Is your business ready to be a social business?

Generally speaking, I don’t have to convince too many entrepreneurs that this social media thing is here to stay. By now, the conversation has largely shifted from “is this viable?” to “what should our presence on social media look like and how does this fit into the overall brand?”

Don’t look now but the conversation about social media’s about to change once again. Not merely about this or that new channel. Not about what Facebook is adding or restricting.

No, I’m talking about something deeper – the growth of social business.

Social business is about integrating the technology of social media into your business practices. It involves social tools to encourage greater team collaboration, productivity, new idea generation, better customer communication, streamlined processes and more.

If this concept a leaves your company feeling a bit behind the times in its progress, don’t panic. A new study can help reveal how organizations like yours can use social approaches to create meaningful business value.

I had the opportunity to speak with Eric Lesser, Research Director of the IBM Institute of Business Value, who recently spearheaded a new study on social business. Through surveys and in-depth interviews of nearly 1200 individuals from leading organizations, Lesser and his team uncovered powerful insights on how companies are facing the prospect of not only adding on social media channels but becoming a true social business.

Dan Gershenson: How does social business change the landscape for business?

Eric Lesser: Throughout IBM’s Institute for Business Value study, we talked to people in industries from telecom to restaurants, from business-to-business to business-to-consumer. What do they have in common? They recognize that if they’re going to truly integrate social media in their businesses, they can’t just port over the tools they use in their personal lives. They have to learn how to use social media in ways specific to their business. Take training for example. What if you were able to use social approaches to create a community of learners that tapped into new content? Rather than instruction books, what about creating an instructional video that people could comment on? What opportunities can social create to allow you to listen better to customers and vendors for great ideas?

How are companies beginning to recognize its importance?

Through our study we found that social business is an area garnering significant attention and investment – almost half of the companies we spoke with in the study increased their investment in 2012. Interestingly, while Marketing and PR are the top two investments of these companies, they’re not the areas with the largest jumps in expected growth. That actually belongs to the areas of Customer Service, Sales, IT and HR.

Why the biggest growth in those areas?

Managing the brand and perception is as crucial as ever. There’s no doubt about that. But there’s also a need to apply social media to how internal work is actually going to get accomplished. Do these companies have all the answers to that yet? No. In fact, we see that more than two-thirds of the companies we talked to are underprepared for cultural changes as a result of social business. They felt their internal cultures were not social business oriented and they aren’t working enough on the applications of social business inside and outside the organization.
They’re not sure about the endgame.

What can they do to prepare better for a shift like this?

The question is not merely about getting more ideas but setting up more opportunities for ideas to come from anywhere.

As companies grow, the knowledge around the organization becomes more distributed, so making connections in the most productive ways becomes increasingly important.

Customers are expecting companies to know much more about them. That means companies can’t just rely on manufacturing and product knowledge. They need to deliver customer-driven content more effectively. Don’t just provide me a manual, but provide me with experts who understand my challenges and can show me how to fix my issues on a customized level. Some companies will struggle with this but customers are expecting this kind of service in their environment. They don’t want to have difficulty spelling out a challenge or they’ll move on.

To learn the four specific trends Lesser expects in 2013 as companies adapt further to being social businesses, visit my blog at www.chicagobrander.com.

Dan Gershenson is a Chicago-based brand strategy and marketing consultant who works primarily with small and mid-sized businesses. His column on branding and social media strategy appears on Crain’s blog for Chicago entrepreneurs on Wednesdays.

Reach Dan at Dan@ChicagoBrander.com and follow him on Twitter: @DanOnBranding.

Join Crain’s LinkedIn group for Chicago entrepreneurs. And stay on top of Chicago business with Crain’s free daily e-newsletters.

How many people really hear your brand on Facebook now?

By Dan Gershenson

“It’s free and always will be.”

That’s the message we see on Facebook every time we log in to the largest social media channel in the world. Every time I’ve seen that promise, I’ve wondered how long Facebook could really hold true to it.

And now we know – for users and brands alike, the answer is getting a lot murkier than it’s ever been.

Yes, technically speaking, you can still be on Facebook and it won’t cost you a dime. But if you want to actually be seen with greater visibility to your existing Fan base? Well, friend, that’s going to cost you.

Here’s the simplest way to explain it:

Let’s say you’re a restaurant owner. You’ve worked hard to build up a loyal following and solid reputation for quality food. Your customer base expands and all is going well – until one day, a Tony Soprano-looking character strolls into your establishment and says, “I’m sorry to have to do this, but to continue serving 85 percent of your customers, you’ll need to kick up some bucks to me every week. This ensures you’ll stay highly visible to everyone and all will be kept status quo. I’m happy, you’re happy. If you don’t, that’s your choice. But don’t be surprised if you only reach 15 percent of the people you’ve served up to this point and your visibility takes a nosedive.”

It’s not a far cry from the situation small business owners find themselves in with Promoted Posts, a new feature of Facebook that asks brands to pay in order to ensure that a particular post is seen by all their Fans – the Fans they worked hard to obtain. If they don’t pay, they can still use Facebook. The only problem is that if they don’t use Promoted Posts, their posts will reach an average of 15 percent of their Fan base.

That’s right. A whopping average of 15 percent.

Want to ensure you reach the other 85 percent of people who are already your Fans? No problem. Just pay up and that post will reach all of them.

Yes, I know – I don’t think it’s a good idea either.

What’s more, while this may have less of an impact on large corporations, the move is going to smack small businesses right in their pocketbooks because it will be a challenge for many of them to pony up significant dollars if they want to promote their posts daily.

That said, we need to be realistic here: This isn’t going to kill Facebook. What it may actually call for is more of a change in strategy – not an impulsive change in social media channels. You may not want to race away from Mr. Zuckerberg’s company before you explore your strategic options.

Identifying Your Real “Home Base”

Let’s face it – on Facebook and any other social media channel, you’re renting land. If you can’t roll with the punches as they make changes, you’re going to find yourself perpetually hopping from channel to channel. And that’s going to give your customers fits.

So how do you cope with such unexpected changes? Plan on originating the content you create in places you have more true control – such as your website and/or blog. It’s the home base where you can change these elements or not versus having changes dictated to you. This doesn’t mean forgoing social media. As you create content from your home base first, you push it out to the social media channels that make the most sense for your goals and audience, whether that’s Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, whatever the case may be.

This way, when those social media channels do make a change, you’re seeing them more for what they are – outlets that can amplify your message, but not the be-all and end-all that defines what your brand represents in total.

If You’re Going To Advertise, Then Advertise.

I can’t blame small business brands for being upset with Facebook over Promoted Posts, but if there’s a silver lining, it’s going to force them to make better decisions on what content deserves to be promoted while making the rest of the content that isn’t paid for as high quality as humanly possible. If what you’re doing isn’t a post but more of a true advertisement, then place an ad.

For example, I recently read a complaint on the Promoted Posts issue by a woman who provides daily deals to her Fans. Of course, she was furious that her posts weren’t showing up as regularly due to the recent development of needing to pay more for greater visibility. I don’t disagree with her frustration.

The only problem was, she wasn’t really interacting with her community. Or trying to be all that helpful. Her posts were largely just “Here’s today’s deal.” That’s essentially a one-way message where she’s trying to push her own stuff all the time. That’s an ad. So she should look at it as such. That way, she can actually target her ad using tools like Facebook’s new Custom Audiences feature, something I’m really excited about.

Custom Audiences can enable you to run campaigns targeted to all the friends of actual customers, retarget visitors to your website on Facebook, run mobile ads featuring specials, encourage customers to come to an event and more. It expands the range of visibility rather than merely asking you to pay to promote yourself to your own Fans. I see that as smarter targeting of an ad that may yield better results.

I don’t love the idea of Promoted Posts. But as Facebook is a public company that needs to evolve to make its investors happy, changes like this to create more revenue were inevitable. Instead of running from it, however, consider rolling with it by being selective with the paid posts you really want to highlight, keeping the rest of your posts high quality and actually advertising when your message is, after all, an ad.

You may just be better off by segmenting your brand to the right crowd at the right time.

Dan Gershenson is a Chicago-based brand strategy and marketing consultant who works primarily with small and mid-size businesses. His column on branding and social media strategy appears on Crain’s blog for Chicago entrepreneurs on Wednesdays.

Reach Dan at Dan@ChicagoBrander.com and follow him on Twitter: @DanOnBranding.

Join Crain’s LinkedIn group for Chicago entrepreneurs. And stay on top of Chicago business with Crain’s free daily e-newsletters.

What marketers can learn from the scariest advertising

By Dan Gershenson

Every few years at a time that includes Halloween, there’s an evil type of advertising that rises, striking horror into the hearts of those who can’t escape it.

It’s the kind of advertising that isn’t very creative, doesn’t elicit a lot of positive emotion and finds it more useful to tear down a competitor than tell its own story in any compelling way.

This beast is called the political ad. And it sucks the life out of many of us. No matter whom and what we support.

After the election, the political ad will sulk away. But like a thousand “Friday the 13th” sequels, it will come back. How do we stop it? Well, we can’t. But what we can do is make sure we aren’t mimicking features of the political ad when we develop our own brands. Because we can do a lot of harm to our brands if we follow any part of the formula.

The horror of distortion

I’m going to go out on a limb and say there’s a lot said in political ads that’s a stretch, if not an outright distortion of facts.

Imagine if that applied to our own brand strategies. Do you think tweeting about how much the other brand stinks is going to get you far? I don’t either. Because even though the picture of your competitor isn’t flattering, you’ve shifted the focus to them and away from you.

For the rest of us who aren’t running for office in the age of social media, transparency of our brands could never be more important. It is less about giving the appearance of perfection and more about being genuine and human as we build relationships. For example, if you don’t respond to a mistake quickly or if you try to cover it up as though it never happened, it’s an inconsistency with what much of the online world is seeing in the form of a Yelp review, a tweet, a YouTube upload, you name it. And it works so fast.

On the other hand, if your company is encountering a technical difficulty but you’re giving your customers updates on what you’re doing to fix the problem, aren’t they more apt to forgive you once it’s resolved (provided the time frame is within reason)?

There’s no reason to stretch and distort. The brand that keeps it real wins.

Death by one-way message

At this moment, we are being bombarded each and every day, every hour by political messages that aren’t very original or likely to shift our thinking tremendously. Why? For one, there’s rarely enough clearly stated about the issues that are important to us.

In truth, that’s like a lot of advertising we become numb to every day as it is — the only difference is that we rarely see this much from one type of brand within one hour unless they’ve bought all the air time.

In both cases, there’s a lot to potentially tune out.

With this in mind, do you think hitting people relentlessly with posts that are all about your brand’s offerings and speaking little to your audience’s own challenges/preferences is going to give you significant traction? If it’s about your latest offer or sale all the time, isn’t that just a lot of one-way blasting and not much two-way communication?

Political ads may go that route, but better brands don’t have to. We can start to craft messages that are helpful to our audiences by listening to and monitoring what they search for, what they share, what they view and what they chatter about most. There’s another post in itself about the number of free and paid tools for helping with this, but there are definite options here. What words and phrases are they using? How can you incorporate the issues that resonate with them in your website or blog and naturally lead them into a way you can help — without blatant selling?

Frightful return on investment

When you think about it, billions of dollars are being spent to move a very select number of voters. And in a race this tight, you can almost see why and justify it. Still, it seems so much is about outspending instead of outsmarting. It’s a race of inefficiency they’re trapped in.

In the real world, how often do you hear, “Spend as much as you want to reach a really tiny segment of the population”? Not too often. Probably because as marketers, we like to stretch our dollars more efficiently than political ads do. Outspending our competitors on TV commercials doesn’t equate to instant success.

What’s even more scary? The expensive story they’re telling is difficult to measure. Sure, we can take random polls and see the final tally, but it’s hard to draw a line from a particular ad to a vote.

The lesson for our own brand strategies is that, unlike the story that begins and ends with a 30-second TV ad that doesn’t often drive people anywhere (rather than saying “go to my website to learn more about my economic plan”), we can not only speak to a tightly defined audience but also do a better job of funneling segments of people into places like specific online landing pages, whereby we can learn more about the messages they respond to most and don’t. In the process, we can use metrics to track awareness, sales and loyalty — evolving and tweaking our media mix where necessary based on those goals.

— Being genuine (and creative) in message.

— Building more two-way conversations.

— Measuring the results of diversified media.

— Segmenting to different buyers instead of one mass audience.

These are just some of the tricks that can help your brand bring home more treats. Even amid the scariest advertising of the season.

Dan Gershenson is a Chicago-based brand strategy and marketing consultant who works primarily with small and mid-sized businesses. His column on branding and social media strategy appears on Crain’s blog for Chicago entrepreneurs on Wednesdays.

Reach Dan at Dan@ChicagoBrander.com and follow him on Twitter: @DanOnBranding.

Join Crain’s LinkedIn group for Chicago entrepreneurs. And stay on top of Chicago business with Crain’s free daily e-newsletters.

The solo entrepreneur’s guide to social media time management

By Dan Gershenson

“Look, I’d love to be involved more in social media, but the reality is that I don’t have enough time in the day and I don’t have enough people helping me. So what am I supposed to do?”

Small-business entrepreneurs are faced with this dilemma every day. For some, the answer may be to outsource many functions of telling their story online through content marketing. But for others, that may not be an option because of budget constraints or other factors. That means it’s back on them to make it happen.

The excuses are easy to make. Here’s my response to the popular ones and how social media and time management are still very possible within your schedule if you plan accordingly.

1. “I have no time.”

In fact, you probably do. It’s just that you’re just looking at the gigantic picture of how you’re going to pull all this together rather than breaking this challenge down into smaller chunks. Let’s start with what’s important. Your vision.

It’s not about being on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn. Or anything else. Yet. Many businesses tend to think tactically before they think about the bigger picture strategically. Namely, what’s the problem you’re trying to solve? How are you planning on being helpful? And how can you do it without resorting to blatantly selling your product or service?

That’s right. You’re an expert who just happens to also have something to sell at your disposal. Lead with the sell and you’re in trouble from the get-go. It’s not about your stuff. It’s about how what you know can help them address their challenge right now. Then and only then will you gain continued entry into their lives.

2. “How do you get to 10,000 followers like some of these people? I can’t do that.”

Who cares? Do you want to talk up a vanity stat or do you want to better your chances of getting in the door? If the latter, think smaller — about your audience. If we drilled down to think about the 10-15 companies we really wanted to get into, we’d stand a better chance of understanding what makes them tick. We’d study them harder on a more one-to-one level rather than as a field to enter in an Excel spreadsheet.

3. “Yes, but how do I know who to contact? That takes time.”

Think about the decision-makers who traditionally sit at the table when making a final call about your product or service. If we knew things about them like their titles, couldn’t we use the advanced version of LinkedIn (which won’t break the bank) to learn more about who these people are faster? You could certainly spend more on other tools to accomplish this, but entrepreneurs don’t often have that luxury.

4. “OK, how am I supposed to stay up to speed on what’s new with them?”

You can set up tools like Google Alerts around their names and the company name that can tell you just that. Like when someone gets a promotion. Or leaves the company. Or the company buys another company. Or moves to bigger headquarters. Or releases a new product. These are some of the examples of what Jill Konrath, author of books such as “Snap Selling,” refers to as “trigger events.” When you recognize that trigger event faster, you have to insert your proposition into that event faster. Impossible? Not when tools such as these are giving you a head start by cluing you into the news faster.

5. “Fine. But this blogging stuff … what am I going to write about?”

You can start by using the Google Keyword Tool to discover the words and phrases used in association with your business or your competitors’ business. I find this enlightening because unlike the marketing-speak we’re often guilty of using within our own walls, people searching for us use plain English. And that helps us craft better content around the way they talk.

6. “I still hear the part where I’m coming up with ideas from scratch.”

Do you read blogs that are relevant to your industry that you enjoy? Subscribe to them. Refer to sources like LinkedIn Today and Mashable (or right here at Crain’s), which give you an array of “hot button” newsworthy topics you can potentially provide your own take on that’s different from the one provided. Keeping them organized through a tool like Google Reader enables you to get a stream of information on popular conversations to inspire thought rather than you sitting in front of a blank screen, wondering what you should write about.

7. “But putting content on all these different channels is a pain.”

Entrepreneurs often forget the power of repurposing content to “slice and dice” it in different ways. Let’s say you write one blog post. That blog post can then fuel a variety of formats. You can create a video based on it for YouTube. You can take a portion of it, put it in an e-newsletter and have it jump to your blog for the rest of the article. You can pull a provocative sentence out of it with a link back to the blog and put it on Twitter or LinkedIn. You can post images from the post on Pinterest, which then links back to the full post. And that’s just a sampling. One post can go a long way.

These are far from the only ways to inject more time back into your day for social media, but they’re a healthy start. As we just had the Chicago Marathon, think of this as your own marathon training. It’s a slow build to get consistently stronger, but before long, you may find it’s easier than you thought and even, yes, fun.

If you have other ideas, tools and tricks that have helped you stay on top of your social media execution as a solo entrepreneur, share them in the comment section below.

Dan Gershenson is a Chicago-based brand strategy and marketing consultant who works primarily with small and mid-sized businesses. His column on branding and social media strategy appears on Crain’s blog for Chicago entrepreneurs on Wednesdays.

Reach Dan at Dan@ChicagoBrander.com and follow him on Twitter: @DanOnBranding.

Join Crain’s LinkedIn group for Chicago entrepreneurs. And stay on top of Chicago business with Crain’s free daily e-newsletters.

What did Social Media Week teach us?

By Dan Gershenson

Last week in cities from L.A. to Shanghai to Barcelona, Social Media Week explored the kind of trends, entrepreneurs and technologies that are shaping the future of social media. Chicago’s version, now in its second year, did not disappoint. The way I see it, it’s hard to feel let down when you have the opportunity to view dozens of lectures and panels on social media (most of them at no charge).

The awareness of this event is still growing but if the early response by marketers, tech entrepreneurs, brand managers, web developers and the like is any indication – many sessions were initially sold out, although several later opened up to let in more people – I would only expect Social Media Week to get bigger next year.

So what did we learn from the week? You can’t realistically recap 90-plus sessions, so I thought I’d provide a sampling of my takeaways – if you went, feel free to add yours in the comments below.

I “liked” you, isn’t that enough?

As Jay Baer, author of “The Now Revolution,” mentioned in a Thursday session, getting a “like” on Facebook is about the most miniscule amount of commitment that somebody can make to your brand. They haven’t signed up for anything, they haven’t downloaded content and there’s nothing to suggest they’re going to purchase — yet. The like, the retweet, the plus-1, etc., are vanity metrics. It’s time to face it. They may sound great to newcomers, but we need to dig deeper to produce measurements that have greater meaning so businesses can be equipped with what they need to make better decisions.

An hour a day won’t cut it

One of the more interesting (and retweeted) messages of the week came from Lightspan Digital, which cited a study that showed at least seven hours a week on average is necessary to be successful on social media. That minimum may not sound like much to someone who does that every day for a living, but it can seem daunting for a marketer short on time and internal support. Which is only going to cause more of them to take a hard look at what they can handle internally and what they can outsource so other day-to-day responsibilities can get accomplished.

Google Plus will realize its potential . . . one of these days.

It may be my imagination, but in more than one session, I felt an air of disappointment in association with Google Plus. Why? Perhaps as one presenter explained, Google Plus has more than 400 million users. Which sounds impressive on the surface. Except for the fact that only 100 million of those 400 million are active. Then you compare that to a comScore report earlier this year that suggests Google Plus users only average 3 minutes per month on the site. Facebook users? 405 minutes per month.

The Google Plus channel still holds a lot of promise and nice features – but for now, it appears the problem remains that not enough people see a compelling reason to move away from the social media channels they actively participate in to invest the most amount of time in it.

Don’t forget the Big Idea

Sometimes we get so caught up with choosing this or that social media channel, optimizing content for search engines, thinking about paid search, updating statuses, etc., that we have to remember there’s a much bigger picture than that, which involves brand development. Namely, what’s the overall story of our brand that we want to be telling? What’s our strategic purpose? What kind of things do people want to hear about and hopefully share with others? In fact, as an agency creative director from Havas explained, we can’t forget about building the great big idea that can spark conversations, traffic and a host of other benefits. And as a keynote speaker from Google reminded us, think about how one video like the one for Dollar Shave Club propelled that brand to almost 7 million views on YouTube — and counting.

Not being on social media will be unthinkable

Think back to the ’90s when people were considering whether to have websites. Yes, companies actually did have this mindset at first and didn’t jump right in. Of course, the idea of a company not having a website these days seems ridiculous. So how far away are we from a time when not being on social media becomes detrimental to your brand? Not far away at all. Several speakers made the argument that we’re already there.

What’s the Next Big Thing?

You knew that question would come up multiple times. The next big social media tool may not be a sleeping giant that awakens a while after launch and suddenly explodes like Pinterest. Instead, in the words of one presenter from Razorfish, it’s a tool that may very well happen by the launching of ex-Twitter or ex-Facebook employees – the kind of people who have worked on a channel that provides them with the experience on what’s been done well but with a new, inventive spin.

It’s a great time to be a Chicago entrepreneur

During a weeklong event like this, you definitely appreciate how much progress Chicago is making as an inviting environment for entrepreneurs. Co-working spaces. Incubators. Niche clubs and networking groups. Crowdfunding. Venture capitalists. Thanks to a little help from 1871 and Motorola Mobility coming into the space, who knew the Merchandise Mart could become a hotbed of tech companies?

No, let’s not get carried away and say we’re the second coming of Silicon Valley. But at the same time, when you hear the chief technology officer in Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office talking about how is one of the most wired cities in the country and looking to upgrade the city’s digital infrastructure (i.e., more Wi-Fi in more public places, please?), you can’t help but think, “Wow, there are far worse places to build a business than here.”

Continuing to build these resources for small businesses and keeping our infrastructure highly competitive is crucial not only for the city but for giving our economy much-needed momentum. Make some plans to attend a few sessions next year for Social Media Week and I think you’ll be as excited about what the future holds for entrepreneurs and technology in this town as I am.

Dan Gershenson is a Chicago-based brand strategy and marketing consultant who works primarily with small and mid-sized businesses. His column on branding and social media strategy appears on Crain’s blog for Chicago entrepreneurs on Wednesdays.

Reach Dan at Dan@ChicagoBrander.com and follow him on Twitter: @DanOnBranding.

Join Crain’s LinkedIn group for Chicago entrepreneurs. And stay on top of Chicago business with Crain’s free daily e-newsletters.

10 endangered species that may be leaving your office by 2017

By Dan Gershenson

Dinosaurs are fun to look at in the Field Museum. It’s not actually fun to look like a dinosaur in an entrepreneurial setting.

“Oh, that’s not our company,” you scoff. Well, put down the phone in your cubicle and stop sending that fax because depending on the tools and practices you’re using, you might not be quite as progressive as you think. Especially if you witness the opinions of more than 7,000 professionals surveyed by LinkedIn as part of its “Office Endangered Species” study released yesterday.

Here’s the top 10 list of tools and cultural practices that professionals worldwide see as becoming potential relics by 2017:

1. Tape recorders (79 percent)

2. Fax machines (71 percent)

3. The Rolodex (58 percent)

4. Standard working hours (57 percent)

5. Desk phones (35 percent)

6. Desktop computers (34 percent)

7. Formal business attire like suits, ties, pantyhose, etc. (27 percent)

8. The corner office for managers/executives (21 percent)

9. Cubicles (19 percent)

10. USB thumb drives (17 percent)

The dream office

What would the same professionals like to see in the future?

• Having a clone or assistant to help them through the day’s tasks (practically speaking, I’m thinking more Siri-like technology than literal clones of people).

• A place in the office that provides natural sunlight.

• A quiet place where employees are allowed to take a nap.

• Amusingly, almost one in five people surveyed said they would like a mute button for their co-workers, so they didn’t have to hear them talk.

With the global rise of tablets, cloud storage and smartphone use, along with flexible work hours and social networks, it’s not surprising that we’re becoming less tethered to our desks, to our offices and to traditional business practices. I see entrepreneurs leading this charge more than ever, but it’s not limited anymore to the up-and-coming startups. The trend here is clear and has implications for future employee recruiting, particularly to the Millennial set — if you’re doing business as usual, it may be time to re-evaluate how you want to be positioned internally and externally.

It begins with asking: How truly essential is this tool or practice to our success? Do we really need corner offices and cubicles to appropriately establish a hierarchy or can the CEO sit next to the entry-level person? Do we really need everybody to be at their desks in order to feel connected or can some work virtually, communicate via Skype and accomplish the same goals? Does everyone really need to be there at 9 a.m. and leave at 5 p.m. every day or can adjustments be made to accommodate special work/life balances?

I wouldn’t wait until 2017 to figure it out.

Dan Gershenson is a Chicago-based brand strategy and marketing consultant who works primarily with small and mid-sized businesses. His column on branding and social media strategy appears on Crain’s blog for Chicago entrepreneurs on Wednesdays.

Reach Dan at Dan@ChicagoBrander.com and follow him on Twitter: @DanOnBranding.

Join Crain’s LinkedIn group for Chicago entrepreneurs. And stay on top of Chicago business with Crain’s free daily e-newsletters.

5 ways to get more bang for your trade show buck

By Dan Gershenson

I’m writing this from the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS), the largest manufacturing show in America, at McCormick Place through Saturday. More than 90,000 people have registered for this gigantic event so far.

Walking across a floor of 1,800 exhibits, you quickly get the sense that, at a time when marketers tend to question if trade shows are worth attending, it’s clear there are no such hang-ups as it applies to this show. There’s a whole lot of heavy investment from manufacturers going on here in their presence. With this in mind, I can’t help but wonder about return on investment and what kind of steps brands can take to help themselves stand out once they say, “If there’s one trade show we want to be at this year, that’s the one.”

Here are some takeaways and tech ideas I witnessed at IMTS that you can consider incorporating for your own trade show efforts this fall, especially if you’re preparing for a massive, high-visibility trade show like this one.

Stand up for iPads

You’re trapped with one attendee who is talking your head off and it’s clear they’re not going to be a serious buyer. Meanwhile, isn’t that so-and-so who you’ve been meaning to talk to walking up to your booth? How do you ditch the gabfest in front of you elegantly? You may be able to divide and conquer resources if you have a securely mounted iPad display stand. Visitors can walk up to the stand and scroll through valuable information about your company’s products and services.

Walking by hundreds of booths at IMTS, I saw two of these stands used. I expect I’ll only see more of them at future shows. It’s very slick and helps act as another “salesperson” for your brand.

Webcasting

There’s a great opportunity in live webcasts at the show: First, it extends your appeal beyond the immediate trade show floor to the social web. Second, it involves people in your booth on a deeper level as interviewees and not just casual browsers. So it’s no longer just a booth but an experience. Many booth experiences start and end with the physical walls of the brand. It doesn’t have to be that way any longer.

IMTS had several live webcasts throughout the day via its IMTS TV, which could be seen at nearby hotels, the event’s shuttle bus and online. Taking a page from this experience, whom could you interview at your booth, even for just a couple of minutes? Could you target them in advance of the show and invite them to be a part of your webcast, which may extend into a longer conversation afterward? Where can you share this information beyond your website?

3D video projection

A screen mounted on a stand? That’s OK, but rather expected. When done well, a video projection on an ample-sized banner, complete with audio, can lure people in and tell more of the brand’s story with a high-end quality. I’ve seen but one company only lightly touch upon this application, without audio.

Or there’s really taking the experience up a notch — using 3D images (also called “3D projection mapping”) to transform a part of the booth into a captivating spectacle of video. Just Google “3D projection mapping” and you’ll see what I mean.

So if we can create 3D video projections on landmarks, why can’t we do these at trade shows? The answer is, we can. Compelling video that brings the product to life gets noticed, especially in a crowded hall.

Private rooms/sections

You heard me. Get a room — as in think about how your booth can be sectioned off to accommodate “VIPs” at the show.

Several exhibitors at IMTS have created what could be described as less of a booth and more of a lounge or café. That can be visually appealing and inviting, but for my taste, private rooms/sections within an area facilitate better one-on-ones and lend themselves to sensitive conversations that can’t be conducted out in the open.

By the way, don’t forget that shows can be used for recruitment opportunities too. The issue in manufacturing isn’t so much a lack of jobs as it’s about finding qualified people to fill specialized positions. Some here have seized on that opportunity by realizing that their audience isn’t only potential buyers of product but also potential referrers of talent.

Granted, I know creating a “private” area of your booth isn’t necessarily cheap, but really, when you’re spending a lot on this as it is, do you want to treat a serious buyer/candidate like anybody else wandering by?

Social media

I get a lot of questions about industries that aren’t “ready” for social media just yet. Some skeptics say manufacturing is one of them. Which is interesting, considering I’m looking at a Twitter stream with the hashtag #IMTS and seeing major manufacturers tweeting about their booth’s events and engineers chatting with each other about what they’ve seen and heard at the show.

So if someone says, “Our industry isn’t into social media and won’t care about using it at the show,” challenge that assumption. Could people check into your booth on Foursquare and be rewarded for it? Could you tweet your booth location and share what events are next? Could you upload pictures and video for those who missed a crucial speaker? Yes. And they’re doing it here.

Remember, much of this activity with social media isn’t confined to the booth or even the show. It extends beyond that.

It’s easy to fall in love with how big your logo looks on a trade show wall over a few days. But there’s a much bigger picture than that. If you can capture some long-term leads today, you can continue the conversation on the web long term, which can grow into something much more tomorrow.

So think about how you can integrate your online presence more so your trade show booth works even harder. Like a machine.

Dan Gershenson is a Chicago-based brand strategy and marketing consultant who works primarily with small and mid-sized businesses. His column on branding and social media strategy appears on Crain’s blog for Chicago entrepreneurs on Wednesdays.

Reach Dan at Dan@ChicagoBrander.com and follow him on Twitter: @DanOnBranding.

Join Crain’s LinkedIn group for Chicago entrepreneurs. And stay on top of Chicago business with Crain’s free daily e-newsletters.

5 ways you aren’t using LinkedIn (but should)

By Dan Gershenson

Create a profile. Ask people to connect with you. Update your account with new info.

Technically speaking, it may mean you’re on LinkedIn. But it isn’t really making LinkedIn work for you.

These three steps represent the basic, passive approach that the majority of businesspeople take once they join LinkedIn. In fact, some people don’t even get that far, merely entering the basics into a profile and leaving it as is for months at a time.

Which is a lost opportunity, considering the vast potential and promise it holds, particularly for entrepreneurs.

“LinkedIn is the most effective business development tool since the advent of the cellular phone,” says Steve Fretzin, president of Sales Results, a national sales training firm. “In a time when gatekeepers and voicemail have all but eradicated the sales professional, inside connections are sometimes the only way through the door.”

That means entrepreneurs willing to dial it up a notch or two to switch their passive LinkedIn presence into a much more active one can be found more often, prospect for business more productively, leverage their network better and engage in true relationship building.

How? By using these five lesser-used but far more active tactics to power up your presence on LinkedIn:

#1: Rev up your recommendation acquisitions

By themselves, adding recommendations may seem passive, but I’m speaking more of the way in which you view and pursue them. Sure, you probably ask for a recommendation now and then. But every client/strategic partner/employer you have or have ever had a positive outcome with should represent a recommendation on LinkedIn. That’s right. Every single one. After all, shouldn’t someone who has benefited from your services want to say good things about you? Of course they should. This is perhaps the most underutilized feature of LinkedIn.

What’s more, recommendations may be more effective than anything else on your profile, according to Mr. Fretzin.

“A good analogy is how people choose a restaurant these days. We’re living in a time when people are more likely to trust the opinions of someone on Yelp or Urbanspoon than a critic’s review,” he said. “Similarly, on LinkedIn, we’d rather read the recommendations of others than only hearing what the person we are researching has to say. Why? Because we’d rather listen to people who are like us.”

#2: Are they looking at you? Then seize the moment.

When you upgrade to a LinkedIn Premium account, you can see all the people who have looked at your profile as opposed to only the most recent, which you see in the free version. What’s the advantage here? Without being creepy about it (“I saw you were looking at me!”), this represents an opportunity for potential follow-up as chances are good that person has some intent in looking for someone in your field or as a strategic partner.

#3: Optimize your profile for your target

Another advantage of LinkedIn Premium? You can see the search terms people are using to find your profile, which enables you to tailor your profile to incorporate the most popular terms. This goes beyond just tweaking your profile for the sake of appearing in search. It’s taking an active role in seeing how a specific set of search terms resonate with a specific set of people you want to attract more of.

#4: Search smarter and faster

Besides optimizing your profile to be found more easily, the other side of the search equation is in searching for your ideal prospect faster without restrictions. The Premium level enables you to save serious time by quickly zeroing in on prospects based on criteria such as seniority, company size, function, groups and more.

#5: Maximize activity with a warmer introduction

How often are you asked for an introduction to someone in your network?
How often do you ask a connection to introduce you to someone in their network?

Not much? You’re not alone. By themselves, cocktail hour networking and morning coffee chats may seem productive, but one of the biggest mistakes Mr. Fretzin sees people make is when they equate increased networking activity with progress – and becoming frustrated when relationships stall. A third-party introduction via LinkedIn can change that dynamic.

“The typical networker is only 10 percent effective at obtaining a quality introduction from someone they meet through networking,” Mr. Fretzin said. “Ninety percent of the time, people are just meeting people for meeting people’s sake. LinkedIn can take networking to another level when you leverage past or existing clients to get introduced to that person’s network at a high level.”

I’ll contend there are certain areas with LinkedIn that could allow for far more of a true business dashboard that incorporates a CRM, complete social networking, video conferencing and more. If and when it ever gets to that point, look out.

But let’s not wait for that evolution before evolving ourselves – because by turning the typically passive presence on LinkedIn into a more active one, we won’t just be standing out from the majority. We’ll be more likely to transform mere “Connections” into real relationships.

And isn’t that what we’re there to do?

Dan Gershenson is a Chicago-based brand strategy and marketing consultant who works primarily with small and mid-sized businesses. His column on branding and social media strategy appears on Crain’s blog for Chicago entrepreneurs on Wednesdays.

Reach Dan at Dan@ChicagoBrander.com and follow him on Twitter: @DanOnBranding.

Join Crain’s LinkedIn group for Chicago entrepreneurs. And stay on top of Chicago business with Crain’s free daily e-newsletters.

Building your brand while working for someone else

By Dan Gershenson

There’s a school of thought that when you work for someone else, you stop building your own brand. After all, being under a company’s roof means their name is on the door, not yours. It’s not like you have employees in that circumstance, either – you have a boss and co-workers. And they have people above them. All of which makes you feel like a fish swimming within a pond that has no room for anything personal, including your goals.

And you couldn’t be more wrong.

If you haven’t already, it’s time to start viewing yourself as a brand in need of development. You are a company within a company, a brand within a brand. And like any brand, there are several considerations that are worth making for your own personal fulfillment and happiness.

What’s your mission statement?

Without any kind of vision that’s easy to comprehend, it’s next to impossible to know where you want to go — beyond what you have right in front of you for the day, that is. That makes you like anyone else going through the motions, and you’re better than that.

So visualize your “future self.” Take your employer out of the equation for the moment. What kind of work are you doing? Who are you working for? What kind of positive things are they saying about you? Don’t worry about where you’re at and how far away from this visualized future you might be. You’re already ahead of many people who wish for a “someday” that will be different that they can’t even picture. Which you just did.

Who is your target audience?

A brand has ideal customers or clients that comprise the “bulls-eye” of who it would ideally like to work with, who appreciate its product most and who would, in turn, probably tells others as an advocate.

Thinking about this in your current work context, who are the key decision-makers your “product” speaks to and impacts? Is there one? Three? Ten? While considering these numbers, think beyond your boss. Think about the people at the table that your boss tends to sit with when he or she has an important decision to make.

This is your Primary target audience. How can you make the people at that table notice and appreciate you? Get in their heads – don’t just think about what you do every day. Think about what they do every day. Think about what they’re facing, what their goals are, what causes them anxiety.

How can you help alleviate that anxiety and help them reach those goals?

That’s not all. Who are the people directly connected to those decision-makers who might have an influence and what’s your relationship like with them?

This is your Secondary target audience. You may not work for them directly, but it’s important to know the role they play indirectly in your success. Neglect them at your own risk.

Who are your strategic partners?

You can’t be an island when it comes to building your brand. Just as many people need networking partners to refer each other business and have each other’s back, you need strategic partners who understand where you want your brand to go within that corporate environment – your spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend, family, close friends, co-workers you trust, etc. It doesn’t have to be a big list. You can be selective and in all likelihood, you probably should be.

The point is to surround yourself with people who see you as more than just a cog in the wheel. They know what you want, they’ll sing your praises and they’re not afraid to, either. If companies can have brand ambassadors, you can too.

How will you measure success for your brand?

Can I be honest? I’m not a fan of Big Hairy Audacious Goals. I think they’re unrealistic most of the time and everything accomplished before them that could be considered progress feels like a failure. I’m a fan of smaller goals, one step building upon another, step by step, so it feels like gradual progress.

So if you were to make some progress this month or this quarter to further your brand, and you could maintain that progress from now on, how would you know what that looks like? Pick one to three metrics of success that you can track one month or quarter over the next. Put it in a graph or chart if you helps you visualize your progress. And if you take a step back from those metrics from your progress, don’t get discouraged. Understand why that happened and what you plan on doing differently going forward to get yourself back on track.

How will you promote yourself?

I’m not talking about creating posters with your face on it all over the office. I’m talking about getting evidence that your brand is furthering itself. The social media universe, for example, allows us to create blogs, videos, curated collections of images, podcasts and many, many other ways to tell our story outside of the realm of our “normal” workplace. The key here is consistency of how often you create the content on weekly basis. Chances are, it will take some significant time to build an audience, but with that time and audience growth, you’ll begin to sense an appreciation from the outside about your expertise.

Now, obviously you don’t want to blog to your heart’s content while on the clock at your job, but do keep this much in mind – no matter how long you stay at an employer, your opinions aren’t the only thing that are your own. Your expertise is your own, too. Expertise that needs to be conveyed and packaged in a way that makes you feel like the brand you were born to be. And a brand any employer will feel lucky to have.

Dan Gershenson is a Chicago-based brand strategy and marketing consultant who works primarily with small and mid-sized businesses. His column on branding and social media strategy appears on Crain’s blog for Chicago entrepreneurs on Wednesdays.

Reach Dan at Dan@ChicagoBrander.com and follow him on Twitter: @DanOnBranding.

Join Crain’s LinkedIn group for Chicago entrepreneurs. And stay on top of Chicago business with Crain’s free daily e-newsletters.

Crain’s small-business editor Ann Dwyer is on Google+.

Uploading a video? How’s your VSEO look?

By Dan Gershenson

Let’s admit it. It’s not always easy to wrap your arms around this SEO thing. You’ve got to think about organic search. Paid search. Relevance. Authority. Keyword optimization. Plus, every other minute, Google seems to have some kind of creepy crawlers that go through your site looking for fresh content. Or, don’t look now, it’s changing its method to cut down on keyword stuffing.

In the midst of it all, you’ve got to contend with a new term you haven’t heard before: VSEO, or video search engine optimization.

You might think, “Wait — you mean I don’t just upload a video to YouTube and call it a day?”

Not quite. Assuming it’s compelling and entertaining, video can certainly help keep people on your site longer. But considering Google owns YouTube, you have an opportunity to maximize that video by taking a few key strategic steps of VSEO that can go a long way.

Let’s start with keywords.

When you take a closer look at the keywords that are being searched for at a high volume and have relevance to your company, you can incorporate these keywords into descriptions of your video.

Jack Lane, of Chicago-based Lane Media & Productions, works with clients to help address this very issue.

“We insert specific keywords into the scripts we write for clients,” Lane says. “After the video is produced, we create video site maps, which are then uploaded to the client’s service and submitted to major search engines.”

Lane explains that this is really the best way for a search engine to index the content within the video, helping the company move up in the rankings.

“As they should, companies are concentrating on finding the right mix of creative talent, production expertise, web compression techniques and affordability. But they can’t forget about how video SEO contributes to successful online marketing. That matters as much as anything.”

By the way, don’t forget the importance of using relevant keywords in the title of your video, too, and tagging your video with those phrases.

How do you measure it successfully?

By now, you’ve been told enough times the importance of making your content engaging — but analyzing how meaningful that content is to the audience can be tricky for some marketers. Play count is a factor but…

“Videos with 1,000 hits are not going to bring huge SEO results,” says Remsy Atassi, of ARU Chicago. “That said, the most effective projects I have worked on put a large emphasis in sharing strategies. Sharing across multiple branded channels maximizes your play counts, increases your presence in search engines and lends credibility to your message.”

Beyond tagging the video, Atassi encourages his clients to also explore social media channels, such as Facebook and Twitter, for reposting links back to the video.

“This increases the relevancy of what we produce,” he says. “Because our content must often satisfy the demand of multiple viewing formats and types of audience.”

Ask them to watch — and rate.

When search engines see a video that has high ratings and a large volume of comments, it can place a higher value on your search results. Unfortunately, most people just say, “Check out our newest video!” and hope others like it enough to share it. Don’t leave things to chance; spell it out for them. When you promote your video to an audience, encourage viewers to rate the video too. The higher quality content, the higher the rating. And the higher the rating, the more likely it’s a video that gets viewed, commented on and shared.

The best-case scenario

In my book, the only thing more flattering than sharing a video is embedding it onto a website. A video that’s embedded on other sites goes a long way with search engines as well. So beyond embedding the video onto your own site and enabling social media sharing, make sure users can embed your video code into their sites. Then, track the number of times that video gets embedded on those other sites to get a continued measure of your video’s influence.

With an understanding of how the video platform fits into your overall brand strategy, you’ll see VSEO as a powerful tool for sharing content and engaging your audience.

Dan Gershenson is a Chicago-based brand strategy and marketing consultant who works primarily with small and mid-sized businesses. His column on branding and social media strategy appears on Crain’s blog for Chicago entrepreneurs on Wednesdays.

Reach Dan at Dan@ChicagoBrander.com and follow him on Twitter: @DanOnBranding.

Join Crain’s LinkedIn group for Chicago entrepreneurs. And stay on top of Chicago business with Crain’s free daily e-newsletters.

Crain’s small-business editor Ann Dwyer is on Google+.