November 14, 2012 By 1 Comment

Pinterest and SAP

An acquaintance runs a business that sells an analytics program that can determine how employees are actually using the SAP system. He said, “SAP support services is not a Pinterest marketing opportunity…” The challenge was on.

Cut to the chase: Board Suggestions

SAP Solutions Partner

  • Employees
  • An office; in a city
  • SAP certifications / awards
  • Reports from their software
  • FAQ
  • Customers (both logos and people)
  • Epic fail stories about implementations gone wrong (use with care)
  • LOL and inside jokes (also use with care, but if CSC can create them, so can anybody)
  • Blog posts, illustrated with screen shots of the software
  • Convention information

That’s 10 Pinterest boards right there, and the only thing I know about SAP is that it used to deposit my pay in the bank.

Why Pinterest Over SEO & Google SERP?

Search Google for “SAP Consulting,” first page SERP:

SERP SAP consulting

First page Google SERP for “SAP Consulting”

Same search in Pinterest Pins:

SAP Consulting Pins

Search Pins for “SAP Consulting”

Same search in Pinterest Boards:

SAP Consulting Boards

Boards found on a search for “SAP Consulting”

And one more time, for Pinners:

SAP Pinners

Pinterest accounts with “SAP Consulting” in their name or description.


Now, you tell me which search provides more instant information, and which results page distinguishes your business from all the others more, for free? (Ok, not “free;” somebody’s maintaining those accounts. It’s not PPC rates, either.)

More Research

A quick search found 50 pins about the company SAP and its product (excluding pins about maple syrup, victims of cons, and other spell-alike captions.) (Deeper diving into the accounts and boards that contained those pins yielded much more information which did not use the “SAP” term in the caption.)

Corporate users

A board called “Production Users” contained an SAP logo pin.  This account is maintained by 10gen / MongoDB, which offers a high-performance, open source, schema-free document-oriented database.  Presumably, SAP uses their database.

The SAP Super Users Group has a Pinterest account with only one pin, linking back to their site.

By looking at the Super Users’  followers and following listings, I found the IBM SAP Alliance Pinterest account, with 33 pins on five boards.  It is an “official” IBM account.

ConsultantBox SAP Consulting (Sweden) has an account, introducing their services and some of their consultants.  Their followers and following lists have a large number of accounts related to SAP. Brainarea is just one of them. Panorama Consulting, from Denver, specializes in ERP work and has a fairly active account.  (Check the list of people they follow for LOTS of business journal and other technical accounts.)

By following a pin, I learned about the SAPWeb2.0 service that allows you to pull tweets into a presentation.

One user maintains a board about SAP Training, but I can’t get a feel for why from the rest of the account.

ConPlus Mittelstandslosungen collects SAP information, including videos. They are an SAP business partner in Germany.

CSC Australia is one major technical services provider using Pinterest reasonably actively.  They have an SAP pin on an “Know Our Partners” board.  I recommend following this account to see how a business in the technical services space can use Pinterest as a public face.  They are only following CSC accounts from around the world; it is clear there is significant corporate investment in their Pinterest activity.

The SAP HANA datamining engine is represented by a pin on a Datamining board.  (Can’t read his captions but can tell it’s a technical account.)

SCM systems have a board of their own. CRM systems (including SAP) have a board on a very interesting account.

Chris Herbert, a #B2B marketer for technology companies with the Mi6 Agency, develops content, networks, communities and business for clients. He collects SAP information on his Big Data and Analytics board.

Incidentally, Cisco and IBM Research have Pinterest accounts. Salesforce has a GREAT business account. Accenture and Deloitte have accounts with no pins.

Graphic Design

Nick Smith, a desginer, collects SAP Advertising on a Graphics Design board.

A graphic designer has a pin about an SAP how-to manual on her Portfolio site.

Another designer, more technically oriented, has a pin of an SAP interface, labelled “disappointing,” on a Windows Phone UI design board.

One user maintains a board of “enterprise iOS designs I don’t like.”  They are all SAP versions.  (His “likes” are all from much newer applications that have been created in the past five years, without having to build on history or even enterprise-wide integration.)(I’ll bet he never coded COBOL, or ran punch cards…)

Another graphic designer maintains a board about Signage that includes pins of interior navigation sign from SAP USA properties.

Personal accounts with SAP pins

A board called “Work Information” contained a pin linking to a Harvard Business Review issue highlighting Competing on Talent Analytics.  (I’m guessing the pinner is an HR professional.)

Someone is maintaining an account titled “SAP ERP” .  The URL for this account is /breakingnewz10/, which makes me suspect it’s not an “official” SAP account.  However, the Books Worth Reading board is loaded (300+) with mostly-technical books about programming in enterprise systems including SAP and Oracle, as well as ERP and eHR theory. The user maintains a related board called SAP ERP Modules, which is solely about ERP.

Recommendations

To tell the truth, I found much more about SAP and its cohort of associated services than I expected to.  Few of these boards / accounts have significant followership, but it’s also not clear how many followers or leads it takes to succeed in this business.  There are, after all, only 500 companies in the Fortune 500…. (who employ some 20 million people, however).

It crossed my mind that selling SAP and its services is not too far from selling an airport financing deal.  Readers of Pitch Anything will see where I’m going with this.  Both transactions are traditionally considered completely logical, rational decisions.  Neither is, at least to the winner of the financing package for the new San Diego Airport.

As I write this post, I don’t have my copy of Pitch Anything at hand.  When I get back to it, I’ll review and make additional, more specific recommendations.  The general direction is to use images on Pinterest to set the frames for the opportunity:  how will my friend’s services help THE PEOPLE who will use the system, rather than the business numbers that make moving to SAP a good idea.

 

Filed Under: Marketing examples
November 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Why I didn’t buy your program

I just finished listening to the MP3 download of the free webinar you delivered last week, the one in which you promised to tell me how to XYZ in 90 minutes a day.

What’s XYZ, you ask?  Whose program?

It doesn’t matter.  Lotta launch promo; joint venture, shared lists.  You know what you did to promote it.

And so yesterday I’m driving around town and your audio download comes up on my MP3 player, and I have to listen to 10 minutes of “I love me” crap before you get to anything ANYTHING useful.

What’s “I love me?” you ask?

I’m so excited to be here… more than once.  Welcome to Sandy and Jennie and I see Cathy and Cary and Edward from London and Greta from Greece and …  You went on.  And on.  And on.  Now,  I hope for your sake that Sandy and Jennie and Cathy and Cary and Edward and Greta all bought your program, because every name you mentioned made it less likely that I would not.

You didn’t stop there, though.  Every time you conducted a poll during the actual teaching time (38 minutes by the dashboard clock, out of a 60 minute file), you had to read off the names again…  Sally says yes Mark say yes Matthew says I agree! They’re coming in so fast I can’t keep up!

What I agree with is that if your free stuff is half full of junk, your paid content will be too.

OTOH, I’ll agree, you probably did well enough, and you got the audience you wanted, and your class is full, and everyone’s happy joyous and doing the work.  There’s a lot to be said for selecting against people who will be troublesome, or aren’t a good fit for your market.

If that’s what you were trying to achieve, it worked.

Filed Under: Marketing 658.8
November 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Guest Posting Pitfalls

I listened to one more call about the wonders of doing guest posts to build blog traffic yesterday, and my head started spinning.  Why is it that the people who sell these how-to programs always use examples in the big traffic fields of personal finance and (wait for it) BLOGGING?!?

Getting a guest post on a blog about blogging  when what you do is blog about blogging really isn’t a big deal.  It’s also kind useless if the business you’re in isn’t blogging, directly, or isn’t even related to what you MAKE.

It struck me that I’ve been listening to these webinars and the reason they don’t work for me and I don’t take any action as a result is that THEY DON’T WORK FOR ME.

Duh.

I blog easily about making textile art at Rugs from Rags.  I know a lot about sourcing textiles, repairing looms, and designing new colorways.  But these aren’t the topics that my BUYERS really want to read about.  Other textile artists, sure, but other artists can’t afford my work.

For guest posting, I need to be looking toward the home decor blogs, and I need to be writing about rugs and home decor, or perhaps color selection and stepping outside your comfort zone, and on a stretch, about sound attenuation by hanging rugs on your bigger walls.

Granted, doing a double handoff like that in the middle of a short free webinar designed to attract clients who aren’t sure they know how to write in the first place is a lot to ask.  That is, explaining to the listenership that it’s not quite so simple–write a guest post on Copyblogger!  Traffic will follow!  Especially if you can hit ProBlogger in the same month!  unless, of course, your business isn’t blogging.

Oh well.  You get what you pay for.

Filed Under: Content marketing 658-8, Networking 658.8
November 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Pinterest for a business coach

One of my clients runs a small business coaching center, where he facilitates monthly peer advisory groups segmented by number of employees. He teaches a monthly class “100 Days to Abundance” class that helps small business owners develop effective client attraction and lead generation practices to keep their pipelines fille.  He is interested in learning how Pinterest can help generate leads for this business.

I suggested the following types of boards for this business:

  • A 100 Days to Abundance board, with individual info-spins explaining the various components of building a business woodpile, and other lessons
  • A board for each flight of the 100 Days to Abundance class, containing pins that link to attendee websites, as well as in-class images uploaded from the Pinterest app for phones
  • Images from the holiday party, uploaded from phones and edited to point back to the business website
  • A board about scouting (he is a Scout leader)
  • A racquetball board
  • A small business resource board, including pins from local support such as the SBA, the SBUs, the SBTDC, and so forth
  • Small business owner of the week
  • Pins from the Small Business Insight magazine
  • Business wisdom pins using a text-to-pin tool such as Quozio.com, including some of the graphics used in the classes and peer advisory groups
  • Images of the meeting space that is available for rent will be displayed on the “Gift” list, increasing exposure of the center as a rentable location
  • A board about the other Team Nimbus centers around the country

 

Filed Under: Marketing examples
November 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Pinterest for a career coach

One of my clients runs a career coaching service. Resumes aren’t “pretty,” generally, and service businesses in general are not the most obvious target for marketing on Pinterest. However, that’s not a valid reason to ignore potential web traffic.

I searched on “Dream Job” and found the following pins:

Pins found on a search for “dream job.”

Only two of the pins are about FINDING a dream job, while the others are examples OF dream jobs. This is a market opportunity.

Searching on “job interview” yields a few more helpful pins, as well as a lot of funny ones:

There is room in this space for pins about interviewing skills and improving your work situation.

Career coaching is not a market that will generate instant sales traffic from Pinterest. However, it may be fairly easy to ask a visitor from Pinterest to sign up for an email list, or even to follow the business’ boards and pins in Pinterest itself. Board and account description fields offer plenty of space for traditional copywriting.

I recommended that this client start by taking each of her “talking points” from the sales letter:

  • Are you working in a job you hate . . . and thinking “I can’t take it anymore!”?
  • …
  • …
  • …
  • Are you retiring (or planning to) and need to figure out what to do with your time?

and turning it in to a pin using a text tool such as Quozio.com.

Quozio example

Example of a text-to-pin conversion from Quozio.com.

Pin the quotation from the Quozio application to an appropriate board:

Pin from Quozio

Quotation pinned from the Quozio application

Edit the pin to add a more engaging caption and a link directly to the blog post or email sign up page on the business website:

Edit pin from Quozio

Edit pin to point link to business website and adjust caption to include a call to action.

So that the pins and boards for this business are not seen as sales pitches, at least 80% of the businesses’ original content should be “how to” info-graphics, containing helpful suggestions.

Repins from other users’ accounts will include fashion, industry-related (our clients work in places like this), dream offices, commute (transportation), and retail food (places to have a business lunch or to meet for coffee). All of these will be selected based on the ideal target client for the coaching service–C-level executives will have different “fashion” tastes than people just starting out.

More Info Pin Ideas

Inc Magazine, October 2012, p. 8:  Three questions great job candidates ask:

  • What do you expect me to accomplish in the first 60-90 days?
  • What are the common attributes of your top performers?
  • What are a few things that drive results for the company?

You could either pin “three questions” linking back to a blog post about all three and what the employer is hoping to hear, or make up three separate pins, one for each question, and send them to the same blog post.

References:

See Candy Chang’s TED talk for more about the “Before I die” pins.)
Bucket list pins

Brazen Careerist 9 Lies Job Interviewers Tell (Post has a PinIt button already)

Five common interview mistakes

 

Filed Under: Marketing examples
October 31, 2012 By 1 Comment

Pitch Anything and Pinterest

Pitch Anything is a new book about presenting-to-sell by Oren Klaff. One of my marketing teachers, Glenn Livingston, said it was the best marketing book he’d read in the past five years. I’m not so sure I’d go that far, but I just finished the book and it is engaging.

Pitch Anything, by Oren Klaff

Pitch Anything, the new marketing book about using framing and hot cognition to influence your audience.

Klaff’s recommendation is, IMO, not quite as revolutionary and innovative as he’d like to think: Guy Kawasaki has been saying the same thing for a few years already. Tell the story. Don’t let them get you into the weeds. Give people something to believe in. They don’t care about your pedigree, resume and backstory. Use your business’ version of puppy porn…(that link is safe for just about anyone). (In his case, the big sale involved airplane porn. I hope you already understand the use of the word in the internet context…)

If you’re someone who reads marketing books, you’ll enjoy Pitch Anything. I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it because it’s difficult to apply. Klaff uses examples from his own investment fund raising past, and they don’t directly translate to the kind of selling most of my clients do.

One point, however, struck me powerfully. Klaff talks about the importance of Hot Cognition–the instant, primal brain response that says, “I want it.” When buyers / clients are in hot cognition, they want what you have.

Reader, Pinterest is nothing BUT hot cognition.

I see it I want it I click it’s mine.

There is no sales letter than can compete with puppy porn, if what you sell can be represented by your market’s equivalent of this pin (also safe on a public PC).

As I write this post, I also realize that Pinterest is, in Klaff’s terms, a way to “stack frames.” The board and surrounding pins provide context you control, setting the scene for the item and how it will fit into your client’s life. Providing more detailed examples of boards and frames is more than I have time for in this post. More later.

Filed Under: B2B 658.8, Books 028, Pinterest
October 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Load a Portfolio to Linkedin

Post a Portfolio of Your Work to Linkedin

Linkedin is not a very image-friendly application. If you are successfully displaying your work on any of the portfolio sites including Pinterest, you may not need to worry about Linkedin. However, lots of professionals use the site, and adding either or both of the two portfolio display options to your profile doesn’t take very long.

Behance Creative Portfolio Display

If you already maintain a portfolio at Behance, link to it using the Creative Portfolio Display application (More / Get More Applications / scroll — on my account, Behance is #10).

Behance is the portfolio engine for Pantone, BTW.

SlideShare

At the time of this blog post, you can’t open a SlideShare account through Linkedin directly. (Check under More / Add more applications / Slide Share.) You can create a free account at SlideShare, and then link a presentation to your Linkedin Profile (as well as share it in your updates and groups).

Use MS PowerPoint or your choice of presentation software (most formats are supported) to create a deck with images of your work.

Think about a useful file name if you are going to allow downloading. Once files are downloaded, they are easily lost if the file name is something like “Portfolio 2012.” Use your own name and useful search terms to help viewers find the file again. (Put contact information in the header or footer of each slied, as well.)
Add captions and watermarks as needed. Load your portfolio presentation to SlideShare, and then let your network and groups know, as appropriate.

Filed Under: Content marketing 658-8, How to 680, Images 770, LinkedIn, Social media 658.87
September 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Pinterest and LinkedIn

Connecting Pinterest and Linkedin

Apart from your profile picture, LinkedIn doesn’t offer a lot of support for images, but all is not lost.  Linkedin has a LOT of activity, and because most of the people on that platform are employed, they tend to have a bit more money than the average visitor.  Even if Pinterest is driving the bulk of your traffic, take an minute and make sure Linkedin knows about your Pinterest account.

Add a Website link to your Pinterest account

Pinterest displayed as one of three websites on your profile.

Your Pinterest account can be one of the three website links displayed on your Linkedin profile.

Use one of the website link options to point visitors to your business account, and one of the others to point to your Pinterest account.

Select the “other” option on the first drop down (rather than any of the fixed options) and Linkedin allows you to create your own label for the URL.

Linkedin's Website listing

Select the “other” category to create your own label for the URL, and then enter the full link to your Pinterest account.

Filed Under: B2B 658.8, LinkedIn, Pinterest
August 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Headlines that Backfire

Why isn’t your dog sleeping on an Orvis memory foam bed?

reads the headline in the email subject line this morning. The text in the image in the email itself goes on to say, “Giving your dog a memory foam bed makes you feel good inside. And sleeping on a memory foam bed makes your dog feel good all over. … every dog benefits from the perfect support and unparalleled comfort of memory foam.”

Please!! (multisyllabic….)

Memory foam beds start at $300. I spend $400, give or take, per head per year to feed and care for five dogs and two cats. Orvis thinks I should be spending an entire YEAR’s support on a bed? Has Orvis ever been to a thrift shop and seen how many couches can be purchased with $300? A LOT. Without any shopping at all, at least 10. I could get a new-to-us couch almost every month for that much money.

My dogs have clearly voted. They prefer to sleep “up”–on the couch or bed, depending on what we allow, or “under,” in the cave created by the bed or corner table. They’ll argue and whine to get the best positions.

Orvis products are marketed as being of “better” quality. We purchased collars from Orvis a few years ago. The boys chewed each other’s off pretty quickly, although they left their sister’s collar alone (and hers faded from pink to dingy pretty quickly). In other words, they weren’t high quality for the variables that mattered to me.

The company markets to my own, human-centric, sense of quality, which is remarkably different from my pragmatic understanding of my dogs’ habits and preferences. Why would I spend $300 on a foam bed when I’ve seen what this pack can do to a foam teddy bear?

The larger conclusion, with regard to marketing: when you write a headline, make sure it doesn’t inspire a “because I’m not stupid!” response!

Saw another headline that backfired in my email box:

You have to make up your mind today!

No, I don’t.  Rather, I made up my mind last week.  The fact that your offer ends today is not affecting that decision at all…

Filed Under: Content marketing 658-8, Marketing examples
May 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Use a good picture

Clearly, I am not a big believer in the power of photographic illustration for my blog posts.  I had to laugh this morning, when I received an email newsletter with the heading, “Three Hurdles for New Businesses” and this illustration:  Hurdler wearing socks

People who know me in person understand what I mean when I say, “both feet rarely leave the ground at the same time anymore.”  I have never been a hurdler, or a runner of any distance, for that matter.  I put the shot in high school.  But even when I was in high school (back in the dark ages, when high school athletes first started weight training and Wake Forest football trounced the ACC because their players worked out in the gym in the off-season), hurdlers worked to get over the hurdles as smoothly as possible.

Good hurdling looks like this.

So what am I supposed to think when the illustration is completely wrong for the point of the article?  I get that images are supposed to capture the eye and engage the mind and make your writing more interesting to the casual reader.  Just sometimes, you create exactly the WRONG outcome.

Filed Under: Content marketing 658-8, Images 770
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