blog

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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Most marketers are still using social media tools for in-platform branding, which translates to lost opportunity. According to the latest survey by MarketingSherpa, 78 percent of respondents are participating on company branded or managed social networks, such as Facebook or LinkedIn, with another 63 percent using microblogging tools (e.g., Twitter). Content sharing, blogging and social media news releases also receive a considerable amount of attention, at 63 percent, 59 percent and 48 percent of respondents, respectively.

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A successful sales call requires preparation. You can’t just glance at your notes in the parking lot and assume the rest will take care of itself. Fortunately, you have plenty of information at your disposal, maybe even more than you realize. For your next appointment, keep the following in mind:

1. Study what you have: we give our clients detailed sales intelligence for every appointment. Read it carefully, and collaborate with colleagues for additional insights.

2. Read between the lines: is there something the prospect isn’t saying? Sometimes, a handful of pain points can suggest a greater underlying problem.

3. Hit the web: learn more about both the person and the company … Google exists for a reason! Check LinkedIn for the prospect’s background; you may learn something useful.

4. Gather materials: pull white papers, brochures and other tools that align closely with the prospect’s pain points. It’s great to have something to leave behind.

If you’re using LinkedIn as part of your social media marketing program – or just have an interest in this stuff – you’ll want to take a peek behind the curtain. The latest post on LinkedIn’s blog shows you how the new “faceted search” feature (launched at the end of last year) was designed. In the increasingly crowded and complex social media space, it’s important to get a sense of why some of the new features being introduced were developed at all. This will help you decide which to adopt and which to skip.

While I won’t rehash the entire post here (you can read the whole thing on LinkedIn’s blog), it was pretty interesting to learn some of the findings that influenced the development of faceted search:

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The purpose of a corporate blog or other social media presence isn’t merely to add to the endless electrons that are produced every day. And, it isn’t merely to provide a free service to the world. You’re looking to advance your business. While this may entail providing a free service consisting of informative and useful content, the net result has to be a lead stream for you to exploit. To turn your social media communities and traffic into business opportunities, you need hooks.

It’s easy to go overboard. In pursuit of leads, many companies tend to use their social media environments as advertisements, promoting at the expense of informing. Do this, and you run this risk of losing your audience — as well as your investment in the social media marketing initiative. When you create content and interact with your community, play it straight: deliver information that your readers can use — but don’t be afraid to make it easy for them to enter the sales cycle. This is where your “hooks” become useful.

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Does having a Facebook fan page, a LinkedIn group and a blog mean you have to content — regularly — for three different platforms? It’s a scary thought, probably enough to turn even the most zealous social media advocate away from the space. Well, here’s the good news: write content correctly, and you can carve it up for use across your entire integrated social media environment. There is no bad news.

Start with the blog post — it’s going to be your anchor. The material you publish on your blog will tend to be longer and more complex than what you put on Facebook, LinkedIn or certainly Twitter. Everything else you write and post should be pulled from this source. Not only do you only write once, with the exception of small modifications, but you ensure consistency across your entire social media environment.

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Facebook has attained incredible reach, and Twitter’s rise has been nothing short of meteoric. LinkedIn has demonstrated strong and steady growth. But, the history of the social media space is littered with the corpses of former flavors of the month, and the likes of MySpace and Friendster represent sunk costs for companies that believed these environments were around for the long haul. Choosing right platform, it would seem, is crucial.

To think that, however, would be to miss the point entirely.

Instead of working diligently to select the most appropriate social media platform, it’s better to realize that you’ll assume a certain amount of obsolescence risk with any platform you choose. Under these conditions, protecting your social media marketing investment is actually much easier than you’d expect. All you need to do is ensure that your content is easily portable.

Specific social media tools may come in and out of fashion, but well-planned content will stick around for a while.

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We routinely field questions from our clients about social media. They ask if Facebook is better than LinkedIn, how to promote their services effectively on Twitter and what type of information should be used for a corporate blog. These are all important questions to ask before jumping into social media marketing — and they all share a specific problem: they revolve around platform. To use social media effectively, you need to think past platform and focus strictly on content.

The social media platform you use is really nothing more than a mechanism for pushing content and managing your community. You can keep track of friends, fans and followers and receive some great features for pushing information, receiving feedback and tracking interactions. On its own, however, platform provides no real advantage. Everyone has access to the major social media platforms, and the major decision involves whether or not to create an account and get started.

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What social media marketing metrics are you using?

The latest research from MarketingSherpa indicates that businesses using social media to promote their products and services — and fill their lead streams — are employing a variety of measures to gauge the effectiveness of their initiatives. Of course, the metrics you’d expect have been most widely adopted, but there are some important stats being watched by a small group of companies that signal where social media marketing is headed.

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LinkedIn has been busy with new features this year, and the new tools have clear implications for IT marketing professionals who are using social media. Though the features are intended to make traditional use (i.e., by members who use LinkedIn to manage their personal networks) easier, savvy marketers can turn these new tools to their advantage.

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