Online Marketing Blog

Social media marketing for B2B brands requires creativity, scalability and buy-in across the organization. Just after the Tuesday morning keynote at SES New York, Adriel Sanchez, Senior Director of Demand Generation at SAP and Jasmine Sandler, CEO at Agent-cy, shared with attendees a framework for building a B2B social media machine in their session led by TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden.

Social media management changes constantly, Sandler reminded participants as she took the stage. The opportunity for B2B brands continues to grow; one-to-one conversations are happening across social platforms, blogs, forums, and elsewhere across the web.

Companies need to first understand the social media landscape – where are we today. where are we going, who is already here? If you’re into social media, you need to have a global perspective, Sandler said. Marketers must be thinking of social and its relationship with:

As new businesses are started every day across the U.S., many of those entrepreneurs are grappling with the realities of how to market their ideas, products and services.

Limited resources and an overabundance of options requires filtering and prioritization when it comes to where marketing investments are made, whether it’s content, blogging, social media, or SEO.

Common questions include: What to measure? What if it fails? What should we outsource?

Here are a few answers to those questions that I was asked as prep for an interview:

What advice do you have for business owners or entrepreneurs who are staying out of blogging and/or social because they don’t feel they can produce enough content on a regular basis to keep things interesting?

Recent changes to social ad platforms mean marketers may have a bit of catching up to do in the social advertising arena. Twitter recently launched their new advertising API, allowing marketers to work with Ads API Partners to manage Promoted Products and Accounts ads; eMarketer expects Twitter ad revenue to grow to over $800 million by 2014, to account for 12.7% of all social network ad revenues.

Meanwhile, Facebook doubled their mobile ad revenue YoY in Q4 2012. Their emphasis on mobile, added capability for targeting based on web browsing history and the debate over ROI have even seasoned marketers on the lookout for advanced ad optimization and performance advice. The opportunity for lead gen and customer acquisition through paid social is massive, with proper planning, quality content and great optimization.

Brands often struggle to hit that elusive mix of creative, timely content relevant to their audience that still directly aligns with their brand. If you have something of a sense of humor, entertaining your audience isn’t that hard. Yet for your social content to be effective in marketing, at least a good portion must be relevant to your brand, as well. You know the deal, though; if you’re only talking about your brand or products, fans get bored with your self-promotion.

Special occasions and holidays offer marketers a great chance to get creative with their social content, to capture the attention of an increasingly attention-deficit audience.  Yet simply being an Irish company doesn’t make your product or service relevant on an Irish holiday. Being a Canadian, or American, company doesn’t guarantee relevance on holidays specific to North America, either.

About today’s guest post: As companies mature their online presence though more robust social engagement, individuals within those companies are advancing use of social technologies to communicate and collaborate publicly. At the same time, consumers’ evolving use of social platforms has lead to increased expectations for brand information discovery, consumption and engagement. Surfacing organizational culture and expertise helps companies better connect with their customers in terms of who they are and what they stand for.

Tapping into the collective wisdom of an organization’s thought leadership has enabled social business transformation in ways we never would have imagined 5 or 10 years go. In today’s post,  Ethan McCarty, IBM’s Director of Enterprise Social Strategy, @ethanmcc has offered to bring some clarity to this opportunity and to share one example of what IBM is doing about it. 

LinkedIn has quickly achieved top status as “the” business to business social networking destination.  In fact, less than two years after going public, LinkedIn’s value has risen from $4 billion to over $18 billion.

Not only has LinkedIn’s value increased significantly, but their capabilities and engagement have as well.  The same Wall Street Journal article that included the valuation above also shared the following insight:

• In the most recent quarter LinkedIn’s page views have risen 67%
• LinkedIn’s new “content” features include news aggregation and hosting of expert blog posts

If your company hasn’t quite figured out the secret sauce needed to really make your executives’ LinkedIn profiles shine or how to make meaningful connections, you’re in luck.  Whether you want to increase your brand or individual online visibility, this post shares insights into the 5 elements of an optimized LinkedIn profile.  

Companies of all sizes are in search of answers towards better social media strategy and at TopRank Marketing we’re helping to make that happen.

This week Jolina Pettice and I completed giving a 2 day social media and content marketing workshop for a $400 million company and a few weeks ago I gave a presentation to executives at a $22 billion company on how social media could advance some of their objectives. The way forward with social media is top of mind for many businesses and organizations.

If you are like most Americans, Sunday night was spent in front of the television watching Seth McFarland sing songs that ran much too long and make awkward jokes.  I was actually one of the few that did not watch the Oscars (I don’t have the attention span) but I did follow the buzz online.

As an online marketer, it’s always interesting to see how companies take advantage of events such as the Super Bowl, Oscars, Grammy’s, etc.  Many viewers are just as interested in seeing the glamorous outfits and train wrecks which can all be found on the red carpet.  Similarly, there were a select number of companies that successfully carried off an integrated Oscars marketing campaign, as well as some that just didn’t hit the mark.  Below you’ll find what I consider to be the best and worst “dressed” social media marketing moments from the Oscars.

Astronauts Tom Marshburn, Kevin Ford and Chris Hadfield chat live from the International Space Station with #NASASocial participants.

February 20th, NASA hosted a special event at their Washington headquarters in which a group of their social fans attended a day of tours, expert talks and even a livechat with astronauts on the International Space Station. My son and I are fortunate to have participated and on top of the insider look we had at NASA research, we learned a great deal about the power of social media advocacy, as well.

So what happens when an organization puts 150 of their loyal social media fans in one room for a fantastic, exclusive experience? Brand building and social reach magic, judging by the results of yesterday’s #NASASocial.

After a long and stressful week at the office it’s time to kick back, relax, and make the most of your weekend.  The easy option might be to stay in, order take-out, or watch Golden Girls reruns.  However, you might also be ready to blow off some steam.  Let’s face it, as attractive as a lazy night on the couch sounds, you know once you put in the extra effort a night out will be much more fun.

Comparatively, there are two ways to plan a social media strategy.

• Plan 1 consists of a lazy and solo mission where you simply share a few things here and there that are just a regurgitation of social media stories and promotions that your readers have already heard.

You’re probably familiar with at least a few social media horror stories; those epic hate-bombing situations, where companies commit social suicide in one way or another and pay for it very publicly. One such company was Boners BBQ, who posted on their Facebook page a picture of a customer who had written an unfavorable Yelp review… and captioned it with a rant which included calling her horrible names and accusing her of not tipping the staff (see the full story by Scott Stratten at Unmarketing).

The fatal attraction I speak of is more insidious, less intentional, yet can chip away at your time and resources, effectively undermining your social efforts and hurting your ROI. Is your social content attracting the wrong type of attention?

Interest in scaling social media sales has increased significantly over the past year and in 2013 it be even more so.  Organizations of all types and sizes are coming to terms with the need to better monetize their investments and one of the most compelling opportunities to do so is through helping sales leadership develop their personal brands online.

It’s understandable why: A recent study reported on by eMarketer indicates that 67% of BtoC marketers and 44% of B2B marketers saw leads generated through social media channels.

Many companies are investing in social media listening for things like buying signal keywords to engage with prospects and creating content specifically to address the kinds of questions that lead to inquiries. However, there’s only so much a community manager or social media strategist can do.