I went digging for some examples of how, with little resource, real, tangible returns could be seen.

Here were just three of them witnessed by one particular client:

LinkedIn

The client was encouraged to use the status update feature on LinkedIn to keep his network appraised of company news. One status update later he landed two contracts with very old customers that weren’t aware previously that the company was active in a certain field. These contracts would have paid for a couple of new salespeople for several years.

Video

A simple posting of a video to a client website and YouTube channel generated 67% new unique visitors to the company’s website.

SEO

The bigger effect of the video content, together with launching a Twitter feed and circulation of new content, was the impact on search rankings. The company immediately became number one ranked in its field, despite its shift in focus and no renewed investment in the website itself.

These are the types of compelling stories we come across every day and are happy to share. Of course, I would advocate that social media needs a top down and strategic approach to ensure a company knows why it’s engaging, who it’s engaging with and for what purpose. Money on training and a strategy is probably the first best investment a company new to social media can make.

But to those cynics who need proof and ask whether the investment will deliver the return, I also ask, what real investment do you need to make? If you are savvy, content is free and you can call on the resources around you. They might just enjoy doing it…

Generally speaking, the real results will be reaped long term – but there are some pretty spectacular short term results along the way too if you’re lucky.

As one of the recognised leaders in the enterprise marketing automation space, we’re keen to hear what their update will include when we attend the conference later this year.

We asked our team, what they hope to take away from Eloqua Experience Europe 2012? Here is our list:

• Confirmation that Eloqua is EU and ICO compliant for visitor web code tracking
• An update on development around Social Sign-ons and the depth of integration to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
• A glimpse of the roadmap for Eloqua 11
• New developments around automated data cleansing
• Enhancements to the campaign analysis reporting

No matter what you hope to get out of the experience, you’re guaranteed it will be an excellent use of any senior marketer’s time; especially if you are looking to learn, share ideas, network and gain insight into the future of marketing and marketing automation.

Last year’s event was excellent, we look forward to it again this year.

For more information visit Eloqua Experience.

Start with good content and get social

Content is at the heart of a social media strategy so finding a platform to host / publish it on is vital. We recommend you start with a blog, using a platform like WordPress, and once the content is online optimise it for other social media channels or vice versa. With that in mind, we’ve listed a few essential points for creating and optimising a blog.

1. Post regularly on topical issues and make sure the content is entertaining, informative or adding value
2. Social media shouldn’t be a one way comms channel, respond to comments and engage the audience
3. Hyperlink to relevant content
4. Read other blogs to see what you do and don’t like and get inspiration
5. Add a blogroll and link back to relevant industry blogs
6. Where possible use images and videos
7. Link your blog to your website and other social media channels and update your social media status when a new post is added
8. Use widgets to enhance your blog, share buttons and an RSS feeds
9. Use tags and themes to organise your posts, this will also increase your SEO

Once you’re up and running with a blog, managing the rest of your social channels should be a lot easier.

If you’re worried you won’t be able to manage your social media programme once it’s started, there are some simple tools and methodologies you can use to make the process simple, yet deliver stunning results.

If you need more inspiration take a look at our post on how to optimise your LinkedIn account or contact us regarding a social media training day.

The individual page:

• Build your profile as fully as possible with a photo, description, career and education history
• Add links to your company’s website, blog and other relevant online links like Twitter and YouTube
• Ask for recommendations from past employers, consultants and educators
• Join groups that are relevant to you and the industry you work in then join in the discussion
• Add the Answers app to demonstrate your knowledge and the and Poll app to gain feedback from your network

Tim Walker, MD, Iconnyx has an example of a LinkedIn profile that is fully integrated with social media channels and the company website.

The company page:

• Include as much information as the profile will allow on the company, including your logo, a description and number of employees
• Add links to your website, Twitter and other online social accounts
• Update the status of the company regularly as you would in a personal profile and use it to start discussions and links to content
• Encourage your employees, partners and customers to use LinkedIn and follow the company page to build an engaged audience ready to receive updates and news
• Create a group to define the company’s position in the market and raises its profile
• Add a description for each of the company’s products or services and ask customers for recommendations

Cognito’s company LinkedIn page makes full use of the status update bar to share news and start discussions.

We hope you found these tips useful and we welcome your feedback. Do you have any tips to add which you have found has enhanced your profile?

With over 140 million Tweets being sent every day there will always be something new to talk about and it can be hard managing multiple accounts and following various conversations, topics or hash tags (#). Hootsuite and Tweetdeck are applications that allow you to manage your different social media accounts, monitor coverage, schedule updates and create individual search streams to keep track of various keywords, #, users and types of content.

We like Hootsuite because:

• The ow.ly integration shortens links and can be used to monitor what you share
• It is web based so its responsive and if you’re a mobile / multi-location worker you can log in from anywhere
• Tweets can pre-scheduled (Tweetdeck also has this function, but your computer needs to be running for it to function) and are saved on a calendar for a retrospective overview
• It has the ability to look at a number of metrics around your twitter account, including which tweeted links were most popular, follower growth by time, and so on
• You can move seamlessly between different social media profiles including Facebook and LinkedIn
• It allows you to search and view other profiles to see their Twitter and Klout credentials
• You can set up a dashboard for each social media ID and switch between multiple accounts so you never miss a tweet

We think Tweetdeck is great for:

• Individuals who are at their desk
• Seeing who has recently started to follow you in its dedicated ‘followers’ column
• Having up to date real-time tweet updates
• Setting up search streams and responding directly to Tweets all from one dashboard
• Alerts so that Tweets pop up in the corner of your screen at intervals so even while you are not actively looking at Twitter you can keep to date with what is going on
• Sending an update to your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profile

We also keep a number of other monitoring tools in our social media tool box including Radian6, Klout, Peer Index and Social Mention. We welcome your feedback and look forward to hearing what you, as individuals or agencies, have in your social media toolbox.

There have been some moans and groans during the month but like the unwanted Christmas jumper, everyone is now getting used to their hairy, itchy, scratchy face and the puzzled looks from friends, family and even clients that it attracts.

We hope we’ve stepped up to the challenge and managed to highlight the issue of Prostate Cancer whilst having some fun along the way. Let us know what you think of our efforts.

We would also like to congratulate our “MoSista” Thea Parnell for her sterling efforts at growing a moustache.

With award season nearly upon us, we’ve used our Acronis award submission to B2B Marketing Awards to outline eight simple measures which we used to promote the nomination.

1. Share the good news via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
2. Update your email signature to display the award logo.
3. Update your website to show the award and make it visible so that clients and prospects take note.
4. Write all about it! If you have a company blog, include a short post about the award or the nomination, photos of the event are usually a good thing to include.
5. Share the news with clients, prospects and industry publications.
6. Highlight the achievement internally, so make sure you thank the team in the business for earning the nomination/ award. Internal promotion of awards is a great way to increase employee morale.
7. Invite staff and relevant clients to the awards ceremony, to share in the accomplishment.
8. Dependent on what the award was for, reproduce the award entry as a case study, press release, video and email marketing campaign.

In our case, we developed a case study that detailed the project we undertook with Acronis; it is now featured in Marketing Communications Fifth Edition and has been shortlisted or a B2B Marketing award in the category of best lead nurture campaign. We will be going to the award ceremony to support the nomination and we even bought the book!

Most marketing automation platforms will offer the capability to score leads before they are passed through to a CRM as a qualified lead. The theory of this is great, but building a scoring matrix that is relevant to your business can be very hit or miss.

How do you know whether your scoring matrix is effective? Here are three aspects to consider when reviewing (which you should do on a fairly regular basis):

1/ Compare the lead score in your marketing automation platform with opportunities and closed business in your CRM system. If your scoring model is relevant there should be a high correlation between the two lists. If the correlation is low then you need to tweak the scoring model; sometimes this requires more than a simple tweak.

2/ Remember that not all opportunities start from marketing. You may find that many sales-generated opportunities also have a lead score attributed as they may have interacted with your web site or opened an email.

3/ The lead scoring process starts out as feast or famine but with regular fine-tuning it can be very effective in giving you an accurate picture.

This is ultimately what you need to optimise your telemarketing or inside sales resource.

This month sees our thought leadership campaign kicking off on the topic of disaster recovery.