11 Simple Ways B2B Companies Can Be More Social Today

When making the transition from traditional to online and social media marketing, B2B companies will need to make major and minor changes to their marketing strategy and tactics. While the major changes are important, sometimes it can feel like the company is not making any progress in becoming more “social.” So while, as a marketing department, you are making major changes like CRM integrations, lead collection systems, etc., consider making some of these simple changes as well to become instantly more social.

This list serves as smaller steps that can help B2B companies better integrate social media tactics while applying larger online marketing strategies.

1. Make Marketing Documents Social - It is likely that your work computer contains dozens of documents that could be valuable to current or prospective customers.  As a marketer, you can instantly make your marketing documents social by uploading them to social media document sharing services such as SlideShare and Scribd.

2. Create Social Media Icons - Images on the web have different sizing requirements than traditional logos and letterheads. As a business online, you need to create a logo that represents your brand on social networks. This means you need a small, square-shaped icon that can be used on social network profiles such as Facebook and Twitter.

3. Claim Social Media Accounts - While you may just be developing a social media strategy now, that shouldn't stop your business from going ahead and claiming social media accounts even if they won't be used for a month of two. Head over to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. and create your accounts today.

4. Set up a Company LinkedIn Profile - LinkedIn is a B2B focused social network. It also provides the ability for businesses to maintain a company profile page that LinkedIn members can subscribe to for tracking company updates. Setting up a company profile is a good first step in becoming an active member of the LinkedIn community.

5. Write Blog Posts - While you may still be considering which blogging platform to use, this selection process shouldn’t stop you from going ahead and writing a few blog posts. After all, you can never have too much content for your blog. Writing articles before you've decided on a blogging platform will allow you to start publishing as soon as your corporate blog is live.

6. Equip Staff - When creating content for the web, marketers need a different set of tools. Thinking of trying online video? You may consider getting a Flip cam and some video editing software. Will you be writing blog posts? Then you may want to download a screen capture application like Camtasia. Having the right tools in place will make it easier to create quality content for the web.

7. Start Monitoring - Begin to get a basic understanding of the social media conversations related to your industry by using free tools. Use Twitter Search, Alerts Grader and Boardreader to monitor search terms relating to your industry and business. As you begin to become more sophisticated, you can transition into paid social media monitoring software.

8. Set Employee Expectations - Some companies have social media policies; others have general conduct policies that include social media behavior. Setting expectations with employees for how they should be representing your business online is an important initial step in social media marketing. Encouraging your employees to represent your company in the appropriate way online can help to expand the overall reach and power of your marketing department and facilitate a culture of marketing.

9. Set up a Bit.ly Account - As marketers, we need to take opportunities to capture data about our efforts as much as possible. One simple way to do this is to set up a bit.ly account. This URL shortening service makes it easy to share links on social networks like Facebook and Twitter while providing helpful analytics pertaining to each link you share.

10. Make Your Web Browser Social - The core online and social media marketing tool that marketers use every day is their web browser. Use a browser that supports extensions like Firefox. These extensions can help marketers save valuable time and make web browsers more social. Check out this blog post for a list of browser extensions that are helpful for marketers.

11. Install Analytics - Getting back to the idea of data, it is your job as a marketer to make sure all marketing data is being captured. If you haven’t already, be sure to install web analytics software like HubSpot or Google Analytics to better understand where your visitors are coming from and which social media channels drive the best visitors and leads for your business.

Start taking some of these steps today, and let us know what else you would recommend.

Posted by Kipp Bodnar on Tue, Aug 17, 2010 @ 11:50 AM