The following is a look at why the answer might be maybe.

1.  Fear is holding back adoption.

In general engineers don’t have a lot of spare time on their hands.  Part of the reason for the lack of time on their hands to engage in social networking can be attributed to their inability to get to social media. The SAE’s Do mobility engineers use social media? study surveyed nearly 1200 members and found only 55% said they use social media for work and only 52% of companies permit social media use during business hours.

Additionally, MarketingProfs What Works in 2011: B2B Marketing report finds that the number of companies restricting social media use is growing. Facebook, while the most popular of the social networking channels, is also the most blocked by companies.

Security and over exposure of information are the Top 2 fears of companies according to McAfee Inc.‘s Web 2.0: A Complex Balancing Act – The First Global Study on Web 2.0 Usage, Risks and Best Practices Report. The study found over 60% of the respondents stated their company suffered losses averaging of $2 million related to security issues.

Here are a few more facts from the McAfee Report.

• 60% of companies reported that the most significant consequence from inappropriate Web 2.0 and social media usage is loss of reputation, brand, client or confidence.
• 1/3 of respondents reported unplanned investments related to “work arounds” related to social media in the workplace.
• 14% of organizations reported litigation or legal threats caused by employees disclosing confidential or sensitive information, with more than 60% of those threats caused by social media disclosures.
• 13% of organizations block all Web 2.0 activity while 81% restrict the use of at least one Web 2.0 tool because they’re concerned about security.
• 25% of organizations monitor how staff use social media
• 66% have introduced social media policies
• 71% of which use technology to enforce social media policies.

Panda Security’s 1st annual Social Media Risk Index reported 1/3 of SMBs experienced a malware or virus infection via social networks through July of 2010, and 23% actually lost sensitive data via these networks.

2.  Too few companies have a social media plan in place.

In Why Social Media Projects Fail?, the Brand Science Institute at the University of Hamburg found that:

• 81% of all companies don‘t have a clear social media strategy in place.
• Corporations take twice as long as start-ups to implement social media projects.
• Only 7% of all companies understand the value of customer interactions.
• Only 27% of all companies have a clear understanding of their customers.

KingFish Media’s 2010 Social Media Usage, Attitudes and Measurability study found that only 43% believe they need to show a positive ROI to obtain social media funding. This is supported by SocialMediaExaminer.com’s 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report that finds only 1 in 3 marketers indicated measuring results and identifying the best practices were top of mind questions. Harvard Business Review found 75% of companies they surveyed didn’t know where their most valuable customers were talking about them, 31% of companies don’t measure effectiveness of social media and only 23% are using social media analytic tools.

If you aren’t measuring ROI or return-on-engagement, how can you determine if social media is working — even if you have a plan?

3.  Companies and their target audience aren’t engaging.

Engagement and social networking success go hand-in-hand, but the numbers show that companies and their target audience aren’t engaging for various reasons.

WhiteHorse “B2B Goes Social” study finds that only 32% of B2B companies engage daily this could be due to the lack of a person or team dedicated to social media. The KingFish Media study found that only 9% of respondents said they have a dedicated person for social media.

In a December 2010 survey, RSW/US found only 36% of Facebook users are somewhat to very active, for LinkedIn it was 33% and for Twitter it was 15%.  This trend is supported by a recent WebTrends study that found 51% of Facebook users and 8% of Twitter users are engaged daily. GlobalSpec’s Social Media Use in the Industrial Sector Report shows that industrial professionals only participate in social media a few times per year.

SAS & Harvard Business Review’s The New Conversation: Taking Social Media Talk to Action study found that the manufacturing sector is less likely to use social media and are not really engaged. The study found that 45% of manufacturers are currently using social media, 19% plan to use, and 32% aren’t currently using and have no plans to use social media.

The study also found that 26% of organizations use 3 social media channels. They found the two most common combinations are blogs + social networking + multimedia sharing (36%) and blogs + social networking + microblogs (35%)

As of January 2011, manufacturing makes up 9.5% of LinkedIn’s 101 million worldwide membership, but is only 7.5% of the North American 47.9 million members. Engineers are 8.6% of the worldwide membership and 6.9% of North American membership.

4. Older workforce doesn’t social network.

Pew Global Attitude Project’s Global Publics Embrace Social Networking study found there is a large age gap in the usage of social networking in the United States: 77% of 18–29 year old, 55% of 30–49 year old and 23% of 50+ use social networking. So with the average age of a manufacturing sector employee being 50, it’s no wonder social networking engagement is limited within the industrial sector.

We believe that social media does have a role in your marketing communications — as well as human resource, customer service, business development and product development among others — efforts  and can be successful in the industrial sector, however, just like any other form of marketing communications:

• You must know your target audience, where they are going to get their information and where they are talking about you, and how to engage them;
• You must have the resources  — financial and human — to devote to engaging your target audience regularly, if not daily;
• Your messages must be timely and relevant; and
• You must have a social media plan that fits your company’s core values and integrates with your other online and offline marketing communications initiatives.

Our blog post Before You Leap Into Social Media & Networking provides a 6-step process for developing a social media plan that will allow manufacturers to be successful using social media to connect with their stakeholders. If you need assistance in developing and implementing an engaging social media plan, contact us and ask for one of our marketing communications experts.

© 2011, Jeff Klingberg. ©2011. All Rights Reserved. Mountain Stream Group, Inc.

Mountain Stream Group created this illustration for White Hydraulics (now known as White Drive Products) for use in an print advertisement.

© 2011, Jeff Klingberg. ©2011. All Rights Reserved. Mountain Stream Group, Inc.

Mountain Stream Group’s development of this 4-page cross reference guide for Ortman Fluid Power started with an Internet search to ascertain all the manufacturers of NFPA heavy duty, hydraulic cylinders. Next, we downloaded catalog information about the part number coding for the various mounting styles, identified the series name and available bore sizes and then put the data into the easy to read table.

© 2011, Jeff Klingberg. ©2011. All Rights Reserved. Mountain Stream Group, Inc.

© 2011, Jeff Klingberg. ©2011. All Rights Reserved. Mountain Stream Group, Inc.

The origins of the Ortman Fluid Power cylinder line — the 101 Series, a round-body hydraulic and pneumatic cylinder. For over 60 years it has powered some of the toughest industrial applications.

After a long absence the hydraulic and pneumatic cylinder brand known as Ortman Fluid Power is back.

Their journey began in 1945 when World War II veterans Harold and Nelson Ortman returned home joining their older brother Alva, Carl Speichert and Carter Miller to form Ortman-Miller Machine Company, Inc. located in Hammond, Indiana.

At its inception, Ortman-Miller was a general machine shop making parts for other companies, but in 1948 they began building and selling cylinders for a wide variety of industries. Their first cylinder line was the round-body 101 Series. In 1955, they introduced three square-head, JIC interchangeable cylinder lines—TH, 4K and 4L Series.  They expanded their NFPA pneumatic cylinder offering by introducing the 1A Series in 1971. Over the past several years, they’ve broadened their product line with the addition of the AS/ASH and QA Series.

Beyond their standard cylinder lines, they have 3 specialty products: the FA Series valve actuator cylinder, the 7R Series air/oil tank and the 7P Series air/oil booster. If their customers have applications that don’t fit standard product options, they can build custom cylinders.

In 1968, Garlock Industries purchased Ortman-Miller Machine Company and several founders left. The journey took a twist in 1976 when Colt Industries (now known as EnPro Industries) bought Garlock Industries and changed the company name to Ortman Fluid Power. It changed course again in 1997 when they left their Hammond facility, and moved in with Quincy Compressor in Quincy, Illinois. Then came the name change to Quincy Ortman Cylinders in 2004.

The 2010 purchase of Quincy Compressor by Atlas Copco North America LLC began to bring the journey full circle and it was completed in March of 2011 when the brand name became Ortman Fluid Power once again.

Now that’s staying power.

© 2011, Jeff Klingberg. ©2011. All Rights Reserved. Mountain Stream Group, Inc.

S-C-I-E-N-C-E
S-C-I-E-N-C-E
S-C-I-E-N-C-E
Science! Science! Science!

Cheerleaders for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)? Absolutely! It’s about time!

The United States is at a crossroads. Battling for its survival, and desperately needs a quintessential American pep rally.

We can’t secure a prosperous future without innovation, science, and technology. But, we have three major STEM problems — rapid retirement, supply lags demand and kids aren’t interested.

Between 2004 and 2014, it is estimated a half million engineers will retire, but EngineeringTrends, an engineering education consulting group, reports that engineering supply lags demand by 7 years in the United States.

The reason for the lag in supply versus demand is because while the number of students receiving bachelor’s degrees overall in the U.S. has increased by more than 50%, the number of students earning bachelor’s degrees in engineering has declined by almost 3% over the past two decades according to the National Science Board’s Science and Engineering (S&E) Indicators 2008.

The American Society for Engineering Education reports U.S. engineering enrollment grew to 403,000 in 2008 with 74,000 graduates receiving bachelor’s degrees, but that’s far less than Japan’s over 430,000 engineering students in 2005 and 100,000 bachelor’s degrees in 2002, and China’s 250,000 bachelor’s degrees in 2002. India is graduating more engineers than the US, but how many more is open to interpretation of available data.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reports worldwide the average number of first-time graduates in science and engineering as a percentage of total first-time graduates is 23%. China (~40%), Korea (~40%), Germany (30%), and Japan (25%) are above the average, while the U.S. is below the average at just over 15%.

The U.S. lags behind other industrialized and developing countries for several reasons.

Reason 1: Only 7 out of 10 students who enter the U.S. school system graduate high school, according several studies including Editorial Projects in Education Research Center.

Reason 2: Less than 3.5% (or just over 100,000) of the 2.7 to 2.9 million high school graduates go into engineering programs. A 2008 Harris Interactive/American Society for Quality study found this lack of interest can be attributed to the following.

Forty-four percent of kids, ages 8–17, don’t know much about engineering, and 85% of the respondents want a more exciting profession than engineering. While 97% of parents stated they believe that knowledge of math and science will help their children have a successful career, only 20% encourage/will encourage their sons or daughters to become engineers.

The study further reports that kids don’t feel confident enough in their math or science skills (21%) to be good at engineering — despite the fact that the largest number of kids ranked math (22%) and science (17%) as their favorite subjects.

Reason 3: There are large enrollment declines in years 2, 3 and 4, especially in underrepresented minorities.

Factors leading to the enrollment declines include the high cost — upwards of $50,000 per year — of engineering schools, the need for remediation in math (15%) and science (8%), too much theory being taught in the first year, and the perceived lack of quality of professors, according to S&E Indicators.

As you can see from the aforementioned numbers, for the security and prosperity of the United States, we need to get students interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. So please join us and the Science Cheerleaders in letting out a loud cheer.

S-C-I-E-N-C-E
S-C-I-E-N-C-E
S-C-I-E-N-C-E
Science! Science! Science!

And, let’s show our future how exciting and rewarding a career in science, technology, engineering and math can be.

© 2011, Jeff Klingberg. ©2011. All Rights Reserved. Mountain Stream Group, Inc.

For several years now we have been sending our clients invoices by email, and have been accepting credit cards through PayPal. While this has been greatly appreciated by our clients, they’ve asked for more options. So, we’re pleased to announce the addition of two new online invoice payment options — Intuit Payment Network and NOCA Secure Check.

With the addition of these payment methods, our clients now have multiple options to choose from when paying their invoices:

1. corporate or cashier’s checks through postal mail,
2. credit cards through PayPal,
3. ACH or bank-to-merchant electronic payments through Intuit Payment Network or
4. secure electronic checks through NOCA Secure Check.

All of the online payment methods are free of charge to our clients.

We will be adding links to our invoices — as they become available for our accounting system — that will let you select which online payment methods, if any, you’d like to use. In the meantime, if you are interested in using any of the online payment methods let us know and we’ll make the arrangements. If you have any questions or would like more information about our payment methods please contact us at info (at) mountainstreamgroup.com or call Jeff Klingberg at +1 847 453 8895 x701.

© 2010 — 2011, Jeff Klingberg. ©2011. All Rights Reserved. Mountain Stream Group, Inc.

We will be assisting them in developing a public relations campaign and trade show efforts among other services.

© 2010 — 2011, Jeff Klingberg. ©2011. All Rights Reserved. Mountain Stream Group, Inc.

A recent LinkedIn post asked for experiences from foreign national corporations who have had trouble introducing their products and services to the North American market. From our experience in this area, foreign national corporations typically encounter the following issues.

1. Send a foreign national to open the operation just because someone believes there is a large untapped market in North America, but no research is done and no plan is formulated before coming.

2. They attempt to apply their current sales policies and distribution channels they utilize in their home country in North America, which typically is unsuccessful.

3. They send people to manage the North American operations who have little to no understanding of the culture, and given limited time and resources to learn it.

4. If they hire a Canadian or United States national to manage their operation, there is a communication issue between the North American operation and the home country. Typically, the reason is the North American operation does not have a seat at the executive table when decisions are made, and little training or effort was given to introduce this person to their new employer.

5. Very limited financial and human resources are allocated for operations, sales and marketing — especially sales and marketing.

6. No or limited inventory of product is on hand in Canada or the United States and long lead times to get product sold to North America.

7. Cut and run. For as much as foreign corporations talk about managing for the long term, they tend to apply short term thinking when entering the North American market, which leads to huge turnover of employees and management teams which ultimately results in cutting their losses and closing shop after 3, 4 or 5 years.

If a foreign national wants to be successful in North America, they must:

Understand the market before you come here.

To accomplish this you will need to assign a staff member to conduct market research or hire a firm in North America to help you with the process. By doing so, it will help you:

• Determine the market potential, the pricing structures, the sales cycle, etc.
• Learn who your target audience is, where they get their information from, and who your competitors are.
• Uncover how products/services are bought and sold.
• Discover what the points of resistance will be.
• Find out the work and visa rules for foreigners, and if there are government regulations involved in the sale of your products or services (e.g., UL, CSA, CE).
• Ascertain what your strengths and weaknesses are at the HQ and your facilities (do you have the personnel in place to support a North American operation, do you have the manufacturing facilities to produce product for North America, etc.).
• Become versed in the culture.

Based on our experience, here are few key points to begin your understanding process and develop a plan for success.

i.   Developing a North American operation will be a 10-year process to really gain a foothold in North America because introducing a new company and product/service takes a lot of pioneering. Pioneering takes time.

It could take less time depending on how the company is structured, and the human and financial resources that are allocated.

ii.  Having only one person covering Canada and the United States — and possibly Mexico — and expecting exponential growth is unrealistic. There are only approximately 200 business days in a year. Finding distribution channels and making sales presentations to prospective clients and managing projects at accounts you pick up along the way will require that person to be living on a plane and hotel every day of the year.

Some of that time and those expenses can be eliminated by fully utilizing the communications tools that are available today, but even then, there is the risk of falling into the out-of-site-out-of-mind trap, which can stunt growth.

iii.        Hiring a master distributor and expecting them to do all sales and marketing with their own money and at the same time expecting exponential growth is unrealistic.

iv.        Having no inventory in North America and expecting repeat sales and exponential growth is unrealistic.

Have a plan.

Coming to North America without a plan and flying by the seat of your pants is a recipe for disaster. It’s one reason why foreign nationals continuously turn over management teams when the headquarters feels success hasn’t been obtained because there are unrealistic and immeasurable goals.

Hire the right people.

Your North American staff and management team are crucial to your success. The only way to hire the right people is to take your time and make sure you have a job description prepared with the traits you are seeking. For the President/Managing Director, there are 3 methods to finding or developing the right person.

One, find someone from North America who has experience dealing with foreign nationals and has expertise in the specific products you make or industry you’re in. Two, send a person from the corporate headquarters that has been to North America for an extended period of time and is comfortable with the culture. It can be quite the shock to the person’s system to send someone who is unfamiliar with the culture, has to find someplace to live and setup operations while at the same time attempting to learn English and grow business. Three, hire a Canadian or United States national bring them to your facility for a minimum of one year so they can learn the home country culture and operating methods then return them to run the North American operation. And, make sure they have a seat at the executive table.

Hire a marketing communications firm.

Getting the word out about your company and products/services is very important to your success. A marketing communications firm can help you craft the messages needed to gain attention in the press and influence decision makers. Also, they will help you make sure the English in your literature is polished and localized — so you’ll look your best.

Be willing and able to invest a minimum of $50,000 to $100,000/year, if possible, for at least the first 5 years to get your message out, and for it to gain traction. This investment will go towards the development of case studies, translation of literature, public relations, advertising, trade shows, and other channels of communication. As sales increase, so will your marketing investment.

© 2010 — 2011, Jeff Klingberg. ©2011. All Rights Reserved. Mountain Stream Group, Inc.

We will be assisting them in developing a corporate identity and marketing materials, and conducting business development and public relations efforts among other services.

© 2010 — 2011, Jeff Klingberg. ©2011. All Rights Reserved. Mountain Stream Group, Inc.