Category Archives: Social Media

#IMTS – Everywhere You Look! #TBT Edition

Remember when IMTS 2014 announced their photo contest and we submitted this scrumptious morsel of photography??  For #TBT, I’d like to pay tribute to this delicious day in Bernard & Company history: “Chicago’s Favorites”  featuring Bernard & Company, IMTS, Portillo’s Chicago-Style Hot Dogs/Fries and Italian Beef Sandwiches, Lou Malnati’s Deep Dish Pizza and Garrett’s Chicago Mix Popcorn.

Click Photo to Enlarge Deliciousness

(Original Tweet here)

Ensuing food hangover included!

(Original Tweet here)

Keep warm and keep having fun, manufacturing world!

– n

IMTS – Everywhere You Look!

When IMTS 2014 announced their photo contest, we couldn’t wait to get to work!

#IMTS: Everywhere You Look – #Photo Contest! Send us your images spelling out I-M-T-S, we will choose our… http://t.co/pRbDeyo6NS

— IMTS 2018 (@IMTS_2018) February 24, 2014

@BernardandCo We are very excited to see how creative our #exhibitors will be. Can't wait to see your #IMTS photos! http://t.co/DRODctM0o0

— IMTS 2018 (@IMTS_2018) February 19, 2014

Presenting our entry:

“Chicago’s Favorites”  featuring Bernard & Company, IMTS, Portillo’s Chicago-Style Hot Dogs/Fries and Italian Beef Sandwiches, Lou Malnati’s Deep Dish Pizza and Garrett’s Chicago Mix Popcorn. What could be better?? Nothing, I tell ya.

Click Photo to Enlarge Deliciousness

Do NOT miss IMTS this upcoming September!! Our clients, including Siemens Machine Tools, Siemens Production Machining, Rattunde, Advanced Machine & Engineering, Heimatec, TCT Stainless, GMTA, Suhner and Chemtool will all be exhibiting!

And if the photo above did not leave you reaching for a napkin to wipe the drool, IMTS will be home to over 100,000 decision makers showing new manufacturing technology and ideas. So come on over to Chicago and get a taste of everything IMTS will have to offer!

Happy Father’s Day!

Father’s Day is this Sunday, June 15…

We did it for Mother’s Day, and now it’s dad’s turn. They’ll make you laugh, they’ll make you cry, they’ll make you appreciate dad more than ever before!

Here’s a collection of the best commercials/videos celebrating dads:

Dove’s #RealDadMoments

VISIONFUDGE – Dads Can’t

Google Chrome – Dear Sophie

Miller Lite – Here’s to Dad

American Greetings – The Dad Life Rap

And here’s a little extra:

25 Absolute Greatest Dad Jokes of All Time

** Happy Father’s Day!! **

Do you have must-see commercial to add?? Share the link in the comments below!

Guest Post: Stepping Up Our Marketing – Advanced Machine & Engineering

Advanced Machine & Engineering Co.

AME is taking it to the next level with Inbound Marketing + Social Media + CRM + Tradeshows.

Advanced Machine & Engineering Co. (AME) has achieved manufacturing excellence over the last few decades by providing some of the highest quality machine tool component products and services the market has to offer. Now, we are taking the next steps to improve our business and increase our market share even more. It hasn’t always been easy getting from where we were nearly 50 years ago to where we are now. But we can honestly say the hardest parts are behind us. You can only improve products and processes so much before there is little to no room left for improvements. Although we will continue to innovate further, we have successfully neared that point in our manufacturing processes for a few reasons.

First, we have implemented lean thinking principles which allow us to operate with less unnecessary expenses, for example, excess inventory and waste. Second, we have become a continuous improvement…

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Happy (Post) Mother’s Day!

Is there a better way to celebrate and honour Mother’s Day than to make you weep uncontrollably at your office desk?

I think not. Here’s a collection of the best commercials/videos celebrating moms:

Olympics P&G – Thank You Mom

Olympics P&G – Pick Them Back Up

Publix – Mother’s Day Commercial

Kobo – The Gift of Reading

Google – Here’s to Moms

#WorldsToughestJob

Video – Parents Announce New Baby; Daughter Has Best Reaction. Ever.

And then there’s this one. Disclaimer: this commercial is incredibly creepy. But also hilarious.

Old Spice – Momsong

** Happy Mother’s Day!! **

Do you have must-see commercial to add?? Share the link in the comments below!

Hi. I’m new here.

Hi!

Here I am. Marketing Information Specialist/Director of Social Media/Blogger all rolled into one – a perfect storm dynamic combo of job titles and caffeine.

Social media 101: Social media is, um – social. It’s engagement – it’s a conversation and I’m finding it difficult to have that conversation in 140 characters or less (à la Twitter). So, Hi. I’m new here. Offer me greetings of salutations below or on Twitter or Facebook. As an extended voice of our advertising/PR agency, I want to show you that there’s more than meets the “i” in our industrial world [haha – get it?]! And I’ll show it to you one blog post at a time. I mean for these posts to vary in levels of information and entertainment. After all, we’re not just PR robots here at Bernard & Co!

Say ‘hi’ NOW! Do it!

I just used 745 characters and it felt glorious. I love you, Twitter – but you can’t hold me back!

Do You Leave Your Presentations Unattended?

I had a speaking engagement today where I spoke about Social Media to a Human Resource association.  I was discussing how Twitter, blogging and YouTube work best when they go hand-in-hand with each other.  This topic came up here at work recently and this is how I put it into perspective:

When you develop a great video presentation and bring it to a trade-show or conference, you don’t just set it up on a table and leave it playing in a loop all by itself.  You don’t just start the presentation and leave it unattended do you?  Instead, you are there ready to greet people who show any interest in the presentation you are running.  You are there to answer questions, make conversation and interact with others. As we all know, this is called networking.  Likewise social media, when used correctly establishes this same type of interaction.  Videos on YouTube need to be associated with a website, or a blog where someone interested can go and interact and ask questions.  Once a connection is made and a conversation is started, it is just like you are standing together at the  trade-show, or in the conference room.  Here, in the discussion that evolves, whether it be virtual or in person, you will decide whether continuing a business relationship or not is in your best interest.  So in both scenarios (virtual or in person) the same objective is being met.

Likewise, it’s important that once you post something on YouTube you have methods in place to draw traffic to the video.  This is where your website, Facebook, Twitter and blog will play their part in this dance of getting your online presence noticed.  Social Media needs to work together and be in harmony with each other.  Working together is the key to the success of your social media campaign as well as your overall marketing plan.

We have a client who posts videos on YouTube, at the end of their Print Ads in the trade magazines we print: “see our videos on YouTube”… how is that for the evolution of the ad/PR world?  We now have our traditional print ads referring potential clients (and anyone else who is interested) to our client’s online presence.  At least for right now, it seems you can’t effectively have one without the other.

-Wendy

If You Build it, They will Come…

I have seen many businesses that looked at social media as a passing phase… at least they were crossing their fingers and hoping it was.  Others felt it wasn’t relevant to their type of business.  This way of thinking has led to them simply “dabbling” in social media.  Ultimately, they end up neglecting it and concluding “it doesn’t work”.  When a business chooses to simply dabble or chooses to outsource social media negative results are almost always a certainty.

It is very common for us to hear “My son (or daughter) set up our Facebook page (twitter account, blog etc) but nothing ever came of it.”  You cannot have an “if you build it, they will come” mentality when it comes to social media.

Your online presence needs to be built, given life and then it needs to be nurtured so it stays alive and grows bigger and stronger.

When a business jumps on the social media bandwagon they need to really wrap their minds around what that means and all that this new endeavor entails.  It is not as quick and easy as jumping on Twitter or posting a blog once in a while.  It’s not about someone who already has a full time job at your company spending a few minutes each week, “checking things out“.   Here is the truth about social media: the beginning, the setting it up is actually the least time consuming and the easiest part.  Why?  because no one has found you yet and no one has started to communicate and interact with you yet.   You are also not developing content, researching what’s being said and what are good, relevant things for you to be talking about.  Getting content out into the world takes time.  What are people interested in and talking about?  How do you or your clients contribute to that conversation?  This is not about selling products it is about participating in a conversation so you become the “go to” person for information and guidance in the world that your business is part of.  I hear people say all the time, “what’s the big deal?  I’ll just throw some things up on twitter once in a while and blog once in a while.” Sure, that is great if you want to use social media as an outlet for your daily ponderings… but if you want to get paying clients out of it, it’s a whole different ball-game.

So, assuming you are going to get with the social media game here are somethings to consider.  This is a full-time commitment, it is your choice to spread it out over a few people who each work on it a little each day or each week or assign one person this task as their full-time job.   If you choose the route of using multiple people, be sure they are  communicating with each other or have a schedule.  The last thing you want is for everything to go unattended because everyone though someone else was doing it.  Regardless of whether you have one person or a team here is a little help to guide you in choosing the individuals for the job:

• Make sure they have a good grasp on social media and how the internet works
• Make sure they know your products and services as well as your client’s products and services if you are mainly B2B.
• Make sure they know you products and your consumers needs and lifestyle (outside your product).  For example if you are a store that sells Kayaks don’t just blog or tweet about your products, blog and tweet about what your customers are interested in.  For example, blog and tweet about great Kayaking vacation spots.  Expand your blogs and tweets outside your world, but within the world of your customers interests and your knowledge base.
• Be sure they know how to write!
• They also need to be good at dialog.  Social Media is not about putting information out into the world, it is about establishing relationships and starting conversations.  When you put something out there and someone comments on it, that is an opportunity for connection and to open a dialog.
• Be sure they are passionate about what they do.

In the PR/ad world,  we need to maintain this knowledge for our business to grow, but we also need to be a source and knowledge base for our clients so they can to look to us for expertise and guidance.  How do we do this?  We need to know about, speak about and write about anything and everything that is relevant to our world as well as theirs.  We also need to know where our clients need to have a presence in order for social media to work for them.  They look to us for knowledge and guidance and as their ad/PR agency; we better know what we are talking about.

Right now, the topic that is being thrown around by our clients in the Industrial world is “pull all of our ads in the trade magazines and focus all on the internet”, or “forget the internet we’ve done just fine with the trade magazines”.  We strongly recommend a balance of the two… but that’s a blog for another day.

-Wendy

Social Media… Productive & Profitable Playing…

Several clients have appointed designated hitters for the internet blogs and especially the engineering chat areas of publication websites.

We applaud this action, especially in this economy.

One client said to me, during a meeting where I was encouraging this tactic, “Tim, how can I take a very busy engineer or sales guy away from customers and quoting to play on the internet?”

After I calmed down, I explained to him that:

• It’s not play, especially when problem solving is involved.
• It’s not play, when relationships are being formed with potential customers, even those, scratch that, especially those who don’t know your company.
• It’s not play, when a member of your team is quickly perceived as a go-to guy online by key players in your market and among your peers.
• Even if it IS play, it’s productive play.  Didn’t your mother teach you the value of THAT??

Seriously, since very little is new under the sun, this is just the new version of that longtime and revered guy at every company, the one people flocked to see at trade shows.

Two quick examples:

We had a client (sadly passed away) who invented polymer quenchants for commercial heat treating.  This ancient industry used water and oil, mostly, as it had for literally centuries.  People would come to the trade shows and actually wait in line to see the guy.  Then, with almost papal severity, he would lean into them, listen to their quenching problem, ponder it for a moment and then put his finger in their chest and say, “OK, here’s what you do…”

We have a current client who runs what is arguably the finest gear company on the planet.  He’s also a world-class fly fisherman.  He stands in the aisles and goes “casting for customers,” as he says.  When he arrives at a show or conference, you’d think Ghandi had walked into the room…with Mother Teresa on his arm!  Talk about drawing a crowd.  His theory evokes the old John Kennedy line that a rising tide lifts all boats.  He actually shows customers, prospects AND his competitors his operation and his p&l.  His company currently exports high-precision gears worldwide, including to China!

The internet guru at your company can be a powerful force for growth and a true agent of change for your business and the industry as a whole.  Don’t overlook the possibilities or think that it’s just playtime!  When a “social” network has a tangible business upside, that’s a game we’d all like to join!
TD