In this presentation that I gave to the Business Marketing Association's St. Louis, MO chapter on April 1, 2010, I go over the best sites to analyze for driving more leads into the sales pipeline for a B2B organization.

1. Leveraging Social Media for Effective B2B Business Development BMA - St. Louis April luncheon Erin Eschen

3. Business Development Further develop professional reputations Increased lead pipeline Increase sales

4. Creating Relationships Finding decision makers Finding reliable contact information Establishing rapport Demonstrating credibility Understanding the need Communicating the solution

5. Who I am Search Marketer Social Media Consumer 2006

7. CRM

8. CMS

9. Portals

10. Business Intelligence

11. Business Analysis

12. E-Commerce

13. Search

15. Online Advertising

16. SEO

17. Social Media

18. Mobilewww.Perficient.com/SocialMedia

19. Social media is changing marketing Exclusive > Accessible Expensive > Time Intensive Monologues > Dialogues Content consumers > Content producers

21. A customer oriented mindset stemming from deep social interaction allows a company to identify and meet customer needs in the marketplace, generating superior profits.(2)

22. 90% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know. Only 41% trust sponsored ads on web pages. (3)1 Forrester B2B Marketing Analyst Laura Ramos 2. Wetpaint and Altimeter, The Engagement Report 3. Nielsen, December 2009

24. Look at these users’ followers list and created lists to identify others in the same related network.

25. Follow people who these users are talking to and about.

27. Social Media Goal #2 Establish thought leadership How: Post links to useful, new articles you find: blogs, news sources by industry/technology Share others’ related, valuable comments Comment on others’ posts with thoughtful insight and helpful suggestions Refer back to company content: blogs, webinars & white papers where relevant

28. Social Media Goal #3 Increase the company’s (or your) brand awareness & visibilityHow: Get other users to mention you, your product, your brand Get other users to share your content Get others to converse & engage with you.

30. With the networks we build on social networks, we ultimately expect to see an influence on:New qualified leads New business Other desired actions (conversions).

31. 6 Stages of Social Media Adoption Awareness Interest Conversation Engagement Conversion Advocacy

32. Getting started with Social Media Confirm your brand’s goals Assign a social media owner or assign individual accountability Commit to update content and engage frequently Know what sites your target spends time on Listen and respond Converse and engage

33. LinkedIn A resume site and professional business development network.

34. LinkedIn Usage Average age: 44 47% female 50m members worldwide. This means an increase of around 1m members month-on-month since July/August last year. Study: Ages of social network users, Pingdom (Feb, 2010) via Google Ad Plannerhttp://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/16/study-ages-of-social-network-users/

35. Fill out your LinkedIn profile

36. Join Groups

37. Ask & Answer Questions

38. The Digital Rolodex Research people before you meet them Be a connector: Help people out Write recommendations Share opinions & experiences

39. Twitter A micro-blogging and “status update” site.

40. Twitter Usage 75m user accounts, but only around 15m are active users 64% of Twitter’s users are aged 35 or older. Average age: 39 1.3 million tweets/hour Unlike most social networks, Twitter started out being more popular with adults, before it caught on with younger users. (2) Study: Ages of social network users, Pingdom (Feb, 2010) via Google Ad Plannerhttp://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/16/study-ages-of-social-network-users/

41. Using Twitter You are limited to 140 characters per tweet. URLs will often take up the most characters, so use www.bit.ly to shorten.

42. Twitter Profiles

43. Twitter: Post & Monitor Frequently 3 times per day Check Twitter every day for any mentions of your brand, your Twitter name or any topics of interest. Use Twitter search to look up topics of interest Use tools like SocialOomph.com or Pingie.com to get email alerts

44. Twitter: 80/20 Professional to Personal Professional: Links to relevant articles in your industry with a short comment of your thoughts about the article Work experiences and lessons learned Events occurring at work: webinars, trade shows, meetings, speakers Professional networking events Personal: Not as simple as what you ate for breakfast but instead What you have planned for the day What day-to-day types of things bother, surprise or interest you

45. Twitter: @ Mentions How: To “mention” someone, use @ in any “tweet” directly before the Twitter account name for the person you want to mention. Why: Referencing friends/colleagues using the @ technique will allow you to do the following: Engage in conversation, similar to an instant message Public to all people who are following you as well as all people who are following the person to whom you referenced.

47. Twitter: Re-Tweets A Re-Tweet is simply your way of repeating a message word for word the way it was posted by someone else. There is no need to use the @ symbol to mention the original source. Simply copy and paste the entire

48. Twitter: Direct Messages What is it? A DM is a “Direct Message.” This is a private message between you and the person to whom you send the DM. How to send one: To send a DM, type “D username” where “username” is the person’s Twitter account name. Why: Twitter is a place where public conversations are common.Once a conversation needs to become private for any reason, you should send a DM. “Send me your email address so we can talk more about…”

49. Perficient on Twitter 6 active profiles 2,000+ followers in less than 5 months Increases our lead pipeline and helps us prospect, research and connect with leads before meeting them

50. Facebook A social network for “friends.”

51. Facebook Usage 400 million users 61% of Facebooks’s usersaged 35 or older. Average age: 38 54% (112MM) of US Internet users are now on Facebook Over 1.5 million pieces of content shared daily Study: Ages of social network users, Pingdom (Feb, 2010) via Google Ad Plannerhttp://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/16/study-ages-of-social-network-users/ ComScore- Jan 2010

52. Facebook: Fan Pages www.Facebook.com/Perficient300+ fans in less than 4 months More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook.Why a fan page for your brand/product instead of a group page…

53. Facebook: Finding fans Search for employees and colleagues Search for those with similar interests Share your Facebook URL everywhere Find interested people via other fan pages and groups Get creative: contests, polls, games

54. YouTube A video sharing site.

55. YouTube Usage Self-reported by YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/t/advertising_targeting

56. Why YouTube? YouTube (and Google Video) is the top U.S. video property with 6.8 billion videos viewed 40% market share. The next highest video sharing site has a market share of 3% 78.6 %of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in 2009. comScore, July 2009 http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2009/6/Americans_Viewed_a_Record_16.8_Billion_Videos_Online_in_April

57. YouTube: Sharing Videos Events: Trade shows, luncheons, promotions Internal office parties or events Interview subject matter experts in person or via Skype Interview yourself (Web cam) Example: TheRiseToTheTop.com

58. YouTube: Top 5 Tips Learn to embed videos: blogs, web pages, email links, etc. Even if you host elsewhere, also upload to YouTube to take advantage of the audience. Tag with keywords and quality descriptions Keep them short: 3.5 minutes Wrap the video with your brand

59. www.YouTube.com/Perficient 1 channel, 12 videos, 1,000+ views

60. Blogs The “home base” of unique, relevant, valuable content.

61. Blog Usage 61% of the blog readers (of those surveyed) are over age 30, and 75% make more than $45,000 a year. (source: eMarketer) 400,000 blog posts are created every day in the blogosphere, which averages out to about 4.6 posts per second, or over 16,000 posts per hour (source: Technorati) 70% of bloggers are organically talking about brands on their blog. 38% of bloggers post brand or product reviews.

62. Our Blogs 5 Blogs 30+ bloggers 150+ subscribers Driving 30+% of new visits to our website www.Perficient.com/SocialMedia

63. SlideShare “The world's largest community for sharing presentations.”

64. SlideShare Usage 25 million monthly visitors 70 million monthly page views Highly Educated - 62% hold a college degree and 19% have a Masters or PhD Affluent - over 25% earn $100K+/year Adult - 64% is 35 years+ and 32% is 18-34 Business Decision Makers - over 50% are managers, directors, or C-level execs Source: Slideshare.net

65. SlideShare channels www.SlideShare.net/PerficientInc 14 presentations, 6,000+ views

66. Measuring Results Social media measurement metrics and tools

67. Tools to Try Google Alerts Technorati (Blog Search) Radian6 Blog Pulse Collective Intellect FiltrBox SocialOoomph

68. Metrics Quantifiable but Directional: Brand Mentions Followers, Friends & Fans Subscribers Direct messages Impact on the business: Conversions: can track via analytics (referring sites): lead forms, orders, downloads, etc.

69. Commitment to Frequency Blogs: 3 posts / week as a minimum, 1 post per day to drive quality traffic and loyal repeat visitors and readers, 2 posts / day: optimal results. Twitter: 1 account per unique brand, product line, character, target market. 3 posts per day minimum, 10 per day max. Facebook: 1 fan page per brand and/or product. Post 1+ unique post / day Feed in blog posts and Twitter posts YouTube: 1 video per week

70. Social Media Policy Stay on topic. About 80% of your posts or more should be professional and have the intention of reaching the stated business goals. Post frequently: 3 times per week for a blog, at least once per day for Twitter. Keep private issues and topics private. Do not post anything negative about business partners or competitors – their products, employees, etc. Monitor how others respond to your posts, and reply appropriately. Respect your followers and your network. Avoid inciting any disruption or negativity.

71. Returning to the job at hand… Finding decision makers Finding reliable contact information Establishing rapport Demonstrating credibility Understanding the need Communicating the solution

72. Social Media’s Future “Search will be customized, personalized, and targeted to us and our contexts: who we are and where and when we are asking for something.” Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do “We know our current customers might not be using Twitter and Facebook, but we know that the next generation is, and we want to be there and ready for it,” Tim Madel, Manger, Global Ebusiness, Kennametal

73. Thank you! Erin Eschen Online & Social Media Marketing Manager Perficient, Inc. @ErinE http://erineschen.blogspot.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/erineschen