tJP

I decided to run one more set of numbers on my LinkedIn connections and their Blogging and Twittering relationships. Bottom line is that in this sample you will have 62% more connections in LinkedIn than the average. If you blog and tweet then there are 82% more connections. Just blog and its slightly less than the average. Go figure!

                                                  Average LI Connections

LinkedIn Connections                         154

Also Tweet                                            251

Also Blog                                               147

Blog & Tweet                                       281

Future Plans to Blog/Tweet             148

Note: For ‘highly connected” LI users I have used 500 as the max although it may be much higher.

Here are the results of the quick survey I ran of the overlap of LinkedIn usage and the use of Twitter and Blogging. Headlines are that 29% of my 398 LI contacts responded( thanks all). About 30% of the respondents currently do either blogging or tweeting with the combination of both being the largest. Details and thoughts below:

LinkedIn Contacts 398   % Resp
Blog & Tweet             15     13%
Blog Only                      8       7%
Tweet Only                12    10%
Plans to                         9      8%
Don’t Blog or Tweet  73    62%
Responses                 117   29%

Quite a number of you had future plans. I had many comments as well as Yes/No answers. Appears many are too busy to turn on another channel of communications with email already considered a ’significant other’ in life. It would appear that the greater the use of of LI to connect with your network the more likely you are to use Twitter or to Blog. People are using Twitter as a hybrid personal/business tool whereas blogging is mainly used as a business tool.

 People are using these channels to work with and converse with their communities. Whereas blogging has comments that people are or are not using it, Twitter solicited many responses along the lines of ‘can’t see the point’ that is worth mentioning.

Note: the majority of my LI network are business contacts in the marketing and sales field and would have personally met 95%+ ( i.e. I am not an open networker).

According to IBIS World there are a number of industries that will not only ride out the current recession, but also benefit from it. Here is a list of the Australian economy’s 10 fastest employment growth industries for 2009 that are looking to expand despite current forecasts:

• Recycling Collectors
• Private School Teachers
• Online Information Providers
• Road Construction Workers
• Cosmetics Retailers
• Cosmetics Manufacturing
• Grain and Livestock Farmers
• Health Providers
• Rail Network Providers
• Internet Service Providers

Attended the Sydney CeBIT yesterday and Tim Sheedy of Forrester called it the “Long Tail of IT vendors” I thought he was being too kind, it took me back 20 years to a time when the PC market had not yet migrated from small enthusiast market to the high street retailer. Appeared to me that the guy with a beard and a waistline above the recommended 94cm was back in fashion.

CeBIT was about a large number of bored people wandering around a maze of 3*3 stands trying to avoid the mass of even more bored exhibitors( few of whom had ever seen the John Cleese video on successful exhibitions). The few highlights included some free coffee machines and the usual dolly girls( but car companies do that much better).

Why was it so boring? Firstly there were few ‘hero’ vendors there to give us any confidence - Google and salesforce were half hearted sharing a small stand, SAP had some carpet with some researchers but no sight of Microsoft, HP, Asus, Apple, HP etc. I did manage to talk a client out of exhibiting as they had little success in previous attendances and one of their foundation ideas for attendance was that “A lot of high-level CIO’s have been retrenched and we could meet them at CeBIT”. Not sure that there were any CIO’s.

It was not all bad, some of the Web 2.0 stuff was good and pretty localised so you can parachute in and out. There was lots of SEO, Security and web content management tools.

So why do exhibitors still come? Likely that they have no ‘good’ marketing the rest of the year, so they don’t have a decent database to market to. So at least they can meet some new people and maybe connect with someone that maybe one day might become a lead.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on major changes in the loyalty card market. The Fly Buys programme has been around for years and has 8m members. Its owned by Coles/Wesfarmers and nab. This programme has been a long and tortured series of missed opportunities.

Fly Buys is only now moving to tailored offers based on purchasing history - which is a tragedy. Some 4 years ago dunnhumby the British analytics company behind the Tesco Clubcard had a pilot team in Melbourne to help do this but Coles did not have the foresight to go forward. The early mover advantage seems to have passed them by and Woolworths have started their loyalty programme and are currently building an analytics team.

The Tesco programme is recognised as the global gold standard, with 2.5m offers made monthly with a rumoured 20% redemption rates. This is done and maintained through a consistent and measured programme and supported by competitive pricing.

The challenge as noted in the SMH article is for Fly Buys to reposition itself from a flight points based loyalty programme to something a bit more flexible with shorter ‘time to benefit’.

http://business.smh.com.au/business/coles-goes-cold-on-frequ
ent-flyer-scheme-20090512-b1uy.html

This post is addressing various areas of how Twitter and then other social tools can help generate leads.

 This is not for the ‘make myself a millionaire’ in 6 weeks brigade. This is for serious B2B lead generation - that is lead gen for capital goods, selling to big companies in a targeted fashion.

It usually requires steps such as:

• Identifying the ideal customer
• Developing a list of ideal customers
• Identifying the key decision makers and influencers in these target companies
• Getting their names, email addresses, phone numbers, identifying their needs and developing problems for them( only problems get fixed and funded)
• Making contact and promoting the problem and then your solution to the point that its painful and funded
• Winning the deal
• Implementing the solutions you sell

This is usually broken down into lead capture, lead nurture, lead score and hand-off to sales steps. There is also the concept of reusing leads that ‘leak’ out of the funnel.