Social Media

The following post is taken from my monthly collumn over at B2B Marketing

B2B lead generation in its traditional form consists of many outbound marketing activities; for example ads, telemarketing, email marketing, and pay-per-click. All of these are broadcast in their very nature. However, some of these activities are now increasingly becoming ignored by prospects who favour one-to-one communications. This shift in behaviour effects not just the success of lead generation but your future marketing budgets.

Savvy marketers now regard social media as an important channel of the marketing mix whereby conversations and content referred to as ‘inbound’ marketing can attract, engage and nurture leads.

Cost effective
The value of social media used for lead generation in comparison to outbound marketing activities is a lot more cost-effective. What this means for small and medium sized businesses is that they can now compete with larger corporations because they can leverage social media to their advantage through effective engagement and creative content at lower costs. For larger corporations the risk is that, if they do not adopt or engage in social media, they will lose a slice of the prospect pie.

When looking to generate leads through social media, the first step is to get heard by cutting through the noise. This is where your social media brand outposts such as Twitter, blogs and LinkedIn communities are important as they are the launch pad for creating interesting conversations and engaging content.

Both the conversations and content you are producing can be promoted through seeding, sharing and optimisation throughout social media. This allows your content to be found through social search and increases your chances of prospects engaging with content and spreading it further throughout their own social networks.

Traditional processes still work
Marketers should look to revise traditional lead gen processes such as scouring newspapers and trade publications for new business opportunities by using social media tools. For example, you can now use RSS readers to pool RSS feeds from trade publications as well as from competitors. The RSS readers enable you to keep up to date with industry announcements and potential opportunities that you can add to your prospect database and follow up.

At the same time it is essential that you have a listening strategy in place whereby you can monitor conversations taking place within blogs, forums and most importantly Twitter so that you do not miss out on opportunities. Expanding upon your listening strategy further, effective monitoring of conversations will provide you with the intelligence enabling you to engage in discussions within Yahoo Answers, Facebook groups and LinkedIn Q&As.

You should look to develop networking opportunities using social media, for example you can search for prospects within Twitter. Once you have added them to a list, you can create bespoke content for specific leads in order to create conversations and optimise this content to spread further through your other brand outposts and social networks to increase the potential of reaching more prospects.

Make sure that you balance all content with conversations so that the dialogue is not one way to ensure you are not reverting back to the traditional broadcast marketing methods.

Securing future social media budgets
Once your conversations and content are discovered, the goal is to funnel visitors/traffic toward target destinations such as a bespoke landing page whereby the user can enter in details via data capture and become a prospect. Social media activity inevitably costs money in terms of both time and resources, therefore in order to secure a budget for future social media spend you need to generate as many leads as possible that will eventually result in sales.

Some of the best tactics used to generate leads are value-added, for example creating blog posts offering advice on how to carry out business processes that compliment a company’s products and services thus increasing subscribers and increasing ratio of leads. It is important to remember that the quality of leads is controlled by the quality of the content and targeting.

As with all marketing activity, and social media is no exception, it needs to be measured in order to determine success and increase business intelligence. Use multivariate testing within your communications, analyse the data to track visitors, leads and customers across every channel that you are using within social media. This information will help inform where future budgets are best invested and what content works.

Tagged as: b2b marketing magazine, chartered institute of marketing, cim, lead generation, marketing, Social Media

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OK, first off let’s start with a few random Twitter stats:

• The average Twitter user has 126 followers - (Guardian)
• Largest demographic on Twitter - 45-54 year olds (Social Media Library)
• There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%) - (Sysomos)
• Twitter’s most active celebrity based on no. of tweets - Perez Hilton (Brian Solis PeopleBrowsr)

For me personally the above stats amongst all the many others add up to one important and obvious fact: this platform is sticking around for a while.

If you, your client, company and even dog (check out Jeremiah Owyang’s dog) are not using Twitter to its full potential, then it is about time you got involved, brushed up on the latest tactics or even re-visit that Twitter profile you abandoned a few months ago when you first joined.

For those of you who need even more reinforcement or just want to hear the latest case studies from some of the UK’s top twitter brands, then the Media 140 event in London on Monday 26 October is the place to be enlightened (thanks to Sejal for the invitation to the event which unfortunately I cannot make). Everything a brand needs to know about Twitter and real-time social media features a top line-up of Twitter brands including Easyjet’s Paul Hoskins @easyjetCare and someone who I respect very much and have had the pleasure of tapping into his brain last year,  Innocent Drinks very own Mr Ted Hunt.

Oh, and if you’re not already following me on Twitter then shame on you! Go on follow @TomChapman say hello and I’ll follow you back (please note: Mafia Family invites via Twitter do not apply).  I personally can share with you some great Twitter case studies that Headstream have been involved in with leading brands such as Guitar Hero, Samsung, Galaxy Radio and UKTV to name but a few.

Tagged as: conference, easyjet, event, headstream, innocent drinks, media140, seminar, Social Media, Twitter

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Monitoring, listening and engaging with social media is a hot topic for brands with their ongoing quest to get closer to customers, build trusted relationships and extend their customer lifecycle. There is a conference for that which I would have liked to participate in: Monitoring Social Media
I personally have been involved in monitoring the social media sphere for clients at Headstream as part of the listen and engage methodology from the Social Media Strategic Framework.

From my own perspective what each audit has highlighted is not only the wealth of conversation taking place about individual brands within social media, especially on certain platforms; but the need for organisations to place more importance on customer service and online reputation management.
In short organisations looking to be more successful need to become customer centric and take into account the social consumer – pretty obvious. You can read my thoughts on social CRM and online reputation management.

Back to the post in hand… Today I received latest the research conducted by Harris Interactive and commissioned by Tealeaf that looks at the social customer and the powerful effect they have on a brand’s reputation. More specifically how customers respond to their experiences of online transactions. Do check out the slide deck and if you require further information visit http://www.tealeaf.com/harris-uk

The research was carried out amongst UK consumers who had participated in online transactions and those who had experienced online problems with transactions.

The findings for those who closely follow the social media world and indeed marketing in general are not ground breaking, but they further re-affirm the importance of digital marketing, social media marketing, online reputation management with regard to consumer purchasing decisions. I have extracted some of the key findings from the research below:

• When customers experience problems attempting to conduct an online transaction, 78% share their experience with others.
Furthermore 46% of those customers would then abandon a transaction entirely or switch to a competitor.
I am certain that you have witnessed many a tweet complaining about airline ticket bookings which is why in the UK profiles such as @easyjetCare exist to respond to customer issues. I do not need to mention @comcastcares or @zappos

• 51% state that social media has influenced their online transactions.
This finding further supports research from DEI Worldwide in 2008 that I have referenced within client presentations particularly for the consumer electronic and game verticals placing importance on search and social media.

• 74% said when they read a negative comment online, it influences their likelihood to do business with the company.
Would love to know what the sales figures were like around the @HabitatUK backlash which scattered across all social media. Out of curiosity it would be great to see if the figures underpin the above findings and understand brand perception through the Net Promoter Score (NPS).

• 52% used a particular website after reading good reviews.
Encouraging result that supports the need for brands to identify key influencers and form trusted relationships with them.

In summary the underlying message from the research is to monitor, react and respond. This focuses on listening to the conversation within social media, reacting to the conversation in the appropriate way through a considered response.

Going back to basics it makes perfect sense to actually sort out the website sales funnel and indentify where in the transaction the problem are occurring, usability testing would not go a miss.
This is also an opoprtunity to engage your community and get them to play their part in helping to contribute to research and development of new platforms. Without covering old ground Dell IdeaStorm exists for this very reason.

Essentially the research places the importance on digital reputation management for brands and looking toward a customer centric business model – cue the social business and more importantly the implementation of social CRM.

Tagged as: customer service, harris interactive, marketing, Reputation Management, Social CRM, Social Media, strategy, tealeaf

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Conversations about your industry concerning buying decisions are taking place regularly within social media spaces. In order to have an influence over these conversations you need to be active within social media.

However, in order to make an impact, you need to ensure that your voice within these spaces is one that represents value, respect and trust. Many marketers have taken a bold step in entering social media, only to receive a backlash from a community. Others have given up on social media outposts that have already been set up because they have not delivered immediate results.

The following guidelines will assist those already operating in these spaces and help those considering getting their hands dirty:

1. Beware of a lack of understanding
If you have not done so already, educate yourself on the seismic shifts in communication when it comes to ‘mass broadcast’ versus ‘conversation’. Read case studies to help understand what has worked.

Marketers who want to use social media must be part of social media. You need to be out there commenting on blogs; contributing to communities and using social media outposts such as Twitter and LinkedIn.You cannot execute successful campaigns if you do not understand the platforms you are using.

2. Develop a social media strategy
It goes without saying that your organisation should have a social media strategy. This should be a company-wide strategy with all business units contributing.

A well-designed social media strategy can be used as a roadmap for your organisation. At the same time, the strategy will be used to benchmark tactics against objectives showing results and return on investment.

The most important element of the strategy is listening to the conversation. By listening you are able to understand where the conversation is taking place and what challenges your clients and prospects face. Then you can produce content and start a dialogue.

Most importantly, the process of listening enables you to understand the marketplace and competitor movements.

3. Be open and honest
Social media is all about open and honest communication. This means you need to be transparent in everything you do. Instead of building a wall, come forward and admit mistakes, learn from the experience and move on, ensuring that transparency becomes a corporate objective throughout the entire organisation.

Social media has the habit of finding skeletons in closets so honesty from the outset will earn you respect in the long-term.

If you have corporate social media outposts – for example Twitter and blogs – then look to communicate who is behind them so you give clients and prospects a face and a name to communicate with. Ideally, CEOs should contribute guest blog posts and staff members should be involved in the conversation.

4. Avoid short-term engagement
Forget the quick-win scenario; with social media you are in it for the long-term. Your social media strategy will help map out forthcoming activity and include campaign activity to maintain the engagement.

If you have social media outposts that are left out-of-date then it allows your competitors to move in. Revisit your strategy regularly and plan activity that will create dialogue. This dialogue can comprise of individual short campaigns, but they must all link into one another to form one large consistent campaign. The benefits of investing in long-term engagement should not be underestimated.

5. Poor creative = poor engagement
If you are struggling for ideas on how to maintain long-term engagement then you need to look at investing in and creating social currency that will kick-start the conversation and continue the engagement. Engaging content is essential to support word-of-mouth activity. An example would be to invest in research that can be produced as a white paper and offered to the community. Similarly, branded entertainment can create social currency.

It is important to note that social media is definitely not a one-size-fits-all approach. Every company and industry will be different in terms of strategies and tactics, but the underlying principles are the same. What is consistent, however, is the time and effort required for planning a social media strategy and campaigns and this should not be underestimated.

Tagged as: branded entertainment, marketing, Social Media, strategy, tactics

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