Communities.cisco.com, on the other hand, gets it. A platform that contains more than 50 communities for Cisco’s partners, customers and employees, communities.cisco.com, also known as Cisco Communities, has almost doubled its membership and has seen a 50% increase in overall traffic in the last year. Additionally, Cisco continues to see measurable savings and efficiencies as a result of the program. Allison Johnson, Social Media and Community Manager at Cisco, who has worked with Cisco for 5 years and communities.cisco.com for the past year and a half, discusses the ingredients that make up Cisco’s recipe for success and the challenges of managing a successful global community platform.

Q: What is your role at communities.cisco.com?

A:  At Cisco I manage the communities.cisco.com platform in addition to driving social media and digital marketing across the company.

When working on the communities platform I oversee the entire program at a macro level. My team and I work on everything from identifying technical problems and scheduling the bug fixes as well as onboarding new teams and setting up the overall program structure. We work closely with the community managers to help them reach their individual goals as well as goals we have for the program.

Sometimes we joke around that in my role I’m essentially a community manager of community managers. Every day is different and I never know what hat or situation I’ll find myself in. A main focus for us is our long-term strategy. People forget that communities are a long-term commitment and it’s essential to align your long-term plan with corporate strategies and initiatives. At the end of the day, the most important thing I can do is give the community managers the tools they need to be successful.

Q: What’s your vision for communities.cisco.com and its business purpose?

A: We set both short-term and long-terms goals for the program. Our 5-year vision is to sustain and create a global community program that deepens relationships with partners, customers and employees. Getting there involves building out some of our core areas to make them more engaging and relevant. We’re in the process of a study to learn more about behaviors. Currently we added a social share functionality to the platform to encourage conversations that are happening in the social web to interact and share with our communities.

Q: Tell us about some of the success you’ve seen as you’ve worked toward that vision.

A: This past year we saw tremendous growth in registrations (more than 50% to more than 110,000). Overall that is one of our largest success metrics. Monthly, we capture metrics and do analysis on our platform. This past year we’ve seen a lot of growth. Ways we hope to continue this growth are building out case studies and best practice sharing modules from these growth spikes.

A more specific example can be seen in our Partner Community. This private space was built for our Cisco partners and we have seen it contribute to reducing travel and increasing the productivity of Cisco experts. These experts travel most of the time and have little time for face-to face interactions with our partners. Now these experts broadcast training sessions for partners on communities, which achieves the goal of deepening relationships with our partners.

The common theme here is that the Web 2.0 technology that communities use can positively impact the business by encouraging innovation, reducing travel costs, opening communication and open up resources. Another way we’re positively impacting the business is that we are capturing and sharing frequently asked questions and conversations within the community. We have a wider reach and we’re able to answer more than one person’s question online. If someone else has the same question it’s all right there with a paper trail.  Communities.cisco.com have proven to be a very transparent, authentic way to communicate so more than one person is able to benefit.

Q: Those are impressive results. What are some recent milestones you’ve reached in terms of overall traffic and membership?

A: Our membership a year ago was at about 74K. We are now at about 113K. In 2011, we saw more than a  50% increase in overall membership and traffic. And, we’re also happy about the response time we’re seeing. Support questions usually get at least one or multiple responses within 24 hours.

Q: What are a few best practices you can outline that have helped achieve these results?

A: Open and frequent communications are a must when you are working with a group this large. We have an open bi-weekly Community Manager meeting to serve as a communication platform as well as a best practice share and overall time to update one another on the various projects we have in the works. We set the agenda in advance and we have an area in our own Community Managers Community, completely dedicated to presentations delivered and communications relayed in these meetings. We encourage CMs to bring up topics they want to cover as well as set the agenda for future facing meetings. Not limiting ourselves, we also bring in our external networks.  I think it’s really valuable that we’re always willing to learn from internal and experts about how to best manage the platform.

Additionally, every community has an established and committed community manager. You must always have one point of contact for each space. This way that person can drive communications about the community and content within their space. It is also imperative that they manage the editorial calendar. This is another best practice.

Overall the CM will coordinate with campaigns in different parts of the organization to drive awareness. Some may also work with hired moderators to make sure questions are escalated to appropriate subject matter experts. They should be focused on the communities health.

Q: What is the biggest challenge ahead of you?

A: I’d say it is taking the platform to next level. As I mentioned before we recently added social share into the platform, but what else is out there? It will be a challenge making communities an easy go-to Web 2.0 tool. There are so many different ways we communicate day-to-day whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, e-mail or text messaging. It’s hard to make sure there’s one central place to go to. From a platform perspective, technology and communities will continue to evolve and it’s my job to monitor this space and help drive what will make communities a better platform and program, without losing sight of our goals.

 - Lauren Bittner, the author of this blog, is Senior Director of Client Services at Impact Interactions and has 10 years of experience with helping companies align their online community management efforts with their business goals.

I was recently interviewed by Jon Vanzile for an article he wrote for B2B Magazine (6/6/11) titled “Is Blogging Over?” along with our client, Jeanette Gibson of Cisco. The article is in response to a New York Times article in February claiming that blogs are losing their marketing power, especially with younger audiences due to the growth in Twitter and Facebook. When we spoke about this, I told Jon that this isn’t the case from our experience in the B2B world. In fact, blogs are a cornerstone for B2B marketers (or should be) who are looking to develop stronger relationships with their customers, prospects, and stakeholders. Here is my quote from the article about why blogs work for B2B marketers:

“When you look at the B2B market, what’s necessary is thought leadership, and you cannot get thought leadership in 140 characters or a Facebook post.”

Think about this for a moment.

We counsel our clients that the main difference between B2B social media and B2C social media is the needs of the audience and the buying cycle timing. For B2C, social media is about building awareness and then trial. B2B is much more complex, it is about building awareness then relationships with the audience. Why? Because in general, the sales cycle for B2B is longer than B2C so more effort and information is necessary to help your prospect move to become a customer.

Blogs can play a big role in this relationship building process by highlighting your company’s thought leadership in the industry. Companies want to buy from companies that will be leading the industry and can demonstrate staying power. By providing executive views of the world to your audience, you help them to understand that your company is a leader and will be there in the long term to help your customers.

Can Twitter or Facebook do the same? No, they cannot. Here is a better way to use these tools in your B2B marketing.

We work with our clients to use B2B social media tools like Twitter, Facebook (yes, it does work in B2B), LinkedIn Groups, and YouTube in their online marketing mix. But we recommend a stronger process of using these tools as a complimentary set of tactical processes that support business objectives. We do that through our “Beacon Strategy.”

Just as a lighthouse helps ships to find safe harbors, the correct use of social media tools can help your audience find the best information you can provide quickly and efficiently on their time. Social media in a B2B setting works best when it works together with blogs and compelling content to educate and help audiences to learn more about your products, services, view of the industry, and support issues. By pointing your social media content on third party sites such as Twitter or LinkedIn Groups back to your controlled website, you have the advantage of measurement while your audience has the advantage of learning more. B2B social media requires measurement. Friends, followers, group members, etc. don’t mean anything until they are engaged in a conversation or contact process with your firm. Why? Because you cannot measure anything of real economic value until the person completes an action. Those actions should take place in your harbor, not somewhere in the vast ocean that is the internet.

Getting back to the article, B2B blogs when clearly written with compelling content are one of the best destinations in your safe harbor for people to learn about your company. In a project we did with SAP back in 2004 and 2005, we saw that one of the best indicators of whether a company was moving towards purchase was their reading of the SAP Executive Blog Series. This was a series of blogs by SAP Board Members and top executives at the time (people like Hasso Plattner, Shai Aggasi, Leo Apotheker, etc.). Why? Simple. Before a company spends thousands of dollars on your products, their executive team wants to know if you are aligned with their interests and if your company is truly customer focused. Blogs help to show this to your audience.

So, are blogs dead? For B2B marketers looking to use relationship marketing, the answer is a resounding NO!

The Elevator Pitch – Your Introduction to the Market

Traditionally, many people view the Elevator Pitch in terms from the late 1990s when management consultants told their clients to be ready to explain their company and its strengths in less than two minutes. While this was adopted at the time primarily by new stage companies looking for investments from venture capital companies, the use of elevator pitches has evolved tremendously over the past several years.

As more and more potential customer staff members search the internet for information (one of the top reasons B2B staff use the internet), your firm must not only be found but able to tell its story quickly. That’s what the elevator pitch does so well.  The key concept behind the elevator pitch for established companies using video for contact generation is that the videos reach people who you don’t know who may be looking for your solution or researching it for a decision maker in their company.

So let’s look at an example of a good elevator pitches from a member of the Best Performance Circle, SPIN Consulting of Italy.

You’ll notice immediately that this video elevator pitches is much less formal than you might expect. This video works well because it acts as an introduction, not a sales pitch. The style is conversational and inviting. But what of the results? Well so far, SPIN’s video has received close to 800 views. The majority of SPIN’s views have come from  viewers who visited the SPIN website, which is why you need to embed these videos into your site. Each of these views are an opportunity to introduce your firm to a potential customer.

Customer Success Stories

In business, recommendations and references are often used to help close a deal. What if you could change the timing to demonstrate your expertise and move ahead of your competition, would you make that change in your process? That’s exactly what good, strongly focused customer success story videos do for companies. It’s a tactic that has worked remarkably well for big global companies and for small businesses focused on a single market. Companies like SAP, Cisco, HP, IBM, Cap Gemini, Accenture, Atos Origin, and others have been using customer success whitepapers and videos to help build a faster relationship with their contacts and prospects for years.

In the Best Performance Challenge 2011, we’ve seen several examples of customer success videos. One of the better examples is from DSCallards Ltd, a partner selling Business Objects solutions in the UK. The video on SAP Crystal Reports Server is short, clear, and provides the opportunity for the customer to tell the story. That is the essence of the customer support video.

To date, this video has over 2,300 views since it was created in November of 2010. More importantly, the video has influenced visitors’ views of how the software can positively impact the business. This can be seen by reading the comments on the video on YouTube:

• Great video, good to see user experiences

Dawnlco 3 months ago

• Good video – shows how accurate reporting can impact different areas of the business. Nice to hear positive user experience from the users themselves.

DilbertDaveCarson 3 months ago

• Good to see real, like sized, customer stories, definitely helping us make our mind up

R00ddle 3 months ago

• I’ve been working on a large corporate Business Objects project and had lost sight of how MI reporting can be critical to the day-to-day running of a real life SME. It was great to see dashboard reports actually being used in an operational environment rather than being presented to management as a snapshot tool at a board meeting. Well done to the team for an excellent presentation of how the real world can see the benefits of information that they already had but didn’t know how to use.

wm419142a 3 months ago

• Very illustrative and informative video. Clear to see the business benefits to be derived from such a solution.

lizm2508 3 months ago

• Excellent video!. Really helpfull. We’re considering a similar solution in our organisation, and would like to discuss how we might use Crystal instead.

Please contact me!

businessmanup 3 months ago

• Really useful video. This will help us to move forward with our own reporting project. thanks!

zenagee 3 months ago

• Great to see real customers benefiting from meaningful dashboard reporting & positively impacting their strategy

greenrhino77 3 months ago

Look at the comments closely. See the comment asking for someone to contact the viewer? This is why allowing visitors to view video on their time is so important. As business people continue to start their search for products and solutions online using search tools like Google, Yandex, Baidu, and others, they will find your videos and web site. By combining the power of video into your web site, you present an opportunity to engage and learn more by starting the relationship early and demonstrating the power of your solution long before your competition.

One Last Point About Online Video for Business

In the Best Performance Challenge 2011, some of the feedback and questions from our competitor teams revolved around video styles and languages. Let’s look at one last research chart to answer the question of style:

In the viewers’ minds, it doesn’t really make a difference if the video is a studio produced gem or a company created offering. What does matter is that you offer video.

On languages, there is no set rule other than to meet the needs of your audience. If you are working in several markets which have different languages, you might want to consider providing videos in each distinct language. If you are focused on a single market, it is probably a better idea to utilize the local language. Remember, audience focus is the key, meet their needs and you’ll be successful.

Recent research has shown that executives across many industries are expanding their use of social media. At the same time, the research shows that the majority of business to business executives in charge of social media believe they are not achieving the optimal business results from their efforts. At iStrategy San Francisco, Impact Interactions’ president Mike Rowland, Cisco’s Jeanette Gibson, SAP’s Sara Larsen, and NetApp’s Navneet Grewal will present case studies of integrated, coordinated social media programs based upon proven strategies that provide a positive impact on the organization’s top and bottom line.

With over ten years of experience in the online interactive world, Mr. Rowland brings a wealth of best practices from clients such as NetApp, Cisco, SAP, AARP, Intel, and many other major brands. The methodology developed by Mr. Rowland and Impact Interactions utilizes measurement as part of the initial planning process for social media in order to provide clients with instant clarity into how the success of the project and effort will be demonstrated. To provide additional insight at the
conference, Mike will be joined by top B2B social media professionals from his clients Cisco, SAP, and NetApp. Successful case studies of B2B social media projects, organizations, and strategies will be presented and discussed with iStrategy attendees.

“Too often companies begin with the tools or third party sites like Twitter or Facebook then wonder why they aren’t getting the results they anticipated,” stated Mike Rowland, president of Impact Interactions. “Our methodology begins with defining success from a measurement point of view. We then build out key performance indicators (KPIs) to track our success based upon three categories of measurement: Traffic, Behavior, and Value. Too often marketers substitute traffic metrics or behavior
activities for value. This is why so many senior executives have difficulty believing that social media is effective. In order to demonstrate true value to the organization, you have to move beyond traffic and behavior and find the economic value of social media activities. Our expert panel presentation for iStrategy San Francisco attendees will help their organizations to move forward and realize the economic value of their efforts using social media in a B2B setting.”

By demonstrating a stronger method of using social media to compliment rather than compete with existing marketing activities, Mr. Rowland’s presentation will provide real world case studies from clients such as Cisco, NetApp, and SAP that translate efforts into stronger conversion, engagement, and ultimately business results. Whether the focus is lead generation, brand awareness, trial, promotion, or support, this presentation will demonstrate why integration of effort is critical to success.

Attendees will be able to understand why traffic and behavior metrics do not equal value in social media. Through social media case studies, marketers attending the iStrategy event will also understand why counts and followers don’t necessarily lead to value, while activities with strong calls to action and follow through do bring value to the organization.

“I look forward to presenting our best practices which help our clients succeed,” states Mr. Rowland. “If social media is to move past the hype and become a successful long term strategic asset for companies, we have to demonstrate not only what works but how success is measured.”

That was a fast seven years…

 Way back in 2003, the Internet world of Pets.com, Webvan.com, and others was dying a fast and some would say well deserved death. But what was emerging was the idea that the web provided companies with a direct link to an increasingly vocal audience for their products and services.  After cutting my teeth at Participate.com, I became a ‘true believer’ in the future of the internet as a powerful marketing and support tool. Even though Participate was slowly dying, I was convinced that companies would need help measuring their online activities and working with their online audiences.

So after leaving, I launched Metricreports.com one of the first companies to focus on analytics and metrics as an outsourced service for organizations. The business world was awakening to the idea that online activity meant more than just hosting an online brochure. The idea behind Metric Reports was that marketers could make better decisions if they understood more about what their visitors were doing on their web sites and communities. With more and more of the public starting to use broadband instead of dial-up services, the ability to interact online kept pace. That spurred an idea about our future:

Now:

Over the next several months, as companies wanted additional help with interactive media we expanded our offerings to include strategy consulting with companies regarding online communities as well as measurement. Our clients started asking for us to help with their implementation and use of the new social tools. So in late 2003, we renamed and re-branded ourselves Impact Interactions.  (See how fast the internet really moves?)

To differentiate ourselves from the growing list of consultants and freelancers in the market, we decided that we would not only provide the pre-requisite consulting document and powerpoint, we would also help our clients execute and measure the results of our recommendations. We don’t drop a document and leave, we stand by our ideas and will help to prove their value to your organization.

Sometimes, it’s a good idea to look back while moving ahead. Say hello to Social Media… what’s old is new again.

In 2004, we attended the first blog conference organized for business. What amazed us was the idea that somehow all of this was shiny and new. What floored us was that the speakers continued to push the idea that never in the history of mankind, had the ability to publish ideas using a one to many model been realized. These tools, Blogs and Wikis were going to change the world like nothing ever seen before… each person on the Earth would have his/her own blog and share their lives with everyone in a transparent and authentic way. (Does this sound familiar yet?)

When we brought up online communities such as Cisco’s NetPro (now called CSC) or SAP’s Global Business Community, both of which we helped to launch at Participate, out came the deer in the headlights looks from the speakers. Clearly, no one was trying to draw lessons (or best practices to use the correct jargon) from the experiences of others before them. The focus was on the new shiny tool. Measurement was left for another day. This would be a recurring theme as our industry evolved…into the Social Media industry today. Too much hype, not enough results. Attend most conferences today on Social Media and you’ll see firsthand how far we still have to go… From our inception, Impact Interactions focused on getting results rather than on the tools. It’s a major differentiator between our competitors and ourselves that we believe is the reason why our clients achieve stronger results more consistently over time.

We’ve witnessed the growth in the social media tools that allow interactions between companies and audiences. We’ve noted that for every Facebook there is a GeoCities or Friendster. The tools keep evolving and can truly help companies succeed online, but most never achieve the results that they could… because of the focus on tools and tactics rather than true strategy.

That is more true today as companies believe the hype surrounding social media but cannot figure out how to accurately measure the value it can produce. Achieving results for clients is all we are about… not pushing cool toys to use. In a world of hype, we’re a bit of a stickler for avoiding the hype and focusing on using the best tools to meet client objectives. And if you can’t measure it in terms that your Vice Presidents can understand, then you are probably not properly aligned to your company’s business goals in your social media program. But …

 We couldn’t have done it without our clients…. THANK YOU from Impact Interactions!

Our first client in 2003 was SAP, quickly followed by AARP. And we’ve been proud to be associated with them for multiple projects over the past seven years. Our focus on helping companies attain measurable results in their efforts lead to significant growth in both clients and in projects. We owe a lot of our success to the people that we’ve been fortunate to work with in these organizations. People like Raimund, Sara, Crispin, Nancy, Roland, Zach, and Lee of SAP or Sandy and Teri of AARP. Not only did we help them, but we learned from them as well. 

Today, we’ve grown considerably from our first few months using the Metric Reports name. Our client roster has grown to include many of the largest and biggest brands on the internet, but what we are most proud of is the fact that the majority of our clients continue to re-hire us each year for new projects. Along the way, we’ve helped them to use global and local tactics to achieve strategic results. Our work, like the internet itself is global. We’ve completed projects in the U.S., Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Poland, Russia, China, Brazil, Argentina, Spain and many other countries.

As with all our clients, we’ve worked with some great people along the way. From Elaine, Mike, Tim, LaSandra, Laura P., Laura D., Deb, Peter and many, many others at Cisco to Mark and Christine of the American Chemical Society to Navneet, Carrie, John, and Terri of NetApp, we’ve enjoyed working with some of the most passionate, smart people around.

On our anniversary, the team at Impact Interactions would like to thank all of you for helping us grow, learn, and be successful. We look forward to continuing to provide value to you, your teams, and your organizations.

So what’s next?

We’re never standing still. It’s a big wide open world out there…the social media consulting industry is very fractured with a lot of inexperienced people providing poor advice. More digital agencies are entering the space and claiming expertise (then turning to companies like Impact Interactions and others for help). The confusion levels amongst social media professionals in large organizations is still very high due to so much focus on one-off tactics versus integrated strategies that benefit the organization. For example, we often see B2C tactics being pushed for B2B programs which then have to be revised six months later due to lack of results.

With projects in Europe and Asia as well as North America, we understand that there are unique differences between the adoption of social media and online communities in the U.S. and elsewhere. (That’s why we partnered with PDAgroup of Austria in 2010, to help companies in Europe expand their use of social media to engage with their audiences and customers.)

Despite one of the toughest global recesssions, we’re very optimistic for the future.

There is a lot of opportunity for us to help. We expect to open a second office in Chicago in 2011 and are actively seeking partnersto expand our network in Asia Pacific and Latin America. To do that, we’ll need additional talented people to join our incredible team. That leads me to one final group that deserves a lot of credit for helping Impact Interactions grow to where it is today:

A Special Thank You to our Employees!

From our first employee through our latest one, our team is well versed in social media, online communities, and project management skills. They work tirelessly for our clients. They’ve given up weekends and nights to make sure our clients’ needs are met. Along the way, they’ve learned a lot and shared a lot.

I hope that all of you are enjoying our ride and are ready for our next stage of growth! Thank you for all of your hard work!

Happy Birthday Impact Interactions!

Mike Rowland, President

With our continued growth here at Impact Interactions, we’ve recently added two experienced professionals to help our clients’ social media and online community projects succeed. Please join us in welcoming Lauren Bittner and Adam Crawford to our team!

Lauren Bittner (Social Media Consultant) brings over nine years of professional experience in the social media and loyalty programs to help our clients drive deeper, meaningful relationships with their members. With consulting and management experiences ranging from IBM and McGraw-Hill to Allstate Insurance and Ace Hardware, Lauren has a strong foundation in the B2B social media world. She will initially support the Hall of Fame and Expert member recognition program at Cisco’s CSC as well as support additional projects both for Cisco and our other B2B clients.  Prior to joining us at Impact Interactions, Lauren helped improve usability for client sites as well, bringing another dimension to our services for clients. Lauren got her start in social media at online community pioneer Participate.com.

Adam Crawford (Social Media Consultant, Business Development) is an experienced social media professional with over ten years experience in helping large organizations with their social media and online communities. In his experience, Adam has managed teams of moderators for such diverse companies as NBCi, ATT, AARP, and Ace Hardware. Further extending his social media experience, Adam was an Account Development Manager for Open Text, a leading Enterprise 2.0 content management and social media software company for the past five years. This gives Adam a wide understanding of not only the processes and procedures for social media programs, but also a solid understanding of the technology requirements needed for success. Prior to Open Text, Adam worked for Participate.com as well. In his new role, Adam will help Impact Interactions with Business Development and consulting work.

Please join me in welcoming Lauren and Adam to our team.

The methodology is built around a very simple, yet powerful concept: Restaurant menus. Our training workshops provide teams with the questions that they must answer to successfully utilize social media. The goal is to clearly identify your strategy and objectives, then build a menu of tactics to support your effort.

So, are you a Pizzeria or a Fine Dining restaurant? Do you have a limited menu or an expansive menu with ever changing offerings (think of daily specials)? Does your audience have the time for a five course meal or do they want take out? Do you have multiple chefs or is there one person making your pizza?

By answering these and other questions, B2B teams begin to gain clarity in their objectives, audience, content strategy, and measurement requirements. Once we complete this session, we move into the tactical way to utilize social media in order to build out the menu of offerings.

Not all tactics are appropriate, nor does B2C social media strategy always deliver the intended results. By understanding how B2B social media tactics differ from B2C and work together to deliver results, our client SAP has generated significant results. In terms of helping partners succeed in a tough economy, it’s Best Performance for Partners social media program delivers training and information efficiently to help each partner organization succeed in meeting its revenue and lead generation objectives. For SAP, the partners who are participating are learning better ways of marketing and selling which benefits SAP directly in the form of revenue achievement.

For SAP, the Best Performance Challenge is an innovative way to build its partner channel competency each year. The Best Performance Circle, composed of the top partner organizations in EMEA and India, reinforces SAP’s commitment to its partners by using an online community to strengthen its relationship with a key part of its sales ecosystem.

The video below by Raimund Mollenhauer, Head of Enablement & Talent Net for SAP Partners, SME EMEA & Global describes how SAP is using Impact Interactions’ methodology today to deliver results:

The innovation continues at SAP with future roll-outs of additional Best Performance initiatives. Their use of social media not only speeds the adoption of these initiatives, but also delivers value to the partner channel in a cost effective manner.

To learn more about B2B social media best practices, our workshops, or social media for channel management, please contact us or ask a question here on this blog.

Several of our team members were in London for the annual Internet World Exhibition held at Earls Court between April 27th and April 29th. As one of the few exhibitors and speakers in the B2B Social Media Industry at the show, we noticed a lot of confusion about using social media and what social media could do for a B2B focused organization.

For example, we noticed a large number of email vendors selling the idea that email is social media (it’s not). The idea of renting a list of unknown people to send your message to was presented as social media (it’s not). Lastly, there is so much confusion over using social media applications like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn for business that we spent much of our time helping people learn the basics of the applications and why they might want to consider using them.

But just as important to us, there were many people who were disappointed using social media as they didn’t get the results they wanted or thought that they would. Why? Because in most cases, their companies were using B2C techniques to engage with the B2B audience for their services. Many were following the common theme of retweeting others, constantly updating their Facebook pages with product information, building a network of as many followers as possible, and joining as many groups as they could on LinkedIn. And most of it was a gigantic waste of time.

The crowd comes into the theatre for my standing room only talk on B2B Social Media

At Internet World, I presented a short case for why B2B Social Media is very different from B2C. The presentation covered the idea that most people are focused on the tactics at the expense of their strategy by following the common wisdom of social media experts and gurus who only understand B2C marketing. B2C is concerned with building awareness, then trial. That’s why couponing is so effective for B2C. B2B is concerned with building relationships. It’s harder and takes much more time than B2C social media tactics. But in the end, it leads to tremendous value when executed properly.

You can download the presentation’s slides here: B2B Social Media – What Works 2010. The slides are helpful when viewing the actual presentation below: (Quick Note, the edited video below is courtesy of Seminar Streams, so you’ll have to register or log in to see the video. Or enter our username Impact and our password impact. The video will play right away and you won’t have to search for it.)

If you’d like to learn more about using B2B Social Media for lead generation, customer support, training, channel or partner management, or another specific purpose, please contact us.

© 1995-2009 AARP

by Matthew Lees

They say, in politics, you can tell an administration’s priorities by its budget. Office holders can talk all they want about the importance of education, services to seniors, and having the latest and greatest fire-fighting equipment, but are they putting their money where their mouths are? It’s the how they allocate the dollars that tells you what they’re serious about.

Similarly, you can tell a company’s priorities by what’s on its home page.

Sure, home page real estate is precious, and what does or doesn’t appear there (and where it appears) can be a contentious issue. I don’t know of any fist fights that have broken out over what links appear on the home page (and where they appear), but I’ve been around some pretty heated discussions.

The debates are understandable, as your home page can be the gateway to your organization (and your products and services) as well as the first impression it makes. It also cuts across organizational lines, as just about all departments are impacted to one degree or another and should, therefore, have at least some say in the matter. Many voices makes for difficult decision making.

Of course, it’s not all about the home page. There are many ways besides your home page that customers, prospective customers, business partners, and others can discover the content within your site, including community content. In many ways, Google is your home-away-from-home page, as that’s often the entryway to your site’s content. So what’s on your internal pages, and your overall SEO efforts, will also have a sizable impact on how people get to your content.

But there’s no getting around the visibility, cachet, and effectiveness of being on the home page.

So the question comes down to: Is there a link to your customer or partner community on your home page?

If your customers (or partners or readers or users, etc.) are important enough to your organization, there will be. Linking to your community on your home page not only makes it easier for people to find your community, it also makes it easier for people to find each other. And, perhaps more importantly, it makes the symbolic statement that you highly value your customers and their perspectives – the good, the bad, and the ugly – by supporting their candid discussions, collaboration, and networking, and by being part of the conversation yourself.

(I’m not talking about displaying links to your Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter pages. That’s all well and good, but that’s done more for marketing purposes than customer engagement.)

Here’s a selection of a dozen organizations that feature their communities via prominent links on their home pages. (There are certainly many others. If I handed out Customer Community Seals of Approval, all these sites would get them for their home page placement alone.)

•   AARP

•  Adobe

•  American Diabetes Association

•  Caterpillar

•  EMC

•  LeapFrog Enterprises

•  The MathWorks

•  NetApp

•  RIDGID

•  Sage Software (ACT!)

•  Unilever (Slim-Fast)

•  VMware

Many other organizations link to their communities from their home pages, but in less prominent locations. While not ideal, that’s still good. But many companies, even ones with vibrant communities, don’t put them on their home pages at all. Often this is despite the best efforts of the community team. The community manager in one such company has been trying to get a home page link for over a year.

How do you make the home page thing happen? Here are some things to try:

1. Begging and pleading.
2. Looking for examples of competitors that feature their communities on their home pages. Nothing spurs action like showing what the competition is doing.
3. Asking to include a home page link for a trial period of, say, one month. Measure the impact this placement has on the community metrics you track. Can you show a compelling correlation between a home page link and an increase in page views, membership, and return visits? Can you translate these numbers to positive business results?
4. What else works? Perhaps those of you who have fought this battle can share your experience and insights below…

While I haven’t formally tracked home page links to communities, it does appear that this practice is increasing. And that’s a good sign. When it comes to showing your customers how you value them, there’s no place like home.

Sure, it’s useful to find a general consensus on social media topics by simply scanning through blog posts and comments in your feed reader but it’s another thing to collaborate and share experiences in person. I think that those of us who interact in online communities and through social media on a daily basis have will welcome the opportunity to actually meet that person that you follow on Twitter or someone who left a comment on your blog.

The real gem of the Online Community Unconference East will be in the knowledge exchange. Social Media is still evolving and many organizations are just now getting into it. There is a lot that can be learned by listening to others tell their stories on successes and failures with social media. Impact Interactions has 9 years of experience in helping organizations like AARP, Cisco, and SAP to build and execute community strategy, manage online interactions, and provide measureable business results. I look forward to using my experiences at Impact Interactions to collaborate on fresh online community and social media ideas and provide insights where I can.

Jen Graziani