Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Business-to-business’

Be The Change You Want To See In B2B Marketing

Posted in Social Media Marketing, Thoughts and Musings, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on January 27, 2011 | 1 Comment »


By guest blogger Michael Brenner.

“Be the change you want to see in the world” is an oft-used phrase by Mahatma Gandhi. But now that January is coming to a close, most resolutions have fallen by the wayside and many of us find ourselves back into the same old routine.

Resolutions or not, change has come to B2B Marketing in 2011. Are you keeping up? I have always tried to follow Gandhi’s advice to drive both professional and personal goals. It is one of the reasons I started blogging. And as a “B2B Marketing Insider,” I am a practitioner and need to make sure I practice what I preach. So what is the best way to be the change you want to see in B2B Marketing?

I truly believe Life Is Short! In that article I challenged myself to ask whether I was pushing myself hard enough, to consider whether I was achieving my goals and to remind us all that we are the only ones to blame if we are not where we want to be. But is that really the answer? Let’s look at a few other people for their recent thoughts:

Slow Down

One person whose blog I enjoy and whose life story I truly admire is Jonathan Fields (@jonathanfields). Jonathan writes about how to build the life you want, offers tips to small business owners and also writes amazingly inspiring articles. In “Hair On Fire Minus One“ he suggests we slow down, even just one gear. Jonathan tested this theory when he was a big-shot securities lawyer (he’s not any more!) and found that he was making fewer mistakes and was actually more productive.

Read more on Michael Brenner’s blog.

____________________________________________________________________

About SocialB2P Guest Blogger Michael Brenner

Michael Brenner is the author of B2B Marketing Insider and serves as Sr. Director of Integrated Marketing for SAP. Michael’s blog is dedicated to sharing the ideas, topics and marketing strategies that drive real results like sales, leads, and higher customer loyalty. Follow online at http://www.B2BMarketingInsider.com Follow on Twitter: @brennermichael @B2BMktgInsider

Read Full Post »

How Can Businesses Get Started with Tweet Chats? 8 Tips Based On Lessons Learned

Posted in Marketing Best Practices, Social Media Marketing, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 18, 2011 | Leave a Comment »


By guest blogger Petra Neiger

Tweet chats are not new but they are still a relatively new phenomenon in the Business-to-Business (B2B) world. Why is that? Maybe it’s because a group tweet chat requires more effort to organize and conduct than simply asking a social media enthusiast to share a few thoughts on a particular topic.

Additionally, many marketers still wonder about the value that social media offers to B2Bs. The fact is that more B2Bs are beginning to embrace social media as a way to expand their reach and engage with their audience. According to a MarketingProfs.com article citing SPSS’ 2010 B2B Customer Engagement survey, 64% of interviewed companies are now using social media to engage customers. This is the story of a group at Cisco that regularly uses tweet chats for business.

The Cisco Collaboration Solutions Marketing team (@CiscoCollab) was the first group at Cisco to launch a series of monthly tweet chats. The nature of their solutions – collaboration technologies – implied an audience that was already more online savvy than some other segments.

Therefore, tweet chats seemed like a natural extension of their existing Twitter activities. Since the first Collaboration tweet chat launched in March 2010, they have created a repeatable process to increase their efficiency around logistics and merged this program into their larger customer and influencer outreach initiative. The results: well-attended sessions month after month and increased name recognition for #CollabChat, the organization’s tweet chat program. To date, the team has had 4 sessions with an average of about 1,200 community post views each.

Kira Swain (@kiraswain) and Laura Powers (@powersla), the Social Media Managers behind these tweet chats, sat down with me a few days ago to help demystify group tweet chats. Here are some best practices they shared along with some additional notes from yours truly.

1. Find Your First Guinea Pig.

If this is your first group tweet chat, do a quick survey among your subject matter experts (SMEs) to see how many of them are on Twitter and what they do there. Those people should be your low-hanging fruit, partner with them first. Not only will they be more comfortable answering dozens of questions at the speed of light, but they will also bring their own followers into the conversation, thus giving this program some viral buzz.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.