Doing Sales Right: SCORE Chicago showcases Social Media Savvy
Chicago SCORE office shows it knows how to use social media and online approaches to drive new content to the people they serve.
2010-04-07
PrintSales Kickstart, a new small business webinar series, is profiling the hot and hip and sharp young companies out there that are doing it right and driving online sales. Counterintuitive Email Marketing: Stuff you can use today to nurture a relationship one step closer to a sale: starts on April 8th, Thursday.
I’ve not seen a lot of social media work from SCORE, the well known small business advisor program. When I received this info from SCORE Chicago, I was impressed. I asked for online sales success and they showed me how they are using Twitter, YouTube, and other tools to drive new traffic and awareness for the Chicago office.
They actually look at their customer/prospect touch program as continual programming. They have built a mailing list of both "in business" and "going into business" individuals. In addition, they have actively built a community of collaborators to get our resources visible. This can be super helpful to getting the word out.
In social media, their content creation begins with a live 25 minute cable access show that they do in collaboration with CAN TV. The interview questions are designed as answer bits and can be reused in several venues.
After the show is aired, it is posted up on BLIP.TV. Then they cut the show into segments, which is a great approach, so that it is easily consumable by people who are busy and don’t have a lot of time. Hats off there. The answer bits address specific issues that are of interest to small business, which are posted on their YouTube Channel. This channel is one of the larger small business channels in the world. I really liked this part: The links to the segments are also made available to various partners within the community for email marketing or embedding in their environments. That’s huge. I love that idea.
Of course, they maintain a blog. Links to video are added to emails that notify clients of upcoming workshops. Adding a link to an email, significantly improves click through. Various members of the Chicago community use the content to tweet and retweet.
The results: They shared that both client visits and workshop attendance is up significantly over last year. Although it was not in the original plan, they get over a thousand views each month from outside the Chicago area, and around the world. In a 3 month period, all 50 states and over 82 countries were reached.
I'd say they are doing online sales right.
TJ McCue is founder of the Sales Rescue Team.
I’ve not seen a lot of social media work from SCORE, the well known small business advisor program. When I received this info from SCORE Chicago, I was impressed. I asked for online sales success and they showed me how they are using Twitter, YouTube, and other tools to drive new traffic and awareness for the Chicago office.
They actually look at their customer/prospect touch program as continual programming. They have built a mailing list of both "in business" and "going into business" individuals. In addition, they have actively built a community of collaborators to get our resources visible. This can be super helpful to getting the word out.
In social media, their content creation begins with a live 25 minute cable access show that they do in collaboration with CAN TV. The interview questions are designed as answer bits and can be reused in several venues.
After the show is aired, it is posted up on BLIP.TV. Then they cut the show into segments, which is a great approach, so that it is easily consumable by people who are busy and don’t have a lot of time. Hats off there. The answer bits address specific issues that are of interest to small business, which are posted on their YouTube Channel. This channel is one of the larger small business channels in the world. I really liked this part: The links to the segments are also made available to various partners within the community for email marketing or embedding in their environments. That’s huge. I love that idea.
Of course, they maintain a blog. Links to video are added to emails that notify clients of upcoming workshops. Adding a link to an email, significantly improves click through. Various members of the Chicago community use the content to tweet and retweet.
The results: They shared that both client visits and workshop attendance is up significantly over last year. Although it was not in the original plan, they get over a thousand views each month from outside the Chicago area, and around the world. In a 3 month period, all 50 states and over 82 countries were reached.
I'd say they are doing online sales right.
TJ McCue is founder of the Sales Rescue Team.
