Community Marketing Blog

Social network sites: practice what you claim!

The Netherlands is worldwide the nation with the largest number of social network users relatively to its size. 49% of its 16 million inhabitants are members of social network sites. This is even bigger than US (40%) or Canada (44%). The network I use most frequently is LinkedIn (1 million users in The Netherlands). Somehow The Netherlands is one of those countries in the world where Facebook isn’t very successful yet. About 8 million people (50% of the population!) use the Dutch network Hyves as the main online way to socialize with friends. Facebook doesn’t even come close to those figures and MySpace already gave up competition last year.

Winning New Clients: Right Person Myth

Discussions about how to win new clients usually involves the "get to the right person myth".

The bigger the dollar value of the service you offer, the broader the impact of your service and the more stakeholders it affects, the more people will be involved in the decision before you are hired.

As a rule of thumb, you should plan to have discovery conversations with all 3 roles in the decision (cheque signer, influencer and implementer) before starting discussions about a specific solution or proposal.

Event: Grow Your Pipeline And Revenue Through Sales Process And CRM

News Release June 8, 2009, Toronto - Corporate and sales leaders are looking for concrete ways to fill and maintain a vibrant pipeline and position their company to meet objectives now and growth in the coming recovery.

Blog-Off Contest Results: Marketing and Social Media Thought Leaders To Watch

On May 6, 2009 Community Marketing Blog founder Andrew Ballenthin put the word out it was looking for co-bloggers to assist in growing our community that researches and pioneers topics related to social media and marketing thought leadership and practical advice.

Within a few days of putting the word out on LinkedIn and twitter over 40 people responded. After some pre-qualify exercises 15 people emerged as entrants of which 12 went on to compete in our Blog-Off contest.

What's Your Strategy?

In this series, I have just touched on a few of the most popular social media platforms. With all these vehicles and possibilities, how do you decide what’s for you? You could easily spend all day on Facebook alone. But is that where you should be?

Think about what your goal is. Is your company striving to have a presence in social media because you’re afraid you will miss out on something? You think it’s the thing to do? Oh, then you do know that’s not a good reason to spend the time and effort to get a profile up. First of all, when you create your profile, you should have your strategy already in mind. Answer these things:

The Psychology Of Social Media: BlogTalk Radio Interview

Host: John Hansen
Where:  Blog Talk Radio
When: June 4, 2009. (45 minutes)
12:30 pm EST/New York City Time Zone
Call-in: 347.326.9234

As social networking evolves into a primary vehicle for establishing relationships, the medium's impact on the world of business is unquestionably significant. Where will social networking take us in the future, and will it ultimately become one of the key differentiators for companies in terms of bottom line success?

Why instant feedback on the internet can be BAD

This past week I was in PEI Canada - working with companies.  Given the beauty of the surroundings and given that my wife was with me with no teenagers - I stopped Twittering, Blogging and Facebook Posting. 

From this I learned that instant feedback from the web had caused me to change the "voice" of my writing.   Over time I had learned how to post messages and content that maximized chances of "retweets" "blog postings" , blah, blah, blah.

LinkedIn Drives More Direct Blog Traffic Than Facebook, twitter or Google

Out of the many social network choices for reaching business professionals, LinkedIn stands clearly above Facebook, twitter, Google and email according to findings from a recent Blog-Off contest. LinkedIn dominated hands down with 55% of 2,350 directly referred URLs (separated from the 6,000+ total page views) over two weeks in a Blog-Off contest that involved 12 marketing and social media thought leaders. Facebook eked ahead of twitter with 13% of direct referring URL's versus 11% from the rapidly growing micro-blog site.