Social Media Marketing

A Guest Post from HiveFire Marketing; Taariq Lewis

B2B Social Media; Senior Marketing Executives Want Control

While participating at the Online Marketing Conference, I heard a few comments from a few very hard-working working eMarketing managers.  These managers commented on their company’s leadership view of the growing importance of Social Media for their businesses.   In their view, most senior executives still don’t understand the need for all this focus on Social Media.  Sure, some bosses are willing to devote a little time and budget, but senior marketing executives see lots of fads in their lengthy careers.

Thus, the brave eMarketing Managers, whom they employ, are usually pioneers, risking their careers, to launch and integrate Social Media plans into their corporate marketing efforts.  Not only do they have the smallest budgets, but they usually have the highest ROI proof requirements.  I am guilty of chuckling at the true story of one eMarketing Manager sneaking their company’s credit card to make a Social Media tool purchase.  They were only able to keep their job after showing the ROI on the tool!

It’s my view that senior marketing executives in large companies clearly understand and see progress in Social Media.  This is old news.  Many of the leading social media marketing technology companies have covered it here and elsewhere.  However, the problem, from my perspective, is one of control.  Who controls Social Media in the organization?  Does it fall under Corporate Marketing or Marketing Communications?  If Social Media ROI doesn’t deliver, as promised, who’s responsible, the eMarketing Manager or her boss?  Finally, if an eMarketing or Social Media Manager positively impacts revenue growth, how does the firm properly reward that individual and encourage the rest of the organization to support that success?

Social Media Marketing is not easy.  It’s not non-technical and it requires increasing understanding of analytics, software, and rapidly evolving Internet technology.  Although there’s sufficient education for eMarketers through organizations such as Online Marketing Institute, where’s the educational opportunity for Senior Marketing executives?  How will they learn about Social Media so that they can feel empowered to move their marketing organization, with confidence, in this rapidly emerging and highly effective direction?
In the absence of more education, tools must suffice and these tools need to get easier and give Senior Marketing executives more control and easier participation in Social Media marketing activities.  Information automation tools and social media dashboards are a start.  However, there’s more that can be done and I’d like to see more conversations around other possible solutions.  Unless our senior executives are encouraged to participate in B2B social media, we’ll miss out on their insights and support for this new customer engagement channel.

Engagement Strategies Social Media Marketing

We Are Driving Ourselves Mad

Content Curation, Original Content, Re-purposed Content, Purchased Content, Content Yada, Yada, There sure is a lot of fodder these days about how to slice the Content Pie, from bloggers, clients, side liners and such.

What is a Business To Do?

How about starting with what you always do when operating a business, Look at The Numbers. If no one is reading your blog, what you are doing isn’t working. How the content is labeled has little bearing on the success of your blog.

There is an underling current surrounding original content, and sometimes folks get stuck on always wanting original content on their blogs. That is a flawed approach. As an example, a good friend of mine, Erin Rose runs a local news blog  Positive Detroit,, now a couple of years running was just voted as The Best Local Blog in SE Michigan by our local media, Real Detroit. Erin does an outstanding job curating content, but guess what friends, none of her content is original!

The point here is this, Erin has a keen understanding of what type, and feel of content her Circle of Influence wants to consume, and she satisfies that by filtering through localized content for her readers and following.

Focus on Results

If you are using your blog for your business, it IS about driving leads. Marketing has always been about selling more stuff to more people for more money. If you are using new media, social media or whatever the buzz word of the day is, Focus on the Results. Nothing else matters,