Most marketers in Advanced Manufacturing & Energy and other B2B segments are trying to figure out how best to use social media. With Twitter becoming a household word and LinkedIn and Facebook gaining users in the important 35-plus age category, the pressure is increasing to “do something.” Often compounding the sense of urgency is the loss of control as customers, distributors and employees start up blogs, groups or pages related to your business or products.
How do you get back control and deliver business value? Consider taking a cue from Levi Strauss. Just as Mr. Strauss made his fortune selling dry goods to miners rather than panning for gold, you can provide customers and business partners who are blogging, tweeting, poking and linking the tools to make their use of social media more enriching. You may not control the number of feeds and pages devoted to you or your products, but you can provide context to the conversation and strengthen relationships in the process.
Marketers in the Advanced Manufacturing and Energy industry who are interested in this supply-side approach should visit the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Social Media Resources page; a site increasing in popularity due to the recent H1N1 flu virus outbreak. Here, visitors can choose from a wide variety of social tools including blogs, eCards, YouTube videos, Flickr photos, podcasts, badges, buttons, widgets like the one you see below and syndicated content.
The CDC has an excellent social media strategy for communicating directly to consumers and this resources page enhances that effort by helping healthcare providers and organizations provide important, entertaining and accurate information to their friends, fans and followers. This ensures greater reach of the CDC’s messages and fulfills its mission of being the most credible source for health information in the U.S.
So if you find that your customers are mining social media for gold, consider offering them some supplies. Even if you’re strictly a B2B player, you can still be a source of better content and fun social interaction, and that may just be the solution for making more solid business connections in the Advanced Manufacturing & Energy marketplace.
(Guest contributor Ron Loch is a senior vice president at Gibbs & Soell Public Relations.)
Even as they continue to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, use less fossil-fuel-generated power and develop more sustainable products, many Advanced Manufacturing & Energy companies are grappling with how to communicate their business’s environmental story.
Our instincts as marketers and PR professionals tell us to shed the best possible light on sustainability efforts. Yet with so many companies making positive environmental claims, consumers have become skeptical and the media is quick to call out companies for “greenwashing.”
For some legal perspective on how to push the envelope without going too far, we caught up recently with Clifford P. Case III, co-head of the environmental practice at G&S client Carter Ledyard & Milburn LLP. He offered the following tips:
Establish an environmental baseline: So supportable statements can be made about the company’s “greenness,” progress over time can be measured, and valid comparisons made with competitors. Complicating this part of the task is the large number of standards in the marketplace, many of which are in a constant state of evolution.
Select Your Story: Once a careful foundation of environmental facts has been established and screened against governmental and non-governmental standards, communicators can publicize the “green” facts that will help their company and its products succeed in the marketplace.
Continue to Evolve: Bear in mind that the process is not static but ever-changing. New and more demanding environmental standards are constantly being developed. What was environmentally impressive yesterday may not be so tomorrow, and “greenness” is always being redefined. If a business wants to continue to be recognized as environmentally progressive, its management’s commitment to green principles must also be ongoing.
Of course, the process of actually adopting environmental practices and measuring results is much too complex to detail in this blog. But by sharing these three simple principles, hopefully we can help B2B communicators sleep a little better, knowing their green communications are accurate, defensible and immune to greenwashing challenges.
The buzz on the show floor at the WINDPOWER 2009 trade show continued Wednesday — albeit at a somewhat lighter pace than Tuesday — as thousands of visitors filled exhibits of companies throughout the supply chain.
As the show draws to a close tomorrow, the question becomes: how can renewable energy companies sustain the momentum created by the event? During two days of conversations with B2B PR and marketing communications professionals, it also became obvious that they have an additional question: how can they best capitalize on the power of digital and social media?
Interestingly, those two questions can be inter-related. Digital and social media – from podcasts and webinars to Twitter and LinkedIn – can be great tools for continuing dialogue with customers, prospects and other target audiences. The key is to let objectives, strategy and messaging drive the use of digital media tools. Too many companies seem to be diving into the digital media arena with little idea of where they are heading or why they are going there. By first establishing clear goals and a strategic approach, companies can select the right digital media tools and get the most impact from their communications investment.
As leaders throughout the supply chain head back to their respective homes, it is also important that they continue to support AWEA in efforts to push wind energy to the forefront across a wide spectrum of influencers — from government, to financial institutions to the general public. By generating a consistent level of coverage in the mainstream media, for example, the mix of household-name companies and emerging technology leaders that make up the wind industry can help create a higher level of overall awareness and credibility needed to achieve the objectives of 20% renewable energy by 2030.
Marketing and PR professionals at the WINDPOWER 2009 trade show in Chicago – which kicked off in earnest Tuesday – said they were very pleased with the results they were generating at the show thus far. Communicators we spoke with from throughout the supply chain said overall traffic was solid throughout the day, and that they were pleased to have the “right” prospects coming through their exhibits.
While a variety of factors have slowed the industry’s growth during the past several months, many PR and marketing professionals we spoke with put things into perspective. Many referenced just how much bigger the show is today versus only a couple years ago, while most expressed cautious optimism that improving economic conditions and pro-growth policies would soon begin to re-energize the industry’s growth.
That same optimism was evident in PR efforts, as a variety of companies used the show as a forum to announce new wind energy products and production facilities.
According to AWEA, approximately 17,000 attendees were expected at the show, which features nearly 1,200 exhibits.
Perhaps the one area for the show to improve from a PR and marketing standpoint is in the area of mainstream media. While the renewable energy trade media and a sampling of business outlets such as Reuters and Bloomberg were reporting from the show, it’s disappointing to see that more major news outlets are not covering this dynamic industry the way they do other emerging technologies – such as the extensive media coverage each year surrounding large technology trade shows. After all, it is this type of media exposure that could help the industry generate more widespread support and a positive regulatory environment that could more quickly create greater overall demand for wind energy.
Stay tuned — we’ll be reporting again from WINDPOWER 2009 on Wednesday.
The buzz on the show floor at the 
Marketing and PR professionals at the