Last week, BtoB Magazine announced the winners of its social media marketing awards. Hobart Corporation, IBM, Constant Contact and Intuit were among the awardees. These companies are all consistently named among the best and brightest in B2B marketing, but there are many other B2B marketing powerhouses that didn’t make the cut. That led us to ask: What is it that separates a truly effective B2B social media marketing effort from a simply average one?
Among the winners from this year’s awards, we noticed three common habits:
1. They engage. All too often, we focus on “pushing” information about our companies and brands via social media, and forget to interact. However, social media really is a two-way conversation, and to be effective, you must interact with your fans/friends/followers. All of the winning brands from this year’s BtoB awards devote significant time to responding to comments, asking questions and forming relationships with their networks.
Take, for example, Constant Contact. One look at their award-winning Facebook page shows threads rich with back and forth discussion between the company and its customers.
2. They integrate. While some of BtoB Magazine’s award categories focused on specific social channels (i.e., best Facebook page, best use of LinkedIn), all of the winners integrated their campaigns across various social channels. This is vitally important in today’s media environment where most people are active on more than one social network, and network preferences vary with each individual.
While Ultimate Software’s decision to focus their efforts on LinkedIn was likely based on a finding that its target is most active on that network, the company also wisely acknowledged that their customers are often driven to LinkedIn through their blog and Facebook page. As a result, they integrated LinkedIn callouts into Facebook and the blog channels, and cross-posted blog and Facebook posts on LinkedIn.
3. They add value. In the early days of social media, simply posting updates about your company, products and customers was enough. Those days are now gone. Today, B2B customers interact with businesses on social media because they expect to get something of value through the interaction. Each of the award winners recognized this fact and found unique ways to offer valuable, brand-relevant resources to their networks.
Hobart Corp’s “Back to Scratch” campaign is a great example. The integrated effort, which used a variety of social channels to encourage culinary and baking professionals to share their passion for from-scratch foods, added value for Hobart customers by giving them an outlet to promote their businesses and a platform through which they could connect with other like-minded professionals.
What other habits of highly effective B2B social media marketers would you add to this list?
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