It’s no secret that business-to-business marketing has shifted in profound ways in the last several years. Not long ago a general consensus ruled—that the best online marketing dollars were spent exclusively on then cutting-edge tools like webinars and email blasts. Now, thankfully, we have sharper tools that allow us to both reach business customers more succinctly and to track the efficiency of our marketing dollars. It’s now widely recognized that talking at our business customers is not as good as talking with these customers. This is the essence of social media marketing.
What is Social Media?
Social media (best identified with popular applications like Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, and now Twitter) are sites that host content created almost entirely by an army of online participants—individuals devoted to and driven by diverse interests and passions. Participants are not just individual consumers at home—they are also workers using the same tools to solve problems and get ahead in their industries.
What Is Social Media Marketing?
For B2B marketers, marketing with social media means using these tools to reach customers. It means participating in online conversations through channels not available just a few years back. Due to Facebook and other sites there are now many conversations happening online and as a marketer you have an opportunity to jump right into the conversation and engage with current and future customers.
Social media marketing means listening to what people are saying about your brand, product, or company. It means engaging in relevant conversations that can either improve the image of your brand or decrease the damage that your brand might incur. It means commenting on blog posts, answering questions, and also responding to accolades or criticisms. It means listening to the Internet for mentions of your product, brand, or name. By engaging in conversations about your brand or product you become much more visible and relevant online. As you set up links and blog mentions in the online social fabric, interested people see these and click through.
Social media marketing means actively starting conversations online, pushing content, asking questions, driving traffic and expanding visibility.
The Importance of Content
Using social media must involve publishing new content. When good content is exposed, people link to it in a multitude of ways that also help with search engine rankings. Social media marketing begins with some content posted on a blog, page, account or profile to get a discussion started. As the poster of content, you get to control the links, keywords and often the rules of engagement. Social media marketing can happen on your site, but often happens off your site.
Part of the challenge for marketers today is to produce content regularly—in this new dynamic, traditionally static websites no longer cut it. Content marketing means constantly generating new and relevant content as a means to connect with customers. As marketers we need to create original and compelling content to use in our search engine optimization (SEO) and social media programs. This includes asking questions or setting up polls—really anything to get a buzz or a discussion going.
You might say a new virtuous circle exists: Customers have increasing success looking for timely information online, they do more searching for it, and those marketers who are attuned to this new behavior supply content that meets a need. Those marketers who stick to old ways—standing behind static and outdated content—are missing out on a great opportunity. As a way to drive understanding in a brand or a company, reaching out to engaged, self-identified customers supports the goals of larger marketing campaigns.
