With Marketing budgets being tight and ROI more important then ever, there’s a major focus to get the most bang for the buck.  Decisions to drop high expense/low return tactics such as paying for exhibitor booths or sponsorships are becoming more common in exchange for speaking at events and creating more content to be distributed online.  As companies in the B2B space look at social media and content marketing, there are many reasons to build a strong content marketing strategy.

Anywhere by anyone at any time

One of the top reasons content marketing is so effective is that it can be distributed anywhere by anyone at any time.  Great content has the potential to be shared by thousands of people over various networks when THEY need it.  It’s not a point-in-time experience shared by only a few.  Helpful content gets your customers’ attention.  Just a few well-connected customers can then share that information with their networks and word-of-mouth spreads overnight.  In addition, people trust information shared by someone they know much more then an unsolicited ad or brochure.

Thought Leadership

The more a company can educate and help customers and prospects, the better.  When speaking at events, take the time to upload your presentations online where people can go back to them and share them.  Address key pain points your customers face on your blog and provide useful advice that doesn’t include your product or service as the answer for everything.  Everyone knows the business decision process for B2B is much longer so building trust as a thought leader and advisor pays huge dividends when one of your followers is ready to make a buy decision.

Stronger Relationships

One of the biggest differences between B2B and B2C is that a B2C transaction tends to be a one-and-done experience.  In B2B, the relationships last longer and the parties turn into strong business partners when it’s done right.  Your customers don’t want to hear from your Sales people all of the time but they do want to learn from your expertise.  Providing great educational content via ebooks, webinars, blog posts and newsletters allows you to continue to build strong relationships with your customers without them feeling bothered or pressured.

Having a great content marketing strategy in place is key to creating new customers and building stronger relationships with current customers.  Taking the time to create helpful and timely content on a consistent basis on a variety of platforms can be an extremely effective and rewarding use of resources.  How is your company using and benefiting from content marketing?

One of the great opportunities that social media allows us is to find and connect with people and companies with similar interests and reach out to them with an efficiency we’ve never seen before.  While many join social networks with the thought of “I’m here new customers. Come to me!” we’ve found that one of the best uses of social media has been in connecting with companies or people that we would have struggled to meet with otherwise. We then take those online introductions to build solid offline relationships.

Social media trumps the Contact Us form

How much luck have you had trying to connect with a company via their Contact Us form?  Same here.  However, we’ve had a great experience connecting by genuinely commenting on a person or company’s blog post when we could add value or share an experience.  We’ve also had a lot of luck Direct Messaging someone via Twitter.  The main reason for both is that with social media, the person you’re trying to reach can look at your profile, blog, and social media comments to see what you’re really about. It’s easy to filter out the legitimate connections. One mistake people make is to blindly comment on a blog post without adding any helpful input and making a blatant plug for their company.  This is the fastest way to get ignored by the blogger as well as everyone following that post.

It’s much easier to meet someone in person that you’ve already met online

For those attending conferences and networking events, sometimes it’s hard to make that initial introduction and connection to someone you’ve never met before.  However, when you’ve been following a person’s blog or their Tweets for the last few months(and hopefully, they’re doing the same), you’ll be amazed at how easy it is to walk up the person, introduce yourself, and immediately start talking about your topic of mutual interest. The additional bonus is that you will both tend to help each other out more in the future and show some social media love after you’ve met each other in person.  It’s human nature to help those you know and like.

To date, we’ve used social media to introduce ourselves and build relationships with; multiple startups, other companies in our industry, industry bloggers, venture capital firms and investors that focus in our area, industry trendsetters, and our company advisor.  It’s all been genuine and hasn’t happened over night but it’s been powerful and gotten us farther then any Contact Us form ever did.

If you have any examples of how you or your company have used social media to start and build relationships, please let us know.

(Photo “to put the rest aside” by crysb)

You are hearing the buzz around the office about Twitter, and how it’s beneficial for business.  This post focuses on how small-mid size companies can leverage Twitter’s unique social platform to creating meaningful relationships with clients and colleagues.

1. Establish a relationship: Try and get to know your fellow Twitters’, make it a goal to go out to coffee at least once a week with someone new.  Interacting in person and not just RT will establish a real relationship. So ask yourself, do you really know thy Tweeters? What are you doing to create relationships… REAL relationships with your followers. This method will mean much more than having 1000’s of followers you barely know.

2.Understand that it won’t happen over night, social media takes consistency and time.

3. I, me, my, to YOU YOU YOU.  Make it about them! If you really want someone to like you, figure out how to alleviate their problems and issues.

4.RT( Re-Tweet)  If someone posts great content, RT it! This does two very good things: You are giving them credit for finding the information, boosts their credibility and chances are, they’ll RT your next post. Or at least keep an eye out for ya!

5. Settle into your community: Most major and many small cities now have Tweetups, where Twitter’s unite.

6. Link it: Tweet’s with links have a better chance of being read and clicked.

We didn’t cover everything, what’s your best advice?

(Thanks to @Kevindonlin for I, me, my theory)

On Tuesday, I attended Keith Ferazzi’s Webinar, author of Never Eat Alone and newly released book Who’s Got Your Back.  Joining him was marketing guru Seth Godin and author of Duct Tape Marketing John Jantsch. Here are some key points in building meaningful, lasting relationships:

1. A broad network will give you a wealth of information
2. Real feedback is vital
3. Constructive feedback are important pieces of data and should be thought of as generous
4. Create a peer to peer support group to hold you accountable, kind of like AAA
5. Acknowledge the truth: letting your guard down is courageous, not weak!
6. Embrace others to achieve the success and dreams in their lives
7. Lifeline: Embrace one person that could be a lifeline relationship. Create a strong relationship with this person and care, genuinely.  “Lets sit and talk about where you are   going,  how can I help you?”
8. If your not happy with what you’ve got, don’t expect someone to just fix it
9. Go for your full potential and receive great success
10. If you can create circles of people who have something to talk about it helps everybody
11. Seth Godin: Go fail, fail often, fail with people it’s ok to fail with
12. Keith Jantsch: Just go do it