XMAS IDEAS: How to make social marketing work for business-to-business (B2B)

Social marketing (tweeting, blogging, linking in, digging it and so on) is a BIG old world. The good news is that most of it is completely free. The not so good news is that it eats time - and how on earth do you know which bit of time is well spent?

We've put together a compact guide for businesses - the minimum you should be doing and what kind of results you can expect.

For companies: The different kinds of social networking, and when to use each


LinkedIn - your professional Rolodex. (Think of Facebook as the personal one.)

  • Used as a public profile so people can find out about you and build credibility
  • A method of getting in touch/networking with people
  • Use LinkedIn Groups, one centered around your company and one centered around your industry, to network with similar people – a bit like an online professional association.

How to put it to good use:

  • Link in with every prospect, client, influencer you can find. Look out for contacts that move organisation in the news feed - you can email them to congratulate them and suggest a meet up! Without linked in, these people would drop off your radar.
  • Update your status from time to time to reflect some of the exciting things your business is doing - this is currently underused, so yours will stand out.

Join all relevant groups (turn off the comms setting if you're getting bombarded with nonsense) and start your own groups. Post questions and useful articles around once a week.

Search for relevant but currently cold contacts using the search function. Invite these people to join one of your groups.


Twitter - used by your prospects as a way of keeping in touch with what’s going on in the industry (by “following” the updates of companies they find interesting like yours and sharing website links about things of interest with their contacts)

  • The most popular form of microblogging.
  • Originally a social tool, but rapidly transforming into the perfect business forum.
  • Once you sign up (free), you can a) 'tweet' your own short messages (usually pointing to a relevant article, tool or trend) and b) follow other people's tweets.
  • Great for pushing your website up the search engine rankings and building a 'following' 

How to put it to good use

  • The key is to provide value by sharing interesting links etc (go to www.tinyurl.com or bit.ly to shorten a link so it fits within the 140 character limit of each message, or “tweet”.)
  • This can be time-intensive so don’t feel that you have to be involved in it all the time!
  • This can be a good way to get an “in” through direct messages with people who might not be willing to talk to you otherwise.
  • Use bit.ly to track the links you post (bit.ly shortens your links so that they fit within the character limit and also enables you to track how many people have clicked them)


Google Analytics – not strictly a social media in its own right but a tool which you install on your website to find out how many people visit your site and what they do when they get there.

  • Ask your web developer to set this up on your site and check it at least monthly
  • Consider using prospectvision.net to make invisible visitors visible for £250 a month (a lot more than free, but well worth it if you can contact 5-6 companies a month who are searching for a supplier on your site).


Blogs – function as an online newsletter to help you build credibility as well as providing content to keep contacts updated with your name (and lovely keywords to boost your search engine ranking).

  • Short articles from 100-300 words commenting on a new development in the industry, talking a little about an aspect of a methodology you use etc.
  • You can make the content work hard (aka “sweat”) by reusing it as a newsletter and emailing it to your contacts every few months.
  • It creates credibility around you and what you have to offer – by sharing a little of value, people trust you. Posts should hardly ever be straight adverts for your company – perhaps no more than 1 in 10.
  • Posts are hosted on your website, as fresh content improves your page rankings.
  • Create the newsletter as an email with short snippets of content, with links back to the full content on your blog/website, or as one really good article you can email to your “warm” contacts list.

How to put it to good use

  • Blog weekly or monthly - as much as you have the time for. Pick one subject/slant and discuss. It doesn't need to be War and Peace.
  • Use these to feed your newsletter
  • Tweet new blogs and post them on social bookmarketing sites (see below) to increase exposure
  • Visit others' blogs on similar subjects, make a comment and link back to your original post.


Social bookmarking (Digg, Reddit, Delicious etc) – a method for sharing useful information online

  • Links submitted to social bookmarking sites are “voted” on (e.g. “dugg”) up or down.
  • The most popular links are viewed by millions of users.
  • Especially useful to improve your page ranking within Google.  Plus these are probably the best suited to casual browsing for useful industry information.
  • Social media isn’t something you do just to get on the bandwagon, so to speak – pick the particular result you want and do the activities which will lead to that result.
  • How to put it to good use
  • Sign up with Diggit, Reddit and Delicious (free)
  • Post your blogs on each and hope they get dugg/red/delicioused!
  • Make sure your own site is registered on each - get every member of your team to sign up, log on and add your site with keywords. A great help for SEO.

 

Quite a job - but doable in 4-6 hours a month, if you're super speedy and efficient.

 

Want to chat more? We're always happy to talk through social marketing and what might work best for each organisation. Ring us (+44 118 3217457) and we'll be ready to speak.