B2B the full story #iStrategy

AKA: Everything You Wanted To Know About B2B Social Media (But Were Too Afraid To Ask)

It’s hyped by the name so let’s see how deep we can go.

And our cocreators are:

Menno Likendijk – Director and Partner, Milestone Marketing

Jeremy Makin – Director of Media Sales and Strategy for Optism ,Alcatel-Lucent

Ed Bezooijen – Director of Marketing, Citrix Systems

To give us a feel for the marketplace Martin quotes:

B2B online just released the impressive stat: 93% say they’re ‘using’ social media.

Quite what that means is another thing.

Heres some of the areas Martin is using:

Lead Generation and building relationships is at various levels across the panel. Some with every associate participating, others with trained empowered social media hub and node teams within the organisation.

Citrix, being very wary of code of conduct, nondisclosure and how you communicate. All associates are aware and marketing, PR and customer support, engage accordingly.

They’re also wary of being to pushy with sales.

Alcatel-lucent adding:  The B2B sin, is spending time planning the wedding not the marriage? Beautiful brochureware with no ongoing though leadership or content strategy will die.

Insight generation is something many have explored, yet again this requires an org structure and overall understanding of Social Media that let’s those on the front line raise issues with the appropriate leader/contact.

It is interesting to note those experimenting and retrofitting social media to their marketing strategies. Vs. An integrated approach.

Retrofit – Tweeting invites to the event you planned, tweaking posts to LinkedIn etc. Local twitter accounts, millions of pilots etc.

Integrated – Lead generation and insight generation funnel, leveraging the different communities and the interactions within them. A funnel and Social Media Architecture that aligns with the marketing and growth path for the organisation.

Parting nuggets:

Ed’s

“Just do it”

“It’s game changing”

Menno’s

Enable your teams, not with “howtos” but also content

Get your content strategy right.

Have a plan

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The nugget I’d offer – if you’re starting out, think like Agile Software developers.

1. If you can’t have a full plan, then at least get your headline elevator pitch for the strategy.

2. Don’t do anything that conflicts with that headline.

3. Get going.

Then communicate and collaborate internally as you would on Twitter, LinkedIn or FaceBook

4. Get your content strategy in place.

5. Outside of your core streams and messages, allow associates the freedom to engage and make them aware of your strategy. Train then, offer the basics.

6. Don’t toe dip, but if needed, chop you’re presence development to bite sized stories.