Born to B2B Social

November 18, 2010 By 2 Comments

Welcome to social media marketing

It doesn’t matter if you’re churning out great content for your B2B blog. If no one is reading you, you’re going nowhere. No prospects. No leads. No nothing at all.

Lead Generation

Pay-per-click has traditionally been one way of getting visitors to your website and still has a role to play. If not, Google wouldn’t still be pushing so-called “sponsored links”.

It maybe beneficial though, that as the owner of a small-medium business, to also consider using social media channels to win some traffic and generate really meaningful leads. That’s not because pay-per-click doesn’t work. It’s just that with all those chunky costs you’ve got, pay-per-click isn’t always cheap. And anyway, given the lengthy B2B purchase cycle, social media lead generation might actually be a more effective path to go down.

Word of (Digital) Mouth

Just as we listen to our friends when they recommend or refer us to a business, the same goes for social media connections on sites like Twitter or Facebook.

Even the big guns are witnessing the power of social. For example, this week, Martin Clarke, who runs Mail Online (British newspaper The Daily Mail’s website), revealed that 10 percent of the site’s UK traffic is generated by referrals from Facebook.

According to Clarke, who was speaking at the Society of Editors annual conference, only Google delivers more traffic to their site!

A number of our clients are also witnessing similar figures. At a meeting today, I was going over some stats with a client that revealed Facebook sends them over one third of their traffic – second only to Google.

Make Social Work for You in Your Area

Forget dreaming of business from Chicago, Oslo or Cannes, as a small business with local knowledge and local contacts, you should also be using social media to target local people – especially if you own a bricks and mortar store. But even in the B2B space there’s plenty of room to connect on social channels with other local businesses.

In a country like Sweden, were we don’t really have many people (approx 9 million), B2Bs have taken advantage of the Twitter hashtag #svpt to connect with other B2Bs, generating a local dialogue of sorts.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B, marketing, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Do Your B2B Communications Bore?

October 25, 2010 By 22 Comments

On Thursday night last week I scuttled off to talk B2B communications and social media to a bunch of people who work for a B2B company that have twelve offices throughout Sweden. After showing them how social media represents a paradigm shift in the way we communicate, I looked at examples of how other companies working within B2B convey their sense of personality and key competences on the web.

Facebook, Blogs or Twitter?

As I was talking all things social, the majority of my presentation looked at how other businesses use social communications channels in the B2B space.

Looking at a rather dry selection of B2B communications on corporate websites, I complained about how much they were lacking in personality and then contrasted them with a few examples I like including my friends at Arment Dietrich.

I chose to showcase Gini’s sites because they do two things that B2Bs can really learn from. They both

  • show personality and
  • build trust and credibility.

Personality

What I like most about Arment Dietrich’s blog, corporate site, and Facebook page is that they ooze personality. Particularly that of CEO, Gini Dietrich.

On the blog there’s a weekly vlog that shows Gini – cycling gear and all, or maybe a hotel backdrop – answering a crowdsourced question from the Facebook Page. For example:

As I’ve written before, this kind of B2B communications gesture shows that the people that run a company are approachable.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

B2B? Get Out of Facebook

October 1, 2010 By 11 Comments

I‘ve resisted starting a Facebook Page for Jontus Media for a good while now. Don’t get me wrong. Pages are great for some of our clients and I can see that they generate a lot of value and are worth sticking with.

The one thing that I notice though, is that the clients that seem to do best with Facebook are either non-profit, educational organizations, or those that purely focus on building a large community. Not B2B businesses looking to make a sale.

Nothing Actionable

The Wall is great for micro-blogging, status updates and getting quick messages out to your community. It’s also a useful channel to quickly respond to questions, post links to your video and audio content marketing. And in short, Pages often successfully drive traffic to online hubs where you’ve got more actionable landing pages in place.

If you’re a B2B organization looking to really kick start your online marketing and communications, I’m not convinced Facebook Pages are right for you. Many people that I talk to seem to want to jump on the Facebook Page bandwagon without actually figuring out what end result they aiming at.

“Everyone else is on Facebook,” is something I seem to hear on a regular basis. But investing in yet another channel that needs commitment, nurturing, and regular participation might not be the right thing for your business.

Things to Think About

Customer Service & Crisis Management
For me, Twitter is easier to work with if you’re looking for a channel to monitor and respond to customer questions and complaints.

Applications like HootSuite and TweetDeck make it really easy to track real-time mentions of your business. Whilst some might suggest that Facebook is a great place to respond to customers because there’s more space on a Wall than Twitter’s 140 characters, Twitter is great for a quick fire response. You can include a link to a FAQ or post on your B2B blog or a YouTube video from your CEO responding to the crisis.

I also think what does it for me is that a lot of Twitter usage is on mobile devices. Yes, I know Facebook works on mobiles too but getting your instant response out on Twitter via your mobile or PC is much more likely to be heard by other stakeholders like journalists who wouldn’t necessarily be following your Facebook Page.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: communication strategy, marketing, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

More on B2B Blogging & Conversions

September 6, 2010 By 2 Comments

I‘ve got a guest post up on Mark Schaefer’s brilliant blog today about how business blogs often fail to convert visitors into clients.

By means of a follow up I was thinking about how we as online communications, marketer and PR folk can convince businesses that they really should invest in blogging.

It’s Not About Conversion

When it comes down to it, my experience with clients has shown that blogs aren’t really about converting to sales. Yes, they might be an important part in the process of generating a sale, funnelling site visitors to specific landing pages; but as anyone involved in B2B marketing will tell you, the sales process is much longer than B2C. You have to convince different levels of an organisation that your product or service is just what you need. And persuading everyone through to the top brass can take time.

So I tend to see blogs are part of that initial journey to the sale.

For small online businesses, or would-be internet marketers, blogs are a vital cog in the sales wheel because so many internet marketers make their money with affiliate links or the sale of ebooks or training courses. But the techniques they use, won’t / don’t necessarily wash if you’re selling printers; or consultation services.

So What Are B2B Blogs Good For Then?

[Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B, blogging Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Google Wave & B2B Marketing

August 6, 2010 By 14 Comments

google_wave_logoWe were really excited at Jontus Media when we first heard about Google Wave. That video on YouTube blew us away and we imagined Google would be taking online communications to the next level, making it easier to collaborate over the web.

We got our invites really early on and gave it a whirl, trying it first out as a collaborative note-taking space at a Stockholm conference.

But as we tried to get our heads around it, it quickly became apparent that the product itself just wasn’t what we were looking for. After looking at other options we settled on Basecamp, which makes working as a virtual agency a blast, and haven’t looked back.

Google Wave – A Marketing Lesson

As you might have heard, Google put the final nail in the Wave coffin announcing that it was killing it earlier this week. I must admit it came as a bit of a surprise given the resources that had been put into building the Wave brand.

It was supposed to radically change the way we communicate online: Email 2.0 for millennials and other interested parties.

But after all the publicity, the hype and the interest generated around the product – people were paying for beta invites on Ebay, for goodness sake!– Google didn’t follow through.

Development seemed to stall despite the release of a few Wave templates; and it didn’t play nicely with Google Docs.

And then Google really shot themselves in the foot by releasing another highly promoted online communications tool: Google Buz.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Creative Approaches to B2B Marketing

August 4, 2010 By 30 Comments

I‘m a firm believer in creative online content. The kind of content that makes you stop and soak it in for a moment – like the Old Spice videos. Or a Seth Godin E-book.

creative content

Go on, get creative!

If you’re working in the B2B sector and looking to marketing your services or products online you need to embrace creativity if your content marketing is going to dazzle and increase sales.

Content is King, But Creativity is Queen

I don’t mean that you should put creativity or razzmatazz ahead of substance; getting your key value proposition across is essential. Nevertheless, the creativity that underscores a piece of online content is an important part of the marketing process. The Net has all but replaced TV as the go-to medium but text alone is losing some of its sparkle; in the last two years video and audio have begun to feel just as natural on the Net. After all, there’s a reason YouTube is the number 2 search engine on the planet!

Creative Strategies

With the Net increasingly the domain of mixed (or multi) media, content marketing strategies have had to change. Getting traffic to your website isn’t just a matter of great writing. It’s also about search engine optimization, participation across social media channels, and building communities of engagement.

Throwing money at a project isn’t the be all and end all of strategy. Sure, large companies may be able to throw money at creative teams in the pursuit of standout content, but that doesn’t always ensure success. Just ask Cisco. They aped the Old Spice campaign and no one seemed to notice. [Read more...]

Filed Under: content marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,