Don’t Overlook the Power of LinkedIn Groups

Filed under Application, Discussion by on 17 December 2009 at 01:18 {14 comments}

LinkedIn continues to win me over. While the buzz remains focused on Facebook and Twitter, I continue to see improvements with the LinkedIn Platform. Some of the changes in the past year alone have included the addition of applications (e.g. Tripit), better group management functionality, new LinkedIn Blackberry application, and the latest change is the in the look and feel (more like Facebook/Twitter).

linkedin

If you’re in B2B communication and you’re looking for a place to start in social media – or expand – then you need to go back to LinkedIn if you haven’t already. The main reason I like LinkedIn for social media is that it’s very transparent: I know who you are based on your profile and most people have a real photo (not an avatar of screen name). I am also a fan of their group functionality. We use mostly private LinkedIn groups at the exchange as a way to connect users (we become a networker) and as focus groups for topics, issues and news.

Here are some thoughts and ideas about why pursuing LinkedIn groups can be a win for you and your organization.

Privacy– One of the concerns of public streaming networks like FaceBook and LinkedIn to internal and external stakeholders is the issue of privacy. The “private” feature in LinkedIn helps ease those fears since messages can’t be picked up in Google or other search engines. As a side note, one thing we have noticed by keeping our groups private is that the the number of people remains a manageable size and we can control who joins. As these groups grow we likely will look at creating subgroups (another new feature). There are some good ideas on subgroups here via @CherylHarrison.

RSS Feeds — A nice feature is that you can aggregate RSS feeds into your group, which may or may not include feeds from your own company. And you absolutely should include feeds from relevant trade pulications and blogs to drive content without you having to search for it. We mostly use non-CME Group feeds in order to help foster discussions and provide us with more credibility since we bring in outside content.

Discussion– Part of the focus group feature of LinkedIn groups is the discussion section that allows you to have an open forum for whatever you need it. Do you want the group’s feedback on a new product you’ve launched? What about input on how to improve your web site? More important is you should encourage your audience to post topics and then you can take notes, learn and jump in when needed. Just don’t try to manage too much of the conversation or people will stop contributing.

Legal and Investor Relations- My guess is your corporate counsel is not on Twitter. They might be on Facebook. I blogged earlier about investor relations using StockTwits for to reach shareholders, but they likely aren’t there yet. Here is where LinkedIn can be a showcase for your social media efforts. There likely is more of a chance that they are on LinkedIn and you should be get them involved to show what social media can do and win their confidence.

Company Profile- While you’re at it you should take a quick look at your company’s profile on LinkedIn. There is an enormous amount of data people can find on this one page and someone needs to update it and validate it. Since people may want to learn more about your company before joining your group. I suggest you find your company now and make sure it’s accurate. As a bonus your recruiting department will appreciate the update.

This video from Kyle Flaherty is a nice overview on how to set up and start managing a group.

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In addition, Mashable has some good tips here on how to manage your LinkedIn groups. Are you managing groups on LinkedIn now? If so, share some of your best practices with us. What’s worked well? What have you learned? And while you’re at it why don’t you connect to all of us here at B2B Voices on LinkedIn: Kate Brodock, Anna Barcelos, Arik Hanson, Aaron Pearson, Allan Schoenberg.

5 Ways to Combine Traditional & Social Media in B2B

Filed under Discussion, Uncategorized by on 3 December 2009 at 13:20 {5 comments}

I continue to be disturbed by the frequency with which social media is treated as this isolated specialty area, with the result inevitably being that social media messaging and strategy is cut-off from other marketing communications programs, leading to redundancy, mixed messages, wasted money and blown opportunities. I can’t speak for consumer products companies but in B2B I can only implore you to never go this route.

Instead, as I’ve preached before, our point of view is that a B2B purchase decision is an “inline” journey – that prospects using a mix of offline and online sources of information and influence to ultimately become a buyer and hopefully an advocate. As University of Pennsylvania sociologist Keith Hampton said in an article about the myth of urban isolation, “Online and offline life are inherently connected.”

handSo here are 5 thought starters on just how to do that:
1. Bring Offline Conversations Online. You’ll get more return on your investment in live gatherings of customers, prospects or influencers if you encourage online conversations to run in parallel. They will help engage people in live attendance more intensively, provide important contextual information (such as online videos or collateral that complement live presentations), and pull in a lot of people who otherwise couldn’t attend.
2. Be an Inline Thought Leader. Most B2B public relations campaigns have a strong thought leadershp component because when you’re making an expensive, complex purchase, you’re more likely to do so with a vendor with demonstrated expertise, not just because they’re running a “buy one, get one free” sale. Make sure your online thought leadership efforts are thematically in sync. One of our consulting firm clients targeting banks did this by complementing news releases and bylined articles (traditional PR tools) with online video interviews of subject matter experts and a Twitter presence that linked to both their own and third-party content that was topically consistent.
3. Activate Your Intelligence Network. Leveraging social media doesn’t just mean trying to connect with current and potential customers. It can also include creating an internal network or a partner network designed to facilitate intelligence gathering about competitors, sales trends or sales and marketing best practices. Tools like Yammer, Delicious, iGoogle and Radian6 can help and even more sophisticated ones are coming onto the market.
4. Ignite Advocates. Word of mouth remains the No. 1 source of influence in B2B, according to most of the research I see from Forrester and others. A lot of that is happening through pretty traditional channels – face-to-face, phone and email mostly. You can arm your advocates for those conversations by sharing information specifically designed to help them tell your story, via Twitter perhaps, or even a password-protected online advocacy toolkit.
5. Work With the Media – and Be the Media. We’re still going to be pitching stories and working with media and bloggers, but we can self-publish good content ourselves too and the evidence is that good content will be embraced even if it comes from a vendor. For example, a vice president at one of my former clients covered their industry trade show with video and regular blog posts, and was included in an industry trade round-up story as one of the individuals “covering” the event. It gave a big boost to his blog traffic. As journalist A.J. Liebling said, “Freedom of the press is guranteed only to those who own one.” Now you can.

I’m a what? And I have to wear that?

Filed under Uncategorized by on 1 December 2009 at 01:37 {3 comments}

Just like Jason Falls, Paul Gillin and Lindsay Lebresco I was intrigued by the box that was delivered to my office last week from Gas Pedal. Holiday candy? A new tech gadget? No, wait…Andy sent me another copy of his book!  No. I unwrapped to my dismay a very large, yellow, personalized t-shirt. Thanks Andy. The obvious idea behind the t-shirt is to promote the “Word of Mouth Supergeniuses” conference taking place right here in Chicago on December 16. And it worked.

DSC01773

Safe and sound at home in my new large, yellow, personalized t-shirt

I’ve been able to get to know Andy better through CME Group’s affiliation with the Social Media Business Council, and I have to admit that Andy is a great example to follow. Why? Well, you can see the photo of me wearing the very large, yellow, personalized t-shirt and in fact I’m wearing it now as I blog. Yes, he’s that good because this t-shirt is reallyis very large, yellow and personalized. But Andy knows that word of mouth is a driving force in marketing, and if he can use a simple thing like a t-shirt with the discount code “ALLANISMYHERO” to get you a $101 discount on the price of a ticket — well you get it too.

And if you look at the event agenda this really has the foundation to be a great program. In addition to the people mentioned above, you’ll be able to hear from Olivier Blanchard, Rick Murray, Rod Brooks (PEMCO), Matthew Guiste (Starbucks) and more.

There’s still time to register for this event here and be sure to use the “ALLANISMYHERO” for your discount. And of course if you let me know ahead of time that you’re coming I can even arrange for a personal tour of our trading floors. Not even Andy can offer that and the t-shirts at CME Group are way better. See you in Chicago!

Mingling in Seattle with Ragan

Filed under Discussion, Soap Box by on 23 November 2009 at 14:49 {2 comments}

Last week I attended and spoke at the 2009 Ragan Employee Communications, PR and Social Media Summit in Redmond, Washington, at Microsoft’s campus. I continue to be impressed with the events produced by Mark Ragan (@MarkRaganCEO) and his team as they not only secured a world class venue, but the topics continue to be timely (Disclosure: We’re hosting two Ragan events at the exchange in Chicago next month, so if you plan to attend let me know.).

I’ve been asked by various people since last week to summarize the event and I can summarize it with one word: Mingle. Now, I don’t mean mingling in the network, business card trading sense of the word — I’ll get to that as well — but from a new technology coming from Microsoft to address social networks internally. How new is this offering from Microsoft? Try to Google (or Bing) Microsoft Mingle and see what you find. We were lucky enough to have Frank Shaw (@FXShaw), vice president of corporate communications, Microsoft, kick off the conference and demonstrate Mingle. So what is Mingle and why should you care? Seeing and reading about it are two different things, but here’s a quick rundown:

  • Mingle is a collaboration initiative that will allow for a one-stop network for employees to come together.
  • Essentially, Mingle is an organization’s internal Twitter,where employees can tag or annotate internal *and* external URLs & share with other employees.
  • Mingle can allow for groups to be created among empmloyees based on key words or topics discussed in the live stream, which in turn can connect employees from various locations/departments to collaborate better.
  • Like Twitter and other microblogging tools, Mingle allows employees to move conversations from e-mail to a secure internal community (one of the key distinctions as services like Yammer run outside an organization’s firewall). 
  • Microsoft plans to build more awareness and use of Mingle internally through existing resources like Sharepoint.

Shaw summarized the purpose of developming a tool like Mingle by stating that Microsoft wanted to know where their employees are getting information and then optimizing that information across all employees. What struck me as the obvious throughout the demonstration of Mingle is the fact that Microsoft is getting ready to unleash social media for the masses, which means there will likely be changes to tools such as Outlook, SharePoint, PowerPoint, Excel and other products. When this happens it will be hard for employees to ignore the changes, and it will bring even further changes to how enterprise communicate with employees. How would your organization change if employees communicated more in real time and depended less on email? How will employee communications and human resources have to adapt to these changes? I would suggest you pay attention to Mingle as Microsoft discusses this platform more publicly.

In addition to the Mingle platform I was able to mingle in real time with some pretty amazing people, including:

 Shauna Causey (@ShaunaCausey) — One of the added benefits of attending this event was the opportunity to spend time with Shauna and she’s a professional I admire and look to for ideas. You should too. I connected with Shauna several months ago via Twitter and we immediately bonded. She’s a very sharp communicator who has taken on several cause-related initiatives in addition to her job with Comcast.

 

Finally meeting face to face and mingling with Shauna Causey (@shaunacausey) Finally meeting face to face and mingling with Shauna Causey.

 

Jeff Willinger (@JWillie) and Charee Klimek ( @ChareeKlimek) — I met both Jeff and Charee via the Chicago Social Media Club earlier this year and the three of us seem to show up everywhere together. One of Jeff’s areas of expertise lies in SharePoint, so I know he was doing some serious networking on the Microsoft Campus. Charee is a consultant involved in helping organizations understand how to leverage social networking with employees, which means Mingle has some serious potential for her business. 

 

Charee Klimeck and Jeff Willinger -- a Windy City connection in Seattle. Charee Klimek and Jeff Willinger — a Windy City connection in Seattle.

 

Tony Edwards (@TraderSmarts) — Tony is an independent trader who lives in Seattle and he and I were introduced only a few weeks ago randomly on Twitter. One of the tremendous benefits of using Twitter at the exchange (@CMEGroup) is meeting with so many customers face to face. I often talk about using social media as way to build a fan base of supporters who can support your oganization. Meeting with Tony and learning not just about how and what he trades, but getting to know him as a person, further helps to show the value of social media in a B2B environment. By the way, here was Tony’s tweet last Friday.

Tac Anderson (@tacanderson) and Nathan Misner (@NathanMisner) – Their presentation on influence was straightforward and filled with great ideas. You can view their presentation here.  I was able to spend some time with them before and after their presenation and they are a must follow if you are interested in the power of storytelling and engagement as public relations strategies. They also unveiled Twendz as a social monitoring tool that will track frequency, reach and the influence of people online.

There were many more conversations with the likes of Jeramie McPeek (@Sunswebaster), Shannon Paul (@ShannonPaul) and of course Mark Ragan. If you attended the conference what did you think about Mingle? If you are involved in employee communications how are you managing the change brought about internally by social media? Let us know your thoughts.

Using Social Media in the Banking and Financial Sectors

Filed under Resources by on 9 November 2009 at 21:10 {10 comments}

Allan wrote a post in July on building a social media marketplace in financial services.  There have been a few posts in recent news that highlight this issue of using social media concepts and tools in the banking and financial sectors, so I thought I’d take a moment to highlight a few.

  • Banks & Social Media – Will Slow & Steady Win the Race? (B2B Bliss) “It’s clear social media is changing the industry.  But, engagement is a different story.  Regulations and compliance issues still hamper many banks from embracing the truly “open transparency” social media requires.”
  • 5 Ways Banks are Using Social Media (Mashable) “By embracing the most popular tools available, the industry has also been embracing the best of what social media culture has to offer, and smaller, community banks seem to be leading the charge when it comes to social media innovation.”

Update: An article with thoughts from some one of our readers, @podcaststeve, “Bankers conference highlights opportunities, pitfalls of social networking” (In NJBIZ)

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Building a Social Media Marketplace in Financial Services

Filed under Uncategorized by on 10 July 2009 at 13:23 {2 comments}

I remember in my days working at Edelman during the ERP heyday that online B2B marketplaces, particularly for manufacturing, were the buzz and actually changed how many companies did business. Last month, I presented at the Ragan Corporate Communications Social Media conference (we also hosted the conference at the exchange) about what we are doing in the financial services industry (you can view my presentation here via Slideshare and a recap from Barbara Rozgonyi here).

In my opinion we are in the midst of developing a new marketplace at the exchange. In the past several years alone we have seen tremendous and rapid change in our industry. As a marketplace founded in 1848 (version 1.0) our model was unchanged for more than 150 years. Buyers and sellers came to our trading floors to hedge their risk and sell their products. They also used the markets to discover what the market would pay for a price. In 2002 that evolved (version 2.0) when the exchange went public (Nasdaq: CME) and we had new audiences to communicate with (investors, analysts) besides our members. When I came to the exchange in 2004 another shift occurred when for the first time ever electronic trading (version 3.0) surpassed floor trading. This shift in trading create even more opportunities for us as we now had customers in more than 85 countries directly connected to CME Group (as opposed to our trading floor). Today, more than 80 percent of our volume is now electronic. If you want to know more about how the exchange operates you can watch the video here.

So where are we now? I believe social media is profoundly changing financial markets once again (version 4.0). Social media, in particular Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, are having profound effects on the way our customers interact, communicate and research what is happening in the economy. If you want a great example of this just go to StockTwits and follow the conversations. We’ll see where all of this takes us but I think social media will continue to create a number of real business opportunities for traders and the financial markets in the coming years.

I’ll be talking more about this idea and concept at Blogwell and Ragan in the coming weeks. So how is social media changing your views about your industry? I welcome your thoughts, ideas and questions.

Community is Like a Dinner Party

Filed under Discussion, Guest Post by on 24 June 2009 at 08:34 {no comments}

This is a guest post by Rachel Happe, the Principal and co-Founder of The Community Roundtable, a peer network for community managers and social media practitioners.

Most of us have heard some version of “Social Media/Twitter is like a Cocktail Party” and while this is hardly a new meme, I wanted to add my perspective because a party is not a party is not a party. I have a soapbox topic that is related which is social media is not community – even though it may share many of the same characteristics.  To me it is like saying a cocktail party is not a dinner party – most people would agree.  I like both as an individual but one represents my circle of acquaintances and the other represents people with whom I have more intimate relationships. For business, that is very similar to a marketing funnel – and depending on what type of business you are in, one may be more important than the other. In particular, if you are marketing to businesses rather than individuals, the deeper relationships engendered by “dinner parties” are critical to your marketing efforts.
There are a few characteristics of a good dinner party that make it special and different:

  • The food and wine are typically more elaborate and sophisticated
  • Your attention is focused on a small set of guests all evening
  • The music is mellow to allow for in depth conversations
  • Guests are introduced to other people they are likely to enjoy meeting
  • The host or hostess mixes things up, ensures the conversation keeps moving, and draws out their guests
  • You put out your best dinnerware

Done well, the host of a dinner party makes their guests feel welcome, comfortable, interesting, and desirable. It is a pretty good ‘tool’ for establishing closer relationships with people and making them want to stay friend with you.

What can businesses learn? Sure, throw a lot of cocktail parties (i.e. use social media tools), you have to get your name out and chat with the crowd… but make sure you also throw some fabulous dinner parties – or get invited to them because those are the events that allow you to have a richer conversation. Niche communities are where people will trust each other, participate in deeper conversations about their needs, and really get to know you. Setting up a community to serve the same purpose as a dinner party requires:

  • A appealing location (even if that location is virtual) that encourages conversation and connections
  • Good content that will encourage the conversations you want the group to have
  • A community manager who facilitates introductions, highlights content, and keeps the conversation going
  • Participation of experts and thought leaders that people want to meet – whether from within your own company or external

You can throw the dinner party, which may cost more but you get to decide who gets invited, or you can work on being a sought-after guest – someone that helps hosts provide good content and/or energy. But beware: It is all to easy to provide an appealing location, invite people over and assume they will form a tight knit community. But think about throwing a dinner party, having people come over and then spending the evening in another room – maybe yelling out to them every once in a while. Awkward, no? People would chit chat a little but the conversation would be stilted because there they are, sitting in your living room… waiting for you and the food, eventually leaving in disappointment and annoyance.

Communities are a phenomenal way of developing relationships with prospects and customers… but don’t think they will effortlessly develop. Want to understand them a little better? Go home and plan a dinner party.

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Using Social Networking Sites in B2B Businesses?

Filed under Discussion by on 8 June 2009 at 11:37 {3 comments}

In the B2B Online Marketing group on LinkedIn, Rob Schmelz, E-Commerce Manager for Central Restaurant Products, asked a simple question from people:

robb2b

The question got a few good responses that hit on several key issues involved in instituting social media into the B2B space.

Kathryn Korostoff, Founder and President of Research Rockstar, notes varied successes:

kathrynb2b

A lot of success to date with B2B and social media use has been in cultivating communication with your current constituents: customers, clients, and employees.  As Kathryn mentioned, they had a ton of success using the tools for their customer support.  Other such examples are internal communities for current employees, or platforms that increase the connection to tier one clients.  She also highlights where social media tactics have room to grow: new client or customer acquisitions, or new sales.  In summary, at least in Kathryn’s experience, social media has been much more useful in making existing relationships stronger and deepter.

Scott Hardigree, CEO of Indiemark, which recently launched the mformer portion of their services to target B2B companies,

scottb2b

There is still a place for quick, viral marketing to happen in the B2B space.  A lot of people think this and other forms of word of mouth marketing are reserved for the B2C space.

Maria Colacurcio, Co-Founder of SmartSheet,

mariab2b

As Kathryn also mentioned, social media is a great way to develop your standing as an expert in your field and, ideally, an industry leader.  One of the primary ways this is done in the B2B space is to have a company blog where you’re able to post valuable information that brings readers back for more, and thus creates more brand awareness for when it does come time to make a decision on a certain product or service.  It’s icing on the cake that also boosts your SEO.

Jann LaGoy Mirchandani, Owner of Mirchandani Consulting, a graphic & web design firm in New York, commented:

jannb2b

Some B2B industries may see more success than others when it comes to sales.  Part of that, as Jann points to, may be a result of having a company with a little bit more word of mouth capabilities.  Once you have happy customers, information on a jewelry design may have the capability to be more “talked about” outside your direct network or industry connections than, say, a supply management software application.

Do you have any thoughts on successes or failures in the B2B space?  What have been our experiences?

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Other Voices: Ellis Booker, Editor, BtoB magazine and BtoB’s Media Business

Filed under Other Voices Interview by on 13 May 2009 at 15:24 {no comments}

I had the pleasure of meeting Ellis Booker at the Chicago Social Media Club event in March 2009. As the editor for BtoB magazine, Ellis oversees content for the only publication devoted exclusively to the intersection of business marketing and business strategy. He also is editor of BtoB Media Business, the Magazine for Business Publishing Executives.ublished monthly by Crain Communications Inc., the publication reaches an audience of more than 45,000 readers. In addition to the print edition, BtoB offers online content and a weekly e-mail newsletter. Prior to joining BtoB Ellis was Editor at Large for CMP’s Internet Week, Senior Editor for Mecklermedia’s Web Week, and Senior Editor for Computerworld. He graduated from Oberlin College with a B.A. in English and Philosophy. You can find Ellis on Twitter at @ellisbooker.

Q: What changes in B2B marketing and communications have you seen since you’ve been at the magazine?

A: Two things. First has been the embrace of marketing metrics. It’s significant, I think, that during this latest downturn, marketing continues, albeit at reduced budgets. In other words, marketers have succeeded in demonstrating their value to the business bottom line. There will be no going back to “let’s throw it out there” campaigns. Even newfangled viral executions are being monitored closely, and modified if they are not meeting some pre-determined success metric. The second thing, I’d say, is how much more playful and creative the executions have become in the nine years I’ve been editor of BtoB. I would credit Ogilvy’s brilliant work for long-time client IBM as helping to create this new, creative landscape.

Q: The economy has obviously been under a tremendous amount of stress lately. How do you see B2B communicators coping?

A: It’s sector by sector, as you’d expect. What will be interesting is how the hardest hit areas, such as construction and financial services, find their voice in the recovery. And how the survivors, many in merged situations, handle their merged brands.

Q: How do you see B2B companies embracing social media?

A: Cautiously. But they need to engage these new channels, at the very least as listening posts for how their products and brands are being discussed by customers and prospects. Another healthy outcome of social media is that it is forcing companies to look at how their customers consume media. The old assumptions about target audiences–the trade magazines they read, shows they watch, conferences they attend, etc.–are being considered with fresh eyes. Also, the smart companies are giving their young employees more and

more responsibility for setting the strategy for these channels, which are consumed by young professionals like themselves.

Q: With all the press about print diminishing, how do B2B companies feel about print advertising? And how is BtoB dealing with this?

A: We’ve had a multi-page NetMarketing section in BtoB since relaunching the title in 2000. So Internet topics are not new to us. We also have a standing section on business media, which provides very insightful coverage of media companies. Regarding the future, what I think you’ll see is the media print brands in each category surviving and growing integrated print-Web-event-data businesses. The second- and third-place media properties are on the bubble, unfortunately.

Q: What marketing programs are they doing for brand retention and awareness?

A: Answering this slightly differently… one of the things that has concerned me is marketers being too myopic about, if you will, transaction-based campaigns and having less patience for long-haul, multi-year efforts that build brands. This problem is magnified in the current economy, of course.

Q: Where are B2B companies investing most of their marketing dollars?

A: No surprise here. Online is still growing at double digits, although far less than a couple years ago. Within that online spending, paid search and search engine optimization take the lions share.

Q: If you could give advice to B2B communicators, what three things would you tell them they need for being successful?

A: First, I’d say communicators must learn to listen before they can talk. And by “listen” I mean listen across all channels, using analytic technology to make informed decisions. Second, they need to coordinate their efforts. It’s simply not acceptable these days to have online and offline efforts out of sync. Third, they should be ready to adapt, and adapt quickly. Companies that adopt the right technologies to listen, monitor and manage their messaging should be able to modify these efforts quickly when the data indicates X or Y

isn’t working.

Q: Finally, what’s really the best way to pitch a story to you these days and what are you looking for?

A: The best way is e-mail. I live on e-mail. But before sending me a pitch, please read BtoB (and our many, subject-focused e-mail products) to see how we organize our coverage. That’ll give you the best idea of what we’re interested in. And on last thing. Despite my many comments about enabling technology, our focus here is about how marketers, practioners, are using these tools. We don’t do product reviews. We want to talk to users.

B2B Case Study: ShipServ

Filed under Case Study by on 29 April 2009 at 12:27 {6 comments}

The social media program that this case study is based upon was a joint effort between ShipServ and Velocity Partners, a London-based B2B Marketing agency specializing in technology markets.

So what works for a B2B company? Let’s start by taking a look at a campaign that’s been pretty successful so far. This campaign was driven by John Watton, the VP of Marketing for ShipServ, an internet trading platform for the shipping industry. ShipServ has a global audience and a dispersed community of purchasers who are, believe it or not, quite eager to network.

Goals of the campaign:

  • Raise the awareness of the ShipServ brand amongst our target audience
  • Increase traffic to shipserv.com by 50% in three months
  • Engage with the audience and start to build community

Challenges faced:

  • Limited budget
  • Conservative target audience, late to adopting the internet and Web2.0 technologies

ShipServ’s Strategy:

  • Build an online community of advocates
  • Move communications from broadcast to discussion, engaging the audience in ongoing,open dialogue
  • Nurture prospects through drip feed of relevant content
  • Establish key themes on a quarterly basis, and develop rolling thunder of editorial content

Tactics Used:

  • Launch of the ShipServ Maritime Trading Network Group on LinkedIn in December 2008
  • Joined five other maritime groups on LinkedIn
  • Launch of the ShipServ blog as a container for opinion pieces
  • Opened up a twitter account, taking direct feeds from the website
  • Undertook keyword planning, optimized the website and developed landing pages for SEO
  • Revamped company newsletter to be more point-of-view oriented
  • Distributed humorous viral video

  • Underpinned site with lead nurturing system (marketo) to track visitor behaviour and nurture leads
  • Developed six themes, each of which manifested itself in:
    • A discussion posting on the LinkedIn groups
    • A social media release, distributed via PitchEngine
    • A blog posting

Results:

Building the community

  • Built a community of nearly 400 on LinkedIn
  • Attracted nearly 300 visitors to blog postings
  • Attracted over 50 relevant followers on Twitter
  • Over 600 views of the viral video, 62% of which came via email distribution and 18% via shipserv.com/linkedin distribution

Web site stats:

  • Visitors went up by 59% (increase in quantity)
  • Page views went up by 70% (increase in quality)
  • Average time on site went up by 25% (increase in quality)
  • Linkedin and Twitter went from zero to being in top 20 traffic sources
  • Number of leads passed to sales increased by 400%

This is a great example of using social media as a low cost way to build brand awareness and encourage engagement in a B2B space. Ship Serv, and John Watton, are instituting pioneering strategies with social media in a what is usually considered a pretty conservative industry.

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