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In this podcast I fly solo to provide an interesting story about a house painter named Bruce.  Bruce is not the podcast interview type so you’ll have to hear the story from me. In fact, Bruce doesn’t know much about the web. If I talk about “social media marketing” with him, he wouldn’t know what it means. Bruce is a successful house painter located in my Tampa Bay area. He’s been in business about 20 years. He works alone. He does no marketing. None whatsoever. He has a business card and a magnetic sign on the side of his truck with his name and phone number. That’s the extent of his marketing. Bruce’s marketing is a combination of great content and great customer service. So, how does a house painter produce great content? I’ve said before, “let your content be your marketing.” In Bruce’s case, his content is his knowledge of quality painting, his willingness to give clients paint samples, show up on time, be courteous, be reliable, be friendly, exceed expectations and be clean during and after the painting process. The result of all this great content is that his work is outstanding and his 20 year reputation is proof.  100% of Bruce’s painting jobs are from word of mouth. If the phone doesn’t ring, he doesn’t work. And, even in a weak economy Bruce is never without work. When Bruce completes a painting job at a residential or commercial property, he cleans up so meticulously you wouldn’t even know he was there. Bruce has even been flown out of state by affluent homeowners who have learned of his reputation from a satisfied client. What does this have to do with social media marketing? If you follow me (and my contemporary social media evangelists) you’ve heard me say that successful social media marketing is based on two pillars: great content and relationship building. Bruce’s example in an offline world transfers to marketers who are marketing online.  Bruce could produce a website displaying photos and video of his painting experience. He could list testimonials of thrilled clients. He could Tweet about his experiences, and share them on Facebook. Sure, he could share that great content online but then he would probably have to hire other painters to keep up with the demand. Bruce is pretty happy working alone, so he won’t do any of these. But, the rest of us can learn from Bruce’s exemplary content and relationship building as we project our brand through our online strategies. Let your content be your marketing. Produce great content, build relationships online and like Bruce, you’ll do just fine.. In this podcast, I also provided an update on my book: Marketing 2.0: Bridging the Gap Between Sellers and Buyers on the Social Web. The book is at the publisher going through the second round of editing. It should be available by the end of June. I will be podcasting chapter summaries soon with my podcasting buddy Chuck Palm (@chuckpalm). Stay tuned on that… I also will soon be interviewing interesting guests on my podcast shows. Some of my upcoming guests include Steve Tingiris, CEO of Enthusem, Justin Levy, General Manager of New Marketing Labs, Mike Volpe, V.P. Inbound Marketing at HubSpot and Susan Bratton, CEO of Personal Life Media and host of the DishyMix podcast show. Other guests include successful marketers whom I wrote about in my book. You’ll hear firsthand their stories about how they are using social media marketing in their business. I hope my solo podcast was interesting and enlightening, if (admittedly) not as entertaining as they are with Chuck Palm. The podcast medium allows us to do whatever we want with little regard for professional studio quality (Chuck Palm notwithstanding). If the content is useful to you, that’s what matters most, even if you have to tolerate a little bit of hissing in the audio. As always, I welcome your feedback, input and suggestio[...]

B2B buyers have many options when they do their research on the web and therefore, they are harder to convert to leads. Many marketers struggle with how to engage a B2B website visitor. Marketers must look at their website from the customer's point of view. Visit your website as a prospective customer. Ask yourself if your website content and calls to action are engaging for visitors at different stages of their buying cycle.

How can businesses use Twitter in a way that executives can justify having their employees spend time on Twitter? Listen to the podcast above. Below are the show notes. Twitter is a cross between a social networking platform and a micro blogging platform. You create a simple profile, you start following people, some follow you and you have 140 characters to say something about what you’re doing, thinking or planning.  People who talk about interesting, meaningful stuff and include links to blogs and articles have a positive affect on their brand. There has been lots of press coverage on Twitter including a Wall Street Journal article titled: “Twitter Goes Mainstream.” In December 2008 HubSpot published the Q4 report on the State of the Twittersphere. Some interesting stats from this report: Twitter is dominated by new users – 70% of Twitter users joined in 2008. 5,000 to 10,000 new accounts are opened every day. 35% of Twitter users have 10 or fewer followers. 9% of Twitter users follow no one at all. There is a strong correlation between the number of people you follow and the number of followers you have. Chuck Palm started following some Twitter celebrities recently.  He started following the CEO of Zappos, the well known online shoe store. Chuck searched for blue suede shoes and found a pair that meets his unique feet. Chuck found their customer service was terrific! Zappos has over 400 employees using Twitter. They are very focused on customer service, engaging people on the web and building relationships. When you buy from Zappos you can Tweet what you bought and post it to Facebook. When someone of prominence starts following you on Twitter others notice and your Twitter following starts to grow. A Ford Motor Company promotion: “just drive one.” Scott Monty heads up social media marketing at Ford Motor. He builds relationships on the social web. He communicates what Ford is working on and allows word of mouth on the web to run its natural course. He talks in a conversational way. He informs in a human voice. He educates and he engages people. He once conducted an interview on Twitter between Alan Mulally, Ford’s CEO and consumers. Many famous individuals use Twitter. To name just a few: Lance Armstrong, Governor Schwarzenegger, Demi Moore, Anderson Cooper. Cooper always drops links to stories on CNN. How important is the number of followers? It depends on how important that is to you. Guy Kawasaki once stated that he would be willing to pay $500 per month. He said it’s the best platform to communicate with so many people so easily. Marketing reach like never before! “Show Me The Money!” Who in your company is a good candidate to embrace Twitter to write interesting posts several times per day? Ideally it should be more than one person.  Consider a Twitter persona branded by the company, e.g., Apple, Comcast, L.A. Fire Department, Zappos, HubSpot, etc. Individual employees should be Tweeting about anything relevant, not always about yourself or your company. Focus on building great relationships! Breaking Twitter Etiquette The biggest etiquette rule on Twitter is not to view Twitter as a platform for shameless promotion. Some  view it as an advertising billboard.  It’ NOT! it’s a platform for your human voice to build relationships across a great reach.  You can make so many connections on Twitter. Market through relationship building, not shameless promotion. @chuckpalm got a new Twitter background. The gal behind TweetGlitz.com created a new Twitter background for Chuck for free. And, she got a shameless plug from Chuck on this podcast. Not bad! During the holidays of 2008 Dell sold more than $1M through Twitter. People were tweeting about promotions during the holidays, only available to Dell’s Twitter followers. I personally have made several valuable connections on Twitter as I use it for relationship building in my social media m[...]

I recently dropped by the CEO Lounge (radio show) for a chat with the legendary host, Brent Britton, to discuss my forthcoming book: Marketing 2.0: Bridging the Gap Between Seller and Buyer on the Social Web. To hear the 10 minute interview, click the play button above. A summary of the interview follows… My book is scheduled for publication in June. One of my inspirations for the book comes from one of my favorite books: Get Content: Get Customers, by Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett. Their book discusses the importance of creating good content to produce great marketing results. My book is a macro view of social media marketing for business owners and marketing executives to help understand what is social media, why they can’t ignore it and to answer the “show me the money” question. Buyers have filters they can put up to prevent sellers from reaching them. So, now buyers are in control.  Sellers have to find new ways to reach their buyers.  Marketers should allow their good content to become their marketing and connect with like minded people on the social web and build relationships. Produce good content, find your community and engage them on the social web. Brent Britten embodies marketing 2.0. He produces great content through his writing, the CEO Lounge radio show, speaking engagements, etc. Brent has become a trustworthy source of information on intellectual property law. Buyers talk to each other on the web. Their opinions are very influential in buying decisions. Produce good content about your industry to become a good source of information. Can marketers in any industry use marketing 2.0/social media strategies? There are no known industries where buyers don’t use the web. It doesn’t matter. I’ve written case studies in the book that range from a lawyer (Brent Britton), a real estate agent, to a manufacturing company who makes extensive use of blogs and video led by visionary Rick Short. The tools available to marketers range from blogs, podcasts, social networks, wikis, Twitter.  Find one or two tools that you’re comfortable with and focus on using them. What about metrics? More and more analytics tools are coming available for social media. Focus on building relationships and measure the outcome of these relationships. Eventually, you’ll measure revenue but start out measuring the outcome of relationships. Stay tuned for more insights into my book coming in June… Bernie Borges @berniebay