Tag Archives: linkedin

The Future of Social Media is Not Digital

Posted on by
Reply

I spoke at three separate events last week with a focus on how social media has disrupted B2B communications and the way we operate. While there was a lot of focus on what we have accomplished and lessons learned, everyone seemed interested in my thoughts on what’s next. What is the next platform? Is there a new technology we are testing? What are B2B companies going to do next? What should we be looking to do?

I recently talked about the changing role of communicators, but I’m never one to make predictions, especially when it comes to technology. That’s why I read the blogs of people like Howard Lindzon, Armano, the team at Convince & Convert and others.

That’s not to say I don’t think a lot about technology and all things digital. Tools like Twitter and Instagram came out of nowhere and one of the next new technologies will likely do the same. That is a topic I personally follow regularly, and right now, I’m interested in content aggregation, especially in light of yesterday’s Google Reader news, and how individuals wade through the endless streams of information and vertical communities that help focus conversations.

But technology aside, I think the next, next thing in B2B communications is face-to-face communications. That’s not exactly revolutionary, but it is vital. Read what Aaron Pearson had to say about this while at SXSW.

People want intimate experiences that cannot be filled by any social media.

There still remains a lot to do in social media. Twitter and Stocktwits continue to evolve their real-time streams, LinkedIn still provides us ways to professionally connect and other platforms give us a variety of choice to leverage our B2B content. These are and will be important business tools moving forward.

Speaking last week at the Marketforce Social Media in Financial Services conference

Speaking last week at the Marketforce Social Media in Financial Services conference

But we are coming closer to the point where competing with our competition on social media will be like competing websites, trade show booths or advertising. These tools do matter, but they will become ubiquitous and expected. A few years ago, companies truly gained a competitive advantage using social media, and we still do, but as it makes its way throughout the enterprise it will be more challenging to do so. Will you still be the best brand on Twitter? Will your Facebook page help you stand out against others? Do Slideshare and Instagram show off your thought leadership? Maybe. Maybe not. Does it matter?

Last week continued to demonstrate to me what I have believed for some time since engaging more and more in social media: People want intimate experiences that cannot be filled by any social media. Yes, Google Hangouts can make a difference and hashtags on Twitter create virtual discussions, but that is not good enough.

My coffee break conversations at the Marketforce event were constructive and interesting. I was also able to finally spend some quality time talking with Cristophe Langlois of Visible Banking. The discussions I had with the students from the Hult International Business School and Penn State Harrisburg were vastly different, but they challenged me on many areas of digital and

We are all in a battle for the “hearts and minds” of customers, influencers and other various stakeholders, and while social media helps us connect, it does not replace what we want as people.

Is your company a leader in social media? Great. Is your organization following and trying to understand new technologies? Wonderful. Are you trying to learn what can help make your brand stand out and understood? Perfect.

But how are you connecting with people and creating those intimate moments that matter? If you are not thinking about this yet, then you quite possibly will be left behind by the next wave of social media: building and maintaining relationships.

If you enjoyed this post you may also want to read the following:

We still need to get together in the real world?

Do we need a social index for businesses? 

Who are your content superheroes?

Tuning into your industry

Social media management

Blogging isn’t supposed to be easy

Getting Your Degree in “Business Acumen”

What is social media success in B2B… and some examples

 

 

SXSW: Vertical Communities Seeing Growth

Posted on by
Reply

I attended a SXSW session yesterday called “Professions Go Social,” which looked at how new profession-based social networks have emerged to extend B2B social networking beyond LinkedIn, moderated by Altimeter Group’s Rebecca Lieb. Some of the networks are doing quite well.

For example, Jay Hallberg, the co-founder of Spiceworks, said they have built a community of more than 2 million SMB IT pros, supported by 1,500 advertisers.  Spiceworks designed a very user-friendly place where these pros can talk to IT vendors about what to buy, and also talk among each other. It’s sort of an iTunes for IT. Hallbert says there are no barriers put up to discourage IT pro engagement – no freemium tricks, no charge for charge for support, just totally free.

Another panelist, Kirk Simpson, is a co-founder of Wave, which makes small business financial software, but also launched the Wave Pro Network as a community for these professionals to connect with real professionals in accounting and bookkeeping.

One of the key points was that these specialized communities have been built with the unique workflows of their industries or professions in mind, something a LinkedIn can’t do. I had an opportunity to develop a proposal for a company that wanted to market to golf course superintendents, a niche community if there ever was one. Do they have their own vibrant online community? You bet they do, TurfNet! Their forum not only covers niche topics like irrigation system pressure monitoring, integrated with educational webinars, and with a mobile version for an audience often on the course rather than in an office.

The key with all these sites is to get to a point where a lot of pros feel like they need to be on them. From the in-depth conversations I had with golf course superintendents, I know Turfnet made it, and they actually use a paid membership model. Hallberg indicated that reaching three percent of the addressable workforce segment might be the point at which those positive network effects kick in.

 

Social Media Week: The B2B Content You May Have Missed

Posted on by
Reply

It’s been a busy week in social media as cities, brands and people came together to discuss all things social — from Facebook’s initiative to remove bots to Instagram overtaking Twitter on mobile phones. We decided to pull together some of the best B2B focused content from this past week and share it with you. If you have any other links (including your own) that you think we should have included please add them in the comments.

There was a lot of content to consume this year.

There was a lot of content to consume this year.

Hootsuite has added a “conversational” dashboard to help facilitate better real-time collaboration (Disclaimer: I’m a Hootsuite customer).

LinkedIn (a favorite tool of B2B marketers) has rolled out an “endorsement tool”. Why don’t you connect to all of us here at B2B Voices on LinkedIn: Kate Brodock, Arik Hanson, Aaron Pearson, Allan Schoenberg.

Gartner says CMOs better start thinking like CIOs. Speaking of that relationship, IBM has a new study out looking at how CMOs and CIOs need to work more together. If Gartner and IBM are talking about this you better be paying attention (and fine-tuning your technology skills).

You’ve always wanted to take your social media strategy global; no worries, HubSpot has you covered.

Do you know the behavior of your B2B customers? This Buyersphere survey looks at that topic to determine just exactly what is the actual behaviour of B2B buyers (PDF).

If you haven’t started a Facebook page yet for your B2B brand (or haven’t given it attention lately) you better get going. A new study shows that brand pages are getting some serious attention.

I asked you earlier if you were ready for a real-time B2B world, but what does real-time search mean for B2B marketers?

Do you want to be more effective at B2B marketing? Focus on creating better content.

Are you thinking about how your mobile strategy is working? If not, you should because everyone wants it.

The doctor is in and it’s time for a social media check up for your brand.

If you like infographics you will not be disappointed by this one from Brian Solis: The Brandsphere and why it matters.

Last, but definitely not least, are you measuring your influence and what you do? Apparently the C-suite isn’t very impressed with marketers.

 

Do Most Online Communities Fail?

Posted on by
5

This is an interesting question. Fortune magazine seems to think they are failing. But the answer is never as easy as the question.

For instance, if you build a community targeting CFOs from the Fortune 100 companies what would determine your success?

  • Would it be 100 percent participation? Probably not since we know most people watch and listen online and getting 100 percent is unrealistic.
  • Would it be an increase in sales from the companies respresented in your online community during the year? Maybe, but they may do that regardless of your online community.
  • How about if you focused on just three CFOs in the group whom you know would receive value from doing more business with you? Bringing in increased sales from two of them could potentially be linked to your efforts.

So determining what you want to get out of a community from the start may not be what you actually get out of it in the end, but that depends on what your objectives are for your community. Adjusting your strategy along the way may help you achieve the results you want, but you may also need to adjust your strategy because the results you desired have changed (You are getting results just not the ones you expected). Yes, communities are complicated, ever changing and complex.

The trading floor community in Chicago

I’ve been lucky that even before the rapid growth in social media I was part of working with a large community — the trading floors.  To get a feel for that you can read some of Jeff Carter’s posts on social media and trading and why he likes Twitter better than Facebook for building his social media trading community.

So what can you do to be successful? One key part of building a good community is letting the community run it. As PR20/20 reminds us, it’s the conversations that make good communities function.  And running a community takes a number of skills – from adaptability to empathy — as the Business 2 Community points out.  Whether you are an experienced community manager or new to it, I would definitely recommend you read Community Spark from Martin Reed.

Having the right resources in place can make a difference in a number of ways for you and your team. Here are some thoughts on what you need to build your success:

  • My suggestion to you is not to spend an overwhelming amount of time choosing what you need. You should have a list of important criteria (e.g., does it have mobile capability, what are the metrics you will receive, etc.) and focus on those. In addition, there are numerous blog posting and online reviews of platforms that can help you speed up your decision process.
  • Not only should you focus on your own content to share, which should be unique, interesting and offer helpful insight, but you should also be a resource to find and distribute third party content that your community may find useful. A good mix of content is challenging but will make you more trustworthy; it also can spark conversations around the topic of choice and should lead you to develop more of your own content. Here were some thoughts on content curation and dealing with social clutter.
  • Have a vision. It’s easy to get bogged down in what you are doing today — posting stories, answering questions, finding new members, etc, but don’t forget to keep thinking forward. Not only will you need to understand changes to social platforms, but you will also need to understand the trends and issues of your business.
  • While not something you can create or build, you will need to enlist the people who believe in what you are doing. I wrote about this concept and motivation as a driver of success earlier. For instance, we’ve found that some people really understand and enjoy LinkedIn vs using another social platform. In this case, we are cultivating the “believers” and getting them to best utilize the platform to meet their needs. Here’s some help about how we use LinkedIn: Don’t Overlook the Power of LinkedIn Groups

Community management is not simple nor is it easy. It takes a lot of hard work, making personal sacrifices and a constant flow of ideas and conversations. In fact the worst thing a community manager can receive is silence. But if done right, a community will grow, network and provide you with valuable insights and relationships.

So what do you think? Are more communities failing? Or are we measuring them wrong? What do you think makes a community successful that I missed?

If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:

Don’t Overlook the Power of LinkedIn Groups

Content Curation: What Does it Take To Be Successful?

Social Clutter or Social Clarity?

Is Motivation the Key to Success?


2012: No Predictions, Just Actions

Posted on by
8

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

Are you ready for a real-time B2B world?

Using social networking sites in B2B businesses?

B2B Creativity is Not an Oxymoron

Posted on by
2

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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

Are you ready for a real-time B2B world?

Using social networking sites in B2B businesses?

LinkedIn Becomes More Relevant for B2B Communicators

Posted on by
3

LinkedIn continues to be enhance its platform for B2B communicators. Last month the company announced that companies could stream news and information from its corporate page. That was a small change and a much needed addition. But a much bigger change has just happened.

When LinkedIn went public I wrote about some new things for the company to invest in and focus on, and one of those was a dashboard. Yesterday, the company announced that an analytics dashboard is now live within groups. This is a game changer for LinkedIn but also for all of us.

LinkedIn Dashboard

It’s no secret that I am a believer in the power of LinkedIn Groups. We use them extensively at our company. But the lack of data and information have made them a guessing game for marketers and human resource managers. LinkedIn says the dashboard for groups will be updated every day — something that would be expected and critical to the success of this tool.  The addition of data points about group members can help in two key ways:

  • Demographics. You can now see by title, demographics, industry and function who is in your group. For highly targeted product groups like we do, if you’re trying to reach senior managers in the Ukraine in the agriculture market you now can get a clear view. For larger groups that are more focused on a topic, the dashboard gives you an accurate display of who is interested in order to help better facilitate conversations and connections.
  • Discussions. Views on comments and discussions posted help show how active the group is and if you are facilitating conversations among the group. While this is a great view, this part of the dashboard still needs work in order to better drill down. I would like to see the dashboard to start to include information on who is most active at posting, commenting and sharing information. It would also be helpful to see which posts are most read by the group in order to focus further content.

One thing I also like is that you can see the data for any group. LinkedIn did not fence this data just for group managers. As a member of several groups on LinkedIn, I like that openness and transparency since I can now better determine which groups are worth my time and effort.

It was only a matter of time before this tool became available and there’s no doubt more changes will be coming. This initial launch was well done by LinkedIn and has already helped me get a better understanding of the groups we manage and how we can further achieve our sales and marketing goals.

If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:

CME Group Builds Impact on LinkedIn Using Exclusive Groups

Don’t Overlook the Power of LinkedIn Groups

What the LinkedIn IPO Could Mean for B2B Communicatons

What’s your “I” in social media?

Why LinkedIn’s Company Pages Now Matter More

Why LinkedIn’s Company Pages Now Matter More

Posted on by
5

With one small update, LinkedIn made the company pages more releevant and more competitive with other social platforms last week. The new company updates feature allows the administrator for a company’s page on LinkedIn to now add news and share links that feed into the page’s stream. In addition, the stream for company’s you like will now be udpated on your own LinkedIn home page. I’ve been a long-time supporter of the group’s feature on LinkedIn to promote our company, and we use LinkedIn group’s as internal focus groups.

CME Group on LinkedIn

Prior to this update, administrators for the page could only update company basic information and facts — addresses, blog URL, number of employees, etc. Not a very compelling reason to visit the page. If you have been following companies you like via the LinkedIn “follow” button you know there is value in connecting with a company and its people. However, there was little incentive to revisit a company page once you started to follow it. As an administrator of our page on LinkedIn we’ve already started using the new updates feature to post and share news and information about the company. The new updates now allow an administrator to play a more active role in promoting the company and brand and makes a company more visible.

Why does this matter?

  • You have a highly targeted audience that is looking for information about your company. You can now share relevant information that matters to you and them.
  • The analytics portion of the LinkedIn company pages continues to get better and adding this feature should help you correlate more data.
  • Using URL tracking and analytics, you should try to develop and track use of the page and how it correlates to your other communications activities.
  • Anyone who is following your company will now see these updates in their own home page stream, which makes your updates more visible to the people who follow it. This should make your company page a more active landing page.

As next steps, if you play a role in your company’s social media efforts you will want to connect with your company’s page administrator and gain access if you have not already. Also, follow other companies that are now using the new update and benchmark your efforts against them. Finally, figure out how you want to use your LinkedIn company page and the new stream — will it be a job posting venue, industry news source, or a platform to promote your product efforts.

You can also connect with me on LinkedIn here: Allan Schoenberg LinkedIn

If you enjoyed this post you may also want to read:

Don’t Overlook the Power of LinkedIn Groups

What the LinkedIn IPO Could Mean for B2B Communicatons

What’s your “I” in social media?


What the LinkedIn IPO could mean for B2B communicators

Posted on by
6

Tomorrow marks another milestone for social media with LinkedIn’s IPO. You can catch up on the latest news here: Forbes, Fortune, Deal Journal, TRB, Term Sheet, Mashable. But as this story in Bloomberg details, LinkedIn gets “70 percent of revenue from business subscriptions, a model that’s similar to Salesforce.com.” So perhaps instead of treating LinkedIn like social media perhaps its future is more like the CRM model. With that in mind I wanted to offer my thoughts on how it can make improvements as a better resource for marketing and sales.

For those of you who read this blog regularly and know me, I am a long-time supporter of LinkedIn. The network, more so than other online platform, is a transparent resource for businesses — I can see your work history, your real name and what people are saying about you through recommendations. With a reputation for catering to recruiters and job seekers for so long, the company has really made some great improvements in the last two years to become much more useful to communicators. And they will continue to build these services out post IPO.

With a fresh round of cash in its coffers expected tomorrow — estimated at $340 million — what’s next for the social med…er…CRM company? Here are a few things I hope they are considering:

Company Pages

The company pages section in my opinion seems to be the most lacking in functionality for LinkedIn. You are fairly limited as to what you can do on this page and I would like to see that expanded. For instance, having our Twitter feed on this page would seem like an easy add-on given their partnership. As much as I understand this is a career networking site, the profiles they feature are not very useful. What would be helpful is if they could show those people’s status updates, groups they’ve joined and other relevant information. The space these profiles are taking up is valuable real estate. I would also like to see the ability to add more RSS feeds. Finally, I would to have the ability to customize this page — let me choose which items I add and where to put them. The analytics they provide to this page are excellent and I hope they continue to build that out for the benefit of recruiters and marketers.

Group Pages

We use the Group Pages functionality in many ways and I’ve written here about not overlooking groups for B2B companies. One change they made for groups that I wish they would use in Company Page is the scrolling headline of posts. This is extremely useful to see who and what’s been posted. And similar to my thoughts on the Company page, I would like to have the ability for more customization. One thing that Facebook has done really well with the company pages is just this — the ability to add and delete tabs and features. Facebook makes me feel as if our company page is our company page. On LinkedIn I still feel that our pages are us on LinkedIn. LinkedIn also needs to look for more add-ons to the group pages. I honestly feel like we could do so much more with polls, events and even careers. Finally, where they really need to step up is in analytics for group managers. This option is simply non-existent and the company needs to figure our a better way for us to analyze, evaluate and measure our group pages. At this point it’s a guessing game with no historical evidence or info to measure against.

Build a Dashboard

The company clearly does a great job at connecting people, but they need to do a much better job at connecting information. What I mean is that I wish they would do a better job connecting all of the things I do on LinkedIn. Not only do I manage several of our group pages, but I’m also a member of other communication groups, formers employers’ groups and university groups. I would like LinkedIn to figure out what all of this means not only to me but to the people and groups I’m connected to. For the most part, I feel inundated with information from LinkedIn — from email notices by groups and posts, connection notices, the stream on the site, the addition of the news feature — forcing me to make sense of all of this does no one any good. In reality, the company should build a dashboard that I can customize (e.g. think MyLinkedIn as your home page) and view with real-time information.

Make Me Pay

Yes, that’s right. I’d pay. Similar to the model for recruiters who have to pay for services this model should be used for marketers as well. If the company goes down the path of integrating with Salesforce.com, provide deeper analytics and gives me useful options to add content I’d pay.

What did I miss? Let me know what you think.

We’ll see how well the market receives the listing in 24 hours. And of course, if we aren’t connected on LinkedIn let’s do so. You can find my profile here.

If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:

Don’t overlook the power of LinkedIn Groups

What’s your “I” in social media?

Using social networking sites in B2B businesses

Finally, a comprehensive B2B social media study

What’s on tap for the B2B Voices team in 2011?

Posted on by
Reply

With a new year comes new priorities and objectives. Each of us at B2B Voices decided to share with you what we’re working on for 2011, and hopefully in December we can all say we’ve achieved our goals. Share with us in the comments what you hope to accomplish as well.

Allan Schoenberg

In January I relocated to London for CME Group to take on a new role and new challenges for the company heading up all of our international communication efforts. While I will still be managing our presence in the social media landscape, we obviously are looking to expand in that area overseas as well. As our business continues to grow throughout Europe and Asia, we have been aggressively pursuing more ways to communicate our brand attributes and strengths of our business. My expanded role at CME Group is an exciting time professionally and personally for me. So this year expect to see more regular media coverage of CME Group throughout Europe and Asia, including profile stories, product and service news, and having the company more woven into the fabric of the London business scene.

Aaron Pearson

In January, I shivered in the cold while watching with envy as Allan relocated to London. I have a couple big professional priorities for the year. First, I’m hoping not to bomb out teaching an executive education class on social media marketing at the University of St. Thomas with Weber Shandwick Digital Strategist and Vice President Andy Keith (builds on this course). That’s partly why I’ve been doing more social media book-reading – I need to make sure I have a good handle on perspectives and experiences beyond my own. Second, as the head of our vertical market segment, I’m trying to focus a great deal on growing our healthcare IT work.  It’s the hottest B2B vertical market out there and we have a good base of experience to tap. Finally, we’re trying to take more of our clients’ B2B social media efforts beyond pilots to full-fledged efforts that deliver measurable impact. Social media engagement really is perfect for connecting niche B2B audiences into global communities, and yet there’s a lot more experimentation and innovation today on the B2C side. I have a major client playing in a blurry space between B2B and B2C and that should be a great sweet spot for showcasing how this can really work – stay tuned.

Arik Hanson:

For me, in many ways, 2011 will be a building year. On the business side, I’ll be building on the first year of my new digital communications consulting business, ACH Communications. Year one exceeded almost every expectation I had–but in 2011, I’m looking to take that success to the next level. That doesn’t necessarily mean growing my business (although that appears to be happening whether I want it to or not). It means finding ways to work smarter. And stay ahead of the digital curve. And, finding ways to deliver outstanding value for my clients. Professionally, I’m hoping to build on a number of events I helped run or found in 2011. I’m working with PR leaders across the country to formalize the Help a PR Pro Out (HAPPO) organization a bit–we will have big news to share about a great Feb. event soon. I’m working with my colleague and friend Melissa Berggren to take the MN Blogger Conference event and build that out a bit with additional events in 2011. And, I’m hoping to play a key role in BlogWorld again this year (I helped organize the Social Media Business Summit last fall). Finally, personally, I’m hoping to build on our family successes (OK, so the metaphor doesn’t really work here :) . I’m planning to take more time with my daughter and son to help them discover their interests and passions. I’m hoping to spend more time with my wife as we continue to explore more restaurants and haunts in Minneapolis (we’re amateur foodies). And, I’m also looking to spend more time on myself as I seek to read more (trying to read 26 books in 2011) and get back in shape (working out 3 times a week–a big jump for me).

Kate Brodock

In January, I transitioned from full-time to part-time at the family business in Rome NY, a manufacturing plant, in order to focus entirely on my social media marketing and content production consulting firm, Other Side Group.  I’ll be reworking the formula I had from 2008 until now, and will be adding a focus on reputation management for high-profile individuals, in addition the existing social media marketing for organizations.  Luckily, my family still loves me, and I’ll be also taking their marketing to a new level.  I’m excited to “get back” into the space full-time, and look forward to working with B2B and B2C customers alike.  I also hope to renew my focus in Girls in Tech in my new role as CMO of Global, and in Meta-Activism Project.  Lastly, I’d like to increase my number of speaking and writing opportunities, as those are two things that really drive me. Oh, and have a ton of fun in life… of course.

You can also follow all of us on Twitter: Allan, Aaron, Arik, Kate or connect with us on LinkedIn: Allan, Aaron, Arik, Kate

Enhanced by Zemanta