The team over at Flowtown have updated this infographic on social media resources. This is a helpful tool for B2B communicators to use in order to better assess the tools needed to best achieve their objectives. It can also help others to understand what can be accomplished with social media and to set expectations.

The Small Business Social Media Cheat Sheet.

The Social Media Cheat Sheet B2B Communicators Can Use is a post from: B2B Voices

If it’s not, where does it fit? One example of a company who thinks it is central isn’t one that comes to mind when you think of B2B communications companies. But they are certainly a leader and one to follow: The Economist. As told to BtoB Magazine, the media outlet demonstrates how important social is for content distribution as well as driving subscriptions.

In the maze of communication where does social media fit?

So back to my original question: Where does social media fit into a B2B communicators strategy?

Are we at the point now where it at the center and all channels feed off it? After all, most companies now use social media for news release distribution — Twitter, StockTwits, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Keep in mind that we also still rely on wire services for reaching the majority of our journalist contacts (or email distribution). There clearly has been a shift in the past two years and moving forward there is no doubt that we now think different.

What are your views? Have we hit the tipping point? Or have we tipped?

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

Social drive growth, content for The Economist, others — B2B Magazine

Are you ready for a real-time B2B world?

Still pitching to use social media?

Are you ready for these five trends?

What drives your b2b strategy?

Is Social Media Central to Your B2B Communications Strategy? is a post from: B2B Voices

A B2B Voices Q&A  With Kipp Bodnar and Jeffrey L. Cohen

I just finished reading The B2B Social Media Book: Becoming a Marketing Superstar, by Kipp Bodnar (day job at HubSpot) and Jeffrey L. Cohen (day job at Radian6), hot off the presses this month. I recommend it. Despite the title, it doesn’t try to encompass everything you need to know about B2B social media marketing.  Rather, it tries to open the lock box to social media lead generation. Frankly, that’s the way we’re going to get a lot of B2B companies to start to take social media more seriously.

I’ll follow up with a longer review but I had a chance to ask Kipp and Jeffrey a few questions after reading the book, and here’s what they had to say!

Aaron:  You both obviously have a lot of passion for B2B marketing in general, and social media specifically. Why? Where did that come from?

Kipp: It is what I have always done. Since the beginning of my career I have worked with B2B companies mostly at marketing agencies and then here at HubSpot. I love the challenge of B2B. B2B marketing is the ultimate in problem-solving and storytelling. It is awesome.

Jeff: I, too, have always worked for B2B companies, including marketing agencies that focused on B2B and companies that sold through distribution. It is more exciting to live in a world where the product quality and company knowledge are the basis of a sale, rather than the correct Pantone color. The longer sales cycles require companies to build customer relationships that can be nurtured, rather than offering promotions and discounts.

Aaron: What is most misunderstood about B2B social media marketing?

Kipp: For me it is reach. In traditional marketing, B2B companies obsessed over narrow targeting because executing marketing tactics was expensive. Social media has changed this. Narrow targeting hurts B2B companies online. Bigger reach is needed to generate word-of-mouth and leads online. Even if a social media follow isn’t a potential fit as a customer, they have the opportunity to share your content with someone who is, but this is impossible to predict. Thus the need to actively build reach online. 

Jeff: The notion that social media marketing is a business-to-consumer-only activity is most misunderstood. Many conservative B2B companies think that just because there is less volume of conversation around their company, products and industry, that social media is not for them. This ignores the benefits that social media brings to search, and the ability to leverage and share the knowledge and expertise imbedded in B2B companies to build and nurture relationships required for lead generation. 

Aaron:  Why the intense focus on lead generation in the book?

Kipp: Lead generation is the genesis of B2B success. Marketing must generate leads and revenue to survive. Yes, branding, public relations and other aspects of marketing are important, but they can’t compensate for the lack of a solid lead generation strategy. If lead generation is sound, all of those other aspects of marketing can supercharge it. 

Jeff: We know that social media adoption is very slow for B2B companies, no matter what online surveys say. We chose this important slice of social media activity, lead generation, because when success, it demonstrates real value of social media. It is much easier for C-Suite executives to endorse rolling out social media across an organization if it has already generated revenue through this one approach.

Aaron: I especially liked your more integrated focus on bringing prospective customers along a path from initial reach to signing on for content (like liking a page) to ultimately responding to a call to action and becoming a lead. Give us an example or two of who does that well.

Kipp: Breaking Point Systems down in Austin, TX is crushing it. They sell network testing equipment, which is a high-consideration and long buying cycle B2B purchase. We featured their vice president of marketing, Pam O’Neil, in the book. They have an awesome blog, a website that is super SEO-optimized and a social media presence that is engaging and drives traffic and leads back to the website.  Pam told us that they have a 2800% ROI from their online leads. 

Clear Risk is a finical services company in Canada that is also doing a great job. They have an awesome Facebook page, Twitter page, LinkedIn Page, blog as well as a calls-to-actions and lead generation offers. 

Aaron:  What about nurturing existing customers?  Private B2B communities are big in some industry segments like enterprise software, for instance, but this seemed to be less of a focus in this book. Why?

Kipp: Honestly, that is another book. You’re right. Lead nurturing as well as customer retention is huge revenue-centric application for social media. We just didn’t have the real estate to cover it properly in The B2B Social Media Book, so we decided to save it for another one. We think that having a solid customer generation strategy is the right first step, and too many companies still need to improve that. Lead nurturing is the next step.

It’s Time for B2B Social Media Marketing to Generate Leads is a post from: B2B Voices

An excellent infographic by the team over at Eloqua looking at breakthrough technologies and processes that forever changed one segment of the world: B2B Marketing professionals.

A History of Disruptive Innovation in B2B Marketing [Infographic] is a post from: B2B Voices

I attended a Minnesota Business Marketing Association breakfast yesterday that served as a reminder that crises can happen to B2B companies too, not just cruise ships. Unpleasant things happen – planes with executives crash, workers strike, products fail, plants close, tornadoes strike.

The speakers were Jon Austin, former spokesperson for Northwest Airlines and now with his own firm, and Paul Omodt, VP at Padilla Speer Beardsley and a former PR person for the Northwest chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association. When I was in college in the Twin Cities, I saw Austin in the local media more than I saw the White House press secretary. You can imagine the issues they had to deal with.

Jon Austin at Minnesota BMA on Crisis Preparedness for B2B

Here’s the quick takeaways:

First, yes you probably need some kind of crisis plan, even as a B2B company. Think of Arthur Anderson.  Respected, in business for like a hundred years, and then thanks to the Enron collapse, out of business in the blink of an eye. Austin noted that what killed Arthur Anderson was not the lawsuits filed, because those took 10 years to get through the courts. Instead, in the first month or two after the Enron collapse, they had clients calling them up say, “We love you guys and know you didn’t have anything to do with what came down in Houston, but we just can’t have you signing off on our financial statements.” Reputation damage killed them.

As Austin put it: “Dinosaurs were pretty dominant at one time, and now they’re pretty damn dead.” Don’t be a dinosaur.

Second, drill on crisis plans. It’s time-consuming to put these things together and it can be a relief just to finish but without practicing their implementation, they are still likely to fail you. For one thing, people panic. Is this a crisis?  Do I really pull the trigger on this plan now?  Practice makes them comfortable. Second, it’s a great way to learn if it really works, if the roles are all covered. You don’t want to find out you haven’t adequately prepared for the likely contingency that your CEO will be oversees, your phone system will be swamped, and your email wil be down. It’s a chance to be comfortable with the plan and identify any weak spots in it.

Remember 9/11? Austin was with Fleishman-Hillard by then, working on the United Airlines account. The crisis plan called for flying all the key crisis team members to Chicago as a central coordination point. The team hadn’t considered the possibility that U.S. airspace could be completely closed down. Fortunately, Austin was able to drive to Chicago from Minneapolis, but you can bet all those airlines learned from that experience.

The more realistic the rehearsal the better. We have a great product offering that I’ve written about before called Firebell  for drilling on a crisis. The strength of Firebell is it’s been designed to simulate a crisis on a social world, letting you see not only what happens on the local TV news but also what happens on your Twitter account, Facebook and other social channels. (blog post on it or email me)

Finally, keep the plan refreshed. A reorg can eliminate a team of people important to executing the plan. New products are developed and old ones are sunsetted. New markets are entered. Crises are not viewed the same all over the world.

Interesting comment from Omodt – some insurance companies will lower your company’s premiums if they know you have an effective and up-to-date crisis plan in place – something to look into.

In closing, says Austin: “Be a mammal. Don’t be a dinosaur.”

B2B Companies Need to Be Prepared for Crises Too is a post from: B2B Voices

Highlights of the findings of a study released last month by MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute addressing content marketing for the B2B industry indicate that content production has become and will continue to be a major piece of the marketing mix for B2B marketers.  We’ve seen a huge increase in content marketing – specifically writing (eBooks, blogs, white papers, etc) – from B2B clients (many of them requesting just content) at Other Side Group over the course of the last 12 months, so some of these numbers don’t surprise me, but looking at trends and shifts as a whole is very insightful.

There are several key takeaways from the report.

Content marketing is almost universally used. 90% of B2B marketers used some form of content in their marketing program in 2011, and no individual industry reported lower than a 70% adoption rate.

Content type and its perceived effectiveness is varied.  Marketers are using a mix of content creation and content curation in their programs.  Visual content – in-person events, webinars, video – seem to be the most successful pieces of content, while informational/written pieces – case studies, eNewsletters, white papers and blogs – are also considered very effective as whole.

Creating valuable and consistent content proves challenging. Among B2B marketers largest challenges in content production are creating content that engages prospects (41% of respondents reported this as their largest challenge), and creating enough content (20% stated this as their largest challenge).

More budget is being spent on content marketing, and a lot of that is going to third-parties. While the above stat has changed little from 2010, 60% of respondents said they were going to be increasing spend on content marketing over the course of the next 12 months.  To boot, 62% of B2B marketers use outsourcing for content marketing, a substantial increase from last year’s 55%.

QUICK SUMMARY: B2B marketers are finding content marketing extremely effective, and are willing to put more money behind content marketing programs in order to overcome the challenges they see as most inhibiting.

Content Marketing Proves to be a Large Part of B2B Marketing Programs [MarketingProf Data] is a post from: B2B Voices

A lot has been happening in the world of social media, and I do mean the world. As many B2B companies move into using more social and digital tools we continue to read about case studies involving the big three — LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. But what abo0ut Sina Weibo? Orkut? Hi5? Renren? Are these networks a part of your strategy? Do you know who they reach and what they do? Do you need to expand your reach by using them?

Is your digital strategy stranded at home or are you on a journey to expand your work around the world?

As our business expands and we look to reach our customers around the world I’ve been reading more about the growth of social media globally. Here’s a breakdown of some of the research I’ve found interesting and helpful:

Asia

• New research in late 2011 according to Burson-Marsteller shows Asia’s top companies double their social media presence (Slideshare) compared to 2010. Penn Olson breaks the study down for you.
• Mashable writes about a Forrester Research poll of 100,000 consumers in Asia, Latin America and North America in the second and third quarters of 2011.
• Last year, Edelman published its study and infographic of Asia’s key digital and social media markets. And over at The d Infographics they break down social media statistics in a large infographic for Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

Europe

• I spoke last year at the the European Corporate Social Media Summit where we discussed a number of topics, including my talk on measuring influence. Most of the discussions focused on measurement and evaluation and two presentations are available here for download. Late last year, Adobe commissioned a study on social media measurement in Europe that is worth a view (Slideshare).
• The Economist last July reported on the European Commission’s study of the most enthusiastic, and the most fearful, social networkers. Even European MBA programs have embraced social media.
• And if you need any data to further support a mobile strategy, Comscore reported in November on the rapid growth in mobile social networking in Europe.

Latin America

• If you’re looking to expand into Latin America your destinations should be focused on Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.
• Another excellent Edelman Digital study and one from Synthesio look at the rise of networks throughout the region.

But if you’re pressed for time and want a global view of what is happening online, I strongly suggest you download this Slideshare presentation from InSite Consulting and their total view social media around the world in 2011 (NOTE: you will need to request a copy from them).

Is there a presentation you liked that I missed pointing out above? Is there an example of what you’ve learned from your experiences? Is there a fact that surprised you from the information you viewed from the above links? Please share them in the comments.

If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:

World-Class social practices for B2B companies

What drives your social media strategy?

Are you ready for a real-time B2B world?

Are you ready for these five trends?

The most important question you can ask

Using social networking sites in B2B businesses?

Around the World in Social Media is a post from: B2B Voices

A new year and another opportunity to get under the hood and check your social engine. One of the keys to success in the social B2B space is having a strategy. The team here at B2B Voices have posted often on this topic of strategy from using social networking sites in B2B to looking at what makes a  world-Class social practice for B2B companies to asking the right question.

We all agree here that if you want to succeed you need to start with a strategy. Jeremiah Owyang from Altimeter now has a must read paper titled “A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation.” The paper is a great way for the experienced and novice B2B communicator to step back and think about what you are trying to accomplish.

The social vehicle you choose should help drive your conversations and evaluation

The key takeaways for me were as follows:

Businesses struggle with strategy: On page six of the report it’s clear that companies are struggling to get handle on what they want to accomplish and how they will get there. One thing we always focus on here at B2B Voices is making sure your social media strategy aligns with your business and other communication initiatives. It should rarely be a silo. If you need help understanding what your strategy should be you can reference the graphic on page 13 of the study.

Vendors need to catch up: The rapid growth of free tools with premium tools is creating an overload of resources that in the end create more confusion. Page 10 and 11 detail the issues and in my opinion we will see an ongoing consolidation of these tools. There is a good review of many of the platforms in the report and we at B2B Voices would encourage anyone looking at tools to take your time in choosing where you spend your resources.

The one point to remember in this discussion is that strategy takes time and effort. Not only do you need to have the right tools to work with, but you need to understand your business goals as well as what drives your brand strategy. While it’s easy to “do” social it’s much more difficult to “do social well” and measure the results.

UPDATE (JANUARY 17): Apparently, Tac Anderson and I are on the same page when we think about social media. Here is his post (Can’t Find a Good Social Media Management Tool? Get a Strategy First) on the same study by Jeremiah Owyang.

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

Are you ready for a real-time B2B world?

Still pitching to use social media?

Are you ready for these five trends?

What Drives Your B2B Social Strategy? is a post from: B2B Voices

Navigating the social landscape brings a number of challenges. What content should you publish? Do you use platforms like StockTwits that target investors? Do you create private or public LinkedIn groups? And what about those influencers?

Know your way around the law and social media

One thing we also cannot forget is collaborating internally. I’ve blogged before about making sure you have talked with InfoSec so both of you understand each other – your goals and their risks. Another department to work with is legal. Mashable has a new post on the five predictions for social media law in 2012. If you haven’t read it you need to, but don’t stop there. If you are continuing to try to convince legal about mapping out the opportunities and value of social media you should do the following:

• Understand the concerns: Is legal worried about intellectual property? Privacy? Reputational risk? If you don’t know – or just think you know — now is a good time to sit with legal to discuss.
• Find a legal champion: Someone on the legal team may already use social media (e.g. LinkedIn). Discover who you think may be someone that can help you understand the concerns before you go into a formal meeting.
• Do your research: The Mashable post is helpful and a good start, but dig deeper. You should have a firm grasp of the concerns and issues so that you can alleviate the risks and make everyone more comfortable.
• Find working solutions: There are always ways to be more flexible, so be prepared to work with your colleagues and have a variety of idea.
• Create a dialogue: You can start with the Mashable article and forward it to your legal team. If you start positioning yourself as someone who understands their concerns they will be much more open to listening to you.

If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:

What’s your “I” in social media?

Why LinkedIn’s Company Pages Now Matter More

Are You Using StockTwits?

Do we need a social index for businesses?

Navigating the Legal Road Map of Social Media is a post from: B2B Voices

One of the most often asked questions when I speak is around content — “Where do you find so much information about your company to post?” The answer is easy: That much content doesn’t exist. What B2B companies fail to realize is the power of partnerships and connecting with other users for content. Shannon Paul also makes a good point about B2B content:

Many folks in the B2B space often blame the lack of social media content opportunities on the fact that what they do doesn’t directly impact consumers, but I don’t buy it.

Finding good, original content can be difficult. So stop trying so hard. Instead, focus on ways that you can find content from others and collaborate with others. Here are ways that have worked for us:

Find internal champions who will send you content proactively and make sure you give them their just internal rewards for helping out.

My inspiration partner happens to be 8 years old and drinks hot chocolate.

Identify the key content aggregators in your industry and work with them. This takes time and effort but will pay off in the long run.

Experiment with content on platforms and times to find what interests your audience.

Finally, don’t be boring. Any company can post a news release or a research report. It’s up to you to make it interesting and fit within your brand standards. While you want to be taken serious as a brand, you should also find ways that capture people’s attention, and sometimes that requires a little bit of fun.

If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:

You are What You Read

Social Clutter or Social Clarity?

Content Curation: What Does it Take To Be Successful?

Is Motivation the Key to Success?

Social influence matters! No, it doesn’t!

World-Class social practices for B2B companies

What’s your “I” in social media?

When it Comes to B2B Content, Don’t Go it Alone is a post from: B2B Voices