who could tell me anything about swimming pools numbers one -you and one other guy. So I could ask all the people I know on Facebook, and I’m going to get not a lot of good information back.

Marcus: Because we don’t practice buying pools until we actually own a pool, right? So most people, they don’t have anything to say about it and we’re not exactly bragging to our friends, I just spent 50K on a pool. So we don’t tweet it out, “Yo, I just dropped 50 grand but I own a swimming pool now.” Most people, unless we’re a professional athlete trying to show our crib, we just don’t do it that way, and that’s why it’s not a very social industry yet. It’s more of a search industry, old school style. And I think there’s always going to be a place for that. But honestly, I’m saying all this stuff, dude. Three weeks from now, I could change my mind because that’s how fast we’re developing, and I think we’re all idiots, kind of.

Jay: You’re going to shut your blog down. You’re going to have a Lion Pinterest board and that’s it. Just different lions, that’s it.

Marcus: Oh man. Going off about that whole traffic thing you were talking about earlier. I’m like Pinterest has become way worse than StumbleUpon in terms of, you know, I have friends that hate it when they get stumbled because it just means that they got a huge…

Jay: A bunch of traffic they can’t convert?

Marcus: …that they can’t convert and drives them crazy and it kills like all their bounce rates and stuff like that. Pinterest, in a lot of ways, potentially does that. Not that I don’t see the value for it, but it’s clearly not the end all. And the quality right today of the Pinterest visitors, so far for many companies, hasn’t been that strong. I mean, let’s just be real. It might be at some point, not right now.

Jay: Awesome. Eric, any questions from you, or are we going to Social Pros shout outs?

Eric: No, man. I’m interested to hear what Marcus reads.

Jay: Social Pros shout outs.

Eric: Shout outs.

Jay: From Mr. Marcus Sheridan. Go.

Social Pros Shoutout

Marcus: Okay. I’m just going to mention two for you that nobody’s ever heard of probably.

Eric: Google and Pinterest.

Marcus: Yeah, Google, who clearly love me now, right? Okay, this is outside of the box. There is a company called Block Imaging. All right. And I don’t even have the URL. Just type in Block Imaging blog. They sell refurbished medical imaging equipment. Here’s what’s special about this company. They have about 70 employees, and 40 of those employees are active on their blog. So they have a true culture of blogging within the company. I think that’s beautiful. And they’re Block Imaging – I know about them, they’re one of my clients. But I think they’re so amazing and I love their story. And to me, they get this whole idea of what it is a culture of content marketing.

There’s another one that most people probably haven’t heard of. I think he’s a big up and comer and his name is Ryan Hanley. He comes from the insurance industry. He is passionate. He is a great guy and he is now starting to talk about marketing. So kind of like Gary V of wine, he is a passionate guy from the insurance industry.

Jay: He’s the Marcus Sheridan of insurance.

Marcus: In some ways, yeah, he is. I think he’s a great young guy, and I think he’s going to be big time because he has the passion to carry the day.

Jay: Awesome. Good shout outs.

Marcus: Thank you.

Jay: Thank you very much for being here. Good stuff. Awesome. That’ll do it for Social Pros. Who do we have next week, Eric Boggs?

Eric: Next week on Social Pros, Maria from Marketo.

Jay: Oh, fantastic. Our friend, Maria from Marketo. That’s going to be great. Talk about content marketing, they’re all about the content marketing over there. Thanks as always to our sponsors, Eric’s company Argyle Social, data-driven social media management software used by none other than me, Jay Baer. Our friends at Infusionsoft, Jim Kukral from DigitalBookLaunch.com, and a big Social Pros welcome to our new sponsor Janrain, social sign-in and a bunch of other wizardry. That’s it for this week. We’ll see you next time.

About the Jay Baer: Jay Baer is a hype-free social media strategist & speaker, tequila guy, and co-author of The NOW Revolution. Jay is the founder of http://convinceandconvert.com and host of the Social Pros podcast.

Social Pros 15 – Marcus Sheridan, The Sales Lion is a post from: Convince and Convert Blog: Social Media Strategy and Social Media Consulting

The Most Overrated Social Media Metric

Posted on 05. May, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media measurement, social media metrics, Web Analytics

Do you sell advertising on your website? No? Then why are you so excited about your website traffic?

Late in the third quarter it's Pinterest 17, Facebook 13.

The most overrated social media metric is traffic from social outposts.

This blog post is symptomatic of this problem, although there have been hundreds (thousands?) like it. Here’s the highlight:

With only 1% of Facebook’s user count, Pinterest sends 13% of the traffic that Facebook does.

Pinterest has spawned a new way of consuming and searching information, and may be the poster child for the coming image-centric social Web that will make written blogs like mine look quaintly Amish by 2014. But to make the case that Pinterest should be a big part of your marketing arsenal because it proportionally sends more traffic to your website than Facebook or Twitter is patently ridiculous.

Don’t Forget This:

You are in the behavior business, not the eyeballs business.

The Social Media Metrics That Matter

When determining the value of your social media efforts, and certainly when calculating your ROI, you must focus on behavior, not aggregation. Almost always, numbers that count steadily upward (like number of fans, number of visitors, etc.) are inferior to ratios and percentages that measure behavior.

Knowing that Pinterest sends a ton of traffic to your site should CREATE questions in your company, not answer them.

• Do your visitors from Pinterest engage in desirable, profitable behaviors at a ratio equal to or better than Twitter or Facebook?
• Do they buy? Disproportionately so? Higher average order?
• Do they fill out lead forms? Disproportionately so? Better conversion rate?
• Do they look at high-value Web pages like product lists, pricing, customer testimonials? Disproportionately so?
• Do they subscribe to email updates? Disproportionately so? Better open and click-through rates downstream?
• Do they ever return to the site? Disproportionately so?

See more goodness at Some E Cards

Those are data points that are easily determined with web analytics and goal funnels, but are different for every company. All of these are vastly more important than the number of website visitors from Pinterest.

Is Pinterest More Like Google Than Facebook?

My hypothesis is that visitors from Pinterest will behave more like search-referred visitors, rather than visitors from Facebook and Twitter. This is because Pinterest (like Google) is about discovery, whereas the people who click links in Facebook and Twitter are often already familiar with the company in question.

I don’t know for sure, because even though I’m moderately active on Pinterest, I don’t see a ton of traffic from it because I almost always pin other people’s stuff rather than my own. We also use Pinterest as the curation hub for our daily One Social Thing email update. I don’t get enough Pinterest traffic to test the theory. I’d love to see someone with access to more analytics data tackle it.

Perhaps Pinterest isn’t the new Facebook, but the new Google? The same way that YouTube revolutionized video search, and Slideshare revolutionized presentation search, is Pinterest revolutionizing image search?

Maybe that’s the story, I’m not sure. But I definitely know that the story is NOT that Pinterest sends a bunch of traffic to your site. To that revelation I say “who cares”?

(Note: After this post ran, loyal reader Juan Barnett (@DCAutoGeek) created this awesome graphic. Enjoy!

About the Jay Baer: Jay Baer is a hype-free social media strategist & speaker, tequila guy, and co-author of The NOW Revolution. Jay is the founder of http://convinceandconvert.com and host of the Social Pros podcast.

The Most Overrated Social Media Metric is a post from: Convince and Convert Blog: Social Media Strategy and Social Media Consulting

Social Media Time Savers: 4 New Productivity Tools and How to Use Them

Posted on 18. Apr, 2012 by Jess Ostroff in Blog, productivity, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media tools, Springpad

Jess Ostroff is Managing Editor at Convince & Convert. She also acts as Director of Calm for the new virtual social media assistant agency, Don’t Panic Management. You can find her tweeting about social media, martinis, and music as @jessostroff.

As Jay mentioned in his post yesterday, there’s a serious influx of information out there, plus an increasing urgency to get things done better and faster. It can be overwhelming to stay up on what’s happening in the world while also tending to your day job. Between our new newsletter, the One Social Thing, and the handy tools below, we hope to give you enough time- and sanity-saving techniques so you can go home at 5pm, be with your family, and even take up a hobby.

While a few of these tools can be used solely as a creative outlet, they can also serve as a way to harness creative energy that can be put toward your content marketing efforts so you can maintain a cohesive, high-quality, and consistent strategy.

DivvyHQ

Self-proclaimed as “the spreadsheet-free editorial calendar system,” DivvyHQ lets you “divvy” and conquer your content marketing efforts.

If you’re a blogger or individual consultant, you might only need one calendar. If you’re an agency or a freelance community manager, you might need to manage several calendars. DivvyHQ lets you set up and keep track of tons of different types of content on multiple calendars at once. It also lets you easily assign pieces of content to individuals and reminds those people when things are due through email notifications so you’re not hounding people for that guest post, newsletter copy, press release, podcast, etc.

Through their subscription model, DivvyHQ lets you manage virtually any type of content that you can think of, and keeps it all in one organized place for everyone on the team to view. And if your editorial calendar is currently in a spreadsheet, that’s no problem. DivvyHQ lets you upload your current calendar and converts it into the DivvyHQ format, so there’s no painful learning curve to worry about. You can also assign editors and publishers to each piece of content so that your workflow is completely streamlined and efficient. After their 30-day free trial, you probably won’t remember how you managed your content without it.

Pinterest

If you haven’t heard about Pinterest, you’ve probably been hiding in a fantasy land where the internet doesn’t exist. But, if you’re reading anything online, you’ll know that Pinterest is all the rage these days among everybody from runners, chefs, photographers, moms, and more. Aside from simply pinning things like “recipes to make” and “gadgets to buy,” Pinterest is a great tool for storing ideas and inspirational articles, especially if you’re a part of a collaborative team.

The great thing about Pinterest is its versatility. Collaborative pinboards provide a nice clean way to keep press mentions, blog post ideas, inspirational artwork for advertising campaigns, or even funny things that your team collects around the internet for moral support. It’s much easier to glance at a Pinterest board than sift through countless circulated emails.  At Convince & Convert, we use a collaborative pinboard where we can all pin ideas for our daily newsletter, the One Social Thing.

Creating collaborative pinboards is easy, and you can choose who you want to be able to pin to it by inviting people via email. From inside your Pinterest account, click the “Add” button, and select “Create a board.” Once you have the new board screen, you can select your board name, category, and decide who can pin. Make sure you click on “me + collaborators” in the last step. Then you can start pinning! That’s it.

Pinning things on the fly becomes even more seamless with a browser extension like the Pinterest Button for Chrome, which lets you pin directly from the site you’re on with the click of a button.

Don’t forget that collaborative pinboards are still public, so don’t use them to collaborate on secret missions!

GroupHigh

If you’ve ever launched a blogger outreach campaign, you know that influencer identification goes beyond the Klout score. You also know how time-consuming it can be to not only find relevant blogs, but then manually pull out the blogger’s social networking channels and email addresses to get in touch with them. GroupHigh pulls out that legwork on your end, promising a simple and effective search tool that filters through the thousands of blogs across the Web and only sends back the ones that fit your criteria. That way, you can spend your efforts focusing on your communication with the bloggers.

In addition to the blog URL and SEO rank, GroupHigh also pulls in location, total number of shares, and social profiles of the blogger (including number of fans/followers on each channel).

Finding the bloggers is only the beginning, of course. GroupHigh also lets you track engagement and touch points so you can stay on top of blogger communication and keep the relationship strong.

GroupHigh offers different packaging for brands and for agencies so you can find a pricing model that’s best for your team.

Springpad

Springpad hasn’t hit the mainstream market yet like Pinterest has, but there’s a chance for it to go there soon if it plays its cards right. Described as what would happen if Pinterest and Evernote had a baby by GigaOM, Springpad provides a visually appealing way to store things online based on interests. While it is similar to Pinterest in a lot of ways, its latest release reveals some really cool social updates that may even make it more useful than Pinterest. For example, instead of just pinning whatever content exists on a web page, Springpad lets you categorize that content with their pre-populated categories such as business, restaurant, recipe, book, movie, album, TV show, etc. Then, when you add a note to one of your Springpad notebooks, it automatically identifies other things you might like based on that note. Kind of like related videos on YouTube, but with less cats.

What’s really awesome about the new Springpad features, however, are its productivity tools, which automatically sync with your mobile devices and calendars. You can add things like an alarm, a checklist, a task, or even a new contact and save them directly to a new or existing notebook.

You can also set reminders or tasks from springs that you’ve already added.

Like Pinterest, Springpad also has a nifty browser extension so you can “spring” things from wherever you are. You can also add collaborators you to your notebooks, similar to Pinterest, but Springpad allows private notebooks so your world domination plans can be done in stealth mode.

Which fancy new tools are you using to make your daily social media life easier to manage?

Note: We wrote about these tools because we like them. None of them are paid affiliates.

Social Pros 7 – Cindy Kim, JDA Software

Posted on 15. Mar, 2012 by Jay Baer in B2B Social Media, Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

This is Episode 7 of the Social Pros Podcast : Real People Doing Real Work in Social Media. This episode features Cindy Kim, the Director of Marketing and Social Media for JDA Software. Read on for insights from Cindy, our “Work It Out” advice segment, and Eric’s Social Media Stat of the Week (this week: does Pinterest drive more traffic than all other social networks combined?).

Listen Now

Click the play button to listen here:

Download the audio file: http://socialpros.podbean.com/mf/play/f4t5hg/SocialProsEpisode7.mp3
The RSS feed is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/socialprospodcast
Find us on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/convince-convert-blog-social/id499844469

Please Support Our Sponsors

Huge thanks to data-driven social media management software company Argyle Social for their presenting sponsorship, as well as Infusionsoft and Jim Kukral at DigitalBookLaunch. We use Argyle Social for our social engagement; we use Infusionsoft for our email; and Jim is our guest host for the podcast and a smart guy).

Social Pros Transcript For Your Reading Enjoyment

Transcription services provided by Speechpad.

Jay: Hey everybody, it’s Jay Baer and Eric Boggs live, a live episode of
the Social Pros Podcast from soggy South by Southwest in Austin.
Eric, I haven’t seen you in full rain gear in quite a while, and
it is a sexy, sexy look on you.

Eric: Yeah. I’ve been on the ground in Austin for three hours now.

Jay: And it’s rained 14 inches in those 3 hours.

Eric: Yeah.

Jay: It’s the big typhoon edition of the Social Pros Podcast.

Eric: So it’s bearable, but it’s going to get nasty when the sun goes down
and it’s going to get colder.

Jay: As I saw on Twitter the other day, the killer app of South By is an
umbrella, which is less digital than you would expect. We have a
great show. Live here at the SpreadFast Social Lounge is our
good friend Cindy Kim, Head of Social Media for JDA Software. We
are going to talk to her about their supply chain business and
the amazing things that they’re doing in social. They’ve come a
long way fast, and it’s going to be some pretty interesting
stuff, and I think a lot of people will be amazed by and will
learn from.

Jay’s Thought of the Week

So let’s get into Jay’s thought of the week, and I tell you,
it’s weird. I feel like we have this commoditization of social
networks, that we have a diminishing level of distinguishing
characteristics. So here’s what I mean. Twitter announces last
week that they are going to do a new iteration of brand pages on
Twitter so that companies can actually have Twitter apps. They
can have contests within the Twitter platform themselves. So
essentially, you will have a Twitter page that will be somewhat
similar to a Facebook page.

And Facebook just announced and
actually rolled out Interest Lists, so you can actually
subscribe to topics on Facebook and get in your news stream
things about dogs or, in my case, tequila or, in your case,
North Carolina Tar Heels basketball failures. And Google+ is
the same thing, right? Google+ has half of their features came
from Facebook, and the ones that Google+ innovated, like
circles, Facebook copied in 30 seconds. And so, if all three of
these guys end up doing the exact same features, what the hell
is the point? Why do we have all these different social networks
if they’re going to have the same functionality?

Eric: Yeah. You even left off Facebook’s new ad platform, which is,
effectively, exactly Twitter’s ad platform.

Jay: Which, actually, Twitter’s ad platform is actually Google’s ad
platform in many ways. I understand that good ideas should be
copied, but I feel like, instead of truly innovating,
everybody’s playing “me too”.

Eric: Well, it’s kind of they’re all sort of approaching the mean. They’re
all kind of becoming the same thing.

Jay: Yeah. But is that based on they think that they understand what people
actually want, or is it like, “Oh my god! These guys have a
feature. We need to roll out something similar.” I think it’s the latter. I think it’s more competitive pressure as opposed to
some sort of in-depth market research on consumer demand that
says, “Oh, we have to have Interest Lists.”

Eric: I think it’s driven by the need to become the biggest social network that they could possibly become. When you look at what Facebook has done and they’ve kind of built every feature under the sun, and you look at what sort of the strategy that Twitter looks like they’re taking where now there are going to be brand pages, they’re headed down that path.

Jay: And that, in particular, is the one that really bothers me because
I’ve always believed since the very beginning that Twitter’s
genius was that it did one thing and did it extraordinarily
well. And, to me, every time they hang more ornaments on their
Christmas tree, it takes them away from their competitive
advantage, not giving them new competitive advantage.

Eric: You and I did a great webcast this week about niche networks, and three or four years ago, Twitter was a niche network. Today, it
is without a doubt one of the top three with Facebook, Twitter…

Jay: 400 million users or whatever the number was.

Eric: Yeah. And I think this is kind of the price they’re having to pay.
You look at something like Pinterest or Instagram, these niche
networks that may or may not cross that transom and become
mainstream, they are the ones that are doing one thing really
cleanly and really simply. The big difference is that Facebook
is making a kajillion dollars a year, and Twitter seems to be
ramping up to be making a kajillion dollars a year, and
Pinterest and Instagram are making zero dollars per year. So
it’s all driven by ad dollars. I don’t know that that’s best for
the user, but I think there are a lot of people that have
invested a lot of money in these companies that want to get
their money back.

Jay: Yeah. It’s going to be fascinating to see where we are a year from
now, when we basically just have Twacebook and Fwitter, right,
and it’s like the exact same thing. I think we’re going to get
that day, maybe not exactly that, but we’re headed that
direction. What do we have on the math front?

Eric’s Social Media Stat of the Week: Does Pinterest Drive More Traffic Than All Other Social Networks Combined?

Eric: We have a couple stats of the week, actually, this week. First stat
of the week is 50, in that it’s 50 degrees in Austin, Texas,
which is…

Jay: 50 degrees in Austin, Texas.

Eric: And rainy. I think there’s a 70 percent chance of rain tomorrow,
which is not what the South by Southwest organizers hoped for,
and certainly not what the South by Southwest attendees had
hoped for. That said, the party will go on.

Jay: The party is going on.

Eric: The actual stat of the week comes from our dear friend, Tom Webster.

Jay: Tom Webster. @Webby2001.

Eric: VP of Marketing at Edison Research. He writes one of the best blogs
on the Internet, BrandSavant.com. One of the few blogs where I
read every word that is written. He just launched sort of the
second piece in his media empire, which is DataSnob.com. And Tom is a self-admitted data snob. So he wrote his first blog post on site and it’s going to be a great site, I can already tell you. Basically, he took a report from Shareaholic,
which is like an onsite sharing system, and basically, these
guys put together a report. The report surmised that Pinterest
drives more traffic than Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn
combined. And Mashable got a hold of the report and that was the
headline, is that Pinterest drives more traffic than these other
networks combined and Tom’s point is: You know what? That is a
valid outcome, but only when you put it in the context of
amongst Shareaholic users, amongst this set of data, we found
this outcome.

Jay: You can’t assume that Shareaholic users behave the same as a larger
population.

Eric: It’s not representative of humanity.

Jay: Well, it may be. We don’t know that. But you can’t assume that.

Eric: Exactly. Exactly. And this type of content is classic Tom Webster and…

Jay: And that kind of study is classic modern marketing.

Eric: Yeah, exactly.

Jay: That’s why we have a social media stat of the week on the Social Pros
podcast because this kind of thing happens consistently, and the
desire to get clicks and win the content marketing game tends to
get in the way of either nuanced reporting, he says, former
journalism major, or legitimate market research.

Eric: Yep. And I’ll tell you, we do this at Argyle. We’re a data driven
company. A lot of our marketing…

Jay: You’re part of the problem, not part of the solution, honestly.

Eric: I disagree. I will admit it is a tough line to tow, and we just try
to be as absolutely upfront and transparent as we can be. I give
a lot of talks at conferences, and I spend way more time than I
should probably…

Jay: Disclaiming, yeah.

Eric: …describing the context…

Jay: Verbal asterisk.

Eric: Yeah. The context of the dataset and sort of empowering everyone
with, “Use this, but your mileage may vary because this is our
data and this is what it tells us.” So DataSnob.com, a Tom
Webster joint, it’s going to be a great blog.

Special Guest – Cindy Kim, JDA Software

Jay: Awesome. So let’s bring in our very special guest, live at soggy
South by Southwest, Cindy Kim from JDA Software. Cindy, my
friend, how are you?

Cindy: Good. How are you? Thanks, Jay, for having me.

Jay: We are delighted to have you. Tell the folks at home or in the car or
on the treadmill, wherever they happen to be, a little bit about
JDA and what you guys do.

Cindy: So JDA Software is one of the leading providers of supply chain
management software. They’ve got global offices everywhere, and
we’ve got large enterprises that we serve in the retail
manufacturing and travel transportation markets.

Jay: So, if you need to create some sort of, I don’t know, portable,
disposable raincoat for South by Southwest attendees, you need
to make sure that those raincoats are here for this conference.
JDA Software can make sure that those raincoats are manufactured
and shipped in time.

Cindy: Yes. And I’m sure a lot of our clients were responsible for
bringing in a lot of the food, all of the items for South by
Southwest in terms of the supply chain.

Jay: Well, thank you, for making sure that we have beer to drink at South
by Southwest because of your software. Congratulations.

Eric: Exactly. We’re all going to be huddled indoors drinking together, so
it’s important that we go on.

Jay: So, as I mentioned in the show intro, it wasn’t that long ago that
you were actually hired as the Head of Social Media at JDA
Software, but yet, the company had no social media program,
which I think is one of the greatest feats of getting a job in
history. I’d like to be your Director of Social Media despite
the fact that we have no social media, which is really quite
fantastic.

Eric: Lots of smoke. Lots of mirrors.

Jay: It’s genius, right? You need to open a recruiting business. But now,
fast forward like 18 months, and you guys are all over the
place, I mean blog and everything else, social networks. How did
you do that? It’s a big company with big company issues, about
trust and turf and all those kind of things. How has that journey unfolded?

Cindy: When I started, I think JDA was ready and we had a good
leadership there who understood the need for social media as part of the marketing mix. So, I was really glad to take that
role and look at the company’s culture and the needs of our
culture, not just to fast track and adopt social media as part
of our marketing strategy, but really to understand what is it
going to be in terms of really benefiting our brand and building
our thought leadership and really engaging with some of the
supply chain folks that are out there.

Jay, I’ve had the pleasure of bringing you onboard and working
with you very closely and looking at our company culture, and
really asking the question, “What’s going to really work for
JDA, and what are some of the objectives and goals that we want
to achieve?” So I think with that in mind, really understanding
the intent and the commitment by the executive team, we were
really able to lock down a policy where we got really good
engagement from HR, Legal, and all of the core stakeholders, and
then really looking at putting together a very solid, powerful
social media marketing strategy and program.

Another key thing that we did was we did bring in an agency that
I trusted. We really looked into the digital experience and
really used them as the extended branch of our brand and to get
our voice out there. So I think that has helped quite a bit, and
that firm is Lois Paul & Partners, obviously you know. I think
one of the success factors of really being able to be successful
is understanding that we are going to focus on the core
channels, like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, not Google+. But
we understood, even from me speaking with you, was really
getting the blog as the essential hub of content. So really
being able to invest and get buyer insight and really get the
approval from our executive team to launch that.

Jay: I think the executive team part of that is so critical. I mean, we
talked a lot about that, of course, in The NOW Revolution, and
Amber, my co-author, now is doing a lot of consulting around
corporate culture and social business transformation. But I
don’t think you could have gotten to where you are today without
cultural alignment and true executive support for social. I
think people believe that to be true, but you’ve lived that,
right? If you didn’t have the sea sweet drink in the social Kool-
Aid, this wouldn’t have gotten off the ground, I presume.

Cindy: That’s exactly it, and I think one of the things that I did
was, when I put together the social media strategy and program,
I tried to really do the social selling to our executive team
and not to just our legal, our HR. They really bought into it
and they started to evangelize within their own business units
and within their own management that this was a good thing for JDASoftware. When it came to the blog, it was very unique. We
actually had the executive team excited about it, but we
developed a buddy blog program. We really shared with them how
we were going to make this successful.

Jay: How do you mean a buddy blog program?

Cindy: We had our social media team from LPP and myself really look at
our bloggers and say, “We’re going to be your blog buddy. We’re
going to provide you the content and topic recommendations. We’re
going to review your blog. We’re going to give you links to
blogs and articles where you could comment and link back to our
blog.” So that has worked. It’s been very successful. But after
our executives saw the plan on how we were going to go to market
and how we were going to make this successful, they were very
confident that we could actually pull this off and sustain the level of success that we had supplied.

Jay: Do you then circle that back and give those execs and other content critters on the blog, “Hey, here’s how many page views you generated,” or sharing behaviors of that kind? Do you reinforce their good behavior with data?

Cindy: Exactly. The first month it launched, we had a very successful traffic flow on a page basis and stuff like that. And so I would send weekly updates to our EVP of Sales and Marketing, Tom Dziersk, to show its success. And really, even the unique page views, but also time on site as well as the clicks on each of the blogs that we posted. And so he could see the success or what’s resonating in the market. We’ve been actually linked from some of the industry blogs as well, and now we’re getting really closely tied into the industry influencers. We’re really headed in the right way, and I’m very excited about what we’re doing.

Eric: I want to go back a couple of questions. You were talking about the
pitch that you made to the executive team. I know you can’t
share all of the details of the pitch, but what do you think was
the hook? What do you think was the angle or the pieces of data
that got the executives to…

Jay: It was free beer. It was like a South By thing.

Eric: I need you to sign this document, but first have a six pack.

Cindy: We had cocktails. You know what’s so funny is a lot of people said, “You’re going to have to do a lot of upfront work to get the executives to buy in.” That wasn’t the case. We, as acollective team, came together and said, “We have a strategy. We
have a plan. And I know how I’m going to sell it.” I first sold
it to the EVP… I actually sold it to the CEO. In my hallway
conversation, I said, “Look. The blog, content is your new
currency, and if you want JDA to be… we’re the best kept
secret in the market. We’ve just got to break out of that. So
the way we do that is through the blog, and the blog is our new
social newswire and we’re going to be clicking out from the blog
to Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. And that’s how
you’re going to succeed in this content distribution and
dissemination.” So he was all for that. As soon as he bought
into that, it was all about the blogger education, how we were
going to roll it out, the content flow, how we were going to
match up the blog buddies to the executive team. And you know
what? Once the CEO bought on, that was it.

Eric: Speaks to the power of selling high, right?

Cindy: Yeah. It’s been great.

Jay: You talked about the content, having multiple authors of the blog.

How many writers do you have? Contributors?

Cindy: We had about, I believe we had eight to start with and the CEO,
Hamish, he was so excited about contributing content because he
really attached and got connected with the customers. So he was
one of our key bloggers to start with. Now we have over, I
believe, 20 bloggers that are on staff. They just love
contributing content, but now our job is to make sure that
content is premium, it’s unique, and it’s really going to serve
the customer audience.

Jay: How do you do that? Do they say, “Hey, Cindy and team, I have an idea
for a blog post,” and you say, “That is a good enough idea”? Or
do they give you content and then you’d say, “Yeah, that blog
content maybe doesn’t quite work”? Or do you say, “Hey, we need
to create content about this topic because it’s good for
search,” and then you assign it? What’s that process?

Cindy: We have a great blog with Lois Paul & Partners. We have a blog
process. So we have our blog buddies. Any content that they
write, they submit it to blogreview@jda.com and our team takes a
look at it. The blog buddy would communicate out, read their
blog post, and say, “It doesn’t make sense. You should link to
this. You should look at this article. You should include this
author.” So they really provide that guidance. But I think in
terms of making sure they’re educated on what they come back
with, we just work closely with them to make sure they’re really
linking to events and relevant news or relevant influence or…

Jay: So they can pretty much write what they want, and you just make sure
that goes through our quality control process…

Cindy: Yes. Exactly.

Jay: …to make sure that it’s good enough.

Cindy: Exactly.

Eric: And these bloggers are employees from different departments
throughout the organization?

Cindy: They’re subject matter experts as well as folks who engage
directly with the customer. We wanted to make sure that we had
equal representation across JDA Software, so that’s what we did.
We made sure that we just didn’t approach just experts. We
wanted to make sure that we get war stories from the field. We
wanted to make sure we got the right mix of content. So I think
our bloggers are just really representative of that.

Jay: Then you were using your social channels at some level to support the
blog. Obviously, you’re talking about other things in social as
well, but what you say in social, in some cases is, “Hey, we’ve
got this interesting content.” So you’re using social to promote
content, not just social to promote the company, which I think
is an important distinction. It goes back to what we’ve talked
about a lot of times, Eric, that content is the fire and social
is the gasoline, right? It’s not the other way around.
Otherwise, what are you tweeting about? How awesome you are?
That’s going to run out of steam pretty quickly in a lot of
circumstances.

Anything on the visual side? Are you guys thinking about doing… last episode, we talked to Jon Wichmann from Maersk Line,
and they have an amazing Instagram program with a giant global
shipping container company, which is not immediately what you
think of when you think of Instagram successes, and it’s an
amazing story and they’re doing a lot of photo stuff in social
media. Have you guys thought about kind of breaking out of the
text mold and going photos, videos, skywriting, magic tricks,
whatever?

Cindy: I think that’s where we’re headed. We would love to have more
infographics, and we’d love to have more ideas on how to get our
people more engaged with a conversation that’s happening. I
think that’s where we’re headed, but right now, we’re really
just trying to really ensure that we can be successful in the
things that we do and that we are putting out the right
conversation starters.

Jay: Is the audience for the blog intended to be potential customers or
current customers?

Cindy: Both.

Jay: Both, OK.

Cindy: And I think the content really shows that we can go both ways.
But they’re all educational. They’re non-JDA promotional. And
really, the purpose of educating these bloggers was to say that,
“You don’t want to put out content that’s going to promote JDA.
It’s really about informing the market on what’s coming up or
really stating the expectations of how to use best practices to
move the business forward.”

Jay: So the helping, not selling thing that we talked about before.

Cindy: That’s exactly, Jay.

Eric: Talking about what your customers care about.

Cindy: Yes. And that’s at the heart of what you’re trying to do with
content, right? So that’s exactly where we want to be.

Jay: Awesome. Well, we’ll make sure that we link up the JDA blog and other
social channels in the podcast transcript.

Work It Out

We have a Work It Out segment on the podcast today, and today’s
Work It Out is from Julie, a Social Pros listener, and Julie
says that she’s got a company with 15 or so salespeople, and
those salespeople are clamoring to do more in social media, do
more Twitter. Give me more of that Twitter! And LinkedIn and
Google+ and whatever or whatever. She is a little concerned
that, if she gives the salesforce the opportunity to kind of go
batshit crazy in social media, that there could be problems.
Sometimes salespeople have been known to lay it on a little
thick.

Eric: Salespeople are salespeople.

Jay: Right. Yes.

Eric: And I say that as a salesperson.

Jay: Yes. There you go. So, Cindy, Eric, what advice would you give to
Julie, the listener, about how to make sure her sales team does
this the right way? You just talked about it a second ago with
the blog, about being educational and not necessarily overtly
promotional.

Cindy: Yeah, and I agree. And I think of that, what we do is we send
out daily e-newsletters on the content that you can share via
Twitter, Facebook, Google+

Jay: To employees?

Cindy: To employees, and that includes sales as well. So they take a
lot of guidance in terms of re-posting the content that we share
with them. But I think education is key. Work with the sales
guys to really go through an education Webinar in terms of do’s
and don’ts. We also recommend top LinkedIn groups that they
should look at by vertical so that they can engage in
discussions and follow some of the influencers on LinkedIn
versus just posting nonsense stuff. These guys are desperate to
get leads. That’s all they want to do is look at the new shiny
object, use it to get leads or conversation starters.

Jay: The thing about us as marketers is we’re not on to you yet. So people
will say, “Oh, sales guys.” But you know what? We get paid
regardless. They get paid on commission, at least partially.
It’s a different dynamic.

Eric: So we have a pretty big sales group at Argyle, actually 13
salespeople, and our…

Jay: Are you Julie? Did you call in?

Eric: I’m not Julie, but I’ve…

Jay: You’ve walked a mile in Julie’s stilettos.

Eric: I wouldn’t say we’ve wrestled with this issue at Argyle, but we see
it and we have just made it very clear that, if it is a
conversation related to @argylesocial, that is marketing’s turf,
and we did not want salespeople invading marketing’s turf.
Salespeople, tweet with your prospects, by all means. If you
already have a relationship with someone, you should be tweeting
with them…

Jay: But that’s almost a replacement for email or a replacement for
voicemail more so than a replacement for direct mail, right?

Eric: Right. So you’re talking about Twitter in terms of a lead gen or
prospecting. That sits very clearly under marketing at Argyle,
and we’ve maybe had to slap some wrists to get people to back
off a little bit. It’s good to see hungry salespeople, but you
have to find that balance…

Jay: Well, when everything you tweet is public, right, and customer
service and sales, frankly, is a spectator sport now, you have
to realize that, if you lay it on a little thick, that can have
ripple in the pond ramifications for the brand, not necessarily
for that individual salesperson. That stands to reason. But for
everybody else on the team too. I guess the way to say it is
you’re only as cheesy as your weakest link. That’s
really what it comes down to.

Eric: This is a question I’ve heard many times, we hear from our customers.
You make a list of 10 social media questions and it starts with,
“When is the best time to tweet?” Somewhere in that list of 10
question is, “Should my sales guys be tweeting?” There are a
number of ways to answer that question, but no question, a hot
topic.

Cindy: I think that it’s also letting the sales guys know what are the
best channels to engage, because I’ve seen examples where the
sales guys have seen customers come back and ask questions via
LinkedIn, and I think the key thing to note is they need to know
who to go to, to really get that final guidance and approval
before they post anything. And that’s been great with some of
the folks at JDA where they go, “Oh my god! This customer is
talking about something. What do I do?” And then you say, “Look.
We’ve got an expert who is going to go on there to respond and
just monitor that group.” So I think that’s important as well,
understanding where you should engage versus being everywhere at
anytime, being everyone, being just present for everything. Just
investing their time wisely.

Jay: I’m a big fan of SocialToaster. Do you know those guys? SocialToaster
company, actually?

Eric: I’ve heard of them.

Jay: SocialToaster.com and it’s really interesting software. It doesn’t
get a lot of run, but you can have employees, or it’s actually
built for fan advocacy, but you have employees do it too. And
Cindy, you were talking about the message of the day email that
gets sent out. Same premise, but the way it works is that it’s
software driven, so when you get the email, you go off your
account, so as part of it, your Twitter, your Facebook,
whatever. So, if you’re with the sales team, yeah, I do want to
force amplify this message from the company. You just click a
link in the email and it automatically re-broadcasts on your
account, your Twitter, your Facebook, your LinkedIn. So it is
sort of a geometric multiplication opportunity. It’s a neat
concept.

Eric: Yeah.

Jay: You guys should buy them.

Eric: I don’t know how much cash you think we have in the bank account.

Jay: I thought you guys were going to go public or do something amazing.
I’m not just doing this podcast just because I like you. I
thought that someday there was going to be a velvet smoking robe
for me.

Eric: Jay, the friends and family equity grant will be coming.

Jay: Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Excellent. Next time I’m in North
Carolina, the drinks are on Eric. All right. That will do it for
Episode 7 of Social Pros Podcast from here in soggy South by
Southwest Land, Austin, Texas. Thanks very much to Cindy Kim,
who joined us in person. Of course to Eric Boggs. Our sponsors
Argyle Social, Eric’s company, who we use for all of our social
media stuff at Convince & Convert, and InfusionSoft, who we use
for all of our email, and our good friend and fill-in host Jim
Kukral from DigitalBookLaunch.com. We’ll see you next week with
Ian Greenleigh from BazaarVoice.

Eric: Which is based in Austin, Texas.

Jay: Also based in… I saw Ian yesterday in the line for the nametags.
So we’ll jump on his case next week at Social Pros. Thanks for
listening.

Social Pros 6 – Instagram Lessons from a Giant B2B Company

Posted on 08. Mar, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, facebook, forrester research, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

This is Episode 6 of the Social Pros Podcast : Real People Doing Real Work in Social Media. This episode features Jonathan Wichmann the head of social media for Maersk Line, the world’s largest container shipping company. Read on for insights from Jonathan, our “Work It Out” advice segment, and Eric’s Social Media Stat of the Week (this week: are we unfriending each other more than ever?).

Listen Now

Click the play button to listen here:

Download the audio file: http://socialpros.podbean.com/mf/play/xnz5ze/SocialProsEpisode6.mp3
The RSS feed is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/socialprospodcast
Find us on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/convince-convert-blog-social/id499844469

Please Support Our Sponsors

Huge thanks to data-driven social media management software company Argyle Social for their presenting sponsorship, as well as Infusionsoft and Jim Kukral at DigitalBookLaunch. We use Argyle Social for our social engagement; we use Infusionsoft for our email; and Jim is our guest host for the podcast and a smart guy).

Social Pros Transcript For Your Reading Enjoyment

Transcription services provided by:

Jay: And we are back with a Social Pros #6. I am Jay Baer joined, as always, by my trusty sidekick Eric Boggs. Eric, how are you?

Eric: I’m just great, Jay. The pre-South by Southwest episode should be a good one.

Jay: Absolutely. Did you miss me last week?

Eric: I did. I did. Jim Kukral’s a pretty good cat, though.

Jay: He is a good guy and we appreciate his support and for him stepping into the breach when I am away. I do appreciate you guys ganging up on me in my absence last week so I have to watch and listen when I’m gone. People will stab me right in the back.

So we’ve got a great show today and, as you said, South by Southwest is coming up in just a few days. You and I will be palling around out there in Austin, trying to get some live audio from our compadres at South By so that should be a good time. In between tacos and beer, we will try to get some Social Pros audio while we’re out there.

Eric: Yeah. Take a look for us. I’ll be the guy with the argyle pants toting around a microphone so it shouldn’t be hard to miss me.

Jay: It should not be hard to miss Eric Boggs.

Eric: Also standing beside Jay Baer so there’ll be a massive entourage of cool people too.

Photo of Eric, his pants, and our friend J from www.jseverydayfashion.com

Jay:Yeah, that’s exactly what happens. That doesn’t even happen in my own house, much less at South by Southwest. We should include a photo of you in your pants again in the blog post so that people can identify you by your pants. In addition to Eric’s fine company, Argyle Social, which we use at Convince & Convert for all of our social media needs, other sponsors for this fine program are our friends at Infusionsoft and we’ll be at a little party for them on Friday at South by Southwest and, of course, Jim Kukral himself at Digital Book Launch helps to sponsor the Social Pros podcast as well.

Today, on the show, in just a moment, Jonathan Wichmann from the Maersk Line, which is the world’s largest container shipping company. If you have ever seen a container vessel or a train or maybe a long-haul trucking operation in this great land of ours, you have seen Jonathan’s company. He’s going to tell us just how many goods they import and move around this world. You think, “Gee, why do we have a container shipping company on the Social Pros podcast?” You are going to be blown away when you understand just how good these guys are at social. So if you’re out there thinking, “Geez, my company is boring. I make ball bearings. I’m B-to-B. I can’t do social media.” Bull! We’re going to show you how you can for a company that most people would not think is inherently social media-oriented.

Eric: Also, our first international guest, if I’m not mistaken.

Jay: That’s right. Jonathan is going to join us from Copenhagen, I believe, is where he is today and I think that’s where his primary home base is. One of my favorite cities in the world and I’m not just saying that because I’m a quarter Danish, although it doesn’t hurt.

Jay’s Thought of the Week

So let me talk about my thought of the week. My thought of the week is all about this new Facebook thing. I wrote a blog post today called, “Fourteen Ways that New Facebook Betrays Small Business,” and I feel like everything they announced last week is pretty nifty if you’re a larger company that has a staff and some social media consultants at your disposal. But if you are a local mom & pop dry cleaner, restaurant, baby-sitting service, etc., I think many, if not most, of the changes they have announced are going to be burdensome. It requires some additional management of your Facebook presence as well as some additional aptitude with photos and uploading and things like that.

Ultimately, that bothers me. I feel like Facebook is making the classic mistake of, “Hey, we need additional dollars so let’s cozy up to the Fortune 500,” and not realizing that there’s a lot more small businesses than there are big businesses and that’s why I feel like Google has always gotten it right in that regard, if nothing else, in that all the things that they’ve done with AdWords and Optimizer and Analytics and all these other things are very small-business friendly. I think, long- term, that’s a smart play.

Eric: Yeah. I think you are on point there in terms of Google’s ability to capture the long tail in terms of the smaller advertisers. I’ll tell you, my perspective on a lot of the Facebook changes. I think most of them are actually good but I agree, it does add so much overhead even in terms of just finding the cover picture for your page. It took me probably an hour to find a high-res photo that we had hanging around Argyle to put on our Facebook page and I can only imagine . . . my Mom is actually a marketing consultant and she does social for a lot of local businesses and they’re not going to be able to put this together very quickly and easily and it’s going to be painful. So for people like my Mom, who make their money helping businesses do this, it’s a boon, but for the businesses themselves, I think it’s just going to create a lot of complexity that they’re just not going to find as rewarding.

Jay: Yeah and, as you said, it’s going to take some time to put this together and for small businesses, they’re not sitting around thinking, “Geez, I’ve got a few extra hours a week, let me dive into doing Facebook more aggressively.” My favorite part of this whole thing was Facebook literally patting themselves on the back for giving people 30 days notice, as if that is some extraordinary gesture. I’m like, “Thirty days?” For a small business, that is not very much time to get this figured out.

Eric: Seriously. Well what do you think about the changes to the ad units? I mean, that really gets back to the conversation we had on an earlier podcast episode where we talked about the ability to target organic content and that’s effectively exactly what Facebook has built. You just have to pay to do it.

Jay: Right. Yeah. Their targeting capabilities far supersede anything else available on the Internet in almost any way shape or form but what I think that they’ve said is, “Look, we can only monetize that to a certain degree going with primarily direct- response-oriented advertising,” is what they’ve been involved in so far with marketplace ads. A lot of people have bought Facebook ads on a cost-per-click basis so now they’re saying, “You know what? Let’s change this game a little bit and orient these advertising opportunities more towards bigger brands who are going to pay us on a cost-per-impression basis longer term, bigger dollar deals and it certainly makes sense for Facebook but there’s going to be less advertising inventory available for the small guys who will prefer, obviously, to buy stuff on a cost-per-click basis.

Eric: Yeah.

Jay: So we will see what happens. It will be interesting on March 30th to hear the collective disturbance in the force when everybody turns on their Timeline and it’s all jacked up.

Eric: Yeah, it’s a lot of work, you’re right. I’m trying to think about when I activated timeline on my personal page and Facebook did a pretty good job of guessing when I was born and when I was married and the things like that that I had already structured based on my usage of the platform. Businesses have none of that. I guess you have like the date you started your business if you put that in your company page but all the other milestones and things that sort of align with the timeline paradigm, they don’t exist for the most part, I would guess, in a typical brand’s page. So it’s going to be a ton of work to go back and sort of back fill all of that.

Jay: And I agree with you. I think that ultimately it’s for the best because it forces companies of all sizes to be less overtly promotional. As Facebook has said, they want businesses to act like people and they’re sort of legislating that to be true based on how they’ve reconfigured the technology. So I think, ultimately, from sort of a spiritual perspective, it makes a lot of sense in terms of how businesses use Facebook and to protect them from themselves, to some degree, but it is going to be a hassle for a lot of small companies and they’re just going to have to either say, “Hey, we’re going to find a way to make time or we’re going to get off of Facebook,” so we’ll see how that shakes out.

Eric: Yeah, yeah.

Eric’s Social Media Stat of the Week: 71% of Execs Say Taking Social Media Seriously Gives Them a Competitive Advantage

Jay: Tell us, good sir, if we have a social media stat of the week. This has been a good week for social media stats, all kinds of stuff. What is this week’s social media stat of the week, Eric?

Eric: There have been plenty to choose from. This week, we’re going to talk a bit about a forth-coming report from Forrester Research. Forrester’s consulting division did a survey of over 100 V.P. and C. level professionals, including 12 CEOs, CMOs, VPs, you kind of get the whole deal. Facebook actually commissioned this report. The full manifesto will hit later this week. So look for it on Wednesday, I think. A few interesting data nuggets: 41% of those surveyed have begun to use social media marketing to promote their products, manage their staff, optimize their operations; 76% of those sort of viewed social media as a brand- builder for their organization; 40% plan to start employing social media as a marketing operations tool. So those that have not adopted it plan to. What I find interesting and appealing about all of this is that a survey was conducted of VPs and C- level marketing professionals and they had some intelligent things to say about social media. They had visibility to social media marketing as a mechanism to move their businesses forward.

Jay: Yeah, I found it interesting how much people were using social or thinking about social as an awareness builder.

Eric: Yeah. Well, one other data nugget I didn’t mention, 71% say that companies taking social media seriously gain a competitive advantage. Actually, I probably should have led with that one. But, yeah, it’s kind of a curious thing to see what this survey might look like two years from now versus what the survey might have looked like two years ago.

Just goes to show that the market’s moving quickly. But this idea that executives are starting to think about social media as mission-critical in terms of a way to gain a competitive advantage or a way to not sort of wither on the vine, I think is a pretty compelling story.

Jay: Yeah. It’s good job security for you.

Eric: And you.

Jay: Yes, so they tell us and everybody else who is a social pro, right?

Eric: Exactly, exactly.

Jay: Hence the name of the podcast. Let’s talk to today’s very special guest, Jonathan Wichmann from the Maersk Line, which as I mentioned in the intro, is the world’s largest container shipping company. Jonathan, thanks very much for being here.

Special Guest: Jonathan Wichmann, Maersk Line

Jonathan: Thank you for having me here. It’s a big honor.

Jay: Well, it is not a big honor at all but we appreciate you saying so. Thank you very much.

Jonathan: It is a big honor and you are quite right, I’m situated in Copenhagen, Denmark so I guess I’m the first international guest.

Jay: You are. You are very much and hopefully you will not be the last international guest after the European community gets word of the Social Pros podcast. When we were doing some research for this, and you and I have interacted a couple times in the past, Jonathan, it is absolutely amazing to me the number of things that your company has going on in social. Could you maybe give the listeners just a little bit of a sense of how Maersk Line works and sort of how that container shipping business rolls out and who your actual customers are and then some of the things that you’re involved in social media?

Jonathan: Well, the container shipping business is a, in a way, an old business, conservative business you might even say. It’s been around for more than 100 years and the company has a rich heritage of very strong stories to tell. But as it is, kind of, I wouldn’t say a secret business but not very public and not living very much from sharing the stories, at least in the past. It’s been quite a change to jump into the whole social media sphere for Maersk Line. I believe that’s the first company in that industry and it’s been equally overwhelming to see the response from the outside world and I don’t think anyone in the company anticipated that it would reach these heights so soon. Basically, we decided, and we’ve only been there for four months . . .

Jay: Is that right? Wow!

Maersk Line on Facebook

Jonathan: That is right. I joined on the first of October last year and I was hired to do this and I’ve been driving it by myself, actually, part-time. So it’s a rather small set-up, a lean set- up we do.

Jay: But here’s the thing, right, you’ve been doing this for four months, you’re the only guy doing it. You started it. You are a container shipping company, let me just make sure people realize that. You have 174,000 fans on Facebook.

Jonathan: Yeah. It’s really taken off. There are a lot of good things. It is a global company. It is 110,000 or 120,000 employees. It’s truly global in the sense as a network and all the countries. The Maersk brand is really strong so that’s a big advantage, of course, when you start out. Then there are a lot of very different kind of users that find it interesting to interact with us, the employees of course, there’s the whole shipping community, and then there’s the customers. That was really the whole idea behind, that was what convinced the company to, “Okay. Let’s do this now,” because before I came, they had been in what they termed “the listening phase” for three years . . .

Jay: That’s a long phase.

Jonathan:  Yeah. Just listening to what and how can we be anything in this social world. So the whole plan is to, the whole strategy is to get closer to our customers, that’s how we defined it. But really there are so many other aspects of it as well. But in terms of employer branding and the brand loyalty and creating awareness and driving the agenda in the container shipping industry. One of the good things, for Maersk Line in terms of this is we’re really ambitious in terms of changing or shaping the shipping industry, driving the innovation because right now it’s not as profitable as it should be so things has to change and social media could be one of the ways to actually learn how we could go about it because we don’t necessarily, in Copenhagen, know what’s the best thing to do. All the good ideas might be out there. It’s also about connecting and bringing in some intelligence from influentials in the industry.

Eric: Jonathan, how do you think about socializing a brand as big and international and traditional as Maersk Line?

Jonathan: Yeah, that is really the attraction of my job, I think, because social media and Maersk,  that is not something that meshed, so it came as a surprise to people and all of the sudden it can work out. It can be social. One of the things we did was, in the pattern I work in, it works rather close to a, like the senior people, the executives and so on, so we’ve managed to get some of them on both our Twitter feed and on Facebook where they tweet about what’s up and down in their world. That’s, of course, a way of engaging people upwards in the company. You can show that it’s not just another add-on. It goes right through the center of the company, or should at least. It’s still a learning phase, I would say. We’re just getting started. Because the front-line people, all the many young, enthusiastic guys and girls around the world, they jump right into it and they just started sharing team photos and whatever with us and we started posting those as well.

Eric: Yeah, that was actually the next thing that I was going to ask you. Some of the photos are beautiful. Are they all sourced from your team?

Jonathan: The team’s photos you’re talking about? You’re talking about vessel photos?

Eric: Yeah, on your Facebook page and on Instagram.

Jonathan: Yeah, on the Instagram, we have, of course, a library of 14,000 photos. That was like the first thing I did when I started was to go down into the basement, into the archives and get a hold of some of these really, really amazing photos from the past and current, new photos as well. But on Instagram, the whole idea is to get container or ship tagging going and we can see that has started to happen, that people in terminals or on the ships, in the streets or the cities, when they see a Maersk container, they take a photo with a mobile phone and then they hashtag it “Maersk” and then it automatically feeds into our Facebook page. So there are many kinds of engagement or interest around the brand. This is a very visual site.

Jay: One of the other things that I really like about your Facebook page is the “house rules” section, very much a best practice. Very few companies actually do it but on your Facebook page you have a tab that says, “Obviously, we’re around the world but we’re doing this in English and here’s kind of how we handle customer service and you can’t do things that are offensive,” and it basically sets forth the ground rules for how you’re going to manage your Facebook page. Really, really excellent idea. Did you use a social media management software tool to create that page or did you just build it on the fly?

Jonathan: We just built it on the fly right from the start because we realized that customer service, you know, if we start inviting them into the game, then it’ll never end and we need a whole team of 50 people sitting there.

Eric: Probably more than 50.

Jonathan: More than that, even. We already have some on-line tools that people can use instead so we’re rather direct them to those than trying to handle them on social media. So we have a very focused approach to it. Yeah, as I said, getting closer to our customers but also bringing in some intelligence from the outside world. For example, we did on LinkedIn, we’ve done this closed group of influentials in the industry, the shipping circle, it’s called, where we ask questions like, “What’s the next big innovation that will turn the industry upside down?” and people write amazing pieces, really insightful stuff. I will then involve the management team and see if there’s something there that they can pick up in their decision-making.

Jay: So as leaders in the industry, your company is facilitating conversation about key topics in the industry?

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jay: Fantastic.

Jonathan: That is the whole point.

Jay: As I mentioned earlier, you’ve got 174,000 Facebook fans, in fact, 10 more since we started the podcast, even though the podcast isn’t live, so that’s good news, but substantially fewer, just a few thousand on Twitter. Was that a design to sort of channel emphasis issue or just sort of how it happened to roll out?

Jonathan: It was quite deliberate that we started on Facebook because, in terms of volume, that is, next to Google, where people enter the journey on the Internet as of right now. That’s how I look at it at least. If you know what you’re looking for, you go to Google. If you don’t know, you go to Facebook. It might be different in the United States but in Europe, I think, and especially in Asia, that’s how it is today. So that was quite deliberate. Then that is the idea to create volume and awareness through Facebook and I think Twitter is more for sharing news and trying to even influence the press and the other bloggers and stuff like that.

Jay: Well and certainly given how photo-driven a lot of your social communication is, Twitter makes that a little more difficult. Obviously you could link to your photos and it’ll show up in your little photo area on Twitter but certainly Facebook and even Google+ would be better places if you’re going to have a heavy photography play. You have a Tumblr blog as well that contains your Instagram feed, is that right?

Maersk Line on Tumblr

Jonathan: Yeah, that’s right. We just keep that nice and clean, only the Instagram photos and nothing but that. So it’s for all those without an iPhone, basically, so they can be part of it as well. We were quite latecomers on Facebook, as you can tell, so the idea with Instagram was basically to say, “Okay. Even though we’re late here, we might be first movers in other areas.”

Jay: Fantastic. Well, hey, there’s a lot of companies that would like to be late to the game and put up 174,000 Facebook fans in four months for a container shipping company so I think you’ve got an awful lot to be proud of. It’s a fascinating, fascinating program.

Jonathan: Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Eric: Agreed, yeah. It’s very cool, Jonathan.

Work It Out

Jay: Speaking of photos, today’s “work it out” segment comes from Phil, a Social Pros listener who asked about Pinterest. We talked about Pinterest at one point on the show and he wants to know whether or not it makes sense for his particular business. Phil’s an interior designer. It would seem that Pinterest is on everybody’s lips but it’s not for everybody, right, Eric?

Eric: It is indeed. I wrote an article today about Pinterest. This is probably not where you’re going or where Phil wants to go with this question, but about copyright issues with some photos earlier today. Anyway, that kind of popped in my head randomly but, yeah, Pinterest, it’s a kind of a wait and see game, I think, for most. But if you’re an interior designer though? It seems like bread and butter, I would think.

Jay: Yeah and I think for companies, I think you raise a good question about copyright. Jonathan just mentioned that he has this entire basement full of 100 year-old Maersk Line photos that he can cull through and post to the Internet because they presumably have rights to those photos and have this amazing legacy of the company and putting those on Pinterest in a way that is interesting, I think, makes perfect sense.

But what has happened now is that a lot of people go out and just pin a lot of images that you don’t have rights to maybe even the site you pinned it from doesn’t have rights to it. So people who were actually the original photographers of that image are starting to say, “Hey, wait a second! What happened to my link and my credit and my licensing,” and all those other kinds of things so it’s going to be interesting to see how that shakes out.

We’re very much getting into yet another micro-era of niche networks, of people saying, “Well maybe it’s not just Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and YouTube. Maybe we should get into Pinterest or Path or whatever else is going to float through the transom.” To some degree I can see the attraction there. On the other side, I think people need to worry about doing what we have today better more so than doing the new thing.

Eric: Yeah. Jonathan, you do a pretty good job of blending a mainstream network like Facebook with a smaller network like Instagram. Are you guys sort of purposeful in that or what even makes you adopt Instagram when there’s a perfectly functional photos function inside of Facebook?

Jonathan: I think the thing that the Instagram community is quite different from Facebook and from Twitter and it is interesting to . . . I just find it interesting, actually, to go out there and see happens on various challenges. I think the small set-up that we have, especially in the start-up phase, is very important so you don’t get caught up and be measurements and KPIs and all that, which can happen at big companies because then you can experiment a bit, try out some stuff and maybe you find out, “Oh, it doesn’t really work for me.” On Google+, for example, I couldn’t really see, for example, how it would work for us but maybe I haven’t experienced it at all yet so it’s just about going out then and seeing what happens.

Jay: It’s a good point you raise about not measuring it to death. Eric and I both come from a measurement background and tend to be as strategic as possible about social participation but I think, especially in big companies, you’re right that sometimes you can put so much math around it that it kills your ability to experiment and I think it’s actually really commendable that you’ve been able to go as far as you have as quickly as you have with Maersk Line without getting bogged down in a lot of analysis and reporting so far.

Jonathan: And I think really, the whole thing is that the social media, is it a business logic or it is a social logic? Because if it’s a social logic, then measurements are no good really. You need to measure it in a qualitative way in order for it to make sense. Let’s just say, “Okay. We have 170,000 fans on Facebook. That’s not a success as such.” So I really think we need to look at other ways of measuring what’s good and what’s not good, to put it that way. So I’m not all for all the metrics in the start- up phases at least. Especially when you talk B-to-B companies, there is quite a long way to an actual sale, of course, so that makes it even less relevant.

Jay:  This has been fantastic, a fascinating episode, one of my favorite so far for sure. Jonathan, you’ve been great. Thank you so much for taking the time. I know it’s late at your place. Eric, thank you as always. Thanks again to our sponsors: Eric’s fine company, Argyle Social, Infusionsoft, our buddy Jim Kukral. Next week, we will be back with some sort of South by Southwest show. We’re not even sure who we’re going to be able to corral yet. Week after that, Ian Greenleigh from Bazaarvoice is going to be our guest so we’ve got all kinds of amazing things coming up on Social Pros and we thank you for your support.

Online Marketing News: Tips for Going Viral, Socially Optimized via Mobile, Facebook Timelines for Business, LinkedIn Company Follow

Posted on 02. Mar, 2012 by Ashley Zeckman in B2B, B2C, Blog, content marketing, Search Engines, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

What does it take to go viral?

This recent video from Salesforce.com covers what it takes for your content to spread as well as the formula for success.  The video also includes a checklist marketers can use to increase their likelihood of going viral.

This Week in Online Marketing News

“Getting Socially Optimized with Mobile Marketing” As mobile marketing continues to expand marketers are still searching for the best way to reach their audience through the development of applications for smart phones, ads, and mobile optimized websites.  This article provides some insight into the benefits and challenges of a mobile marketing strategy. Via BtoB Magazine.

“How Twitter is Pairing It’s Interest Graph With Ads”  While Facebook’s social graph provides information on connections, likes, and demographic data Twitter is taking a different approach.  Twitter’s interest graph will focus more on users likes, what they read, and generally what topics they are interested in.  Via Techcrunch.

“Facebook Revamps Pages For Businesses”  In order to create consistency between profiles and pages, Facebook has now rolled out the new timeline for branded pages.  Facebook is encouraging businesses to make the shift from pure advertising to storytelling and hopes that the new timeline will push companies to make the transition.  TopRank recently rolled out the updated timeline, what do you think?  Via the brainyard.

“Foursquare Says Farewell to Google Maps, Joins OpenStreetMap Movement”  Foursquare has decided to part ways with Google Maps saying that “as a startup, we also often think about how we can make life easier for other startups.”  Curious to know why Foursquare chose this particular product?  Via Mashable.

“Posting From Pinterest To Your Facebook Fan Page”  Tabfusion recently released a Facebook app that allows users to display their “pins” to their Facebook page.  The company shares that once Pinterest releases their application-programming interface there will be further integration.  Be sure to take a look at the clever cartoon attached to the bottom of the article.  Via Marketaire.

“12 important steps bloggers should never forget”  Writing a blog is a serious commitment.  Many bloggers get wrapped up in creating the content and forget some very simple optimization and promotional steps.  This article provides some good insight into steps that bloggers should incorporate into their blogging routine.  Via ragan.

TopRank Team: Search & Social News

Brian Larson – Google Images Adds Previews to Related Searches
Let’s face it, some searches are just inherently more intent on visual content. Google gets it and is making access to relevant images even more convenient. For businesses, this update reinforces the importance of optimizing images as part of an overall online marketing strategy.  Via Search Engine Watch.

Shawna Kenyon  - Clock counts down as Google privacy change looms
Google’s new privacy change is their solution for combining 60 privacy policies for different services. For some Google users this change is unfavorable as there is no way to “opt-out”.  However for those who favor all of Google’s services this will be a way for the user to be presented with content that is similar to what they are already looking for. Google continues to reaffirm its commitment to preserving privacy stating the change will only serve to “simplify” the user experience.  Via Cnet.

Alexis Hall – msnNow Is Driving More Traffic To Bing, But Is It Artificially Inflating Searches?
msnNOW, a new service which aggregates content around trending topics, launched just two weeks ago, but already seems to be having an effect on Bing traffic numbers.  While new traffic to Bing has jumped in the past two weeks, this post suggests that those numbers may be inflated due to how msnNOW links are structured.  We’ll have to keep an eye on this trend to determine how search engine market share may shift, as well as how msnNOW may impact the search and social landscape.  Via Search Engine Land.

Ken Horst – LinkedIn Launches Follow Company Button
Here is something every company with a Linkedin profile should jump on right away.  According to execs at LinkedIn, there is a finite limit to how many brands people will follow per channel.  Companies that drag their feet with the LinkedIn “follow company” button may find it more difficult to find willing followers later in the year.  Via AdWeek.

Time to weigh in:  Do you consider the new Facebook timeline for businesses a positive or negative change?  What impact do you think this will have on your business?  Have you integrated mobile marketing into your online marketing strategy?  What have been the results?

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
Online Marketing News: Tips for Going Viral, Socially Optimized via Mobile, Facebook Timelines for Business, LinkedIn Company Follow | http://www.toprankblog.com

Why Pinterest Is Not the Next Big Thing for Your Business

Posted on 29. Feb, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Duct Tape Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media

Why Pinterest Is Not the Next Big Thing for Your Business

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

You’ve likely heard lots and lots about a newish social network called Pinterest in the last couple of weeks.

1935 Alfa Romeo 8C – Fabforgottennobility via The Fancy

Many bloggers are talking about it in the same giddy ways reserved for the last few next big things, but let me offer some relief. Pinterest is an interesting site with some real, immediate applications for online retailers and Etsy merchants, but the site itself offers little for most typical businesses and it’s certainly not the next big thing. (I wrote about it late last year if you want some information on Pinterest for Business)

I usually know that once small business owners start asking me about a strategy for using some new tool it’s time to speak up.

In fact, it’s the search for the next big thing that is hurting many businesses. You know what the next big thing for every business is? Find a way to clearly differentiate what you’re doing and how you’re doing it and why you’re doing it from everyone else that says they are doing what you’re doing. That’s the next big thing. Pinterest then might actually be used as a tactic to support that, but never the other way around.

I think the thing that leads to so much confusion and frustration for business owners these days is that there’s an entire generation of online pundits (generation is about every three years in online punditness) that missed out when blogging tipped and that weren’t at SXSW in 2007 when Twitter raced on the scene, so by gosh they aren’t going to miss the next big thing and are willing to proclaim – “this changes everything” about any tool that gets a little white hot.

Here’s the thing. I kind of like Pinterest, I kind of like Foursquare, I kind of like Twitter and on and on, but the main thing I like about every new tool is what it can teach us once it develops buzz and users. So you see, I’m not opposed to anything other than people selling tools as strategy.

The great learning from playing with Pinterest and even exploring ways to use it to help support your objectives is that you get to witness how important visual stimulation and social sharing is in the  grand scheme of attracting interest. I’ve had the opportunity to study how some early Pinterest adopters use the tool and it’s a fascinating study in the behavior of online users.

Like the entire category of infographics has done, Pinterest has plenty to teach us about how to create interest on our own website, in our own presentations and in the stories we use to attract potential clients – that’s what makes Pinterest worthy of the investment in time and not some magic fairy dust promise of traffic and riches.

In fact, I would suggest you look into some other sites employing visual scanning and visual stimulation to actually make money. There may be greater learning to be had at sites like The Fancy, Fab.com, Visual.ly or Polyvore.

The big message in all of this though is clarity of purpose. Until you’re clear on your marketing strategy every new tactic will sound like the next big thing.

5 Reasons Pinterest is Addicting and 4 Weaknesses That May Kill it

Posted on 19. Feb, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, infographics, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social networks

Like Google searches for M.I.A. after her Super Bowl middle finger salute, the growth of Pinterest is positively ferocious. A 329 percent increase in unique visitors in 90 days is the kind of rocket ship acceleration that is usually far more myth than reality, even in social media start-up circles.

Why this newfound obsession with Pinterest? What’s fueling this rocket? There are actually several factors and features that have made Pinterest on par with Twitter as a traffic driver (according to a Shareaholic study).

1. Focused Functionality

Unlike many other contemporary social environments that seem hell-bent on adding features like ornaments on a Christmas tree, Pinterest does one thing, and does it well. They have embraced the less is more ethos that initially propelled Google search and Twitter to the forefront of their respective fields.

2. Intuitive Interface

Ease-of-use is the killer app. Pinterest would never have crossed the chasm to become the darling of the often non-technical crafting and fashion crowd if it was a hassle to figure out. It’s drop-dead simple, possibly because of its focused features, as is impacting Web design best practices in widespread and profound ways.

3. Passion Pit

Pinterest allows us to chronicle and share what we love. Our hobbies. Our desires. Our aspirations. I don’t have data on this (it would make an interesting study), but I’d wager a considerable sum that there are 10x more pins of things we want, compared to things we have. It’s akin to the Facebook “like” phenomenon, but with a far more visceral psychological anchor.

4. Massively Browsable

You can enjoy Pinterest without reading anything. Let that marinate. In a world where the tweet and status update have reigned supreme for years, you can now can fully immerse yourself in a powerful community experience that is 100% visual. It’s no wonder that Pinterest broke out at roughly the same time as Instagram, Path, and other social sharing opportunities that revolve around pictures, not words. (see post from Ekaterina Walter on whether photo apps will kill the written word) It’s the natural evolution of communication. A picture may not be worth 1,000 words, but it’s definitely worth 140 characters, and when the vast majority of the population began possessing a camera at all times via their mobile phone, this type of photo-driven culture was a natural byproduct.

5. Equality

There are no Sneetches with stars and Sneetches without stars on Pinterest. Brands have pages and access to the same features that individual users have. This democratizes the community in an important and powerful way, making Pinterest the only major social opportunity (other than Twitter) where people and companies are singing from the same hymnal. Strangely, Twitter aims to eliminate their edge in this area by rolling out brand pages to companies.

Is This The End of the World as We Know It?

Those are the five primary reasons for Pinterest’s success. But I advise that you temper your passion for Pinterest, as there are four reasons why the site as we know it today may not survive.

1. Link Spam

One of the digital marketing advantages of Pinterest is the fact that all links on the site are followable by Google and other search engines. On a pin, the from link, the image link, and even the description link (if you insert one) are all followable by Google, passing juice back to your site. This is too good an opportunity for SEO pros to pass up, and link spam on Pinterest will pick up significantly in the next few weeks. Pinterest will likely have to change links to no-follow, or risk SEO spammers dragging down the quality of the user experience.

Image From llsocial.com

2. Shopping Spam

On a related front, the affiliate marketing opportunity on Pinterest is astounding. Already, you can set up an API feed of Amazon’s top sellers (or other products) onto a Pinterest board, create a potentially lucrative, automated revenue stream. This is going to explode soon, with a potentially overwhelming number of low quality, affiliate boards cropping up like mushrooms. Even Pinterest itself is getting into the act, inserting affiliate links automatically wherever it can do so, using Skimlinks. Again, this commerce-first shift may threaten the idyllic user experience that has made Pinterest successful.

3. Copycats

The fact that Pinterest is so focused is terrific (see #1 above), but also makes it far easier to copy it’s offering. Like daily deal sites aping Groupon, Pinterest is massively prone to other sites chipping away at its user base by creating more relevant offshoots. Already, you see clones like Gentlemint.com vying for the “Pinterest for dudes” audience, and angel investor online community Angel List includes several companies that describe themselves as “Pinterest for Architects” “Pinterest for Beauty” and so forth.

4. Too Good to Stay Solo

The most likely reason that Pinterest as we know it today will disappear is that it’s simply too ripe for acquisition. Suitors are plentiful, as Pinterest makes tremendous strategic sense for many social behemoths, but for different reasons.

Google could buy Pinterest to add pins and repins as a social signal for photos, serving as a de facto +1 for images and adding an entire new layer of relevancy to Google images search results. It would be a tidy add-on to Google Plus as well, and give it a meaningful advantage over Facebook.

For that matter, Facebook could buy Pinterest and make it the core of its still nascent social shopping efforts, giving Facebook pages an easy way to monetize “likes” at the product level.

Twitter could buy Pinterest and make boards and pins part of users’ profile page, taking today’s uninteresting ”Recent Images” to an exciting new place.

Groupon could get into the game, using what you’ve liked and pinned as a relational database to improve the relevancy of deals you’re offered.

Certainly, in the interest of possessing a revolutionary new social commerce front-end, Pinterest would be attractive to Amazon, and probably eBay as well. Even Wal-Mart – which has quietly been getting very serious about social - would be an interesting and viable candidate.

I’m not a crafter or a fashionista (my first Pinterest board was favorite tequilas, and my most popular board is social media infographics), so I don’t fit the profile of the typical Pinterest freak. But, I love and very much appreciate the site for the five reasons I’ve mentioned. However, for the other four reasons I’ve articulated, I fear our relationship will be short-lived.

What do you think?

(post originally published on the Monetate blog)

Free Handbook: 7 Apps That Will Change The Way You Do Marketing

Posted on 14. Feb, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, delicious, dropbox, Duct Tape Marketing, Evernote, gmail, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media

Free Handbook: 7 Apps That Will Change The Way You Do Marketing

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

There’s always more to do than time to do it these days. That’s why I love discovering new tools and apps that help me get it all done.

I also love to share what I find and so I teamed up with Hubspot to write The Productivity Handbook: 7 Apps That Will Change The Way You Do Marketing.

(Yes, Hubspot asks for some information from you, but trust me, the how to use and why to use info included in this eBook will be worth it to you. If you’ve read anything I write you know I give away practical advice only.)

You’ll learn how these exciting, new tools can help you:

• Brainstorm ideas for fast content creation using Evernote
• Easily share large files across multiple devices using Dropbox
• Generate more traffic to your website using StumbleUpon
• Tell your story and share photos using Instagram and Pinterest

Download your eBook here

Will The Rise of the Photo Apps Kill the Written Word?

Posted on 14. Feb, 2012 by Ekaterina Walter in Blog, Blogging and Content Creation, Guest Posts, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Ekaterina Walter is a social media strategist at Intel. She is a part of Intel’s Social Media Center of Excellence and is responsible for company-wide social media enablement and corporate social networking strategy. She was recently elected to serve on the board of directors of WOMMA.

Overall, the statistics point in just one direction: blogging is dying. A 2011 study by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth researching social media usage by Inc 500 companies (who have a strong usage of social media generally) found that the use of blogging had dropped to 37% from 50% the year before. 74% and 73% of the Inc 500 use Facebook and LinkedIn respectively, and the study concluded:

“Fewer [companies] are using blogging, message/bulletin boards, online video, podcasting and MySpace.  More companies are using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, downloadable mobile apps, texting and Foursquare.”

The rise of image driven apps such as Pinterest, Tumblr, or Instagram is another trend that various commentators have jumped on to hail the death of the written word in generating sales.

Word Killer Number One: Pinterest

Pinterest, the virtual social pin board for themed images and interests, is currently ranked 5^th for driving traffic referrals, behind Facebook, You Tube, Twitter and Yahoo. Google+ ranks at number 9. (Source: Experian Hitwise US) But before brands can start getting too excited about the commercial potential of Pinterest, it’s worth looking at the type of traffic it is generating. Of the top 10 brands on Pinterest, 9 are lifestyle/retail. Pinterest is a visual medium that works best for lifestyle and retail industries, where customer decisions are particularly based on visual appeal.

But Blogging Actually Works

Another 2011 study, this time by Hubspot, focused solely on companies concerned with inbound marketing and painted a different picture. They found that:

• 57% of companies using blogs reported that they acquired customers from leads generated directly from their blog.
• Businesses are now in the minority if they do not blog. From 2009 to 2011 the percentage of businesses with a blog grew from 48% to 65%.
• 85% of businesses rated their company blogs as “useful”, “important” or “critical”; 27% rated their company blog as “critical” to their business.

What this actually suggests is that blogging is becoming more ‘niche’; rather than an all-purpose tool it is being used with more specific goals in mind. Companies who may have not been all that dedicated to maintaining a blog are finding other communications channels, such as image applications, work better for them. Brands that get value from their blogs are just as committed to that form as ever, but may have also added other platforms to their communications toolbox to interact more flexibly with a wider variety of audiences. Socially savvy brands like Dell, for example, report significant cost-saving benefits from having a support blog in place which helps reduce the volume of the call center calls. But it doesn’t mean that Dell doesn’t have other touch points with its customers on various networks.

The way I see it, social networks cannot truly replace the role blogging plays in company’s content strategy and credibility-building. Your blog is where you share your best content; social networks are channels which support the distribution of that content. Helpful, genuine and targeted blogs bring a number of benefits to a brand:

• Thought leadership: being viewed as a trusted source
• Improved customer service
• A way to humanize the brand
• Contextual relevance
• Better connections with customers which leads to increased loyalty and advocacy
• Differentiation from competition
• Improved search engine optimization

Having a network of blogs where each blog focuses on a particular topic or audience is a great strategy employed by a number of successful companies. It allows you to connect with relevant customers in a meaningful way.

It’s Not Blog OR Social Network, it’s Blog AND Social Network

Companies are asking themselves, what media is best for interacting with customers? This might be image-driven, video, or another visual medium. If short messages are the best way of reaching customers, tweeting, texting or using Tumblr might be preferable. A company with a local customer base might be more suited to Foursquare.

But these platforms are not mutually exclusive, and in fact are highly compatible. Brands can use their Facebook page, their Pinterest account, and their blog to drive traffic, often using cross-promotion. How they use them will depend on the message.

What we are seeing is the fragmentation of information on one hand, but its conglomeration on the other. As content strategy becomes more ‘niche’, the potential for sharing that information across a multitude of platforms brings a kind of umbrella to the process, tying it all loosely together. So a successful blog will be joined up to a whole range of social media channels: it might come up in a Google Plus search, or a good blog infographic might be taken and shared across Pinterest.

We’re moving away from one-size-fits all social media approach and towards niche usage. So no, blogging is not dead: where the written word is the most appropriate form of communication it is stronger than ever. Blogs are generating leads, showcasing thought leadership and supporting customers in an ever more relevant way. Where blog usage has fallen, it is because the written word was not the most suitable method of communication, and other media forms have proved a better fit. Brands are thinking harder about the ever-expanding range of communication channels available to them, and where they are blogging it is because they have made a conscious choice to.

A good blog will focus on long-term audience engagement, and that’s something that is still often best achieved through the written word.