We saw in my previous blog post that social networks are a source of education and information in the B2B industry. They can be qualified as marketing techniques that may, with more conventional techniques, become part of a marketing strategy.
Below are the main steps used in B2B strategic marketing to attract web traffic or qualified prospects:
1) First, understand and determine the role that each technique used in social media will play in your company.
Using LinkedIn as a technique is very important in B2B. Its objectives are the following:
To increase the a company’s notoriety;
To connect with its clientele and B2B audience;
To connect with potential clients;
To create and participate in discussion groups.
This is also a networking tool which can build professional networks. It can also be used to manage a company’s online reputation and for recruitment.
Facebook may focus on relationships between businesses, business activities, anecdotes from the office and any type of publication regarding life at the office. This is an interesting way to share content (blog posts, pictures of products, etc.). In addition, the new journal profile of social networks is an excellent way to list the main stages in a company’s lifeline.
Twitter can be used to promote other networks (LinkedIn, Facebook). It is an important resource for B2B, as well as an essential tool for publicizing blog posts or other informative content. Also with Twitter, opinion leaders and early adopters have a variety of activities at their disposal:
Furthermore, within the context of a B2B strategy:
Pinterest can be used as a bulletin board for products, services and accomplishments.
YouTube allows for visualisation of corporate or promotional videos.
Flickr and Photobucket post pictures of products, as offered or in a context of use, of team or corporate events.
RSS feeds and Google alerts are used to obtain content relevant to your industry, which can then be shared on Twitter.
Foursquare, Groupon and sCRMs (Bantam, Toucan, Salesforce, etc.) are other strategic marketing techniques.
2) Keeping a corporate blog and publishing at least two blog posts per week.
According to the figures, two posts per week is the minimum required to attract web traffic. Also note that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and other miscellaneous known to experienced writer are other such tools that will attract the readers.
3) Share posts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and other social networks that concern your company.
When blog posts are published, they need to be publicized via social networks. Ideally, several people from the company mention the posts in their personal Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. Of course we suggest talking about it in your corporate Twitter account as well.
4) Follow the traffic coming from social networks via an analysis tool in order to continually optimise content.
This will result in an increase in visits to corporate websites. The evaluation of traffic may be done on a daily, monthly or quarterly basis.
What do you think? Do you know of another way of attracting clients to your website? Contact me and we’ll write about it!
