The document discusses the importance and growth of B2B social media, highlighting that companies that blog significantly outperform those that do not in lead generation. It emphasizes the need for B2B marketers to develop a comprehensive social media strategy that includes setting clear objectives, understanding target audiences, and measuring success through analytics. Additionally, it provides actionable insights on how to effectively engage on platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube to enhance customer relationships and drive leads.

1. B2B Social Media –
A Backgrounder
by robin frank
beep beep media
April 2012

2. Part 1:
Overview of B2B Social Media

3. Latest Data
• B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads/month
than those who do not.
• 69% of B2B marketers are shifting their budgets toward social
media.
• B2B companies that blog more than 4x/week see the biggest
increase in traffic and leads, according to @HubSpot
• 51% of B2B marketers plan to increase their spend on content
marketing, per @MarketingProfs
• 86% of #B2B companies are using social media
• Top use of B2B social media is for thought leadership at 60%,
per @btobmagazine

4. Latest Data (continued)
• B2B companies are more likely to use Twitter than B2C
companies: 75% vs 49%, per @businessdotcom
• 41% of B2B companies are acquiring customers through
Facebook.
• 39% of B2B marketers say blogging is their most valuable
content asset, per @eMarketer
• 60% of B2B marketers cite thought leadership as #1 reason to
use social media, per @btobmagazine
• Social media helps B2B marketers improve search results
• B2B social media spending set to explode to $54M over next 5
years per @Forrester

5. Social Media Statistics
• Twitter
– 225 million – Number of Twitter accounts
– 100 million – Number of active Twitter users in 2011
– 250 million – Number of tweets per day (October 2011)
• LinkedIn
– As of December 31, 2011 (the end of the fourth quarter),
professionals are signing up to join LinkedIn at a rate that is faster
than two new members per second.
– As of February 9, 2012, LinkedIn operates the world’s largest
professional network on the Internet with more than 150 million
members in over 200 countries and territories.
– Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members

6. Social Media Statistics
• YouTube
– 60 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute (more video
uploaded in past month than three big TV networks in the past 60
years).
– YouTube gets 4,000,000,000 page views a day, which adds up to
1,000,000,000,000 a year.
– YouTube has 800,000,000 users (about the same as Facebook) who
watch 3,000,000,000 hours of video a month.
– YouTube Average viewing session remains a low 15 minutes
• Blogs
– 70 million – Total number of WordPress blogs by the end of 2011

7. The Rise of the B2B Social Buyer
• Relies on social
media and online
communities during
the purchase
process.

8. Solution Provider Credibility is also
on the Rise
• B2B solution providers
need to create fact-based
customer intimacy,
establishing a relationship
with the buyer based on
knowledge and creating a
continuous, coordinated
dialogue.

9. B2B Marketers’ Jobs are More
Complex than Ever
• Dealing with
both social and
traditional
buyers

10. The Goal: an Integrated Customer
Engagement Program

11. Social Media is the New WOM Engine
• B2B companies should obsess about building
reach as much as B2C companies.
• Social media builds reach.
• Social Media amplifies the effectiveness of
online marketing. It doesn’t replace it!
– Use social media to promote all your online and
offline events.

12. Social Media is Cost Effective
• While social media requires an investment of budget
and resources, it is nowhere near the costs
associated with other media.
• Even in tough economic climates, B2Bs can afford
social media programs and use these initiatives to
gain competitive advantage.
• Social media platforms provide excellent outlets for
customer education, building trust and shortening
the sales cycle.

13. Part 2:
Developing a B2B Social Media
Strategy

14. Social Media Strategy Elements
• Set Your Objectives
• Know Your Audience(s)
• Study the Competitive Landscape
• Define Your Strategy
– Platforms: Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube,
– Social Media Playbook
– Measurement and Reporting
– Management Tools

15. Objectives
• Objectives (Customers and Key Stakeholders such as
investors, partners, and others)
– Increase awareness of company and the problems you
solve.
– Establish interest with compelling reasons for your
solution is better than the competition and more
details about your offering.
– Engage social communities with content that is
relevant, interesting, educational, and entertaining.
– Create thought leadership position.

16. Target Audiences
• Identify target audiences
– Who are they?
– Where do they live online?
– Which social platforms?

17. Your Competition’s Social Media
• Study the competitive landscape
– What are they doing in social media?
– What are their strengths and weaknesses?

18. Platform Mix
• ID platform mix and messaging
– Create a unified presence that builds your story,
empowers your interactions, and helps you rise up from
being just another voice in the stream
– Create useful information, to select the best possible
media to package that information, and then to choose a
series of distribution technologies for delivering your ideas
to others, to encourage interactions, and to drive towards
certain target results.

19. Social Media Playbook: A Guide
• Social Media Playbook: a procedural guide to aid social
media spokespeople for your company
– Audiences
– Voice/Tone
– Content Strategy
• Timing
• Editorial guidelines
• What can/can’t be said
• Promotions/Special offers (whitepapers, reports)
– Content Creation System
– Monitoring guidelines
– Spam policies

20. Key Messaging Doc
• A living “Google doc” of your company’s positions on leading
industry trends and issues.
• Gathered from fraud prevention best practices, sales
personas, analyst opinion, press coverage, mgmt opinion.
• Used as a reference in creating social editorial on the fly,
using keywords/phrases.
• Reviewed quarterly.

21. Editorial Calendar
• Marketing/Editorial Calendar
– Spreadsheet of all content across all channels, by date for
creation, publishing, promotion, and tracking.
– Guarantee that you always have something proactive to
talk about.
– Includes current/older content, but also integrates with PR
schedule, event-driven mktg, blog editorial planning.
– Ensures you are proactive, not just reactive, to drive
eyeballs to owned assets (site, social, blog, etc).

22. Content
• Prospects don’t care about your products; they want
solutions to their problems.
• 60% of the sales cycle is over before a buyer talks to
a salesperson.
• Publishing and sharing content online is the single
biggest lever to increase lead generation.
• Create awesome content and reduce the friction of
sharing it.

23. Atomize Your Content
Reactive example
New Aite Group report:
"Online Fraud Mitigation: Tools of the Trade“
27 October 2011
Today Tomorrow Next Week
TWEET: COMMENT: BLOG POST:
You can market fraud Here are 2 ways to not Download the report
prevention to your affect online usability… from us. Here’s our
customers! <link> take on what to do…

24. How Social Media Leads Happen
1
Twee
t
Landing
Page
Form Lead
Like Blog Landing
Post
CTA
Page
Product Landing
+1 Page
CTA
Page

25. 3 Must-Haves for Social Media
Lead Generation
• Get people to connect with you.
• Get people to share your stuff.
• Place calls to action everywhere.

26. THE Links to company
blog posts
10-4-1
Links to third-
party articles
Link to a company
landing page
RULE

27. Know Your Expiration Date

28. Twitter To-Do’s
• Create Profile
• List in directories
• Follow and engage key audiences and press on Twitter
to gain followers
• Participate: use keywords, define keywords, retweet,
@reply, create lists
• Content strategy: customer support, interesting
information in the industry, education, even humor
• Monitor keywords and key lists of stakeholders and
customers

29. LinkedIn To-Do’s
• Build out company profile –jobs, description
– Encourage employees to create profiles, connect, get
recommendations
• Monitor and participate in key groups
• Create company group
• Share updates
• LinkedIn ads – wait – currently not high returns

30. YouTube To Do’s
• Add videos and create company channel
• Create playlists
• Add tags
• Add annotations
• Add friends/gain subscribers
• Optimize for SEO

31. Measurement & Reporting
• Identify key analytics and targets.
• Create customized analytic report and provide monthly
reporting.
• Offer/integrate recommendations based on learnings.
– Evolve content and promotions to emphasize what you
find to be successful.
– Create strategies for flexibility and adapting to
changing market conditions.

32. Tools for Management &
Monitoring
• Hootsuite
– Schedule and monitor posts on Twitter/Facebook
– Link accounts to save time
– Hoosuite analytics for Twitter
• YouTube Insights
• Twentyfeet
– Broad cross-platform monitoring
• Klout
– Monitoring influence across social networks

33. Social Media Monitoring
• Industry blogs
• News websites
• Conferences/events
• Analysts
• LinkedIn Groups and companies
• Twitter profiles – lists of PR, competitors, analysts,
influencers, etc.
• Note: create workflow for alerts, and responses

34. Social Media Analytics
• Suggested analytics to measure
– Inbound website traffic referred from social media sites
– Inbound blog traffic referred from social media sites
– Growth in blog commentary (per post average)
– Blog article “Likes”
– Growth in Twitter followers, retweets, @replies, and hashtags
– Growth in followers on LinkedIn
– Growth in group members on LinkedIn
– “Authority” measures for blog, Klout
– Number of new prospects who admit first following us on
social media

35. Social Media ROI

36. Thank You!

37. Background