I had the pleasure of attending the Social Media Plus Conference on November 16 at the Philadelphia Convention Center. Hundreds of Social Media enthusiasts converged on Philadelphia from all over the country. I came away with dozens of tools, tips and ideas for powerful Social Media Marketing.
In this post, I wanted to highlight 3 trends worth considering in your Social Media Strategy. These themes seemed to permeate most of the talks that I attended and I believe they represent leading edge topics for Social Media.
Visibility into Social Media Performance.Koka Sexton shared that nearly 60% of B2B companies aren’t able to
track their leads from Social Media. Its challenging to determine what’s working in Social Media. Was it your recent Meetup? Perhaps a Webinar contributed to your recent sales? How about your sales team’s participation in LinkedIn Answers? Google Analytics has recently added “multi-channel” funnel visibility which helps your company to see “assists” from Social Channels towards a particular goal.
If you are serious about using Social Media for business, you must invest in tracking performance, setting goals and measuring results. While complexity remains, Google Analytics and other tools are providing a new generation of visibility to help answer questions about contributions from Social Media.
Personalization. Koka also pointed out B2C has been built on personalization, but not B2B. Yet B2B companies can take advantage of one to one marketing using Social Media. Changes in executive profiles, updates on company acquisitions or new product roll-outs are opportunities to create and extend relationships. Invest the time and reach out to your B2B contacts. Meet them on the channels where they are hanging out. And BTW – as far as I’m concerned, the telephone IS a social media channel. Personalization is taking place on search results too… which leads us to…
Google+. Wil Reynolds provided excellent insights into how Search and Social are starting to play together. Wil’s insights make it clear that Google has the upper hand on search with Google+. You’d better be on board to play in this game if you are serious about competing online. By integrating social sharing results (e.g. +1, Facebook likes) with your Social Circles and personalized search results, power is shifting to those who are engaged with their audiences – and Google plans to reward those who use their platform as well.
Do you think these trends are game changers? What other game changers are you seeing in the Social Media space?
(Photo credit: Magnifying Glass from www.ereleases.com )
As much as we love the way web marketing CAN be very quantifiable, people need to realize that social media often builds and strengthens relationships that move through many channels and are not measurable. Branding is a big part of social media, like it or not. Banner ads were once valued only for click-through but branding value later stood out.
Hey Eric – great point. Benefits of web marketing – and social media – extend beyond just driving $$ and sales. Effects like brand recognition, trust building and curiosity are much tougher to measure but equally valuable to a business. Thanks for stopping by!