How to Create A Not So Boring B2B Social Media Strategy

by with No Comment Branding

When you start to make a list about all those companies that are killing it in the domains of social media, the first ones to come to your mind must be B2C (business to consumers) organizations. You can hardly name any IT or management company making it big on Instagram or Snapchat. But it does not translate to impossibility, B2B companies with successful social media strategy do exist, but they are in the minority.

For the most part, either B2B companies seem to struggle to grasp the concept of social media marketing, or they just flat out turn a blind eye to the strategy full of progressive potential. Despite the success B2C is collecting through social media marketing, B2B still heavily relies on the more of traditional methods like call calling or attending business network lunches. Don’t get it wrong, these techniques are also useful, but they should not be used instead of social media.

Action- Packed B2B Social Media Marketing Techniques:

Creating a social profile and then sending out a few tweets, B2B social media marketing is not just that simple. Any brand can do this, but this does not interpret a strategy that yields results. Every now and then we see a brand falling out of social media. Usually, because they fail to generate any engagement and scrolling through their page is just as exciting as watching the clock tick.

Build A Personality

The best way to fail at social media is to be a bore and insipid. Unfortunately, since several other B2B companies are going that way, you should steer clear. Since B2B consider social media as an added feature only, their post lack personality.

The fear of being too vexed usually keeps them from being creative. Not everyone can ace being sassy like Wendy. However, businesses to not have to be a troll to sound like a human. All you need is a conversational tone, engagement with users instead of just advertisement, a little humor and you are all set.

Know What You Are Aiming For

Be specific about what you want to achieve from social media, shooting arrows in the dark won’t do you good. Be sure of what you are aiming to achieve through it, whether it is branding you are interested in or you want to increase traffic to your website.

Know Who You Are Dealing With

With social media, you can easily reach the global audience relevant to your brand. Which is why the emphasis is on customers and not brand. Confused about how to find apt customers or conversations? Here is how you can do it, keywords, influencers, hashtags, and competitor’s audience.

Identify Your Social Media Platform

Determining which social media platform you are going to target plays a decisive role in whether your strategy will stay successful or not! For B2B, following four social platforms can play a decisive role, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. As an estimate, almost 93% of B2B market experts consider Linked to be the most potent lead generation site.

Undeviating Attitude

Consistent attitude is a must. Being steady and unvarying allows customers to recognize your brand. Plus post should be more frequent to reach a large volume of the customer without having to opt for paid methods. But it a lot harder then it may sounds. B2B marketers usually fail consequent to their lack of consistency.

Biggest Myth about Social Media Marketing

You must have heard of it from time to time or even think about it yourself, “Social Media won’t work for me because it not for boring B2B industries”.

Abolish this thought completely. Social media is not merely reserved for beauty and fashion brands. There are billions of people on social platforms, and you can bet that there must be a little chunk of audience interested in your brand. All you need to do is find them. There are various successful examples like Novartis, a pharmaceutical company, etc.

Ready to Formulate a Killing Social Media Strategy?

We are no longer at the point where we need to decide whether social media works for B2B or not, in this competitive era, it has become compulsory.

While devising a robust social media strategy, it always comes down to setting specific goals, planning, and understanding the nature of social media. Moreover, it is imperative to create content keeping your target audience in mind and also maintaining visual uniformity.

Marketing B2B: How to Succeed Online and Beat the Competition

by with No Comment BrandingBusiness

B2B marketing has changed drastically in the last couple of decades, taking the vast majority of activities from the real world to the digital environment. Today, social media gather over two billion daily active users, while there are more than 50 million business pages on Facebook alone.

At the same time, running a successful small business without a website or email marketing is unimaginable. But how can you combine all these channels to create a comprehensive B2B marketing plan? Are you really able to get the foot in the door and outperform competitors?

If you are not sure, keep reading to learn nine ways to craft an all-encompassing B2B marketing strategy.

1. Set Goals


Business goals set the foundation for the marketing strategy. Only 45% of B2B companies have a formal marketing plan in place, which is a great opportunity for you to step up and distinguish yourself from the biggest competitors.


Business goals set the foundation for the marketing strategy. Only 45% of B2B companies have a formal marketing plan in place, which is a great opportunity for you to step up and distinguish yourself from the biggest competitors.

The plan of activities depends on what you want to achieve, so think about your objectives. Is it to raise awareness, boost customer loyalty, generate new leads, or something completely different? The way you answer this question will tell you where to go and how to do it most effectively. At the same time, business goals give you key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can follow and measure the results of your strategy.

2. Design a Beautiful Website

A website is the first thing B2B clients search for when they want to analyze your company. For this reason, it is critical to design an attractive site that looks amazing and is easy to use. The structure of the B2B website must be simple because you want to allow visitors to find whatever they need with only a click or two. Of course, it is also necessary to optimize a site so as to be mobile responsive, improve page load speed, use the best visuals, and add all those little details that can make your company look fully professional.

3. Publish Quality Content

Do you know that over 90% of B2B buyers want content with more input from industry thought leaders? Genuine assignment masters interpret this stat as a chance to win over their audiences by proving that they have the skills and expertise to solve customers’ problems.

In the B2B universe, content creation is highly demanding because you have to discuss every aspect of the topic and support statements with data-driven insights. Don’t hesitate to use supporting files such as charts, graphs, infographics, and all other types of multimedia that can prove your thesis and make it sound more convincing.

4. Local Search Optimization

Small and medium-sized companies usually have physical branches or stores, so it’s always a good idea to optimize your business for local searches. That way, you allow users who search for your kind of products or services to find you effortlessly. The only thing you need to do is to create a Google My Business account and enter fresh business-related information such as address, opening/closing hours, and phone numbers.

5. Social Media Marketing

We already mentioned that social media have billions of daily active users, but this marketing channel demands further elaboration. For instance, YouTube is excellent for publishing video case studies, while Instagram is perfect for product-oriented organizations.

But while it can’t hurt to create accounts on these platforms, keep in mind that LinkedIn is by far the most important B2B social network. According to the research, 80% of B2B social media leads stemmed from LinkedIn in 2017. The platform targets industry professionals, so it’s up to you to take advantage of LinkedIn and post content that closely relates to the needs of your target audience.

6. Influencer Marketing

Most marketers consider influencers to be focused on the B2C niche exclusively, but the fact remains that popular industry figures can play a major role in B2B as well. If you can find a person who really nurtures the same style and values, you are good to go with influencer marketing. This mechanism is slightly different than standard B2C influencing, but it delivers just as successfully.

7. Email Marketing

Almost 80% of B2B marketers believe email is the most effective distribution channel for demand generation efforts. However, we strongly believe that email newsletter serves another very important purpose – it allows you to nurture long-term relationships with the clients.

Consistency is the key factor here because you need to send newsletters regularly. It can be once a week or once in 15 days, but it’s crucial to get the subscribers used to your content. Doing so, you will build a feeling of anticipation among potential clients and prevent them from forgetting your business.

8. Event Marketing

While it is true that digital content is dominating modern marketing, B2B companies should never underestimate the value of good old events. What makes this tactic so valuable? It gives you the opportunity to meet customers face-to-face, which is always the best ways to seal the deal. Besides that, it allows you to acknowledge regular clients, raise awareness, and build brand affinity. B2B events come in different forms, so you can organize exhibitions, road shows, VIP dinners, conferences, etc.

9. Business Analytics

The last tip on our lists rounds up the whole story. If you want to maximize the productivity of B2B marketing, you have to analyze the results of your strategy. Tools like Google Analytics, Buffer, Ahrefs, and many others provide users with real-time insights, so you can rearrange and adjust marketing operations almost instantly. But in order to do so, you need to come back to the business goals and KPIs (as explained in the first section) and compare it with the actual results of your marketing plan.

Conclusion

Running a profitable company without a comprehensive marketing strategy is almost impossible. If you want to stay competitive in the B2B niche, you just have to invest a lot of time and efforts into promotional activities.

But it’s never an easy task because your competitors definitely want to do the same thing. In this article, we showed you nine ways to design a great B2B marketing strategy that could make your business flourish. Keep our ideas in mind and don’t forget to leave a comment if you have other suggestions or questions – we would be glad to discuss it with you!

5 Tips for Managing Communication Overload

by with No Comment Technology

Remember when an overstuffed inbox or a full voice mailbox was the biggest source of your communications frustrations?

Today’s technological age has brought a wide range of platforms, programs, and apps aimed at making the exchange of information simple and intuitive. From a purely functional standpoint, that’s exactly what online calendars, file sharing programs, content management systems, online project management software, and team messaging platforms have all done.

Here’s the truth about communication overload: it doesn’t happen because of technology, but in spite of it.

Without setting some human parameters and boundaries around your communications systems, you may quickly find yourself drowning in a sea of excessive, unnecessary information that complicates, rather than simplifies, your work and life in general.

Just as technology breaks down barriers to accessibility and opens doors for collaboration, it also allows you plenty of room to create customized online environments that support your productivity instead of sapping it.

Here are five ways to put an end to communication overload:

Use notifications sparingly.

Configure your notifications so you only get alerts that you truly want and need. For example, set team messaging notifications to alert you only when someone is speaking to you specifically (normally with an “@” mention), and then let your coworkers know that if they need your immediate attention, that’s the best way to do it. And keep in mind that if you get notifications on your computer and phone, you probably don’t need a copy sent to your email, too.

Don’t be afraid to leave conversations or groups that don’t really apply to you.

From email distribution lists that don’t affect you directly to chat threads that linger on even after the central issue is resolved, you can choose to remove yourself from the conversation. If you’re concerned a group leader or owner of the email chain or chat will be offended, or that you might miss something important, reach out privately and ask to be included only in what specifically needs your attention.

Streamline your communication system.

When you have many programs running or too many windows open, it can slow or even crash your computer. Similarly, having to fetch data and information in several different places makes you less effective and more likely to lose focus. Choose a central platform for your team to use that integrates the core collaborative applications you use (i.e. text/video chat, file sharing, project management, calendar, etc.) for a more productive, streamlined work experience.

Make sure meetings are meaningful.

Regardless of whether you’re meeting in person or virtually, it’s key to make sure your meetings are well organized and include only those who need to be there. That means having an agenda, keeping to a set time, and being sure that each person who attends gets specific information that he or she needs to get his or her job done.

Block-out time to work from priorities.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you’re hit with a deluge of messages asking for your attention and response. Before you dive into your day, ignore your inbox, stay off social media, and keep your chat apps closed; take the first couple of hours each day to take care of the most pressing items on your to-do list. Productivity expert Rob Hatch calls this your “Success Block,” as this practice allows you to honor your priorities and your agenda before you start accommodating everyone else’s. Knowing that you’ve taken care of your most important business helps set the tone for a more relaxed, more productive rest of your day.

Suffering information overwhelm is not a given, but a choice. Diffuse the overload by organizing your online environment so it replaces your sense of panic with real opportunities for greater productivity – and peace.

How to Hire a Marketing Freelancer

by with No Comment BrandingTechnology

Trying to run a business?  Have other tasks that you need to do? Need a break from marketing?

Well you’re in luck. Today, it’s easy to outsource all or part of your marketing efforts to freelancers. Furthermore, freelancers won’t just save you time, they also usually have the skills and connections to take your marketing to the next level. But that raises the question; How do you hire a freelancer?

Let’s find out.

Defining What You Need

If you’re considering outsourcing your marketing efforts, the very first thing you should do is define exactly what you need done. For example, if you need a new blog post for your company’s blog, you’ll need guidelines on length, subject, tone, other articles to link to, your promotion strategy, and more.

Once you’ve defined what you need, make sure to communicate it to the freelancer in detail.  Because freelancers are not full-time employees, they often don’t have full information about your company and your marketing goals.  If you don’t provide clear guidance, you risk wasting time and resources.

In addition to defining the task, you should give some thought to what kind of skill set you need in a freelancer.  Do you need someone who can write a few simple tweets? Or do you need someone with a PHD to optimize your ad spend program or to make sense of your marketing data?

Either are fine but if you hire the wrong person you’ll either spend way too much or get a poor quality of work which ends up costing you money. Once you’ve roughly defined the person you need to hire and the task you need accomplished, the next step is to actually find a freelancer.

Finding a Freelancer

Although there are many ways to find a freelancer nowadays, the two easiest ones are through referral or through a job board.

Referral

The easiest and best way to find a good freelancer is to ask your friends and colleagues if they know someone. Once you’ve defined exactly what you need, email or call your friends and explain what kind of person you’re looking to hire.

They will often know someone who is willing to make a few extra bucks or will even do the task themselves.  As a result, referrals are free or close to free. Furthermore, referrals are also great because you already know the freelancers will perform good work.

Job Board

The other avenue for freelancers is through job boards, especially boards that specialize in freelance work. Two of the best ones are Upwork.com and Freelancers.com.

On both sites, you can simply log on and enter the project you need done like “Content Writing” or “SEO” and you’ll be presented with a list of freelancers who specialize in that topic. Aim to select freelancers who have a high success rate (meaning they were able to complete the project) on previous projects, have positive reviews from past projects, have the specific skills you need (i.e. don’t hire someone who writes medical articles to write a piece on education) and are offering a fair rate for your project.

Hiring a Freelancer

Once you’ve found a freelancer who seems like a good fit from either referrals or job boards, you’ll want to do some due diligence before hiring them. With a freelancer, you want to focus more on ensuring the candidate has the skills and the time to complete the project.

You don’t need to spend as much time as you normally would with a candidate for a full-time position because things like cultural fit are less important.

Communication

Once you’ve hired a freelancer, focus on communicating well. Because a freelancer doesn’t fully understand the goals of your organization, if you don’t communicate well, they may make some incorrect assumptions which leads to a poor outcome.

Here are some guidelines for communicating with freelancers:

  • Establish guidelines for when you will be available for questions and how long of a delay you expect before you receive a reply.
  • Communicate in writing, even if you initially say something in person or over the phone.  Writing helps ensure that a freelancer can check what you said later and specifics aren’t lost over time.
  • Establish milestones and progress report timelines so that you can keep track of how the project is progressing.
  • If there seems to be any confusion, don’t be afraid to reiterate what you’ve said in the past.

Conclusion

In conclusion, you can find freelancers nowadays for almost any task your business needs to accomplish. However, hiring a freelancer is a bit different than hiring a full time employee.  You’ll need to be clear about what skill set you need in a freelancer and the project you need done.

Then you’ll need to communicate it effectively. If all goes well, you’ll be able to take your business to the next level. And remember, if you find an awesome freelancer, keep them around and refer them to friends to build the relationship.

Effects of Social Media on Organizational Culture

by with No Comment BusinessTechnology

How does social media affect our workplace?

Going to the routes of each word, social media can be defined as an instrument that helps to communicate and interact. Media is a tool used for communication, like TV, newspaper, radio etc. Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable communication techniques. Social media is the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein (2010) define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, which allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content. Businesses may also refer to social media as consumer-generated media (CGM). But social media is not only about communication, it includes as well interaction between users. The most important characteristics that social media has are:

Participation — everybody is continuously involved in this contribution process — to share news, to give feedback

Openness — the barriers are small; the content is reachable and opened to discuss into Conversation — the dialog is really important; you offer information but as well receive feedback or/and other information

Community — common interests, hobbies, passions are creating groups where you can share all these

Connectedness — permanent connection, links between people, resources, life styles etc. The main benefit of adding social media to your overall marketing communication strategy is to create a platform that attracts the attention of clients and prospects of products, services and capabilities, or prompts them to share their views on a topic of common interest.

Use of social media for recruitment

Facebook and LinkedIn are most popular among young professionals. In a study conducted on 430 employees, LinkedIn and Facebook use is highest among the employees who are aged 26 to 45. In addition, 52% of the people surveyed use LinkedIn, 49% use Facebook, 31% use MySpace, and 6% use Twitter (Skeels, 2009). Employers who use LinkedIn and Facebook, as a result, have the highest potential of reaching young professionals in the workplace.

The Impact on the workplace Possible Advantages:

Many hospitality companies have recently been experimenting with social media, and using it to help perform certain human resource functions. After surveying over 2,500 people, CareerBuilder found that 21% of employers use social networking sites to research and recruit potential employees (Leggatt, 2010). These new resources give employers the advantage of fast response. The employer who makes contact with the candidate right away “is the most likely to land them” (Berta, 2000). This gives employers the ability to find new candidates and move them through the interview process at a faster speed. It also helps employers filter out unqualified candidates. Alloro Restaurant uses primarily Facebook to recruit applicants. The general manager of the restaurant, Matteo Scaccabarozzi, messages friends and posts recruitment requirements to his Facebook page when he is looking for staff (Scaccabarozzi, 2007).

A social recruiting survey conducted by US based firm by Jobvite shows that social media has become an important tool for recruiting top talent. According to the survey, which asked over 600 HR and recruiting professionals as to how they use social networking in their recruiting process, 73.3% said they currently use social media to recruit candidates. The most commonly used medium is LinkedIn (78%), followed by Facebook (55%), Twitter (45%) and blogs ( 19%). Jobvite also found that 46% of respondents were spending more on social recruiting in 2010 than they were in 2009. Social media is being used more intensively for internal communications. A lot of networks like KinecticGlue, Yammer, and salesforce chatter are fast being adopted by companies so as to increase collaboration at work. This is being considered as a basic hygiene factor at work.

  • Social networking sites help employees remain focused on and aligned with corporate objectives.
  • People can share resources and information easily and effectively.
  • These tools flatten the corporate hierarchy, empower individual employees at all levels and provide a direct path to decision-makers and executors.
  • Internal social networking encourages people to connect and communicate with each other, cross pollinate ideas and develop valuable insights.
  • The ability to communicate issues, insights and solutions leads to generating new ideas.
  • The company can be more easily and effectively search for and consolidate employee skill-sets to match specific project requirements.

Possible Disadvantages:

  • Open up the possibility for hackers to commit fraud and launch spam and virus attacks.
  • Increase the risk of people to result in data and identity theft.
  • May result in negative comments from employees about the company or potential legal consequences if employees use these sites to view objectionable or offensive material.
  • Potentially result in lost productivity, especially if employees are busy updating profiles, etc.