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As new marketing platforms and the agencies that deliver them continue to take quantum leaps of progress and potential, there’s a good chance you’ve encountered the buzz of social and mobile media in your day-to-day life.

What might not be as obvious (yet), is that these marketing tools are ready to be adopted by IT VARs and vendors, and become a standard part of IT marketing strategy.

Augmented reality, QR codes, mobile sites and custom Facebook applications are just a few of the new terms buzzing amongst early adopters who are excited to be bringing these solutions to new and existing customers. These platforms are mobile-friendly, tech-savy and socially aware, and have the potential to host a plethora of customized content and pack a powerful punch with your consumer base in an engaging and ongoing way.

As your customers increasingly work from a range of mobile devices and wireless environments, why not meet them out in the field, wherever they may roam? As we embrace this age of information and self-published online content, you can clearly demonstrate your authority and technology expertise by establishing a presence in social media and a strong blogging voice in your chosen field.

Working with a marketing company that can help you establish that authority, engage with your customers and even inject some personality into your company brand by working with you to provide you with relevant content and even publish it for you.

Consider a marketing solution that reflects the level of technology you offer to your customers and, in doing so, ensure that your presence and customer perceptions in the marketplace are synonymous with the cutting edge technology company that you really are.

There’s a reason why companies are more likely to turn to Twitter and Facebook than corporate blogging: corporate blogging isn’t easy. Twitter and Facebook let you churn out bite-sized pieces of content without forcing you to think fully or comprehensively, let alone communicate a message clearly and distinctly. Well, that’s a limitation of Twitter and Facebook, frankly, not to mention most social media marketing strategies.

When you turn to social media marketing, especially in the B2B space, there’s no substitute for having a blog. Period. Without a blog as the cornerstone of your social media marketing efforts, the rest won’t get far. The effort associated with corporate blogging comes with clear benefits, particularly that you’ll be able to say everything your target market will need to know to make an informed investment decision.

When I ran into an article on Web 2.0 Journal, I basically saw enter:marketing’s approach to social media marketing staring right back at me: it has to be blog-centric, and here are six reasons why:

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This is going to shock you: the purpose of this blog is to promote enter:marketing. We’re happy to provide plenty of information and insights to you, free of charge. Anyone wanting to learn something about IT marketing is welcome here. Hey, so are the people who just stumbled into this blog while looking for someone else. But, we don’t invest so much time and effort into our content strictly as a goodwill gesture. We want you to become a client!

Of course, you’re fully aware of this.

What I find surprising, though, is that many companies don’t apply this thinking to their own blogs. They remain focused on “sounding authentic” and “not wanting to look like we’re selling anything.” Yet, when these folks go to over corporate or marketing blogs, they know the drill.

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Don’t just let your blog talk for you — let it talk to you, too! Forget about reader comments; corporate blogs don’t generate much. Instead, focus on your analytics. There’s a lot you can learn from these numbers. Here are four dimensions to watch when “listening” to what your blog has to say to you:

1. Which stories are getting the most pageviews: this tells you what interests your readers/market most. You might be surprised to learn, sometimes, that what you think is most important doesn’t matter much to your readers.

2. Return visitors: this tells you how many readers keep coming back to your blog. You want this number to be high — but leave room in your analysis for a healthy rate of first-time visits — who hopefully will become repeat readers later.

3. Referred traffic: this tells you who is linking to your blog. These are the people who are “broadcasting” your message to a wider audience. Think of it as a form of brand advocacy.

4. Service providers: this tells you the name of the network for a particular visitor to your blog. Home and small business users will be concealed by the name of the ISP, which is just a major telecom provider. For larger businesses, however, it’s usually a form of the company name. Send this info over to your sales team.

Either you’ve been tasked with starting your company’s blog, or you just think it’s a good idea. Now what?

Unless you’ve already dipped a toe in the blogging pond, the entire experience can seem overwhelming. Since any corporate marketing initiative comes with a lead time – consisting of everything from design and development to legal approvals – the best first step is to start a blog of your own. As your company is going through the necessary machinations, you can take the time to get a feel for what blogging is.

This may seem like a big step, but it’s actually rather tame. Don’t spend too much time planning (or worrying about what you’ll write). Just head over to WordPress, register and look around.

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Organic growth translates to missed opportunities. When you launch your corporate blog, don’t sit back and wait for readers to come to you … and then wait some more for them to step into your sales cycle. Instead, seek them out, and use your blog as a first step in lead qualification.

Combine direct and social media marketing, and you’ll gain a powerful demand generation tool.

Blogs do have a tendency to be discovered (i.e., to gain readers). Whether it’s through searches, a link on your website, a PR effort or tweets and status updates, traffic happens … it just happens slowly. And since high-value readers are likely to be only a small portion of your organic traffic, you could be waiting quite a bit before your social media marketing effort generates any leads. Take a proactive approach, and this changes drastically and quickly.

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If you think you’re losing readers on your marketing blog, it might not be because of your content. In fact, they just might be forgetting about you, and that’s a problem you can fix.

Think about the media that bombards your clients — or anybody — every day. There are television shows, blogs, newspapers and corporate marketing materials. It’s tough to work your way into the “mandatory reading” rotation, especially since you’re using your blog to market (and may not be publishing daily).

To maximize your visibility, you need to remind your core readers that they like your content — usually, that’s all it is. Read our recent guest post on SocialTimes to learn how you can keep bringing your readers back for more!

[Source: SocialTimes]

Do you spend a lot of time knee-deep in Google Analytics, looking at the rise and fall of pageviews, unique visitors and referred traffic? While it pays to know your audience, focusing too much on the numbers isn’t the best use of your time. To gain more value from your marketing blog, think less about organic traffic growth and more about the impact of your blog on your pipeline.

A corporate blog’s success isn’t measured in pageviews or any other traffic metric. Why not? Well, your objectives are totally different. You aren’t trying to amass impressions to generate advertising views, which is the prevailing model used by most of the blogs you probably read. Rather, you want to attract attention that will translate to inquiries from prospects, who you then hope to advance through the sales cycle.

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Linking out to other blogs may be the best way to increase traffic to your own. Odds are you won’t really lose any pageviews, as readers naturally hit an exhaustion point anyway, especially on a corporate blog. And, if you line up the right partners, you’ll benefit from their overflow. The result, of course, is a net increase in readership across your entire “network” of partnered blogs.

Sound interesting? Check out our guest post on SocialTimes to learn more.

“Large” creeps its way into just about every social media marketing endeavor. Companies want legions of Facebook fans and Twitter followers. And a blog that isn’t highly trafficked and packed with comments almost feels neglected.

Resist the temptation to believe that big is beautiful, and refocus on marketing basics — you’ll get a greater return on your social media marketing investment.

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