Many executives and companies are beginning to explore social media to generate sales for their business. At the end of the day social media will generate leads and even some sales, but in the B2B space it will still come down to people. It is important to understand that social media is an ingredient to a company’s current marketing strategy and does not replace the need for people to interact with people.

Developing a social media strategy that produces leads and eventually sales needs to be done with the consideration for the need of human interaction. Most sales executives reading this already know that and that’s why they/ you even question the validity of social media as a lead generator. Still questioning the need or validity of social media in your company? Take a look at this video,

We work with B2B companies in developing and managing their social media strategy. You can contact us to learn more.

Companies getting started in Social Media are looking for tools to help streamline their efforts and workforce.  So we have put together a short list of tools that can help B2B companies in their marketing efforts.

Salesforce

A web based CRM, Salesforce has led all CRM companies in integrating Social Media to its platform. Some the nice contributions for B2B companies is the Twitter & Facebook integration allowing you to monitor multiple accounts.

Jigsaw (now part of Salesforce)

Jigsaw is the world's largest database of up-to-date, downloadable, and complete contact and company information. Every Jigsaw business contact is complete with a phone number (over 70% of which are direct dial), position, company, mailing address, and business email address. Jigsaw also offers free tools for researching companies as well as a user generated company research wiki pages.  These contacts are then cross-referenced with the social media platform LinkedIn which has over 70 Million plus professionals using this tool.

Hummingbird

Hummingbird is a great application to grow your companies Twitter following in a very targeted way using mostly automation.  It can take a lot of man hours growing a targeted following on Twitter, through Hummingbird that process can be dramatically shortened.  You can even automate your un-following of those who do not follow you back, again saving you’re team a lot time.

Hootsuite

A great tool for managing multiple Twitter Accounts.  In addition now Ping.Fm has integrated the ability to post to Hootsuite.  Allowing even more social media account integration including LinkedIn, Facebook, and WordPress.  Best of all HootSuite cost nothing.

There are multiple other tools available that get more specific to each companies needs.  You can learn more by contacting us.  We work with B2B companies in developing and managing their social media strategy.  You can contact us to learn more.

Companies taking a serious look at using Social Media are facing key internal challenges to their efforts.  This is just a short list, but these are ones I find in my discussions with executives on a weekly basis.

Measurable

How do we measure social media?  In other words how can justify using social media as an additional ingredient.  One of things executives are running into is a lot of start up firms not understanding the B2B/ B2C sales process; however they have a strong grip on social media.  Without an understanding of both, many executives find start up marketing firms along with long standing ones not truly understanding the need and basis for measurables.

Scale

Scale is a huge challenge once you realize the validity to a strong social media strategy.  Who is going to administer the strategy? Who will oversee it?  How many people will it take? Do we outsource?  These are all valid questions.  Scale can be easily overcame with the right tools and delegation along with alignment with the proper social media firm.

Humanism

At the end of the day, social media may generate leads and engagement, but it still comes down to bringing it to a conversation.  Social Media should always be viewed as an extension and ingredient of your marketing and engagement efforts.  It should not be treated as a way to re-write basic interaction and engagement.  It is just an ingredient to help facilitate much more interaction with your target market.  So do your company a favor, be real and authentic when using social media.

Want to learn more? We work with B2B companies in developing and managing their social media strategy.  You can contact us to learn more.

So you're exploring the best practices of LinkedIn for your company or business?  Learn how to effectively position yourself on LinkedIn with these seven strategies.

1.  Their corporate profile is optimized properly. 

• The first sentence in the description is written well for others to derive what you do in that first sentence. 
• Your Corporate Profile is keyword optimized to your industry.

2.  They participate in the Q&A portion of LinkedIn.  With over 170 plus industries participating on LinkedIn and people seeking quality answers.  Many turn to LinkedIn Q & A as they know they will get quality answers and advice.  By participating in this you can become recognized experts voted on by the community of people who ask the questions.

• Dedicated personnel to answer questions in specific topic groups that pertain to your target markets.
• Each answer is tagged or finished off with a standard signature that lets readers who your company is.

3.  They take advantage of the Events Application.

This is a great way to draw attention to your companies events, tradeshows, expo's, or other public and industry events.  By simply using this tool on Linkedin your event will be indexed by Google.  If optimized with keywords properly you can drive serious attention to events and your target that is on LinkedIn.

4.  They set a standardized paragraph and key specialties that goes in all employees LinkedIn profiles.  When done so properly this effect the order your employees rank in search results.

5.  They take full advantage of the Advanced Search application to find contacts for business development, client engagement, and event marketing.

6.  They add misspellings of their company name as a notation in their corporate profile so they can be found in the company search directory if someone misspells their name.

7.  They upgrade to the paid subscription in order to use LinkedIn's more advanced search system and to send in-mails/ messages to people whom you have no connection to on LinkedIn.

These are just seven effective strategies companies should be using, can you think of anymore?

Have you seen the reality shows, coming into help those over-packed home owners who collect everything in sight and never throw anything away.

Have you noticed how many people have become great at generating large followings through auto-follow programs?  Just one important ingredient is missing, engagement.

It’s not just about growing your following, it’s about engagement.  When you think about collecting followers you should be asking what do you know about them?

Do you know where they are?

Do you know what they like?

Do you know what they don’t like?

What are their interests?

What are their beliefs?

One thought you may want to consider is to create folders that identify the specific characteristics or demographics of your followers.  Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook allow for this type of filing through various applications.

So what do you think, are you just hoarding followers? What is your engagement process?

Here is a short video I did sharing how business professionals can search Twitter for targeted prospect pools and begin to grow their twitter followings in a very targeted manner.

Let me know what you think.

My clients often ask me “how do we engage with Social Media?” What I often find is that they already know how to get on the most social platforms, but are over analyzing the “social” aspect. At the end of the day just be social, don’t over due it, be authentic and your audience will grow to trust that. Now when it comes too specific strategies or aspects of unique ways to engage your target market that is were we can help.

However, for know lets just talk a little more about being social. Some do’s and don’ts in reference to whom you’re looking to engage with your social platforms. Because the way you engage your family member is not the way you usually engage your customer.

Don’t over promote to your followers: I like what Chris Brogan says about engagement of status updates and this is something that I think we all should consider. When you do status updates use the 12 to 1 ratio of offering 12 useful meaningful updates that are not directed at your brand or business before you ever promote yourself once. This will keep your followers more engaged and they will thank you for it.

Promote Others: Gain the respect of your followers and your peers by promoting good information, services, or more. By doing this you are showing that you are really looking out for your communities well being and gaining the respect of your peers.

Be Authentic: At the end of the day just be you, be real and don’t try to be someone else.

So there are some of my thoughts on just being Social for your business. What do you do to be social? Is their anything you would add?