More and more B2B companies are recognizing the power of social media in terms of building community, increasing thought leadership, and generating leads. With over 800 million active users on Facebook, more than 300 million tweets sent daily, and one hour of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, it’s easy to get carried away and let everything just pass you by. The truth is, B2B companies can’t afford to overlook a solid social media strategy (which is why we have assembled a group of biggest and brightest minds in social media including Jay Baer, Tim Washer, Ekaterina Walter, Mike Sansone, and Nate Riggs for a series on the Labs site).  In case you have missed it, here are the articles to date:

• Social Media Matters: Exploring the Future of Social Media for Your B2B Business
• How To Build a Ground Swell for Your Startup Using Twitter
• 7 Steps to Successful YouTube Marketing
• Tips for Turning Your B2B Facebook Page Into a Beacon for Your Brand
• Funny or Die? Why B2B Brands Shouldn’t Be So Scared of Comedic Content and Social Media

Part of my work at OpenView is to help our expansion stage portfolio companies develop their strategies around content marketing, influencer marketing, and social media. As a result, I am always looking for ways to help marketers within our portfolio companies and other startups execute their jobs smarter and more efficiently. A great place to start this conversation is with an quick, simple assessment.

Here are my thoughts on how to assess your progress with social media at the expansion stage:

B2B Social Media Assessment

What are your current social media activities?
What channels are you currently participating on?
Do you have goals for your social media strategy?  If so, what are they?
What message/story are you trying to convey with social media?
Do you have a content strategy? What content do you currently share?
Do you have the staff to support social media engagement?
Do you have a release calendar?
Do you have social media guidelines?
Are you tracking conversions from social media?
What metrics are you currently tracking?
What tools do you use to help manage or track your social media efforts?

So, now I need your help.  What did I miss?  What isn’t really that important?  What should be elaborated?  Please, sound off in the comments!

Editor’s Note: For social media lessons from the top venture capital firms online, check out OpenView’s new report: “The 10 Most Influential Technology Venture Capital Firms Online.” And to get more great tips on improving your B2B marketing (and growing your business), sign up for the OpenView newsletter.

Let me explain. You see another company release a beautiful infographic that seemingly blows up on social media and in your next meeting you suggest “we need to release an infographic.” Next thing you know, Pinterest is all anyone can talk about, and all of a sudden you’re spending more time than you care to admit pinning your content. How about QR codes?! Your competitor has a newsletter and now you want to send out a newsletter, as well. These are just a few examples of shiny objects. (And yes, I have been captivated by them, too!) Shiny objects are essentially the things that get in the way or distract you from your goals. I am all for experimenting and exploring new tactics and strategies, so please do not take my rant the wrong way. I also think there needs to be some structure to experimentation, however, and from my perspective, shiny objects are typically one-off ideas rather than fully baked programs.

As I talk to marketers within our portfolio and my network, I sometimes get the sense that B2B marketers treat content marketing as a shiny object — something flashy and fun to play with. This is where they go wrong. If content marketing is viewed as an afterthought or a simple initiative to get started in Q2, you’re destined to stumble.

Content Marketing is the Bedrock of Your Marketing

The Content Marketing Institute has a nice, simple definition for content marketing:

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience — with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

It even goes as far as to say, “If you aren’t content marketing, you aren’t marketing.”  This means content marketing truly is the bedrock, foundation, guts, and core of your entire marketing program. Recently, my friend Joe Chernov described content marketing as the cooking stock at a restaurant. Just as chefs spend hours perfecting their stock in order to ensure their main dishes taste delicious, B2b marketers need to allocate the right time and resources into it so all of the other dishes shine. Metaphors aside, content marketing should be viewed as the base of your all marketing efforts — lead generation, lead nurturing, social media, PR, and influencer programs. After all, what messages and content will you deliver over your marketing channels?  If you are thinking about content in a silo, you are doing your audience a disservice.

Here some great resources to help you lay the right foundation:

• 5 Things You Need to Know about Content Strategy
• 5 Ways to Make Your B2B Marketing Smart
• Planning your Content Marketing: Bricks vs. Feathers
• Developing a Content Marketing Strategy that Drives Results
• Content Marketing Strategies in 60 Seconds

Editor’s Note: To get more great tips on improving your B2B marketing (and growing your business), sign up for the OpenView newsletter.

Image provided by: content 4 demand

Today I joined about 200 other B2B marketers at the Times Center in New York for DemandGen Report’s first ever Content2Conversion Conference. The event was nicely tailored for B2B marketers concerned about lead generation, lead nurturing, the buyer’s journey, and the content that creates the foundation for the program. All in all, I thought it was a really successful event and I encourage you all to look into it next year!  In this post I will share a few highlights from today’s sessions focusing in on the funnel, video, and mobile.

Why You Ought to Rethink the Funnel

Considering that the room was chock full of B2B marketing geeks it’s no surprise that the word “funnel” came up, ahem, several times. There were references to TOFU, MOFU, Buddha belly, gravity, and more! I thought it was great that different speakers brought different perspectives of what the funnel really looks like. A nice example came from Mac McConnell of BlueBird Strategies. Mac challenged us to turn the funnel on its side in order to see its true shape – what he described as a Buddha belly! No doubt there are points within your sales cycle where leads accumulate because they aren’t ready yet, or because your sales team is attracted to a shinier object. These are the leads you should be nurturing. Mac offered the following simple framework to help define a solid lead nurturing program:

• Define goals
• Build a content map for your sales/buying cycle
• Be the lead and truly understand motivations, wants, and needs
• Attach content to each step
• Write emails to help you sell content, not your product
• Fully build nurturing into your system
• Test, monitor, revise, and repeat

Consider Video

Michael Kolowich of Knowledge Systems led a session on the importance of video due to the rise of mobile and the growing popularity for visual content. Michael offered a simple structure to help B2B marketers plan their video creation efforts:

1. Showpiece video: This is the type of video that is super slick. It’s high visibility and beautifully created. Often, these videos have a high viewership and are very brand central.  Michael suggested budgeting $3,000 to $10,000 per finished minute.
2. Workhorse video: This type of video will garner medium viewership. It is typically product, service, or technically specific to your company or brand. It is okay for the quality of the video to be less than the showpiece. Michael recommended budgeting $500 to $2,000 per finished minute.
3. Long tail video: This last type of video typically lives on internal pages of your site.  It is SEO bait and is educational or explanatory in nature. Michael suggested a budget of $50 to $500 per finished minute.

The Rise of Mobile

Another great session (and potentially the most entertaining of the day) was led by Christina Kerley, or CK. CK’s session was about the rise of mobility and why B2B marketers should take note.  We all know that mobile is on the rise. Heck, it has to be. Nearly every waking moment we are on our mobile phones. After all, I’d argue that if phones were waterproof we’d take them into the shower! It was funny to note how many people in the audience (myself included) were glued to our mobile devices throughout the session. In any case, CK’s presentation was full of marvelous statistics (i.e. there are 6 billion mobile devices on this planet and in just 12-36 months mobile will be the first screen devise). CK offered the following tips on incorporating mobile into your strategy:

1. Optimize content for mobile now. As you are creating new content consider how it will be presented on various mobile devices and plan accordingly.
2. Reimagine B2B marketing content through mobile tools. Consider building out a separate mobile site. Think about using QR codes to drive your audience to your mobile site or specific piece of content.
3. Remember that B2B audiences always want something better, faster, and easier. CK cited some solid B2C examples like Chase’s app that takes a photo of a printed check and automatically deposits money into your account. How can your company have impact like this for your audience?

Lastly, I also had the pleasure of participating in a panel discussion later in the afternoon. I was joined by Heather Teicher of LivePerson, Candyce Edelen of PropelGrowth, and Leslie Hurst of American Express. Jon Russo of B2B Fusion moderated our talk. Our panel was one of the last sessions of the day and we focused on sharing our best practices and pitfalls around bringing content to life as well as success stories of using content to generate demand. Many thanks to the team at DemandGen Reports and to my fellow panelists! 

DemandGen Report just released the video streaming.  All presentations can be accessed here.

To get more great tips on improving your B2B marketing (and growing your business), sign up for the OpenView newsletter.

Every now and then I will stumble across a marketing campaign or activity that makes me stop and do a mental head scratch. You know the thought — “Why did they do that?” While I am a huge proponent of trying new ideas to see what sticks, there are a few things any B2B marketer can do in order to avoid looking stupid. 

1. Know your targets.  Entrepreneurs often have a difficult time narrowing their focus to one or two segments. The thought may be Money is money. Who cares what segment it is coming from.  We are bringing in revenue, aren’t we? The truth is not all of your customers are the right customers for your business. We often coach our companies and help them execute market research projects to help them understand the right segments they should be targeting with their overall go-to-market efforts. Take it a step further by fully understanding your buyer and user personas so you can clearly articulate pain points, needs, interests, and preferences of the key stakeholders within your target segments. If you are unclear about where you stand on this, take a few minutes to calculate your market clarity score here.

2.  Tune into the right channels. My next point builds off of your understanding of your target market. To truly succeed in marketing your expansion-stage company, you need to have knowledge about the marketing channels which are most effective at reaching, communicating, and engaging with your target audience. Do some research to identify your right marketing channels. Talk to your prospects and customers. Talk to your sales and customer service teams too, as they may be able to shed some light, as well. Simply put, if your target market isn’t on Facebook you shouldn’t be either!

3.  Go for the goal. Being results-oriented is a key quality for any marketer. But this doesn’t make all marketers smart straight our of the gate. It is important that marketers focus on goals. Without goals in place, efforts will inherently be wasted. The senior management should meet on an annual basis to define, prioritize, and commit to goals for the marketing department so that you can accurately track the success of the team. Take it a step further and make your goals SMART (think grow the subscriber base to 10,000 and increase the open rate to 25% rather than improve the newsletter) and make it a point to regularly evaluate and reevaluate your progress.

4. Plan your attack. Instead of blindly executing against your marketing goals, set aside some time at the beginning of each quarter or planning cycle to really document work plans to guide every step or at least every milestone. This activity can help ensure you create and release your eBooks on time, execute against your campaigns, and achieve all of your other goals. By planning this way, you are more likely to be agile because you will be in a better position to identify and resolve impediments.

5. Focus your efforts. Since marketing budgets in startup and expansion stage technology companies can be a little tight, it is not only important that marketing efforts are focused, it is CRITICAL. Once you understand your target segment, personas, and channels, you should now shift your attention to focus. Marketers have a tendency to be drawn to shiny objects (believe me, I know), so be sure you are properly prioritizing your time and resources on the few things that truly matter so that you can eventually see impact. Instead of focusing on getting more Facebook fans, pinning your infographics to Pinterest, or sending out another press release, focus on the few things you can do this week or next week to move the needle against your goals.

5.1 Leave time to experiment. Okay, my next bit of advice may seem counter-intuitive to my last point, so let me explain a bit. Without going overboard and getting distracted by the newest, biggest thing, do take some time to experiment and test out new ideas. After all, you may find something that sticks!

To get more great tips on improving your marketing (and growing your business), sign up for the OpenView newsletter.

Okay, personal branding is nothing new. In fact, people have been blogging about it for a few years now. But since there are so many online communication channels available today, I feel like it is becoming more and more important (and not just for senior management teams). It seems venture capitalists, in particular, have really taken note of this over the past few years, and from my perspective, they are personal branding machines. If you don’t believe me take a peek at Heardable’s latest list of top VCs online. (Note: OpenView was featured in this list. After it was released I caught up with Jon Samsel, Heardable’s CEO, and he said they are looking to release a list of the top 100 next).

Image provided by: work life nation

Recently my colleagues hunkered down to do some deep digging at what makes venture capitalists so successful at branding themselves online.  This report is the result of all of their hard work.  In this post, I’d like to share some of the best practices that virtually ANYONE can implement in order to elevate their brands to the likes of Fred Wilson, Mark Suster, and Brad Feld — the trio who make up our top technology venture capitalists online. (Note: Fred topped our list and the Heardable list — he really has mastered the art of personal branding).

How to Be the Fred Wilson of Your Industry:

Think of your blog as the hub of your online brand. Ultimately, it can be the online destination for your fans and followers to interact with you. If you are not blogging, you better get to it if you have the goal of building your brand. Here are a few key practices to ensure that you are blogging effectively:

• Cross-promote your blog content by referencing older posts in your new content
• Try to connect on a personal and professional level
• Maintain a regular schedule
• Actively engage with your audience (for more tips, check out the full report here)

Get social with it. Set up accounts across the major platforms including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ to start. Use these channels to really showcase your personality and increase engagement with your audience. Here are a few key practices that were highlighted in our report:

• Develop a hashtag library and work hard to maintain a consistent schedule until your audience catches on
• Think of using the social channels as a way to communicate rather than simply distribute
• Don’t be afraid to share something that tells the world about you — although remember there is a line marking what is appropriate and you don’t want to cross it!

Answer away. Q&A discussions have become quite popular with the rise of Quora and LinkedIn Answers.  Consider participating in these sites (or even in niche communities) in order to build your personal brand.  Here are some key things to keep in mind:

• Set aside some time every day or at least a few times a week to peruse the sites and answer questions
• Be sure to respond to comments as a way to foster engagement
• Consider using Google+ hangouts to really foster a personal connection

For more advice on personal branding, here is a quick blog offering 9 manageable personal branding tips, don’t forget to check out the complete OpenView report.