The Definitive Guide to Social Marketing A Marketo Workbook

01 table of contentS

03 Introduction 04 part one: Why does my Business Need Social Marketing? 07 part two: Laying the Foundation 22 part three: peer-to-peer social sharing 27 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics 62 part five: tools for social marketing success 66 part six: incorporating social marketing into every stage of your funnel 70 part seven: the roi of social 78 25 must-know social media experts 80 conclusion 81 contact marketo introduction why should i read the definitive guide to b2b social marketing?

Social marketing has become an The question is no longer should I do integral part of our lives and continues social, the real question is why wouldn’t to evolve. A few years ago everyone I do social? Our Definitive Guide to B2B was talking about the importance Social Marketing shows you how to add of B2B companies being active and social to every marketing activity to drive creating pages on sites such as buyer engagement, new business and Facebook and Twitter– now the revenue. Whether you are just starting out conversation has shifted and is moving or have a well-defined social marketing towards the idea that every marketing plan, this guide is your go-to handbook. campaign must be social. Let’s get social! The new theory is that social is more than just a channel or tactic; it is a strategy that should be present in every aspect of your marketing. And now that B2B finally understands the power of social, how “Marketing today is difficult. There are 200 do you harness it? How do you entice million people on the U.S. ‘Do Not Call’ list. and engage your audience to share your Over 86% of TV viewers admit to skipping message and to be a brand ambassador? commercials. Forty-four percent of direct marketing is never opened. Roughly 99.9% of As a marketer, you need to learn to online banners are never clicked. Buyers wait leverage social media – for building until they have completed 60-80% of their relationships, listening to the market, research before reaching out to vendors”. promoting content, and influencing buyers even before they’re identified as potential Michael Brenner leads. You have to do more than social Senior Director of Global Marketing at SAP media; you have to do social marketing.

03 part one Why does my Business Need Social Marketing?

04 part one: WHY DOES MY BUSINESS NEED SOCIAL MARKETING? Some context

Before we delve into how to As a result, they invested in lead nurturing strategically use social marketing and scoring programs to further define throughout all of your marketing hot leads and used additional methods Let’s take a look at some activities, let’s do a quick marketing to nurture the rest – to be sent to sales history lesson. In the past, the primary at a later date. compelling stats from Social Media way a prospect could get information Examiner’s “2012 Social marketing about a company was by engaging Today, marketing through SEO, PPC, directly with a sales person. Marketing and email are still very much a part of the Marketing Industry Report” focused on brand building and marketing mix, but social media sites drive • 93% of B2B marketers use social marketing awareness by using mass advertising, a large portion of the B2B interactions on to market their business tradeshows, PR and print media. the web. • 85% of marketers reported that the number Direct mail and cold calling made up one benefit of social marketing is generating the majority of targeted interactions, Through the many connections social more business exposure and marketers passed all new leads marketing creates, businesses can begin • 74% of marketers reported that social marketing – hot or cold – to the sales team for to move from a company-to-buyer marketing has increased their site traffic follow-up. model to a peer-to-peer influence model. • 59% of marketers are using social marketing Social is the perfect platform for creating for 6 hours or more per week With the arrival of Google in 1998, B2B those valuable business relationships that companies started to focus on search promote sharing and engagement. And for engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click this to be effective, as a marketer you have (PPC) advertising and email marketing to develop a strategy that weaves in social to drive traffic to their website. They also as part of every marketing campaign that created content such as whitepapers you do. and webinars to convert traffic into leads. The best marketers realized that their leads were often sent too early to sales.

05 part one: WHY DOES MY BUSINESS NEED SOCIAL MARKETING? The Golden Rules of Social Marketing

4. You will need a strong call to action. The tried-and-true, strong call to action is just as important in social media as it is anywhere else. Be clear about what you want your audience to do after consuming your content or engaging with 1. Don’t take yourself too seriously. your brand. It should be obvious, but social marketing is about being social, and that means you 3. You must have good need a good personality to make your content and solid offers. brand likable. Without well-produced, engaging content, any 5. Always add value. and all tactics you employ At the end of the day, if you are will most likely fail. not providing some sort of 7. Peer-to-peer value to your prospects and sharing is the customers, you are not doing best way to get your job and social media will your message never work for you. heard. Don't just DO social, BE social! 2. Inbound is not enough. Each of the tactics described in this guide can work on their own. But, for a business to benefit fully from them, they should be combined with outbound 6. Never forget that social is a two-way street. marketing. Never underestimate what a bit of paid No one likes being talked at. Yes, broadcast your message, but promotion can do for your business. remember to keep the lines of communication open in both directions. When contacted, always respond quickly and sincerely. Be sure to mix up your messaging and use a combination of content and offers.

06 part two Laying the Foundation

07 part two: laying the foundation Getting started

Social marketing holds tremendous FF My company has clear goals for social FF We produce enough quality content FF We are ready to incorporate social opportunities for B2B companies marketing. Be as specific as you can and to sustain social marketing conversations. marketing strategies throughout the looking to drive new business and keep these objectives in mind for every Content feeds the social marketing beast. buying process. Social marketing is not increase revenue, but only if you initiative you execute. Assign a key team Audit your existing marketing assets and just for the top of the demand generation first develop a solid foundation and of business stakeholders to discuss social identify your thought leadership pieces. funnel. It’s important to monitor and track an understanding of what makes marketing priorities and strategy. It is Also make sure you put a plan in place your prospects and customers throughout the world of social marketing tick. important to have a solid understanding of that will enable you to consistently produce your sales pipeline. No matter how complex your current your business’ personal social marketing social marketing-worthy content, including strategy is, you will want to re-visit it on methodology and how your team will blog posts, infographics, videos, and FF We are committed to making every a yearly basis and make sure you have execute in order to define metrics. white papers. campaign social. As you determine what everything you need to be successful. your campaign calendar looks like for the FF We have the human resources to FF We know which social media sites next six months or a year, you want to Getting Started: Setting commit to social marketing. Before you are popular with our prospects and make sure that you have a plan to use Your Company Up for Success start your social marketing initiative ask customers. Do your research and focus social to amplify every marketing tactic. in Social Marketing yourself if you can allocate the resources your energy and investments where your Whether you have just created a new Take a minute and fill out our checklist needed. Social marketing is about real- audiences are. content piece or are running a demand to make sure you have covered all of your time response and continuously updated generation campaign, be sure to include initial basics. information – both of which require FF Our company website is prepared for social sharing and create tactics within the commitment and dedication. social marketing attention. Before you campaign that encourage relationship set up multiple social media profiles and building across your social landscape. pages, make sure your own website is in good enough shape to handle the attention.

08 part two: laying the foundation developing a social marketing plan and policy

Although it’s tempting to dive right into Who are you targeting with What do you want to accomplish the various social media sites out there, social marketing? and what are your distinct action you need to develop a social marketing Prospects? Customers? Media? items for each goal? plan first. Creating goals and metrics All of the above? Once you’ve decided Social marketing requires time, effort and will help ensure that the time and on the targets, flesh out the defining resources. Take the tactics you’ve decided resources your organization invests characteristics of each group. If you’ve on and associate clear goals, objectives in social marketing are well spent. already read Marketo's The Definitive and action items for each one. It’s important to have guidelines that Guide to Lead Nurturing, you know structure your efforts and guide your about the importance of developing As with any new strategy, try and test participants in the right direction. buyer personas: a fictional character that a variety of social marketing channels represents a target group. Start by listing and tactics to see which has the most Your B2B Social the characteristics you would have for significant impact on your goals. For more Marketing Plan a typical buyer persona, but add a social information on standard social marketing Developing a social marketing plan is marketing dimension to it. tactics, objectives and metrics, go to similar to developing any other strategy. check out our Social Media Tactical Plan. “Focus on how While there is no standard approach, the How can you deploy social marketing to be social, basic components can be addressed by tactics for measurable success? answering these simple questions: Later in this guide we’ll address a number not on how to of different tactics that you can employ do socia l.” • Who are you targeting with your to achieve the business results you’re social marketing? seeking through social marketing. Select • How can you deploy social marketing a few that you think will have the most jay baer tactics for measurable success? impact on your organization and start Best-selling author • What goals or objectives do you want with those. of ‘The Now Revolution' to accomplish?

09 part two: laying the foundation Checklist: pitfalls to avoid in social marketing

FF Don’t dive into social marketing FF Don’t use social media sites as unless you’re ready. You need objectives, advertising opportunities alone. Keep goals and ways to measure success and your brand human on social media sites accountability. and save your ad-speak for real advertising or when you have a more significant FF Don’t be a big brag. Know the presence on social sites. “With the growing reliance difference between becoming a thought leader and endless self-promotion. FF Don’t assume every social media site on social media, we no longer is good for your business. Research which search for news, or the products FF Don’t be afraid to try social marketing social media sites your customers frequent because it doesn’t rely on the traditional and how they prefer to consume content. and services we wish to buy. metrics you’re used to. Instead they are being pushed FF Don’t merely create social pages FF Don't be afraid of social media because and think you are done. Instead, dig to us by friends, acquaintances the ROI will be challenging. There are ways deeper and create a social presence and business colleagues." to measure impact if you have a baseline that resonates with your target audience to start with. Additionally, the branding and and promotes relationship building visibility you can achieve through it will and sharing. Erik Qualman definitely impact your bottom line. Best-selling Author of Socialnomics

10 part two: laying the foundation building your social media swat team

Social marketing takes time and Here are some things you should keep organizational readiness. To ensure in mind when developing your path that you are getting the highest ROI to success: “How can you squander even one out of your social marketing strategy, more day not taking advantage there needs to be a structure in place, • Illustrate competitors who are using stakeholder buy-in, and a devoted social marketing successfully of the greatest shifts of our resource (or a few). Providing a solid • Share some key insights and social generation? How dare you settle foundation to your social marketing marketing statistics strategy will enable you to scale and • Highlight how social marketing can for less when the world has nurture your program as it evolves. be used for lead generation, creating made it so easy for you to be a customer community, thought Stakeholder Buy-In leadership, and even recruiting remarkable.” When determining your social strategy, • Create a report that monitors your social you will want to make sure that you have marketing activity and point out some Seth Godin executive support for your initiative, as possibly missed opportunities for Best-selling Author social marketing is time consuming and engagement based on your findings you will need dedicated resources. • Share how you will determine ROI once your initiative takes off The more your stakeholders understand • Highlight low-cost benefits of engaging and believe in the power of social through social marketing vs. traditional marketing, the more they will evangelize advertising throughout the company and support your strategy. Depending on organizational readiness this may be no easy task.

11 part two: laying the foundation building your social media swat team

Creating a Social Media Staffing Considerations Governance Board Social marketing takes effort, especially In addition to your focused social media if you want to work towards creating an staff, you will want to create a social media integrated campaign strategy. Therefore, governance board that is made up of you will want to take resource allocation executives, stakeholders, Subject Matter into account when creating your plan. Experts, and key employee advocates. How many resources you will need to This is the team that determines your dedicate to social marketing will depend ongoing broad strategy goals, internal on the following: training initiatives, and makes key decisions around your social media • Budget for new headcount interactions. Your Governance Board or intern availability should meet on a monthly or quarterly • Weekly social time commitments basis to re-assess and innovate on goals • Strategic goals and strategies. • Number of platforms utilized • Content strategy • Current and future community size

Consider starting by dedicating one full-time head count to social marketing management. This person will spend his or her time mostly on community management, social messaging, content creating, and planning. Resource permitting, the next full time employee hire should be someone dedicated to creating content and who can serve as the managing editor for all of your content.

12 part two: laying the foundation building your social media swat team

A day in the life: Marketo's Social Media Manager Remember, the amount of work you will on the front lines of your strategy and have for your resource depends on your will be interacting with customers and Posts Promote and engage strategy and company size. You will also prospects on a daily basis through your • Twitter • Think of creative ways to promote want your resource to work alongside your online channels, so make sure you take • 1 post per hour from 6am-5:30pm content, events, and engage fans demand gen team to create successful time to hire the right person. • 4 influencer re-tweets • Pictures, infographics, stats, campaigns. Social media is a huge part • Facebook memes, questions of our marketing at Marketo, so we • 3-5 posts per day • Track success of promotions dedicate a lot of time to creating our social • Google+ either manually or in a marketing presence. For example, at Marketo “We’re living • 3-5 posts per day automation tool 15% of all marketing head count is focused at a time when • LinkedIn on social, content, and inbound. If your • 2 posts per day Influencer outreach company is smaller, you may not need to attention is • Pinterest • Read influencer posts on Twitter dedicate as much time. the new currency. • 4-5 pins per week and other blog feeds and comment When you begin your hiring search for Those who insert Monitor Blog a Social Media Manager, you want to themselves into • Check Twitter, Facebook, • Create blog posts look for a person that is customer service and G+ for mentions or anything • HTML edit blog posts so they are oriented, good at relationship building, as many channels that needs a response formatted and ready to be published is creative, and a strong communicator. as possible look • Respond to comments, customer This person does not need to be a Subject issues, questions etc Matter Expert, but he or she should be set to capture • Monitor throughout the day a “digital native” – someone who grew up the most value.” entrenched in the internet and knows the ins and outs of social media. He or she doesn't need to be young, eg. the pete cashmore proverbial 23 year old social media CEO & Founder manager, but fluency in online customs is of mashable.com a must. Your Social Media Manager will be

13 part two: laying the foundation building your social media swat team

Organization-wide Show them the WIIFM: Training, training, training Participation what’s in it for me This is one of the most important aspects “Create a social You should also think about how you want Your employees are busy, and it takes of getting people involved with B2B social your employees to be engaging on social effort and time to create a Twitter account, media. At Marketo, we created Social media policy (be networks. By having an open discussion post on Facebook, post on LinkedIn, and Media Month which consisted of weekly it 3 pages like with your teams on utilizing social networks create blog posts. So you have to show workshops on social networks, to promote their personal brand as well as your teams, what is in it for them–what are participation rules, blogging tips, LinkedIn Coca Cola or 50 their own, you can establish guidelines that the benefits of contributing to social media? optimization for SEO, and social media like the military) can help them become more active. Having Here are some things you might want to photo day. We also did a series of blog your thought leaders work in tandem with call out: posts that spoke to each social network and trust your your social marketing strategy is a great and discussed how employees can be employees to abide way to further your social reach. • Personal branding–get your more active. By providing a structured name out there format for learning about social networks to free them to Create a social media policy • Building relationships with sales leads your employees can be both well-informed tell the stories Determine how you want your employees • Building customer relationships and pumped up and ready to be social. to participate in social media. At Marketo, • Helping your company be seen that engage.” we have created a Social Media Policy as a thought leader document that outlines what social networks to participate in, how often, and You might also want to consider CC Chapman what the ground rules are. Don’t assume incentivizing social media contributions. Author and content that your employees will know how to You can give out prizes for the employee expert participate. Make it easily available to all who tweets the most or contributes the staff through your company Wiki, HR sites, most blog content. Money motivates, or even develop your own social media so this is a great way to get started. microsite. Promote it through introducing it on a company-wide email and consider creating posters that advertise your policy and post them throughout your offices.

14 part two: laying the foundation Creating your Social Marketing Policy

The social marketing landscape can Here are some suggestions: tool or for product marketing research? feel unstructured. That’s why it pays Be as explicit as possible, and consider to have a social marketing policy to • Define what social marketing means for all the possible ways that people could guide the actions of everyone in your your company. Determine and call out go wrong, without being overly dramatic. organization that will participate in what social networks you will be Remember, your policy is an opportunity social media. It’s also essential to participating in. Use your social to get your company excited about monitor what’s being said and provide marketing policy to define what the term contributing to social media sites. guidelines on how to respond means for your entire organization so • Stress the importance of confidentiality. appropriately (without making your there’s no confusion as to when the Encourage your company’s employees feel like they’re being social media guidelines apply and when contributors to remember the censored). they don’t. importance of confidential information, • Set up a basic set of ground rules. and to manage their social marketing A formalized document will help protect Consider some basic tenets that you’d contributions just as they would your company in a legal sense, while like your company to follow when it conversations taking place in public. ensuring that you’re acting consistently comes to participation. Don’t assume across all social marketing sites, and that your employees know how to reinforcing your brand and value in the participate – make sure that your guide marketplace (a bit like a corporate style is clear, concise, and easy to find. You guide). Check out Marketo’s Social Media can even include social training during “By creating compelling content, Policy as an example. the employee onboarding process. • Decide how your organization will you can become a celebrity.” want to engage as a social marketing participant and contributor. Will your Paul Gillin company’s social media conversations Social Media Expert and Author come from a single person or will everyone in your company participate? Will social marketing be used as a customer service function, marketing

15 part two: laying the foundation content creation

No discussion of social marketing If you are a smaller company without many Content Types These content types can take many is complete without a discussion of available assets or available resources for You want to make sure that you are creating forms, but you will want to make sure content. Your content is the Yin to the content creation, take into consideration a variety of content types to share on social you have the following mixed into your Yang of social, they work hand-in-hand repurposing already created pieces. media channels so your audience remains content strategy: to drive success. We do this at Marketo to ensure we are engaged. Content is a great way to show extending the life of each piece we create. your expertise and your personality. There • Big rock content pieces like ebooks You need a mix of content to share on your are many purposes for creating content, and Definitive Guides social channels. By showcasing thought Take a webinar for example. After the and although your main goal is building • White papers leadership in each stage of the buying webinar has been recorded, you can turn your brand expertise, you also want to • Tip sheets/checklists cycle, you can move a prospect through it into the following pieces of shareable make sure you integrate your thought • Blog posts your funnel. Many of your customers and content: leadership with fun, shareable pieces. • Infographics prospects are turning to social networks • Videos to consume their news and best practices, • Blog posts The Content Marketing Institute put out a • Fun visual content such as memes so social is the perfect venue for viewing • Whitepaper great diagram to explain content purposes and cartoons and sharing your content. • Slideshare deck and how often each type should be shared • Slideshows • Video on your social channels. • Podcasts Do some research to set up your buyer • Checklists/cheat sheet personas so you know what content will • Podcast resonate the most. The closer you get • Infographic to saying something unique and relatable, the more peer-to-peer engagement and By creating a strategy where you sharing you will experience. repurpose content, creating multiple assets seems much less daunting.

The Content Marketing Institute Content Mix Pyramid 16 part two: laying the foundation Visual content

When we think of content, we often think is that they help tell a story related to your of a compilation of words that tell a story brand. Keep in mind that this doesn’t relevant to our buyer and connect to our mean a sales pitch. Rather, visual content brand. The problem is that our prospects is created with the goal of appealing to have less time to read these words, even your prospects and is meant to offer them when they tell a well-crafted story that a solution for a pain they may have. And can be useful in their jobs. Why? We’re because you have so little time and space in a state of information overflow, and to get your message across in social many are looking for a way to dig out. media, visual content will become a Simultaneously, we have learned to cornerstone of your strategy. digest information faster – sometimes even at a glance. This quick Here are some examples of consumption of data lets us know the Marketo's visual content (clockwise big message and allows us to decide from top right): whether or not we need to keep reading. The headline of an article is commonly True Colors infographic: What your used to make this decision, but how can Brand Colors Says About your Business we rely on more than a headline to get our point across? The Definitive Guide to International Market Expansion cover design The answer is visual content marketing, and it should be a key piece of your social Slideshare: Visual Content marketing content strategy. Visual content Marketing: Capture and Engage marketing is the utilization of images to your Audience engage your prospects through the buying cycle. This can include infographics, Webinar graphic: Visual Content images, charts and graphs, memes, Marketing: Capture and Engage comics, photos, and videos. What’s critical Your Audience

17 part two: laying the foundation Visual note-taking: a deep dive

We are all visual thinkers. 75 percent The early field of visual note-taking, notes, it becomes much easier for an Presenting thoughts and ideas visually of the sensory neurons in our brains was named “Explicit Group Memory” audience to process and understand is a terrific and simple way to capture are processing visual information. by facilitator Geoff Ball, who discovered when learning new things. a conversation and its meaning. Hiring As B2B marketers we are constantly that a shared picture supported group • Enables better understanding of key graphic recorders who sketch what is bombarded with information from learning or more importantly – a lasting takeaways. Our visual boards became discussed at meetings and conferences discussions, presentations, and memory in the group. a piece of content providing a tangible is a great way to keep employees engaged reports, the question arises: how representation, allowing the audience and communicate complex ideas in a do we keep all of this information and At Marketo, we recently employed visual to quickly grasp big ideas and translate meaningful and memorable way. transform it into something organized note-taking for our User Summit. We used their impact and value. and accessible? One way is to use a graphic facilitator to capture visual • Gets attendees to look up from their visual note-taking which finds the right recordings of the keynotes. Sketching devices. Putting pen to paper, or in this mixture of words, illustrations, and notes from each keynote and tracked case sharpie to foamcore, is an antidote designs to capture a subject and make sessions in real time created a record that to the pervasiveness of digital culture. it memorable. is not only memorable, but also one you Studies show it can help retain more might actually want to look at again. (It’s information. This is highly dynamic way of sharing now art hanging in the Marketo office). visual content. The great part of visual note-taking is that it enables you to explain Here are four benefits we reaped a complex idea in a series of simplistic almost immediately from using a diagrams. Visual note-taking can be graphic facilitator to illustrate our a useful tactic during keynote speaking conference sessions and keynotes: sessions at events, can help create a fun and engaging video, and can even be • Extends conversations and builds buzz. used by your sales teams to give unique Immediately after each session, our and compelling presentations. Internally, visual boards were drawing crowds visual note-taking can help aid collaboration who took photos and posted them to and amplify creativity. various social networks right away. • Helps with short term memory cache. By breaking down the information into single chunks illustrated within the visual 18 part two: laying the foundation content Marketing tips

“Traditional marketing talks at people. Content 73% of consumers prefer to get their Make every employee Visualize your keywords marketing talks information about an organization in a content creator Building a word cloud based on with them.” articles rather than advertisements. Encouraging employees to contribute conversations around your brand is a great That means it’s more important than to your blog is a great way to generate way to visualize keywords most associated ever to include custom content in your content internally. Ask your customer with your brand. For example, find a group Doug Kessler overall marketing mix. Generating service and sales teams about their most of tweets that mention your brand, product Content Marketing Expert compelling searchable content that frequently asked questions then have or industry, and drop them into a tag cloud people want to consume can help them write blog posts about the solutions. application such as Wordle. You’ll often drive traffic to your website, attract By developing a blog template, you can find new keywords you may not have and retain a dedicated following, and make it easy for others to contribute. thought of, as well as a few surprise topics greatly increase brand awareness. of association. This is a great way to really Test and evaluate In order to produce quality content Linkedin Today stretch your content dollar and find Of course every target audience is different. you’re going to need a good source of Linkedin Today makes it easy to stay up emerging trends to blog about. When you are sharing your content on your raw material to continually draw upon. to date with the most popular news, blogs, social channels, you will want to test, test, and articles relevant to your business. Eavesdrop test! What is your audience sharing? Here are some tips to keep it fresh: Think of it as your interactive real-time Be nosy. Listen in on conversations offline What are they experiencing as authentic? morning paper. What shows up in your as well as online. Tune in to conversations At Marketo, we try to mix in posts for our Follow industry experts feed is generated directly from the network while waiting in line at Starbucks or at the Definitive Guides with fun marketing A great way to get ideas on what content you’re connected to, bringing you the most table next to you at lunch. Find out what memes that we have created. The fun you should be creating is to follow experts relevant news about the industries and people are talking about and what they pieces encourage your audience to share, and influencers on Twitter. Use relevant topics based on the industries and care about. Use Evernote to jot down builds trust, and ultimately helps you hashtags for search and create lists on sources you find most valuable. Checking and keep track of interesting points you develop brand loyalty. As you continue your top influencers. By tracking these in to Linkedin Today can spark a wealth of overhear and the ideas they spark which to further hone in on your social strategy, tweets, you can determine what people content ideas based around trends and often turn into content and conversational you will get into a rhythm of what content are talking about and create content hot topics relevant to your industry. blog posts. resonates for your audience. around those themes. Also, you can curate content on sites like Flipboard, so you can aggregate both news and social content.

19 part two: laying the foundation Interview: content Marketing expert Rebecca Lieb

M: What are your best tips for businesses M: During your session at ad:tech M: In your book, Content Marketing that are struggling to find content? you mentioned that content is like you talk about how to do a Content Audit. RL: For one thing, businesses have to leftover turkey? How important do you think that is to the start thinking like publishers in order to not RL: I love using the turkey analogy. People overall content marketing strategy? only define content, but also to effectively really get that. You start out with the turkey RL: A content audit is very important use content. It’s very daunting to wake at Thanksgiving and that’s the main event, because it not only assesses what you up every day and find a blank page to fill, and then everybody knows that after have, if you do it correctly it assesses how blank air time or blank podcast time, Thanksgiving you’re eating turkey well it’s working and how it’s working on which is why “real” publications have sandwiches, you have turkey on your a number of levels. So you not only look editorial calendars. salad, and maybe a little turkey hash. at what content you have, but also is it Journalists very quickly learn how to treat professionally produced, is it spelled There’s a degree of predictability in content their stories and their sources like that correctly, is it consistent in style? What Rebecca Lieb Discusses that’s not only very helpful to the business turkey. That’s not meant to sound content is attracting people? You look at Strategy, Influencers, or the publisher who’s publishing that derogatory, but you need to understand your web analytics, and say “oh they like and Leftover Turkey content, but also to the audience. The what your content assets are and how and this”, “they don’t like that”, or “they can’t regularity of these types of features keeps when to use them. find something else”. It evaluates how fresh Rebecca Lieb is an analyst at the people coming back. So in order to and topical your content is. Altimeter Group where she covers digital constantly create new sources of content advertising and marketing. She is the you need a plan, you need an editorial author of 'Content Marketing – How to Use calendar. Content to Market Online and in Social Media' and consults on content strategy for a variety of brands and professional trade organizations.

20 part two: laying the foundation Interview: content Marketing expert Rebecca Lieb

M: Influencer outreach is essential for M: Who are the top content marketing a successful content strategy. What are influencers to follow? Who would you your recommendations for people who recommend adding to your RSS readers? are just starting their influencer outreach? Aside from yourself of course! How do you reach an influencer that may RL: Robert Rose who just coauthored be considered inaccessible? an excellent book on content marketing RL: Not a lot of people are inaccessible with Joe Pulizzi. Joe founded The Content on the web, but what they are is inundated. Marketing Institute and their feed is You know there’s a lot of noise, we all get invaluable and probably the leading a lot of email, we all get a lot of messages publication. For content strategy, there’s and a classic mistake that’s made when Kristina Halvorson who wrote the book on people try to reach influencers by getting the topic. I’m a great admirer of Ann Handley in touch by saying “Hi, I really admire you. and C.C. Chapman who published early Now can you do this thing for me?” books on content marketing before mine What you really have to do first is establish even. Also, Lee Odden is a terrific blogger a relationship with that influencer. Perhaps on this and Sally Falkow is very good in the give them something of value or something public relations range. If you search Twitter, that’s helpful. Take a risk, stick your neck there are some very good Twitter lists of out there and create some dialogue and the leading content marketing influencers. you might be pleasantly surprised. I would suggest following those people and determining who’s right for you and who’s really speaking to your content marketing needs.

21 part three peer-to-peer social sharing

22 part three: Peer-to-peer social sharing why share?

Don’t just do a social campaign, One of the best ways to engage your A recent Nielsen Survey showed that Give People a Reason to Share make every campaign social. Before audience is by providing them with a only 33% of buyers believe what a This is a new way to think about influence. you begin executing on your social compelling reason to share your message brand has to say about itself. In the past, influence used to be simple – strategy, it is important to spend some across social networks in a way that is Because people view any brand-to-buyer there were few influencers and it was your time on ways to make every campaign natural and seamless. Word-of-mouth communication as an advertisement, your PR team’s job to find the right people. social and to understand the benefits marketing and peer recommendations customers are less likely to take your word Social has changed all of that and there of peer-to-peer sharing vs. company- are an extremely powerful way to increase for it. In contrast, the same study is now an exploding amount of influencers. to-buyer sharing. brand visibility, as people will believe their showed that 92% believe what their You want to know who is influential network of peers vs. a brand driven peers have to say about a brand. That to your brand, your products, and your In the past, marketers have thought of social campaign. If your target audience’s friends is what you should be focusing on. campaigns. A great way to do this is by marketing as listening and publishing social and colleagues are talking about your building out campaigns that are conducive content, but instead of viewing social as an product or service, you are more likely to We think the real promise of the social to social sharing. isolated channel, today’s marketer needs gain their trust in a much more meaningful explosion for marketers isn’t about to incorporate it as part of their cohesive way than by running an ad campaign. updating your feed for hundreds or But what makes people share? You will marketing strategy. even thousands of fans. We think it’s want to consider this when you determine about getting your voice heard by the what social sharing campaigns you want At Marketo, we believe there are millions of people out on the social web to set up. 3 parts to social sharing: in a different way – by turning your customers into an army of powerful Here are our top 5 motivators that 1. Give people a reason to share advocates for your brand and creating make people share: 2. Always ask for the right to share thousands of peer-to-peer at the right time recommendations on your behalf. 1. Reputation 3. Make your shares measurable 2. Access to something exclusive 3. Co-creation 4. Competition and winning 5. Altruism

23 part three: Peer-to-peer social sharing why share?

Here are some additional • Refer-a-Friend: This sort of campaign is Use this to create a fun and viral statistics to consider taken from generally centered around a compelling campaign that will increase brand a recent New York Times study offer. You promote your offer via email awareness and increase new on social sharing: marketing and social networks, and customers with sharing. Keep in then you create special offers for both mind the following when creating • 75% say sharing helps them better the “referrers” and the “referees”. If you your Flash Deal: understand and “process” news are utilizing a sharing platform, you can • Offer time period they’re interested in expect to gather metrics such as • Maximum number • 85% say the responses they get biggest influencers. of deals sold from posting to a social media • Social Sweepstakes: Create a contest • Allow users to track site provide more thought and get your entrants to spread the deal’s progress • 94% consider how helpful a link would word on your behalf. Through the • Publish your offer on be to another user before posting it sweepstakes entry you gain important all social networks and • 68% share as an advertisement for user data like who is sharing and where your website themselves, to give others a better they are sharing most. sense of who they are • Polls and Voting: Everyone has an You can create campaigns like this • 73% say it helps them find people opinion and they are usually happy to yourself, or you can do so through a social with common interests share. Take a look at the power of Yelp! application such as Marketo Social Suite. Creating a campaign that engages your The beauty of using an application to assist audience and compels them to share you in creating these sharing campaigns is Be sure to keep in mind these motivators their opinions is a great way to build that you not only have a streamlined way to and stats as you start developing social relationships and get valuable deploy each campaign, but you can also aspects to all of your campaigns. Once information about your target harness powerful metrics that will help you you have created a campaign that you audience’s likes and dislikes. continuously test and innovate. believe is worth sharing, here are some • Flash Deals: This is a concept similar additional ways to incentivize sharing to a Groupon. Many social sharing within your campaigns: applications offer functionality for you to create your own time-sensitive deal.

24 part three: Peer-to-peer social sharing ask for the share

Social Sharing

Always ask for the share If you employ active sharing techniques, at the right time you are asking your audience to share at Now that you have created reasons for the right time. At Marketo, we use Marketo people to share, you want to make sure Social Suite to prompt people to share you are prompting people to share your our message. If you are reading a blog, message at the right time. As social in addition to the social share buttons that sharing has become more important to appear at the top, we also prompt our marketers, the best practice has been to readers to share by having a share box include social sharing links before or after pop up as they are reading the blog, a piece of content. This is passive sharing. reminding them to share. You are creating the opportunity to share, but you are not asking for the share. And if you don’t ask for the share you may be missing out on an important chance to engage with your audience, as they may not notice the sharing buttons or be compelled to use them.

Here is an example of traditional, passive social sharing:

You see the social shares up top, but that is the only place they appear to the reader. You might read this post, and although you By asking your audience to share, you enjoyed it, by the time you get to the end are starting a conversation with them. you might not remember to share. You can also use this technique after a lead downloads a content piece, after they download, ask for the share. Social Sharing 25 part three: Peer-to-peer social sharing Make your shares measurable

Make Your Shares Measurable content? Who did they share your content influencers are, what content they are The Definition of Social When a prospect or customer shares your with? And what are they sharing? Social sharing, and what their networks look like. Validation content, this is a great indicator that they applications like Marketo Social Suite, By analyzing your social sharing metrics, Social validation, or social proofing, is a are an influencer for your brand. create more insight into all of your social you can create A/B testing, so you know psychological phenomenon that occurs Additionally by tracking shares, you can activities so you know who your top what is working and what isn’t. when people do not have enough determine what content is working so you information to make opinions can create more intelligent social independently, and instead look for campaigns over time. external clues like popularity, trust, etc. Social networks play an influential role Remember when you implemented when it comes to mitigating the feeling of marketing automation? (If you haven't yet, risk that overcomes B2B buyers when you should.) You immediately had more trying to solve a problem or purchase a visibility into your campaigns and website. solution. A huge part of this is from the Suddenly, you could track website visits social validation or social proofing inherent and downloads. You knew who was to many social media sites. For example, visiting your website, what pages they sites that focus on bookmarking, ranking, visited, and what content appealed most voting, and commenting all incorporate to them. Additionally, you could track all of social validation when users give their your email campaigns. The increased opinions through comments or ratings. tracking capabilities enabled you to B2B companies can use social validation optimize your processes and messaging. to help increase their credibility and allay their prospects’ fears. By opening your You should be doing the same with your website up to ratings, reviews (and social marketing. Instead of just knowing sometime rants), you’re telling your how many shares you received on Twitter, prospects that you value transparency, are LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, etc, you Marketo Social Suite Dashboard open to feedback, and can be trusted as a want to know everything about each vendor. sharing activity. Who is sharing your

26 part four b2b social media channels and tactics

27 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics Channels and tactics

Social Media Channels and There are many different venues to get Social Networks Tactics for Every B2B Marketer the word out there about your company. This is the bread and butter of your social This is meat of your social marketing These channels are where you will post marketing strategy. You will be spending plan. The types of social media tools your contact and promote peer-to-peer a lot of time on the four major social we’ll cover include: sharing. This is not an exhaustive list, but marketing sites: Facebook, Twitter, we have mentioned some of the major LinkedIn, and Google+. But remember • Channels social channels you should consider. that it is not enough to merely post on • Social Networks these sites, the key is to engage and build Facebook relationships through influence marketing. Twitter LinkedIn Google+ • YouTube • Presentation and Document Sharing “The best way to experiment • Photo and Image Sharing • Q&A Sites in social media is to return • Influence tracking sites to the definition of experimenting: • Tactics • Blogging try something new, as in order • Commenting to gain experience." • Bookmarking • Podcasting Nael Schaffer Author and Social Media expert

28 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics facebook

There are more than 800 million Posting for the sake of posting can • Interactions, comments on Fan pages, • The timeline offers more branding and people using Facebook every day. actually hurt your chances of being seen. and “Likes” about your company lead-capture options. The large cover This platform offers more than just The second you post something that appear in a user’s news feed. “Likes” image presents plenty of room for your a way to stay connected to friends is not engaging or relevant, EdgeRank, will also appear in a box at the top branding and marketing images, so you and family; it is an essential tool in the Facebook's proprietary algorithm to of their page, keeping you prominently can capture the eye of a potential B2B marketing toolbox. Facebook organize your newsfeed, will stop amplifying top of mind. customer and get them on your page. allows your business to be available to your posts and placing them in your fans • The ticker shows a live stream of friends' You can also pin images to the top of people on a trusted, popular platform, newsfeeds (more on that below). activities and conveniently lets users your page and highlight certain images where prospects can see “real” people “Like” a page without leaving their own to enlarge them. (their friends, family or colleagues) Facebook Pages can help your company newsfeed. In other words, Facebook interacting with you and your brand. build awareness, share enthusiasm, create users can easily see when their friends This sets the stage for you to build loyalty, strengthen inbound marketing, and are interacting with or commenting stronger, more immediate promote peer-to-peer sharing. First, let’s about your brand and they can do relationships with them. break down the elements of a Facebook the same. page – and how you can take advantage But, businesses need to strike that critical of them. balance of offering content that is relevant and adds value, with content that just plain Facebook's new timeline: entertains. At Marketo, we like to ask two what you need to know questions before every Facebook Facebook began rolling out its new interaction we plan: timeline format in September 2011. Here’s how it better serves B2B companies: 1. Does this help our brand's likeability? 2. Is this interesting, engaging, useful • The “scrapbook” style lets you content? prominently display key snapshots of your business' brand, marketing focus, and gives you the ability to tell a story and to highlight your company’s milestones. Marketo’s current Facebook Page

29 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics facebook

EdgeRank explained When it comes to Facebook marketing, The next logical question is, “How do Keep your interactions up by posting more The content you create and share is your you can use two metrics to measure your we increase our interaction and sharing?” often and by being online and available “make-or-break” component on success: engagement rate and the To boost interaction, businesses need right after you post. In other words, don't Facebook. To get the most out of your “people are talking about this” rating. to post more often and engage their post and go to bed. And keep in mind that Facebook page and presence, your posts’ consumers in a two-way dialogue. More a post posed as a "question" tends to appearing on your fans' newsfeeds is • Your engagement rate can be than 70% of interactions occur during drive more interaction than one written as essential. This is where EdgeRank determined by dividing your total “Likes” the first hour after a post is made. a statement. becomes important. EdgeRank is and comments by your total number Facebook's algorithm that personalizes of fans (Likes + Comments/Total # users’ newsfeeds and inserts posts it of Fans). That’s why your posts need thinks will interest them. In very simplified to be engaging and spark a reaction. terms, if users (or their friends) are A high engagement rate helps you build Marketo’s “talking about interacting with your company/brand on your EdgeRank and gets you seen this” metric a fairly frequent basis, you show up; if not, more often. you get dropped. • Your “people are talking about this” rating is basically your “buzz” metric. It measures who's talking about you or “Even when you are marketing to your entire your posts on their pages and can be audience or customer base, you are still simply found in your page’s Facebook insights as well as on your page. For example, speaking to a single human at any given time. on Marketo's Facebook page, the Worry less about sounding professional and "talking about this" number is located worry more about creating remarkable content on the profile page just under the cover photo and the chart below that is that other humans can relate to.” trending that number. It basically shows when Marketo’s activities in the real, Ann Handley virtual, or social worlds are sparking Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs conversation on Facebook.

30 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics facebook

How to see and be seen Visual content is critical to sharing and Remember that Facebook's EdgeRank maintaining EdgeRank. On Facebook, algorithm rewards pages in the newsfeed people love sharing visual content, so you based on the number of interactions want to make sure that you are leveraging a page receives. An interaction can be something that is visually stimulating. At defined as a summary of "Likes," posts, Marketo, we use a variety of visual content or comments about the page. on our Facebook page to get engagement from our followers. To show up in as many users' top newsfeeds as possible, your content Here are some examples of some must be fresh, engaging, current, and visual content we share on Facebook: compelling. Then it becomes a cycle; Meme created to encourage Killing time infographic to you post content that gets “Likes” and likes and shares be posted on social networks comments, and your future content appears in the newsfeeds of those that “Liked” and commented on earlier content.

Don’t forget: as prospects interact with you through “Likes,” reposts, or shares, you should be tracking engagement.

Visual graphic depicting a stat Event graphic created to post to be displayed on social networks on social networks

31 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics facebook

Facebook Groups Facebook Promoted Posts Facebook suggests using Promoted Here is an example of a very successful The Group feature is useful for Promoted posts show up in the newsfeed Posts for any of the following to get you Promoted Post we did at Marketo: demonstrating your company’s passion for of all your fans and are visible to their more exposure: a topic, and gathers like-minded people to friends as well. It becomes a sponsored Typically, <20% of your fans will naturally share ideas. The best part is that the more story that is seen by more people than a • Unique, vibrant, and interesting see any post, 35% at best, often less. people join your group, the more it gets regular post, so be sure that when you do photos and videos In this case only 8,847 saw it 'organically', promoted to their friends and networks, choose to promote a post, it is strong, • Offers (still in beta) and for a budget of $200, the promoted increasing the group’s popularity and current, and compelling. • Exclusive events or news post added 34,759 views. This was almost growth. Creating a Facebook Group • Questions 5x the number of views that we would have is a great way for businesses to create It is pretty safe to say that businesses will received organically. awareness, increase inbound links and never be able to compete with posts that We found the magic formula for foster loyalty. are strictly entertainment-based or for promoted posts to be this: Clever social purposes only. But by using this messaging with a fun visual, all Facebook Lists promoted post feature, you can call tied back to a strong offer or piece Facebook launched this feature in attention to posts that you believe will of content. response to Google+’s circles, so it generate the most impact. functions in a very similar way. You can subscribe to and organize lists for different topics or influencers you want to follow. As an example, you might have a list for “Here’s the elevation principle formula: social media influencers and another list for competitors. Through lists you can Great content plus other people minus easily view and post to select groups or marketing messages equals growth.” a company, which makes it easier for you to monitor and engage. Michael Stelzner Cofounder of Social Media Examiner

32 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics facebook

Facebook Ads apps. Four of these apps are shown by Marketo’s Facebook Apps If you do use Facebook ads , they need default, with the remaining apps under to appeal to your audience, think outside the fold and only visible by clicking and “A brand is no longer what we tell the box. Use eye catching pictures and expanding the tab on the right. Although the consumer it is – it is what compelling language. Remember: you’re you cannot move the photo app as the competing for attention in a noisy default, you can control which other three consumers tell each other it is.” environment. Here’s an example of how apps show above the fold. It’s important we managed to break through the noise to optimize these three and rotate them Scott Cook with our Facebook ad: frequently with fresh offers. Co-Founder of Intuit Allowing you to change the apps appearing above the fold is one of the most interactive and engaging portions Facebook Key Metrics of the timeline and your best chance to showcase a call to action or offer that • Likes will convert. Take this into consideration • Posts when selecting the display images of • People are talking about this your apps. Consider the image a small • Engagement rate advertisement rather than an image. Facebook Apps Before the timeline changes took place, We’ve even developed a custom you could capture “Likes” via your application within Facebook that welcome page by gating your content and incentivizes “Likes” of our offers. This encouraging users to “Like” your page for form syncs with Marketo and captures access to this exclusive content. This has the lead in real time while offering the gone away with timeline. Now Facebook user a frictionless experience because gives you the option to feature up to twelve they can fill it in without leaving Facebook.

33 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics Interview: Facebook Expert Dennis Yu

M: How many people on average really M: What is your number one tip for M: How do you determine who to target see a business page’s post and what businesses trying to break through specifically? percentage of their following is Facebook EdgeRank with an organic post? DY: You have to know who your audience actually showing it to? DY: I’ll give you one and half tips. If you can is. If you are selling marketing automation DY: Facebook’s number is 16%, but that get more engagement against a particular software, and it’s targeted to small is a confounded number because there post, you’re going to have more power in businesses all of the way up to enterprise are a lot of small businesses, and it’s easy the news because it generates more corporations, well that audience could to get 16% exposure if you have only potential connections. Lots of people are potentially be 2 million people. If you don’t 100 fans. If you are beyond small business saying that if you advertise you will rank have the budget for 2 million people and I mean 100 plus employees, the real better organically in Facebook because or if you don’t have the time to make 100 number is about 5%. If you have 20,000 Facebook doesn’t discount the ad driven different micro targeted ads, then what fans, you’re lucky if you can even get interactions that occur. you do is set up one or two ads starting Dennis Yu on Breaking a 1,000 people or even 2,000 people at 5 or 10 bucks a day. Edgerank & Creating to see your posts. But you asked how do you do it Kick-A** Ads organically. Well, you have to use other We call this a mega ad. You create one ad sources of traffic to drive people to the that has everything in it and then you start Dennis Yu is co-founder and CEO Facebook page and to that post. If you use to do A/B testing. You keep promoting to of BlitzLocal.com, providing leading edge things like the comments plug-in, any the winners, “it seems like what might be local search solutions for regional, national interaction that occurs on Facebook will working here is people who are 25 plus”, and international multi-location and show-up on the website at the same time. and “I am going to take not just the people franchised enterprises. Over the last 3 who are in marketing, but I am going to years, he has guided the development of narrow it down to those people who are an ad serving platform that garners PPC, B2B marketing and Director, Marketing SEO, email, and facebook advertising, Vice President, Executive and I am going optimizing campaigns to online and offline to also say those people who are friends conversions via phone, lead generation, or fans”. Then keep narrowing down and online ordering, and coupon redemption. take the offspring of this mastered ad.

34 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics Interview: Facebook Expert Dennis Yu

M: What’s the best tool to find M: What would you recommend recommended targets for you? as the best resources for staying DY: There is nothing better than up today on Facebook changes? Facebook’s own tool which is free to DY: I don’t think there’s really a better use. You don’t even have to create an resource than allfacebook.com and ad account to get access. To make an insightfacebook.com. If you are a developer account, you go to facebook.com/ads/ or if you are sort of technical, I would manage and go in and say, “I want to recommend developers.facebook.com. know how many females there are who That’s where they post things when there live in San Francisco, who have this kind are breaking changes, where an FBML of degree, who went to Stanford and who is going to break, or when there is a new like healthcare”. I can do that and get ad format that you need to take care of. exactly how many there are. If you’re new to Facebook marketing, I would just go to facebook.com/marketing If you are spending enough money, you because it has all the different resources can use Power Editor as well. It can target Facebook wants you to read. people by where they are in their life – say are they looking for a car, they have an auto intended category, just got married- you can combine that with a particular interest targets.

35 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics Twitter

In 2007, Twitter began as what many Think of Twitter as the water cooler for considered to be a flash-in-the-pan B2B marketers: It’s a vibrant community social media outlet, but as of 2012, where businesses can prospect leads and Twitter had over 500 million registered congregate as thought leaders to discuss users and is one of the 10 most popular relevant industry topics. B2B marketers sites on the Internet – anything but are always striving to provide good content a passing phase. Companies that lack in an easily digestible and timely format. a strategic, lead-generating plan of On Twitter, it is easy to quickly compose attack for their Twitter accounts are Tweets and messages aimed at those losing out on access to a huge interested in your company or product. potential customer base and the opportunity to showcase themselves At Marketo, we are always seeking as social savvy, relevant businesses. marketing avenues that allow for Being followed on Twitter is an continuous, real-time engagement with incredibly strong signal of online our customers and prospects. Twitter affinity for your business. These happens to be one of our most effective self-selected prospects are indicating prospecting channels. We use it to get the an active interest in your brand and word out to customers about specific are asking to hear more from you. product offerings and as a forum for potential customers to discover and learn more about us and what we offer. Quick Tip: You will also want to make sure that your Twitter handle is short, as you only have 140 characters to complete your post. Having a short Marketo's Twitter page Twitter handle will help your followers when they re-tweet you.

36 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics Twitter

Twitter following Tips for following • Create lists. By creating a list you can Becoming someone’s follower easily segment people who you are on Twitter accomplishes four goals: • Find people to follow by importing following. As an example you can create your contact databases using tools a list for hot prospects, customers, and • You identify Twitter accounts that will that Twitter provides. Then, broaden one for competitors. be relevant and interesting to you, your this action by following those that your organization and your industry. followers are following – where relevant. Tools to manage • You let people know that you’re on Be sure to also follow people that your Twitter followers Twitter, and encourage them to follow competitors are following. With so many people to follow, you back. • Do a search for experts in the field sometimes it is tough to keep track. • You associate yourself with a specific who are tweeting. You can find people Plus, as you follow more people, group of industry experts and thought to follow on sites like Wefollow.com you notice the number of irrelevant leaders, and demonstrate your interest or Twibes.com. Tweets start adding up. There are in the space. • If possible, try to make sure to follow many tools out there that can help • Twitter is a great platform for back relevant people and companies you get rid of people who aren't engagement, so once you follow that are following you. You don’t want following you, reciprocate follows, someone on Twitter you can work to upset prospects, customers or cleanup inactives, and follow new on starting a conversation. partners by not following them! people based on similar interests. • Twitter provides easy search Here are 5 tools that can easily help functionality so that you can find you manage your Twitter followers: people that are talking about your company and your industry. Spend 1. tweepi.com some time trying out different searches 2. friendorfollow.com and hashtags that are relevant to your 3. untweeps.com business. Once you find the people 4. refollow.com who are contributing most to the 5. foller.me conversation, start following them.

37 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics Twitter

Twitter 101 : Getting started • You can also engage Twitter followers and influencers by including an @ • Always use a URL shortener like Bit.ly. mention in your tweets. You can do this They are also often built into other when you post content you think will tools such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck. resonate with an influencer. An easy You only have 140 characters, so make format to follow is tweeting with a link it count! to relevant content and then including • The symbol # on Twitter is known the @ mention at the end of the tweet. as a hashtag. These tags are used • Use Twitter lists to segment users by to affiliate a tweet with a certain topic interest or group together brand and can be useful for tracking social advocates and your favorite twitter marketing campaigns and connecting users. Keep in mind that when you add with customers. You can develop your a user to a public list they are notified own hashtags to try and promote a viral and the list is open and searchable to all following for a specific topic or campaign. users. A private list, which may be used • Avoid the temptation to use tools that for competitors, is only visible to you. send automatic direct messages. • Use Twitter during events and to These types of messages are often promote things like contests. A great construed as spam and may cause way to engage your Twitter followers people to “unfollow” you. is to create a contest that asks followers to contribute in some way. • You want your Twitter feed to be a mix of Tweets you’ve created, as well as replies and retweets. An example of Marketo's Twitter feed

38 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics Twitter

Tweetchats #blogchat #mmchat A Twitter chat is a public conversation on Topic: Blogging Topic: Marketer Monday Twitter based around a unique hashtag. Host: @MackCollier Hosts: @TheSocialCMO @JeffAshcroft The hashtag allows you to follow the When: Sundays 9PM ET When: Mondays 8PM ET discussion and easily participate in it. Most Why it’s cool: This is supposed to be What’s smart: Most recent topic: Twitter chats are usually recurring and on the largest Twitter chat on the web and “Would You Join Your Own Community?” specific topics but some are also based every last week of the month users pick Get the chance to meet social marketing around special events. Hosting a Twitter the topic. experts from leading firms every week. chat is an amazing way to engage with your fans and followers. In addition, this is #socialmedia #bizforum a great way to better understand and grow Topic: Social Media Topic: Trending Business Topics your community and to promote your Host: @JasonBreed @marc_meyer Host: @samfiorella brand and business. When: Tuesday at 12PM ET When: Wednesdays 8PM ET What’s good: There is a huge archive What’s awesome: Unlike other chats Five Great Weekly Tweetchats of 130+ chats. Check out the transcripts participants are encouraged to agree for Marketers here and check out some serious thought or disagree and really get to the root of the (Taken from http://under30ceo.com/25- leadership by attendees. issue. Hashtag also features the question twitter-chats-every-entrepreneur-must- of the day. know/) #b2bchat Topic: B2B Marketing Best Practices Host: @b2b_chat @andrewspoeth @ b2bento @cuferg @kseniacoffman When: Thursdays 8PM ET What’s cool: This group features its own LinkedIn group http://linkd.in/qJtYFg exclusive to B2B marketers.

39 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics Twitter

Promoted Tweets in timelines We always see significant spikes in Influencer marketing on Twitter A Twitter strategy we have used with great relevant Tweets during industry events. Twitter is a fantastic platform to learn success is launching Promoted Tweets in We decided to capitalize on that and use who your influencers are. Because “The internet timelines targeted to followers and users Promoted Tweets in search results during Twitter is designed for quick exchanges has turned who are similar to our followers. Our key B2B conference dates. This allowed of information and shares, you can start Promoted Tweets contain timely and us to be part of relevant conversations to keep track of who is re-tweeting your what used to be engaging content like contests for trips when the conversations are hot. By content and engaging in conversations. a controlled, to industry events and links to thought- targeting event-specific hashtags and leadership pieces. Every Promoted Tweet relevant keywords like “B2B” and “lead Remember to reach out to your top one-way message that we run goes to a gated resource page. management,” we are where we need sharers to create relationships. They into a real-time We set up a series of three Tweets per to be at prime lead-generating moments. may be interested in doing a guest blog campaign and rotate them accordingly. Being a part of real-time conversations or allowing you to do a guest blog on their dialogue with For timelines, we run three Tweets on one means pouncing on real-time opportunities. site. The more you engage directly with millions." campaign for three days at a time. your top influencers, the more they will continue to promote your content. Promoted Tweets in search @daniellesacks For search Tweets, we run two offers Senior Writer every two weeks with three different at Fast Company Tweets focusing on fifteen keywords and five countries. We have found through trial and error that it’s more about the offer than about the money spent. Fresh relevant content offers with the right messaging yields CTRs of up to 17% with a cost-per- prospect coming in at around $14 each. This, of course, will vary based on your offer and the relevancy of your content.

An example of a Marketo Promoted Tweet 40 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics Twitter

What to tweet Remember, your content should create What’s great about this approach is that it To some, this may sound backwards or value and ultimately, be helpful to your lets you engage in the conversation, build surprising, but do not use Twitter to only network. In B2B marketing, re-tweeting awareness, and keep in touch with your promote your company. Sure, calling out material that will be helpful to your network followers without coming across as pushy your company's new ebook or webcast is is good, but writing your own informational or too “me” focused. We’ve been trying to an important part of your tweeting. But if material is even better. If your network follow it at Marketo for our Twitter updates you never contribute to the conversations (specifically, customers and prospective as well as our Facebook updates, and taking place, if you never offer something buyers) benefit from something you tweet so far results are positive. As you plan out personal or fun or funny, you are missing about, they will remember you and your the cadence of updates you’ll send, try the prime opportunity unique to Twitter. business. scheduling four educational or entertaining Twitter is about building relationships; Tweets mixed with one “soft promotion” it is about reciprocity. Engage and be Here is that word of caution mentioned (e.g. attend an event) and one “hard engaged. Be a part of the flow of earlier: As with anything, a little self promotion” (e.g. download a free trial information. Don't be a broken record promotion is good for business but if your or apply for an account). repeatedly rattling off the company's entire tweet history is only about you and tagline. It’s in your best interests to pay your company, you’ve got it wrong. Keep attention to what your customers and in mind the 4-1-1 rule: Twitter Key Metrics prospective customers are tweeting about and to respond accordingly. The 4-1-1 rule for Twitter was popularized • Followers by Tippingpoint Labs and Joe Pulizzi, • Mentions founder of Junta42 and the Content • Retweets Marketing Institute. For every one self- • Retweet/reply reach serving Tweet, you should re-tweet one • Number of lists relevant Tweet and most importantly • Social Capital – influence share four pieces of relevant content of twitter followers written by others. • Number of potential prospects sent to sales

41 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics linkedin

As a leading social networking site Here are some tips to get started • Recommendations: After you create • Offers: The Products and Services for professionals, LinkedIn is perfect on creating your LinkedIn page: your Products and Services Page, you Page now has a Promo box. This is for B2B organizations, as the focus is can begin using recommendations. a great place to include contests, on education, work history, companies • Give a voice to your products: The new This gives current customers or promotions, and discounts. Use this and professional interests. Products Page allows you to assign employees a forum to recommend area to drive additional traffic to your members of your organization to your products and services to others. website. Build out your company different product offerings so prospects • Videos: You can now post videos LinkedIn Profile know exactly who to get in touch with. directly to LinkedIn on your Products Companies can build a profile on LinkedIn This is a great way to start and Services Page. Place them next that showcases products, employee conversations between top prospects to product descriptions to get the networks, blog posts, upcoming events, and product managers, sales, and most value and visibility. and status updates. Much like Twitter or support staff within you organization. Facebook, users on LinkedIn can follow your profile to learn more about your company. You can also post jobs on LinkedIn, making it a great venue for recruiting top candidates.

Marketo’s LinkedIn page

42 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics L inkedIn

Build a LinkedIn Group around Encourage your employees • Write a summary in the first person and • Create ads that work for your target your company’s specializations to participate think of it as a “greatest hits collection”. audience: When you develop an ad and core competencies LinkedIn is a great venue for your employees Include keywords and add a bit of your on LinkedIn you will be asked to select The Groups feature is a great way to to both promote your brand and their own own personality your demographics based on role, title, demonstrate thought leadership around personal brands. Employee contributors • Under “Specialties”, include a line list industry, geography, and a variety of a specific area – and to gain insight into should post your company blogs on their all skills one on top of the other to make other criteria. Remember to think about the pain points of potential customers. LinkedIn status updates and join relevant your profile easy to read your keywords when working in each Encourage customers to use this as groups. The more evangelists you have on • Make sure to add plenty of skills demographic. An ad geared towards a forum for discussions and assign LinkedIn, the more opportunity you have to in the “Skills” section a practitioner will be different than an someone to monitor your group. The become a thought leader in your space. • Move recommendations closer ad geared towards an executive moderator should post responses and to the top level prospect. keep the conversation going. LinkedIn LinkedIn and SEO • Think about your call to action: As with Groups makes it easy for B2B companies LinkedIn is fantastic for SEO and having LinkedIn Advertising your ad copy, you want to make sure to locate potential customers. Simply properly optimized pages, both company Like Facebook Ads and Promoted Tweets, that your call to action is appropriate to make a list of keywords that relate to your and employee can boost SEO and organic LinkedIn advertising can get your message your target audience. If it is a piece of prospects or the industries you target, visibility. across to the right audience. LinkedIn ads content think about whether your target and run a search for any LinkedIn Groups work like PPC , and because LinkedIn audience will resonate with that contact. related to these keywords. Once you find Encourage employees to optimize holds valuable demographic information, Additionally, make sure that you are the right groups, participate in discussions, their pages by using the following this may be a great platform for you to utilizing one call to action per ad so that ask questions and make connections. quick tips: reach your target audience. When you set you give your prospect clear direction. up a LinkedIn profile, you put in information • Include a professional headshot such as title, role, company, work • Include keywords in job position title experience etc, and LinkedIn can use • Link to company blog under “Websites” that information to help very specifically • Add Twitter handle target advertising. • Claim unique URL and then drop it into email signatures

43 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics L inkedIn

Other important LinkedIn tips • Use LinkedIn Answers to ask thought- provoking questions or become an • Try to get recommendations from “expert” by providing valuable answers “If you make customers unhappy others that include positive comments and demonstrating thought leadership. in the physical world, they might about your company. These comments LinkedIn Answers are a great way for contribute to social validation about you to showcase your interests, expertise each tell 6 friends. If you make your organization when people view and problem-solving capabilities to customers unhappy on the Internet, your page. Do this for both personal entire networks of people, which can profiles and for your company profile, indirectly drive interest in your company they can each tell 6,000 friends.” as it allows for reviews as well. and new business • Pay attention to the network updates • Promote events on LinkedIn. Jeff Bezos you receive from LinkedIn, as they The events section of LinkedIn allows CEO at Amazon.com share important updates about your event organizers to post events and connections and can hold the key encourages those attending to RSVP to new business opportunities for for the event. This promotes additional you and your company. visibility and encourages sharing.

LinkedIn Key Metrics

• Followers • Referring Traffic • References • Group Members • Discussions Created

44 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics Goo gle+

Google+ is quickly becoming a key part About Page Make sure to include information that The “Party Mode” feature of Events allows of any business’ social media strategy. An essential but often overlooked first step, searchers will want to know about your everyone in attendance to instantly upload Boasting 150 million active users and the about page is a fantastic opportunity company. Take advantage of the fact that pictures to the same album using the 250 million total users as of June 2012, to give a quick overview of what your Google+ allows you to use bullets in your Google+ mobile app, creating a living, this social network is going to grow business is all about. You can also link description, which makes it simple to real-time photo journal of a specific time very quickly as Google is making a back to specific pages and services from create an easy-to-read list of your products and place. You can then show the photos Google+ account mandatory for all this page directing potential customers and services. You can also include links off in chronological order as a slideshow all Gmail users. Google+ is also playing to the most important pages on your to specific pages and a contact form. Test within Google+. a major role in SEO by making it easier website. It’s important to have a balance and track different variations to see what for marketers to show up in search of marketing savvy copy that’s also works best for your business. Circles results. SEO friendly. This functionality allows a marketer to Google Events segment their followers. Unlike other social Google recently announced the Events networks, through Circles, marketers can feature which allows G+ users to send develop personas and communicate out customized invitations to anyone highly segmented messaging to each regardless of whether or not they are audience. This allows you to have a more G+ users. It syncs beautifully with Google authentic dialogue with your key Calendar and shows up automatically prospects. when a user confirms for an event. Hangouts In addition to sending out invites to Use Google+ Hangouts for video webinars, work functions, parties, etc., conferencing. Again, the beauty here is Google Events can also send out invites that it is highly integrated with other Google for Google Hangouts. This could be the applications. So, if you use Google apps catalyst that gets your business on board for your business, Hangouts can be a to start using Hangouts or increase the quick and easy way to connect teams and Marketo’s Google+ page awareness and attendance of the ones get some face time with a prospect. you are already hosting.

45 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics Goo gle+

Claim your ownership of content The business benefits for setting • Protects the original post’s ranking Google is aggressively using SEO benefits up Google Authorship position as higher than a post that to entice webmasters and bloggers to has scraped or syndicated the engage with Google+. Google Authorship • Increases awareness of your overall original content is how Google authenticates and will Google+ profile page • Studies have shown that increasingly begin to “trust” you as a • Adds a human element to your Google Authorship increases quality source of content. Setting up content and increases trustworthiness click-through-rates Google Authorship is simple and • Helps your content stand out from straightforward. You identify yourself to the crowded search page results Google+ Key Metrics Google through your Google+ profile and • Improves your chances of showing then link back to it from your content and up in more personalized search results • Circle Adds/ Followers vice versa. • Mentions

Google authorship is the easiest way to take advantage of the SEO benefits of Google+. Doing so will allow the author’s picture to show up next to his blog posts in Google search results, causing higher rankings and click through rates.

Example of Google Authorship

46 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics Y outube

Video is now an essential part of any Optimize your channel Encourage comments Publish online videos on your website successful social marketing and lead Your channel description should include a When a video receives higher ratings and and landing pages generation strategy. Not convinced? keyword rich description since this section more comments, YouTube sees these as With sites such as YouTube, you can easily According to Forbes, three-quarters represents the meta data that is searched indications of higher quality, more relevant host videos on your landing pages and of executives surveyed said they watch by Google. Each section of your profile videos. Your goal should be to generate as websites by using the links and embed work-related videos on business- is a chance to add in your business' most many ‘thumbs up’ ratings and comments code that YouTube provides. related websites at least weekly; more important keywords. as you can for SEO purposes. than half watch work-related videos on Get into video viral marketing YouTube at least weekly. Optimize individual videos Commenting on other popular videos Video sites provide you with the links to let Your video description should be 2 or 3 in your niche is another way to generate you share with others or include the videos When optimizing this channel for lead gen sentences that include targeted keywords. more comments and ratings. It’s also on your own site. Determine which videos the first step is to create videos that both It’s also a best practice to include a a great opportunity to present yourself would be useful to prospects and include entertain and educate. Your goals should shortened link with a call to action driving as an expert by making a comment that these links in your emails, blog posts, and be based on increasing awareness, traffic to your website or a landing page actually gets liked by the viewers. other outbound communications. demonstrating products, sharing with a specific offer. Remember, always be thinking about knowledge, and humanizing the company. Increase awareness for your company making your content more shareable. The next step is to optimize these videos The tagging feature is the way that Many of your prospects are probably with targeted keywords giving them YouTube determines the relevance of your already registered users of these video a much better chance of reaching page asset and groups similar videos together. sites. Make online videos part of your one in Google search. 5-7 tags are optimal and will ensures your marketing asset strategy – you’ll have a video is associated with other videos that presence on sites that your prospects are use the same tags so they can appear as already visiting, while looking like a thought a “related video” when users are viewing leader in your industry. other videos. Generate new leads Use videos to promote lead generation by putting links to offers for additional content like whitepapers or webinars at the bottom or end of the video. 47 part four: b2b social “We’re living media channels and tactics at a time when attention is the new currency. Y outube Those who insert themselves into as many channels as possible look set to capture Increase social shares through video You can also separate this content out YouTube Key Metrics the most value.” Video content is a great asset to promote by using channels and by customizing social sharing. Integrate videos in your those channels with your company • Referrals social campaigns to further increase logo and branding. • Views of videos Pete Cashmore engagement, as videos often have high • Pages ranking on key terms Founder of mashable.com share rates compared to other types • Subscribers of assets. • Shares

Promotional and sales-focused videos are acceptable and useful. Unlike whitepapers, online videos can be product oriented and promotional, such as:

• Product demos • Customer testimonials • Speaking engagements • Holiday video cards • Vblog (video blog) entries • User generated content • Company culture videos

Marketo's YouTube page

48 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics P resentation and d ocument sharing

While many B2B marketers may be Audit the content on your corporate hesitant to release their content for website and upload key pieces to the right free, social media sites require a shift sites. Think of these sites as an extension in mindset. B2B prospects are already of the “Resources” or “Downloads” section educating themselves about your on your company website, with the added company’s offerings long before they benefit of even greater exposure. get in touch with you – so it makes sense to take advantage of this and Upload and share content that addresses start nurturing them right away via your buyer personas and start to track sites such as SlideShare and Scribd. which sites are most popular with each Plus, the more places your content is persona. You can then refine which topics displayed, the more SEO you have and and content work best on different sites. the more chances you are giving your Types of content you share should include audience to share. infographics, slide decks, and webinar slides. Make sure that all of your presentations are optimized for SEO.

Marketo’s SlideShare page

49 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics P resentation and d ocument sharing

SlideShare Keys to a successful Presentation and Document We recently experienced great success SlideShare launch Sharing Key Metrics “Marketing is the using SlideShare as a channel to promote our content. While working with Column 1. Make it a part of something bigger. • Referrals from presentation/ art and science Five, we created a slide presentation called Our SlideShare presentation is a part document sharing sites of choosing target “How to Build a Better Inbound Marketing of a much larger content initiative. • Views on presentation/document Machine”. In just over four weeks, our At Marketo, we build our editorial sharing sites markets and presentation was viewed more than calendar around monthly themes • Pages ranking on key terms from building profitable 133,000 times and shared hundreds of and then put together the content presentation/document sharing sites times across the socialsphere. pieces to support that theme, • Subscribers to company profile relationships with including, but not limited to, or pages them; it’s the art Pretty impressive numbers and we want SlideShare decks, white papers, to explain how we got them. Of course, blog posts, email campaigns, and of demand it is not an exact science. But we found infographics. management” that putting in place the following elements 2. Base your presentation on a topic to promote and build awareness around in which you are an expert. our SlideShare presentation gave us a 3. Take it on the road. Present your Phillip Kotler much better chance of garnering plenty SlideShare deck at company meeting, Professor and Marketing of views and shares. user groups, meetups, and conferences. 4. Use both paid and earned media in your Guru promotion strategy. 5. Work with a partner who understands your goals.

Marketo's success with our Inbound Marketing SlideShare deck 50 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics P interest

Photo and Image Sharing • Appeals to emotions: Visual content Pinterest Pinterest pages can also be used for a The ease at which you can share photos appeals to the viewer’s emotions in a Pinterest is virtual scrapbook or pinboard landing page for an email campaign, event, and images with others is a huge boon way that text is unable to. Thanks to the that allows users to share and organize or presentation. The boards provide a for B2B companies. It lets you record and simplicity of photo and image sharing visual imagery. A user can pin anything unique way of organizing content to be increase the visibility of company events, applications, text is an afterthought. from around the web and other users can visually appealing to your prospect. industry conferences, user groups and • Creates intimacy: Photos help open re-pin their images. Users organize their more. Prospects and customers love the personal side of your company. Pinterest pages by categorizing content Make sure you are including a good content visual content, so make sure you are Now customers and prospects can on boards. mix in your Pinterest boards. Followers will consistently using images in your relate to your brand message via photos. want to see a combination of business and marketing mix. Why are photos king? • Engages: Photo and image sharing For businesses, Pinterest can be a way culture content. At Marketo, our boards Here are our top reasons why you should applications provide the perfect to curate visual content like infographics, range from info on marketing automation, use photos and images as part of your opportunity for your business to engage videos, company culture, and even blog infographics, blogs, to office fun. Just marketing campaigns. customers in a fun way through contests posts. Pinterest can help promote make sure all of your content is visually and other image-centric campaigns. creativity, but always make sure that your appealing and interesting content is relevant to your audience.

Marketo Pinterest boards

51 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics P interest

Advertising and infographics rule • Content: Do you have some interesting Get followed: SEO is important the B2B marketing pins content that has done well on other Pinterest’s search is mainly how people Today, B2B marketers can get tons social channels? Why not pin it? Just as find you and your pins, and it is all about of great examples of award winning the Facebook audience is different from keywords. For example, a picture of a fish infographics and advertising campaigns the Twitter audience, Pinterest allows with no description will not be found in on Pinterest. When pinning, pin the most you to appeal to a more visually focused a search for “fish”. However, simply adding visually interesting aspect of what you are crowd that may not be spending their a description (adjectives help!) will sharing, like a special banner, slide, or slow hours on Facebook or Twitter. immediately get eyes on your pin. cover page to get the most engagement • Design: Are you a design forward Load up relevant, popular keywords in the and to make your brand look like it company? Or do you typically develop description of your pins and boards and belongs. design-forward campaigns? Pinterest is you are guaranteed to get more views/ all about the visual, so leverage the fact likes/follows. It’s a great opportunity for additional that graphic designers are one of the promotion of B2B campaigns most prolific groups of pinners, get your Fresh content creates the most waves The pinning of handbags and skirts, creative team to pin their work to inspire Just like any other social media platform, directly or through fans, is a great way and be inspired! Pinterest rewards those that bring fresh for retailers to socially market their goods, • Marketing: Just as designers pin and content. So while it’s very easy to fill a but companies that sell $20k consulting re-pin designs that inspire them, board with re-pins, ultimately the fastest packages or $400k aircraft engines still marketers pin and re-pin campaigns way to increase your followership is by don’t have Pinterest in their marketing that inspire them. Start a company pinning new and interesting items. plans. Should they? If they care about board to show your peers the beauty or spend money on any of the following, of your marketing and build your then the answer is definitely “yes”. reputation among prospects and possible job candidates as a top tier • SEO: While there are many theories marketing company. Next, start a board about how the big search engines score with pins of others’ marketing social media linking, connecting campaigns that inspire you. Pinterest can certainly help your efforts.

52 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics i Nstagram

Instagram is a photo sharing app that At its core, the curate stage is about providing a way for people to find can have some relevance to the B2B determining what will make your fans photos through a simple search. market, especially with Facebook’s engage with your brand in a positive Hashtags are especially useful as you recent acquisition of the application. manner and creating a plan of execution. seek to establish your brand as an Having more than 27 million users, industry leader and get more followers. Instragram has a very active user base. 2. Snap: The time has come to start Implement hashtags that are unique Use Instagram for capturing event and snapping photos! Consider the to your brand and industry, as well as office culture photos. You can also following objectives as you create hashtags that are popular keywords. leverage the application to run your visual content: And remember to use hashtags on all contests and scavenger hunts. of your posts. • Make it exclusive: Post images The 4 stages of Instragram for B2B that can only be seen on Instagram. 4. Engage: Engagement with potential • Make it visually engaging: Instragram customers and sharing are the primary 1. Curate: Before you begin snapping users are savvy, creative, and know reasons to utilize a platform such as photos and engaging viewers, it’s up a lackluster photo when they see Instragram. Luckily, there are a variety Photos from Marketo’s to you to create a plan to help you one. Don’t post a photo unless it has of ways for B2B companies to do this: Instragram feed curate fans of your company. Ask aesthetic appeal. questions like: • Make it personal: Post photos of your • Events: Post photos of events Photo and Image Sharing Key Metrics employees at work to give viewers you host for your current and • What does my target audience and potential customers’ personal potential clients • Referrals from photo sharing sites want to see? insight into the inner workings of your • Geolocation: Use the geolocation • Views of photos on social sites • How can I get them to engage company. Viewers want to feel like feature to provide yet another point • Subscribers to your photo with my photos? they are part of something, and this of engagement with your viewers profile or pages • What will get them talking about inside glimpse works wonders. • Gamification: Hold a contest for • Page rankings on key terms my company? your audience. Have viewers from photo sharing sites 3. Hashtag: The Instragram hashtag submit photos, provide captions, • Repins and pinterest board follows is a powerful feature to engage your or solve a puzzle about your photos. viewers. Hashtags act as keywords

53 Q& A sites

Q&A sites provide a platform for users Link Building to ask questions, provide answers, and Since many of these sites rank very high discuss topics of interest. The best and have a continuous amount of traffic, sites provide easily searchable adding links to the major Q&A sites is a answers and can be good for SEO. great way to get additional traffic to your Topics on these sites vary significantly. website and are great for SEO. The key Popular Q&A sites are Quora, here is to make sure that you are not just Formspring, and answers.com. Quora placing links without including it in a quality is unique in that it combines questions, and informative post. Additionally, make answers, social media, and search. sure that links you are including are also Google particularly gives Quora to content that provides value to those lot of weight in search, so have your searching for answers. team members start to engage in relevant industry conversations. Q&A Sites Key Metrics Remember to tell your team to announce themselves as an employee • Increased brand awareness before they answer a question. of influential blogs • Link-backs and referring traffic Q&A sites help you drive traffic to your • Influencer mentions website and they also help you build relationships with key influencers. Set up Google Alerts for your company, competitors, top keywords, and keep an eye out for questions you can answer. Remember to provide thought leadership and insight within your comments, and only include link-backs when relevant. An example of a Qoura post And always focus on building relationships. by a Marketo employee

54 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics I nfluence t racking sites

Now that you are set up on all of your Kred social sites, you will want to see how Similar to Klout, Kred measures your social you are doing. By leveraging free sites content, who it reaches, who engages, like Klout, Kred, and Peerindex, you and if the engaged user shares your can quickly see where you stand content with others. The unique part about against your competition, who you Kred, is not only does it measure influence, influence, and who influences you. but it also measures outreach, which can “Social marketing eliminates be important if you are running social Klout campaigns and trying to promote the middlemen, providing Klout is a great way to measure your social interactions and shares. Kred also brands the unique opportunity marketing influence. By aggregating your provides transparency, in that the tool usage on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, shows you exactly what actions and to have a direct relationship Google+, and Foursquare, Klout’s algorithm interactions affected your score. gives you a score based on 3 areas: with their customers.” Peerindex • True Reach: the number of people In contrast to Klout and Kred, Peerindex Bryan Weiner your content reaches measures authority, which is based on CEO at Digital Agency 360i • Amplification: how many people how others react to your opinions, high you influence large your audience is, and your activity. • Network: who in your network is a top Peerindex uses topics, so a user can influencer and how do they respond search for top influencers in each category to your content who has the most authority. Users can also search by region and sources. This is Klout also tells you what topics you are a great way to determine influencers by influential in and you can both reward and industry and even by location. receive +Ks that increase your score.

55 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics B logging

Now that you have an idea of what you keep up with your content marketing Here are some examples of blogging • Respond to blog comments within channels you want to start engaging mix, as the format is more conducive to techniques: 24 hours and make sure all of your your target audience on, let’s take quick, easily digestible posts. bloggers are aware of and abide some time to talk about various tactics • Establish a corporate blogging strategy by this rule. you can utilize both on these channels Blogs boost your organic search engine by that includes overall goals and success • Remember your content mix – include and in conjunction with your daily adding pages to your site and encouraging metrics. content that is diverse and speaks social media activities. inbound links. Blogs give you a greater • Identify and recruit blog contributors to all places in the buying cycle. chance of showing up in the right search in your organization. • Encourage your readers to participate Blogging 101 engine results. They also give other sites • Blog with your keywords in mind by including calls to action at the end Blogs play a key role in educating a reason to link to you, increasing the – at Marketo we use a Top Keyword of each blog. At Marketo, we often ask prospects for lead generation and number of inbound links and boosting spreadsheet to help guide our efforts. readers to participate and answer nurturing. Many of your most qualified your search engine rankings. • Link to your blog from other pages on questions. leads – whether you’ve identified them or your corporate website. • Do not censor comments since you not – are readers of your blog. Your blog want to spark authentic conversations can be one of the most powerful marketing that engage your readers. assets if you stick to the topics your prospects and customers will find most compelling and avoid the hard sell. A blog adds a human touch, especially when a blog has several contributors and it also lets you focus on your prospect’s agenda instead of yours. It can be a great idea to try and get participation from leaders in your organization. Not only will this diversify your content, but it will also bring more visibility to your key thought leaders. Additionally, a blog is great to make sure Marketo's Modern B2B Marketing Blog

56 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics B logging

5 Tips to write a killer blog post Email Campaign,” try writing “Top 10 relevant content for readers; it can Quick Tip: A key thing to keep in mind is Ways to Get Flagged as Spam.” also position your B2B organization ensuring that your blog content is always 1. Make a list: One of the simplest B2B When it all boils down, both posts offer as a thought leader. relevant to your audience. Make sure you blog post concepts can be the most similar takeaways: how to ensure your 5. Use stats, poll results, or other research: are focusing on pain points and that your effective: list posts. Think “25 Must- emails reach subscribers’ inboxes. Research-driven posts – whether based posts are always relatable. Additionally, Read Email Marketing Resources,” The reverse post concept may be even on an in-depth research report or a less if you can tie in something emotional that “15 Influential Leaders in Search Engine more successful at attracting readers formal reader poll – are another killer will really strike a chord with your prospect, Optimization” or “30 Can’t Miss Social and inbound links, thanks to the element for B2B blogs. B2B he or she will continue to come back for Media Conferences.” List posts are “shock” value. organizations can leverage their own more insight. effective because they are easily 3. Play off current events: Relating B2B research, or that of other groups. scanned. Plus, readers know exactly blog content back to current events can The benefits of research-driven posts what they’re getting simply by viewing help make posts relevant, timely and are two-fold: First, byte-sized statistical the headline – influencing many to share interesting. For example, an event information is simple and quick to read. the content with their social networks planning software company could Secondly, it’s easily sharable via social even before clicking through themselves. leverage a news item about the networks. List posts can also effectively attract Summer Olympics on its blog. A post inbound links. For example, with the could discuss the planning element “15 Influential Leaders in Search Engine of the large-scale event, and tie in the Optimization” post, thought leaders company’s business offerings. “Doing well with blogging is not profiled are likely to link back to the post 4. Leverage someone else’s thoughts: about writing one key post, it is from their own blog or corporate website. Thought leader interviews make great 2. Write the unexpected: Tips and content for B2B blogs. At Marketo, about performing day after day and checklists are popular blog formats, we have used this concept on many helping a few people at a time” but to create a post that truly stands occasions where top influencers have out, write a reverse tips or checklist provided insight on a range of B2B post. For example, instead of “10 Ways marketing topics. Leveraging the insight Aaron Wall to Improve Deliverability on Your Next and opinions of respected industry Author of The SEObook Blog leaders not only provides interesting,

57 part four: b2b social Blogging Key Metrics • Number of posts media channels and tactics • Audience growth – unique and repeat visits • Referring traffic B logging • Time on site • Number of conversions (e.g. prospect to lead, lead to opportunity, etc.) • Conversion rate (depending on specific conversion goals) • Subscribers • Inbound links Blog commenting • Strengthens relationships: Customers However, comment with caution! Comment • Technorati, Alltop and other Blog commenting is underrated – few may be commenting on others’ blogs, and engage with prospects and customers directory listings companies recognize that engaging and which is a perfect time to begin a on blogs with topics similar to yours, but be • SEO improvements commenting on relevant blogs achieves relationship with them by engaging them careful not to merely advertise your blog or marketing goals and therefore do not in a discussion. If customers are the products. Instead, further a discussion and realize its full potential as a marketing tool. ones writing the blog posts about you, spark their interests in the topic with your Commenting Key Metrics It’s a great platform for discussion and an just drop them a simple thanks! They expertise, and if you have a relevant article engaging method of marketing. will appreciate it, and you will benefit. or blog post that covers a similar topic, • Number of comments • Enhances your SEO: Your blog add a link to your post if you think they’d • Increased number of conversions • Increases readership: Find leads who comments will generally include appreciate it. Chances are, if they’re from commenters (e.g. new leads) are looking for you, but just haven’t keywords that leads are searching for. interested in what you have to offer, they will • Increased traffic from searchable found you yet. Some people just need The more you comment, the more likely religiously follow what you have to say and comments that link to click to your website when your lead will find you. However, be share that information with their colleagues. they aren’t actively searching for it, and careful: it is not a best practice to load you can meet them halfway by providing your comment with keywords and a link information they want and a link to one – this is frowned upon. Write a comment of your related blog posts. that continues the discussion, and if • Heightens brand awareness: Make your a link is relevant, post it! You are doing brand top-of-mind. Leads are doing them a favor. Additionally, if the blog is research on the internet for your product, considered credible in the eyes of so be where they are, which won’t always search engines, you can possibly be on your website. Once they see that increase your position in organic search you have been commenting on blogs results as more people click on your with great information, they’ll start website and therefore increase visits to to wonder what your company does your site. and how your company can fix their • Identifies you as an expert: Leads are problems. looking for information. If you can provide what they’re looking for, awesome! You just won points in their Example of a commenting thread book. Now they’ll be looking to you on a Marketo blog for answers. 58 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics B ookmarking

Bookmarking Bookmarking Key Metrics Social bookmarking lets users “‘Build it, and share the websites that they think • Referrals and visits from these sites they will come’ only are interesting. The bookmarks are not • Page rankings on key terms from stored on an individual browser, but exist these sites works in the movies. on web-based bookmarking sites such • Button views – the number Social Media is a as Reddit and StumbleUpon. B2B of times the sharing icon (button) companies can benefit tremendously was viewed on your site ‘build it, nurture from social bookmarking through • Bookmarks – the number of it, engage them, increased awareness and visibility, bookmark events and in their SEO efforts as well. • Bookmarking rate – the number and they may come of bookmarks divided by a n d s t a y’.” StumbleUpon and Reddit button views These sites focus on providing the “best of the web” by having users vote Seth Godin on what they find most interesting, sethgodin.com valuable, entertaining, etc. Once you start identifying the articles that you find useful and interesting, take note of who’s contributing this content and become friends with them. They will most likely find what you have to contribute interesting as well, and could potentially be customers or partners for your business.

59 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics P odcasting

A podcast is a type of multi-episodic Leverage Podcast directories for SEO digital media that can be downloaded. In addition to the Apple iTunes store, there Podcasts are great for webinars and are a number of sites dedicated to helping thought leadership series. There are users find the most popular and useful a number of podcast directories that podcasts according to their interests. can be used to distribute your podcast These podcast directories are yet another content such as your company’s way for your company to improve its SEO webinars and phone conferences. through additional inbound links. Below are some ways podcasts can “55 percent of respondents said drive B2B success. A Podcast series offer a unique they would be more likely to way to interact and converse with Podcasts are automatically your customers and prospects consume white papers and analyst distributed to series subscribers Make sure to provide a dedicated reports if they were delivered When you have subscribers to your phone number or email address that podcast series, their podcatcher is associated with your podcasts so as podcasts.” application will automatically recognize people can respond to you. Then you and download your latest podcasts. can dedicate an upcoming podcast to So when you create a new podcast answering questions or addressing the Research it will reach your subscribers without feedback you received. Podcasts Penetrate B2B Mainstream, you having to formally execute a new MarketingVOX marketing campaign. Podcasting Key Metrics

• Referrals from podcast directories • Views of podcasts (if hosted on podcast sites) • Number of subscribers and conversions

60 part four: b2b social “SEO is a marketing function for sure, but it media channels and tactics needs to be baked into a product, not slapped on like icing after the cake is baked.”

S EO & social Duane Forrester Author and conference speaker

Search engines have long relied That said, as of 2012 the direct impact of Infusing SEO keywords into blog posts heavily on external links as a proxy social signals is estimated to be relatively and social marketing properties for quality. The assumption is that if minor compared to links, according to Part of SEO is being mindful of the a website site is good it will naturally SEOmoz’s survey of industry experts. This keywords your target audience is attract lots of inbound links from other relatively small direct impact is expected to searching for, and then using those websites and blogs, and therefore that increase in the future, so for wise keywords within all properties you want site should rank highly in search. marketers looking to future-proof their to rank well in search engines. For an easy However, as the internet evolves, social SEO strategies, social marketing is and free way of doing keyword research, marketing mentions and “likes” are probably a good investment. check out the Google Keyword Tool. becoming increasingly common, and search engines realize that they need As a side note, many social marketing After you identify target keywords, don’t to look at those social marketing sites, particularly in profiles, will allow you go crazy. “Keyword stuffing” is a bad idea signals, in addition to normal links, to to insert links back to your website. While and went on Google’s chopping block judge what ought to be ranking highly. this may seem like an easy way to build a long time ago. You want to use keywords So, by having plenty of buzz about your links, unfortunately most “nofollow” those in a way that reads naturally to humans. site in popular social marketing like links, which is a piece of invisible code that With that caveat in mind, titles, descriptions Facebook and Twitter, you could essentially tells Google, “Don’t count this and headlines are particularly important, as receive a direct SEO boost. link as a vote.” That’s not to say you can’t well as including keywords at least a few get some good traffic through those times in text blocks. By having keywords profiles, or that other search engines infused into your social marketing besides Google won’t follow them, but properties, you can use them as additional it probably means you won’t get a direct pieces of bait in the SEO ocean. link boost in Google’s eyes.

61 part five tools for social marketing success

62 part five: tools for social marketing success s ocial media monitoring software

So many social platforms out there! Social Media Monitoring But how do you stay organized so (a.k.a. “Listening”) “Innovation needs that you can ensure you are putting One of the first things you’ll want to do is the time and energy into the all of the listen to the social marketing conversations to be part of your right platforms? Luckily, there are that relate to your brand to see what others culture. Consumers many social media vendors that can are saying about you. Guaranteed your help you listen and engage, maintain customers are talking about you, so make are transforming a consistent presence, and help you so you are having a conversation with create robust social campaigns. faster than we them. Be proactive and not reactive. are, and if we The tools you chose will guide you through don’t catch up, the buying process from “awareness” Social Campaigns are to “engagement”, enabling you to truly the Next Phase we’re in trouble.” develop a solid social marketing campaign

that you consistently track along the way. Awareness Engagement Listening Your social media monitoring software and Monitor when your prospects Ian Schafer presence management will empower you are talking about your brand. Deep Focus to be aware of your influencers, while your Presence Management publishing and social campaign platforms Create and manage pages across will help you engage and ultimately convert social networks. your target audience. Publishing Push your message to multiple networks via a central interface.

Social Campaigns Engage your prospects with interactive social apps.

The 4 stages of social media tools

63 part five: tools for social marketing success s ocial media monitoring software

Here are a few of the most popular • Google+ Search: Search your product A more sophisticated approach includes Enterprise level tools methods for listening to your customers: or keywords inside of Google+ to utilizing a social media monitoring Social media monitoring tools, such as monitor activity around your brand and application that enables you to: Viral Heat or Radian6, are available as a • Twitter Search: search for your brand industry. A +1 or a thank you on other software-as-a-service model at a monthly or other important keywords. Twitter user’s mentions and comments can • Automate searches or annual fee. search goes back 14 days. Older tweets go a long way by letting the community • Monitor high volume keyword mentions are lost unless you bookmark them know your business is active and paying across many social marketing channels Using these tools you can build reports or find them using a search engine. attention. • Run reports on the mentions of your and measure share of voice, share of • Facebook Search: search all public • Google Alerts: view search engine brand, competitors and top keywords conversation, and conduct in depth content including everything posted results more efficiently by setting up analysis of trends and keyword mentions in public fan pages, groups and events. alerts around keywords. For example, Social media monitoring will help you around your brand and industry. These Privacy settings on personal pages establish a Google Alert for your decide where to get started when enterprise tools are very powerful and may may restrict what you can see. company name and other relevant beginning your social marketing efforts. by a bit too much unless you have the social • LinkedIn Search: the “Answers” section keywords. You may get some irrelevant Start engaging on sites where your activity and mentions to make it worthwhile. is the best place to start. See if people results but it’s an easy and effective way company is mentioned most, or where you have asked questions about your to keep up to date with what people are can find the largest number of customers. You can translate what you hear into company, competitors and industry, saying about you at no cost. You can action. If you capture social marketing and see how people responded. also find out relevant information about Free or budget-friendly solutions conversations in your marketing Search for the top Linkedin Groups your competitors and industry news. If you are a smaller company or are just automation or CRM system, you can that are relevant to your business and Sites like HyperAlerts (http://www. getting started, you may want to begin respond to them or pass them to sales. industry. Once you do this you have the hyperalerts.no) can send you alerts with some inexpensive or free monitoring option to subscribe to a daily or weekly when your (or your competitor) tools. This way you can start to track what Remember, social marketing provides digest of the conversations that are Facebook pages or Twitter accounts people are saying about you without a great way to engage with your customers taking place. You can then respond have activity. spending money on an enterprise solution. and create relationships – so listening and participate directly from your inbox. Tools like Social Mention, PostRank, and is only the first part. Make sure you are Be sure to encourage employees to Brand Monitor give you a resource to start participating in conversations, which will also monitor this area of LinkedIn and diving into and tracking social elevate your brand in the eyes of your to routinely respond to questions. conversations. target audience.

64 part five: tools for social marketing success o ther Social applications

Presence Management Publishing Platforms Social Campaigns These tools help you manage pages Social marketing management tools, Applications, like Marketo Social Suite, are across all of your social networks to ensure such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, and available to help you create compelling and that you have a consistent voice and are CoTweet help you manage and monitor shareable social campaigns which easily fully leveraging how each of your social conversations on your social media enables you to accelerate your social and pages can interact with one another to profiles. Typically these sites integrate word of mouth marketing initiatives. produce even greater results. Many with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, The compelling part of applications like marketers have a variety of different Foursquare, and Wordpress so you can Marketo Social Suite, is that they give components to their marketing mix – easily have visibility into all of your profiles people who visit your website a reason to different social pages, SEO, website etc in one place. These tools can also help share your content across their personal – and they often think of them independently you schedule messages and Tweets, social networks. Marketo Social Suite instead of as one complete strategy. track brand mentions on social networks, utilizes social referral, promotions, and and analyze social marketing traffic. By engagement apps to provide your target Social marketing presence management managing all of your social profiles through audience a more dynamic experience. tools can help you maintain a consistent a publishing platform, you can improve Compelling use cases for people to share message. By keeping everything fluid and your productivity and save time. These are content could include a sweepstakes, connected, you can establish that your typically free or low cost, and are a must if voting, and referrals. prospects and customers are you are ramping up your social presence experiencing one brand voice vs. 10 or 15 via Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And because these applications integrate different disparate voices. Leverage tools directly into your marketing automation such as vitrue.com and Hearsay Social to software, they are able to track data and tighten your strategy so that all of your provide analytics on each social prospects and customers always have the campaign. Quickly get a snapshot of your same brand experience when visiting each social reach, influencer profile, share rate, of your different social sites. clickback rate, and most importantly, determine how each campaign is affecting your pipeline funnel. Refer to Part Three for more information.

65 part six incorporating social marketing into every stage of your funnel

66 part six: incorporating social marketing into every stage of your funnel Social lead nurturing

Social marketing plays a key role Nurturing Prospective Leads Here are a few examples of how to • Interact with prospects over multiple throughout your entire sales pipeline, through Social Media use social marketing interactions to media channels: Integrate social beginning before prospects are even Lead nurturing comes into play when bolster your lead nurturing methods: marketing channels with traditional identified (while they research or qualified prospects visit your site or social channels such as email, direct mail, and follow thought leadership on social media sites anonymously. It is a vital part of • Focus in and be specific: Use what phone. Make sure you are incorporating media sites), to after they become the sales process that consists of investing you’ve learned from listening to social blogs, videos, and links to your social customers (as they remain loyal in and building relationships with prospects media conversations to engage with sites in your lead nurture email programs. customers through retention and regardless of whether or not you have their prospects with greater relevancy. For cross- and up-sell opportunities). contact information. Just because you example, after identifying a prospect’s can’t identify these individuals doesn’t Twitter username, follow his or her There are four key areas where social mean they aren’t qualified leads; nurture Twitter conversations that include “Social innovation marketing can play an expanded role them just as you would the known contacts keywords you care about, and track makes the product across your sales pipeline: in your database. If you don’t, more agile all of this data in your marketing competitors will steal these prospects from automation system. You can also development cycle • Developing relationships with very under your nose. Essentially, you should engage with the prospect via Twitter by faster, and more early-stage prospects before they even use social marketing interactions and @mentioning him or her and including enter your database through social lead conversations just as you would online a piece of relevant content. Retweeting in-tune with the generation techniques activity on your own website – to increase is also a great way to get a hot voice of the • Building and maintaining relationships the relevance and targeting of your prospect’s attention. with known prospects as they educate marketing and sales efforts. • Segment and trigger your campaigns cus to m e r”. themselves based on social interactions: Think • Supporting the sales cycle once the about the potential of segmenting buyer engages in a formal buying and triggering based on explicit Adam Metz process with a sales rep conversations among people on social Social Media Expert and • Deepening and expanding relationships marketing sites. Get a strong indication Consultant with existing customers of buying intent by combining knowledge of these interactions with tracking of other engagement activities such as email click-throughs, downloads and web page visits. 67 part six: incorporating social marketing into every stage of your funnel Social opportunity nurturing

Social marketing can be quite valuable • Use social conversations to enhance • Have social marketing activities play to your internal marketing and sales your lead scoring and impact lead a key role in lead recycling campaigns: operations as well. You can promote handoff to sales: In addition to You could set up a rule whereby an “The new rules greater alignment between the two demographic, BANT and behavioral increase in activity on social sites of attraction departments by refining the lead data, begin to use social interactions triggers a lead score change that then handoff process and bolstering the as factors in your lead scoring re-engages the lead with sales. While require a shift “lead lifecycle” – the path that your methodology. Then, tailor your this business rule will be automatic, in direction. leads take once in your lead automated business rules for lead be sure to also give sales the ability to management system. A successful handoff to include social media manually indicate a specific timeframe It's not about lead lifecycle requires agreement interactions. Let social media activities in which the lead should be re-engaged ‘pushing’ your between marketing and sales on what trigger the handoff and impact which if they have deeper insight into the constitutes a “sales-ready” lead, and leads are deemed “hottest” for sales. relationship. message, but agreement on when and how leads • Notify sales reps when prospects and • Sell using all available channels: Social ‘pulling’ in your should get recycled back to marketing customers show increased activity or marketing interactions provide a great for further nurturing. Social media are make interesting comments: Hot way for the individual sales rep to build customers. And the interactions can provide deep insight leads demonstrate “interesting relationships with contacts, especially way to pull is to into sales readiness and buyer intent, moments” or behaviors that indicate younger contacts who may be as so they are critical to keeping leads their sales readiness. This might be comfortable interacting online as they publish content.” moving along the lead lifecycle. increased website activity, email are using email or phone. Understand click-throughs, and in the case of social what channels each contact uses to Joe Pulizzi Here are a few key ways you can make media, increased interactions and communicate, and communicate with Content Marketing social marketing a deeper part of your conversations on social media sites. him or her in that manner. sales and marketing alignment By notifying the sales team of these Evangelists and Author objectives in the future: interactions immediately, you will dramatically increase the relevancy and timing of their conversations with these prospects.

68 part six: incorporating social marketing into every stage of your funnel Social customer nurturing

Existing customers are a tremendous Customer marketing is a worthy • Create lead nurturing campaigns • Listen to the social media conversations source of new and continuing revenue, investment for your marketing dollars, optimized for new customers and of existing customers for new needs and should be continuously nurtured and here’s how social marketing incorporate your social marketing and requirements, or even the risk of just as much as new leads. can help: segments and triggers: When an defection to your competitors: Many opportunity is closed and won, this is of your existing customers aren’t going • Use social marketing to reaffirm the perfect time to put all the associated to tell you explicitly when they need an customer purchases after the decision contacts into a new drip marketing additional product or service from you. “Social Media is is made: Just because a prospect has campaign that’s optimized for So you’re going to have to monitor their about sociology and agreed to buy your product or service customers. Make these campaigns social interactions to spot the cues. doesn’t necessarily mean you’re home even more effective by incorporating Be especially attentive to the complaints psychology more free. In fact, the period between when the social marketing segments and from existing customers – you may than technology.” a purchasing decision is made to when triggers we discussed earlier. Over time stop them from being poached by the deal is signed and officially “closed” they will help you cross- and up-sell a competitor. is critical. Use social marketing to additional products and strengthen Brian Solis reaffirm their choice is the right one. customer loyalty. By incorporating social marketing into Principal of FutureWorks lead nurturing, marketers can better understand and interact with prospects and customers by increasing the relevancy of marketing campaigns and sales conversations. Ultimately, this will increase the volume and quality of sales leads, boost conversion rates, and help you realize tremendous revenue growth.

69 part seven the roi of social

70 part seven: the roi of social t he challenges of social marketing measurement

The topic of social marketing ROI about what metrics are truly useful specific marketing campaign. Many The Altimeter Group recently released is really a subject worthy of its own and accurate when it comes to social inbound leads can be attributed to a study called “The Social Marketing Definitive Guide, but we’ll try to give marketing. “word-of-mouth” and partner or employee ROI Cookbook”, and in the paper cited you enough information in this section referrals. For inbound leads arriving via the following reasons as some of most to understand: Measuring Social Marketing a website or phone call, attribution to common challenges of measuring the Just because measuring social marketing a single referral source can be even more impact of social media: • How people are measuring social ROI is a challenge doesn’t mean it’s difficult. Moreover, the idea of “first touch” marketing today impossible. The world of social marketing and “last touch” (meaning an original lead • Exists online, offline, and across multiple • What the challenges are ROI is still evolving. In most cases, we have source versus the campaign that really screens which fragments data capture • How to choose the areas of to rethink traditional metrics to include the closed the deal) is even more complex • Measurement is a moving target, since measurement that make the most ways that people interact with social. For when it comes to social media. social marketing is always changing sense for your business example, the standard metrics for email • Organizations don’t “own” social marketing include delivery, open and As any B2B marketer knows, it takes marketing the way they do their Many companies fear that there’s no true click-through rates. While it’s still possible multiple touches to convert a lead into websites or other owned properties way to measure the ROI of social to find value in measuring click-throughs a sale. This means even those prospects • Different apps and platforms give rise marketing activities. In comparison to from specific URLs on sites such as Twitter that were attributed to a PPC or email to different metrics, making a holistic other marketing channels such as email, or YouTube, social marketing also lends campaign may have also read your view challenging SEO, and display advertising, social media itself to new categories of measurement, corporate blog and Tweets before making doesn’t offer as direct or concrete of a ROI such as activity and engagement. the decision to purchase your product or measurement. This is partly due to the fact service. Even though you may not be able that social media interactions revolve Challenges of Social to get any more granular than “inbound mostly around conversations and brand Marketing Measurement call” or “word-of-mouth” as referral awareness, which are not as easy to Much of the difficulty in measuring social sources for some of your leads, you are still measure quantitatively as click-throughs marketing efforts stems from the inbound making a case for social marketing in your and CPMs. Because social marketing is lead. While it’s revered for its high level of organization. very much about the qualitative not the qualification, interest and sales readiness, quantitative, this results in much debate it is also difficult to attribute it to any

71 part seven: the roi of social t he challenges of social marketing measurement

Thinking outside the box: correlations between social marketing Another important area of measurement overcoming challenges and improvements at your organization in for social marketing is brand and Social media has changed the game of revenue, website traffic and other areas. awareness. Traditional media might marketing, so traditional metrics must be measure brand and awareness through re-imagined. Not only must traditional ROI If engagement is truly what you should reach and frequency: how many people metrics be looked at such as cost savings, be tracking, what does it mean and how have seen an ad and how many times conversions, cost per lead, etc, but can you track it? For the purposes of this they’ve seen it. These days, there are marketers must also look at non-traditional guide, we consider engagement to be technologies that measure posts for metrics such as brand lift and social a category of interaction that include positive and negative sentiments, and engagement. And as social marketing metrics such as “People Talking About Us” “share of voice” (i.e. the number of articles, continues to evolve, the gap to attributing in Facebook , LinkedIn, brand mentions tweets, posts, etc. in which a specific leads to specific social marketing sources in Twitter, sharing of your content, brand is mentioned in comparison is becoming smaller. Through many commenting, and returning visitors, etc. to its competitors). available tools you can make useful

“And I think the one mistake that most companies make, even mature companies in the social media marketing world right now, the one mistake they make is they don’t plan to measure”.

Jason Falls CEO of Social Media Explorer

72 part seven: the roi of social u seful social marketing measurements

Despite the uncertainty around By leveraging new social applications, like Examine referring traffic measuring social marketing Marketo Social Suite, marketers can now Google Analytics is a fantastic way to interactions, there are best practices begin to track social campaigns with more measure how much traffic is being referred that you can put in place. Again, the accuracy. Through these new social tools, to your website from the various social way you go about measuring your you can often track engagement through channels. Under the Traffic Sources tab, ROI will have be altered, as social dashboard reporting metrics such as click on Referring Sites and then type in marketing is a much more fluid social reach, impressions, social activity, your social network of choice to see how channel than an email blast. Keep and conversions. This can be a great way much traffic is being referred. Set up goals iterating your methodology as you to start optimizing your engagement. If you based on the actions you want your hone in further on the place social are using a social application, you will be visitors to complete. Increasing referral marketing has within your able to measure more robustly how your traffic from social sites is a good indicator organization. campaigns are performing. that your social efforts are moving the needle in the right direction. Meet with stakeholders in your organization to determine what metrics are useful for you and your team to track. This may require a bit of education and research for both you and the executive team, but once you have a clear vision of what data you are attempting to correlate you can begin determining ways to track and measure.

73 part seven: the roi of social u seful social marketing measurements

Review the quality and You can easily track these three mentions The formula for calculating relevance of content within Google Analytics by clicking on the SOV is simple: divide the number Content is the fuel for your social media Content tab, then choosing Overview. This of conversations or mentions of engine, but if it’s not relevant and useful, will give you a snapshot of your top pieces your brand by total number of it’s a waste of digital space. The correct of content along with detailed metrics conversations or mentions about way to assess the value of a piece of including page views, unique page views other brands in your market. content is not by continuously checking and time on page. Drilling down into your every five minutes to see if your retweet content with Google Analytics is a great Share of Voice = count goes up or if someone comments way to determine which content is Your Mentions / (Total Mentions for on your blog. These “vanity metrics” give a resonating with your audience. Competitive Companies/Brands) false sense of hope that your content is generating leads for your brand or Look at Share of Voice business. With social media, share of voice refers to the number of conversations about your Instead of judging the success of your company versus your competitors/market. content by the share button, pull back the The value of online customer and prospect curtain and see what’s really going on. interaction can be tied to the share of voice (SOV) metric. Segment brand mentions For each piece of content you create, by social channel to uncover opportunities monitor unique page views, time on page for improvement. You may find that your and total pages viewed. If unique page efforts on one particular channel are going views go up, that’s an indication that your unnoticed, but excelling on another reach is growing, increased time on page channel. shows that your content is interesting to the visitor and increased total page views means your visitor wants to learn more by clicking on other pages around your site.

74 part seven: the roi of social u seful social marketing measurements

Track the total size of community Social tools aggregate your activity into Sentiment interactions, you can begin to connect- and engagement a dashboard where you can quickly see Sentiment analysis is imperfect at best, the-dots, identify, and quantify prospect Measuring and tracking the size of your whether your strategy is moving in the right often ignoring the human element of influence for use in segmenting and collective communities is essential in direction. Marketo Social Suite offers a sarcasm or simple context. To be targeting. Many social marketing networks determining whether you are adding value good view of your basic metrics, including completely accurate, you need to track this overlap, so pay attention to who influences through your social strategy. Using a social engagement and total size, and even goes manually. Go through your mentions and your top prospects and vice versa as you sharing application, like Marketo Social a step further with recommendations for tag them as positive, neutral or negative. continue to determine who to build Suite, is a great way to integrate customer influencers to focus on. Add up the totals and measure over time. relationships with. data with social profiles and interactions Are the good mentions growing and the while monitoring growth and engagement negative mentions decreasing? Sentiment Social Media Return on Effort levels. analysis can be thought of as "opinion The social metrics used to determine mining." success are the ones that make sense for your business and that you can tie back Influencer tracking to your marketing bottom line. By tracking and creating relationships with some key influencers, you can further Building a simple dashboard manually determine how your message is being or using a social tool is an easy way to received by customers and leads. Either track and update these metrics on a through manual tracking or by leveraging weekly or monthly basis. You can then a social analytics tool, like Marketo Social monitor trends and set goals for growth Suite, you can figure out who is interacting based on what’s working. If your metrics with you and sharing your content on are not moving in the right direction or social networks. There are typically a seem to be stalled, try mixing up your handful of people who will evangelize your messaging and experimenting with brand to their network of peers. Work to different posting times and frequency. create relationships with them and track how often they are spreading your word. Screen shot from Marketo's Social Suite Dashboard Through careful tracking of these top

75 part seven: the roi of social u seful social marketing measurements

Month over month growth in are engaging with your brand. Social do about what happened in the past. After organic website traffic, leads, engagement becomes even more a few months of monitoring the trends of and opportunities important as prospective buyers use and your social media lead generation, you can By organic traffic, we mean when people learn on social sites. This is important, start making forecasts about how much are finding your website by ways other since the more people that are talking contribution inbound will make to future than paid promotion or direct brand about you on social, the more your pipeline. This isn’t easy, but is probably the awareness (e.g. typing in your URL or updates will show up on the main news single most credibility-building thing you searching your brand names). From there, feed for your fans. Other tools such can do as a marketing executive. track how much of that traffic turns into as Feedburner show similar metrics leads, and whether those leads turn into for engagement, not just reach. pipeline and revenue. This is great way to show that all the content, blogging, linking, Lead generation by content, and social outreach is actually impacting channel, and initiative the bottom line. Moreover, don’t just track Beyond core organic traffic and leads, the absolute level of these, but also track track lead generation by content asset and the trends so you can see how quickly you source. What sources are driving the most Marketo's ROI on using social for lead gen are going up – in a successful inbound traffic? What kinds of content drive the marketing program, these will grow faster most leads? The most revenue? It can Take a look at the image of Marketo's than your overall objectives and company also be insightful to track how these vary actual ROI on social. Here are some growth rate. by product line or business unit. key items to note:

Social engagement, not just reach Forecasted conversion through • Facebook and LinkedIn display Reach is defined as the total size of the the funnel ads not effective audience you can reach, including your Your C-suite executives don’t really care • Twitter drove many prospects, Twitter followers, Facebook fans, LinkedIn about the number of raw prospects or even but slow to convert to leads followers, blog subscribers, and email lists. leads marketing generates; they care about • Facebook memes are working great But the world is noisy, and just because pipeline and revenue. And they care even • Slideshare great for acceleration someone follows you doesn’t mean they more about next month’s revenue than they (not lead gen)

76 part seven: the roi of social focu sing on business roi

When you’re dealing with a lot of In his popular presentation, The Basics different B2B marketing channels of Social Media ROI, social marketing including social media, email, search consultant Olivier Blanchard recommends “As control of a company’s marketing and more, it’s easy to get caught up an easy way to start measuring the impact messages – and, indeed, it’s very brand on how each channel is performing. of social media. First set up a timeline and However, what matters overall when draw a line to signify the point in time in image – continues to migrate from you’re talking about ROI is that you’re which you started to use social marketing traditional media to social media, it has earning more money than you’re in your marketing efforts. Then map onto spending. this timeline the various social marketing become imperative that companies not only activities in which you’re participating, pay close attention to how they’re being Don’t let the challenge of measuring social as well as the results (e.g. opportunity marketing ROI deter you from finding value creation, new customers, sales revenue, perceived in online conversations but in it. Even if you’re wondering what etc.) that your company has experienced that they also take appropriate action, “engagement” means for your business since implementing its social marketing and how you’re going to measure it, you strategy. This will show what type of overall based on the insights they glean. In many can still prove the value of social marketing impact social marketing has had, and cases, their future depends upon it.” by establishing baselines and tracking whether or not it has helped you increase your progress. your goals over the baseline. Even with numerous marketing activities occurring Jeff Zabin at the same time, you’ll still be able to prove The ROI on Social marketing Monitoring: Why It Pays that social marketing has had a positive to Listen to Online Conversation, Aberdeen Group impact on your overall business ROI.

77 25 must-know social media experts

Need help getting started or advancing 1. Jay Baer 5. Jeff Bullas 10. Ann Handley your current social marketing strategy? Speaker, Author, Consultant Consultant, Speaker, Blogger Head of Content at Marketing Profs, The experts below represent the best Blog: jaybaer.com Blog: jeffbullas.com Author of the best when it comes to all things convinceandconvert.com Twitter: @jeffbullas Blog: marketingprofs.com social. Some have books, some have Twitter: @jaybaer Twitter: @marketingprofs blogs, others consulting firms and 6. Brian Carter top notch Twitter pages. And all have 2. Michael Brenner VP of Marketing at Infinigraph, 11. Jason Keath the A+ smarts to push your social Senior Director, Global Marketing at SAP, Author, Speaker CEO of Social Fresh marketing to the next level. Drum roll President and Co-Founder of Blog: briancarteryeah.com/blog/ Blog: socialfresh.com please… and in no particular order. Business2Community Twitter: @briancarter Twitter: @jasonkeath Blog: b2bmarketinginsider.com Twitter: @brennermichael 7. Brian Clark 12. Cindy King Founder and CEO of Copyblogger Managing Editor at Social Media Examiner 3. Michael Brito Blog: copyblogger.com/blog/ Blog: socialmediaexaminer.com SVP of Social Business Planning Twitter: @copyblogger Twitter: @cindyking at Edelman Digital, Author Blog: britopian.com 8. Jeffrey Cohen 13. David Meerman Scott Twitter: @britopian Manager of Social Media at Radian6 Marketing Strategist, Speaker, Author Blog: socialmediab2b.com Blog: webinknow.com 4. Chris Brogan Twitter: @jeffreylcohen Twitter: @dmscott President and CEO of Human Business Works, Blogger 9. Jason Falls 14. Adam Metz Blog: chrisbrogan.com CEO of Social Media Explorer, Principal of The Social Concept Twitter: @chrisbrogan Author, Speaker Blog: adammetz.com Blog: socialmediaexplorer.com Twitter: @themetz Twitter: @jasonfalls

78 25 must-know social media experts

15. Scott Monty 19. Neal Schaffer 23. Mike Stelzner Head of Social Media at Ford President and Principal at Windmills Founder of Social Media Examiner, Author Blog: scottmonty.com Marketing, Consultant, Author, Speaker Blog: socialmediaexaminer.com Twitter: @scottmonty Blog: windmillnetworking.com Twitter: @mike_stelzner Twitter: @nealschaffer 16. Amber Naslund 24. Marty Weintraub Co-Founder and President at 20. Robert Scoble Co-Owner and Founder of AimClear SideraWorks, Writer, Blogger, Speaker Startup Liason Blog: aimclearblog.com Blog: brasstackthinking.com Blog: scobleizer.com Twitter: @aimclear Twitter: @ambercadabra Twitter: @scobleizer 25. Dennis Yu 17. Lee Odden 21. Mari Smith Social Analytics Evangelist CEO at TopRank Speaker, Author, Social Media Marketing Blog: dennis-yu.com Blog: optimizebook.com Leader Twitter: @dennisyu toprankblog.com Blog: marismith.com Twitter: @leeodden Twitter: @marismith

18. Amy Porterfield 22. Brian Solis Social Media Marketing Consultant Principal at The Altimeter Group, Author, Blog: amyporterfield.com Analyst Twitter: @amyporterfield Blog: briansolis.com future-works.com Twitter: @briansolis

79 conclusion the b2b buying process has changed

Prospects are now relying on social Forget what everyone else is doing. media to research and educate Choose the social marketing tactics themselves before actually engaging that are right for you. Then get out there with your company. But it is not enough and engage – always in the spirit of to merely post on your Facebook and experimentation. Not everything you try Twitter pages, instead you have to in social marketing will be right for you work social into every aspect of your company, but stick with it and you’ll marketing and create more peer-to- develop a powerful new source of revenue peer sharing opportunities. The more that costs a lot less than traditional media. your audience wants to engage with your content, the more likely it is that And remember social is more than just they will want to share and ultimately a channel or tactic; it is a strategy that convert to customers. should be present in every aspect of your marketing.

80 contact marketo

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