Great discussion last nigh at the SVAMA event about how B2B marketers can leverage social media to generate leads. Check out the summary by Kirsty Scott of SD Design
A few points I thought were esp. interesting, insightful, or controversial.
1. Create LOTS of interesting, relevant content. But how, given limited resources? The panelists suggested:
- One person can generate a lot of content and a lot of buzz – it doesn’t take an army
- You don’t have to be a professional writer. Just get your ideas across.
- Give your community a forum for creating content. WD40 fan club is a great example of community-generated content.
2. “The internet is a great medium for experimentation,” Mike Linton.
- Its easy to try out different tactics, different language, and different social media hubs. You quickly can learn a lot about what works and what doesn’t.
- Its easy to overcome resistance inside your company by suggesting, “Let’s just run it as a test.”
3. The community is there. Deal with it.
- If your company thinks its not “doing social media,” its wrong. Users, customers, and probably employees are talking about you, whether you’re there or not. Best to join the conversation than to be ignorant. (Sounds like parenting advice!)
- Communities take on a life of their own. Don’t expect to control or even guide the conversation. Instead find an employee most like your audience and ask them to participate in the dialogue.
- Develop a thick skin. Even within communities you create, someone will find something negative to say, and chance are, it will get disseminated. Don’t be taken by surprise, and don’t panic.
4. Lead Gen is a process, not an event.
- Include calls to action – SUBTLE ones – in your content.
- Give people the opportunity to “self identify” as interested though their actions and responses to many different forms of interactions (Blogs, tweets, webinars, emails, facebook fan clubs, LinkedIn group participation, etc.)
- Track participation and score interest level based on those interactions. It takes time and experimentation to find the most promising patterns.
5. Traditional PR is in trouble, and reporting is dead (or at least, in the re-animation ward).
- If everyone if writing about the latest events, for free, what’s a reporter left to do?
- PR’s traditional emphasis on providing access to reporters and providing reporters with story no longer provides the value it once did.
Were you there? Tell us about other great insights from the evening.
Do you agree or are these suggestions off the mark? Share your B2B Lead Gen experiences via Social Media.
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