B2B social media Immediate Future

B2B social media

Remarketing can be a powerful tool to engage and retain your audience, but are you thinking enough about it? Often it’s the best performing campaign line within our social strategies, gaining clicks from users who have already engaged with your brand in some way – whether this…

Social media is the place for meaningful conversations. Hashtags are a way for people to find and join particular conversations. Twitter was pretty centralised around hashtagging for conversational purposes. Facebook and Instagram jumped on the bandwagon too. LinkedIn introduced hashtags to the platform a hot minute after the rest of…

If you’ve reached this blog, you’re probably wondering why you should implement multi-camera live streaming into your digital marketing strategy and how to pull it off. Firstly, if you feel overwhelmed by the amount of technical terms, don’t worry about it. There is a lot of science behind it, so…

LinkedIn’s latest feature update allows the sending of recorded audio messages from one member to another. Reducing the friction of communication in an online community like with any new tool, voice messages, can be used well or poorly. By providing its users with an option that is…

Approximately 2 billion people use social media. Figures are expected to grow as mobile device usage and mobile social networks gain more traction. With customers using social media 24/7, and on such a variety of platforms, what was best practise last week might not work today. Keeping up…

When you think of influencer marketing, your mind probably wanders to the Kardashians or Zoe Sugg. Any marketer knows that done in the right way, influencer marketing is a great tool for consumer brands to reach their target audience in an authentic and engaging way, and lead to products flying…

Earlier this month, Facebook spoke of some very exciting planned updates for Instagram to be rolled out throughout 2018. Given the platform’s Stories feature now has 300M active daily users alone, viewing organic and brand-based content, it makes absolute sense for substantial investment. It really is the perfect…

Facebook’s Paid Media proposition is changing. After the data breach, and with GDPR coming up, it’s clear why they’re doing it. But, if you use Facebook for advertising, you’ll want to know what’s changing and how. As a Facebook partner, we’ve got all the finer details. In this week’s…

LinkedIn has been criticised for its lack of sponsored video support for quite some time now and most of us have almost given up on the idea that it will ever ACTUALLY happen. However, last October it began beta-testing video for sponsored content with more than 700 participating advertisers. The…

You’ll wanna jump back onto Twitter when you hear this. Twitter has dramatically changed its ad proposition in the last 18 months and it’s been a great success. For their platform, for our agency, and it can be a success for you too! In this week’s Serious Social…

Over the last week, we’ve heard a lot about the data breach between Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. 300,000 users shared their data and, as a result, 50 million users had their data taken without their express consent. Mark Zuckerberg has finally made his statement. You can see it …

Since its recent algorithm change, Instagram now rewards posts with high engagement. Your reach is based on how much interaction your posts are getting. Anything from video views to comments and shares, if your post receives high engagement, it tells Instagram that your content is quality and worthy…

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg made a bold statement about his plans for 2018. With the aim to fix and improve the social network, he stated that big changes will be made to Newsfeed. The algorithm will now prioritise user posts over public content, such as posts from businesses, brands…

Snapchat have now made it possible to create your own AR lens. By launching a new desktop app that can be used on both Mac and Windows, Snapchat intend to make it easy to create AR objects and experiences on top of the geo-filters we all love! Snapchat have come a…

One week until Black Friday, and businesses all want to run a wow factor Social campaign to entice customers. The question is: Are you equipped with your strongest Black Friday strategies yet? If you think about it, just like you, almost every other business wants to make the most of…

If you still haven’t considered including Instagram as part of your Paid Ad spend, I’m hoping by the time you’ve finished reading this, you’ll change your mind. From its launch in October 2010, Instagram has become one of the most popular Social media channels with 800 million active users.

At IF, we’re all about creating a meaningful connection between the Ad products of Social platforms and the marketing strategies of our clients. Ever since Snapchat went public, it’s been really interesting to see a delay in waiting for them to launch a decent, competitive Ad proposition. The evidence…

The online consumption of Sports Online sports viewing has been growing significantly and as consumer attention gets scattered across multiple platforms and devices, it is interesting to understand what major marketing players are doing to follow suit. Trends A positive problem? Opportunities arise for advertisers as a need for engaging…

It’s time we talked about the mediocrity of social media. Brands that are filling the noisy, noisy, world of social with average content for the sake of being social. It’s been an issue that has been creeping up on us for some time, but it is reaching silly proportions now.

Reporting back to senior management with low conversion rates can become the bane of one’s life. And then to top it off, you are probably working extremely hard to persuade for more budget towards your social campaigns. It’s 2017, and you shouldn’t have to battle to prove the success rates…

Years ago, when immediate future first started, we talked a lot about social being the oil in the engine. The same is still true today. Social works at its best when integrated into marketing machine: amplifying and enhancing performance both within social and across all your marketing and sales activity.

Express yourselves! Say more with Twitter’s latest tweak We can all agree that saying everything we need to within the character limit on Twitter can become quite tedious and at times extremely frustrating! Yet somehow, being the super-species we are, we have adapted and now excelled at this. In 2006,…

According to Statista, there are 3.17 billion people online of which, 2.3 billion are active social media users. Yes, you read that right. That figure alone can trigger businesses to invest in social media, with the aim of reaching their target markets. Businesses want to be able…

It’s safe to say that the use of visual content is going to stick and there is a wealth of data that can be used to support the benefits of this type of content. On average, visuals perform 4.4 x better than text-based content and as social media marketers, we…

How many times have you swayed away from social content, thinking, “What pile of absolute fluff?” That’s right- you are todays customer- a well-informed, savvy and socially aware individual who has access to vast sources of data which hold the truths & certainly the untruths of a brand. This could…

Sometimes social gets a bad rep. This is due to the lingering hangover our industry is still suffering from the bad old days of “social rockstars”, “ninjas” and “gurus” who sold vanity metrics at a premium and contributed very little to actual business objectives. The…

Chasing vanity metrics such as likes and followers is pointless (given most of the algorithms on social don’t favour organic posts). But losing followers is still bad. It’s a sign that maybe you’re turning people off your brand. Take a deep dive into your losses and you’ll uncover insight that…

Social media is meant to be all about the one-to-one conversations. Yet the large reach of many social networks often sits counter to this philosophy. The truth is that brands may well want to be part of the conversation, but the temptation to target reach numbers is too overwhelming. After…

According to Campaign Live, a fifth of top brands’ social media accounts are ‘fraudulent’. It seems many household brands are plagued with promotion spams, impersonators, phishing profiles, trademark violations, hacked accounts and counterfeit profiles. Ouch! And this number is on the rise. Sadly, the fakers are making…

There’s a story that Chip and Dan Heath tell in their book “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” that I think about often when creating B2B content for social. A Stanford University Graduate by the name of Elizabeth Newton ran a simple…

It’s no secret that Facebook is killing it when it comes to the roll-out and monetisation of video on its platform. The platform’s second quarter earnings, which were published last month, revealed that more than 1.1 billion people are currently using the platform each day and ad…

Anyone who’s seen Peanuts knows the football gag. In it, Lucy challenges Charlie Brown to kick a football which she then moves just as he’s about to punt the life out if it. The joke ran yearly from 1951 to 1983 and yet every time Charlie B somehow…

Rather than leading your social media traffic to the home page, why not take them on a journey via your landing page and turn visitor numbers into conversions. Creating web pages with a specific purpose is a gold mine for gathering new leads, encouraging event registration and guiding visitors to…

From the adorable To the daring From the weird To the wonderful There can be no doubt that the internet loves a good GIF. And that love affair is growing stronger by the day. From 2012…

Well I have to confess I did not see this one coming. Given LinkedIn’s history of building, developing and buying their own range of ‘add-on’ products, I was certain that they would release their own CRM/listening tool. The lack of API for LinkedIn has always been an issue for us…

It’s true. Reacting to real-time moments with speed and relevancy all begins weeks, if not months ahead of time. No, we don’t employ Mystic Meg, Uri Gellar or the Octupus who famously forecast FIFA World Cup results. What we do employ are smart people who layer creativity and innovation on…

There have been massive changes in the Twittersphere this month with the arrival of Twitter’s new block feature wiping out unwanted users and the character count updates. We all thought removing photos and usernames from the Twitter character count was the cherry on top, but recently Twitter announced a new…

It’s official – Instagram has shaved, traded its fixie for an Audi A8, suited up and launched Business Tools. Considering the platform has over 200,000 advertisers and upwards of 400 million users, many would say this move was inevitable. Credit Suisse estimates that Instagram’s ad business brought in…

Great B2B social media content has many facets. We often hear about high-quality visual social content that can double – or even triple – engagement, the principle of ‘shattering’ larger assets or cutting video to work better in-channel on social. However, the unsung hero is often the copy, the message.

We’ve said it before, but nurturing a social media account is a lot like having a baby. They require constant attention in order to thrive and achieve greatness. Take your eyes off the prize and you run the risk of your precious campaign tugging the tablecloth and…

We are suckers for B2B marketing… it’s part of our DNA here at IF and we like to keep our finger well and truly on the pulse. We are working with some absolutely cracking names in B2B right now and we figured that it was only right with all that…

I think I may be the only person getting excited about this, but in case you hadn’t heard, Periscope is now allowing users to doodle over their live streams. Officially it’s called “sketching” and is available to iOS users, after a pilot was launched just a month ago. The live…

At IF, we pride ourselves on evolving. Curiosity is one of our brand values, championed daily by our fabulous staff. Our event format has been well received for many years but it was time to evolve. After a few months of planning and tinkering, all was…

Chances are your social timeline is featuring a lot of commentary around new Facebook features. Some being available immediately others with defined development roadmap. But why the sudden flurry of comms. Well, for the unaware, Facebook has just closed their annual developer conference – F8. The annual gathering in San…

Times have changed, that’s a fact – and you can take that to the bank! I remember a time, a simpler time – when Facebook was all fields, 3-way calls reigned supreme and if you wanted to reach an audience with an advertising message all you had to do was…

In part one of our “Pro Tips for Powerful B2B Content” series, we looked at three ways to help you create B2B content that inspires action, outstrips the competition and wins business. In this, the final part of the series (for now), we will dive into three…

Getting your message across can be difficult in the digital age. People have very short attention spans and there is a lot of competition. Twitter allows 140 characters to get the job done, but data shows that tweets shorter than 100 characters get a 17% higher engagement rate. If a…

The moment social marketers have been waiting for has finally arrived. The 20% text rule on Facebook adverts has changed. I can hear the cheers from here. Don’t pop open the bubbly just yet – let’s look into the details first. So what has Facebook actually said?…

It’s 7pm and you’re still at the office. A posting plan for your company’s social channels stares mournfully back at you. You’ve read phone books that are more exciting. It’s okay, you reason, we’re a B2B brand. Our audience is time-strapped. Professional. They want facts, not fluff. “Out there” content…

E-volution Working in an ever developing industry that requires a balanced knowledge of data management, strategy and creative flare is a never ending challenge. A wonderfully colourful challenge that demands any given media agent (of any typical agency that works with technology) to submit to a never ending practice of constant wit sharpening.

How should we humanise our social presence? How should we show the people behind our brand? How should we display the softer side of our company? These are common questions from organisations who (quite rightly) invest much of their social media resource into gaining hard, tangible results. After the campaigns…

Last Spring, in a bid to increase the number of users, Facebook announced its plans to start letting brands and businesses use its Messenger app to handle customer service issues. Then, having reached over 700 million monthly active users last summer, they went public with their…

As the minefields of social advertising get ever more complex and essentially a very far cry from simple tweet or post boosting we must move toward to putting audience first, defining your objectives and monitoring closely to optimising your targeting as you go. All very good practice, yes, but what other,…

For many brands using social media to generate sales, the priority list often consists of lead generation, brand awareness, content creation, campaign management and customer service. Whilst all of these can play a major role in creating sales, one important item is missing from that list – online reviews. A…

Many of you might be surprised to read that the seemingly infinite hoard of Facebook users click the iconic “like” button more than 6 billion times a day, driving the relentless social machine that is rapidly absorbing the Internet. This, however, was not enough for Facebook’s chief product officer Chris…

Facebook is rapidly becoming the all-singing-all-dancing internet within the internet it has been aiming for for years. Here are a few functions Facebook products have that you might not know about: PAGES Pages is one product by Facebook that has…

And now to hammer home the message (see what I did there?!). Many businesses are still figuring out how to go about exploiting the many benefits of social. The start of a calendar year is usually the time companies discuss needing a social strategy, but are unsure…

Regardless of the complexity of the sector or product, there is always a human story that can be told. It is this story that allows us to connect with B2B buyers on a personal level. While they may be key decision makers controlling the purse strings of a company,…

As we near the end of 2015 I wanted to avoid a ‘social media trends for 2016’ style blog piece. Of course everyone will be eyes on for what is going to happen over the next 12 months, how the platforms will adapt and technology updates will take place. However,…

Tone of voice is no longer simply a case of using your corporate brand tone on social – you now need specific guidelines (or the opposite, depending on your brand!) for social channels. Now, I’m not necessarily talking about the marketing messages, the sales posts or the brand broadcast-style posts…

The sixth annual Social Good Summit took place last month at 92nd Street Y, a world-class cultural centre in New York. The star-studded summit coincided with the UN General Assembly and the Sustainable Development Summit, in which world leaders adopted 17 new Global Goals.

August is gone with the wind. With it go Notting Hill Festival, Reading 2015, V Fest, National Burger Day and summer. Relive the glory days of balmy summer evenings, sizzling barbeques and 30+ degree weather (sort of) by having a read through our top five IF blogs for August.

Real-time engagement has been a real buzzword in 2015, but is it easier said than done? And how far are brands pushing the concept of real-time engagement? How realistic is it for brands to be ‘always on’? These are all questions that have been bandied around the industry this year,…

All too often driving attendance to events in the B2B world is an afterthought. Companies spend hundreds-of-thousands of ££’s on set-up, stands, design, product and offline marketing and organisation. Then, in the weeks running up to the event, they realise they have not placed enough focus on making their customers…

We’re in the middle of the summer silly season – traditionally the time of year when there’s little actual news to report (unless of course, you consider air conditioning being sexist as headline news). And this is just as important for a social media strategy as planning…

On the 14th September 1987, the first email was sent from China to an international academic network. “Across the Great Wall,” the email proudly proclaimed, “we can reach every corner in the world.” Ironic, considering that the Chinese government has since blocked over 2,700 websites including Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,…

What is the ‘best’ performing blog? Which piece of content performs the best on my website? What should we make more of? These are all questions I am used to hearing from clients. There are a number of ways to measure ‘success’ and ‘performance’ but before doing so you need…

Video killed the erm, everything star. There is no question that video is the future of content marketing and by proxy social media or that by 2017 video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic worldwide. As video dominates marketing strategies left right and centre it can…

One challenge for me day-to-day is helping clients extract the best content possible for their digital activity. When we think about B2B content, we think whitepapers, videos, case studies etc. However, more often than not, the most valuable content is not stored in the form of a document or a…

If you’ve used LinkedIn’s publisher platform in the past, you will now have access to detailed information on how well your content has performed, and the audience it reached. In an effort to be more than just a professional’s social network, and to place itself as a prominent…

Recently, I have been working with clients across a wide range of verticals in the B2B space, from pharmaceuticals to chemical engineering to sports equipment. These disparate markets have completely unique business challenges, requirements, sales processes and routes to market. However, there is one thing that many of these companies…

LinkedIn’s latest product utilises the connections of employees in order to publish and curate content with up to ten times the reach of the average company page. “Did you know the average employee has 10 times as many connections as a company has followers?” – LinkedIn LinkedIn Elevate offers your…

Getting your employees to share content can be a struggle, but when they do it can pay off in ways that company posts cannot. Generating positive employee shared content is easy when you know how. These are five types of content that employees should willingly share that will boost…

Being in the business of social media, we like to believe that it helps bring people together, incites communication and debate amongst large groups of people, and simplifies access to that communication. These remain true, and can be backed up with a plethora of hair-raising facts and figures like…

“Exciting times for live video streaming” isn’t a term we expected to say this side of 2015 but the rate of new apps being introduced that are able to bridge the functionality gap, (Pan Pan, Nutshell, Hopper, Tworlds) has seen a big increase in the last few months. A gap that certain mainstream social channels…

By adjusting your approach to social media during your businesses peak period, you could turn a stressful and potentially fearful time into a victorious experience delivering spadefuls of ROI. We’ve heard it before: “social can be your best friend or your worst enemy”. This is never truer than during your…

Some of the staff at Immediate Future are former journalists who have made a transition from traditional media to digital media and now to social media. Some try to forget they even used the humble manual typewriter with all that heavy industrial noise back in 1990. Seems a lifetime…

Whether it’s more likes on Facebook, a higher number of retweets on Twitter or a handful of comments on LinkedIn; social engagement is good to see – a validation that your content is resonating with your audience and is worthwhile. More engagement then equals more eyeballs on your posts, which…

Over the past few days, a number of announcements have come out of Twitter HQ about new features – both for users and marketers. The option to privately message more than one user at once has been a glaring omission from Twitter for years. But with the announcement yesterday that…

It was once open to an exclusive club of only the most respected and the most influential, with the likes of Richard Branson and Barack Obama being part of the elite. But now, LinkedIn has opened its gates to all. It was announced last week that the LinkedIn publisher platform…

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year The team would like to thank you all for your continual goodwill and loyalty throughout the past year. It’s been a fantastic 2014 and your support has been amazing. Expect to see a lot more of Immediate Future in 2015 as we have…

I was tracking the conversation yesterday at the Content Marketing Summit on the #content2014. With the knowledge it was my blog the next day I thought I would perhaps cover the key topics and themes from the event in this post. I took to Crimson Hexagon to help me quickly…

As we approach the end of the year, two things are certain that we can look forward to: Christmas [obviously] and 2015 predictions. That’s right, because over the next 6 weeks, the good and the great of social media will be sharing their predictions and forecasts for 2015. Whether it’s…

Over the last few years, white papers have become extremely popular and effective as a content marketing tool for B2B marketers. With so many companies pushing their whitepapers, we now have a deluge of content. Has the white paper reached saturation point? White papers have gained significant adoption as an…

Last week Katy Howell and Tom Ball shared their insight and experiences in b2b lead generation through social. Get up to date on key takeaways from their live discussion here, and discover the difference that creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content can make to attract your target audience…

The opening up of the LinkedIn publisher platform is another symptom of a potentially unwell state of content marketing. Quite simply, we are drowning in a sea of content and some of it is just ain’t that good. From the recent Content Benchmarking…

The ability to know what engages your audience has always been important but marketers, consultants and analysis are turning their attention to why? With more social media insights than ever we are empowered with the ability to optimise our social content and this allows us to answer…

“Leads are metrics that, as marketers, we rely on. Because leads mean money.” That was Kipp Bodnar, VP of Marketing for Hubspot. Generating leads is one of the primary goals for marketers, yet only 1 in 10 marketers feel their lead generation campaigns are effective. Why is it that marketers…

Content, content, content. I am not quite sure how many times I use the word “content” in a day but if I did, and I got a £1 for every time, then I would be buying myself Google Glass (even if they are £1000, seriously!). So back…

In the wake of the terrible tragedy at Corpus Christi Catholic College yesterday, where 61 year-old beloved teacher Anne Maguire was stabbed by one of her own 15 year-old, pupils, my thoughts turned to the difficulty in policing social media. In a situation like this, where the identity of an…

LinkedIn’s recent set of proposition from their marketing solutions team again illustrates the focus the platform is placing on content, and being the centre point for your daily fix of industry news and views. After announcing widening the publishing platform up to all users, LinkedIn have…

With over 2 million of them on LinkedIn, Groups are a core part of the platform. Whether it’s to enhance your credibility or to generate leads, we take a look at the important role that Groups can play in your marketing activity. With over 8,000 Groups created every week, there…

LinkedIn is running ‘full steam ahead’ in its content marketing efforts as it announces the release of two new content analytics tools, dubbed as the “Dynamic Duo” for businesses. Read on to discover why the news should come as music to the ears of B2B brands marketing…

The way consumers purchase products has changed. The internet, and particularly social media, has transformed the ways in which consumers buy and research products. No longer do you simply walk into a shop and purchase a product you have never used before. Consumers are researching the product online: reading reviews,…

In our recent blog post, ‘6 social media 2014 predictions from some of the most influential industry authorities’ one of the core predictions identified for this year was to embrace the power of content. ‘All the research at the end of last year suggests that marketers know…

With every company, there are always multiple areas to focus on and different products to promote. But how do you ensure that when promoting online on sites such as LinkedIn, your focus is evident and not just a jumbled-up mess of completely different areas? If this is a…

Is Vine suitable for B2B brands? This is a good question, which I hear being raised over and over again. “Shouldn’t only food brands and celebrities use Vine?” – some may ask. A little investigation I did this morning reveals that, B2B brands can be equally creative Vine makers, and…

[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_video link=”“][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Are you struggling to cook a specific dish and need urgent cooking advice? Or looking to improve your home but need guidance from someone who knows best? Or are you having computer problems and need help fixing it? Sometimes it’s helpful to speak to someone who has…

As you may know, visual content is key for brands looking to find success on social media. The rise of visual content has coincided with the rise of popular platforms like Instagram, to take advantage of the power of photos. Over 150 million users, an estimated 5 million photos uploaded…