Lone B2B industrial marcom professionals can integrate social media if they start smart and slowly.

This post is based on an excellent webinar on B2B social media for the industrial marketer hosted by GlobalSpec‘s Chris Chariton, entitled “Social Media Use in the Industrial Sector.”  What’s equally as interesting as the webinar is conversation that’s ensuing on the GlobalSpec’s LinkedIn Group, Industrial Marketing Mavens.  Some of the conversation is centered on the resource-constrained B2B industrial marketer who, in many cases, is a lone marketing or marcom person who’s doing it all and is struggling with the time commitment to integrate social media into the marcom mix.

It got me thinking…  didn’t we have this same discussion circa 1994 with growing use of the internet and websites?  We were asking if this “internet thing” is for real or just a fad, and “do I really need a B2B website?”  Turns out, the “internet thing” was real; and yes, you do need a website. 

Do B2B industrial companies really need social media?

I think social media for industrial companies will be unavoidable.  But do you need a Facebook page, a Twitter handle, etc.?  B2B social media is real and you do need to participate, but the degree to which you participate depends on your marcom objectives and your marcom resources.  When you consider the evolution of B2B industrial websites, at first marketing owned the corporate website, then it evolved to shared ownership by each of the departments represented.  I think a similar transition will occur with social media. 

B2B industrial marketers need to shift perspective from social media as a marcom tactic to a platform for doing business—one in which several functional areas within the company must collaborate and share the responsibility with marketing, though that’s future state.    Perhaps marketing can lead the charge, but you need the support of R&D, product development, sales, tech support, and customer service. 

As Chris pointed out in the webinar, marketing should be listening first to understand where, if at all, their customers and prospects are within the social sphere; and are they conducting business or personal activity.  Sure there are 500+ million people on Facebook, some of whom are our customers and prospects.  However, the reality that Chris mentioned (based on data from the GlobalSpec study) is that they’re on Facebook for personal reasons and not to conduct business. Whereas LinkedIn is shaking out to be a widely accepted business networking platform. (See Paul Gillin’s post “The Other Social Network“  )

Where should B2B industrial marketers begin with social media?

I think there’s enough data to suggest that for many industrial companies, a well-written and relevant blog, coupled with a well-maintained LinkedIn Company page and profiles for all of the company’s colleagues and partners, and a monitoring program is a good and manageable starting point.  It’s true that some B2B industrial and tech companies with a few more resources have had success with Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, but if you don’t have the resources to maintain them, a good foundation of blog, LinkedIn and monitoring can at least get you in the game. 

Another important point is that Industrial marketers don’t always leverage the content they and their partners already have, which is ideal for the social media platform. For example, you’re likely to have a plethora of PowerPoint presentations from sales meetings, training seminars, and industry association conferences that could be repurposed on SlideShare and added to your LinkedIn profiles for added exposure and SEO.  You may also produce industrial training videos for sales and technical support.  They can be edited and made suitable to upload to YouTube, which can again lead to added exposure and SEO.

B2B Social media is about connecting the “digital dots”…

It’s not about doing more, although there is more work associated with social media; however, it’s about re-thinking how you’re working within the social sphere and leveraging your colleagues and partners, content, and the social platforms. 

Think of it this way… years ago we only thought of the telephone system as a two way device, but then we shifted our thinking to leverage that two-way conversation into a teleconference shared by more than one, then taken a step further VoIP enabled internet-based calling and video conferencing.  Was it just a phone system? No… it was a communications platform for conducting business.

It is clear that sooner or later B2B industrial marketers will have to adopt social media whether by plan or by default.  My advice is to start small; think in terms of keywords when you post, upload or comment; and leverage existing content from you or your partners within the social platform wherever possible.

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:

13 Ideas to Inspire your blog by Denise Wakeman

What’s your social media diet by Paul Dunay

Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2010 by Michael Seltzner answer the question, “How much time does social media take?”

Warning Signs You Might be a Blogcrastinator by Michelle Russell

B2B marketers are adding Twitter to their integrated marcom programs.

Who’s adding Twitter and Why?
Here’s a list of early B2B Twitter adopters. I broke it down into four categories based on what I’ve observed on Twitter. Let’s keep the list going. If you or someone you know is using Twitter in a B2B marketing application, tell us by commenting on this post.

Note: If you plan to tweet, then become familiar with TinyURL.com. It’s a free service that takes long URLs and makes them much shorter and more usable for Twitter and other applications.

And now the list…

1. Sell products and services; drive buyers to your online store.
Several B2B and B2C companies are using Twitter to offer special prices to followers.

Company	Followers
Dell Outlet	1,958
Direct2Dell	16
Direct2Dell (China)	34
Studio Dell	129
Woot	14,548
Apple	4,828

2. Build brands via knowledge sharing and user groups
This is also a great way to share product reviews and information from real world customers.

Company	Followers
Accenture	375
BT	154
IBM System Z	31
IBM Tivoli Systems	98
Direct2Dell (China)	34
Q1 Labs (Infor)	109
Engadget	2,729
General Motors	881
Intuit	53
SAP	496
SaaS On Demand	211
MZinga	509
Yammer	819

3. Build relevant website traffic.
I call these posts “signposts” because they guide followers to more in depth content. They’re popular among media companies for headline news including:

Company	Followers
Reuters	1,822
CNN	43,284
BBC (Off-site list links to BBC)	300-5,000
New York Times	8,614
WHP (CBS affiliate)	97
NPR	6,248
ZDNet	167
Conde Nast Portfolio	385
CNET News	7,104
Revision 3	8,504
CBC News	1,669
Techmeme	4,505

4. Event marketing
This not only lets your followers know at what events to find you, but also lets them meet up with you while you’re at the event. Twitter lets you send instantaneous feedback on speaker highlights, event information and more during the event…

Give Twitter a try. Follow me on Twitter

Download a free pdf of this post.

Special thanks to my LinkedIn Colleagues for their input:
Bill Baithurst
Steven Cadley
Dave Greves
Tom O’Brien
David Peck
Sebastian Porta
Patsy Stewart

As for “Tweetiquette,” read Jeff Woelker’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective Twitterers. (Jeff is someone I follow on Twitter… Follow Jeff too.)

Well, I didn’t come up with the line, “transparency equals trust.” Geoff Ramsey, CEO – eMarketer coined it at a recent B2B Magazine Netmarketing Breakfast. He was referring to social sites, blogs, etc. that allow visitors to provide feedback.

Sometimes feedback isn’t always positive. However, sites which offer transparency into the opinions of visitor’s, customers, etc., tend to garner more trust because they’re perceived as “real” and not marketing speak.

So what’s the message for integrated marketing communications?

If you’re considering a blog or social component to your next marcom campaign, be prepared for some negative feedback, and also be prepared to respond to it. When you allow it and respond to it in a timely fashion, it can help build trust in your brand.

That’s integrated marcom.

SEO and the 1-2-3 punch:

Here’s an example that B2B marketer and blogger Tom Pick used to boost organic search. I call it the 1-2-3 punch.

• First, Tom wrote a thought leadership article for an online newsletter.
• Second, he repurposed the article as a stand-alone page on his website.
• Third, he blogged about the article.

Everything was linked, to further boost relevancy and ultimately search ranking.

That’s integrated marcom!

Check out Tom’s WebMarketCentral blog.

Learn more about successful B2B blogging. Listen to a Buzz Marketing for Technology Podcast featuring Tom Pick.

Here’s another lesson straight from the “school of hard knocks.”
In order for a blog to be successful, one of the first lessons is make it real.
Stop with the shameless self-promotion and provide relevant content written by a genuine person.

Well, Wal-Mart learned that lesson the hard way. Their blog, “Wal-Marting Across America,” turned out to be a total fake… completely staged and written by professionals.

The blog was ghostwritten by a so-called average American couple traveling across America in their RV. Of course, they stopped at Wal-Marts along the way and blogged about the savings they encountered. I suppose it sounded a little too self-serving and the real identities of the actual writer’s were revealed.

The moral of the story… blog readers will always sniff out a fake. It’s o.k. to hire a writer to help you keep up with your blog, but the tone and approach must be geniune and not promotional.

Read the full story here.