Develop an effective B2B social media marketing program based on the 5 P's.
B2B Social media marketing has evolved into a pattern of five P’s based on what I’ve seen from client work and networking with other B2B marcom professionals.
Remember, before embarking on the five Ps, you should have spent a significant amount of time listening to the social media sphere to gain an understanding of the types of conversations taking place, where they’re taking place and how you can participate effectively.
Policy
Most B2B corporate social media policies are an extension of existing policies such as trade secrets, privacy, and codes of conduct; however most companies expand on such policies to cover social media. Kirk Maltais wrote a helpful article on government social media policies (8 Essential Elements for Crafting a Social Media Policy). The eight elements, summarized below, are found in many B2B social media policies.
1.Employee Access – who will be allowed to use social media. 2.Account Management – who will set up, manage and monitor the social media accounts. 3.Acceptable use – how will social media be used. 4. Employee conduct – what are acceptable social media behaviors. 5. Content – how much editorial control will be exerted. (Usually companies require a disclaimer for employees—even former employees—who blog for personal use.) 6. Security – password management. 7. Legal issues – how to enforce policy without infringing on freedom of speech, etc. 8. Citizen Conduct – more of a government requirement involving how to handle the interactions between civilian users and the public.Remember that your social media policy is only as effective as your social media education program, so offer a few training sessions.
Plan
Planning your social media strategy should start with a business objective. For some B2B companies, a phase one objective is to increase their brand presence in the social sphere. While that may be enough to start in social media, it won’t satisfy the long term business requirements for such an investment… namely ROI. So your plan should have measurable objectives, such as 10% increase in web traffic within six months or 200 new LinkedIn followers within one month. Then, align the website metrics with marketing and sales metrics such as a 5% increase in qualified leads or a 5% increase in sales. More B2B social media measurement guidance.
While I’m an advocate of aligning social media with revenue, it doesn’t directly correlate in lengthy B2B selling cycles. As with most B2B marketing tactics, the goal is to collaborate with sales to generate and nurture leads in order to drive sales. It’s the combination of marcom tactics and sales activity that drives sales, not a specific tactic alone such as social media. But you have to be in social media to know whether it will work for your situation. So my advice is to follow trends in leads and sales for the first six months to monitor the impact of social media. Be prepared to sacrifice. Without a concrete ROI, you may need to take marcom budget away from other marcom tactics to fund your initial B2B social media endeavor. I’ve seen clients take money from the event and print ad buckets… even the brochure bucket to fund social media endeavors. More on B2B budget trends from former Forrester Research analyst, Laura Ramos.
People
From my experience, many B2B marcom departments lack adequate people resources to gain traction from their social media efforts. Here’s where B2B marcom folks need to get creative. Yes, if you’re a B2B marcom manager, you’ll likely bear the brunt of the workload when it comes to social media. However, look beyond marcom for content providers such as sales, tech support, product management and even R&D. Remember, your channel partners are a good source of content; they may have their own blogs and social media outlets that you can leverage. It’s helpful to have a content marketing plan and a conversation calendar to help you better determine your resource needs and ensure that you’re participating effectively at a level that will positively impact your business objectives.
Persona
You need to decide how you/your company will appear on the various social media sites. For example when you’re signing up for Twitter what will your handle be; what will the handles be of those contributing? Will you follow the same naming convention on other social sites, your blog etc.? The goal here is to create a consistent persona across the social sphere. You’ll want to avoid what I call a “fragmented persona”—representing your company differently on different sites, e.g., LinkedIn.com/ABC Company, @bigbusinessbranding on Twitter and ABC Branding Blog. Establishing a consistent online persona is similar to establishing your brand guidelines for tone and approach of marketing communications elements such as brochures, newsletters, presentations, etc. You’ll want a unified voice across all media.
Patience! Finally, you’ll need to give your B2B social media initiative time to produce results. Remember, social media is about establishing relationships and that takes time and regular interaction. It’s not just about blasting out content, it’s about making an online connection with your clients and prospects.
Summary of B2B social media resources mentioned above (plus a few more):
About The B2Bblogger: Joan is a B2B marcom consultant and copywriter with more than 15 years experience helping high tech and industrial companies generate leads and sales through integrated marketing communications including SEO copywriting, social media and website content. She can be reached at www.jdamico.net and on Twitter @copywriter4u.
It’s predicted that nearly 6 billion mobile app downloads will occur in 2010 according to Marketing Charts and ABI Research. Of course the growth in smartphone sales (up 20% in 2009) is driving the development of apps.
So I started thinking about how B2B marketers could benefit from apps beyond inc
B2B mobile apps can be an effective marketing tool.
reasing brand engagement. A more powerful use of B2B apps is to enable greater personal productivity and connectivity. Find out what would make your customers and prospects more productive. Based on my work with B2B high tech and industrial companies, the following list offers ideas for B2B mobile apps:
Let’s say you provide a B2B software application. Is there a dashboard or other view that would simplify a process for your customer? For example, a busy plant manager spends a lot of time working throughout the plant. Could an app connect that person to his or her desktop and your software application from a mobile phone or device? Most likely, the answer is yes.
In a similar manufacturing setting, could a mobile app enable more efficient equipment reliability and maintenance? For example, the use of a mobile application that would allow a machine operator to connect to the equipment manufacturer for troubleshooting.
In regulated industries such as food and pharmaceutical, could a mobile app help streamline regulatory compliance or avoid non-compliance for processes such as commissioning and qualification, hazmat handling, etc.?
Connect your app to location-based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla, where it can enhance productivity by optimizing support resources and improving customer response time. (Ok… that one may seem like a stretch today, but not in the near future.) Read more on Geo Location Trends from Mashable.
Calculators and reference tools are popular B2B apps, especially for the technical audience. Whether it’s ROI, popular engineering formulae or productivity/efficiency calculations, calculators can be an effective B2B app for boosting your brand and your customers’ productivity.
How much does a B2B mobile app cost?
B2B mobile app development costs vary widely. Apps can range from $10K to $300+K depending on the complexity of the app, number of platforms on which it will operate (iPhone, Android or Blackberry) and interface with other platforms or systems such as a CRM sytem, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Typical rates for developers range from $50 per hour to $100 per hour. Despite the wide range of pricing, the average cost to develop a robust app appears to be around $30K, although I’ve heard of less robust apps coming in at around $5K.
Consider how the app will be used to determine whether it should be free or fee-based. If your B2B mobile app is designed to help further engage prospects within the buying cycle, then a free app may be justifiable based on the potential return on investment. If the mobile app is an integral part of your product offering or a value-added service, then consider a fee-based mobile app or a free trial period.
When determining the cost of a B2B mobile app, you should also factor in promotional costs. After your app is developed, you’ll need a marcom plan for promoting the app and driving users to download it.
Should you be “app agnostic”?
With more than 125,000 apps and growing, the Apple iPhone is one of the most popular destinations for apps . However Google’s Android OS is quickly gaining popularity along with Blackberry and other devices. As B2B marketers, consider what device your customers are primarily using for business connectivity. The Blackberry is a popular device among enterprise users and a likely destination for B2B apps. You may wish to consider other devices such as iPads and Windows Mobile OS devices as viable alternatives. You’ll have to weigh the development costs of each to determine what is feasible.
Measure the success of your B2B mobile app
The number of downloads is one metric, but it only tells part of the story. Consider the category in which your mobile app will reside and seek to be in the top for your category. For example, the “lifestyle” category is one of the most popular. Of course, the more specialized the app, the less crowded the space. When developing your app, consider building in tools to monitor usage such as AppViz, Heartbeat, or Pinch Media.
A B2B mobile app can be another element in your marcom mix designed to move prospects to the next step in the buying cycle or as an added value to your product.
I’d love to hear more from other B2B marketers and mobile app developers on what you’re seeing in B2B mobile apps. Thanks!
About The B2Bblogger: Joan is a B2B marcom consultant and copywriter with more than 15 years experience helping high tech and industrial companies generate leads and sales through integrated marketing communications including SEO copywriting, social media and website content. She can be reached at www.jdamico.net and on Twitter @copywriter4u.
B2B marcom managers solve the content conundrum with a social media workflow.
Content , links and trust are the currencies of the internet. Relevant, useful content provided on a regular basis across multiple social and online media helps build trust. This same content can also generate the links that boost search traffic, leads and sales.
Whether you’re a B2B marcom manager who’s taking on social media as a grass roots effort (you and one or two colleagues) or you’ve enlisted a team, content creation can be daunting, even meeting the bare minimum frequency. A blog alone takes a minimum of 12 posts per month, and it’s recommended that you have at least two months’ worth of blogs already in the queue to ease the pressure of developing content on demand. Like many B2B marcom managers who are beginning a social media program, you and your already burdened staff are responsible for creating most of the content in addition to your day jobs. Before you read any further, make sure you have a content marketing plan and a conversation calendar.
How to develop a B2B social media workflow
One of the biggest hurdles to social media adoption in B2B is adapting the B2B marcom workflow to allow for social media. For starters, you need to develop a sharing mindset and integrate it into your daily activities. Any media that you consume or develop has the potential to become “social media fodder” that can be finessed into a tweet, blog post or comment on someone else’s blog. For example, when you’re monitoring your news feeds, copy one or two articles/posts and quickly post them to your social media status updates or your Facebook fan page, and then bookmark them on Delicious or Digg them. Social bookmarks serve as a good reference for future blog posts and Twitter tweets.
Note: If you’re not monitoring the social sphere and you’re new to social media, start by setting up your listening posts. It will save you a lot of frustration and embarrassment later.
As you develop the social media workflow, you’ll need a repository for all the content you collect (The new buzzword for collect is “curate.”) You’ll also need a system for managing content. Your repository can be as simple as a “content” folder on your desktop and a Delicious social bookmarking account or a Digg account. There are many other social bookmarking sites; so sign up for one, and as you come across content, bookmark it.
Organize your desktop for social media success
Begin each day with a blank document on your desktop. Then, as ideas come to you, add them to the document. If your idea came from something online, remember to copy and paste the URL for future reference. The blank document approach also works well when an opportunity arises to comment on another blog. I find that you can write your comments more freely in the blank document, than the blog comment box. Plus, you can run spell check before copying and pasting your comment into the blog and do a character count to make sure your post is suitable for 140-character status updates. Remember, comments posted on other blogs often become good fodder for a blog post of your own. So save the document each day and revisit it for future blog posts.
Then, organize your browser to optimize time spent online. Save tabbed groups for the social media-related sites you visit such as productivity tools (mentioned below), your listening posts, bookmarking sites and your company’s social media venues.
Take advantage of the free productivity tools such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, and Seesmic which allow you to monitor your followers’ and your activity in the Twittersphere and on other social sites. These apps also allow you to schedule tweets as well as simultaneously update statuses on other social networks. Be careful with this one. The idea behind social media isn’t to batch and blast status updates, but to connect with real people real time. Although it’s perfectly acceptable to post what I call reference content—something that you read or saw that may benefit others in your community, but be mindful of the social idiosyncrasies of each community. For example, some posts are more suitable for Twitter, while others may be better for LinkedIn. Remember, not everyone has a Twitter account. So @replies and hashtags, although perfectly acceptable in a tweet, may appear confusing on another social media platform.
Effective B2B social media marketers are masters of time management
In the world of B2B social media, busy B2B marcom professionals must make every minute count. It helps if you think of time in smaller chunks. You may have five minutes before a meeting, which is plenty of time to post a tweet or two. While you were in the meeting , did any discussion spark an idea for a blog post or even a series of posts around a given topic? Make sure you capture those thoughts in your “content” document for future reference. An extra 15 minutes is enough time to outline a blog post. Then carve out a little more time to complete it and post it. Most B2B marcom departments have plenty of existing content that simply needs to be adapted to social media—usually that means shifting from a company focus to a community focus. There are numerous blog posts on the topic of repurposing content. I’ve listed a few below.
You’ll find that as you become more proficient at writing for social media and more comfortable with your workflow, you’ll become more efficient at managing social media, making it less of a burden for an already burdened marcom staff.
Here are a few tips culled from the advice of top bloggers and content creators that will help you overcome the B2B marcom content conundrum:
About The B2Bblogger: Joan is a B2B marcom consultant and copywriter with more than 15 years experience helping high tech and industrial companies generate leads and sales through integrated marketing communications including SEO copywriting, social media and website content. She can be reached at www.jdamico.net and on Twitter @copywriter4u.
Here’s my B2B integrated marcom take on a recent Hubspot webinar, “Social Media Optimization Is The New SEO,” featuring Brian Solis, author of Engage.
From my B2B copywriter and marcom perspective, social media optimization, which falls under the larger SEO umbrella, is enabling social objects to connect online. Social objects are content introduced online such as blog posts and comments, Twitter tweets, videos, etc., that can become catalysts for conversation. These objects are all dangling out there in cyberspace. Individually they lack impact; but collectively, they are more impactful to marketing efforts.
What connects social objects?
Keywords and phrases… the same keywords and phrases your company uses to drive search traffic. However, when it comes to social search, keywords serve as connectors that bring your dynamic online content together to boost search ranking and help those who are searching on your keywords find you. It’s important to note that thanks to social media, search is taking on a broader role than delivering traditional search engine results, which take you to a website or other static content. Now, with real-time search and social search (still nascent), your keywords and phrases have much greater power to connect you to the conversations that are happening right now—conversations in which you should participate or risk missing business opportunities.
How does a B2B marcom manager enable social objects to connect?
Think about how your content is distributed. You have a website, blog, YouTube channel, Facebook fan page and tweets all related to your company and its products and services. Your prospects and customers use search to find you. However, if only your website is optimized for search, your customers and prospects are missing a significant portion of the content you deliver—it’s just dangling out there unable to drive potential business to you. You absolutely must apply the same SEO good practices to EVERY piece of content you produce from the 140-character tweet to the 200-word comment on Facebook
B2B integrated marcom managers connect social media objects to drive search and business results.
If you’re an integrated marcom manager, now is the time to develop content optimization guidelines that include titles, descriptions, categories and tags all of which can be referred to as meta data. Every piece of content that you place on the web should include the keywords for which the piece you’re posting or uploading is optimized. For example, a hashtag on your twitter tweet represents meta data.
Here’s a completely fictitious example. Let’s say your marketing enterprise software for discrete automotive manufacturing. You produced a white paper and a video of your CEO speaking at a conference on discrete automotive manufacturing. In addition, you’ll be tweeting and posting on the company blog. You want to capture the share of conversation around the term “discrete automotive manufacturing software.” Here’s how your integrated marcom mix should be connected:
White paper title: Discrete Automotive Manufacturing Software Saves Jobs and the Bottom Line
Video title: Discrete Automotive Manufacturing Software Presented by John Doe of ABC Company
Video Description: Discrete automotive manufacturing software has potential to save jobs and the bottom line. Presented at the National Automotive Manufacturers Association, John Doe, CEO of ABC Company explained how discrete automotive manufacturing software is helping automotive manufacturers increase cost cuts and reduce job cuts.
Tweet: John Doe explains dos & don’ts of #discrete _automotive_ mfg._ software
Blog post: similar title, tags and description as video
I’m not one for predictions, but I believe that social media optimization (SMO) is going to create opportunity for B2B integrated marcom managers. Those who have the foresight to capitalize on social media optimized content development and guidelines will become a valuable asset… otherwise, they’ll have to hire me.
About The B2Bblogger: Joan is a B2B marcom consultant and copywriter with more than 15 years experience helping high tech and industrial companies generate leads and sales through integrated marketing communications including SEO copywriting, social media and website content. She can be reached at www.jdamico.net or through her blog www.integratedmarcom.blogspot.com.
Leverage the strength of B2B channel partners while gaining greater visibiltiy to your end-user customers.
In the past, B2B integrated marketing communications (marcom) was about control—ensuring that the marcom mix had consistent brand messages, tone and approach. Social media is about letting go of control but offering a framework.
For B2B integrated marcom managers, social media represents a double-edged sword. On one side you have the outbound marketing communications, which you control; and on the other hand there are the channel partners, who are putting up Facebook pages, Tweeting about the brand, creating YouTube videos and conducting other social media activities that are beyond your control.
How B2B marcom managers can lose control without losing context
Integrated marketing communications in B2B companies with multiple channel partners presents an even greater challenge for marcom managers in the age of social media. Thanks to social media, it’s even easier for channel partners to publish content. More importantly, social media creates another opportunity for customers and prospects to learn about your products and services.
So what does this mean for B2B integrated marcom?
It means that if you’re a marcom manager, you need to at least start monitoring the social media sphere to find out which of your channel partners is participating in social media and what they’re saying. This is another opportunity for B2B marketers to join the conversations already taking place in the social sphere as well as an opportunity to help frame these conversations in a way that supports the brand message. You may not be the originator of the posts, but you can still participate in the conversation and provide context.
B2B integrated marcom and channel partners: It’s not about control… it’s about content and collaboration
Knowing the Twitter handles, Facebook Fan Pages, LinkedIn Groups and profiles of your channel partners isn’t about controlling the message. It’s about collaborating with your channel partners in a way that adds value for customers and prospects.
Think of it this way. If you’re a marcom manager at an industry trade show, for example, and a prospect walks up to you with a concern, you would try to involve the sales manager, rep or dealer right away. This may take a phone call or two. However, by monitoring the social sphere, this type of exchange can occur much faster and at greater scale.
It’s a good idea to engage your channel partners, particularly those who are influential in social media. You can do this by offering content that channel partners can repurpose in their communities or by your direct participation in your channel partners’ communities. Likewise, you can feature your channel partners in your social media and content marketing programs. For example, interview a channel partner and publish the interview on your corporate blog. Social media enables you to leverage the strengths of your channel partners while gaining visibility to the end users of your products and services.
For B2B marcom managers, collaborating with your channel partners in the social sphere, can help move prospects through the buying cycle and engage existing customers. Participating with your channel partners ensures that you maintain a stake in listening to and learning from your partners and your customers and prospects. I’d love to hear from my B2B industrial marketing colleagues.
Here are a few additional resources for collaborating with your channel partners in B2B social media:
Facebook Community Pages – New addition by Facebook to better delineate brand-owned pages from those set up by channel partners/ brand enthusiasts.
Channel Enablement Class – online learning modules designed to help high tech channel partners understand how to use social media.
About The B2Bblogger: Joan is a B2B marcom consultant and copywriter with more than 15 years experience helping high tech and industrial companies generate leads and sales through integrated marketing communications including SEO copywriting, social media and website content. She can be reached at www.jdamico.net or through her blog www.integratedmarcom.blogspot.com.
More B2B companies are tweeting, blogging and posting news, but I’m curious… are we really communicating or are we still using a bullhorn disguised as social media?
I’m bringing this up because I’m as guilty as some B2B marcom folks who put out good, relevant content on the various social media outlets, but fail to make a real connection with real people. In other words, telling your networks about a really interesting article or helpful tweet is a good use of social media, but it needs to go to the next level to really build relationships… the aim of most social media programs. You need to interact with the communities in which you participate.
Ardath Albee’s blog post touches on the concept in a helpful way for B2B marcom folks. She explains how to create content that “inspires conversations.” This is especially important for B2B marcom because without inserting your company into existing social media conversations, your sales people are less likely to be invited to the meeting, not having been involved earlier in the sales cycle. Robin Teigland, associate professor at Stockholm School of Economics says, “Build relationships before you need them, while making sure you create value and foster trust.” (from her SlideShare presentation, Leveraging Networks And Social Media, slide #72)
This issue is typical of many B2B industrial companies who don’t see the value of participating in the conversations early via blogs (their own or someone else’s) and other social media. If not for the sake of sharing the company’s thought leadership, B2B companies should at least consider the SEO value of participating. I often hear from B2B marketers, particularly in the industrial space, “My market isn’t really on the internet.” or “My market doesn’t really participate in social media.” But they are searching, and the depth and breadth of your company’s social media activity helps drive search results by putting your content in front of the right prospects.
Forget about social media and think about people
My fear is that many B2B industrial marketers with the mindset described above are putting themselves at risk and in a potential reactionary posture, waiting to see if their competition invests in social media. By the time their competition’s social media activity becomes apparent, it will be too late, and the competition will have garnered a larger percentage of interest.
There’s hope for B2B industrial marketers who don’t think the internet or social media is the right place to be. Forget about “the internet” and “social media,” and instead, think about people—what they need; how you can help. Be a useful resource. If you were at a conference and met with a few prospects talking about a specific issue and later you found a trade journal article, you would likely copy it and send it to the people with whom you spoke. Social media enables that type of transaction to take place en masse and quickly. That’s why the first step in social media is listening. It provides an opportunity to hear on a broad scale what’s being said around a given topic. Listening helps shape the content you develop in a way that better addresses the needs of the audience and cultivates conversation. Then, after getting a feel for the social media landscape start connecting with prospects—real people and real conversations—by asking questions, offering answers to their questions, providing content that’s relevant to their needs.
I get social media, but my boss doesn’t…
If you’re the B2B marcom person who gets this, but doesn’t have the support to sell it to management, then here’s what you can do. First, start listening by setting up a few Google alerts based on your brand name and a specific category. For example, “ABC Company” is the brand and “discrete manufacturing software systems” is the brand category. Then do the same for your largest competitor in the same category. Monitor the activity and draw conclusions that will not only support your overall marcom goal, but also the business objectives. You’ll need to show management that conversations around your brand and brand category are occurring and whether or not your competitors are participating. If they’re not, then it’s an opportunity to take a leadership role. If your competitors are participating, it’s an opportunity to claim your seat at the table.
Additional B2B marcom resources:
Burson-Marsteller research report The Global Social Media Check-up (opens a pdf file) pages 11-12 offer a helpful social media summary.
Robin Teigland’s presentation Leveraging Networks And Social Media,slide #125 has a good list of how to match the social media tool to the purpose.
About The B2Bblogger: Joan is a B2B marcom consultant and copywriter with more than 15 years experience helping high tech and industrial companies generate leads and sales through integrated marketing communications including SEO copywriting, social media and website content. She can be reached at www.jdamico.net or through her blog http://jdamico.net/.
The nutrition label lists the ingredients based on volume per package. Items appearing first on the ingredients list are most abundant in each serving. So if you’re looking for cereal that’s low in sugar, then you’ll want to make sure that sugar is low on the ingredient list or that it doesn’t appear at all.
This is where the nutrition label is like SEO copywriting. The keywords on which you’re optimizing your page should be the first few keywords in the meta title and description, as well as in alt image tags and on-page body copy… think up and to the left. This helps search engines determine relevancy of the search query to your web page. (There’s more to relevance than SEO copywriting, but it’s a necessary part of SEO.)
Take a step back, look at your copywriting and ask yourself the following questions:
For what 3-5 keywords are you optimizing the page?
Are those keywords located up and to the left on the page?
Are those keywords located in a headline or subhead?
Are some of those keywords in a hyperlink?
Do your images have keyword-rich captions?
Your SEO copywriting is like the cereal box. Think of the ingredients list as the meta data, which tells search engines what to look for. Make sure that your “ingredients” include the top 3-5 keywords on which you’re optimizing the page. The on-page content is like the front and back of the cereal box; make sure the on-page copy includes those same keywords in the places noted above.
Like a nutrition label, which tells you the percentage of fat and other things you probably shouldn’t have, keyword density tells you the percentage of copy that your keywords should comprise. It basically lets search engines know that you’re actually writing real thoughts in sentences and not simply stuffing a bunch of keywords on a page to trick the search engine into thinking your content is relevant.
You can use tools such as keyworddensity.com and googlerankings.com, which scan your
page content and assign a density number. Most search marketers recommend a density of 3%-5% and some as high as 7% on a page of about 300-500 words.
When it comes to SEO copywriting, your on-page copywriting should connect with the meta data. You don’t want to be the box of cereal that boasts low sugar when it’s the first ingredient on the nutrition label.
About The B2Bblogger: Joan is a B2B marcom consultant and copywriter with more than 15 years experience helping high tech and industrial companies generate leads and sales through integrated marketing communications including SEO copywriting, social media and website content. She can be reached at www.jdamico.net or through her blog www.integratedmarcom.blogspot.com.
“I don’t know how anyone can do competitive SEO without growing their social network experience.” This was a quote from Lee Odden(@leeodden), CEO of TopRankMarketing, at a PRWeb webinar. It got me thinking about B2B SEO and real-time search. B2B companies who aren’t active in social media could have what may become a gaping hole in their SEO program.
Google now displays social media content in its search engine results pages (SERP). Failure to make social media participation part of your integrated marcom program could reduce your visibility to the extent that your competitors are participating in social media. (To see if your competitors are participating, set up listening posts. Integrated Marcom Minute Sept. 2009.) If you’re not commenting on other relevant blogs or actively posting to your own blog, then you could be missing key opportunities to build your digital influence, which in turn influences search. I’m not just talking about blogs and comments, this includes Facebook posts, Twitter Tweets, social bookmarks… everything social.
Does real-time search trump PPC?
If you think real-time search doesn’t matter because you’ve already bought various keywords in your pay-per-click programs, you may want to rethink. Real time search is what’s happening right now. For once, it doesn’t matter if you or your competitors own a popular keyword or phrase. If people are talking about that keyword or term in the social sphere, the content containing the keyword or phrase will appear in the results.
Does this mean you don’t need to continue your PPC program on a given keyword? No, because you’re still getting 24/7 exposure to the keyword you buy. However, it does raise an interesting issue. The more active you are on the social sphere for a given keyword or phrase, the greater the likelihood you’ll show up favorably in the SERP.
Where is your B2B marcom program when it comes to real-time search?
Here are a few more resources on real-time search:
Google Real Time Search (Puts real time search into perspective relative to all the social media that B2B companies are beginning to explore such as Facebook and Twitter)
About The B2Bblogger: Joan is a B2B marcom consultant and copywriter with more than 15 years experience helping high tech and industrial companies generate leads and sales through integrated marketing communications including SEO copywriting, social media and website content. She can be reached at www.jdamico.net or through her blog www.integratedmarcom.blogspot.com.
A B2B social media strategy should include a conversation calendar. Your conversation calendar lists the media and frequency of all your social media activity. The conversation calendar acts as a dashboard of your owned and earned media and the number of posts anticipated per month.
Image courtesy iStockphoto
The conversation calendar is especially helpful if you’re a B2B marcom manager who’s enlisting the help of other colleagues in the social media program. It makes it easier to assign social media to various colleagues and lets your colleagues know how much time to budget for their social media activity.
Your conversation calendar also gives you an idea of the volume of content required to support your social media program. It’s a lot more than you think! But before you become overwhelmed, read Ardath Albee’s advice on b2b content development. Ardath explains how to leverage your existing B2B content to keep up with the demands of a social media program.
Aside from its use as a planning tool, your conversation calendar can also be used with your social media monitoring program. Compare your activity on the conversation calendar to the number of mentions in the social sphere to get an idea of the impact of your social media program. You may find that you need to adjust the frequency of activity or completely drop under-performing activity from your program.
A simple spreadsheet is all you need to create your B2B conversation calendar.
Do you have another way to manage your social media conversations? Tell us here…
About The BtoBblogger: Joan is a B2B marcom consultant and copywriter with more than 15 years experience helping high tech and industrial companies generate leads and sales through integrated marketing communications including SEO copywriting, social media and website content. She can be reached at www.jdamico.net or through her blog www.integratedmarcom.blogspot.com.
At a very high level, SEO is comprised of linking, on page/meta data content and other website mechanics (e.g. redirects, trusted URL, etc.). This post speaks to the page content element that B2B copywriters need to know.
Start by examining your keywords… Many B2B companies underestimate the importance of this exercise. From a marketing standpoint, nailing your keywords and phrases is the foundation for your online marketing communications and content strategy. If you need to coach your marcom team on how to develop effective keywords, here’s a link to one of my newsletters on keyword selection, where you can download a worksheet to help you decide on the most effective keywords. Make sure you vet your keywords and phrases through a keyword tool such as Google or Wordtracker.
On-page SEO copywriting… Optimize your website pages for the keywords and phrases—and not all on one page. Group your keywords and phrases so that any given page is optimized for 3-5 keywords. Make sure that your meta title tags and description include the 3-5 keywords/phrases for which you’re optimizing a given page. For more about on-page SEO copywriting, see my article on boosting natural page rank.
Natural SEO works for blogs too… Apply these same rules to your B2B blog and watch page visits increase. Include keywords in your blog titles for two reasons… one, it’s good for on-page SEO; and two, the keywords in the title usually become part of the URL (especially if the keywords come at the beginning of the title). That means another boost for natural search.
Then, make sure the keywords in the title are also in the body of the blog. And if your blog post is lengthier (500+ words) break it up with H2 or H3 header tags that include a keyword if possible. But remember, keep it natural. Don’t force keywords in at the expense of good copywriting flow and tone. Start with good content and then see if you can work in a few keywords while keeping the tone and flow natural.
Connect with SEO experts…
Follow them on Twitter and subscribe to their blog posts. I’ve started a Twitter list of SEO folks, so go to @copywriter4u/B2B-SEO-pros to follow the list (it’s not comprehensive by any means, but it gives you a good start). The following websites have SEO news and information to which you can subscribe:
Again, there are many more resources on SEO. I culled the list above as I was learning SEO copywriting and thought you might find it helpful for starters. If you have other resources, feel free to add them here.
About The BtoBblogger: Joan is a B2B marcom consultant and copywriter with more than 15 years experience helping high tech and industrial companies generate leads and sales through integrated marketing communications including SEO copywriting, social media and website content. She can be reached at www.jdamico.net or through her blog www.integratedmarcom.blogspot.com.
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Hi, I'm @jeremyvictor, the founder of Make Good Media and Editor In Chief of B2Bbloggers.com.
B2Bbloggers.com is an online magazine for B2B marketers. Our goal is to engage, educate, and make it easier for B2B marketers to find the information they care about to do their jobs successfully.
As a publisher and new media marketing agency, Make Good Media advises businesses how to integrate social media and content marketing with traditional marketing tactics to attract, nurture, engage, and convert customers in the brave new B2B world of the social, mobile web. How can we help you Make Good Media?
About The B2Bblogger: Joan is a B2B marcom consultant and copywriter with more than 15 years experience helping high tech and industrial companies generate leads and sales through integrated marketing communications including SEO copywriting, social media and website content. She can be reached at www.jdamico.net and on Twitter @copywriter4u.
