Tagged Under: Lead Generation

Take a step back. What ARE you protecting? The Crown Jewels? Then crank up the CAPTCHA. A random spam comment showing up once a week on your company blog? If you're running a company blog, you're going to want to be vigilant anyway. Cleaning up some spam isn't that onerous of a job. You can also make your blog comments requiring approval before posting. The danger in this approach is the honest blog commenter is robbed of the instant gratification of seeing his/her words posted immediately. If you're trying to nurture engagement, it's a good way to snuff it out.

An important lesson to learn is there can be a gap between the tacit permissions your customers think they have given you and the permissions you think you have to engage and promote. There's a very fine line between keeping users informed of critical updates and not making it seem like you're unnecessarily spamming them with fluff.

The stats are pretty hard to deny. Blogging leads to more traffic and more leads. If you blog on at least a weekly basis, you can double the number of leads. With so much buzz about Twitter and Facebook, blogging seems downright old school. Social networking has not replaced blogging, any more so than cardio exercises replace strength training. They work very different aspects.

Most of us are familiar with hashtags on Twitter. Maybe there's a chance you found this blog post from the #scrm hashtag I used in my Tweet about it. On Twitter hashtags are a way of creating ad-hoc communities or discussions organized around a certain topic, like social CRM. Or the NHL. Or some political movement. Need a quick and dirty idea how sentiments are trending on a certain topic? Follow the hashtag.

The biggest mistake people make about trying to sell online is reasoning "people who want to buy X can be found in social groups devoted to X." Yes, you and 2,000 other merchants have thought about that. And you're all in that social group waiting for some potential customer to join. And then everyone pounces on the poor guy with their pitch.

You want people to follow you. The best way to get someone to follow you is to follow them first. Or re-tweet or favorite something they've tweeted. Or do all three. I've said it before here in the Roo blog but let me repeat: sometimes the best way for people to think you're interesting is if you find them interesting first. Following, re-tweeting, and favoriting tweets is one way to signal such interest. But that's only step one. People do not spend much time deciding who to follow back. There's a considerable body of research in both traditional marketing and online marketing about the very, very small window of opportunity you have to get someone's attention.

Many small businesses lend themselves to the informal, personal touch. People understand Instagram is not the product of a big media campaign. It's street level. It's a merchant's on-the-spot snapshot of the here and now. You are proud of your office, your building, your warehouse. These things don't really lend themselves to web sites or marketing materials. But Instagram lets you get out these slice-of-business-life snapshots in a way that doesn't seem crass. Keep the photo caption verbiage to a minimum and raw/authentic.

Following a person or following a person back is a first step. But replying to their tweets actually raises your influence with them. Raising influence is about building personal relationships and the perception of a personal relationship. It takes time. Using a robot to follow/unfollow people to build numbers is a complete waste of time.

The most powerful trend these days in communicating information is the "infographic". As the name implies, it's communicating information using images. Anyone who has ever witnessed a political race knows how powerful a pie chart or bar chart can be ("Number babies my opponent eats per month"). Good infographics take it to the next level, presenting complex information in ways that are easy to digest and scales/relationships can be quickly grasped.

Don't despair if you're looking to leverage wiki to increase your business's exposure. The first thing to remember is Wikipedia is the big show. Having a bat and ball doesn't mean you can join the Yankees. Or even the Blue Jays. Businesses that get their own page tend to be notable. Notable means a lot of "dead tree" press coverage, usually of the national sort. Until you're being covered by your local daily paper, CNET, and a few blogs or news websites that Wikipedia considers notable enough, don't even try to get your company written up in Wikipedia.

In BlueCamroo, Leads are what I like to call "the big slush pile". The Leads section is where you enter your first contacts. Got a business card at a trade show? Saw someone on Twitter? Someone filled out a Send Me Information form on your web site? Got an inquiry to your info@mycompany.com email? These are all leads. And they can all be captured easily and in the later two cases automatically by BlueCamroo.

I'm glad you asked. Not many of us have in-house talent or resources to create the next Angry Birds (it cost Rovia about $200,000 to develop the game). That doesn't mean, however, you can't think creatively about producing free digital content that can have spin off benefits.

The problem with Facebook is it's not a great platform for lead generation. Lots of businesses are there because their customers and potential customers are there. But leads have to come to you. They have to find your "fan" page. And since there's no company accounts you can create on Facebook, you have to engage them via your personal Facebook profile. You have to treat customers like friends, giving them access to the baby shower photos, your beach outing photos, and whatever drama might play itself out on your wall.

LinkedIn Answers provides multiple ways for an entrepreneur to market his/her services. Frequently a LinkedIn question might be an overt call for a product recommendation. Sometimes the user is a bit more vague. The user does not want a direct pitch. But merely showing up in the comments with relevant, on-topic knowledge can help you turn up a sales lead. The problem with LinkedIn Answers is finding topics you can comment on effectively can be time consuming. The system has a search engine but it can require some effort to daily search the section for questions that match various key words. Fortunately LinkedIn Answers now has a Twitter account that shoots out new topics as a tweet. Twitter and the power of BlueCamroo's Social Network Scout come to the rescue!

Trade content a site visitor finds highly valuable in exchange for something a company finds of value but the site visitor is happy to give away. In other words: information. Leads. If you're in the leads game, a great way to get leads is to offer "freemium" content ("free premium") walled off until the site visitor provides some form of contact information.