Social media are becoming progressively channels the most influential decision makers in B2B . Even if they still generate little revenue and customer engagement, marketing study conducted by Lopez Research of 106 marketing executives, announced that 90% of companies believe that social media will have a real benefit.
Many companies b2b begin to seriously consider the use of social networks, communities, blogs, forums ... to strengthen the image of the brand, generate leads and engage directly with their customers.
While in the U.S., Forrester tells us that marketing leaders have made significant progress in their social media strategies and increased approach "experimental" approach with a real business challenges, companies in Europe embark timidly ask many questions and do not really know how to do or where to start.
Here is a compilation of key steps after my day on some Forrester report dealing with this subject and my own professional experience.
1)
Find out what people were saying about us: b2b or b2c any business novice in this area must begin with a thorough eve of what is said about his company and its products. It is very easy to set up alerts such as Google Blog Alerts, to search registered on Twitter and Linkedin to research answers ....
This step also identifies the most relevant social networks for business, influencers and bloggers she wants to touch as well as trending topics and themes of its most popular industry.
2)
To study the presence of competitors on social media:
- Have a blog? Blogging Strategy for what he has chosen, is it a blog connected to their websites or blog "independent"?
- What are the topics they cover? themes they deal with the topics they follow .....
- Which social networks are they present?
- What is the volume of audience and what type of audience (Analyze their subscribers on their blog, youtube ... their fans on Facebook, followers on their twitter and linkedin, ....)?
- What is their level of commitment?
Analyze the activity of its competitors on social media and understand their behavior is not only a rewarding day of work which can be followed over the long term, but also a great way to develop a distinctive positioning.
3)
Identify among its customers, who are present on social networks. Strategy on social media can not cover all segments. The presence or use of customers on social networks may depend, for example, their function, their industry, their age ... (Forrester Research). It is interesting to see the sites where they are found, what they say about the company and their level of activity on each social network.
Understanding customer behavior on social networks to identify their interests to better meet their needs.
4)
Identify the main objectives of its social media strategy: choose the highest priority from the following list (which is not exhaustive):
- Increase traffic to their website and generate leads
- Improve brand loyalty and generate customer ambassadors (Brand Advocates)
- Reduce the sales cycle
- offer assistance or customer support community
- .....
Once the objectives are defined, should be put in place an implementation strategy which includes the development of resources, schedule interaction, key performance indicators.
5) Align the social media strategy with the overall strategy online and offline: Social media have no value if they are not connected to the device global b2b marketing. There is an undeniable link between strategy (SEO), content marketing strategy and social media strategy that will increase the impact of these actions.
Finally, it is obviously essential to develop indicators of performance measures to evaluate the effectiveness of their social media campaigns and optimize them continuously. The main key performance indicators (KPIs) that should be followed:
- - Popularity of the brand on social media (brand recognition)
- - Brand Reputation
- - Rate of commitment
- - Share of Voice
There are several tools on the market that can measure these indicators: Social Mention, Trackur, Sprout Social, ...
What do you think of these steps? where are you in your online marketing strategy?
Dizero is a writer who writes for
http://www.webyoda.org/?product=700-instagram-picture-likes – a website designed to help boost your Instagram likes and instagram profile artificially.