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B2B Marketing Predictions For 2011
November 30th, 20102010: The year social media went mainstream
by Michael Brenner – B2B Marketing Insider
Some predict 2011 will see the merging of Twitter and Facebook and the death of Foursquare. Michael Brenner shares his thoughts on what 2011 holds for B2B marketing in various areas and especially social media.
What do you think 2011 holds for B2B marketers?
Is it Time to Reframe the Sales and Marketing Alignment Debate?
November 19th, 2010Innovate around buyer experiences
by Tony Zambito – The Social Customer
Sometimes it feels like marketing and sales are on opposing corners like Republicans and Democrats. Never mind that research shows that aligning the two makes a difference. Instead, are they debating the right issues? Instead of function-oriented debates, try changing it into buyer-oriented one.
What do you think about reframing the aligning around buyer orientation?
Is Internal Marketing in Your B2B Go-to-Market Strategy?
November 18th, 2010Getting all teams including sales on the same page
by Ardath Albee – Marketing Interactions
Articles about the use of social media in B2B companies heavily focus on how to connect with customers and generate leads. Many forget that marketing internally also matters. Internal market focuses on educating employees about its marketing programs, the company’s customers and prospects and so on. Every single employee can affect your company, so you need to ensure they all send the same messages.
How are you making sure employees represent the company in a unified way?
7 Tips To Get New Facebook Fans For Your B2B Business
November 16th, 2010Requires good planning and execution
by Maria Pergolino – Marketo
Some B2Bs have found success in using Facebook to interact with customers and prospects. So it is possible. Just look at Cisco. This article offers a variety of ideas on how to use Facebook pages for B2Bs.
How do you use Facebook for business? Or if you don’t, why not?
Seven Ways to Make Your Social Media Marketing Work Harder
November 2nd, 2010Expand your reach and boost sales
by Heidi Cohen – ClickZ
Content Marketing Institute has released a report that 8 out of 10 marketers use social media, but only three believe it’s working for them. Turn that around with these seven ways to make your social media work smarter for your business.
What has worked for you in social media?
Converting B2B Sales Data into Social Intelligence
November 1st, 2010Shifting sales and marketing reliance on static data
by Umberto Milletti – Social Media B2B
It’s easy to collect a lot of data. The hard part comes in making sense of it so you can act on it. The author offers up a solution in social intelligence, which involves gleaning insights from social communities.
What is an example of social intelligence?
Gear Up for Success
October 29th, 20108 steps to get sales & marketing cranking in unison [ebook]
by Stephanie Tilton – AG Salesworks
This ebook provides insights and suggestions to close the sales and marketing gap. As a result of bringing the two teams together, they’ll better define qualified lead and processes for generation and nurturing them. The eBook includes insights from various b2b marketing experts.
What is most valuable advice you’ve picked up from the ebook?
Are We Ever Going to “Get it?”
October 28th, 2010Stop asking how to get more followers or likes
by Peter Shankman – P.S.
Beware Peter Shankman uses strong words to make his point, but they’re important points marketers and executives need to hear. Asking how to get more followers, fans or likes isn’t the right question to ask. It’s about engaging and be there for your customers. Yes, engagement can bring in revenue. Just make sure your customer facing employees have flexibility to help.
How do you engage in social media?
Current Dilemma:
Um … how do I tell an employee he has bad breath?
October 27th, 2010
One of my employees, let’s say Brad, has bad breath. Unfortunately, it’s not a temporary issue. I’ve tried all the subtle ways to adapt and change, but nothing works, and the idea of talking to Brad about his breath makes me uncomfortable.
Yet, I have to do something since I’m his manager. Should I give him a never-ending supply of chewing gum, or is there a more tactful way to handle this?
— Manager
Current Dilemma:
How do I thwart a thunder-stealing coworker?
September 24th, 2010
Recently, I worked hard on a project alone. The only help I received was from my coworker, Ed — but it was with resentment and, believe me, very minimal. The manager asked Ed who worked on the project. Ed said that I did it with his help. How can I get sole credit? Should I leave this situation alone or do something about it?
— Christine
An Ironic Evolution
August 24th, 2010Virtual events revive live ones
by Brent Skinner, relationSearch partners
Virtual Events
The concept of the virtual event, long a notion prompting predictions and fears of live events’ demise, has achieved an ironic feat. Far from threatening the vitality and existence of traditional events, virtual events bolstered by social media have strengthened the appeal of in-person professional gatherings across all industries, and will soon be crucial to most brick-and-mortar trade shows.
Integrating the new with the best of the old
The transformation of the live event through virtual elements has come about from the perfection of communications technologies such as streaming video and the emergence of communications channels such as social media. In concert, these factors have given rise to hybrid events. By combining offline and online elements with the multifaceted physical and virtual experience, hybrid events teem with interactivity on many levels.
This evolution is already underway on the most forward-thinking trade show floors, where smart trade show producers blend the best of the new with the best of the old. Virtual technologies, along with complementary social media, will increasingly infiltrate the trade show floor, coexisting peacefully with good, old-fashioned hand-shaking and eye-to-eye contact.
New research backs this prediction. Whether as an attendee, exhibitor, producer or supplier/vendor, over 75 percent of trade show and event insiders plan to attend a virtual trade show in the next 12 months, according to a recent Trade Show News Network (TSNN) and Onstream Media Corporation survey of 800 professionals.
More telling, 75 percent of these same professionals consider a virtual trade show as an add-on or extension to an existing show or physical event. It’s not difficult to infer that the industry is embracing hybrid events as a viable way to enhance, rather than detract from, live events.
The template: TS2 2010
Take TS2, an annual trade show about trade show marketing — and a good place, logically to gauge where the trade show industry is headed. In July, TS2 2010: Total Solutions Marketing for the Exhibit and Event Professional occurred at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, where over 1,500 attendees enjoyed in-person, tactile opportunities to physically interact with exhibitors and learn about trade show marketing face-to-face.
The show’s traditional aspects were a hit. Yet central to the success of this year’s TS2 was the IN Zone Lounge and Networking Center, an interactive pavilion that debuted live on the show floor to a positive reception. The center embodied hybrid events’ ability to energize and augment traditional trade shows. A creation of The Expo Group (Twitter: @TheExpoGroup), the IN Zone supported, facilitated and encouraged an array of new media–related activities. For instance, impromptu tweet-ups drew together offline attendees and online observers of TS2 to the IN Zone’s comfortable lounge to share their latest thinking on all things trade show–marketing related; conversations revolved around the ability of social media and virtual events to augment the live event experience for all.
Adjacent to these gatherings, professional trade show presenter and virtual event host Emilie Barta (@EmilieBarta) conducted a series of candid, talk show–style interviews with several industry thought leaders. Passersby on the trade show floor could view and hear these interviews by line-of-site or on a large plasma video screen, and a virtual audience watched streaming video online.
Further promoting interaction between and among in-person, virtual attendees and TS2 itself were representatives from 3D Media Group who roamed the trade show floor to shoot short video spots on attendees’ thoughts regarding TS2. Later, they posted the videos online for all to see. Additionally, virtual attendees were encouraged to go viral by submitting a video for a TS2-associated contest.
The social media ‘glue’
The success of hybrid events relies on crucial social media tools, along with a strategy to employ them. Even a live event bereft of any hybrid qualities becomes better when the show’s producers embrace social media. Why? Social media adds another dimension to interactivity among in-person attendees and online participants.
A parallel scene unfolds alongside the event as social media channels enhance everyone’s experience. People bristle with chatter relevant to the event and of interest to anyone attending physically or virtually. This chatter instantly provides the event’s producers with real-time feedback and a long tail of organic visibility online.
TS2‘s use of Twitter offers an example of the possibilities. In using Twitter effectively, TS2 established and cultivated a presence there (@ts2show) long before the live event. Additionally, showing how hashtags can enhance the brand and increase visibility on Twitter, TS2 created one branded for the show (#ts2show), and included other industry-relevant hashtags in as many tweets as possible. Examples of these hashtags are#eventprofs, the shared hashtag for a group of trade show industry thought leaders who maintain a highly active conversation on Twitter, and #tradeshow, which acts as a trade show indicator for anyone on Twitter searching for trade show information.
These tactics combined social media search optimization with brand-building efforts and set the stage for optimizing TS2‘s social media at the event. In the weeks preceding the show and during the live event, TS2 encouraged attendees and participants to add #ts2show in every tweet pertaining to TS2. The IN Zone held its own outreach by asking attendees to include #InZone in every tweet. As an additional incentive for everyone to do so, the IN Zone posted all tweets incorporating these hashtags on its large plasma video screen, for all to see. This setup allowed Twitter observers to easily follow the hashtags and conversation.
Rounding out its social media presence, TS2 carved a presence on other common social media outposts during the many months leading to the event. For instance, TS2 used Facebook and LinkedIn to announce contests related to the event and to foster an online conversation on issues affecting the trade show industry. These two channels, along with Twitter and others, promise to fuel TS2‘s drive to encourage a continual sense of community and render an annual gathering where stakeholders can meet and share, face-to-face, the ideas they contribute year-round.
It takes a virtual village to revive in-person events
Hybrid events and the technologies that facilitate, complement and augment them have rescued live events from self-inflicted inertia and stagnation. These new amalgams of in-person and virtual interaction have expanded live events’ shelf life to provide a meaningful experience to attendees, exhibitors and other stakeholders “24-7-365.” Furthermore, they transform the live event itself into a pilgrimage, where everything observed through the multifaceted, year-round experience culminates annually. Smart producers of live events are embracing virtual and hybrid events, along with the technologies that support and enhance them.
Editor’s note: relationSearch partners, Skinner’s company, helped TS2 develop its social media plan.
About the author
Brent Skinner is CEO of relationSearch partners, a company that focuses on helping clients find and be found by target audiences with whom they may forge relationships. Whether the need is to form strategic partnerships, tap social media, improve organic search engine optimization or combine all these and more, relationSearch partners develop programs that feed the lead pipeline and drive sales. Visit http://www.relationsearchpartners.com/, follow Brent on Twitter @RSpartners or email bskinner@relationSearchpartners.com.
A white paper that distills the many findings of the recent survey by TSNN and Onstream Media Corporation, Virtual Trade Show Report: Insights & Trends from Industry Insiders, is scheduled to be available this fall. Visit www.TSNN.com for more information.
Aligning Sales and Marketing with the Lead Flow Process
August 4th, 2010Get great leads and close sales
by Janet Gregory – KickStart Alliance
Align Sales and Lead Flow
This article takes you through the process of aligning sales and marketing in the lead flow process. It also identifies alignment problems and how to work through them to gain qualified leads and close the deal. And aligning marketing and sales is indeed a journey, not a destination.
What do you think of the article’s approach?
Five Ways to Encourage Sales and Marketing Alignment
August 3rd, 2010What is the benefit from aligning the two in your business?
by Amberlie Denny – Marqui Blog
Encourage Sales
If you’ve been reading the articles we share on marketing and sales alignment, you understand why it’s important to get the two teams in sync. But how do you make it happen? What I like about this article is how it breaks down the five ways without overwhelming you. It’s not a long article.
What do you think of these five tasks?
The LinkedIn Company Profile:
August 3rd, 2010Is your B2B company in the top one percent?
by Viveka von Rosen – MLT Creative
Top One Percent
Your LinkedIn account is not the same thing as having your company on LinkedIn. Take a look at Publisher Hank Stroll’s Linkedin account (http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankstroll). Now here’s his company’s page (http://www.linkedin.com/companies/internetviz). The article shares how you can make the most of your company’s LinkedIn page.
How do you use LinkedIn?
10 Mistakes Businesses Make on Social Networks
August 2nd, 2010Reading this article gives you a solid place to start
by Steven Overly – Washington Post
10 Mistakes
Here are 10 common mistakes that businesses, organizations and others make when starting social media. If you read our features, you know that the b2b companies that are successful in social media begin with strategy not creating an account.
What do you think is the most important factor for a b2b company’s success in social media?
