I’m a huge fan of LinkedIn. I’ve made amazing contacts, secured new business, found valuable strategic partners. etc. I’m a big fan of the way they do things: slow, methodical, insightful evolutions of the platform that do truly add value to users. In other words, the intelligent way of building out a product, and the antithesis of how most other social platform providers build their product.

But I have to say, today I received an email detailing their first fail (IMO). LinkedIn Answers is no more. They are “retiring” it as of Jan. 31. LinkedIn Answers was one of the things that made LinkedIn unique and useful. It was an amazing place to find people who need help, and therefore a great place to connect with potential clients and customers. Not only have I engaged with people who became new clients (my first international client, actually), but I have found great products and services by posting questions there. It was also one of the only places online to get instant expert advice for free. Why, oh why, would you take this away? It was a great forum with a model unlike anything else out there.

The thinking here–at least according to the announcement–is to focus more on providing ways for people to connect and share. Um…yeah…we can already do that…on LinkedIn, Facebook, G+, etc. I will say the news that they are also adding the capability to share custom content like videos and presentations is pretty awesome and frankly, long overdue. But I can’t help but wonder if these changes are somewhat of an attempt to become more like Facebook where the only value is status updates and ambiguously “following” someone? I’m just sad and disappointed. LinkedIn Answers was truly a great business tool and I will really miss it. And I know for a fact I won’t be the only one. Just please don’t take away Groups next!

So I wanted to have a little fun for the holidays…I wonder what Christmas would be like if Santa was a marketing executive. I started a discussion in the Marketing Executives Group on LinkedIn, asked some marketing folks I know, and came up with a few answers of my own…

What do you think Santa would change if he were a marketing guru?

By the way, I created this infographic myself using a super easy, super free tool called Easel.ly.

I spoke at a business owners’ networking meeting the other day and was reminded of one of the most fundamental business challenges: Sales and Marketing strategy.

So many companies struggle with aligning their marketing and sales activities. They either have great marketing campaigns that sales doesn’t understand—or even know about—or they have a sales team that is out there selling with little or no marketing support. Bottom line: your sales people need a great marketing strategy to support their efforts.

Marketing and sales working together is an enigma. They go hand in hand yet usually operate in well-defined silos. So often, marketing creates innovative campaigns that they think will work, and develop campaigns without any input from the sales people. This is the fundamental problem. This is why the silos exist in the first place. In order for marketing to truly support sales, a strategy needs to be developed that capitalizes on the real-world experience of sales. Sales can provide great wisdom on the target customer—the hot buttons, the buying triggers and the systems that make a sale happen. Without a strategy in place, these two crucial business functions can never work symbiotically.

Sales people and marketing folk have two completely different mindsets. Sales wants to communicate whatever they need to in order to make the sale happen. Marketing is more concerned with the message, the brand and standing out from the competition. If a company can develop a strategy that addresses all these issues—and believe me, it is possible—then the silos are broken down and these two business functions can help each other. So how do you do this? Here are the essentials of making it happen:

1. Create a regular sales and marketing interface. If sales and marketing people aren’t getting together on a regular basis to discuss major issues, and what works and what doesn’t, the company is missing out on invaluable intelligence that can help both functions work better.

2. Build a well-defined sales and marketing strategy. If a strategy is in place that addresses the intelligence gathered during the sales and marketing interface, then each department clearly understands what needs to be done, how it will done, and how it will be measured, setting everyone up for success.

3. Measure the results of both functions. The only true measure of sales and marketing strategy success is measuring the results. By measuring the results gained from a marketing strategy created with input from both sales and marketing, the company can discover what they should do more of, and what techniques and tactics should be eliminated.

Creating the right sales and marketing strategy really requires the input and expertise of seasoned sales and marketing professionals or consultants, but taking the strategic approach initially will help create the right environment for an efficient and smart sales and marketing operation.

I recently spoke at a Social Media Crash Course for business leaders organized by the South Florida Business Journal. It was a great experience–for all involved! The topic I spoke about was the basics of online reputation management and how to get started protecting the reputation of your business online in the era of instant reviews and limitless social media. Here are the keys I covered:

ORM Key 1: Monitor

The first step is to know what content is out there about your business. You should monitor key sites like the search engines and social media. All companies should monitor Google and Yahoo, pages 1 and 2 (page 1 results receive almost 90% of all click-through traffic, page 2, just over 4%). You should also monitor Twitter and other social media using the free site SocialMention.com.

ORM Key 2: Listen

Listening is different than monitoring. Listening means really hearing what is the community saying about your company or product and using that feedback to make your company or product better. A better product or better experience will create more positive mentions for your company online. The social chatter about you could be the most useful feedback you’ve never heard. The right communities can be the most cost-effective focus groups.

ORM Key 3: Delegate

Someone in your company has to be in charge of managing your online reputation. This is time consuming and requires knowledge of social media etiquette, search engine optimization and writing and public relations. It requires knowledge of your company processes, departments and products. They must be able to easily navigate the many departments. Ideally, this would be part of the job description of a social media manager or in larger companies a dedicated reputation manager.

ORM Key 4: Respond

You will get negative comments and reviews. This is reality. You will never please 100% of the world. All negative reviews should receive a response from a company representative and some of your positive reviews should also be acknowledged.

ORM Key 5: Be Transparent

Being transparent means being open, honest and humble about your processes and product in your online conversations. As open and honest as possible. This doesn’t mean revealing anything private, damaging or libelous. It means:
1. Acknowledging when you are wrong, or when someone had a genuinely bad experience with the company. Take responsibility.
2. Offering an explanations or better yet, solutions (not an excuse) to challenges with your company or product.
3. Speak like a real person. Don’t post like a lawyer or marketer. Use plain English. No legalese and no jargon unless your audience is familiar with it.

ORM Key 6: Create

Create what? Content. Content is the currency of social media, and the food Google needs to return great results about your company. You will need a good writer (on staff or through a knowledgable freelancers or agency) and someone who knows the latest SEO techniques. Your company should be putting out new written and video content every month. Google results can change in a matter of days, but certainly will change over the course of a month. You may already have content assets in your business that you haven’t used online. Take an inventory of any product support materials, press clippings, video footage or any other content you have. Start with those assets and adapt them to the short-attention span of the web.

ORM Key 7: Share

Make the content sharable by adding Share buttons to it when it is posted online. I like the Share This and Add This buttons, which give a user the ability to share a piece of content on almost any social media. Add your content to your site or blog, Facebook page, YouTube Channel, tweet it out. If it is press release, use a service like PRWeb to make sure it goes to all the major search engines and gets picked up on as many qualified sites as possible.

ORM Key 8: Prevent

The most effective way to address negative reviews or comments about your brand is by preventing them from happening in the first place. Keep communication with your customers and shareholders open, honest and productive. Make sure you address any negative experiences as soon as you are aware of them. This will reduce the number of negative comments and reviews you receive online. In fact, it could even increase the number of positive online comments because a customer willing to post a negative review is likely equally willing to post a positive one.

Online Reputation Management is a crucial yet young component of online marketing. It’s hard to try to cover it all in s short article, but if you keep these key basics in mind, you will have a good foundation to get started with building a great reputation for your business in the online space.

A major part of your social media strategy should involve sharing content with your target audiences. In order to establish and maintain your followers, friends and fans, you will need to share useful and compelling content with real value. This means content that is unique, interesting, non-commercial and from a source that social media users can trust. A good example of this is mainstream media outlets or a very popular, influential blog.The good news is that the internet is flooded with new content every single day, so much that no one could keep up with it all. Part of your social media strategy could be to become a resource for the best content on a subject related to your product or service–take the work out of staying on top of the latest developments in your industry and your social media profiles may become the must-read resource.

You should also incorporate original content as part of your social media strategy. Here are some sources of good content or content inspiration for your next original blog or article:

Blogs. When sharing blog posts from other sources, make sure that it is coming from a reputable blog, an industry expert or a well-known news blog.

News. Share links to mainstream news articles, breaking news or just interesting articles regardless of the date. These articles should be relevant to your brand, industry, products and services. Sources like Google News (set up a daily news alert or RSS feed) and Alltop.com are fantastic curators of the most prominent news items of the day.

Videos. YouTube and Vimeo have a wide assortment of videos on various topics. Find a topic that you think your audience would appreciate and share it on your profile, page blog or Twitter.

Links. You can send links to other websites as a reference or suggestion. When doing this, always include a few lines about why you think your audience might find it interesting.

Facebook: Asking questions or using polls on your own Facebook page could reveal some interesting insights and compelling topics.

Twitter: Set up a list or saved search on a hashtag or industry topic and see what people are talking about, or what questions they are asking.

Google Adwords: Use Google’s Adwords tool to search for popular topic-related keywords that don’t have much competition. This is a great opportunity to optimize an article or blog post around good keywords that could bring good traffic to your site.

What are your favorite sources of content or content inspiration?

As you develop your social media strategy, you may find yourself investing a lot of time and money in social apps or one-off campaigns. But before you get too caught up in these efforts, remember this: your content matters most.

Why your content development is critical to long-term social media strategy success:

1. The Stage May Change, but Your Content Will Stay the Same: Social media sites are always evolving, and some will disappear altogether—but your content can last forever. When sites shut down or “evolve”, you want your content polished and ready for the next platform.

2. You Own Your Content, but Facebook Owns Your Facebook page. Your content is your online asset. You own it, you control it. Focus first on investing in your own material.

3. People Engage With Content, Not Platforms: Your social media profile is blank without content. People interact with your company on social sites because your content adds value—it gives them information they want or need, or entertains them. Because your audience is most interested in what you have to share, how well you share it is the key tool for your success.

4. Content Gets You Coverage. The best marketing campaigns are those that garner public attention, and the most effective way to get your desired media mentions is to produce quality content. Authoritative endorsements can mean big business victories; use your content to get you the news coverage you want.

What topics or types of content wold get your customers talking and sharing?

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Social media strategy is kind of an oxymoron. It cannot—or at least should not—exist in a bubble, floating out there all by itself. It must integrate and support an overall marketing strategy, and the overall business goals. But so many companies don’t even think through how social media should support the business—and dive into it with no strategic goals whatsoever. Here are three simple steps to get you started in identifying the smartest ways social media can support your business:

1. Formulate Your Goals: As I said, social media isn’t a strategy unto itself, it exists to support your other marketing programs and business goals. Make your goals clear, focused and achievable, and tie them back to the overall business goals. Formulating your goals may be as simple as answering these questions:
- Do you want to increase visitor traffic?
- Manage your company’s reputation?
- Engage your audience and stay on its mind?
- Improve online conversion performance?
- Increase brand awareness?

Take a minute or two to write down your goals and at the very least discuss them with your social media team. Check back occasionally to ensure that you’re keeping your eye on the prize.

2. Conduct an Audience Analysis: It’s simple: a successful strategy is based on knowing your audience. Who is your audience? What’s important to them? It’s your job to determine how you can offer them fun or value—or both! Your audience analysis tells you which social media tools will work best and drives your content development. Once you know your audience’s likes and dislikes, you can craft appropriate and effective social media messages. Conduct an audience analysis regularly; because your social media strategy depends on how well you know your audience, it’s important to stay in tune with them.

3. Measure Success: How do you define a successful social media strategy? Go back to your goals to help you determine how you’ll measure achievement. You need to select key indicators to identify outcomes. If you’re obsessed with Facebook followers or retweets, you may be missing the point. Important metrics include conversions, opt-ins and page views on your website or blog. You want your users engaging with your company and as close to the point of conversion as possible. Fans and followers aren’t a business goal, but what you do with them is.

Social Media Strategists Can Help

When all else fails, call in the experts. If you find yourself struggling with putting pen to paper, or discovering the creative ways social media can and should support your specific business and audiences, perhaps hiring or contracting a social media strategist is the way to go. Or find someone who is experienced in creating strategic marketing plans to help you create yours.

What are your biggest challenges to developing the right social media strategy?

With over 20 million businesses, celebrities, organizations and brands using Facebook pages, many people still struggle with using them as part of a strong social media strategy. Companies have started to realize that even if they keep their page updated with content, their fan base is not growing at a steady rate. Facebook has become increasingly harder to connect with followers–simply because there is so much clutter, and the default news feed settings (dictated by the Powers That Be at Facebook) are set to show only content from pages the user has engaged with in the past. Despite this, a few smart brands and companies have evolved from just broadcasting content to true engagement. Here are some very simple ways to engage your fans and attract new ones:

Ask for opinions. Rather than just posting content, present it in a question format so that it involves a call to action. This can include polls, quizzes or questionnaires. Fans will not only answer them, but are more likely to return to see results or view how other fans have answered. You can use relevant, fun quizzes that lead to a giveaway or a promotion.

Show your thanks. Provide something of value to your fans whether its free tickets, coupons, discounts or prizes. Prominently announce your giveaway so that fans can comment and share.

Provide interesting content. Don’t just talk about your company and your product. Share other information such as industry news, interesting articles or links to other websites your fans may find useful.

Facebook is continually evolving and changing–as marketers we have to adapt our social strategies, but one guidepost remains constant: Think like your customers and find ways to add value (and maybe a little fun) to their lives and you will connect with them. Two-way interaction is the power of social media. This means getting your fans to respond to you. These are just some of the ways to engage fans. Growing and building your fans requires some work and consistency–AND TIME–but in the long run, will pay off with some big dividends.

What tactics have you successfully added to your social media strategy to increase engagement?

Social media for marketing can be more efficient, easier and more effective when utilizing the right tools. With thousands of tools available on the market, it can be hard to settle on the right one. Below are some of my favorite tools to help you get moving on your social media program and make the most of your social media strategy.

• Heardable.com is a brand optimization tool that is free and works like an SEO tool. It measures a website or brand’s competitive edge by displaying how well it is performing within its target audience/market so that you can make the necessary changes to further optimize your site.

• Twiends.com is a tool designed to help you gain more Twitter followers. It provides introductions when you are looking for followers and helps you decide who you should either follow or have as followers. It’s a great tool to get you an initial seeding of Twitter followers, in addition to the directories like WeFollow and Twellow.
• GuestPulse.com is a great little social media monitoring tool created just for the hospitality industry. It helps restaurants and hotels monitor their brand mentions and reviews.
• SocialTwist.com helps you acquire referrals for your social media campaign. Their Tell-A-Friend feature allows people to recommend products or services by creating and sending messages through different social media sites.
• PitchEngine.com allows you to spread your press releases and announcements through social media. You can create a profile and share your “pitch” with your friends and followers with the click of a button.

• Payvment.com provides a social networking application on Facebook that helps you to setup an e-commerce storefront on your fan page using Paypal as the payment processor. Very cool for eCommerce businesses.

• ObjectiveMarketer.com Learned about this tool (still being refined) from Guy Kawasaki. It lets you create a social media marketing campaign and manage your social profiles in one location, like many other tools, but the really great feature is the reporting. You can track click-thrus by individual post and download it into a CSV, which give you great insights as to tweet verbiage and times of day that work best.

What are your favorite social media tools?

There have been so many changes and advancements in social media this year, and so many thoughtful blog posts and articles offering insight into them. I’ve read many, many of them, and to me, a few expert quotes stood out as truly memorable, insightful and/or thought-provoking–and therefore, are worth repeating.

“Our survey results suggest consumers show preference to interacting with brands that offer coupons and promotions via social media outlets. It’s important for brands to recognize consumer preferences and what will help encourage them to visit an establishment.”

~Gary Edwards
Executive VP of Client Services, Empathica

This quote was from an article in Information Week about using coupons and promotions to attract brand followers in social media. I think some social media purists–and even some of our clients–think there is no room for promotions or couponing in social media, and I agree with Gary that this line of thinking is flawed. People want to engage and converse with brands, yes, but they do ultimately, want something in return. Usually savings.

“A prosumer is actively involved in researching and interacting with the companies from whom they will buy…In short, those companies that take the time and effort to establish trusted relationships with their prosumer buyers have the best chance of thriving throughout tough economic times, while their competitors, clinging to old-school ways, will be left by the side of the road.”

~Newt Barrett
Founder of Content Marketing Strategies and Voyager Media, Inc.

I read this quote in an excellent article in Content Marketing Today about building trust with your customers, geared towards small businesses. We work with with some small businesses who think that social media doesn’t apply to them because they are “too small” or “would never be able to build a huge audience.” The fact is, that following size doesn’t matter. It’s all about building a relationship with your core customers. Those small businesses that understand this will out-pace their competitors online, and thus, succeed overall.

“It’s impossible to measure the value of preventing a hypothetical social-media PR disaster, but it’s vital that everyone in your company understands that the best social strategies are defensive as well as offensive…You need to be able to articulate within your organization the reputational risk you’d take by not doing this,”

~Joshua Karpf
Digital Communications Chief at PepsiCo.

Great quote from Mary Ellen Slayter’s blog on Smart Blog on Social Media. I agree with Joshua that the risks of not having a social media outpost for your brand is bigger than the outside chance of a rogue negative comment or two. I’ve seen very little brand bashing on brand pages on Facebook and Twitter…and I used to work in timeshare! Having said that, the risks of harm to your brand’s reputation are extraordinarily high if you decide to jump into social media and use it to fire off contrived or disingenuous marketing content. It has to be a genuine conversation or the masses will sniff you out and exodus from your brand online will ensue. But everyday you’re using social media in your business strategy, your brand becomes that less relevant to consumers.

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em…People were engaging on those sites and communicating about our products anyway, so we might as well embrace them and bring them into the fold.”

~Mark Keys
VP of web production, digital media, WWE

Mark’s quote from a Social Media Examiner article about the World Wrestling Entertainment’s (WWE) efforts in social media show that it’s true what they (and by ‘they’ I mean everyone) say about social media: your customers are already using it, with or without you. So you can join them and reap the benefits, or watch your competition do it. It’s a fact. And it is that simple.

“There’s a growing list of people with titles like social media strategist who have never developed any kinds of strategies in their entire career. They know enough about social media to talk themselves into a position that has no real objectives or success metrics and three months in, everyone is miserable.”

~Angela Connor
Social Media Manager at Capstrat

Not to be a doomsayer, but this quote from an iMedia Connection article said what we are all thinking these days: when’s the social media bubble going to burst? There is such a lack of uniformity (which is kind of the cool thing about it) and a lack of expert knowledge, and anyone and everyone is trying to do it, some better than others. But now it’s reached the point where companies need to hire community managers and there are no measurable or define skills for this role…yet. My gauge of a so-called social media expert (I actually believe there is no such thing), boils down to two questions: What have you done for other brands/companies AND What were the results? I would also ask them to produce samples of strategies they’ve written…yes, an actual document with metrics and deliverables. Not pie-in-the-sky ideas.

“If you want to win, you don’t just employ a ‘knight strategy’ in chess, do you?”

~Steve Woodruff
Connection Agent

Remarking on how a social media marketing in and of itself is not a strategy, Steve said this great line in his blog post called “Social Media is Not a Strategy”. I happen to agree with him that social media needs to be fully integrated into an overall business strategy. Social media are a set of tools to support business and branding goals. They are online outposts for your customers to engage directly with your company. They are service venues. Social media marketing is not a game changer. It’s not the miracle your company has been praying for. And it never works as a stand-alone strategy. Seriously, if I have to hear someone say, “We need to do social media” one more time…

What great quotes have you read this year?