If you are a B2B business, social media can work.  Just like B2C, your clients want to make sure that they are making the correct decision when buying your product or service.  Social proof is one way to increase buyer confidence.  There are many different ways you can use Social Media to support your B2B business.  The important thing to consider is how to add VALUE to your client’s/prospect’s business.  Having said this, there are 3 main take-a-ways from this infographic:

1. Social Media tools are FREE to use but there is a cost or investment to them.  You need to invest time and energy into making them successful tactics to your marketing strategy,

2. One of the biggest advantages of Social Media is that it’s measurable.  The infographic shows that only 50% of the businesses surveyed actually measured it’s ROI.  If you can’t measure or won’t measure it why do it?  Running a business is about ROI on time, money, and resources,

3. Strategy before execution.  Before you undertake any social media campaign figure out what the end goal of social media is for your business.

The infographic you see below was posted at Socialnomics.

Great article posted at eMarketer today on which social media tools businesses are having the most success with.  It’s interesting to note that Facebook is by far the most widely used Social Media platform yet it lags behind in terms of success.  The survey comprised of companies in the Inc. 500 diversified across several different industries, size and location.  Thirty-four percent of the Inc. 500 participated in the study making it statistically valid.  The Inc. 500 is a compilation of the 500 fastest growing private companies in the US published by Inc. Magazine.  The article was based on a recently released study conducted at The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research.

Highlights of the Survey:

• Adoption rates of Social Media increasing with tremendous speed,
• Facebook the most familiar platform to the Inc. 500 with 87% of respondents claiming to be very familiar with it,
• But in terms of what platforms respondents had the most success Facebook lagged behind in 4th place with blogging, Message/Bulletin Boards and Online Video leading the way,
• 50% of the Inc. 500 have a corporate blog with clear evidence of proper usage – customer engagement.  Of the companies that do not have blogs 40-40% intend to have one in the near future.
• 56% (a 13% year over year increase) of the Inc. 500 report that social media is “very important” to their social media strategy,
• 57% of the Inc. 500 report using search engines and social media to recruit and evaluate potential employees,
• 70% of the companies reported that they actively monitor what’s being said about them on social media venues,
• The survey also reveals an increasing trend on adopting social media for B2B communications.  The most notable is blogging with 22% of the Inc. 500 using it as a tool for communicating with vendors, suppliers and partners.
• 83% of responding companies use at least one social media platform clearly indicating it’s importance in how successful companies operate.

With many of the fastest growing companies in the US adopting social media as part of their marketing strategy it is equally important for small to medium size enterprise to do the same.  At the very least, small to medium sized enterprise should be adopting social media to gauge their brand in the marketplace.  Most small to medium size businesses are reluctant to enter the social media world fearing the negative aspects of bad PR.  What most don’t realize is that even if they don’t have a profile in social media they are still being discussed in social media.  Good or bad it’s an opportunity to connect.

There was a cool infographic posted at Mashable today.  It offers an interesting look at the evolution of Social Media.  Evolution often makes me think what the landscape will look like in 5 to 10 years – not just in Social Media but in business in general.  In business, in many cases the first one into the market often wins but as you can see in the world of social media the late entrants are the dominant forces. 

There are 2 take–a-ways from this infographic:

1. Being first to market isn’t always the best.  But if you are, you need to strive at being the best that you can be and the best defense is a strong offense.  A strong offense is building the biggest market share you can afford to build.  And once you have market share you need to do your best at protecting it or you succumb to number 2.
2. Even if you are late to the party you can still compete.  After all, the first one to market has done the heavy lifting…they’ve established that there’s a market.  Now all you have to do is provide a better offering…and there are many ways of doing this.  By offering more, or by offering less, by charging more or by charging less, by catering to a different segment of a market…the list is endless.

Remember this, if you are standing still (i.e. doing nothing) you are actually going backwards.

Check out the infographic as seen on Mashable today.  The infographic was created by OnlineSchools.org.

Seth Godin published an interesting blog post today about raising expectations…and then dashing them.  Godin bashes Banks and Airlines as they tend to be culprits in setting false expectations…and for the most part I tend to agree.

I would take this one level further.  If you are in business, your unique selling proposition (USP) should also denote what you are really about.  As your USP also helps set the expectation for customers or clients when they decide to do business with you.  Get your USP wrong, and you go down in flames.

Back in my radio days, I would say to clients if we have the correct message and the right schedule…you will do well.  On the other hand, if we craft a message that you can’t deliver on…you’ll experience a disaster.  These days it’s even more imperative that you get the message right because the power of social media compounds the effects…especially with unhappy customers.

For example, take the following USPs:

King of the 10 minute call back

Home of the 10 minute Oil Change

Always on time or you don’t pay a dime

Pretty solid USPs, but imagine the negative effects on not being able to deliver on them.  I’ve tested all three of these businesses…only one failed to deliver.

Remember…strategy before execution…under promise and over deliver should help you win the race.

How to Improve Your Social Media Efforts With Your Email Signature – a Microsoft Outlook tutorial.

They say that the next generation of communicators don’t even use email anymore.  It’s either SMS or BBM they say.  For me, I find that I still use email quite a bit.  But I also understand that Social Media is playing an increasing role of corporate and personal branding.

So how do you brand yourself a little better?  By creating links to yourself in your Outlook Email Signature.  How?  Follow the simple steps below.

1. Grab the social media icons you wish to use and save them to your desktop.

You can “right click” on the icons I use below and save them as a PNG Image to your desktop.

2. Start Microsoft Outlook.

Once open, go to Tools drop down menu and select Options

Click on the Mail Format tab then Signatures

Click on New, and then Create a Name for Your New Signature, Click OK

Fill in the contact details, add your previously saved icons by clicking the add picture button (see red arrow)…select files accordingly….click OK

To Add Links to your Icons:

1. click on the icon you wish to add link,
2. click on the add hyperlink button,
3. insert hyperlink address,
4. click ok
5. repeat steps 1-4 for each icon

3. There you have it…be sure to test it all out by sending an email to yourself.