B2B Social Media – 10 Tips From The Definitive Guide To Social Media

As B2B marketers, we know the growing importance of B2B social media. We know it’s a necessary tool for seed nurturing and demand generation, but in many cases, B2B marketers are still not sure where to begin. The following 10 tips from the Definitive Guide to Social Media will help you understand what components are essential to grasp, use and focus on.

1. Develop a plan – Ask yourself these three questions:

WHO – Who is your target audience? Do you have a buyer persona?
HOW – How can you deploy social media tactics for measurable success? What KPIs are important to your brand?
WHAT – What goals or objectives do you want to accomplish? Increase brand awareness? Improve engagement?

2. Blog – This plays a key role in lead nurturing and educating prospects. Therefore, its pertinent that you:

Update often
Create thought leadership content
Add a human touch
Provide insight into company & products/services
Develop linkbait & use anchor text links

3. Twitter 101

Create a full account – Always create your account with a full profile: picture, bio, link to company website and customized background.
Follow with relevance – Connect to significant people, thought leaders, industry experts and encourage others to follow you.
Tweet daily, multiple times daily – Include links, RT followers, be interesting.

4. Facebook 101

DON’T friend people you don’t know. DO ask people if you can friend them, particularly if you’ve only spoken to them on the phone.
DO take advantage of privacy settings to manage personal and business content separately
DO use Facebook status updates to include powerful tidbits of information, similar to Tweets. DON’T update what you had for breakfast unless it’s somehow relevant to your audience.
DO add a picture.
DO create a Facebook page for your business, especially if you aren’t comfortable with a personal profile.
DO post events and create groups. This will help develop your following.

5. LinkedIn 101

Connections – Connect only to those who are relevant. You can actually be banned for trying to connect with people you don’t know. However, it’s fine to connect with those whom you do know but only in a professional capacity without a personal connection.
Timeliness – Send connections shortly after meeting with someone so he/she remembers you.
Complete profile – Provide as much detail as possible, what you’re looking for out of the site and include a picture to ‘humanize’ the profile.
Recommendations – Request from individuals that can leave positive feedback and comments about your company.

6. Online Video Sites – These are great B2B marketing tools.

These sites include mainly YouTube but also Vimeo and Viddler. This provides a great opportunity to build awareness, demonstrate thought leadership and drive business. It also offers the chance to improve SEO, creating a greater likelihood your company will appear in search engines. Sites to test for your marketing include:

YouTube
Vimeo
Viddler

7. Bookmarking Sites – These allow users to share websites and content they find interesting. Sites like Delicious, Digg and StumbleUpon house lists of websites, blog and articles categorized by tags and topics. Use these sites to:

Gain referrals
Build a community
Increase brand awareness

8. Leverage widgets – Widgets are stand-alone tools or applications that provide dynamic content.

It’s very important widgets are relevant and useful, as it’s easy to get lost amongst the masses. Widgets make great viral marketing for companies by offering unique, easy-to-use content that’s visually appealing.

9. Share – The age old lesson of giving to others.

But in this instance we aren’t referring to cookies in the lunch room, instead we’re referencing document or presentation sharing. Encouraging sharing from those researching your content by providing presentations and documents via sites like SlideShare and Scribd. This increases the propensity that visitors re-share this information on their own blogs.

10. Photos – Pictures are great tools to give your company personality and life.

Prospects researching company events, conferences and offices love visual elements, as well. Tell a story through photos deliver dynamic content.

These 10 tips make a great start to help you ease into B2B social media. By downloading The Definitive Guide to Social Media from Marketo, you can learn even more about implementation and analysis. Discover the ROI of social media and how to implement tactics throughout each stage of the revenue cycle.

This content was originally posted by Maria Pergolino on http://blog.marketo.com/