Wayne Breitbarth

Do you think LinkedIn is only for individuals?  Well, think again!  Smart companies are using LinkedIn to:

• Promote their products and services
• Engage with prospective customers
• Increase their visibility in the marketplace
• Demonstrate their thought leadership
• Build a community of followers

Let LinkedIn expert Wayne Breitbarth—a nationally recognized speaker, author, and consultant—show you how investing in your company’s LinkedIn presence will lead to greater marketing and branding success.

In this class you will learn how to:

• Build a LinkedIn company page that will attract maximum attention
• Drive more potential customers to your company’s website
• Capitalize on LinkedIn’s powerful advertising opportunities
• Effectively share company news with your LinkedIn audience
• Implement the best practices of LinkedIn’s most successful corporate users
• Gain a competitive advantage over other companies in your marketplace
• And much more!

This is a seminar-style event as opposed to a hands-on learning experience; so there is no need to bring your computer.

Who Should Attend?

Attendees should have at least a basic understanding of and familiarity with LinkedIn and other social media platforms and could include any of the following:

• Persons responsible for the overall marketing and branding efforts of an organization
• People involved in the execution and delivery of an overall branding and marketing strategy
• Company owners and top-level executives responsible for sales, marketing, and branding initiatives

Bonus Resource and Added Benefits:

In addition to an action-packed 90 minute training session filled with tips and techniques you can quickly and easily implement, you will receive a copy of Wayne’s book: The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success — the #1 LinkedIn book on Amazon for 40+ weeks!

Registration, Buffet Lunch & Networking             11:30-Noon

LinkedIn Marketing Presentation                        Noon-1:30 PM

Register early as seating is limited!

With just over two weeks until the historic gubernatorial recall election on June 5 – only the third such election in U.S. history – incumbent Republican Governor Scott Walker and Democratic challenger Tom Barrett, Mayor of Milwaukee, are in a bitter battle to the finish.

Spending in this election is expected to top $80 million, according to the Los Angeles Times, with much of the money coming in from political action committees outside the state and with no formal affiliation to either candidate. While there's little doubt that the unprecedented spending levels can drive social media activity both directly and indirectly, we're looking at the potential to use social medai metrics as predictors of the election outcome.

We were inspired by Ken Lyons of Wordstream, who correctly predicted in 2010 that underdog Republican senatorial candidate Scott Brown of Massachusetts would defeat his well-funded and Democratic-machine backed opponent Martha Coakley in the runoff to replace the late Senator Ted Kennedy, based solely on the results of his analysis of social media metrics.

One thing to keep in mind: the social media results are being used here as an indicator of where this race is headed, not as the driver of the results. Is there an opportunity for an inbound marketing champion to ride that strategy to a Senate seat? Maybe soon!

Our poll looks at some primary social media indicators – the number of Facebook “likes,” Twitter followers, and YouTube views and subscriptions – as well as the U.S. traffic rank of each candidate’s main website, and the number of inbound links pointing to those sites.

Here’s how Walker and Barrett stack up today:

• Facebook: Walker has about a 3:1 margin over Barrett
• Twitter: Walker has just under a 7:1 margin over Barrett
• YouTube: Walker has about double the views and just over 5 times the subscribers
• Alexa: Traffic ranks for the candidates are fairly close, with Barrett having made up significant ground since last week, when he wasn’t even ranking
• Inbound Links: Credible inbound links from other sites to yours are a great way to increase traffic. Walker has 6 times the links Barrett does, no doubt because he’s an incumbent who’s been generating a massive amount of press since the recall election process was started in November of last year

Barrett clearly has picked up some energy following his convincing primary win last week over Kathleen Falk. His YouTube views are up more than 60%, and his website, which wasn't even ranked last week, has overtaken Walker's web ranking. But in total Walker continues to dominate the important metrics.

Time Magazine today published an article, “With Money and Momentum, Scott Walker Gains Ground in Wisconsin Recall Campaign”, that reported, “With only a tiny sliver of voters on the fence in the recall, (Wisconsin GOP communications director Ben) Sparks thinks the election will be a simple test of who can do a better job of turning out their respective base. Right now, the Republicans are winning on that score. In the Marquette poll out this week, 91% of Republicans reported they were “absolutely certain” to vote, compared to 83% of Democrats and independents.

Will Walker hang on for the win? With new attack ads released almost daily by both sides, and the level of vitriol steadily growing, who knows how voters will ultimately decide? One thing is almost a certainty: the intense emotions rolled out by the opposing camps will not vanish after the polls close, and will continue to be displayed for our amusement across social media, at least until the next election – which is barely 2 years away. Can't wait!

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Thanks to desktop applications like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, we rarely have to log on to Twitter anymore unless we really want to. Once we have our profile set up, it’s easy to get caught up in the action and essentially, “set it and forget it.” However, that doesn’t mean other Twitter users aren’t checking out your profile to see what your company is all about. If you haven’t signed into your Twitter account in a while because you’re hardwired into Hootsuite, take a few minutes to log on and clean out the cobwebs this spring.

Find Out What’s New

Twitter has recently undergone some cosmetic and functional changes in an effort to simplify and streamline the user’s experience. If you haven’t logged on to Twitter in a few months, take some time to check out the latest updates made to Twitter. The new interface has been updated, giving brands a more professional look.

Twitter has also made it easier to search within the social network with the “@Connect” and “#Discover” features. @Connect allows users to view all interactions between them and other Twitter users. So anytime someone follows you, Retweets you, or mentions you in a Tweet, that interaction will show up in this new feed. The #Discover tool allows you to more easily search Twitter by trending topics using the “#” sign, or hashtag.

Update Your Bio

If you never log on to Twitter, you would never think to update your bio information. As they say, ‘out of site, out of mind.’ Make sure that your bio is updated to accurately reflect your brand and any changes that may have taken place within your company recently. Be sure to write a professional description of your company and include a link to your website. As always, you want to be sure that your picture is professional-looking and accurately reflects your brand.

Who Are You Following?

With Twitter, it’s very important that you assert some caution when deciding who to follow. There are millions of people and brands on Twitter that you could follow, but only a fraction will be of any relevance to you and your brand. You want to follow people who are going to share relevant information with you but not clog up your feed with 100 Tweets a day. Clean out the list of people you follow on Twitter this spring to make room for some fresh faces. To add new blood to your Twitter feed, check out Twitter’s recommendations of people to follow.

Twitter is one of the more simple social networks, so your spring cleaning checklist isn’t nearly as long. It’s still important that you take the time and make sure your Twitter profile is neat and tidy. Spend a few minutes weeding out the list of people you follow now in order to save time later when you’re trying to sift through your news feed.

I guess they should have waited a few weeks. To me, success of social media marketing is defined as more leads and more customers for your business. That's essentially the way we track it here at Weidert Group. It's also how Denise Gabbard defined it in a blog entitled Social Media Success Proof. 

As part of the study Gabbard was doing for a client, she looked at three recent studies of businesses that use social media marketing. When she crunched the numbers, this is what she found:

• Social media (SM) users revenue grew at 19% vs. non-SM users 6% 
• Client base of SM users grew at 21% vs. non-SM users
• 61% of LinkedIn users gained a client through SM
• 35% of Facebook users gained a client 
• 47% of blog owners gained a client
• 36% overall gained clients through a social network 

Those are some pretty impressive numbers all the way around. Those numbers make a pretty compelling argument that social media is worth the time you will invest in it. Indeed, as little as 6 hours a week can move the sales needle.

There is more to it than the bottom line - though that's always an important measure. As you execute your social media marketing plan, you are always building your Internet presence and increasing your brand awareness. 

Gabbard's final conclusion: Social media marketing is no longer optional for businesses that want to grow. 

Company's that would easily be defined as "old school" have taken notice. Italian motorcycle manufacturer Moto Guzzi, a 90-year old brand known for its heritage motorcycles and history in café racing, has launched a social media campaign to increase brand awareness and generate leads among 25- to 45-year-old riders. 

By using social media, primarily Twitter and Facebook, and encouraging interaction among its followers, the company has experienced better than expected results.

The bottom line: Social media marketing works. Invest in it and grow your customers and sales. Ignore it at your company's peril. Need help getting started? Check out our guide Learn How Social Media Can Enhance Your Internet Presence.

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If you’ve been putting off updating your Facebook page because you’re boycotting Timeline, or if you’re just intimidated by the change, delay no more! The Facebook portion of our Spring Cleaning initiative is heavily focussed on making sure your Timeline is filled in and looking sharp. When all is said and done, you’ll be happy with the new look and feel of your brand page, and you’ll have a higher comfort level with the new functionality that Facebook brand pages have to offer.

Image is Everything

Marketing is all about your brand’s image. That’s why Timeline for brand pages was a step in the right direction for Facebook. Timeline is heavily focused on image and it allows users to make a more visually appealing page to present to their target audience.

Choose a Sharp Cover Photo

The most drastic visual change Timeline brings forth is the addition of the cover photo. Choose one that looks good spanning the width of your screen, or have one custom-made by a graphic designer. You can still use your logo as your profile picture, but the cover photo allows you to branch out and be more creative with your look.

Update Your Videos

Make an effort to incorporate videos into your Timeline. If you have a YouTube channel, take the time to embed those videos into your Facebook Timeline. Videos are a very good way to share information and they are shared more readily than most other forms of content. However, the videos you post on your Timeline don’t have to be your own. Find other videos that would be useful to your audience and share them with your Facebook fans.

Fill in Your Milestones

As the name suggests, Timeline arranges your profile like a historical timeline, made up of the status updates you post and the significant events that happen to your business on Facebook. You can emphasize these important events by creating “Milestones” for things like the date your business opened its doors, when you joined Facebook, or moved to a new location.

Adding a Milestone to your Timeline is as simple as updating your status. In the Status box, click on the button that says, “Event, Milestone.” From there you can select “Milestone” and select the event that you want to add to the Timeline and the date of the event.

Highlight What’s Important

Timeline also gives you the ability to showcase the information that is most important to your
audience. Each status update or post can be pinned to the top of your Timeline for as long as you choose. That way, if you have an event happening all week, pin the announcement to the top of your Timeline to make sure it stays front and center until you’re ready to take it down. Each subsequent status update will fall in line behind your pinned post. You can also highlight a post so that it spans the entire width of your Timeline for extra emphasis. The “Pin” and “Highlight” buttons are located in the upper right hand corner of each post.

Update Your Page Administrators

This is a good time to make sure that your page administrators are all up to date. Especially for larger brand pages with multiple administrators, it’s easy to forget who’s steering the ship. Go through the list of administrators and remove those who no longer contribute to your Facebook page, and add anyone who should be helping.

Who do you Like?

Go through your list of Likes and clean out any pages that are not relevant to your brand. The more irrelevant pages you like, the more white noise you have to cut through to get to the real deal. Once you clear out some of the irrelevant pages, research new pages to Like. Think about the type of companies you want to relate to and associate with and find them on Facebook.

Sharpen Up With Insights

If you haven’t already learned how to read and understand Facebook Insights, now’s the time. It will help you to monitor your progress and fan interaction, and find out what gets your fans attention. There’s nothing terribly complicated about Insights, it’s just a matter of looking at the statistics and drawing conclusions. However, if you’re looking for more guidance, refer to our tutorial on Facebook Insights.

Fine Tune Your Ad Campaign

Take some time this spring to tweak your ad campaign. Is it still targeted toward the right demographic? Could you have more success with a different image? Is your budget adequate enough to actually generate some results? If you haven’t tried out Facebook ads yet, the changing season is the perfect time to start. Run a spring promotion and advertise it on Facebook with an ad campaign!

Integrate, Integrate, Integrate

There’s no use having a Facebook page if no one knows about it. Take the time to promote your Facebook presence by integrating with other social networks. Post signs throughout your business letting people know you’re on Facebook. Add the Facebook icon to your business card. Embed the “Like Us” button into your website and email signature to make it easy for people to like your page in one click of the mouse.

You’ve got your hands full with this laundry list of spring cleaning tasks for your Facebook page. Go through each item and give your Facebook Timeline the makeover it deserves. Like anything in business, if you’re going to take the time to do it, you might as well do it right!

Optimizing Your Pinterest Profile

These profile settings and steps may seem basic but many businesses and brands fail to go through these steps.

About: Think of this as your page's meta description, since it does appear in the SERPs if someone is searching for your page.

Image: It's important to be consistent with the avatar or profile graphic that is used on your company's other social profiles, for recognition, but also be mindful of how your profile image will appear in your follower's Pinterest stream.

Social Linking: Your Pinterest activity, if done right, can be a great content source for your other social profiles. Make the decision if you want to automatically or manually publish your pins to your Twitter and Facebook page.

Hide Setting: This setting should remain OFF if you want others to find your profile and pins in search, and if you want search engines to index your activity.

Optimizing Your Pinterest Pin Boards

Board Title: Make sure your board title is clear and concise, and if you can, use a keyword phrase as the name.

Board Description: Here's your opportunity to optimize your board by using relevant, target keywords for the content that lives on your board. Your limit is 500 characters so use this to your advantage, or be more selective like the board shown here.

Category: Be sure to assign a category to your board. Even if you have to use the 'Other' option it's better than leaving this blank! This helps users find your content as they search various categories.

Optimizing Your Pinterest Pins

Link Source: Depending on how your pinning your original images to your pin boards the link source/backlink will often populate, but always select to edit your pin to ensure the proper link has populated.

Image: In the world of Pinterest the images you pin are the core source of your existence and success of being seen and repinned. Get creative and find quality, unique images that are worth pinning.

Description: Your pin descriptions also allow for up to 500 characters. Avoid filling this space with tons of keywords and instead get strategic with your description, call-to-action and the use of some selective hashtag keyword phrases where appropriate.

If you're finding this is all gibberish to you, we suggest you start by downloading our free Pinterest Tip Sheet and reading a few of our other blog posts on the topic of leveraging Pinterest for marketing. Happy pinning!

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PR professionals are equipped with a number of different tools that can generate interest in your company and its products. Of course, there are some simple PR tasks you can accomplish on your own if you have the confidence.

If you decided to go that route, though, remember that a few simple mistakes can ruin a brand's reputation a lot faster than the time and effort it took to build that credibility. Below are 3 classic PR mistakes, made by plenty of companies, that should be avoided.

Using corporate jargon.

Using terms that are specific to your industry probably makes sense to you but most journalists, and those outside the industry, will tune out.

Use everyday language when writing press releases and attach explanation sheets if the announcement topic is hard to understand. Remember that journalists receive a lot of pitches everyday, and they'll be more likely to write about your company if they understand the topic and find it interesting.

Steve Cody, managing partner of a strategic communications firm in New York, said he used to use sentences like this when he first began writing:

“Qliktech Announces New Salesforce Chatter Integration for the Qlikview Business Discovery Platform; Enables Collaborative Decision-making by Leveraging Chatter Connect to Deliver Social conversations to Qlikview Business Discovery Apps.”

It’s a good idea to avoid stuff like this.

Overestimating what is considered news.

The kicker here is to have a good idea of what your local and regional journalists consider a good story to be. Although you may think that your company’s every move is newsworthy, very few journalists are likely to agree.

The best way to judge what's newsworthy is to think of yourself as the reader. Is the story that you're pitching something that you'd want to read about, not knowing anything about the company? Keep in mind that reporters will become turned off if you send them press releases every other week. It's also very important to consider the subjects or industries that publications typically write about and tailor your articles to match.

Of course, not everything has to go to the journalists. Remember, your website and social media profiles give you the ability to communicate directly to your many audiences without the media filter. Plus, that simple PR is good for your SEO.

News, by definition, can be anything new, unique, interesting or useful. That means it can be as simple as:

• Hiring a new employee
• Signing a new contract for service
• Winning an award
• Launching a new service
• Creating a new tip sheet or whitepaper

Any of those items can be featured in a short press release that you publish on your website.

Forgetting to proof your work.

Journalists tend to be sticklers for proper grammar, so a spelling error might be enough to put you on the bottom of their list. Even worse are errors-of-fact that could result in incorrect published information. Sending an error-free pitch may be the only thing that you are in control of, so make sure that it’s the best it can be.

Public Relations plays a helpful role in your overall content marketing strategy and in supporting your Inbound Marketing efforts. Dowload our Step-by-Step Guide to Inbound Marketing to learn more about how these components can work together to attract more prospects to your site.

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Ok, you can put your hands down. 

If you raised your hand, congratulations, you’re partially right, but not as right as you might think.  Countless social media books, articles and the day-to-day punditry (present company included sometimes) extol the benefits of customers in social media community (and yes, as evidenced by the oft-quoted Desert Gallery study, social media community brings value to an organization) but that’s not exactly why most customers choose to engage with you in the social space.

In fact, the findings from the IBM Institute for Business Value study on Social CRM, where they surveyed more than 1,000 consumers on their social media attitudes, tell a very different story from the one that most brand leaders believe to be true.  Despite the overwhelming evidence of their embrace of social media (80 percent of the online consumers surveyed are in social media), consumer willingness to engage with companies should not be assumed or taken for granted. 

What Consumers Really Want

The chart below offers a quick glimpse into the divergent reality of customer preference vs. brand bias in social media. The most dramatic difference shows up in the perceptions of discounts and purchase behavior in social media. Thankfully, for companies at least, your customers actually WANT promotional information and a quick path to purchase from social media. Now, not every company can do this, but think about how you can quickly lead a fan or follower through the purchase decision journey from each social media location!

With consumers seeking tangible value in their social media relationships, it’s up to you to craft your social media strategy to meet this demand head on.  For those companies still taking the “build it and they will come” approach to social media (Yes, we all know that’s a bad idea, but so many companies still it with social media…) research like this should be a firm wake-up call for brands to get smart about social media and to step up their game to convert fans and followers into dollars and cents.

The challenge for businesses engaged in online marketing, then, is how to stay engaged with those leads until the buying decision is made. This is a regular challenge for firms that employ Inbound Marketing, as recent research shows that as many as 50% of all qualified leads are not ready to buy after their first conversion on your content.

So, just what are you supposed to do with those leads who've shown enough interest in your product or service to give you their contact information in exchange for your content – but aren't ready to pull the trigger on a deal? 

Nurture them!

Lead nurturing is a system of sending automated e-mails and additional content of interest to your leads as a way of maintaining contact with them, moving them through the sales funnel and, finally, delivering them as a customer.

Lead nurturing is a critical component of your Inbound Marketing success. By utilizing an automated, well-timed approach, you not only further qualify your leads before turning them over to the sales team, but you save your sales team time and money by better educating and preparing your lead for that final conversion. 

Other benefits include:

Staying top of mind with your leads. Since you're sending regular content to them, you get to further demonstrate thought leadership and expertise.

Learning more about your leads. As you send additional content to your leads, their responses to the differing types of information you sent will give you additional insight into their needs.

Conducting a nurturing campaign is a pretty straightforward process. All you need is a little planning, the right content, and to follow these 5 steps:

1. Target your campaigns

Not all of your prospects will convert on the same top of the funnel content offer, so they shouldn't be receiving identical nurturing campaigns. Subsequent content offers should be related and move them further down the funnel.   

Weidert Group has several different nurturing campaigns, each dependent on the initial content the lead converts on.

2. Don't give them a sales pitch

As we discussed earlier, many of your leads are not ready to buy when they first convert on your site. That's why you're nurturing them. Instead, offer them content of additional value such as webinars, ebooks, and whitepapers. 

3. Each e-mail should have a goal

Even though the process is automated, each of the e-mails and content offerings should include a call to action to move your lead to the next stage of the sales funnel. Make sure you use enticing subject lines and write compelling text to encourage your lead to convert again on new content and further qualify themselves. 

4. Create a timeline for your campaign

Typically, it's a good idea to send 2 to 3 emails to those targets in a lead nurturing campaign. Timing is everything. If your typical cycle runs 30 days, set up a campaign for emails to be sent out the 1st, 10th, and 20th days after a conversion. With lead nurturing, patience is a virtue. 

5. Evaluate Your Success, and Optimize

As you run a campaign, experiment with subject lines and the calls-to-actions. Take note of what works and what needs improving. You can always make your campaigns better. Ultimately, you want your leads to arrive at the bottom of the funnel ready to close a deal.  

Lead nurturing can be a powerful tool for converting leads into customers. Put in the time and follow these guidelines and you will improve your chances of making the sale. 

To learn more about nurturing campaigns and the power of Inbound Marketing, please check out free Step-by-Step Guide to Inbound Marketing.

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Spring is in the air! You know what that means: Time to clean out the cobwebs and dust off those social media shelves. This 6-part guide starts by taking a good look at your overall social media marketing plan and identifying aspects that need to be updated based on any changes that may have occurred with your company in the past year or so. Then we’ll help you go through each social network individually with a magnifying glass and clean them up one-by-one. Kick off your Social Media Spring Cleaning by running through this checklist for each of your social networks.

Assess the Current State of Your Brand

Companies have a way of evolving naturally to adapt to the ever-changing market. Sometimes these changes happen so naturally that we don’t even realize it until we take a step back and analyze the current state of our brand. Take a good look at your company for changes in product or service offerings, major personnel changes, or changes in your overall marketing message. These are all changes that should be reflected in the “About” sections of each social network your brand belongs to.

Has Your Target Market Shifted?

When is the last time you looked at the makeup of your target market? You can’t always safely assume that your target market will stay the same over the years. Cultural shifts and changes in your product or service offerings can result in a change in the type of person that patronizes your business. Do some research to figure out the demographics that make up your target, and then make sure your marketing message speaks to that demographic on your social networks. You want to make sure you’re sharing information that is relevant to your target market and in a way that rings true to them.

Review Your Editorial Calendar

If your response to this is, ‘What editorial calendar?’ start by creating an editorial calendar to put into effect this spring. If you have an editorial calendar that you’ve been following, take a good look at it and see if it needs some tweaking. How frequently are you publishing blog posts, tweeting, and posting on Facebook? Are you getting good feedback on the content you post? Is the type of content you publish still relevant? Answer these questions honestly and realistically, and then proceed to update your content calendar to reflect any changes that you may have observed.

Check Your Image

The image that you use to portray your brand online should be uniform across each social network you belong to. If you use your logo, make sure that your logo is still looking sharp and that it accurately reflects your brand. If you use your headshot to represent your personal brand, make sure that your picture is professional-grade and has been updated within the past year or two.

When you get into a routine, it’s easy to just coast through without paying mind to the state of your surroundings. Spring is the perfect time to step back and see what you can tidy up with respect to your social media marketing campaign. As with any spring cleaning project, you’ll be refreshed and pleased when it’s all said and done.