Social Media B2B 'how to guide' explaining in 5 simple steps how to get the most out of social platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and SlideShare in order to effectively reach your target audience.
2. #1 Understanding
Undertake a thorough listening phase, it’ll save you a
lot of hard work in the long run.
1. What are your competitors doing?
2. How does your target market behave?
3. #2 Buy-in
Too many businesses enter the space with the attitude it won’t work or it’s a
waste of money.
This is why the listening phase should underpin everything you do..
If everyone knows exactly why you’re entering the social space and what your
goals are out of it, it’s far more likely to succeed.
4. A few goals to get you started:
To personalise your company – give it a voice
A way to show your clients that you’re still ahead of
the game
Improve your sales cycle by becoming a point of
reference
Turn your staff into thought leaders
5. #3 Resource
There needs to be resource within the business dedicated to
making social media work
The internal marketing department
A combination of departments / experts to make
up the voice
• Don’t pick someone too junior – they need to know
your product well.
6. #4 Co-operation
Agency + The Business = Success
(Ideas / Process) + (Knowledge) = Success
7. #5 Goals
Make sure you report on a monthly basis:
What worked
What didn’t work
What you plan to do moving forward
Don’t just make your goals around hard targets like followers or fans.
Look for business social goals using Google Analytics for long-tail search
terms.
8. A few staff examples:
Getting two people from outside the marketing team to
contribute to blog content.
Live tweeting from an industry event
Engaging in a LinkedIn discussion
Use Google search term metrics
Number of website referrals from the blog
Number of invitations to industry events
Number of calls / emails to your business