B2B social media Immediate Future

B2B social media

We spend a lot of our time with our B2B clients talking about, and operating in, LinkedIn, Twitter & YouTube. Whilst these platforms (for good reason, particularly LinkedIn) are taking the floor and presenting the most opportunities at the moment, it is important for Marketers not to become closed to…

After our recent accolade claiming a top 10 spot in the Cision’s best UK social media blogs, I thought it would only be right to give you a little top 10 of my own. At our B2B breakfast event last week, and…

At immediate future – we love LinkedIn and the opportunities that it provides for meaty social media marketing. In the last two years, the social network has really risen up as a star platform for lead generation with LinkedIn Groups and Company Pages being worked hard by…

Activity in LinkedIn groups shows absolutely no signs of slowing, even with the platform’s emphasis on a content rich update feed. When Facebook made this move with their series of news feed updates, the groups eventually went, but it doesn’t look like they will be going any where fast on…

LinkedIn has gone visual. With the introduction of the feature a few months ago to allow companies to post presentations, images and videos on company page, LinkedIn is clearly embracing the shift towards visual content. We all know that LinkedIn is an effective social media network for B2B…

As social media carries on evolving at lightning speed, the knowledge and skill set divide continues to widen. To be able to fully unlock the power of social media for your business, you need to think beyond the team who manages your branded social media presence and look at the…

If you are familiar with Google ZMOT or just generally observant, you will know that the path to purchase for a consumer has dramatically changed with the influence of social and mobile technology. However, consumers are people, people work in businesses, so of course there is a…

Any business, alert and looking to drive natural search is already running Google+ and Facebook accounts at the moment. Facebook because people are using it and Google+ because it is this persistent beast, which is ignoring popularity and instead providing fantastic ingredients for functionality and the ability to…

Today is the second post in my 3 post attempt to look at lesser-known social networks. As you may remember, in my previous post I assessed the usefulness of Plaxo, a cloud-based contact book. Today we will explore Viadeo. What is Viadeo? Everyone is talking about LinkedIn these days,…

Social Media has become an increasingly important part of a B2B strategy, although many businesses are still finding it difficult to grasp a hold of the power in social media. Pioneering campaigns have shown that the medium plays an essential part of many organisations that want to engage with other…

Your business is full of experts. And people who know a lot about what they do is extremely interesting to others. Some businesses are starting to move towards being an authority in what they do, to get people to buy into their expertise, rather than just telling people they are…

With the sunny weather dominating London’s climate for the last couple of weeks, the social media world has somewhat quietened. For many people this is a time of holidays, parks, ice cream, beaches, festivals, BBQs and generally taking a rest from the constant flow of data that surrounds our culture.

Let’s cut to the chase shall we. B2B marketers want leads. In fact 70% say it is the top priority. In social media we have the opportunity. Our buyers are there.

Last week Twitter announced a brand new addition to its suite of Twitter Cards – one designed solely to help brands capture leads and drive purchase. The Lead Generation Card will now enable brands to push incentives and offers directly to consumers, who by expanding the tweet will see their…

In my last post I looked at key characteristics that make Slideshare presentations go viral. They included providing in-depth insight, designing eye-catching experience and, most importantly, telling a great story. (Full article here.) And yet someone may ask, “What’s the point? Why bother with Slideshare?” The answer…

For companies using social media, Facebook is no longer the “in” platform. LinkedIn has stolen Facebook’s crown and run away with it. According to research from the University of Massachusetts, more than 8 in 10 companies have a presence on LinkedIn (up from 73% in 2011). The…

After reading an interesting article from The Real Time Report last week I was inspired to share some of the metrics I know most companies won’t be tracking in the B2B space… The report above, which looked purely at website analytics as a way of determining referral traffic and…

LinkedIn have reached a milestone 200 million users this week. An impressive stat for any social media site. Perhaps not quite in the same league as Facebook who have 1 billion active monthly users, but definitely catching up with Twitter who have around 500 million registered…

2012 has been a thrilling year in the world of social media, and we’ve been busy keeping up with the rapidity of changes as and when they happen. As the year draws to a close we’ve chosen the top 5 blog posts of 2012. 1. Afraid of…

Great content requires originality. With 190 million tweets being generated per day, people are looking for genuine insight and overlook bland and overused expressions. Quite helpfully, LinkedIn have published their analysis of Top 10 Overused Professional Buzzwords in 2012. They include such well-known examples…

The use of social media in business brings financially tangible and statistically measurable benefits. LinkedIn is a great social media platform that enables companies to generate high quality leads in a cost-effective and highly targeted way. Here’s some thoughts on the benefits of using LinkedIn: 1. Variety – Access to…

Given that 66% of UK professionals are now on LinkedIn, the platform offers considerable B2B marketing opportunities to companies. There are numerous ways firms can benefit from LinkedIn, one of which is participation in group discussions. Good questions provoke lively exchange of views and promote the public…

Love these to bits, always great encouragement for B2B marketers. Especially when they are about 6 foot long! B2B social media is handled by the PR department in the main, most do it to create awareness and the shock that more use Facebook (80%) than Twitter (78%) Have a little…

It’s been over a year since Google released their challenger to Facebook’s rule on top of the social media pyramid, in the form of Google Plus. Launched in June 2011, the search giant hoped that Google Plus could strike a huge blow to Facebook’s dominance of the social media…

The B2Bs in the Social Marketing Universe Using social media for business is no longer a new or strange concept. Although some businesses have been slow to grasp the full value of social media for B2B marketing. Last week Facebook announced it was awarding 12 of the…

It seems the social landscape is shifting yet again for B2B companies… 20% of top level executives are spending more time reading Tweets than online news publications. It represents a slow shift which IBM says in the next 5 years will see social media become a primary interaction tool with…

1. Take it personally Responding in the heat of the moment may be a very human thing to do. But, when acting as the public persona of a brand or a client of such a response is a sure fire way to get your arse handed to you by the…

There is no doubt that the growth of Slideshare has got B2B marketers excited about using social media again. It has become the world’s largest content sharing community. Combine this with the reach of Twitter and LinkedIn and the platform has become a vital part of the best…

There is a perception in the industry that B2B “doesn’t do social”. I have often been asked if B2Bs “should use Social Media?” as part of their marketing mix and if “B2Bs can utilise Facebook?”…

An experimental scientist? A mathematician, an historian, an IT geek, a money making economist or socially savvy psychologist? Last week we conducted a Twtpoll to discover who you would rather employ as a social media consultant for your business. The results were eye opening. To our…

Before hastily setting up a Google+ page for your business, you need to step back and consider whether there is any value in joining the early adopters. We pulled together 4 points to help you evaluate whether it is worth your company embracing Google+: 1. Objective…

Those looking to ensure staff are equipped to represent their brand across social media platforms could do worse than learn from some of history’s most famous and infamous historical figures. So what can your social media training learn from the past? “To be ignorant of what occurred before you…

There is a real dearth of social media case studies when it comes to business to business. The scarcity is even more profound when you are looking for examples from UK companies. Yet, surveys tell us that almost half of UK companies…

It can be somewhat challenging to find examples of Twitter being used effectively in the business to business environment. And even more so when looking for UK examples (I am not advocating that Twitter is the only way B2B social media can support a company’s objective. However, it can add…

41% of UK businesses (up from 33% last year) are winning new customers through social media – this is according to a global survey of 17,000 businesses by Regus Group The infographic outlines global social media adoption…