As I wrote last week’s post on the MarketingProfs’ B2B Forum, one particular session stood out to me – it was insanely interesting, interactive and valuable. Hosted by Jason Baer (of Convince and Convert fame), the session entailed three actual attendees letting the audience evaluate, analyze and critique their B2B social media efforts – whether it be a corporate blog, a community forum, Twitter, etc. or a combination.

Jason started the session off with an incredibly brief appeal to all B2B marketers to  define what success is, and know your strategy on social media. As he explained, too often the tactics are executed before a company knows what their objective is because someone wants to try Twitter, another wants to add a LinkedIn Group, etc. Even if you’ve been using various social media technologies, he suggested taking a step back to regroup and define the ultimate goal – which then lends itself to measurement and metrics (a major theme of the event).

He also emphasized that social media is not for features and benefits content. It’s to TELL A STORY and add personality (however relaxed or professional) to a brand. The companies most successful with social media have an end goal in mind and aren’t trying to feed data sheets into social networks and on blogs. That’s true for B2B and B2C companies.

I loved this session for many reasons. Mostly, I loved that it took three of my peers – who admittedly did not have the marketing resources (staff or budget) that a Fortune 500 company had – and provided them (and us) with specific, and realistic, suggestions to improve. The majority of them centered around the idea that regardless of whether you “own” all the properties, you need to connect the dots (between your company’s LinkedIn, Twitter, blog, website, etc). When done properly, that can extend each other’s audience and create a cumulative effect. When done poorly, they create an annoying echo chamber that is perceived as corporate spam.

Below are the very tactical, but incredibly valuable, tips/suggestions that I left the session with:

  • Every presentation (or podcast or webinar or whitepaper) your company produces can potentially fuel 5-6 blog posts. Make heavy use of content already being created, but keep in mind that the features/function language needs to be pulled out.
  • If you have a group contributed blog, include pictures of the authors by each post.
  • On your corporate blog, add links to each exec’s LinkedIn profile. Also be sure to add their profiles in your company’s LinkedIn Group page. (Check out this great article by Jason, “22 Ways to Dominate LinkedIn,” for more tips.)
  • Use tools to extend your audience beyond the “people in the room” (beyond your blog subscribers, LinkedIn Group members, webinar/tradeshow attendees, etc.):
  1. Use slideshare.net to share presentation-based content and then embed in your corporate blog. LinkedIn also has a slideshare app to pull the slides into profiles of execs and the group page. This is a perfect way to extend the reach of tradeshow and webinar presentations.
  2. Check out Scribd.com, which is like a “slideshare for documents.” It allows you to embed the cover page of each whitepaper to be downloaded into your blog, and again extends the audience.
  3. Make use of tools to incorporate your blog content into LinkedIn profiles (LinkedIn has a blog app that can automate this, too).
  4. If you use need to use the whitepapers and webinars as lead generators, just wait a few months before sharing them – and then extend their life and reach.
  • Don’t use your corporate Twitter feed as a “link dump.” And if you’re using an automated tool to feed your Twitter, FriendFeed, etc., make sure you’re not spamming the same updates multiple times. Also, recognize that people may be following your brand and multiple employees on Twitter, so be careful that you’re not creating your own “retweeting” echo chamber.
  • If you manage a corporate Twitter account, take 15 minutes to brand the background with links to the company’s website.
  • If multiple people are involved in the corporate Twitter account, take a look at Cotweet and Hootsuite. They both allow multiple contributors to a single account, and allows staged tweets (here’s a CNET comparison of both).
  • Sign up for a bit.ly account to provide shortened URLs across all platforms. It allows you to track/measure how many people followed the link.

The event was great, but this session really made it worthwhile for me. I hope you find the suggestions as helpful as I did.