Social Media Healthcheck for B2B Businesses

Not many businesses today would doubt the value of a good social media strategy to developing their customer base. Offering a great opportunity to engage with potential, as well as existing customers, social feeds should be integral to any B2B PR & marketing strategy.

Well populated social media feeds are highly valuable for publishing and targeting specific content, building brand awareness and driving traffic to your website.

To assist you stay on track, we have listed below some pointers which we hope you will find useful:-

  1. Firstly, identify who is your audience - who are you looking to speak to? Work with? Are they searching for advice? Or simply some relief from their heavy workload.
  2. Which social feeds will your target audience be following / regularly engaged with? Unless you are a major B2B brand, the opportunities to grow your Facebook following are particularly limited - despite its seniority in the social hierarchy Facebook is still viewed as largely a personal network.   Twitter is maturing however is still growing its user numbers, a great tool for businesses, offering the opportunity to heighten brand awareness, boost your SEO, promote your content, and so forth. Looking at the value from a pure business network - LinkedIn, the main recruitment vehicle for the vast majority of recruiters, company page subscription is restricted, with person to person individual interaction taking by far the lions share of engagement - use this to your advantage, and encourage your motivated team members to engage, engage, engage!
  3. Focus on the major B2B social feeds for the biggest impact - Twitter and LinkedIn- and save Instagram, Pinterest, What's App, etc for social use. Make the most out of LinkedIn Company Pages, and Twitter feeds  and also enlist your workforce in sharing on their own feeds your good news,  company insights, press coverage, surveys, industry comments, and include links back to your website where relevant.
  4. As you work hard to build up your follower bases, ensure your social content isn't one way traffic or too promotional. No one likes being sold to, so gently does it. Mix up the content as much as your can whilst ensuring anything you post remains on message with your brand and taking care not to offend. Use images and infographs for added interest.
  5.  Tag in and reference other brands / suppliers etc, to build your network, earning yourself as you go brownie points from other accounts with greater follower numbers - share and comment on their content and the likelihood is they will start to do the same for you. Being positive and supportive can develop for you a strong digital fanbase, who one day might need to contract or refer your services!
  6.  Use social media as part of your competitor monitoring activity - who are they following and engaging with? Are they using their feeds to promote specific messages or promotional offers? This allows you at first hand to monitor their competitive strategy, and ensure you are ahead of the pack.
  7. Finally extend your media reach - published articles editorial features or news pieces on your business, are a great form of secondary endorsement, however in today's increasingly hectic society, your target audience is not with the-best-will-in-the world going to be able to read every trade title or regional business title, so take time to share your press coverage as you go, generating excitement and again driving interest in your proposition and offering.
    We manage for many B2B clients a proactive, hard working social strategy, designed to support their business objectives, and are more than happy to offer a free consultation to businesses looking to enhance their social media and content marketing strategy.

Getting to Grips with Writing a Blog

 

For many Planet Zeus clients we write monthly blog posts, whether it is on something seasonal for example; Summer, Christmas, Valentine’s Day or regarding a recent event a client has held.

Keeping your website fresh with new content is important, especially when you’re looking to improve or maintain your position in search engine results. It is also a great talking point on social media and encourages traffic to your website.
We have put together some top tips on how to write a successful blog piece for your website:

  • Understand Your Audience

Before you get started, it is vital you know your audience and think about what they would want to read. Having the right tone of voice is important, whether you want to be formal or chatty, it’s best to stick with your preferred tone for every post you write and upload. Of course there is a fine a line, don’t be too jokey as the reader may not take you seriously and being too formal your audience may find the content boring.

Once you find your balance, have confidence and stick with it.

  • What’s your topic?

Picking the topic can be the easiest part, but coming up with a title for the topic can be a different story. Draft some ideas first and choose the preferred heading once you’ve written the piece. You never know, by the time you come to select one you may have thought of a better, catchier one.

  • Getting Started

At this point, you’re probably chomping at the bit to get writing and get all your ideas down on paper in case you forget anything! But be sure to plan the structure of the blog post and have a captivating beginning, informative middle, and a logical ending - this way it will flow with ease and readers will come to an informative conclusion.

  • Tidying up

Once you’re dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s, it’s time to have a good read through. Does it make sense? Is it punctually and grammatically correct? Is it concise?

You may need to edit parts of it, or even all of it, but this is vital and a great a way of ensuring the messages and information is accurate. Better still, ask a colleague to look over it and feedback any changes you may have missed.

  • Dress it up

There is nothing less appealing than just plain text, after all a “picture says a thousand words”, so add in images whether it’s of a product relating to the blog piece, or from a recent event, it is important to add colour and make the page look eye catching!

  • Last minute checks

Once you’ve uploaded it to the site, be sure to preview the post – make sure all text is the same font / colour / size, everything is formatted correctly and images are aligned perfectly.

Then you’re ready to hit upload!
We hope this helps but if you’d like to talk us about how we can take all the hard work away, call us on 01260 271429.


Forging Brand Partnerships to Extend Your Reach

A great opportunity to grow your customer base lies in the value of brand partnerships. This involves linking up with brands in the same customer demographic space allowing you to share access and cross promote your products and services.

Of mutual benefit to both your brand and that of your chosen brand partner, you can then exchange social media sharing, instore or weblinks and even develop bespoke promotions.

For many Zeus clients from fashion to healthcare clients we employ this campaign tactic to great effect.

As well as the customer acquisition, brand exposure and digital optimisation benefits, it is highly cost effective so implemented wisely it will deliver considerable cost savings to your marketing budget - allowing you to cut back on advertising, PPC and so forth.

To cite examples of how this works in practice, we are midway through a 3 year NHS campaign running across Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester to promote their sexual health provision across the region - and by teaming up with sports, food and entertainment venues and colleges & universities, which are closely aligned to each of the key social demographics - we are rolling out the new gosh brand. Brand partners are displaying the gosh brand partner logo on their marketing materials, online on their social channels and in their facilities with gosh posters in toilets, and other public areas.

However this campaign tactic works equally well in a more commercial sense - for instance we have teamed up a high end luxury travel brand Just Resorts with Living Ventures - the premium restaurant group, to offer a holiday in return for significant data capture and in-venue brand exposure.

 

 


How to Enhance Your B2B Sales Drive

For B2B businesses, there is no better way to grow your credibility with potential customers then to be regularly referenced as 'an authority' in the very media that your business and trade customers read cover to cover every week.

As an agency focussed on working with clients to grow their sales pipeline, we use our vast media relations expertise  and contact base to generate significant profile in the print and digital media read by your customers.

On many occasions, we have had feedback from clients that they have been speaking to a B2B prospect, who references that they have seen them commenting on a salient industry issue, or read their news in one of the trade magazines - what great endorsement!

Even better still, is the feedback we receive from clients that they have had a number of inbound calls from potential customers who have read their feature and news articles in the trade press, and feel confident enough in their services or products that they have picked up the phone!

And often, as a much sought after by product, the digital magazines will give you a link directly to your website - just like having your very own gold dust when it comes to enhancing your Google visibility.

We work very successfully across numerous industry sectors (from food and drink industry providers and manufacturers to core B2B service firms) to deliver for clients significant reputation building profile through editorial feature placement and news flow creation.

If this is of interest to you and your business, we would be delighted to have an informal discussion on how we can support you in growing your trade media profile.

 

 

 


Top Tips for Planning a Photocall

Like milk to a good cup of tea, a visually strong photograph is essential to accompany any press release that hopes to be published in the media. A photocall is an opportunity for the journalist to attend an event to take photos to accompany their story, and it also offers an opportune moment for them to gain any interviews that they may need.

Putting together a photo call is like writing a party invitation, only more formal, and much less ‘BYOB’. There needs to be clear information about what the event will entail, where, and who will be attending, as well as a clear itinerary setting out the order of proceedings, and a set time for photo opportunities. Ideally these will be at the very beginning of the event before the important guests filter off or the crowds disperse. At the same time, the photographer isn’t going to want to hang about, so make life easy for them where possible.

Securing the perfect shot isn’t easy, so where possible have a clear idea of the photos that will work well - talk to the photographer beforehand about these and the best ways to set them up. Images taken outside or against a bright backdrop work well, but directing animals or small children can be tricky.

Your images need to be striking and tell a story, so it’s best to have something interesting going on in them, such as a balloon release or a pose with a celebrity. Alternatively, you could try the emotive angle, such as children stood by a favourite playground that has been vandalised. Try to avoid the cliché of a cheque presentation – try to make the ideas original, try presenting the monetary figure on a cake instead.

Like any party, there’s bound to be people who have promised to make an appearance but don’t show up, so have a contingency in place. Always make sure you have a fully charged camera on hand to take the photos that otherwise would have been taken by the photographer, and send these out to the press instead, along with the full press release.


The winning pitch - 5 consumer press tips from Zeus PR

With top consumer journalists receiving 100’s of pitch calls and emails a day from PR hungry brands and other PR agencies – the scramble for reputation building editorial has never been fiercer!

As an agency we spend much of our day with the phone glued to our ears, or typing emails to bestow the virtues of client products to magazines, national press and the increasingly more important bloggers.

If like most of our clients, you don’t have the budgets of M&S or John Lewis to stage major press events – then go back to basics with our top tips on approaching the media:-

1. Channel your call or email. Think carefully who you need to speak to – the larger titles have specific editors for interiors, fashion, beauty, features, food, and so on. All the major publishing houses list their titles on their websites so this information is usually available.

2. Consider editorial lead times – this can be up to 4/5 months for the consumer monthly magazines, while the weekly magazines general operate on 3-6 weeks and newspapers and bloggers/digital magazine sites days or even hours! So if you have a Christmas range for example, start thinking about contacting the media from July for maximum exposure.

3. If you are calling the journalist, you have a matter of seconds to interest the journalist – be friendly and clearly state why you are calling ie I have launched a new range of innovative sleep aids which I thought may be of interest to your pages…. Similarly on email – get straight to the point.

4. Press always want the details on email even if you have called them first, and it’s in your interest to put everything in writing so any editorial is fully accurate. Therefore make sure you follow up by emailing a short press release containing the product spec, rrp and stockiest information. And attach a decent product shot – see tip 5.

5. Photography is key to securing decent editorial space – so we recommend to our clients that we/they arrange professionally styled images (a mix of product cut out imagery and also propped i.e. the products set in a lifestyle setting). Jpeg format is generally best with a minimum of 300 dpi. Send just one or two images to the journalist, as otherwise you might get them offside from the very start by filling their inbox with big files.

Good luck - and happy pitching!