B2B Social Media: Strategy Guide and Best Practices

B2B Social Media – A Backgrounder

by robin frankbeep beep media

April 2012

Part 1:Overview of B2B Social Media

Latest Data

• B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads/month than those who do not.

• 69% of B2B marketers are shifting their budgets toward social media.

• B2B companies that blog more than 4x/week see the biggest increase in traffic and leads, according to @HubSpot

• 51% of B2B marketers plan to increase their spend on content marketing, per @MarketingProfs

• 86% of #B2B companies are using social media • Top use of B2B social media is for thought leadership at 60%,

per @btobmagazine

Latest Data (continued)

• B2B companies are more likely to use Twitter than B2C companies: 75% vs 49%, per @businessdotcom

• 41% of B2B companies are acquiring customers through Facebook.

• 39% of B2B marketers say blogging is their most valuable content asset, per @eMarketer

• 60% of B2B marketers cite thought leadership as #1 reason to use social media, per @btobmagazine

• Social media helps B2B marketers improve search results• B2B social media spending set to explode to $54M over next 5

years per @Forrester

Social Media Statistics

• Twitter– 225 million – Number of Twitter accounts– 100 million – Number of active Twitter users in 2011– 250 million – Number of tweets per day (October 2011)

• LinkedIn– As of December 31, 2011 (the end of the fourth quarter),

professionals are signing up to join LinkedIn at a rate that is faster than two new members per second.

– As of February 9, 2012, LinkedIn operates the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 150 million members in over 200 countries and territories.

– Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members

Social Media Statistics

• YouTube – 60 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute (more video

uploaded in past month than three big TV networks in the past 60 years).

– YouTube gets 4,000,000,000 page views a day, which adds up to 1,000,000,000,000 a year.

– YouTube has 800,000,000 users (about the same as Facebook) who watch 3,000,000,000 hours of video a month.

– YouTube Average viewing session remains a low 15 minutes

• Blogs– 70 million – Total number of WordPress blogs by the end of 2011

The Rise of the B2B Social Buyer

• Relies on social media and online communities during the purchase process.

Solution Provider Credibility is also on the Rise

• B2B solution providers need to create fact-based customer intimacy, establishing a relationship with the buyer based on knowledge and creating a continuous, coordinated dialogue.

B2B Marketers’ Jobs are More Complex than Ever

• Dealing with both social and traditional buyers

The Goal: an Integrated Customer Engagement Program

Social Media is the New WOM Engine

• B2B companies should obsess about building reach as much as B2C companies.

• Social media builds reach.• Social Media amplifies the effectiveness of

online marketing. It doesn’t replace it!– Use social media to promote all your online and

offline events.

Social Media is Cost Effective

• While social media requires an investment of budget and resources, it is nowhere near the costs associated with other media.

• Even in tough economic climates, B2Bs can afford social media programs and use these initiatives to gain competitive advantage.

• Social media platforms provide excellent outlets for customer education, building trust and shortening the sales cycle.

Part 2:Developing a B2B Social Media

Strategy

Social Media Strategy Elements• Set Your Objectives• Know Your Audience(s)• Study the Competitive Landscape• Define Your Strategy

– Platforms: Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, – Social Media Playbook– Measurement and Reporting– Management Tools

Objectives• Objectives (Customers and Key Stakeholders such as

investors, partners, and others)– Increase awareness of company and the problems you

solve.– Establish interest with compelling reasons for your

solution is better than the competition and more details about your offering.

– Engage social communities with content that is relevant, interesting, educational, and entertaining.

– Create thought leadership position.

Target Audiences• Identify target audiences

– Who are they?– Where do they live online?– Which social platforms?

Your Competition’s Social Media• Study the competitive landscape

– What are they doing in social media?– What are their strengths and weaknesses?

Platform Mix

• ID platform mix and messaging– Create a unified presence that builds your story,

empowers your interactions, and helps you rise up from being just another voice in the stream

– Create useful information, to select the best possible media to package that information, and then to choose a series of distribution technologies for delivering your ideas to others, to encourage interactions, and to drive towards certain target results.

Social Media Playbook: A Guide

• Social Media Playbook: a procedural guide to aid social media spokespeople for your company– Audiences– Voice/Tone– Content Strategy

• Timing• Editorial guidelines• What can/can’t be said• Promotions/Special offers (whitepapers, reports)

– Content Creation System– Monitoring guidelines– Spam policies

Key Messaging Doc

• A living “Google doc” of your company’s positions on leading industry trends and issues.

• Gathered from fraud prevention best practices, sales personas, analyst opinion, press coverage, mgmt opinion.

• Used as a reference in creating social editorial on the fly, using keywords/phrases.

• Reviewed quarterly.

Editorial Calendar

• Marketing/Editorial Calendar– Spreadsheet of all content across all channels, by date for

creation, publishing, promotion, and tracking.– Guarantee that you always have something proactive to

talk about.– Includes current/older content, but also integrates with PR

schedule, event-driven mktg, blog editorial planning.– Ensures you are proactive, not just reactive, to drive

eyeballs to owned assets (site, social, blog, etc).

Content

• Prospects don’t care about your products; they want solutions to their problems.

• 60% of the sales cycle is over before a buyer talks to a salesperson.

• Publishing and sharing content online is the single biggest lever to increase lead generation.

• Create awesome content and reduce the friction of sharing it.

Atomize Your Content

Reactive example

New Aite Group report: "Online Fraud Mitigation: Tools of the Trade“27 October 2011

TodayToday TomorrowTomorrow Next WeekNext Week

TWEET:You can market fraud prevention to your customers! <link>

COMMENT:Here are 2 ways to not affect online usability…

BLOG POST:Download the report from us. Here’s our take on what to do…

1Tweet

FormLanding Page

How Social Media Leads Happen

Lead

Like CTABlog Post

Landing Page

+1 CTAProduct Page

Landing Page

3 Must-Haves for Social Media Lead Generation

• Get people to connect with you.• Get people to share your stuff.• Place calls to action everywhere.

THE

10-4-1RULE

Link to a company landing page

Links to company blog posts

Links to third-party articles

Know Your Expiration Date

Twitter To-Do’s• Create Profile• List in directories• Follow and engage key audiences and press on Twitter

to gain followers• Participate: use keywords, define keywords, retweet,

@reply, create lists• Content strategy: customer support, interesting

information in the industry, education, even humor• Monitor keywords and key lists of stakeholders and

customers

LinkedIn To-Do’s

• Build out company profile –jobs, description– Encourage employees to create profiles, connect, get

recommendations• Monitor and participate in key groups• Create company group• Share updates• LinkedIn ads – wait – currently not high returns

YouTube To Do’s

• Add videos and create company channel• Create playlists• Add tags• Add annotations• Add friends/gain subscribers• Optimize for SEO

Measurement & Reporting

• Identify key analytics and targets.• Create customized analytic report and provide monthly

reporting.• Offer/integrate recommendations based on learnings.

– Evolve content and promotions to emphasize what you find to be successful.

– Create strategies for flexibility and adapting to changing market conditions.

Tools for Management & Monitoring

• Hootsuite– Schedule and monitor posts on Twitter/Facebook– Link accounts to save time– Hoosuite analytics for Twitter

• YouTube Insights• Twentyfeet

– Broad cross-platform monitoring• Klout

– Monitoring influence across social networks

Social Media Monitoring

• Industry blogs• News websites• Conferences/events• Analysts• LinkedIn Groups and companies• Twitter profiles – lists of PR, competitors, analysts,

influencers, etc.

• Note: create workflow for alerts, and responses

Social Media Analytics• Suggested analytics to measure

– Inbound website traffic referred from social media sites– Inbound blog traffic referred from social media sites– Growth in blog commentary (per post average)– Blog article “Likes”– Growth in Twitter followers, retweets, @replies, and hashtags– Growth in followers on LinkedIn– Growth in group members on LinkedIn– “Authority” measures for blog, Klout– Number of new prospects who admit first following us on

social media

Social Media ROI

Thank You!

Background