Whether you are managing single or integrated search engine marketing (SEM) programs, here are some tips:

• Think like a prospect. List terms or phrases that you think prospective customers may use when searching for products or services like yours on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other common search engines. Based on your sales geography, you may have to consider regionalizing your terms or phrases, for example “computer repair phila”. Then expand your list to include relevant variations including alternate spellings (e.g. philadelphia, philly), plurals, and synonyms. Typically we don’t factor company names among our top keywords, mainly because you should be using SEM to attract new audiences.
• Be specific. Consider geography and industry to help narrow searches. Keywords that are too broad can lower your performance by generating many search engine results and ad impressions but few clicks. For example, using the generic keyword “project management” to promote information technology services could show your ad to users searching for unrelated items like job postings for available project management positions or construction-related project management. To make your keywords more specific, add words that are descriptive of your products or services. Instead of using the keyword “project management”, try more relevant and descriptive keywords like “IT project management”, “IT project management phila”, or “IT project management services phila”. Or maybe you are selling software into a specific industry that is not limited by geographical boundaries. For example, if you sell product design software specifically to engineers in the Aerospace & Defense industry, you may consider a keyword like “product design software A&D”.
• Use quality over quantity. Having hundreds of keywords is not considered valuable for two reasons: 1) it is difficult to measure your performance and 2) it is time-consuming to manage. To help avoid a bulky and ineffective keyword list, we recommend that you remove duplicate phrases like “software” and “Software” because the common search engines and SEM systems are not case-sensitive. As a best practice to improve overall performance, we typically recommend that you choose four top keywords that best represent your offerings, and no more than twenty keywords overall that can be utilized based on the topic and the specific SEM program.

Many companies today have already jumped on the social networking bandwagon—or plan to soon. But most of those companies aren’t really sure why they did or if they should. Of course you don’t want be left behind or passed by. But is that enough to justify B2B social networking? And, sure, it’s free. But is it effective?

We are constantly coming across B2B companies—our clients—at this crossroad, trying to determine whether or not social media is for them. And so we’d like to share our experience and insights based on ongoing feedback from our clients in case you find yourself in the same quandary.

With this in mind, we’ve compiled our Top 5 factors for you to consider—a starting point in determining (or re-evaluating) whether or not social media really is right for you.

1. Community: Leverage what you know about your customers, colleagues and peers to determine whether or not your community is ready to receive you via social media networks. A lack of subscribers means your foray into social media will be a flop. And even if you decide your community is ready for social networking, be sure to set their expectations of how to use social media, what they will find and with what frequency. This will remove any possible misunderstandings or barriers of use.
2. Content: Remember, this is B2B. We’re not dealing with shiny new iPads here. So ask yourself, do you have something absolutely gripping to share? Will you continue to have gripping things to share in the future? You need to be sure that what you are plugging is not only compelling but that you will be able to generate enough fresh, compelling content to populate your Facebook, Twitter, blog, etc. regularly. This does not mean quarterly. This means weekly… or maybe even daily! You need to condition your audience that it is actually worth their while to visit not just every once and a while, but with great frequency. This requires not only creativity, but a significant amount of time, as well. Which brings me to…
3. Commitment: If you decide to make your presence known across social networks you cannot do so haphazardly. You must be present consistently. Your content must be fresh and compelling. You must keep your community hooked. As I’ve mentioned this takes time. You must have the resources available and be dedicated to reliably generating content that is new, different, exciting, worth reading and following.
4. Commentary: Many social forums, like Facebook and blogs, enable and encourage your reader to interact and offer comments. This can really work for you, but it could also work against you. Comments can also turn into another “c”… criticisms. Indeed, constructive critiques help us be better innovators—improve our products and services. But do you want to give a potentially jilted client a platform to air every gripe, whether or not it’s founded? With blogs you do maintain some control over comments posted, but managing comments take time (again, see Factor #3.)
5. Conversion: As with any marketing program, you need to be able to yield some form of metrics (quantitative or qualitative) to hold up against what you’d previously deemed markers of success. This allows you to measure and refine programs. Measuring the success of your social media commitments is not necessarily straightforward. What’s important to you? The overall number of subscribers? The number of subscribers who follow you with regularity? The number of “click throughs” to your corporate site? Your community’s level of interaction? Be sure you have a strong sense of what you consider to be important so that you will be able project whether or not you’ll able to meet or exceed your goals… and so you’ll be able to determine if you’ve hit your mark should you decide to proceed/continue with social networking.

No matter where you are in your assessment—deciding whether or not to proceed or continue with social media—use these Top 5 factors as guides to be sure to so you know what you are getting into and why.

My three collaboration points start here:

1. Keep R&D innovating paced by ongoing collaborations with field sales on customer feedback, market demand, and competitive landscapes—preferably led by a product manager. This answers “what customers will buy versus what they expect under maintenance, can it be built, and do we have the resources to deliver on-time”.
2. Leverage Sales to validate R&D’s direction, help set the pricing model, and prepare current customers and prospects in advance of their opportunities. This answers “can we properly package so customers and prospects will buy with little objection, and will we have buyers when the product is available”.
3. Engage Marketing early to help set the launch date and to elevate the vision into sales support tools, web content, proactive PR, and demand-creation campaigns to suspect buyers. This answers “can we upsell customers, push prospects, and attract new audiences”.

Without cadence and before you know it, you are being pressured by current users for the next software release promise. That becomes a real pickle for your sales team!

You know what the real barrier to all of this working smoothly is? It’s not what you might think. What we’ve come to find is that internal communications (or miscommunications) tend to be the real hang up when it comes to conveying the external message out to the market. In a world inundated with iPhones and BlackBerrys and millions of social networking mediums, communication has become easy, instantaneous, constant… but also overwhelming. It seems our modern world of communication provides many forums but lacks EFFECTIVENESS.

With the onslaught of information at our fingertips and ever decreasing attention spans (made even shorter by Twitter) we’ve found it’s hard to get/keep someone’s attention long enough to read and absorb a simple email. We’re not the first to say it but it is true. Ease of communication has led to over-communication which backfired resulting in an inability to communicate clearly and directly with colleagues and clients. This, obviously, makes it difficult to keeping moving the ball forward.

But we’re communications experts and we’ve adapted to ensure our message is conveyed precisely. We’ve employed, and recommend you do the same, new tactics when it comes to our internal communications. Our approach is one where less is more. And when all else fails go face-to-face. If I can’t convey what I need to in three sentences or less, I make the call instead. I put the action item in the subject line. I use bold text or yellow highlighter to call-out the “need to knows” knowing that my reader will skim the contents of my emails. No doubt we all enjoy and rely upon innovative means of communicating—but you must use these advancements methods thoughtfully or your message is sure to be lost in the virtual abyss.