While everyone knows that Facebook is the default choice for any business-to-consumer (B2C) social media marketing, what social media channels are important for businesses hoping to engage with other businesses (B2B)?  How can these types of businesses use social media to engage with their potential clients, gain mindshare and be perceived as a thought leader in their industry, and increase potential clients visiting their website?  Here are the six that I would recommend to most businesses.  Note that, in order to create a sound social media strategy, you should not limit yourself to these 6 B2B social media channels and should also make sure that each site is appropriate for your particular industry.  Creating a social media strategy is about strategic relevance and focus, not comprehensiveness.

1) Your Website & Blog

What most people forget is that social media does not exist in a corporate vacuum and it is only an extension of your marketing, not a replacement.  You will still be doing email marketing as well as other types of traditional marketing, although I do know some start-ups who are putting their marketing budgets solely into social media.  Regardless, you need to lead people somewhere from the conversations in social media to acquaint them with your business and start engaging in a conversation that will hopefully lead to a conversion in the future.  This is why your website is even more important with the advent of social media, and you need to make sure that your website is “social media optimized” to lead others to your social media profiles as well as to help others share your information throughout their social media channels.  Finally, another important part of social media is sharing content, and creating a blog is the best way to achieve this.  Make sure your blog is active and website optimized before engaging in social media.  So before you get active on the other sites listed below, get your own house in order.

2) LinkedIn – Your Hub for B2B Social Media Marketing

If there is one site where decision makers at your potential customers are it is LinkedIn.  Need I say more?  And if you signed up for LinkedIn and nothing happened, make sure you check out the book I wrote to help all professionals maximize your LinkedIn presence.  You can also read my previous blog post on how to get more leads from your LinkedIn presence by avoiding the mistakes that a lot of small businesses make.  Don’t wait for LinkedIn to happen…make it happen!

3) Twitter – The Potential Viral Spread of Tweets Cannot Be Ignored

There are enough business leaders and decision makers from virtually any industry on Twitter to warrant its attention.  Twitter membership is now 50% greater than LinkedIn.  Add in the facts that a Twitter Profile is now almost becoming a default part of a LinkedIn Profile as well as understanding the viral way in which tweets on Twitter get spread and you soon start to see the potential of utilizing Twitter as part of a B2B social media marketing strategy.  I am currently working on my 2nd book which will help you and your business maximize your Twitter presence, but until that’s published, check out my Twitter case study of how NOT to use Twitter.  Stay tuned for more good Twitter blog posts for business in the near future!  And remember, Twitter is not just about tweeting…it’s about engaging, striking up and joining conversations, and respecting others.  But if you engage wisely, Twitter may lead your next customer your way.

4) StumbleUpon – Traffic Generating Community

Part of utilizing social media is to help your company and website to get found.  If you are a consumer brand this is easier to do, but niche B2B businesses can be challenged just to drive any traffic to their website.  StumbleUpon is actually a lesser known social bookmarking site, but because of its algorithm and 10+ million users who like to “stumble” or navigate through several sites at at time, some studies have shown that StumbleUpon actually attracts more traffic to your website than any other social media site outside of Facebook.  My personal experience with StumbleUpon has been the same, even surpassing Facebook.  It is important to note, however, that StumbleUpon should not be used just for SEO and it is a social networking platform in its own.  In addition, because you will need to be sharing content as part of your social media strategy, think of StumbleUpon as your company’s content recommendation engine.  You may not find your Fortune 500 customers on StumbleUpon yet, but I do see an increase in small businesses joining the platform…and there are other compelling reasons listed above that should convince you of SU’s value.  Once you get set up on StumbleUpon, make sure to subscribe to my stumbles for recommend reads on social media strategy.

5) SlideShare – Present Your Business to the World

My newest fave is SlideShare, which in essence is a site of professionals and businesses uploading their PowerPoint presentations.  SlideShare in itself is one of the top 1,000 most visited sites on the Internet according to Compete.com, and it’s traffic is equivalent to more famous sites such as the social bookmarking site Delicious.com.  SlideShare is significant for businesses because this is where other businesses are putting up their presentations, so just as you Google the Internet for information, many businesses and decision makers are coming straight to SlideShare to look for relevant information to help them solve their business problems.  Business usage of SlideShare is increasing to the point where SlideShare rolled out advertising services to allow businesses to get more views of their presentations as well as generate actual lead data from views.  Start with your corporate presentation and then upload your marketing presentations and see what happens.  You may be in for a pleasant surprise!

6) Business Exchange – Network with Industry Leaders and Become the Thought Leader

Business Exchange is literally the Business Week of Social Networking.  What I like about it is that it is similar to LinkedIn in terms of demographic but it gives you the ability to network with and share/learn information with/from other professionals in pre-defined categories and industries.  For instance, for the topic of social media alone there are actually categories covering analytics, branding, business failures and successes, design, social media in the workplace, social media innovation, job hunting, marketing, operations, privacy, training, and social media vs. old media.  Find your industry’s category(s), start sharing information that would interest decision makers in your industry, and build out relationships as you would on LinkedIn.  And, once again, after you sign up please follow me on Business Exchange for the latest in social media strategy.

B2B social media marketing is like anything else social media-related: new tools, old rules.  Business has always been social.  You just need to find where your audience is and get used to a new paradigm where you professionally network with others and try to gain mindshare in a virtual, online world.  That is, in a nutshell, B2B social media marketing.

Any other sites that you would recommend to add to this list?  Please chime in!

And if you’re confused with all of the choices out there and unsure as to how to go about strategizing for your company’s specific B2B social media marketing needs, contact Windmills Marketing for a free initial consultation.

There is no doubt that the current recession continues to have an impact on the growth of social media.  Job seekers are now looking for networking opportunities by embracing social media and joining and then becoming active on sites like LinkedIn as part of their job search strategy.  This make sense because social media is also where recruiters may find you and where companies may perform background checks on you and your personality.  Don’t you want to put your best food forward in your job search and show off your talents to the best of your ability since everybody’s watching?

Unfortunately, I don’t see enough of this happening.  Just like many Internet marketers, who only see social media as another “channel” to start broadcasting their advertisements and self-promoting messages, I see some job seekers doing the same thing by blasting the message that they are unemployed in their LinkedIn profile name and status update or mass sending of their resumes to everyone in their network.  The most important concept behind social media is about sharing, and job seekers can also share their experiences with others and actually start contributing and providing value to the community. In doing so, not only will your expertise be publicly displayed for all of those recruiters to see and help establish a stronger personal brand, effective networking with other professionals can now be done on a scale that reaches far beyond your own network.

Here’s another way to look at it: You can’t force recruiters and companies to look at your LinkedIn profile, but you can use social media in becoming more active in a pool of talent so that you can stand out.  You have to be “productively active”—share your knowledge, expertise and experience to the world and don’t boil the ocean with your resumes.

Here’s how to use social media as part of your job search strategy:

Start Blogging

Blogging is the best way to share your expertise the world, and your blog posts now become things that you can share through social media.  You need to build out the business of company YOU, and a completely customizable blog can now become your “company” website instead of your static LinkedIn profile.  Because you’re sharing knowledge and experience for all to learn by, you are not broadcasting nor blatantly self-promoting.  More people will start visiting your social media profiles because they are interested in you for your ideas.  They will start to seek you out!

Still not convinced?  Here are 7 more reasons why you should start blogging, and here’s advice on what you should blog about if you are looking for a job.

Get Active on LinkedIn Answers

Providing one answer a day in your category of expertise is all it takes to share your knowledge with those who need it most.  Find your category, “own” it, and make it  a part of your daily routine.  You never know what may come out of it!  Here’s some etiquette advice on utilizing LinkedIn Answers.

Contribute to LinkedIn Groups

Join LinkedIn Groups for your industry and profession, engage in discussion, and share your expertise for all to see.  Just by spending a few minutes a day looking for relevant discussions to participate on and engaging in them, you are displaying your expertise for a lot of people to see and truly Windmill Networking.  Here’s some additional advice on what LinkedIn Groups are and their value, which LinkedIn Groups to join and the etiquette of LinkedIn Group participation.

Upload Your Work to SlideShare

SlideShare is quickly becoming the preferred destination for professionals to seek out information that is in a PowerPoint or presentation format.  If you’ve done professional presentations, all you need to do is upload them for everyone to see.  If you have expertise to share, all you need to do is create a PowerPoint and now it’s there for the world to see.  There are many stories of small businesses who have found business from SlideShare…it wouldn’t surprise me to hear of a job seeker who landed because they utilized SlideShare as part of their job search strategy.

I will be honest that I am still a relatively newbie at SlideShare, but I plan to start uploading presentations in the near future.  Please follow me on SlideShare to get my updates!

Create a You Tube Channel

Social media provides a lot of opportunities to learn because many companies and professionals are sharing lots of information.  Many people prefer the video format over a written one, so why not take out that Flip Camera or your iPhone 4 and take a video of yourself speaking about your experiences and sharing your expertise?  If you have a chance to speak at an association or meeting, bring your video camera to capture yourself and upload highlights of it to YouTube.  By creating a YouTube channel and simply favoriting the videos that you recommend to others in your industry or profession, you are curating content and displaying your expertise.  Become the “channel,” literally, on YouTube!  Here are 5 more reasons why every professional should have a YouTube channel.

By doing any or all of the above, not only will you have reached many more people as part of your job search than through your traditional broadcasting of your message, people will also see you as a person with expertise, not someone who is merely using social media as part of their job search.  This social media strategy for your job search is bound to lead to greater opportunities and attract more people who respect your knowledge and will be there to help you on your journey.

Any additional advice or experience in using social media as part of your job search strategy?  Please share!

Whenever I speak about social media and the job search to those that are unemployed, I always have a few attendees who “see the light” and get excited about blogging.  They see the advantages of blogging to start sharing information through social media and establishing their personal brand as part of their job search strategy.  The problem is that they don’t know what to blog about!

If you are unemployed or soon to be in career transition, there are lots of things that you can be blogging about.  I don’t mean blogging about your job search experience, either.  I’m speaking of things that will help you strengthen your personal brand, appear more attractive to potential hiring managers, and help you get found in social media.

Before I even talk about what to blog about for the unemployed, let’s review the 7 benefits of blogging:

• Blogging is the best way to build and showcase your personal brand
• Blogging helps differentiate you from everyone else
• Blogging brings you new opportunities
• Blogging is the ultimate Pay It Forward
• You’re Already Tweeting…Why Not Add Your Own Original Views in More Depth?
• You Can Start to Monetize Your Knowledge
• Because You Can

By now you are hopefully bought in to the fact that blogging is beneficial not just to those in a job search but to any professional.

Next we should talk about my Golden rule of Blogging: Blog about topics that your target audience is interested in.

If you are looking for a job, your target audience will naturally be the hiring managers at your target companies within a particular industry or profession.  What use is your blog, no matter how useful it may actually be to someone, if it does not stimulate your target audience?   By blogging about your expertise, hiring managers who find your blog will have a solid hold of who you are, what you can do, and how important you can be when part of their company.

So what exactly do you blog about?  If you’re targeting hiring managers, your most natural blogging content should come from your own expertise and experience:

1) Blog About Your Work Experience

The best thing that you can do if you are unemployed is to show off your expertise.  You have probably already prepared for interviews and created SAR (Situation-Action-Result) paragraphs in your resume and LinkedIn profile.  If this is the case, why not use a SAR and create a blog post around it?  Or maybe talk about some of your career accomplishments and takeaways that other professionals can learn from?  Offer insight that will help other professionals in the same situation.  But remember that because of NDAs with previous employers, make sure you do not reveal any information that would violate agreements that you have already concluded with past companies you have worked for!

2) Blog About The Latest News

Another strategy is to blog reactively to news about your industry and/or profession.  If you don’t know them by now, get to know the websites and blogs which feature news and current events about your field of expertise.  More than just offering your own insights to all of these happenings and giving the public your own opinion, why not take it a step further and back up your claims with projects you have done in the past?  This way, you hit two birds with one post: providing your own views and opinions on the matter while leveraging your expertise.  Just like that, you’ll be able to create thought-leadership blog posts that are authentic because you can back it up with your actual experience.  It will also show that you are up-to-date on the latest trends in your industry.

3) Book Reviews

What are the latest must-read books for your industry and/or profession?  Why not talk about the most popular books in your industry or profession, not only showing that you are keeping ahead of the curve but also sharing information and displaying your expertise?  There is nothing as compelling as a convincing book review about your line of profession.  Not many can even find the time to start or even finish reading a book these days (blame it on social media, right? .  Being able to have finished one, understand it and share a certain degree of directed information towards your target audience will obviously help you be seen in a positive light.

4) Industry Exhibitions or Professional Association Meeting Reports

You are still attending these despite your job search, right?  Then write about them and share your experiences and expertise to those that were not able to attend!

If you remember the golden rule of blogging, you can see that there really is never a lack of things to blog about, even for those that are in a job search.   The Internet itself provides a huge pool of opportunities for you to find something to reactively blog about.  That being said, if you run out of things to blog about, you may want to start slow.  I suggest starting to blog once a week, and if you run out of content to blog about, then that may be a sign that you need to be reading more books or attending more professional events!!!

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I often get asked about whether it makes sense to completely integrate Twitter Tweets with your LinkedIn Status Update, so that every tweet shows up on LinkedIn.  Obviously there is no one correct answer for this as it depends on your objective and LinkedIn Brand.  However, the question brings to mind a greater issue:

How often should you update your social media status on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Your Blog?

Each social media site has its own functionality, demographics, history, and culture.  And you may have one or multiple objectives for using these sites.  I won’t go into detail on how varying objectives may warrant different frequencies in which you update your status on each of the social media channels, but on average I would make the following recommendations:

Twitter

Because there are so many tweets out there (there are more tweets than people now!) and the culture is one that accepts people who tweet a lot (this is explained by the fact that you could tweet a lot and go unnoticed), it is accepted to tweet several times a day.  I tell people, when they start out, to aim for 4 to 5 tweets a day.  I personally aim for 8 to 10, although I rarely achieve this goal.  When I say tweets, I’m talking about sharing some type of relevant and valuable information, not just chit-chat.  I do not preach automating in social media, but if there were one automation tip I recommend, it would be to schedule your tweets in advance with a tool like HootSuite so that they appear spread out throughout the day.

LinkedIn

Before Twitter became as mainstream as it is today, LinkedIn had its own replication of the tweet with its “Status Update.”  A lot of people used to wonder what to use their LinkedIn Status Update for.  Now that LinkedIn is integrated with Twitter, and more LinkedIn members are on Facebook, people get the idea of what they could put on their Linkedin Status Update.  That being said, because LinkedIn doesn’t have the same “Timeline of Tweets” like Twitter or “News Feed” like Facebook, it doesn’t make sense to post more than once a day on LinkedIn.  I personally wouldn’t post anything if I didn’t have anything of value to say that wasn’t aligned with my objective.  Furthermore, if you repeatedly show up multiple times in Network Updates on someone’s Home Page in the same day, it begins to look spammy, that you are trying too hard to “gain mindshare.”  There are other and better ways of doing that on LinkedIn.  And do remember that LinkedIn is also a Professional environment, so some personal tweets and Facebook posting content might not be appropriate here…

Facebook

Facebook is a tough one.  Similar to Twitter, there are so many people on Facebook competing for space on your News Feed that if you don’t post a lot you may not get noticed.  However, I do see a lot of people who only post once a day, and when I have gone over that in the past, I have received word from Facebook friends that I posted too much!  People definitely get most personal on Facebook.  Certainly Twitter is not Facebook, so I personally don’t think that you should be posting every tweet here.  On the other hand, if you have a lot going on, it may make sense to post multiple times in a single day.  If I could compare the frequency of updating your status on Facebook compared with LinkedIn and Twitter, it would look something like this:

LinkedIn Status Updates < Facebook Posts < Twitter Tweets

Blogging

You really need someone to tell you how often to update your blog?  As often as you can, of course!  Seriously speaking, if you are going to blog, I do recommend that you do your best to blog at least one a week.  Consistency is also important, but even if you are not consistent on the days of the week or how many times you post each week, I think you should try to publish one blog post on a weekly basis.  Want to blog more?  You can never blog too often. I dream of having the time to blog on a daily basis…and envy those who do!

On a final note, it is impossible to do all of the above using a tool like Ping.fm or even a client like HootSuite (although they are fantastic products) unless you are really disciplined.  Just as it does not make sense to integrate all of your tweets into your LinkedIn profile, it also doesn’t make sense to overly automate your engagement with others by blasting the same message to all of the various social media platforms simultaneously.  Yes, there may be an occasional post, like a new blog article that you wrote, that it may make sense to post on all platforms at once.  That should be the exception, however, and not the rule.

What do you think?  What are the social media status updates frequency guidelines that you use?  Please comment and share your experiences with us!

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If you haven’t noticed yet, Facebook “Like” buttons are starting to appear on many websites throughout the Web.  These are part of the new Facebook “Social Plugin” options.  For bloggers and businesses running websites, adding this “Like” button should be a no-brainer in that it adds the following benefits to your website:

1. If someone “Likes” your website, a message is passed on through that person’s News Feed on Facebook that they liked your website, complete with a link to entice one of their friend’s to check out your website.
2. For new visitors to your website, from Google or Bing web searches for example,displaying a number of people that already “Like” your site shows that your site has already been confirmed by many people to be a trustworthy source of information.

Today I recorded my first screencast to show you how to actually implement this on your WordPress powered blog or website.  Even if you are not technical nor have your own WordPress blog, I hope you’ll see my video because it illustrates how truly easy it is to integrate social media features into your website.  I consult with many companies who need to pay a lot of money to integrate social features into their website.  While WordPress may not be the most ideal e-commerce platform nor appropriate for large enterprises, if you use it as the engine for your small business website, you will be able to see how non-technical people like myself can implement the latest social media features.  If you’ve ever thought about blogging, I hope this screencast illustrates how truly easy it is to customize your blog, should you wish to begin blogging.

As this is the first in hopefully many screencasts to come, please do comment if there is a screencast or tutorial on any of the social media sites that you would like to see me cover!  Thanks!

In the world of blogging, mommy bloggers are the talk of the town.  You hear stories about how corporations want them to blog about their products.  PR professionals want to know how to engage with them.  And if you haven’t thought about it before, there are some compelling statistics on mommy bloggers which reveal why they are so important:

• Women influence 85% of all consumer purchases in the US
• Mothers who blog have undoubtedly emerged as a trusted source of information for women
• Of the 42 million women taking part in social media, 1/2 of them have children and more than 1/4 of them are active in the blogosphere

Recently, my local freebie community magazine, OC Family, which rarely has much to say about social media, did a cover story on the mommy bloggers of Orange County.  After I saw this I thought, “If these women were so numerous, who exactly were they and why did I never have the chance to meet one?”  I must be hanging out with the wrong crowd!

At a recent local ConnectOC social media event, I had the chance to finally physically meet one of these bloggers who I had been tweeting with for a while: Marcie Taylor aka @SuburbanMama.  I wanted to know more about who mommy bloggers were, why they blogged, and what they really wanted out of companies who were engaging with them.  Are they in it for the money or products?  And from a social media marketing perspective, how should companies best engage with mommy bloggers?

Below is the 6-minute interview I had with Marcie, where she answered all of my questions leaving no doubt about who these women were and what they were about.  Enjoy!

Do you feel that Marcie represents the average demographic of mothers who blog?  Anything new that you learned from the video?  Please share!

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As 2009 comes to a close, we start reflecting on our New Year’s Resolution(s) for 2010.  In Social Media, which is all about sharing, the greatest contribution that you can make is to share your knowledge or opinions to the world through blogging.  After all, as a professional, where is your “Home Base,” the hub that you share with people who want more information about you?  Your LinkedIn Profile?  It should be your blog, and if you are looking for reasons to start blogging, check out these 7 reasons to start blogging (in 2010 or ASAP!).

1. Blogging is the Best Way to Build & Showcase Your Personal Brand

Whether you like it or not you are developing an online identity with or without your knowing it.  Just do a google search for your name and watch the results increase.  You can’t fight it, so you might as well do your best to proactively manage how people will perceive of your online identity.  This is what personal branding is all about, and you are in complete control of it through your blog.  If you have expertise that you want to let the world know about, simply start blogging and they will recognize you as the expert over time.  I can think of no better way to build your personal branding than through blogging.

2. Blogging Helps Differentiate You from Everyone Else

As a professional, there are times where you may want to stand out from the crowd for whatever reason.  Could be you’re aiming for a promotion among several contenders at work.  You could be competing in the marketplace for jobs.  Or maybe you can’t control your ambitions and want to be known as THE go-to person in whatever it is that you are an expert in.  There is no better way to differentiate yourself these days than by creating a blog and sharing your expertise for all to see.  Get noticed: Start blogging!

3. Blogging Brings You New Opportunities

To be honest with you, I started blogging because I wanted to Windmill Network.  There is no better way of meeting new people online than to put your thoughts and ideas out there for the world to see, not just those that may happen to see your profile on LinkedIn, et. al.  But something funny happened as I started blogging and getting comments: a lot of opportunities started to come way.  And as I continue to blog, now that my blog has some credibility, more opportunities come my way.  You have to trust me on this one, but once you start blogging, you will start meeting new people and various opportunities will come your way over time.

4. Blogging is the Ultimate Pay It Forward

Paying It Forward is an important part of Windmill Networking.  There is so much that we can do for others, and it can only help our bank account of karma over time.  By blogging and sharing information, you are providing a great service to everyone out there seeking out just the information that you can provide.  Google is the matchmaker here.  Everyone is happy.  Consider blogging as the ultimate Pay It Forward device and start sharing!

5. You’re Already Tweeting…Why Not Add Your Own Original Views in More Depth?

If you are reading my blog I am assuming that you have already started to tweet…if you haven’t do that first!  Why?  Once you start tweeting on a regular basis a funny thing happens.  You start thinking about what you want to tweet about it when you read information on the Web.  You start thinking about what information your Twitter Followers might be interested in.  But maybe you want to start adding more of your own color and opinions but are feeling limited by 140 characters?  Well, Twitter is a micro-blogging platform, so when you’re ready to move up, start a blog page on Posterous or even WordPress.

6. You Can Start to Monetize Your Knowledge

I recently did a webinar on helping entrepreneurs and frustrated job seeking executives to utilize social media to start monetizing their knowledge.  A blog itself will not help you make money, and very few bloggers make enough money to replace a full-time job.  But blogging does serve as a gateway to advertise anything that you may want to create, such as an e-book, webinar, or speaking engagement.  When you are ready to start monetizing your knowledge, your blog should be the home base from which you broadcast and advertise…but in a savvy way that is aligned with social media.

7. Because You Can

If you have enough time on your hands and the creative juices are flowing, start blogging now.  You never know what will happen to you tomorrow!

Did this article give you enough courage to start blogging?  Are you already blogging and want to add more reasons why others should start?  Do tell!

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