Social Media's Impact on B2B Technology Decision Making

For a long time, we've known from CIO's and our clients that the Gartner Magic Quadrant was on the short list of technology decision making factors. This has been slowly changing, as we've seen data from the likes of Forrester that reveal that more IT decision making is based on feedback and influence from peers via social networks. 

Source: blogs.forrester.com via Ted on Pinterest

 

As I cited in a blog post last year on social media strategy for B2B technology companies, the social media sources ranked most highly as a primary source of information for purchase decision making are "professional social networks." According to Forrester, these don't include LinkedIn, so the question is, what are these networks? 

Until recently, it has been niche networks and more traditional online discussion groups, but new networks have come on the scene to fill the need. These have included Q&A-based sites like StackExchange, Quora, TechTarget's IT Knowledge Exchange and IT Toolbox. 

The most recent entrant is IT Central Station, and it is unique in that it is a dedicated ratings and reviews-based site focused solely on enterprise technology products. CEO Russell Rothstein positions it as a "Yelp for CIO's" in a Wall Street Journal blog post published a few days ago.

“It’s Yelp for enterprises,” according to IT Central Station CEO Russell Rothstein, who co-founded the service along with Naftali Marcus, the startup’s vice president of development. The service, in private beta since May 2012, lists hundreds of IT product reviews on products from more than 1,400 vendors. To be listed on the site, products must be actively used by 15 enterprises, which the startup defines as having 1,000 or more employees and/or generating $250 million in revenues a year.

The team seems to have thought through how to preserve the integrity of the site as an unbiased community by limiting the ability to post information and opinions to IT users only, as well as making their identity anonymous on the actual postings.

An immediate question that came to mind was how successful this would be if truly limited to CIO's, as my experience has been that this level of buyer is not active on social networks. I posed the question to Rothstein via Twitter to understand the demographics of the community, and he confirmed that it's open to any technology buyer, and it uses LinkedIn to verify the identity of the reviewer.

@tedweismann @samuraiwriter99 Reviews coming in from CIOs, junior/mid IT staff, and also non-IT users of enterprise software

— Russell Rothstein (@RussRothsteinIT) August 29, 2012

Vendors can pay a fee to respond to reviews ($500/month) and also can contact reviewers privately via e-mail, but only if users opt-in to allow this contact. IT Central Station also encourages vendors to ask their best customers to submit a review of their products on the site, as part of a customer community program.

Key Takeaways

This last point is important. There was much debate recently about an article written in HBR about the death of traditional marketing. A key point made there was the importance of customer community programs that energize a company's best customers to become promoters via sites like this. Since 62 percent of B2B tech buyers are likely to post reviews online (according to Forrester's data above), it's likely that they will review the enterprise tech products they use now that they have a forum. Energizing a company's best customers to submit reviews is a key way to leverage this new service.

The introduction of this service also reinforces the trend towards new services that are fulfilling the need of IT buyers for "professional social networks" to share information and opinion. This increases the need for active social media listening programs and a changed culture and mindset inside tech companies to respond and engage in the right way so that when buyers enter the sales process, they are positively pre-disposed to companies' offerings. We have been helping our clients with these needs for several years through our integrated social media and PR services.

What is your reaction to IT Central Station? Does this concern you or do you plan to embrace it?

Following is a nice overview video from IT Central Station.

The Intersection of Social Data and Storytelling

Thanks to Steve Olenski for tuning me into a recent white paper released by Bazaarvoice called "Chief customer advocate: How social data elevates CMOs".

The paper focuses on how the mountain of data emanating from social networks empowers the CMO to become more strategic within the "consumer-obsessed C-suite." Specifically, it highlights the value of social data as real-time insight into the voice of the customer by revealing "first person words and sentiments" about a brand.

It then presents data from a survey of 100 CMO's from both B2C and B2B companies on how they are using social data for decision making on marketing programs.

Brand Management Leads

It's not surpristing that social data is used more for brand management than other functions by such a wide margin. Specifically, 82.3% of CMO's believe that social efforts have a measurable impact on brand awareness.

Don't Lose the Social Data Connection to Storytelling

So much of brand awareness relies on storytelling and crafting the right messages that in particular allow media and bloggers to understand exactly what the companies and products they are pitched and briefed on do and why their readers would find them interesting.

Media and bloggers are thinking first and foremost about what their readers will find valuable, particularly as it relates to the issues and problems that they face. Good journalists have solid insight into this, increasingly through direct social interaction and real-time feedback on their stories and posts. The source of this insight -- through social channels -- is the same for marketers, and this is precisely where the intersection of social data and storytelling exists.

Unfortunately, this is where a disconnect still exists and it's our job as good strategic communicators to also use this social data to ensure the messages are crafted correctly and the story is told in the right way. 

It is still all too common for messages to be too vague and hyperbolic. A post yesterday on Techcrunch reminded me of this, where a stealth company pre-briefed Ryan Lawler on funding, and when he pressed about what its product does, here was the response:

Undeterred, I pressed on. What does this product actually do? “Our premise is is to allow anyone to watch anything, anytime, anywhere,”

Naturally, Lawler was frustrated, which was probably the reason for the snarky post. The company spokesperson would have been better served in framing the answer by paraphrasing what an early anonymous tester of the product has told the company about its unique value. It could have been articulated in a way that wouldn't give away too much information about the product but still more valuable to Lawler.

So, during your next messaging exercise, ask yourself the question: how much of this story truly reflects the voice of the customer as we hear from our listening to conversation on social networks? This is data that will help ground the exercise in reality.

Are you using social data in this way?

The Role of Content Creation in SEO

It never fails. Every time I see a blog post with "death of SEO", I skip right over the post and jump to the comments. Because there's always a boat load of them. Scanning them tells me exactly what I need to know about the post, as the author spends time clarifying and talking overreacting SEO consultants's off the bridge.

Case in point was Ken Krogue's blog post on Forbes on July 20. Titled "The Death of SEO: The Rise of Social, PR and Real Content," Ken writes about how the focus on SEO has changed from old-school tactics like on-page optimization and link-building to continuous, high-quality content creation. And it's not just him saying it. He quotes an SEO consultant who he respects, Adam Torkildson, who says that "Google is killing the SEO industry." Here's what he meant.

“We hardly do any of the old SEO stuff. It still brings results, but not like it used to. Google is pulling the rug out to provide better search for their audience. They are routing out the counterfeiters. Now it must be real, valuable, content, and lots of community value and interaction.”

In a clear and compelling way, Ken wrote about how social signals have become a much bigger part of Google's algorithm and that link-building, which over time became more shady, is less important. What generates social signals like Google +1's, tweets and shares is great content that is generated on a continuous basis, which Google also rewards now through other algorithm changes that looks for freshness. This regular stream of great content generates an "opt-in" audience of followers that engage with it and share it.

UPDATE 8/1: To further validate this point about social signals being more important to Google, it's interesting to consider why Google purchased Wildfire Interactive yesterday for $250 million. Jay Baer of Convince & Convert had the best analysis of the deal, particularly this piece about one of reasons being access to social signals:

This gives Google an end-run way to get Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and Linkedin activity signal into the Google search algorithm, since they’ve been unable to keep that stream alive via biz dev deals. You may recall that Facebook never signed a deal with Google to incorporate behind-the-password activity into Google, which is why Facebook activity doesn’t show up in Google much, and also why the Facebook/Microsoft (Bing) alliance was theoretically a counter-balance.

Twitter used to have a “firehose” deal with Google, whereby all tweets were indexed, but that deal expired over a year ago, and led (at least indirectly) to the rollout of Google + so that the big G could have their own source of social signal.

What’s driving this is the fact that “pages” and “links” are no longer the primary way we vote for the accuracy and reliability of online content. Now, we vote with tweets and +1s and likes and shares, and Google doesn’t have a good source for that information (until now), which puts the mothership of search result accuracy (and thus, Google Adwords) at peril.

While SEO consultants may have disputed what Krogue was talking about, many other marketers validated this view, as a chart published last week by Marketing Sherpa clearly illustrates.

This chart shows the result of a survey of B2B marketers on their most effective SEO tactics. What stands out in this chart is not just the fact that content creation ranks number one, but the wide margin it holds over the second tactic on the list for most effective.

I've held the position for a long time that PR is the most experienced and the most qualified to lead the kind of content creation efforts that matter. Google is rewarding freshness and social signals. Success depends on creating content that is incredibly timely, that is relevant to the conversation and to real-time trends among both influencers and buying community members alike, and that provides insight or actionable advice readers can take with them to do their jobs better.

Specifically, here is what I wrote two years ago when Google became a real-time search engine:

To Google, reputation is the most important thing.  This is true of basic web content, but now there is the added dimension of social content.  This is determined by how important others think you are, how credible you are to your public, and how much you help meet the needs of those in your (buying) community.

To me, this points to the importance of reputation management, something that communications and PR has owned for a long time.  As with many other things in business, reputation management is becoming more critical than ever now that a company's buying public can turn to peers for information and opinion as easily as traditional sources of information.

So none of this is really new.

SEO is alive and well -- just look at how fast SEOmoz and its community are growing. It's just changing and the most recent set of discussions is just another reminder of how valuable PR is in this "new normal" marketing environment. The fact is that PR and SEO pros can benefit by working together to deliver the best service to its marketing clients.

Do you agree or disagree?

Image credit: ProsperWithTess.com

Social Media Content and User Conferences: A Match Made in Heaven

I've heard it said that content is the fuel that keeps the social media engine humming. 

That's a nice simplified view of the importance of content creation. To break it down some more, content is the refined gasoline (or generated electricity if you're into green vehicles). Like the companies that provide that end-product, you have to invest in content exploration projects to get the raw material to refine into your high-octane content.

A great source of content raw material: Your user conference

While general industry trade shows and conferences have suffered with the economy, user conferences continue to be an important investment. From educating customers on best practices, meeting face-to-face with them to understand their challenges first, or allowing for peer-to-peer interaction, these events generally energize a passionate customer community.

And it also serves as an untapped content exploration opportunity. To be successful requires careful advance planning, however, as you can't expect to just show up with a video camera in hand and start shooting.

Following are the key considerations to take to strike it rich. This is based on our own experience with our clients:

JDA's social media agency, Lois Paul and Partners, conducted social profiling of attendees, journalists and analysts prior to the event to provide more targeted messages in event communications.

Tailor content to appeal to attendees - For a recent user conference, we received a copy of the pre-registration list to understand the social "technographics" (to use Forrester's term) of the attendees. This allowed us to know the extent to which attendees are active on social media both from a company and attendee level. We also could discern from this what aspects of the agenda and sessions to promote before and during the event for the most enagement.

Pre-plan video interview topics - Be involved with the event planning team and understand the key storylines and messages that will emanate from the conference. Then develop a series of video interview abstracts consisting of an interview premise and 2-3 key questions to ask, and share this with your subject ahead of time. If it aligns with what they are presenting at the conference and their area of expertise, they will be well-prepared with minimal effort. They're busy enough as it is, so the approach ensures that they don't see this as yet another item on their plate. I've found that this makes it fun in the end.

Use the SIG's - Many user conferences hold important meetings for the leadership teams of user groups and customer special interest groups. Work with the teams that interface with these SIGs to arrange time with them for an inteview -- either for a blog post or a video. While many times customer attendees are reluctant to agree to a video interview, SIG members may be more willing if the benefit to them is to communicate their groups' agenda to fellow users. This is a great example.

A little incentive - As mentioned before, get involved in the event planning effort to be sure that references and links to your social channels are everywhere -- in pre-event e-mails, on signage, on flyers in the welcome kits, in the slides and speaker notes of the general session and more. Encourage attendees to share their favorite quote, a photo, speaker session or something fun via Twitter, and reward the best ones with something like a $50 gift card. Gather the best tweets and photos and splash them on the big screen at the next day's general session or parties. Attendees love seeing their tweets share with their peers.

Not only are user conferences filled with the raw materials that can be refined into social content fuel, the engagement with customers communities that comes from the event can carry over well after the event is over and extended to other campaigns like webinars and other regional events.

How have you used your user conference for your content engine? The ones above are only a few of the ways that we've leveraged them. What's worked for you?

What Your Own Facebook Newsfeed Tells You About Increasing Brand Engagement

Mathew Ingram of GigaOm recently wrote about Facebook's challenging ad business model. It touched on an issue I've been thinking about of late with regards to finding the right voice on a company Facebook page.

In short, Facebook is the most personal of any of the social networks. It's not far from the truth to say that the reason that almost all of Facebook's users joined the network in the first place was to connect with personal friends and family. This is what drives them to log-in everyday, check their feed on their phone and is the basis for the status updates they share.

They can follow their favorite sports team, celebrity, media source and products. But that is a convenience, and they won't tolerate it if one of these entitites fires off too many self-promotional updates that get in the way from people interacting with their friends. And what Facebook watchers like Ingram are trying to determine is what will keep sponsored stories from doing well (will people scroll right past them in their feeds to get to their friends' fun updates?).

Learn From Personal Interaction

There is no shortage of research and advice out there on ways to increase Facebook page engagement. The factors discussed tend to be fairly common -- using photos, asking questions, timing, frequency, running contests, etc.

Beyond these more formulaic factors, there is one that more intuitive, and it's right there in front of you -- your personal newsfeed. On a regular basis, take a step back and look at your newsfeed and the posts that have the most interaction at any given time. What are the characteristics that make them popular, and how can those be applied to posts from your brand page?

Here are some examples from looking at mine this morning:

Vacation & Travel -- Who doesn't love being on vacation, especially this time of year? Vacation photos get a ton of likes and shares in my feed, and they help us daydream and look forward to our next one. Post a photo of a beach on your brand page and ask your fans to name their favorite one.

Anniversaries -- One of my former co-workers posted how she reached the one-year mark at her company and generated a dozen comments and likes. I posted a picture of me and my wife from our wedding for our recent 15-year wedding anniversary, and it generated over 50 interactions. Why not use your brand page to celebrate anniversaries involving employees or even that of a key customer or partner relationship?

What's the weather like? -- The weather always is a topic of conversation among friends, even on Facebook. Extreme weather events also get people talking, like the derecho in Virginia or the lightning storm that forced everyone at the Boston fireworks show into a tunnel on Storrow Drive. Companies can do well by connecting to this topic with useful information, like my insurance agency did here.

What's your favorite [fill in the blank]? -- Whether is music, movies, athletes or books, it's always fun getting friends to talk about their favorites. And it can lead to spirited comment threads. Asking your fans' to share their favorite whatever likely will engender the same kind of interaction.

These are just a few of numerous ways you can tap into the very personal experience people want to have on Facebook - a great way to balance your channel content, making followers more receptive to campaign-oriented updates. I'd love to hear of more examples.

What's worked for you?

Facebook Doing Its Best to Lose Trust of Its Users

Facebook didn't pick a good day to foist a change on all 901 million of its loyal users without asking.

On an otherwise slow news day yesterday (only Microsoft overpaying for Yammer to compete), the big social media dust-up was how Facebook changed the email address that appears in everyone's Timeline profile to an @Facebook.com email address.

The social media echo chamber was fired up for a few hours, and rightfully so. The background here is that two years ago, Facebook announced its "email killer" by giving everyone a Facebook.com email address that others could use to send messages to their Facebook message inbox from outside Facebook. 

No one uses it. If the behavior of my Facebook friends is a representative sample, this is probably because most people use the "post comment" button just like the "reply all" button in email.  When they are spending all their time posting and interacting with friends on the news feed, why use Facebook messages?  

This is Facebook's lame attempt to force people to do so, but it is completely violating the trust of its users in the process.  The right thing to do would be to reverse course based on the backlash that's already taken place.

I doubt they will, though, and fortunately you can change the settings back. But what gives Facebook the right to take up five minutes of my valuable time to have to change something it tried to sneak on me?

I tend to agree with Chris Taylor of Mashable who wrote that Facebook is the Honey Badger of social media. It don't care. It has a history of skirting the boundaries of user privacy, and it has apologized and reversed course a few times. But the pattern continues and changing someone's personal profile without asking is probably the most egregious.

We should count on the pattern continuing, especially now that Facebook is under the scrutiny of Wall Street. And since these kinds of issues could very well affect company pages as well, it's worth conducting a regular audit of your company page settings to be aware of any changes that might be made. 

How do you feel about what Facebook did? Do you see it as a violation of trust?

 

Social Media Targeting Comes to LinkedIn

The feedback from the majority of my clients that want to justify investment in social media today are very different than they were two years ago. They go something like this:

The executive team does not understand the benefit derived from our participation in Facebook, Twitter, Slideshare. They see the effort and output but cannot make the connection back to traditional PR measurement metrics or any lead generation activity. 

They all know and understand LinkedIn.  They feel there is some opportunity to generate benefit – ideally sales leads.

The odds are good that this is what you are hearing or asking at your company now as well. I'm going to cover how we're responding to this in several posts here in the coming weeks.

I'll start today by covering a new LinkedIn feature introduced this week that has the potential to be a valuable tool in the kit for engaging customers and prospects and supporting lead generation.

How to Target LinkedIn Company Page Updates

LinkedIn made a new company page feature available to everyone. Page administrators can now "target" updates to a subset of page followers, which allows you to map the content of your update to everyone that sees it. After typing the page update in the status window, click on the drop down arrow next to "Share With: All Followers" and select "Targeted audience".

You'll then be able to segment along five different dimensions including company size, industry, function, level of individual (e.g. CXO) and location. As you select segments in each area, you will see how many of the followers you will reach along with a sampling of who these individuals are by showing their LinkedIn profile photo.

Key Takeaways

Conduct an audit of your followers. As I've started using this feature, the first thing I noticed was how it gives me a very good idea for how many company page followers fit into key segments. This points to the importance of really knowing the demographics of your followers and mapping them against the ideal breakdown. In other words, if the goal of LinkedIn is to reach prospects for demand gen, you'll want the majority of page followers to match your prospect profile. 

If you don't know this, conduct an audit of your followers and keep track of this breakdown on an ongoing basis.

Increase ideal type of followers. If your audit reveals that 75% of your followers are employees or former employees, you'll need to plan how to get more customers and prospects to follow you. Here is where you should look at all customer communications to do this as well as incent customer-facing employees to use their relationships to attract those followers. You want the profile of the majority of your followers to map to your social media program and LinkedIn as a channel.

Don't shoot into the air. The reason that the two steps above are important is that you can then be much smarter about your content strategy for LinkedIn. You are in a much better position to tailor the content to the right segment of followers, optimize the mix of post types and take advantage of the targeted audience feature. Without this planning, publishing updates is like shooting an arrow into the air and not knowing where it will land.

Below is a video LinkedIn created for more information on the feature.

LinkedIn just became much more powerful for customer and prospect engagement and demand generation. How do you see it?