Professionals don’t get much coverage when it comes to using social media and at first glance (or two) it’s not obvious how those that are in the B2B marketplace could successfully use social media for their business.

I was doing a social media presentation earlier this week to a group of business owners and a couple of questions came up that I get a lot.

The first question was triggered by covering several examples of businesses successfully using Facebook and Twitter to promote their businesses:  “Can you show us a good example of a Business to Business company using social media for their business?”.

The second question was kind of related to the first one, but it had a bit of a different spin to it:  “We only sell to other businesses and for us it’s all about building relationships – how does that fit into all of this technology?”.

They’re both good questions – most of the discussion / press / examples of social media tends to focus on business to consumer types of businesses – and even more specifically it’s the type of B2C business that people get excited or emotional about (photography – especially kids, food, entertainment, clothes, etc.).

However there are great ways to use social media for business to business situations – let’s take a look at a few ideas:

Use social media to engage clients and prospects!

The social aspect of social media is a great way to connect with friends, family, people you used to work with or go to school with, but in a similar fashion it can also be used to engage your clients and prospects.

Linkedin was designed and built to support business networking…only online.  Let’s say you meet a great prospect at a networking event.  You hit it off, have a strong introductory conversation and agree to get together for coffee in a few days.  A logical follow-up to that coffee discussion would to be link on LinkedIn which will allow both of you to keep in touch and learn more about each other.

People buy from people that they Know, Like and Trust and by continuing and furthering a real life relationship online by engaging on LinkedIn, you will accelerate or enable that process.

See what your contacts on LinkedIn are talking about (status updates, questions they are asking or answering, groups they’re participating in).  Initiate activity by asking or answering questions on your own, providing the occasional status update or responding to what other people are doing.  Share the books you’re reading, events you’re interested in or post a presentation.  All of these are great ways to stay in front of and engage the people that you’re connected to.

Engage by educating

The other great way to promote yourself, engage clients, prospects and partners is to create interesting or educational content and share it with social media.  A great example of this in an extremely Business to Business situation is the Signal Integrity blog, which is written by a product manager at Agilent to promote their highly technical product (Signal Integrity refers to the network engineering benefit their product provides…I think).  The readers are other engineers in the industry who get an inside view on what Agilent is doing and why.  It puts a human face on a technical product and educates them on details that might not be obvious from a standard website (it also helps immensely with Search Engine Optimization which was the biggest driver to create it in the first place).

Another example would be Jonathan Kranz and the Content Marketing Playbook.  I started following Jonathan on Twitter because I thought his stuff was interesting and worthwhile and I wanted to make sure that I could keep up with him.  A few weeks later I happened to catch a tweet from him about a new eBook that he just released – it’s educational, it’s well written and I got something out of it.  I’ve never met Jonathan, but because I’ve been able to read his blog and his materials, I feel like I know him well enough to be able to recommend him to people I do know….and isn’t that really what you’re looking for?

Business to Business examples of Social Media aren’t as flashy as a lot of the consumer ideas (have you seen the really cool example of the BakerTweet product out of London?).  But a big reason they aren’t as flashy is that business to business success is driven by relationships…relationships take time and they aren’t driven by a flashy twitter strategy, they’re driven by genuinely engaging with people over time.

How could you (or do you) use social media for your business to business professional setting?  I’d love to hear some more stories and examples or just your thoughts – share them below.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

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“If a good reputation is like Gold, then having Integrity is like owning the mine.”  John C. Maxwell / Jim Dornan – Becoming a Person of Influence

I had a great opportunity to sit in on a Core Advocates training session this morning that focused on the importance of Reputation when it comes to building your business by word of mouth.  I’m going to be doing some work with the Core Advocates team in the future and I’m impressed with what the ‘core’ ideas behind the training.

Reputation is a critical part of anyone’s business success (or success overall), but how often do you actually hear anyone talk about it or take the time to really think through what their reputation actually is and what they’d like it to be?

Your reputation is up for discussion every single day.  “I’m looking for a good plumber…do you know one?”  “I’m going to that new restaurant on Metcalf this weekend – what did you think of it?”  People will talk, and with the explosion of Social Media, they have an easy platform to share their opinions and they’re doing more than ever.

Do you know what your reputation is? 

There are several reasons why Reputation is critical – the obvious one is that people won’t do business with an individual or business that has a known bad reputation (shoddy products, unfair dealings, poor customer service, etc.).

Just as important, people will not refer someone they believe has a bad reputation – in fact, they are much more likely to tell others about a bad experience than a good experience, especially in the age of the internet!

On the flip side, if you can demonstrate a positive reputation – if people get to Know, Like and Trust you (even if it’s outside of work) they will consider doing business with you and they will refer you!  Think about the implications of that…social contacts, neighbors, parents that are at your kids games – all of them have the opportunity to experience your character, even if it’s outside of a work setting and if they like what they see they will jump on your bandwagon – possibly doing business with you or referring others.

Reputation Audit

List out all the characteristics that you are looking for when you do business personally or professionally.  Most people would include things like honesty, integrity, professionalism, friendly, helpful, etc.

Now – picture yourself at work…do you exhibit all of the traits that you expect from others?  Picture yourself out at a restaurant, a bar, your church, a crowded parking lot on a hot day…do you still exhibit all of the traits that you’d like to be known for?

Contrary to what Corporate Brand managers would have you believe, reputation only comes from the actions you take.  You might tell me what a great business you are, but I’m going to judge you based on what you do – not only at the workplace, but everywhere else as well.

“You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.” – Henry Ford

What do you want to be known for?  What are you specifically doing to make that happen?  Is being yourself enough or do you need to consciously push yourself towards the reputation you want? 

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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Search Engine Optimization has become a mystical term, invoking the idea of wizards laboring in their lofty towers to get websites onto the first page of Google.

The reality is that SEO for really competitive online sites is an arcane art and if your business is going up against the big boys then you need to seek out professional help. 

However if you are a typical small business and you are in a well defined, narrow niche or you’re in a contained geographic area then there are a couple of basic SEO principles that will make a world of difference to you and won’t cost an arm and a leg to implement.

The challenge I’ve had is how to explain these basics to business owners that don’t know HTML, don’t want to know HTML and really don’t want to get bogged down in the details.  Here’s my attempt – let me know what you think.

Think of Google as a Giant Library…in fact it’s the largest library in the world!

Instead of physical books, this library is made up of virtual ‘pages’, each of them like a book on the shelf of the library.

Google wants to make it’s users happy!

Google makes money (lots of money) because 64% of all searches happen on Google – giving them the leverage to charge a lot of money for ads and other stuff.

However those users only continue to use Google if they get what they want when they’re searching.  So Google wants to make the users happy and the best way to do that is delivering search results that best answer what the user is searching for.

Therefore Google has to understand what all of the books (web pages) are about so they can find the best responses depending on what was searched for.  (With me so far?)

Back to Google being a library

Just like at a library – if you wanted to know what a book was about, the first thing you would do is look at the title of the book (the title of the web page).  If the title is “Great Burgers in Kansas City” then Google would assume the book is about Great Burgers…in Kansas City.

The next step to identify what the book is about is to crack it open and look at the Table of Contents section.  What are the chapters in the book about?  For a web page, the equivalent to a Chapter or Section title is a Header Tag – specifically a Header 1 (H1) or Header 2 (H2) tag. 

Using our example, it would be likely to assume there would be a chapter titled “Best cheeseburgers in the Kansas City Metro area” or maybe “Unusual burgers found in KC”.

Finally – the last thing that Google will do is thumb through the book and glance through the content.  Does it look like it’s a book about burgers in Kansas City?  For Google to really be comfortable, there should be a lot of content that would support the chapter titles and the book title.

Where Google isn’t as much of a library

The other thing that makes Google comfortable that a web page is important (and helps determine what it’s about) is based on the number of other web pages that point to a web site with a link…and how they  point to it.  Ideally other sites would setup a link that says Learn about Great Burgers in Kansas City.

The more sites that point to a page, especially if they’re related to the content overall, the more important that page or site becomes to Google and the higher up it will rank for searches on topics related to the title.

What most sites look like to Google – the reality!

Most small business books (web sites) that are out there either don’t have a title or the title is the name of the business…or sometimes even just the word ‘Title’.  So if your business is BFD and Associates and that’s all you’ve got in your title tag, all Google can do is assume that your book is about BFD and Associates (whatever that is).

Then Google opens your book and there’s nothing in the Table of Contents – there are no Header tags anywhere!  Now Google really isn’t sure what your site is about.

Finally – Google flips through your book – maybe there are a lot of words, but nothing really stands out…as far as Google is concerned, your book is about…NOTHING!

I don’t have actual numbers, but I would bet that 90% or more of small business websites don’t have Titles that reflect what the site is about (Keywords), Header Tags that support the Title and reinforce the keywords and content that additionally reinforces those same keywords.

The really great news about basic SEO!

Because almost no one does it right and most of your competitors don’t understand that Google is a library – if you can make a few small changes to your site, you will quickly start moving up the search results, without expensive black magic!  Here are some Quick Tips to get started:

1. Come up with at least 3 keywords for your home page that you think your best customers would use to search for your services.  That could be something like Peer Group Advisory Board or Kansas City Small Business Accounting.
2. Add those keywords to your Title Tag for your home page (it may be difficult to get 3 of them in there, especially if they’re longer, but do what you can).
3. Create headers on your home page content using H1 and H2 tags as natural descriptions for sections of your page.  Use the identified keywords in those sections.
4. Add those same keywords into the overall content on that page.  They should show up at least 3 or 4 times on the page – but make sure the page doesn’t sound stupid when you read it.  This is not more important than readability!
5. Don’t use flash or scripts as your home page (or only use it in 1 section) – it may look interesting but to Google, that’s like have a book without any pages.  You will get NO credit for search if there’s no readable content.

Start looking at your websites or your competitors websites and see how your book reads to Google.  (Try right clicking on your browser page and ‘View Source’ to see the code for your page – you don’t have to understand all of it, just look for Title and H1 or H2).

Does this description make sense?  Send me an email (skinkade at aspirekc.com) to request an article that gets into more detail on this idea – I’d love to hear from you (or post to the comments below)!

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach (letting Google know who I am)!

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Halloween is just around the corner, which means it’s time to start thinking about carving pumpkins.  I remember learning how to carve a pumpkin around our kitchen table from my parents and older brothers.  There was always an element of creativity in terms of the design and certainly some of us were better than others in terms of drawing or actually cutting, but overall we used a consistent system to create our art.

Now imagine that you want to create a really cool Jack O’Lantern this Halloween, but you don’t have a clear process or system for how to do that.  You’ve seen the end result, but you’ve never actually gone through any steps…and in fact you don’t even know what steps there might be!

Odds are your pumpkin is going to look more like road kill than a cool, scary design!  Without a systematic process, you’re stuck with making it up as you go and even though it’s not that hard (once you know how to do it) there are lots of points where you can trash your pumpkin if you do it wrong.

The importance of a system

When I talk to business owners about the importance of using systems in their business, they usually get a look of dread on their face, thinking about all the work that it will take to create all of their systems.  Although it may be a pain up front – good systems can mean the difference between success and failure in the long run!

A system will keep you focused.

A lot of business owners will ‘do’ marketing without a system – which results in an approach of marketing du jour.  This week it’s direct mail.  Next month it’s social media.  The month after that, maybe it’s networking.  But without a clear plan and a system to stay on track, there’s no clear focus.

A system will keep you consistent

Your clients want your best work, but more than anything, they want to deliver to their expectations…consistently.  That’s true whether it’s you delivering or one of your employees.  Without a system, any consistency is either going to be luck or an awful lot of oversight and rework.

A system will let you improve

Without a system, it’s impossible to make long term improvements to anything that you do within your business.  Without a system, the next time you do something (marketing tactic, creating your product, paying your bills, etc.) you will do it at least slightly differently than you did before – losing the great idea you had for improvement.  With a system you have a clear baseline and improving isn’t a big deal.

Examples of a System

Systems don’t have to be overly complex – here’s a high level description of the system I use to send out my newsletter (register here if you’re not currently getting it):

1. During the month create at least 1 foundation article in my blog to use for the newsletter.
2. At the end of the month, copy over the template from last month’s newsletter and update all of the issue specific information (date, etc.).
3. Add all new contacts collected through the month into the mailing list in Constant Contact.
4. Create a theme / headline / key message for the month.  Include a quote or two that supports the theme and write the introductory paragraphs and header information.
5. Decide if the newsletter needs to promote any particular offers or activities (i.e. special offers to clients or prospects, upcoming workshops, networking events, etc.).  Add special promos if necessary.
6. Create the main article, including a picture and reworking the introductory paragraph from the blog if necessary for readability or length.  Link to the blog.
7. Create a short article on a business resource that readers would find helpful.  Include image (same size as other images).  Optional – link to the blog.
8. Create a short article on interesting or fun pop culture topic. Include image (same size as other images)
9. Review and rewrite close and P.S. to drive any desired actions.
10. Preview and correct any issues – schedule for the morning of the first Tuesday of the month for delivery.

There’s a lot of leeway for different ideas and creativity within this system, but I could hand the steps above over to someone else and they could create a newsletter that’s very similar to what I do every month.

The system for carving a pumpkin can be equally simple – but using that system will save you a lot of time, heartache and extra pumpkins!

Do you have clearly thought out, documented systems for all aspects of your business?  If you’re like most business owners, the answer is no! – Contact me if you’re interested in learning more about how to actually go about systematizing your business.  It’s the key to freedom and success.

What do you think about systems?  Share your thoughts below – I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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We all love buying something with a great guarantee – it takes the risk out of an unproven product, it gives you confidence that the vendor really stands behind their work and it generates a lot of credibility that you are getting what you pay for.

Guarantees are a great thing…for the buyer, but not the seller…right?

Wrong! – Guarantees are great for both the buyers and the seller!

We had a great discussion this morning at one of my Peer Group Advisory Board meetings about one of the business owners rolling out a guarantee as part of his latest marketing campaign.  It was a tough topic with lots of things to consider.

Guarantees are scary things!

In this particular situation, the product is a service that’s delivered over a period of time (think training) and the overall success in large part is driven by the actions (or lack of action) by the customer.  Kind of a ‘you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink’ kind of thing.

If you look at a case by case basis, there’s no way to guarantee results for any given individual – what if they don’t pay attention?  What if they aren’t very smart?  What if they intentionally screw up?

However this client had almost 2 years worth of results that showed clients improved an average of 28% when going through his process!  Additionally, like many small business owners, client satisfaction wasn’t just a buzzword, this guy practically kills himself making sure his clients are getting the best of everything.

In short – he’s a perfect candidate for a guarantee because he’s already doing all the work that you need to do (and getting the results) to keep your customers happy, he just wasn’t getting any of the credit for all of that hard work!

As we talked through the idea, the rest of us could visualize the headline and the excitement but the business owner in question became more and more uncomfortable.  What if everyone decided to take advantage of the guarantee?  Studies have shown that the number of returns on products that are of reasonable quality is very low.  In this case, working with hundreds of clients, there had been less than a handful of serious complaints, but the fear of a run of money back is a scary one when cash flow is tight (and cash flow is almost always tight!).

Now – think about your business, your products or services…do you offer (and highly publicize) a guarantee?  If not, does it make you nervous to think about it?

Points to consider for a worthwhile guarantee

The best thing, in small businesses guarantees are often uncommon.  If you’re feeling nervous, your competitors are feeling exactly the same way.  If there aren’t many visible guarantees, then it’s a great way to stand out (and if there are a lot, you probably need one just to keep up).

Guarantees should be straightforward and have minimal fine print.

Guarantees should cover the results / outcome your customers are interested in the most (which may be different than what you’re selling) – see a great summary of what I mean in this article by Kevin Donlin on How to create a winning guarantee!

Your guarantee should be as specific as possible – ideally it should be something that can be measured objectively.

You don’t have to offer money back (although that’s probably the strongest position), you can also offer credits on future services, offer to make it right, etc.  If you’re up for it, make it memorable – something that people will really talk about (which is really the point).

Make sure that if you do have to honor your guarantee that it’s cheerful and hassle free.

When you’re just getting started, test out different guarantees to see which one gets the most response.

Make sure your guarantee is in writing – and in fact, make a big deal out of it.  You do great work, you’re standing behind it anyway – let people know and get more customers!

Start thinking guarantee!

Why go to all the trouble (and the perceived risk) of putting together a guarantee?  Because you could substantially increase your business!  Companies like L.L. Bean, Nordstrom or Eddie Bauer all had crazy growth – in large part of their no questions asked guaranteed return policy.

My client’s going to give it a try – let me know if you’d like an update once he’s given it a shot.  I think it will be a big deal, but the proof will be in the results.

I offer ‘Risk Free’ coaching – if for any reason you aren’t happy with what we’re doing, you can get a full refund on your first month, no questions asked.  I’ve considered some other ideas, but I haven’t landed on anything just yet.

Do you have a guarantee?  Have you thought about creating one?  I’d love to hear your thoughts or stories – share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

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