The team over at Flowtown have updated this infographic on social media resources. This is a helpful tool for B2B communicators to use in order to better assess the tools needed to best achieve their objectives. It can also help others to understand what can be accomplished with social media and to set expectations.
Is Social Media Central to Your B2B Communications Strategy?
If it’s not, where does it fit? One example of a company who thinks it is central isn’t one that comes to mind when you think of B2B communications companies. But they are certainly a leader and one to follow: The Economist. As told to BtoB Magazine, the media outlet demonstrates how important social is for content distribution as well as driving subscriptions.
In the maze of communication where does social media fit?
So back to my original question: Where does social media fit into a B2B communicators strategy?
Are we at the point now where it at the center and all channels feed off it? After all, most companies now use social media for news release distribution — Twitter, StockTwits, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Keep in mind that we also still rely on wire services for reaching the majority of our journalist contacts (or email distribution). There clearly has been a shift in the past two years and moving forward there is no doubt that we now think different.
What are your views? Have we hit the tipping point? Or have we tipped?
If you enjoyed this post you may also want to read:
Social drive growth, content for The Economist, others — B2B Magazine
Are you ready for a real-time B2B world?
Still pitching to use social media?
It’s Time for B2B Social Media Marketing to Generate Leads
A B2B Voices Q&A With Kipp Bodnar and Jeffrey L. Cohen
I just finished reading The B2B Social Media Book: Becoming a Marketing Superstar, by Kipp Bodnar (day job at HubSpot) and Jeffrey L. Cohen (day job at Radian6), hot off the presses this month. I recommend it. Despite the title, it doesn’t try to encompass everything you need to know about B2B social media marketing. Rather, it tries to open the lock box to social media lead generation. Frankly, that’s the way we’re going to get a lot of B2B companies to start to take social media more seriously.
I’ll follow up with a longer review but I had a chance to ask Kipp and Jeffrey a few questions after reading the book, and here’s what they had to say!
Aaron: You both obviously have a lot of passion for B2B marketing in general, and social media specifically. Why? Where did that come from?
Kipp: It is what I have always done. Since the beginning of my career I have worked with B2B companies mostly at marketing agencies and then here at HubSpot. I love the challenge of B2B. B2B marketing is the ultimate in problem-solving and storytelling. It is awesome.
Jeff: I, too, have always worked for B2B companies, including marketing agencies that focused on B2B and companies that sold through distribution. It is more exciting to live in a world where the product quality and company knowledge are the basis of a sale, rather than the correct Pantone color. The longer sales cycles require companies to build customer relationships that can be nurtured, rather than offering promotions and discounts.
Aaron: What is most misunderstood about B2B social media marketing?
Kipp: For me it is reach. In traditional marketing, B2B companies obsessed over narrow targeting because executing marketing tactics was expensive. Social media has changed this. Narrow targeting hurts B2B companies online. Bigger reach is needed to generate word-of-mouth and leads online. Even if a social media follow isn’t a potential fit as a customer, they have the opportunity to share your content with someone who is, but this is impossible to predict. Thus the need to actively build reach online.
Jeff: The notion that social media marketing is a business-to-consumer-only activity is most misunderstood. Many conservative B2B companies think that just because there is less volume of conversation around their company, products and industry, that social media is not for them. This ignores the benefits that social media brings to search, and the ability to leverage and share the knowledge and expertise imbedded in B2B companies to build and nurture relationships required for lead generation.
Aaron: Why the intense focus on lead generation in the book?
Kipp: Lead generation is the genesis of B2B success. Marketing must generate leads and revenue to survive. Yes, branding, public relations and other aspects of marketing are important, but they can’t compensate for the lack of a solid lead generation strategy. If lead generation is sound, all of those other aspects of marketing can supercharge it.
Jeff: We know that social media adoption is very slow for B2B companies, no matter what online surveys say. We chose this important slice of social media activity, lead generation, because when success, it demonstrates real value of social media. It is much easier for C-Suite executives to endorse rolling out social media across an organization if it has already generated revenue through this one approach.
Aaron: I especially liked your more integrated focus on bringing prospective customers along a path from initial reach to signing on for content (like liking a page) to ultimately responding to a call to action and becoming a lead. Give us an example or two of who does that well.
Kipp: Breaking Point Systems down in Austin, TX is crushing it. They sell network testing equipment, which is a high-consideration and long buying cycle B2B purchase. We featured their vice president of marketing, Pam O’Neil, in the book. They have an awesome blog, a website that is super SEO-optimized and a social media presence that is engaging and drives traffic and leads back to the website. Pam told us that they have a 2800% ROI from their online leads.
Clear Risk is a finical services company in Canada that is also doing a great job. They have an awesome Facebook page, Twitter page, LinkedIn Page, blog as well as a calls-to-actions and lead generation offers.
Aaron: What about nurturing existing customers? Private B2B communities are big in some industry segments like enterprise software, for instance, but this seemed to be less of a focus in this book. Why?
Kipp: Honestly, that is another book. You’re right. Lead nurturing as well as customer retention is huge revenue-centric application for social media. We just didn’t have the real estate to cover it properly in The B2B Social Media Book, so we decided to save it for another one. We think that having a solid customer generation strategy is the right first step, and too many companies still need to improve that. Lead nurturing is the next step.
What Drives Your B2B Social Strategy?
A new year and another opportunity to get under the hood and check your social engine. One of the keys to success in the social B2B space is having a strategy. The team here at B2B Voices have posted often on this topic of strategy from using social networking sites in B2B to looking at what makes a world-Class social practice for B2B companies to asking the right question.
We all agree here that if you want to succeed you need to start with a strategy. Jeremiah Owyang from Altimeter now has a must read paper titled “A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation.” The paper is a great way for the experienced and novice B2B communicator to step back and think about what you are trying to accomplish.
The social vehicle you choose should help drive your conversations and evaluation
The key takeaways for me were as follows:
Businesses struggle with strategy: On page six of the report it’s clear that companies are struggling to get handle on what they want to accomplish and how they will get there. One thing we always focus on here at B2B Voices is making sure your social media strategy aligns with your business and other communication initiatives. It should rarely be a silo. If you need help understanding what your strategy should be you can reference the graphic on page 13 of the study.
Vendors need to catch up: The rapid growth of free tools with premium tools is creating an overload of resources that in the end create more confusion. Page 10 and 11 detail the issues and in my opinion we will see an ongoing consolidation of these tools. There is a good review of many of the platforms in the report and we at B2B Voices would encourage anyone looking at tools to take your time in choosing where you spend your resources.
The one point to remember in this discussion is that strategy takes time and effort. Not only do you need to have the right tools to work with, but you need to understand your business goals as well as what drives your brand strategy. While it’s easy to “do” social it’s much more difficult to “do social well” and measure the results.
UPDATE (JANUARY 17): Apparently, Tac Anderson and I are on the same page when we think about social media. Here is his post (Can’t Find a Good Social Media Management Tool? Get a Strategy First) on the same study by Jeremiah Owyang.
If you enjoyed this post you may also want to read:
Are you ready for a real-time B2B world?
Navigating the Legal Road Map of Social Media
Navigating the social landscape brings a number of challenges. What content should you publish? Do you use platforms like StockTwits that target investors? Do you create private or public LinkedIn groups? And what about those influencers?
Know your way around the law and social media
One thing we also cannot forget is collaborating internally. I’ve blogged before about making sure you have talked with InfoSec so both of you understand each other – your goals and their risks. Another department to work with is legal. Mashable has a new post on the five predictions for social media law in 2012. If you haven’t read it you need to, but don’t stop there. If you are continuing to try to convince legal about mapping out the opportunities and value of social media you should do the following:
- Understand the concerns: Is legal worried about intellectual property? Privacy? Reputational risk? If you don’t know – or just think you know — now is a good time to sit with legal to discuss.
- Find a legal champion: Someone on the legal team may already use social media (e.g. LinkedIn). Discover who you think may be someone that can help you understand the concerns before you go into a formal meeting.
- Do your research: The Mashable post is helpful and a good start, but dig deeper. You should have a firm grasp of the concerns and issues so that you can alleviate the risks and make everyone more comfortable.
- Find working solutions: There are always ways to be more flexible, so be prepared to work with your colleagues and have a variety of idea.
- Create a dialogue: You can start with the Mashable article and forward it to your legal team. If you start positioning yourself as someone who understands their concerns they will be much more open to listening to you.
If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:
What’s your “I” in social media?
When it Comes to B2B Content, Don’t Go it Alone
One of the most often asked questions when I speak is around content — “Where do you find so much information about your company to post?” The answer is easy: That much content doesn’t exist. What B2B companies fail to realize is the power of partnerships and connecting with other users for content. Shannon Paul also makes a good point about B2B content:
Many folks in the B2B space often blame the lack of social media content opportunities on the fact that what they do doesn’t directly impact consumers, but I don’t buy it.
Finding good, original content can be difficult. So stop trying so hard. Instead, focus on ways that you can find content from others and collaborate with others. Here are ways that have worked for us:
Find internal champions who will send you content proactively and make sure you give them their just internal rewards for helping out.
My inspiration partner happens to be 8 years old and drinks hot chocolate.
Identify the key content aggregators in your industry and work with them. This takes time and effort but will pay off in the long run.
Experiment with content on platforms and times to find what interests your audience.
Finally, don’t be boring. Any company can post a news release or a research report. It’s up to you to make it interesting and fit within your brand standards. While you want to be taken serious as a brand, you should also find ways that capture people’s attention, and sometimes that requires a little bit of fun.
If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:
Social Clutter or Social Clarity?
Content Curation: What Does it Take To Be Successful?
Is Motivation the Key to Success?
Social influence matters! No, it doesn’t!
2012: No Predictions, Just Actions
Everyone seems to have dusted off their crystal balls the past few weeks as the predictions for social media in 2012 are plentiful. I stopped reading them. There are only a handful of people who are making predictions that I would trust, and after seeing so many most are not taking into account the current economic climate and the themes are too repetitive.
Instead of adding to the overcrowded space of predictions I want to focus on actions. The path for next year is clearly lined with more questions than answers. So, what am I looking at in 2012, a year clouded with economic uncertainty and promises for social media nirvana? Here’s a rundown of what’s on my agenda and questions you may need to ask yourself:
What's ahead for you in 2012?
- Digital Content: We’re doing a lot more with digital content on our website and that will continue. What we’ve learned from the past few years of doing social media is that we have become our own media aggregator with original content that cannot be captured anywhere else. Whether it’s our blog, our online magazine, our media room or our education center, various stakeholders look to us for content and we will continue to drive more of that next year. What are your plans for digital content in 2012? Have you developed an editorial calendar? Do you have an editorial team?
- Mobile: This was a great year for us and using mobile devices as we expanded our iPhone/iPad offering to the Android and Blackberry. In addition, we introduced an app specifically for our annual Global Financial Leadership event. Our research continues to show that users are moving more and more toward accessing our site from mobile devices and we know that consumers in general are digesting more information via their mobile devices. We will continue to enhance our mobile strategy in 2012 not only for distributing content through social platforms but also for giving people access to our information. How are you integrating mobile into your marketing strategy? What type of research do you have on people accessing your content from mobile devices?
- Real-time matters: We’ve been using Twitter since 2008 and are one of the few verified brands. In our line of business, real-time news and information matters and for the markets and finance this won’t change. David Meerman Scott’s latest book on real-time marketing captures exactly how we approach this world of instant news. Where we’ll be looking at improving on what we’ve already accomplished is with our partnership with StockTwits. Messages about our products and services in the past year surged from 15,000 a month a year ago to more than 40,000 a month last year on their platform. Does real-time matter to you and your business? Are you targeting the right people on Twitter? Do you have a plan for how you can leverage StockTwits and the messages about your company?
- Social networks: Facebook will still be a part of our plan and remains a great way to connect with customers in a more static environment. We can create very topical conversations around news and events on our page and that won’t change. We do know that Facebook fans are passionate about topics and the stream has changed our approach to this platform and has helped in creating more awareness about our offerings. We can’t ignore either of those facts. The challenge for 2012 will be to figure out how to use our Google+ page, but first I think Google needs to figure out Google+ for brands. I don’t see a lot of focus there yet from Google so do not plan to spend much time there. At the best right now it’s an experiment in SEO. How are you going to handle new technologies that come out in 2012? Do you have an assessment plan or team in place?
- LinkedIn: I am a long-time fan of LinkedIn for the B2B market and am very excited about 2012. The company has made some great changes to the corporate pages managed by companies and added a much needed dashboard for group managers. Both of these additions have been much needed and further enhance LinkedIn as a social business platform. We continue to leverage the groups and the private feature has allowed us to create a 24/7 virtual focus group environment where we talk with our customers. We will putting more emphasis on LinkedIn in the coming year and finding ways to better improve what we do for the benefit of our customers. How do you leverage the groups on LinkedIn? Is your company page a place where potential employees view you as a thought leader? How do you get others in your organization involved in LinkedIn?
- Video: We do have a YouTube presence, but our video strategy continues to focus on bringing people to our location. Our website continues to be populated with video content in a number of places and videos allow us to visually tell our story through our spokespeople, customers and thought leaders. We’ll continue to build content that includes video as a key component and through our social platforms bring this content to our followers. How are you leveraging videos? What is your distribution plan? Do you use video to complement content?
- Metrics: I’ve always believed that in order to manage content you have to know what is happening. So metrics and measurement continue to play a very active part of what we do and this will continue to be the trend for us in 2012. We have a number of tools that we use that include both qualitative and quantitative metrics for us to better understand what we are doing. Are you measuring the right information? How are you making decisions based on your data?
- Experiment: We did a lot in 2011 to try new things and apply new technologies. For example, we integrated Facebook comments onto our digital magazine, started using Google+ brand pages, launched our Weibo account in China, and made several changes to our LinkedIn company profile. In the coming year we will continue to do the same and experiment where it makes sense. New technologies and enhancements are now the norm and finding ways to leverage them will be a challenge. How do you stay on top of the latest information? Do you have a social team to review and plan for new initiatives? How do you prioritize what to implement and where to hold off?
- A Social Business: In 2011, we continued to integrate our social media with our business. One of the best posts I’ve read on this topic is from David Armano and Demystifying Social Business. When I started using social media at the company in 2007 it very much was a silo channel for us, but in the past year we have made great strides as an organization to integrate it throughout the company. That will continue in 2012 with our sales force, marketing activities and with our employees. How do you communicate your social initiatives internally? Have you implemented any training or education programs? Do you have social guidelines for employees and if so when was the last time you reviewed it?
The coming year promises to be another exciting year for communicators. We will not only face a global economy that has numerous challenges for our businesses, but we are being inundated with new and various tools to communicate with our stakeholders. Finding the balance between those two will help determine success for each of our enterprises and I wish you all the best of luck.
If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:
Finally, a comprehensive B2B social media study
World-Class social practices for B2B companies
How are you measuring influence?
Last week I spoke at the European Corporate Communications Social Media Summit on tracking influence and the non-financial ROI. The topic has been a key issue for ou
r industry in 2011 as offerings such as Klout, Peer Index and the Social Business Index have garnered plenty of attention — both good and bad. I’ve written on this blog before about ROI (Return on Influence) as has Aaron Pearson (Dare we measure ROI?) and I’ve also written about the Social Business Index. The subject warrants discussion as B2B companies are devoting more resources to social media and in particular working to discover and measure what matters — the people, messages and sources.
For my presentation I was asked to address what we are doing and to help the audience target two questions: Where should your business be spending its time and how much time should you allocate to the social channels?
I will admit, this is nearly an impossible topic to talk about and discuss in any great detail in under 60 minutes.
When I look at measuring the effectiveness of what we are doing I like to break down our metrics into two categories. By doing so, it helps me to focus on both the quantitative and qualitative items that can help us see what’s working and who/what matters. The two sets of metrics I like to reference are Attention Metrics and Influence Metrics.
Attention metrics tend to have a bad reputation. But don’t discount them. While they are hardly scientific and lack context, they can help validate over time topics and issues that matter to your audience and who you are trying to reach. Keep in mind that these are a helpful guide — but treat them as a guide since they are easily and readily accessible, but lack the depth you need to act on any strategic decision making.
The second set of metrics I prefer for better analysis are what I call the Influence Metrics. These will take more time from you and 
your team to assess, but certainly can give you a better indication of the content and people that matter to you. For instance, location metrics can better help you understand if you need to translate content or even add more content to focus on other regions, but you need to get an understanding from the business if that’s really ideal to sales and revenue generation. In our case, seeing the growing traffic from China helped make our decision to join Weibo. Another metric that matters is trying to know the people who talk about your company and products, but it’s not as simple as seeing if they’ve retweeted you or posted something on your Facebook page (more than likely they have not). You will need to find the tools and resources needed to locate and engage with them both online and in person. Take a read at what Vann Morris wrote about the value of B2B relationships in social media if you want to learn more.
The conclusion of my discussion was more of a reminder than anything else. It’s key for any program — social or traditional — to focus on what you are trying to achieve and how you will get there. I like to use a three step process that I’ve used for many other forms of communication — new product launches, events and white papers. First, decide what it is you want to accomplish with your program. In the case of social media this could be to increase the number of positive conversations (or decrease the negative) and build relationships with the people online whose opinions matter most (customers, bloggers, journalists); understand the metrics you will want to use; and, finally, analyze the content and then repeat. You may find that you need to change what you want to accomplish or perhaps you were measuring the wrong item. Some programs we use require more detail and more steps, but these three should provide a good foundation.
Even as the existing tools get better and more tools are introduced (like Awe.sm — and I suggest you try this one), the key to remember is that you need to always focus on what you are trying to achieve. You may need to adjust your tactics, but use your metrics to better understand if you reaching your goal — and don’t lose sight of your goal.
So what’s Next for ROI? I pointed to four key trends that we are all going to need to pay attention to in the coming year.
- We are awash with data. At times it seems like we are drowning. But don’t despair as the technology to analyze this will continue to get better. Will it be perfect? More than likely not, but it will continue to evolve and help us better evaluate what we are doing. My suggestion is that you not enter into any long-term vendor agreements and make a concentrated effort to use the tools. The more you can engage with your metrics the better you will be able to tell a story about what’s happening with your brand.
- CRM will matter even more, which means communications and sales have a tremendous opportunity to gather social data and apply it toward sales relationships. Salesforce.com continues to integrate social capabilities and will provide more insight on your customers. While I’m a bit sceptical for the early results, it’s a step in the right direction and needs to be watched closely.
- There’s not a silver bullet and never will be. There are some great resources and tools that help you move in the right direction, but one solution will not work for everything. If that’s what you’re looking for and expecting you will be disappointed. If you focus on using the tools to make you more efficient and better utilize your resources you will certainly move in the right direction.
- Everything will move in real time. Are you ready for a real-time B2B world? Not only is the data growing exponentially, but it’s moving faster and faster every day. For example, StockTwits helps investor relations professionals now monitor real-time conversation, and those discussions are growing (we monitor nearly 45,000 posts each month about our products). Are you ready to monitor, report on and respond to this new era of public communication? In 2012 more B2B companies will look at who staffs and responds to these issues and the centralized v decentralized model debate will continue.
What are you thoughts on measuring and influence? Is this a case of too much information to make it matter or can we cut through the noise and build business solutions?
And while I like to delve into our metrics I continue to learn more from reading what some of the true thought leaders on this subject have to say. Here are some resources on this topic that you should read:
Social Media Measurement 2011: Five things to forget and five things to learn – Metrics Man
The Digitization of Research and Measurement – Metrics Man
Social Media Impact Takes Awhile to Gauge – KD Paine
Real Time is Wrong Time in Measurement — KD Paine
Making Business Decisions Through Data — Logic & Emotion
Why Online Relationships Matter — B2B Ideas@Work
12 Tools to Measure Social Media Influence (Maybe) – Social Media Today
Social influence matters! No, it doesn’t! — B2B Voices
Digital on the Rise in B2B, But Audience Engagement Lags
Recent research from Forrester has good news and bad news, from my perspective. On the one hand, Tracy Stokes, in “Marketing Budgets for 2012 Expose a Fear of Commitment,” notes that B2B marketers are moving to digital even faster than their B2C counterparts. Unfortunately, how they are doing so seems to be putting immediate gratification (i.e. leads) over the kind of richer relationship-building enabled by social media and creative digital programming.
First, the good news. According to Forrester’s research, which I would treat as directional rather than quantitative because of its small sample size, more than half of B2B marketing leaders see an economic recovery in their industry next year, compared to less than a third of B2C marketing leaders. Also, digital media now comprises 28% of B2B marketers’ budgets, ahead of their B2C counterparts (22%).
Are you investing in the long-term relationship?
Wow, right? Except what are they spending it on? Not innovation, which is expected to be cut in half from an already small base. Not brand building. Not relationship building. Transactions. Or at least that’s where the emphasis is.
I understand, I’m empathetic, really. If you don’t win today, there is no tomorrow. But that’s a little like the federal government cutting taxes to spur economic growth without a plan to address long-term deficits. Ultimately, there’s a nasty price to pay. What are some of those costs? Here’s four:
- Commoditization
- Reduced customer loyalty
- Declining pricing power
- Reduced market focus
Ouch. As with everything in life, success is about finding a healthy balance of investment through the marketing funnel – and beyond it to nurture customer advocates too. I’ve been part of award-winning communications plans that piled heaps of interest into the top of the funnel only to be plugged up at the bottom, and that’s no good either. But we have great opportunities now to do build stronger B2B brands and increase customer and prospect engagement all while effectively driving sales.
Building an positive and engaged bond between your brand and your customer is a powerful defense against commoditization. Leveraging social media to improve product development and customer service grows advocates and reinforces loyalty. A real commitment to listening to customers through social channels is effective (and cost-effective) at reminding you what your brand really is all about, and what it’s not about, so the organization stays focused on where it can be most successful. Here’s to a digitally engaged 2012!
B2B Creativity is Not an Oxymoron
One of the myths around B2B communications is that the industry lacks creativity – or the drive to be creative. I can’t think of anything that’s farther from the truth. And while it’s true that B2B companies don’t buy the flashy Super Bowl ads or use various mascots to win over customers, we are challenged day in and day out to think differently.
Another Lego creation at home.
Just like with B2C companies, creativity can be driven by a company’s culture. We’ve always been focused as an organization on innovation, which is why we’ve been so successful at trying new things, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and mobile devices. Ben Parr over at Mashable posted last year how B2B companies will be using social media as part of their creative campaigns. And Aaron Pearson just posted here on B2B Voices a post on world-class B2B social practices that’s a must read.
But there are some rules and guidelines to follow.
- Your ideas should always be in line with the brand you are trying to convey. Don’t be creative just for the sake of being creative. While this can work more in the B2C space, it rarely works with B2B companies. We have fewer opportunities to sell our products and services and every opportunity counts. In addition, B2B purchases are usually long-term investments by companies and they want to trust you. Any creativity — whether its very smart and interesting or immature and insulting — will reflect back on your organization.
- Study the competition — and be better — don’t copy or instigate them. Your competitors can always give you new ideas and thoughts, but I’ve seen B2B companies try to take on their competition head to head in ads and direct mail. That’s hard to pull off successfully (it can be done) and I always feel it’s better to focus on your strengths than your competitors weaknesses in paid campaigns. Save your competitive arguments for non-paid mediums such as your website and the media.
- Always be thinking about driving sales for the organization — this means being fully integrated. We know in B2B the sales process and cycle is much longer than in most B2C decisions, so you will need to think long-term for your campaign. If you are thinking of a new creative campaign it needs to play out online, at trades shows, through direct mail and in person. “One hit wonders”, like a weekend sale, are simply not the norm for B2B campaigns.
- Take risks, but know your limits. Good creativity helps you to stand out, but as you think about how creative you should be and how you will use the ideas read points 1 – 3 above.
Here are some other ideas from Marketo on being creative in B2B communications. It’s worth a read if you are looking to learn more about this topic.
I’ve been lucky to work on both national and international B2B and B2C campaigns in my career and personally I’m glad I’ve gravitated into strictly B2B. The creative challenges are different. They are more demanding. They require more time to succeed. And they need more buy-in from the organization. Not to take anything away from B2C creativity, it’s still demanding, but I’ve always liked that challenges and pressure as a professional of being more creative in B2B communications.
If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:
Finally, a comprehensive B2B social media study
World-Class social practices for B2B companies
