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This week, MarketingProfs put on the first series of their Digital Marketing World 2010 conference. These sessions covered social media and its implications. A truly digital conference, participants could move about an auditorium, into a networking lounge, check out the sponsers’ booths, and more.

While I thought all of the speakers brought a ton of great information to the table, I couldn’t help walking away thinking that the information was all well and good with large corporations with hundreds to devote to social media and metrics, but what about small businesses with one – maybe two – employees to be in charge of social media? Well, that’s exactly what I’m aiming to do today.

Since the presentations were broken down by logical steps, that’s how I’m going to break things down:

1. Social Media Setup
2. Social Media Content
3. Social Media Metrics

Social Media Setup

(primarily from the How to Build Successful B2B Social Media Strategies session)

1. Start by understanding that social media is (probably) right for your business. The fact of the matter is, while social media can be extremely powerful, it’s not going to be right for everyone. How do you know if it’s right for your business? Try asking your current customers where they spend their time online.
2. After you find out if and where your current audience spends their time, then you’ll have a good idea about where your potential audience/customers spend their time. Is it LinkedIn? YouTube? Facebook and Twitter?
3. Before you start building out a custom Twitter background, stop and make a plan. (Marketo has a great example social media plan. Or I created an example plan here.)
   Think about (and document):
   1. What do you want to accomplish with social media? What is your goal(s)? (Get more leads? Sell more widgets? Get more email newsletter signups?) Having more Facebook fans is great, but how does that help accomplish your business goals?
   2. Define logistics. Who will be in charge of social media content? How often will they be responsible for posting a tweet/Facebook update/blogpost/YouTube video?
   3. How will you measure? Don’t forget to base measurements on your business goals (from above).
4. Take the time to properly set up your social accounts: with any custom backgrounds, logos or branding, descriptions, etc.
5. Then set up your listening tools.
   1. Listening tools: If you’re using Twitter, how will you incorporate Twitter Search? How about Google Alerts? Will you use a tool like HootSuite for monitoring?
   2. How about sharing tools? Tweet this/Share this buttons on your blog?
6. Get to work!

Social Media Content

(primarily from the Unleash the Power of Content to Engage Your Prospects session)

• Create a blog, community, and/or forum.
• Commit to creating remarkable and relevant content. If you have an editorial calendar, make sure you stick to it.
• Repurpose your content when you can and publish it to all of your online channels.
• Use SEO to optimize content for search engines.
• Use your audience’s conversation to mine for content topics.
• Offer your content in the format your audience likes. White paper? Video? Blogpost? Email newsletter?

Social Media Metrics

(primarily from the Overcoming the Challenges of Social Media Metrics session)

• Remember to always tie metrics back to goals.
• How can you incorporate social media metrics into the current metrics you use?
  • Sales/Revenue
  • Lead generation
  • Email signups
• Discover your Social Media ROI – [(Gain from Investment - Investment Cost)/Investment Cost] x 100
• Possible metrics:
  • Activity & Engagement
    • Members
    • Posts/Threads
    • Comments or Ideas
    • Inbound Links
    • Tags, Votes, Bookmarks
    • Active Profiles
    • Referrals
    • Post Frequency/Density
  • Revenue and Business Development
    • Speed of sales cycle
    • Number/% of repeat business
    • % customer retention
    • Transaction value
    • Referrals
    • Net new leads
    • Cost per lead
    • Conversions from community
  • Cost Savings
    • Issue resolution time
    • % of issues resolved online
    • Account turnover
    • Employee turnover
    • Hiring/recruiting
    • Training costs
    • New product ideas
    • Development cycle time
    • Product/serv adoption rate
  • Awareness and Value
    • Brand loyalty/affinity
    • Media placements
    • Share of conversation
    • Sentiment of posts
    • Net promoter score
    • Interaction with content
    • Employee social graphs

In summary

It’s a lot of initial setup and work along the way but, when done right, incorporating social media into your business model can take your small business to the next level!

Nicki Hicks
How does it apply to small biz?

This webinar recap is part three of a three part series from the Social Media Marketing conference at MarketingProfs’ Digital Marketing World 2010.

In this presentation:

• Your business needs Social Media
• Fundamental concepts of Social Media Marketing
• B2B Social Media tactics and metrics
• Incorporating Social Media at every stage of the revenue cycle
• The ROI of Social Media

1. Your Business Needs Social Media

The Evolution of B2B Marketing

• Before search engines: branding, mass advertising, tradeshows
• After search engines: lead management, scoring, and nurturing
• Arrival of social media: SEO, content marketing

Why Inbound Leads

• Inbound leads: highest conversion rates to qualified opportunities
• Inbound leads: educate themselves beforehand
• Companies now “get found”

Is your company ready for social media?

• Clear objectives and goals
• Available resources and content
• Target audiences use social media
• Prepared to handle social media
• Ready to incorporate social media through revenue cycle

Developing a B2B Social Media Plan

• WHO: Who are you targeting?
• HOW: Which social media tactics will you employ and how will you measure success?
• WHAT: What goals or objectives do you want to accomplish and what are the action items?

Sample social media plan from Marketo

Developing a B2B Social Media Policy

• How do you define social media?
• Ground rules for participation – who will participate and how?
• Importance of confidentiality

2. Fundamental Concepts of Social Media Marketing

• Company identity and brand
• Social media monitoring (“listening”)
• Social sharing
• Social validation (social proofing)

Company Identity and Brand

• Develop your identity
• Create permissions and privacy settings
• Use proper logos, colors
• Customize as much as possible

Social Media Monitoring (“Listening”)

• Start by monitoring the most popular social media sites
• Make best use of alerts
• As activity increases, consider using 3rd party tools (Twitter Search, Facebook Search, and LinkedIn Search – be aware they all have some limitations; Google Alerts)

Social Sharing: A closer look

• ShareThis or AddThis (have your content shared to an audience(s) who wouldn’t have otherwise seen it)
• Custom links for increased personalization

Social Sharing: Customized E-mails and Landing Pages

Share emails and landing pages, but no need to be constrained by generic content

Social Validation: A closer look

Adds transparency and credibility

3. B2B Social Media Tactics

• Social Media Networks
  • The Basics
  • Blogging
  • Twitter
  • Google Buzz
  • Facebook
• Pitfalls to Avoid

Social Media Networks

• Blogging
• Microblogging
• Social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Online video (YouTube)
• Presentation/Document sharing
• Widgets
• Bookmarking
• Podcasting
• Social CRM
• Photo sharing (flickr)
• More!

Crash Course in B2B Blogging: The 5 Ws of Blogging

1. Why blog? (Increase search engine visibility.)
2. What should I blog about? (Anything! FAQs, How-to’s, Numbered lists, etc.)
3. Who should participate? (Everyone who can. For a technical product, engineers are fantastic.)
4. When should I blog/How often? (2 times a week at a minimum. I agree, 2-3 times/week at first is best.)
5. Where should I post your content? (All of your channels that apply)
6. How should I measure my results? (Measurement tools like Google Analytics)

Crash Course in Twitter for B2B

• Twitter profile: humanize and brand it
• Choosing who to follow: import contacts, follow experts in your industry
• Interacting with your followers: be responsive and engaging, not salesy
• Use tools to create and monitor conversations: retweet, hashtags

Crash Course in Google Buzz for B2B

• What is it?
  • Get into inboxes without email
• Getting started:
  • Update Google profile and link accounts
  • Watch privacy settings
  • Be patient as others get acclimated

Crash Course in Facebook for B2B

• Profile and status update: what matters to you and your company?
• Who to “friend”?
• Personal vs. business content: privacy settings
• Groups and Pages: promote awareness and thought leadership

Crash Course in LinkedIn for B2B

• Profile: make it as comprehensive as possible
• Connections: only people you know
• Recommendations positive comments socially validate your company
• Network updates: new business opportunities

Social Network Takeaway: Be aware of your individual vs. company presences

Pitfalls to Avoid in Social Media

• Don’t dive in until you’re ready
• Don’t be a “big brag”
• Don’t be afraid to try it because the metrics are new and different
• Don’t treat social media like advertising
• Don’t assume every social media tool is right for you

4. Incorporating Social Media into Every Stage of the Revenue Cycle

Social Media Across the Revenue Cycle

• Seed Nurturing – Developing relationships with early-stage prospects before they enter your database
• Lead Nurturing – Building and maintaining relationships with known prospects as they educate themselves
• Customer Nurturing – Deepening and expanding relationships with existing customers

Seed Nurturing & Social Media

• Make valuable content freely available
• Create a reputation that builds credibility and trust

Lead Nurturing & Social Media

• Listen
• Segment & Target
• Notify & Score
• Interact

(Maria uses tools to actually score potential customers and people talking about her company.)

Customer Nurturing & Social Media

• Reaffirm purchases after the decision is made
• Deepen relationships, create personal connections
• Discover new needs and requirements
• Manage customer and retention

ROI of Social Media

• Challenging, but not impossible
• The ROI equation remains the same:ROI = [(Amount Gained from Investment - Cost of Investment)/Cost of Investment] x 100
  
• Establish a baseline and measure progress before and after starting your social media strategy

Marketo Case Study

• Clear objectives for success
• Make it easy to share
• Spread the word
• Validate
• Nurture
• Measure return

Social Media Drives Revenue

• Increased brand awareness and thought leadership
• Enhanced lead nurturing and scoring
• Improved sales effectiveness

Maria Pergolino, Director of Marketing, Marketo

This webinar recap is part two of a three part series from the Social Media Marketing conference at MarketingProfs’ Digital Marketing World 2010.

In this presentation:

• Content Marketing
• How BreakingPoint used content to increase new customer acquisition by 240%
• How Kadient built a content library that maps the sales cycle

Content Marketing

Stephanie Tilton, Content Marketing Consultant, Ten Ton Marketing

Michelle Linn, Executive Editor, Content Marketing Institute

Some statistics

• Buyers only find relevant content 42% of the time
• The lack of relevant content as perceived by buyers is responsible for reducing the vendor’s change of closing a sale by 45%

Create the kind of online content that your buyers naturally gravitate to. - David Meerman Scott

Content marketing is the secret, and starts with a strategy:

Create a Content Strategy

1. Listen
   1. Google Alerts
   2. Twitter
   3. Google blog search
   4. Where your customers spend their time
2. Develop buyer personas
   1. Bring your prospects to life
   2. Create sample persona(s)
3. Map content to the buying cycle
   1. Understand content preferences
   2. Map preferences to buying cycle
   3. Map content
4. Think like a publisher
   1. Create an editorial calendar
   2. Keys for the editorial calendar
      1. Be consistent
         1. DO deliver content on a regular basis
         2. DON’T publish only when you have something new
      2. Commit to your content
         1. DO think about the content your audience prefers
         2. DON’T try a lot of things but don’t do anything well
      3. Map out content
         1. DO move people through the buying cycle
         2. DON’T string random pieces of content together
5. Commit to remarkable content
   1. Craft valuable, relevant content
6. Extract maximum value from every asset
   1. For example, use a single whitepaper and create: articles, webinars, checklist, podcast, blogposts, and best practices
   2. Repurposing your content
      1. Don’t…
         1. Simply put the same content in different channels
         2. Ask “what more can I create?”
         3. Consider content reuse as an afterthought
         4. Recycle the same content again and again
      2. Do…
         1. Customize content based on the channel (e.g. mobile)
         2. Ask “How can I give my readers a new way of understanding a key issue?”
         3. Include a plan to reuse content from the start
         4. Customize your content for a certain audience, vertical or place in the buying cycle
7. Make your content easy to find, access, and share
8. Measure

How BreakingPoint used content to increase new customer acquisition by 240%

Pam O’Neal, Vice President of Marketing, BreakingPoint Systems, Inc.

Do not interrupt what people are interested in; be what people are interested in. - Jeff Lanctot

1. Becoming Interesting

2. Monitoring, Engaging, Prioritizing

• Mine for topics and opportunities (key influencers)
• Capture the conversation
• Analyze SEO keyword volume
• Monitor analytics to ID popular topics
• Identify and create content for buyer needs, issues
• Prioritize content by effort
• Identify opportunities

3. Speak to your buyers

• Create blog, forum, community
• Deliver role-based content
• Optimize for search
• Build community of interest
  • Pull with “conversation”
  • Pull with SEO, viral content
  • Push with SEM, email
• Monitor popular content
• Maintain with fresh valuable information

4. Seek to be found: SEO

Forget about your home page. Google is the new home page.

Content Distribution:

• Twitter
• RSS
• Email
• Wikipedia
• Scribd
• flickr
• Facebook
• YouTube
• pitchengine
• marketwire

Content Aggregation:

• Digg
• Google/Google Images
• Bing
• Reddit
• FriendFeed
• Squidoo
• StumbleUpon
• Delicious
• LinkedIn

5. Spread the Word

6. Integrate with Drip Marketing

7. Optimize and Measure

How Kadient built a content library that maps the sales cycle

Amy Black, Director of Marketing, TimeTrade Systems, Inc.

Mapping Content to the Sales Cycle

• Market Education
• Lead Gen
• Nurturing
• Opportunity
• Close

Remember:

• What’s your key objective for the piece?
• How else can you use it?

Content Library: Top of Funnel/Lead Gen

• “How to – Impart practical knowledge
• Provacative – Challenge and introduce a new way to think
• Fresh format – eBook, conversation style, images, video

Content Library: Nurturing

• Entertain with relevant, attention-grabbing humor (also great for viral program)
• Harness customer voices
• Highlight third party validation

Content Library: Lead to Opportunity

• Connect prospects with internal expertise

Content Library: Sales – Opportunity to Close

• Making the iron clad case
• Showing how Kadient is different and better
• Getting over the hurdles

Final Thoughts

• Remember who you’re “talking” to
• Keep your key objective front and center
• Break through the clutter – stand out!
  • Entertainment
  • Provacative POVs
  • Video – short, sweet and interesting
• Create content you can repurpose
• Listen to your sales team
• Pay attention to what is and isn’t working

This webinar recap is part one of a three part series from the Social Media Marketing conference at MarketingProfs’ Digital Marketing World 2010.

In this presentation:

• How old/new metrics can work together
• The difference between ROI/Value/Impact
• The importance of goal setting in measurement
• Why benchmarking is critical

Measurement is a Discipline

• Smart
• Specific
• Measurable
• Actionable

Measurement Tips

• Don’t let your metrics sit in a silo.
• Do your measurements tie in with your business objectives?
• There is no one magic metric.
• Measure in line with your objectives.
• Use qualitative AND quantitative data.

Go beyond the tool

• View at the Macro Level
• Outline useful metrics across multiple verticals.

TurboTax example

“Follow me home” – executives “follow” customers home and watch how they use the products.

Use radian6 technology to pull metrics:

• Share a voice – what are people saying about TurboTax
• Sentiment – what’s the tone of the conversation?
• Key themes – to pass on to leadership
• Deep dive – Use for crisis situation/new product/social media launch

Awareness, Attention, and Reach

• Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water
• Improve on what is existing
• For example, how is your CRM system being used to derive value?
• What are your FAQs? How is being measured?
• How can you lay your new (social) metrics on old metrics?

New metrics

• Instead of just looking for negative/positive/neutral engagement, look into the industry. Figure out how those people are talking. Can you participate in those conversations/communities?
• Discover how present you are.
• Difference between cause/correlation: There are always external factors.

The Ultimate Metric

Where’s the social media ROI?

[(Gain from Investment - Investment Cost)/Investment Cost] x 100

Metrics and Measurement

• Activity & Engagement
  • Members
  • Posts/Threads
  • Comments or Ideas
  • Inbound Links
  • Tags, Votes, Bookmarks
  • Active Profiles
  • Referrals
  • Post Frequency/Density
• Revenue and Business Development
  • Speed of sales cycle
  • Number/% of repeat business
  • % customer retention
  • Transaction value
  • Referrals
  • Net new leads
  • Cost per lead
  • Conversions from community
• Cost Savings
  • Issue resolution time
  • % of issues resolved online
  • Account turnover
  • Employee turnover
  • Hiring/recruiting
  • Training costs
  • New product ideas
  • Development cycle time
  • Product/serv adoption rate
• Awareness and Value
  • Brand loyalty/affinity
  • Media placements
  • Share of conversation
  • Sentiment of posts
  • Net promoter score
  • Interaction with content
  • Employee social graphs

Presenters

Lauren Vargas, Senior Community Manager, Radian 6

Chelsea Marti, PR& Social Media Manager for TurboTax, Intuit, Inc.

Who doesn’t want more hours in the day? We all do.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the secret that will add minutes to your day; but I do have some that will help you use your time more wisely.

Blogging

1. Have go-to blogpost ideas ready for a rainy day. Try some of these easy tips to get started.
2. Repurpose your content by guest blogging or article marketing. Take an existing blogpost you already have and put a different spin on it, or elaborate on a certain point.

Social Media

1. Use services to send out mass status messages to all of your social media profiles. My favorite is ping.fm.
2. Spend your time where your audience is at. If they’re on Twitter, be on Twitter. If they’re on LinkedIn, make sure you’re answering questions on LinkedIn. If your audience isn’t in a particular social space – and you’re pressed for time – I would argue it’s not worth being there.
3. Use Networked Blogs for Facebook, and skip having to worry about posting every blogpost to your fan page. Use a service like Twitterfeed to have blogposts auto-tweeted.

What about you? What are your tips for saving time blogging/social media success?

Nicki Hicks
Let’s work smarter, not harder

Photo credit: tonivc

Last year, I did a presentation for the seniors at St. Joseph’s College about how to get a job using social media. This semester’s class was kind enough to invite me back.

I spiced the presentation up a little and here’s the new version. Even in six month’s time, the takeaways are ever so slightly different:

• Be yourself online. If you’re witty, be witty. If you’re serious, be serious. It’s not worth trying to be someone you’re not.
• Always add value. No matter the video, photo, post, or tweet, make sure what you’re putting out there is valuable. (No one cares that you’re brushing your teeth right now.)
• For graduating seniors, doing a little clean up on their social profiles might be important. My rule of thumb? Don’t post something (post, tweet, photo, etc.) unless you’d feel comfortable showing your Mom…or your boss.
• Engage with your network online – especially job posting sites and potential employers. Don’t discount the value of face-to-face networking.
• Show potential employers you know how to brand yourself and can therefore brand your potential employer.

How often should I blog? How often do I tweet? How often should I update my Facebook status?

These are among the most common questions I get. For most, I answer an indefinite, “however often feels right” or “however often you have something meaningful to say“.

For most business owners, this answer is not concrete enough. So, here’s an example of how you could manage your social media time:

Every day…

• Digg something of someone else’s
• Bookmark something on Delicious.
• StumbleUpon something of somone else’s
• Twitter
  • Add something of value
  • ReTweet someone
  • Engage with someone
  • Promote something of your own
  • Follow someone new
• Facebook
  • Add something of value
  • Comment on something (friend’s/business’s status, photo, etc.)
  • “Like” something

Every few days…

• Write a blogpost (and ping it)
• Update your LinkedIn status
• Add photos to Flickr
• Comment on a blogpost
• Facebook
  • Friend someone new
  • Update your business status
  • Promote something of your own

Every week…

• Check your Google Analytics
• Digg something of your own (and ask others to digg it)
• StumbleUpon something of your own (and ask others to give it a thumbs up)
• Check in somewhere on Foursquare
• Participate in a forum or LinkedIn thread
• Do one “Please RT” on Twitter
• Answer or ask a question on LinkedIn

Every two weeks…

• Create a new YouTube video

This schedule won’t work for everyone and, as it’s generalized, certain social media channels might need to be tweaked.

Nicki Hicks
It’s all about Time Management

It’s no secret that getting more links results from creating more content.

Sure, a year-old article might still hold some importance. But what about that brand spanking new breaking story over at Mashable? Now that I have to link to.

Blog

Blogging is, without a doubt, one of the best ways to create link worthy content. It makes sense, right? Small, bite-size morsels of information that answer a specific question. Plus, blogs tend to be way less salesy than web sites, so folks are bound to link.

How can you get more link building bang for your blogging buck? Here are a few tips:

• Submit a guest blogpost
• Hit pain points with your blogpost
• Leave insightful comments on other blogposts
• Broadcast your posts in all the right ways

Press Releases

By their nature, Press Releases are spread all over the web. You, of course, pay for this service. However, it’s an easy and effective way to get news (and links back to your website) spread. Plus, local newspapers often pick these releases up.

Article Marketing

Likewise, article distribution is a paid service. However, the articles themselves are often glorified blogposts, are they not? Webmasters and bloggers link to the article, and with a link to your website in your signature, you’ll get the benefits of that link juice!

Social Media

The “shareability” of social media makes it a linking smorgasbord. No, these links don’t pass link juice, but you can only imagine the constant linking to pictures, images, video, websites, and blogs is bound to expose a website (or blog) to legitimate, powerful links.

Nicki Hicks
Content is king

Content in this Presentation

• Social media ecosphere stats
• Value of social media traffic
• How to leverage social channels for impact
• How social media success supports business goals
• Examples of great social campaigns

Social Media Ecosphere Stats

Data to Convince your Team that Social is Big

Here are a few of the screenshots Rand used in his presentation; you’ll find the URL for the original source at the bottom of each slide.

First things first, there have already been a ton of great posts on how to use Buzz and what it’s all about. If you want a really great overview of all Google Buzz has to offer, check out this Mashable post. The official Google Blog also has a post with some great video how-to’s for both the web-based and mobile Buzz versions.

Here are some of the more interesting features of Buzz – the good, the bad, and the ugly – that I’ve noticed in a few short weeks of buzzing.

Gmail Integration

If someone replies to a “buzz” of yours, it is emailed directly to you. Even more cool: you can reply to the thread directly in the email.

Be careful though, comment on an influential Buzzer’s(?) post and you’ll get all of the comments thereafter. There are a few options for this: a) create a filter to put any buzz comments under a specific label in Gmail, b) “mute” the post, so that you no longer get the updates from it.

Also a negative: for those anti-Googlers out there, you have to have a Gmail account in order to Buzz.

Social Integration

Buzz has the option to integrate a ton of your other social media profiles, and I can only assume there will be more to come. But for now, your tweets, YouTube videos, flickr photos, and more will show up in your Buzz stream.

Watch the conversation

Like Facebook’s commenting and “liking” features, Buzz is superior to Twitter in the fact that you can actually watch a conversation – and follow it if you’ve come late to the game.

Alas, for every positive there is a negative. I love Mashable, but I unfollowed them because they were clogging up my Buzz feed. Lots of great info – I just don’t know if Buzz is where I want to get it. In the future, hopefully Google will help sort folks you follow so it’s more manageable. Again, currently you can mute a post, so that you don’t receive updates as people comment.

Mobile Integration

Access Buzz on your smart phone and you’ll see the same features, plus some – including Google Maps integration where you can see who’s buzzing around you.

I’m sure that as Buzz evolves, the less than desirable qualities will be ironed out. And until then, we can figure out the implications of Buzzing and add yet another social network to our list to join.

Nicki Hicks
Follow me on Buzz