I recently wrote about using Posterous as a tool for social media marketing, and I wanted to take some time to comment on why it’s a great tool specifically for the B2B space.  Three of the nine reasons I had given really stand out to me:

1. SEO. Whether you’re a cutting edge research firm that only transacts with other businesses, or you’re in a more traditional industry like manufacturing, there are just plain fewer opportunities to really leverage SEO… people aren’t necessarily searching for you in the ways that B2C organizations get searched on.  The concept of outposts comes into play heavily here, and the simple fact that having more places for people to search for content related to you – and ideally from you – the more opportunities you have to associate that content with your website, and the more qualified traffic you can drive to your site.  You can very appropriately (and deliberately) assign keywords to your content that is directly linked to your website, and thus your company.
2. Inbound linking. Many B2B companies also don’t have a lot of opportunities for inbound linking, especially in the more traditional industries  or instances when you may be just one piece of a long supply chain.  Inline with SEO opportunities, Posterous allows a pretty easy inbound linking opportunity….and one of high authority.  If you’re on a fledgling website strategy and need to boost that inbound link count quickly and effectively, Posterous is a great way to do that.  Additionally, these types of young or underdeveloped websites may have a low authority, and supplementing that with Posterous inbound links can do a lot for your organic SEO.
3. That means more thought leadership potential. See, it makes a nice little equation, doesn’t it?  With higher SEO, more content sharing opportunities and more inbound linking, it means all of your valuable content is all pointed back to your brand.  If you’re good at what you do – which you probably are – and you identify effective internal content to share, this could mean the start of some great thought leadership opportunities.  And this is where people in more traditional industries can have a big advantage…. if you’re among the first to start really thinking about this equation, you can make huge and long-lasting strides ahead of competitors who aren’t as “up-to-snuff.”

I also wanted to throw out a technical note on calls-to-action.  Again, in the B2B setting, calls-to-action can be a lot more difficult to achieve.  It’s not like someone wants a new pair of running shoes from you.  By using outside content on Posterous, and providing a link of some sort – preferably in the form of “For more information on X systems….” – you can still drive people to your own products or services related to the content you’re posting.  As long as the content is relevant to your company, this is still a good way to be found by qualified leads.

So, a couple To-dos for B2B Posterous users:

• If you have a blog, post every post up on Posterous, with a link back to the original.
• Think about calls-to-action, and make sure that every post has one that brings your products/services to the readers’ attention.  These don’t need to be overt (and really shouldn’t be), but can be very effective.
• In some of the more traditional industries, it may actually be better to have your call-to-action right at the top.  If someone is searching for “copper tracer wire” and really just wants a quote or a price (which is usually the case with a purchaser behind the desk) and they come to your Posterous page in their search results, make it really easy for them to get that done…. through you. They may not have the patience to read through your entire post….
• Use outside content, and find a way to incorporate an association to your company.  This is an easy one, as the fundamental goal of content production is to provide valuable information to your audience.

What else have you found helpful about Posterous in the B2B setting?  Are there any other To-Dos you have? Do you have a Case Study you’d like to share with us?

More Reasons to Like Posterous, especially in a B2B setting is a post from: B2B Voices

To be sure, Loren is right that social media is overhyped. I suspected we’d see the social media bubble pop a little in 2010 and in fact early signs give me confidence in that prediction. He contends that these various social network channels are just tools.  This is unquestionably true. We have not found a silver bullet to neverending sales and marketing nirvana, to solve all our customer relations challenges, to connect with all potential buyers through the magical bonds of Internet conversation. Yet read the breathless tweets and blog posts of many social media experts, and you’d think it were not so. Suddenly, the 4 Ps of marketing – product, promotion, place and price – have been replaced, as I’ve read, simply by People. It’s kind of an interesting concept (and 4 Ps as a concept is simplistic itself) but it isn’t true.

There’s no silver bullet, my friends.  Especially in business-to-business marketing, accept that different communications sources, different tools, each play a role in moving someone from need awareness through brand awareness and interest, through purchase, and hopefully brand advocate. Twitter might play a role somewhere along that journey, but Twitter isn’t a marketing strategy. A blog isn’t a sales strategy.  You need to start with a strategic assessment of your market opportunity and your competitive position and creatively arrive at an approach that will help you capitalize on that opportunity, and it’s at least conceivable that there’s no social media component.

But I doubt it, and this is where the video rant goes too far.

The fact is that social media should probably find its way into most B2B marketing programs in some way or another. Loren says, “If you are focusing so much on social media, you are making a big, big mistake.”  Now how does he know?  Just because it’s not a silver bullet doesn’t mean social media can  be discounted as a potentially critical component of the communications mix.   

I’m kind of skeptical of Facebook for most B2B environments because Facebook has generally become a place for personal and consumer conversations (though anyone doing B2C should note a real sales corrolation in this Harvard Business Review study resulting from a Facebook site). But it’s not because Facebook destroys brands. New BPO analyst firm Horses for Sources was able to launch itself this week in part because of its powerful 9,000 member forum of BPO experts and executives called The BPO and Offshoring Best Practices Forum.  It’s hard to see how using social media to better listen to your customer needs will send your brand off course.

Twitter is a little different in that it isn’t really a destination and, in my opinion, shouldn’t really be compared to Facebook. It’s a network of people exchanging information via scores of user interfaces and devices. They may not want to go to your web site. But they’re also not so cynical that you can’t establish trusted relationships with them through social media channels.  In fact, taking Loren’s argument to its logical extreme – that you should only work to drive people to your web site – it’s therefore a waste of time to secure a New York Times feature story profiling one of your customers because the traffic goes to NYTimes.com.

Here’s the big issue the video misses, I think: You don’t really own your brand anyway. A colleague of mine reminded me that it’s really customers and employees who own the brand. It’s true, and they can build it up, reinforce it, grow it, or tear it apart and show it to be lacking in integrity or value. Coming up with a brand message doesn’t make it true. Making a cool web site doesn’t mean your customer service is any good. If your employees think your ad campaign is full of crap, their silent abstention from supporting your big mega marketing campaign online will be deafeningly obvious. But if it rings true to them and to your customers, they will heartily, voluntarily reinforce it. Without even asking.

So let’s get over our breathless excitement over social media as marketing messiah, fine. But make no mistake, we can listen to customers and other stakeholders better than ever before, faster, less expensively. Customers can unleash their own power as advocates – or badvocates – far easier than ever before. That’s not something email marketing or Google Adwords campaigns can do.

Social Media Won’t Kill Your Brand – Just Be Strategic is a post from: B2B Voices

Who doesn’t love a good story? I’m particularly at my best reading these Curious George books to my kids at night. There’s always something about George getting into trouble and learning a lesson that I enjoy — but I think my kids just like how I goof around and tend to get creative with the plots each time I read them.

While the enjoyment is spending time with my kids, the challenge is always trying to make the same story interesting again and again. Does that challenge sound familiar at your job?

I was lucky enough to speak to a group of Northwestern Univerity IMC graduate students a few weeks ago on this topic of storytelling. I started my discussion by asking a simple question — what are the two things that every business does? The first answer was easy — sell. Obviously to exist companies need to make revenue and they do this by selling. The second took a little longer to get, but as you can tell by the theme of this post the answer is — tell stories.

That’s it? Sell and storytelling? In my opinion, yes. We just don’t call it storytelling. Words like differentiation and branding come to mind as do tactics like case studies and third party influencers.

But those words and tactics are parts of the story. So what is storytelling and how do we use it? Here’s a great post by Kevin Dugan on the topic. You should take a look at what he has to say.

I like stories for a few reasons and try to use them as much as possible. Here’s my line of thinking:

1. Stories make your organization come alive. Telling stories gives depth and perspective to the products and people of your company. While you only make “widget123″ there is a reason you make it, people who make it and customers who buy it. Providing background on how it “widget123″ was invented, examples of how customers use them, and why they are important to your industry (and perhaps the economy) gives your product and company life.

2. Stories give you credibility. While fact sheets and statistics are nice and get to the point they rarely get you anywhere on their own. Stories can demonstrate why there is a need for your company and the things you do. And face it, facts and figures do support your stories — not the other way around. I don’t think I’ve ever had a reporter write a story about my company or clients based on a fact sheet, but giving them a story — buttressed with facts — makes my pitch that much stronger.

3. Stories differentiate what we do. While competition can drive us all bananas (Curious George pun intended) it only forces us to tell better stories. The next time you’re stuck in a competitive situation start asking your product teams about the stories they can tell. You may be surprised at how many ideas you can generate to really stand out from your competitors (and hopefully they’re not reading this post).

Now it’s your turn. How do you develop stories for your company? What stories work for you? And of course if you have any children’s book recomendations I’m open for ideas (so are my kids).

Curious George Goes to the Office is a post from: B2B Voices

A Q&A With Jeannie Walters, Founder, 360Connext

Jeannie Walters’s Chicago-based consulting firm specializes in the cornerstones of customer experience, including customer engagement, employee engagement and connections like social media. Before starting 360Connext, she spent 12 years at Vox, a customer experience consulting firm, eventually as President and Partner. Walters specializes in helping companies achieve more loyalty from employees, customers and prospects through improved experiences at every level.

Jeannie Walters, Founder, 360Connext

I spent some time last week talking with her about the profound impact improved customer engagement can have in B2B, both in terms of strengthening existing business relationships and in unleashing those customers as word-of-mouth advocates for your brand.

Aaron: Talk a little about what you learned at Vox that reflects your priorities now at 360Connext.

Jeannie: A main focus for me has been around the customer experience, and typically no one person owns that function so it touches a lot of areas. Employee engagement is one of the easiest ways you can influence customer experience so that’s a big focus for me right now. For example there are a lot of companies right now that have laid off employees and you need to keep those remaining employees focused on the mission. The other area that’s really coming to life is social media to connect directly with customers, and that goes to both content and communication. But most customer initiatives don’t typically work, because it has to become a part of the organization’s culture.

Aaron: Changing culture is a very long-term process, right?

Jeannie: It is, but one step people can take is to really understand what your customer experience is right now. I’ve worked with large companies like Allstate and AIG and that’s a daunting effort. So you need to take it one piece at a time. For instance, look just at your social media strategy. Or just look at conversion rates online. Then take those learnings and apply them to the next piece and the next piece. Don’t expect a CRM system to be a magic bullet to [fully understand the customer experience].

Now my focus is more on midsized companies because in a lot of ways, you can move things a lot quicker, make changes easier. Oftentimes, midsized companies are still run by the original leader. They are often more passionate about the customer experience too.

Aaron: How do you engage employees in customer experience initiatives? It’s not just about the marketing and sales people, right?

Jeannie: The problem is we often focus on the salesperson relationship but often after the deal those people move on. So companies need to focus on retention as much as acquisition. All the money and resources go to acquisition or selling – making the sale. …

A lot of the [employee engagement problem] relates to hiring the right people and making sure they’re the type of people that solve problems and are service-oriented. Because if you get feedback from customers, you need people who are really prepared to respond.

Aaron: So what are some of the best practices in being responsive to customers?

Jeannie: Be very public about feedback and use it. There are some SaaS [Software as a Service] companies that do a great job of that. They say, “Customers, we heard from you and so we’re doing x, y and z” with our software. The other thing is kind of empowering employees to solve problems. Call centers are often incented to spend less time on the phone and that’s terrible.

Aaron: I’ve actually heard of call center workers purposely faking connection problems to rack up a bunch of short calls.

Jeannie: Yes it’s better for them if they hang up.

Aaron: Of course, it can be hard to find the resources for solving that caller’s problem right then and there, especially with complex products.

Jeannie: So you need to be realistic, about whether we can call you back for instance. At the end of the day, humans are reasonable. The rub comes in when the expectation comes a certain way and is not delivered. Cell phone companies are finally figuring out that service is what they do and getting much better at call center service.

Aaron: Talk about customer events. Do people use them well?

Jeannie: Social media has done a lot to promote events better and to help companies understand what customers are looking for. People want substance, and especially with complicated products, they want to understand how to make this work better for me, and another customer can help them understand that best. SaaS companies have also done a great job here by bringing together their power users to help [these other customers] and that’s had a lot more influence on the experience.

Aaron: It’s interesting that you keep bringing up SaaS companies – these are companies that realize they are service companies, not software companies, so it seems natural that they would really be focused on listening to and responding to the customer, true?

Jeannie: Absolutely true. Also, look at banks and how they used to be known for abusing small business clients. They took your business for granted and then realized people have more choices. Some banks have been strugging with family-run businesses because the clientele is dying off and they didn’t reach out to the next generation. I had a client who found their business customers had a relationship with their banker. So if the banker moved on, so did the business. In response, the bank started creating small business-focused events – forums for small business customers. AmEx Open Forum is an example of that. If you are an AmEx busines customer and carry an Open card, you get access to other entrepreneuers like yourself. The part of the pendulum swing that we’re in is exclusive memberships. I predict we’ll see more of that. People want to find the right people a little easier.

Listening & Responding to Customers: Industries That Have Struggled Are Making Strides is a post from: B2B Voices

Every now and then I take time to think beyond our product offerings. It’s a nice exercise and usually leads to some unique and creative ways to think about positioning the exchange. One area that we like to pursue and where we have been successful is in the area of technology. I’m sure we’re not alone in this area, but we try to balance talking about technology as well as our people in technology. So what are some areas that go beyond just products in helping to promote your B2B brand? Here are some quick thoughts.

Technology:

I like talking about technology. I like talking with our technology team. I’m a tech geek like a lot of you. And I do believe that marketing IT matters – I wrote about it here and earlier this year on B2B Voices about the importance of partnership with information security here.

Human Resources:

Have you integrated recruiting into your social media campaigns yet? There are some simple and effective ways to do this, such as starting out with posting exisitng job openings. But you should also think about how to fully leverage LinkedIn for your recruiting efforts. By the way, have you looked at your company’s profile on LinkedIn yet? It may be in need of some help (another easy victory for you with HR).

R&D:

Positioning your research team members can help showcase some of the great minds at work within your company. These are probably the people that already have a blog or read blogs. Getting these people to post on popular blogs about innovation and technology can help position your organization as leader in either very broad or niche topics.

If you need ideas on how you can do this go back and read Aaron Pearson’s post on how to combine tradition and social media in B2B here and Arik Hanson looked at what to do if you hit a social media roadblock here. And of course share your ideas with us on how you look beyond products to promote your company or clients. What are some ideas that have worked? Or failed? And where do you get your inspiration?

Thinking Beyond Products is a post from: B2B Voices

When you cast your gaze across the digital landscape one organization you may not expect to see is an accounting firm. But, one of the leading tax, accounting and consulting firms in the country–RSM McGladrey–has proven that notion wrong over the last year building up quite an online presence in the process.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I’m a former McGladrey employee. I worked as part of the marketing/PR team for five years in the early 2000s. So, it’s been particularly interesting for me to monitor their progress as they’ve started their first blog, dove into Twitter and started a YouTube channel–all in the past year.

Overall, McGladrey’s one of the more socially active accounting firms. Just take a peek at their online interaction and platforms:

* RSM McGladrey Golf Blog

* Success Starts Here (career/recruiting blog)

* RSM McGladrey Mfg (Manufacturing blog)

* RSM McGladrey ESOP blog

* Official McGladrey Twitter account

* Terri Andrews and Ben Gotkin also tweet under the McGladrey banner

* RSM McGladrey Careers Facebook fan page (more than 1,200 fans)

* McGladrey Careers YouTube channel (1,179 views)

* McGladrey PR News channel (238 views)

* McGladrey LinkedIn Alumni Group (nearly 900 members)

But, as we all know, a “presence” means nothing on the surface. There needs to be an integrated strategy. A solid business case for engaging with these tools. I had the chance to ask Terri Andrews, PR manager at McGladrey, a few questions last week about their engagement, strategy and results so far.

B2B Voices: McGladrey is currently active on a number of different social platforms. How did you sell these ideas internally to senior management who must have been a little skittish?

Terri: Our senior management has been surprisingly receptive so far. They realized early on that social media was going to be the way of the world. And they understood we could either use these tools to solidify our reputation up front or move into reactionary mode online. We’ve been testing the waters since early last year.

B2B Voices: What were your initial goals as you began last year?

Terri: We wanted to get involved in a listening mode. What conversations were happening in areas we were interested in? We really wanted to get a feel for where we could add value. We also feel we can use social media to raise brand awareness in many ways.

B2B Voices: How are you setting expectations internally at McGladrey? And how are you measuring success?

Terri: You can’t expect 10,000 clicks every time you post a blog. We’re trying to work with our executives and thought leaders to help them understand that their won’t be an immediate ROI in every case, but that it’s more about building relationships that will eventually result in ROI.

B2B Voices: In my view, social media for professional services firms like yours is all about thought leadership. As far as you know, has any of the work you’ve done online led to a lead or an actual new client?

Terri: We continually track our blog numbers and we know our social activity is increasing visits to our Web site. We’re trying to push folks to content on our site that is relevant to them. And, we’re working hard to find our audiences where they live online–whether that’s LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube.

B2B Voices: What’s next for McGladrey in the social realm?

Terri: We’re currently in the midst of implementing a social media policy/guidelines for employees. We believe this will give employees a better understanding of how they can get involved online on behalf of RSM McGladrey. We’re hoping this will ultimately result in even more employees representing McGladrey on social networks. The policy will also ensure we’re all integrated and supporting each others efforts.

So, how does McGladrey measure up?

McGladrey has already made great strides. The fact that they operate four blogs, three Twitter accounts, a Facebook page and two YouTube channels means, as Terri stated above, they’ve convinced senior management the benefits of engaging online outweigh the negatives. That’s no easy task in an accounting firm culture. Believe me.

However, while the firm has made great strides, like any other company, there seems to be a few opportunities. I thought we’d take a moment to look behind the numbers at their digital activity:

* Thought leadership: I’m a firm believer that the biggest social component to any professional services firm digital strategy is blogging. It’s the ultimate thought leadership platform. And, the SEO benefits are huge for firms like McGladrey. It’s nice to see McGladrey putting some emphasis behind an industry that I know is important to the firm: Manufacturing. Tom Murphy has been, and is, a great face for that vertical for the firm.

* Engagement: As an organization that’s trying to establish itself as a thought leader in different categories, engagement isn’t always the priority. However, the lack of comments and two-way dialogue on the McGladrey blogs has to concern the firm just a little. On the flip side, Terri Andrews and Ben Gotkin do a wonderful job serving as the “face” of the firm from a recruiting and PR perspective on Twitter. And, the recruiting team does a nice job on Facebook responding to questions and jumping in when appropriate.

* Integration: This is one area where I think the firm has a clear opportunity. Visiting the McGladrey Web site, other than the McGladrey Golf Blog, I don’t seen any mention of the organization’s social work or properties. So, there’s an opportunity to integrate all McGladrey’s social initiatives on their Web site. On the flip side, the Success Starts Here blog does a fabulous job of pulling together all the digital McGladrey properties. On the blog, not only can I link quickly to the firm’s Facebook page and YouTube channel (focused solely on recruiting), but I can also view a Google map with location info for every McGladrey office across the country. Nice.

So, can an accounting firm really be social? I think McGladrey’s answered that question beyond a reasonable shadow of a doubt. But, like any other company, they still have opportunities. They’ve done the heavy lifting. Now, it’s a matter of listening and watching how their fans and followers behave on their sites, monitoring the digital landscape and adjusting as necessary.

Enough blathering by me. You’ve seen what McGladrey is up to now. What do you think? How does McGladrey measure up against other professional services firms (accounting, legal and architecture firms) you’ve seen online?

Case study: Can accounting firms really be social? is a post from: B2B Voices

If you use Twitter a lot you’ll know that at times it becomes difficult to write an email or document without catching yourself inserting a #, $ or @ symbol somewhere. I’ve actually caught myself a couple of times doing this. The beauty of using these symbols is that is makes searching and following the vast streams of information easier and more efficient. As a B2B communicator here are a few of my thoughts around these helpful symbols:

#

Some of the favorite # discussions I follow include #pr20, #journchat and #blogchat where there are lively and insightful discussions, and of course I try to use #b2b as often as possible to tag content relevant to this audience.

$

If you’re not using $ signs to at least monitor what people are saying about your company/client than you could be missing out on finding supporters or emerging issues. How does StockTwits work? Here is a cheat sheet from the source itself and I posted earlier about using StockTwits as an investor relations tool here. Essentially the $ works like a # except you are using it in front of a stock, currency or commodity product to create a stream. I obviously follow $CME on StockTwits closely.

We’ve also used the $ to our advantage at CME Group where we’ve created our very own $ for Twitter interviews. Working with the team at StockTwits we created the symbol $ExchTalk to actually interview industry leaders, bloggers, traders and media. You can follow all of these online discussions here.

@

If you’re using Twitter you know that the @ symbol represents your name and identifies who you are talking with. The point I want to make is that I wish people would use the @ symbol more when they talked about brands. If you really want to have a company talk with you than use their @ in your tweet. Afterall, isn’t that one of the key elements of Twitter — to have a dialogue or conversation versus just shouting?

What are your thoughts? Are there other # discussions you like on Twitter? Have you found StockTwits usesful? Let us know.

#s, $s and @s oh my! is a post from: B2B Voices

As the last in my series of 2010 prediction posts, here are some of my thoughts looking forward to the next year in B2B social media use.

1. Social media use will grow horizontally in the B2B space. This means there will be a lot more industries that will be represented on social media than there have been thus far.  And we’re talking a lot more industries like cementing or manufacturing.
2. Because of the horizontal and first-time occurrences mentioned above, it also means there will be some industries that will be under-represented in the social media sphere, but that will develop front runners who will get significant advantages within those respective industries.
3. While being more accepted, there will be more boundaries placed on how many B2B industries us social media.  There won’t be so much “stuff” to play with because implementers will realize that there are particular tools that are more helpful for B2B purposes, and that there are many tools that just won’t work.
4. Social media will be used heavily for internal use in the B2B space.
5. There will be a lot more multimedia uses, specifically video.
6. As for all social media marketing, it will be a question of how to interact with people rather than simply where.  This goes a long with the idea of strategy trumping tactics, but it really emphasizes putting together a fuller picture of what can be done with social media tools in B2B and applying in a more focused way.

What do you think will happen in the next year?

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Predictions for B2B Social Media Use in 2010 is a post from: B2B Voices

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).

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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.

Don’t Overlook the Power of LinkedIn Groups is a post from: B2B Voices

By nature, many B2B organizations are pretty darn conservative. Trying new things, experimenting and sharing opinions publicly sometimes aren’t high on the priority list for these organizations. So, it can be challenging to get upper management–or any level of management, for that matter–to buy in to social concepts and approaches.

But, just because you run into a roadblock, doesn’t mean the journey is over. Try a redirect.

If you run into a wall with legal, compliance or IT, try redirecting your efforts to a different part of the organization to get things off the ground. Remember, early on, it’s all about quick wins and demonstrating the business value of these tools. To do that, sometimes you need to find a different avenue.

So, if you’re continually butting your head against the wall, try redirecting and channeling your thoughts and energy toward one of the following areas:

Employee communications. Internal communicators face several challenges. Building pride among employees. Aligning staff with key organizational priorities and strategies. And fostering innovation and collaboration. Social media “behind the firewall” can help with all three. Plus, social tools present tremendous value to organizations with remote or geographically dispersed workforces. By giving staff the chance to connect, converse and share ideas across locations, you’re starting to harness the brainpower of ALL your employees. Just ask IBM. And, typically, using social media internally is more of a “low risk” proposition than using it out in the public eye.

Community events/sponsorships. Another lower-risk opportunity might be to activate your brand socially at a community or sponsored event. Maybe your IT consulting firm is the title sponsor of a local walk to support children’s cancer research. Why not encourage walk participants to use a branded hash tag if they tweet during the walk? After all, they’re walking, not running, right? Or, set up a “photo booth” at the end of the race, take pictures of participants and set up computers and encourage folks to upload the photos directly to their Facebook pages. There are simple steps you can usually take to active your brand at events like these without taking a huge amount of risk.

The recruiting front. OK, so maybe most organizations aren’t looking for talent right now, but they’d be wise to prepare for the next few years when boomers will start exiting the workforce. In many industries, social tools represent an ideal way to reach and communicate with the younger, millennial and Gen Y generations. Going this route may give you the opportunity to establish a corporate presence on one of the table-stakes social networks, like Facebook. Remember, we’re talking baby steps here. Set up the account. Create a plan for what kind of content you’ll share and how you’ll build this community. Then, create momentum, and “sell” those wins internally. Down the road, it will make those tough conversations with legal, compliance and IT a little easier.

Hitting social media roadblocks? Try a redirect. is a post from: B2B Voices