OH: Every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question "How do we tweet?" the second by the question "Why do we blog?" and the third by the question "Where shall we have the next social campaign?"

 

We are here to see humans move from why to where!

Success factors for a B2B blog: Emerson Process Experts

“Process Control and Industrial Automation” is the last place to expect social media tools being used for marketing and research. The Emerson Process Experts blog with 40,000 monthly visitors, more than 1000 RSS subscribers and most importantly 10-15 prospective sales and information inquiries a week is an instructive example of social media engagement in the B2B systems and solutions industry. These numbers are very important for an industry with sales cycles that hover around 2 years! We spoke with Jim Cahill the person behind this blog, about what worked. Here are a few of our takeaways for B2B social media initiatives:

1. Define goals

A key purposes of a “Brand” is to reduce the search costs for the end consumer. “Share of mind” is a major criteria in the CPG arena, but, in the high stakes B2B world, we are dealing with buyers with more search tools than just their memory. To reduce their search costs sometimes means to literally reduce their Google search costs! This was the premise that Jim Cahill started with in 2004. Just a few keyword searches on Google made it evident that buyers looking for Emerson’s services were ending up on blogs and websites that Emerson had no control over.

If you look at the diagram below, Emerson Process Experts goal can be defined as Building Awareness and online presence to route inbound traffic. Putting Emerson’s talent out in front of the world, on a leading tech blog, would slowly but surely build Emerson’s brand equity.

2. Perseverance

Jim felt that Emerson was not only a market leader, but also a thought leader. That is where the idea of the Emerson Process Experts blog, a content based platform to bringing together Emerson experts, customers and the industry experts, was born. Everyone appreciated the idea but in in Jim’s words:

Nobody was saying no, but nobody was ready to give a go ahead for the blog !

Emerson Process competes in a very ‘traditional’, ’safety driven’ and ’standardized’ industry, therefore, the first major hurdle from the execution point of view was to convince the management and the legal teams at the corporate office that a blog would not be “the end of the world”. Initially, there was a fear that two-way discussion through blogging might be detrimental for a marketing organization that worked only in broadcast mode. On Steve Rubel’s advice they introduced blogging software on there intranet. The Google bots that crawled the intranet showed expert blogs at the top for most internal search results. This was the push that they needed to get the green light for this initiative.

3. Content

As Jim began the process to build a resource library to share Emerson Process’ expertise, across various domains, the initial goal was to have 2-3 content driven blogs per week sharing presentation, podcasts, as well as contact information for these ‘Experts’. The initial success criteria established for the blog was to rank among the top searches for keywords that their clients were expected to use. Selection of the right blogging platform goes a long way in publishing content that is optimized for the search engine.

“Mention in the Wall Street Journal and popular social media book like ‘Groundswell’ really helped in the process.”- Jim Cahill

4. Soft Metrics

From a measurement and ROI perspective ,the first few months were a calibration and benchmarking period. The team monitored the visits and RSS subscriptions. But the real question was how to quantify it. The 40000 monthly hits or the 1000+ subscribers were not the answer. As the blog became the face of the organization Jim began to receive a dozen or so weekly prospective emails and calls, this eventually became the soft metric for measuring success. In Jims own words:

What’s Golden is something like the email I got from a major Oil Company talking about :
“I didn’t realize that you guys did greenfield work on main automation contractor project. If you are not too busy, could you send somebody to discuss?”
In the oil industry with its large capital projects and multi-year sales cycles, to be able to sit down with the clients from the very inception of a project is very different from responding to a specification where one of the competitors has set the vision and we try to respond to it.

This visibility in the new media channels has naturally brought Emerson more coverage in the trade press, communities and other traditional PR vehicles.
Another notable soft metric: Jim spends more than 40% of his time creating content, listening to the response and engaging with the community. In other words blogging is not a side activity that would happen on its own, it needs to be one of the primary measurable responsibilities for a marketer, as the old adage goes “what gets measured, is what gets done.”

5. Sow the seeds for Groundswell and be ready to be surprised

The visibility of the Emerson Process Experts has been a catalyst for the groundswell within the organization. The team also provides support in terms of software installation and advice to other blogs within Emerson (Modeling and Control, Global Life Sciences,Process Control Musings etc.) that have come up over the years.
With the benefits of being at the surface becoming clearer within the organization, employees on their own initiative are participating on twitter, facebook and LinkedIn groups to listen to what customers and other experts have to say. The diagram bellow tries to illustrate the interactions that Emerson Process Experts seems to have catalyzed :

Finally, to most of us, process control and industrial automation is not the sexiest of industries out there, but leveraging social tools can change perceptions ;) .

You know what is the difference between you and me? I make this look good.
- Agent J, MIB

Jim Cahill is the “Chief Blogger” for Emerson Process Experts.

Emerson Electric Co. (EMR) is a diversified industrial conglomerate with FY2009 revenues of $20.9B and net income of $1.7B. Emerson Process Management is one of the eight business segments of Emerson, accounting for 29.6% ($6.2B) of the revenues in FY2009.

Posted: February 17th, 2010 | Tags: , , | Comments: Comments