SocialTech 2010

The Official Pre-Game Blog for MarketingProfs' SocialTech 2010 Conference, October 26, San Jose, CA

4 Ways to Improve B2B Facebook Marketing

While Facebook marketing continues to grow at lightning speed, it’s still relatively untapped territory for many high-tech marketers. Just because Facebook got it's start with the college crowd in 2004 doesn’t mean B2B marketers shouldn’t be there in 2010. With that in mind, here are 4 ideas for getting more from your B2B Facebook Marketing.
 
1. Humanize Your Fan Page
No matter how large or corporate your company is, people still buy from other people. As a marketer, you must strike that magical balance of being professional and personable so your prospects feel connected to your product(s) and your brand. Humanize your Fan Page by uploading pictures of employees and your office(s). Give prospects a view of what goes on behind the scenes. Introduce them to engineers, customers, the product team, the sales team, and the CEO. The more they get to know you, the more they’ll trust you. And the more likely they’ll be to choose you over a competitor.
 
2. Consider Facebook Your Competitive Advantage
As popular as social media marketing is in high-tech B2B marketing, it’s still in it's infancy. Do a quick search and take a look at the Facebook Pages for the largest software and hardware companies. While most have a Facebook presence, few are harnessing it's full potential. Use this to your advantage and make your Fan Page better than your competitors’.
 
3. Take a Group Approach
While many larger companies have full-time social media marketers on hand, in smaller or less progressive organizations, social media still falls under a marketing manager or PR manager’s responsibility—and their plates are already full. By allowing multiple team members to update the page, you’ll increase the frequency of updates and subsequent Fan activity on the page. Just make sure you have strict guidelines in place on what’s acceptable and what’s not. I’ve seen this group approach produce significantly better results than having just one or two Fan Page administrators. Nothing’s worse than landing on a Fan page that hasn’t been updated in weeks.
 
4. Create an Opt-In Form with Static FBML
With static FBML, you can create a custom tab that allows Fans to subscribe to your newsletter, request a white paper, or contact a sales representative. Most email solutions have instructions on how to integrate an opt-in form with static FBML.
 
What high-tech organizations do you think are doing a stand-up job on their social media marketing? Let’s talk about it in the comments below!

The Real-Time Web: 3 Ways B2B Marketers Can Adapt

A guest post by Maria Pergolino, Director of Marketing, Marketo.

It’s no secret that modern B2B marketing is all about the web.  B2B marketing is actively being shaped by the power of the internet as a resource and researching tool for prospects and buyers alike.

Add another layer of change when you consider the ability to share information in real-time and modern marketing can get complex, fast.  In this ever-changing environment sometimes it feels difficult to stay ahead of the game – but it’s vital.  To accomplish this, it’s pertinent you stay adaptable.

Follow these three ways to acclimate to the real-time web and the way it’s changing B2B marketing.

1. Provide Relatable Information

Your customers are no longer waiting for information to fall into their lap.  Instead, they’ve taken to the real-time web to search your company name, products and services.  They’re gathering information and forming their own opinions based upon what’s at their disposal.

Many B2B marketing websites are relatively static. You may add new product updates from time to time, or updated copy every so often, but for the most part, new content isn’t added on a regular basis.

B2B blogs and social networking sites allow marketers to add new content weekly or even several times a week. By consistently posting interesting, informative information, organizations will encourage prospects to regularly visit the blog in search of fresh content. Plus, frequently updated, optimized content can help improve a website’s visibility in the search engines.

2. Engage In Seed Nurturing

Lead nurturing campaigns used to take place after prospects landed on your site and entered your database. However, qualified prospects are now visiting your site or social media sites anonymously before you ever have their names or information.  Seed nurturing allows you to build relationships with prospects before they you have any information.  Thanks to the real-time web, you’re able to relay valuable resources to these prospects, helping shape their decision-making process.

Use social media to share educational and resourceful white papers, links and articles.  Your ability to provide facts, research, updates quickly and rapidly will help facilitate your placement as a thought leader of your industry.

3. Practice Online Reputation Management

The Internet now provides a rich arena for brand monitoring, and the marketing analytics possible to report on are robust.  But there is equal potential for the real-time web to either praise or “flame” a brand digitally.  Forums, comments, tweets and statuses can turn open-ended text boxes into a weapon or praise.  To help ensure you’re receiving the latter, there are a lot of ways to correct and respond to any negative brand mentions.  The real-time web gives us the opportunity to leverage brand ambassadors and B2B marketing tools to track our brand and increase awareness, while controlling any negative mentions.

Now that you know a few ways to adapt, it’s time to put these ideas into implementation.  If you haven’t already, develop a social media plan and find out what’s being said about your company and products.

6 Ways to Generate Leads on Twitter

Now more than ever, lead generation for the complex sale is a long process of developing relationships with your prospects. Gone are the days of just getting names and making calls. Since Twitter is a fantastic way to build new relationships, it makes sense that B2B adoption continues to grow. However, because it’s still a relatively new channel, many B2B marketers struggle with how to use it and aren’t harnessing its full potential. With that in mind, here are 6 ways to generate and nurture more leads on Twitter.

1. Interact with People

This may sound obvious, but it’s easy for B2B marketers to fall into the trap of simply tweeting thought leadership content and promotions. Content is important, to be sure, but the real benefit of Twitter is the ability to develop relationships. So interact with people, reply to their tweets, ask questions, and start building new relationships.

2. Don’t Tweet in a Silo

Depending on the structure of your sales and marketing department(s), you’ll want to keep tabs on who is a real prospect and who isn’t (yet). After all, you may look silly suggesting to a seemingly new lead that they check out your product or white paper when they’re already in the last stages of the buying process. However you do it, try to set up some form of communication between your sales and marketing team(s) so you: i) hand off good Twitter leads to sales ii) follow and engage with current prospects and iii) are aware of who is in the buying process and who isn’t.

3. Provide Value and Advice in Your Tweets

So you’re interacting with people and probably promoting your own thought leadership content. Fantastic! You’re off to a great start. Now it’s time to provide real value in your tweets and become a trusted advisor. So provide solutions. Offer advice. Help your followers solve their pain points. Say “A great way to increase ABC is by doing XYZ”.

4. Monitor Relevant Keywords

Monitoring keywords is a great (and easy!) way to find targeted people to follow, offer timely advice, and stay on top of industry trends. Let’s say you market dedicated server hosting. Make a list of relevant keywords that your prospects may use to describe their pain points, like “server downtime” or “network reliability”. You can use an RSS feed to receive a notification when someone tweets with those keywords, or you can use the built-in functionality with a tool like Tweetdeck. However you do it, you’ll be able to stay on top of what’s happening on Twitter, and swoop in when someone complains about their current solution’s reliability or downtime.

5. Monitor Your Competitors’ Brands

The great thing about Twitter is that everything is out in the open. You can easily see who is tweeting to your competitors and what they’re tweeting about. By monitoring your competitors’ products and brand names, you can: i) offer advice to a competitor’s customer who is having technical issues ii) engage with anyone who is considering a competitors product iii) follow anyone who tweets about a competitor iv) follow people that your competitors follow v) stay on top of trends in the industry vi) engage with the people your competitors tweet to. Just don’t do it all at once. That would be creepy and weird. And you don’t want them to call you out on it.

6. Offer Lead Gen Opportunities

Finally, offer direct lead generation opportunities. Tweet webinars, reports, white papers, and content. Just make sure you’re associating those lead capture pages with your Twitter marketing, so you can track the stellar ROI of your efforts.