Category Archives: Social Networking Sites

Is social media right for my B2B firm? A new study offers fresh insights

Posted by: | March 28, 2013 | Marketing Trends, Social Media, Social Networking Sites

Twitter TweeterTwitter and LinkedIn have more than 200 million users apiece. Instagram and Tumblr? More than 130 million combined. At 1 billion-plus users, Facebook has more than all of them put together – twice over.

Still, when it comes to social media, many B2B marketing managers in the United States remain skittish about making the commitment. Frequently – and understandably – they find themselves asking the questions, “Who are all these people?” and “Do they want to buy any of my products?”

More times than not, the answer to the latter question is, “it depends.” In terms of answering the first question, a new Pew Research Center survey may provide important insights that can help you determine whether social media is a good fit for your business. The survey offers a deep dive into who exactly all those many billions of social media users are and how they use different applications – all information that can help you make an informed decision.

Out of regular Internet users, the Pew survey suggests that overall, 71 percent of women and 62 percent of men in the United States use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr or Pinterest. Two-thirds of college degree holders, individuals living in households that make more than $75,000 annually and suburbanites also use social media, according to the study.

Social media usage rates among minorities outpace white users considerably. The Pew study shows that 72 percent of Hispanics, 68 percent of blacks and 65 percent of whites are regular social media users. Among other interesting findings:

  • Is Facebook getting grayer? While Facebook usage remains high among the18-29 year-old demographic (86 percent), it’s also very popular with the middle-aged crowd. Consider this: Almost 75 percent of 30-49 year-olds and nearly 60 percent of 50-64 year olds are users.
  • Twitter is popular in minority communities. Twitter usage among blacks and Hispanics is well ahead of the white community. According to the Pew study, 26 percent of blacks and 19 percent of Hispanics surveyed use Twitter, while 14 percent of whites participating in the poll reported using it.
  • Pinterest use is consistent among female age groups. While Pinterest users appear to be overwhelmingly female – only 5 percent of men participating in the poll said they used it – 19 percent of women in both the 18-29 demographic and 30-49 demographic said they used the online pin board.

Full results of the Pew study are available here.

What has been your B2B firm’s experience on social media?

B2B trendspotting: What we learned in 2012

Posted by: | December 27, 2012 | Education, General Business Practices, Journalism

TSG 139 - cell talkerAs 2012 draws to a close, it is worth reflecting on a number of milestones and trend lines in the world of B2B marketing and advertising that emerged this year, developments that may make a big splash in how businesses interact with their current and potential customers in the coming years.

Mobile tipping point?

More than two years ago, Wired set off an existential crisis for tech types and marketing/advertising executives with the article “The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet.” In it, the magazine speculated that the then-recent advent of smartphones, tablets and other portable, app-based devices would soon send Web browsing, Googling and other 1990-era Internet trappings the way of the Dodo. (more…)

Making Your Social Media Matter

Posted by: | December 20, 2012 | Direct marketing, networking, Online advertising

Few small businesses today question the marketing ROI of sites like Facebook and Twitter. Still, many small firms remain stuck in an awkward adolescence, unsure how to best use social media to engage their customers and integrate these standard tools with their overall business strategies.

But why?

While many small business owners realize it’s no longer sufficient simply to have a Facebook page, LinkedIn profile or Twitter handle, they often find themselves asking “now what?” after signing up for a social media account. For many, taking the social network plunge can be a daunting undertaking.  But it’s not impossible if you keep these two concepts in mind. (more…)

Get out the vote: What the election taught us about combining traditional and new marketing strategies effectively

Posted by: | November 8, 2012 | Best Practices, Direct marketing, Marketing planning

Earlier this year, 5 million people bought the newest iPhone in its first weekend of availability. Last year, more than 11 million Harry Potter fans bought an opening-day ticket to the final installment of the popular movie franchise. Neither of these tectonic cultural movements registered anywhere near the turnout of a U.S. presidential election, which saw 125 million voters cast their vote (give or take – I think some folks in Florida are still waiting for their turn). Election Day offered keen insights into the culture of our country, not the least of which are the most effective marketing strategies of our social networking world.

Marketing has always been a part of elections and reflective of the technology of the day. From the original campaign buttons William McKinley used during his 1896 presidential campaigns to the whistle-stop tours along U.S. railways throughout the 19th and 20th centuries to the judicious tweets from President Barack Obama leading up to his re-election, leveraging innovative marketing tools to win big is as ubiquitous as kissing babies and shaking hands.

In 2008, then-presidential hopeful Barack Obama gathered an immense number of micro donations through social media, which he rolled over into effective traditional marketing campaigns. In 2012, he wasn’t alone in complementing traditional marketing with more cutting-edge tactics. Republican challenger Mitt Romney employed similar voter outreach and made it a much tighter race than John McCain’s organizers had during the previous election by fumbling opportunities to incorporate new marketing strategies.

The sooner businesses embrace the lessons presidential elections teach us about mixing traditional marketing strategies with newer ones, the farther ahead of their competition they will be. While newsletters, direct mail, brochures and advertisements allow you to deliver your message, social networks like Twitter and Facebook become tools that allow your business to present its casual, relaxed and human side.

New media is built around interaction within the community. Let your supporters work for you. President Obama generated both money and interest by presenting a call to action that involved his supporters spreading the word. There is no better recommendation than that of someone freely and willingly putting you in front of people you might otherwise not have touched.

We’d love to hear how you’re absorbing new marketing strategies into your traditional ones? Tell us about it in the comments section.

 

One sweet (unified social media) world

Posted by: | August 18, 2011 | Social Media, Social Networking Sites

I consider myself a pretty dedicated social media user. I have accounts with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube, just to name a few. When I arrived home from a vacation a few days ago, I looked at my bookmarks and shook my head – it was going to take hours to see what had happened during my time away from the Internet. I wanted to catch up on news from friends, family and more, but it just wasn’t going to happen – I listened to a few songs on YouTube instead.

As I was searching for songs, I remembered that Google had purchased YouTube a few years ago. My mind wandered and I wondered why Google hadn’t somehow merged the two sites, which would have saved me time. Effectively shifting the blame to Google, my thoughts wandered somewhere else – what if we only had one social media outlet altogether? It could essentially merge Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube and all sorts of other social media channels into one website – either Google or Facebook would be the most likely candidate at this point.

The combined site would probably be unwieldy at first, most likely looking like a hodge-podge of wall posts, retweets, product offers, pictures of your cousin’s baby, messages from ex-significant others (yikes!) and notifications that a business associate had checked in at a convention hall. But Facebook’s redesigns have proven that people adapt to change (even if they don’t like it at first) and that tweaks can improve things over time. Other sites might emerge, but we all seem to agree that Friendster, Classmates.com and even MySpace have run their course and that Facebook is the place to interact with friends.

Having everything under one roof would likely pose a lot of challenges from a marketing standpoint. It’s entirely possible that we’ll find ourselves in this scenario, though, as we demand more connectivity from media outlets while our attention spans continue to shrink. Would you be in favor of having only one social media outlet/profile?

What can Google+ do for your business? Part 2 of 3: E-communications

Posted by: | July 13, 2011 | Advertising Strategy, Best Practices, Direct marketing

One of the hallmarks of Google+ is that you’re actually sharing information with fewer people. The social media tool allows you to place contacts into separate groups called Circles, so users can keep their work colleagues in one group, personal contacts in another group, and so on. Before this segmented approach was available under Google+, we had two choices: Create multiple accounts (all of which need unique content and take time to sign in and out of), or send the same message out through one central account and risk only being relevant to a small percentage of your audience. As part of our three-part series on Google+, we’ll look at how the social media tool can help you target your marketing more effectively.

Vertical targeting: Wouldn’t it be great if every tweet or post was directly relevant to every reader? Google+ will bring us a lot closer to that, since you can create different Circles and place contacts in various groups as you please.

Consider a company that has prospects in every stage of the sales pipeline. Google+ will allow you post pieces introducing your work and trade show invitations to prospects, while targeting incentives to current customers to work with you once again or to refer new business to you.  The ways you can sort your clients and prospects are endless, including location, company size, value of the sale, how much of a priority the target audience is and even the age of the decision-maker.

This isn’t to say that transmission services and segmented Google+ Circles are mutually exclusive. While e-blasting services also allow you to send information to specific verticals – and, unlike Google+, will provide you with analytics – Google+ offers a free supplementary outlet for targeted marketing. What’s more, it’s entirely possible that people are more willing to link with you on a trendy new social media outlet than to sign up for your e-newsletter. Simply put, marketers can use Google+ as a tool to increase the number of people who view their e-communications pieces and opt in to receive more of them in the future.
Remember that not every social media outlet is for every company. Some B2B companies offering five products total don’t need to segment their customer base any further. But for those that could benefit from segmentation, Google+ offers a powerful new way to accomplish that goal.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s entry – Google+ as a cloud-workflow tool.

Social media – where not to hang your hat

Posted by: | May 19, 2011 | Marketing Trends, Social Media, Social Networking Sites

Social media is all the rage across the business world – some companies even use it without knowing why they do so. The truth is that every social media outlet has potential for B2B uses (depending on your firm and your audience), but some outlets are better B2B resources than others. If you have a 100-person marketing department and an unlimited budget (drool…), knock yourself out trying every social media tool. If not, think twice before spending your time marketing your company through these social media methods.

Foursquare: The main use for a site like this is to “check in” at various places you’ve been, such as movie theaters or restaurants. Nobody is going to check in at a law firm or construction site, so no need to set up a profile.

Flickr: Facebook offers the ability to share photos, so this photo-only site is less functional and not worth your time.

Tumblr: Essentially, a mini blog that doesn’t give you an SEO boost for living on your site. You can follow users like Twitter, like things like Facebook and… well, that’s about it. Unless you’ve come up with a groundbreaking way to use a meme as part of a B2B marketing plan, this should be one of your lowest priority items.

Podcasts: In my humble opinion, podcasts are the future of radio – they serve as radio on demand. There are even apps (Stitcher comes to mind) that act as podcast hubs or networks that allow you discover new and interesting podcasts. There are plenty of business reasons for people to have a podcast, including thought leadership, proving yourself to be an expert in the field, and increasing awareness of your capabilities and what they mean to your audience. Still, podcasts take a lot of setup. You need a studio, equipment, editing software and capabilities, and plenty of bandwidth. You also need to figure out who will host the show, coordinate guests, come up with topic ideas and more. There are almost always more effective ways to spend your marketing budget, especially since you’d be spending more to reach fewer people, as podcasts for business purposes haven’t caught on like wildfire yet.

Digg/Reddit: You know how you can “like” a page on Facebook? These sites allow you to tell the world that you “Digg” a specific link or about an article that you’ve found… namely that you’ve “Reddit.” You have no ability to post your own content or interact… It’s just a stream of links with a number of “likes.” Your time is better spent elsewhere – I insist.

While there are B2B business applications for all of these social media, in reality, you’re better off focusing on channels that allow you communicate more effectively with other businesses. Feel free to take these on if you have multiple spare employees and an unlimited budget, but first, call me… I absolutely must meet you.

Marketing, with a side of mac and cheese

Posted by: | April 19, 2011 | Social Media, Social Networking Sites

If you want evidence of how much social media has changed marketing, look no further than The Southern Mac and Cheese Truck.

This glorious van of cheesy goodness pops up around downtown Chicago during lunchtime each weekday to dish out a few varieties of gourmet macaroni and cheese. To the delight of everyone in our office, it stops right down the street from our building on Tuesdays. The truck’s employees post updates to Twitter and Facebook to let hungry customers know when they’re on their way — leading to some pretty frequent late-morning screen refreshing around here.

Although the truck usually comes around the same time each week, its plans can change. Some days, the truck makes an unannounced stop somewhere else first to test-drive a new location; other days, a lack of parking might leave the truck circling the block for a few extra minutes. Luckily, all we need to do to find out exactly when to head downstairs is glance at the truck’s social media sites.

The mac and cheese truck is the kind of operation that would have been nearly impossible to pull off before social media. A lot of things can crop up at the last minute when you’re driving through Chicago, and Twitter and Facebook allow the truck to communicate quickly with customers. These sites also give the truck a low-risk way to try out new markets. What’s more, the truck can use the customers who visit the truck’s Twitter and Facebook pages for schedule information as a sounding board for other business decisions: “Would you rather eat andouille or chorizo mac?”

The takeaway for b-to-b marketers? Take advantage of the unique — and often low-risk — marketing opportunities available to you through social media to build your brand and boost sales. If you want feedback on your product’s latest update, ask your fans on your Facebook page. Is there a last-minute schedule change at the conference where you’ll be speaking? Post a quick message on Twitter. Whether you’re selling mac and cheese or widgets, the results can be huge… and delicious.

SOCIAL MEDIA SAVVY PART 6: Putting the ‘you’ in YouTube

Posted by: | March 21, 2011 | Best Practices, Social Media, Social Networking Sites

NOTE: This is the final part of a six-part series designed to help businesses jump-start their social media campaigns. Check out our earlier posts on getting started, LinkedIn, blogging, Facebook and Twitter.

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then what’s a video worth? Even more, if you’re a marketer.

Forrester Research has shown that you’re 50 times more likely to get on the first page of Google’s search results if you have video on your page. With more than 2 billion daily video views, YouTube is the leader in the video hosting world, and the site that we’ll focus on here. Other hosting sites include Vimeo and Flickr.

Build buzz and have fun at the same time

Here’s the breakdown on YouTube:

How to use it: You’ll need a script, videographer, talent for the video, and audio and editing capabilities to produce a video successfully. Once you create your video, you can post it to your company’s website and video hosting sites, using keywords in the title and tags to make it more visible in searches. Many companies have also created branded channels, which allow you to customize your page’s background, post additional links and forgo the banner ads on regular pages. And once your page is up and running, you can link to it from your other social media sites for maximum exposure.

The goal: To engage your customers, employees and prospects in ways that can’t be achieved through text and photos. The companies that do this best are sometimes rewarded by having videos go “viral” — meaning they’re viewed by thousands, or even millions, of people.

Potential uses:

  • Drive traffic to your website
  • Generate business and sales leads
    • Demonstrate how to use your company’s new product
    • Share messages from your CEO
    • Post video testimonials from your customers
    • Upload recordings of your presentations or events
    • Provide online tutorials
    • Give a tour of your offices and staff

Time involved: The most time-consuming part is making the video. Between writing a script, shooting the video and editing the finished product, you can expect the hours to add up. As for managing your YouTube account, you’ll want to check in regularly to monitor comments on your videos and keep your content current.

Money involved: Video is a big financial investment. You don’t have to be Rich Uncle Pennybags to make a great video, but be prepared to lay out enough money to have it done professionally, whether you hire a staffer with video skills or outsource the work. If you want to create a branded channel on YouTube, you’ll need to dig into your pocketbook further.

Drawbacks: The expense and the technical skills required are the biggest challenges for many b-to-b companies interested in breaking into video.

Learn more about YouTube, including how businesses are using it in creative ways.

But wait, there’s more…

While this wraps up our social media series, you can expect much more on social media in future posts on this blog. As long as businesses keep asking, we’ll keep sharing what we know. After all, it looks like social media’s here to stay — you may as well get the most out of it.

SOCIAL MEDIA SAVVY PART 5: Keeping it short and sweet on Twitter

Posted by: | March 18, 2011 | Best Practices, Social Media, Social Networking Sites

NOTE: This is the fourth part of a six-part series designed to help businesses jump-start their social media campaigns. Check out our earlier posts on getting started, LinkedIn, blogging and Facebook.

140 characters. That’s all you get on Twitter, the social media site that makes a blog post look like War and Peace. Created to be compatible with texting software on smart phones, Twitter allows users to post brief messages in real time that even the most time-crunched person has time to read.

Around since 2006, Twitter is named after the tweeting sound that birds make; in the founder’s words, tweets are “short bursts of inconsequential information.” Yet the site’s popularity has proved to be quite consequential for many businesses — 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies have a corporate Twitter account with at least one tweet issued in the last 30 days, according to research from University of Massachusetts Amherst. That’s up from 35 percent a year ago.

The next best thing to the easy button

Here’s the breakdown on Twitter:

How to use it: Once you create an account, you can post messages, photos, videos and links to other sites that appear on your profile. Anyone can see your profile by searching for it, and the Twitter users that “follow” your profile will see your messages pop up on their Twitter walls when they sign in. You can also send direct messages to other Twitter users; “retweet” another user’s message, which means you send it out to your own network; and incorporate “hash tags” into messages that users can search for on the site (i.e., #wintersale).

The goal: Twitter is a hassle-free way to alert your customers, employees and prospects to your business’ interesting new content and to build relationships with them through back-and-forth dialogue. It’s quick and easy for you to post, and it’s equally quick and easy for your followers to glance at your new messages. Think of Twitter as the bow that ties your social media presence together — you can use it to direct people to your blog, your Facebook page and your website, as well as provide small bits of new content.

Potential uses:

  • Announce sales, specials or events
  • Drive traffic to your website
  • Provide live updates during conferences or events
  • Invite prospects to in-person events
  • Create multiple targeted accounts for different sectors of your audience (clients versus employees, for example)
  • Set up alerts to find out when other users mention your company
  • Follow users that are relevant to your business
  • Sync your Twitter messages to also post on LinkedIn and Facebook

Time involved: Writing posts doesn’t take much time, but you need to update your feed frequently and respond to other tweets quickly. In a medium that moves this fast, logging in once a week isn’t going to cut it.

Money involved: Twitter is free to join.

Drawbacks: Everything you post is public, so this isn’t the venue for you if you want to share information with a select few. And again, it’s a fast-paced tool, so you have to be prepared to keep up.

More free expert tips

Get more of our insights on Twitter, including specifics on how to use it to solve common business problems.

The end of our social media series is in sight. Wrapping things up will be YouTube, the platform that takes your tech skills to the next level — and if you’re lucky, takes your company viral. Check back Monday for more.