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Social Media in the B2B World – A “Social Enterprise” Requires E=MC5 Connectivity!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 7, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Jeff Bullas, a Top 50 Social Media Power Influencer on Forbes.com, recently wondered whether social media had reached a digital tipping point.  Jeff believes that social media, smartphones and search engine evolution are causing a paradigm shift in our digital landscape.  While Jeff’s prognostication might be true as far as smartphones and search engine evolution are concerned, I would posit that social media has some ways to go in this regard.

There is a simple reason that the recent Facebook IPO bombed–a billion, largely non-revenue generating subscribers do not make for a very attractive business model.  More importantly, most of the so-called successful social media companies such as Facebook, Groupon, Zynga, etc. have been operating pre-dominantly in the B2C (business-to-consumer) services domain.  The Internet consumer services segment is dominated by a largely young demographic, which has become used to a “free-is-good” culture.  Without advertising to generate revenues, most B2C social media services companies will find it hard to survive in the long term, which is barely a couple of years in Internet time.

Thus social media needs to make rapid inroads into the B2B (business-to-business) world, where businesses actually pay for services rendered.  In this regard, companies such as Salesforce.com have been pioneers in quickly integrating social media into the business environment, both B2B and B2C.  In fact, at last year’s Dreamforce 2011 conference, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, introduced the concept of the social enterprise.  In his keynote address, Marc very relevantly pondered, “Customers and employees are social.  Are enterprises social?”  He went on suggest that they were not social and wondered if there was a way to bridge this social divide between the enterprise and its employees and customers.

All that bridging Benioff’s social media divide required was the establishing of a value proposition that would be compelling to the enterprise. And, Mr. Benioff did so quite convincingly in his Dreamforce 2011 keynote.  He asserted that for an enterprise, delighting customers is knowing who they are and what they like–Facebook tells us what they like, Twitter tells us what they are saying and LinkedIn tells us who they are connected to?  So in order to become a “social enterprise,” a B2B needs to follow three steps–begin creating customer social profiles in its database, establish an employee social network and finally integrate these into customer and product social networks with the appropriate security and access provisions as required.

From a marketing standpoint, the social enterprise could become the Holy Grail for B2B marketers when it comes to sales enablement, demand generation and a truly integrated sales and marketing funnel– what revenue managers refer to as “one vision of the truth.”   With a customer relationship management (CRM)-integrated marketing automation platform, marketing to the social enterprise then becomes a collaborative, real-time exercise that ought to make it a delightful experience to customers, employees, partners, et al.

Finally, infrastructure is key for a social enterprise to function effectively in the world of social media. I have therefore previously proposed my own E=MC5 theory of connectivity, which states that a social Enterprise must provide Mobility, Cloud-based Communications, Cyber-security, Collaboration & Content.  Thus, for social media to make a successful foray into the B2B world, a business must necessarily meet this E=MC5 threshold and it does not have to be a business Einstein to make this connectivity happen!

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Facebook IPO Fallout–The Seven Doggone-Its of Highly Effective People!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 27, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

In our April 14th post “If Facebook Were a Country…” we hinted at the “irrational exuberance” that was being generated by the Facebook IPO.  Since early April, MahaTweeter (The Marketing Id’s Twitter handle) had been trying to stand “athwart history, yelling ‘Stop!’”  In any event, before we get to our Seven Doggone-Its of Highly Effective People (with apologies to Dr. Stephen R. Covey, Author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People®) involved in the Facebook IPO, we present a timeline (keeping in character with Facebook’s new look) of MahaTweeter tweets to make our larger point.

A couple of days after Facebook acquired Instagram for an ungodly sum, MahaTweeter fired a couple of warning shots, the first of which included a sarcastic reference to its “insta-acquisition”:

 April 11, 2012 – Instawham: #social #media startup earns billion dollar valuation despite phantom cash flows from non-paying subscriber base of millions! #in

April 12, 2012 – Déjà vu all over again–financiers investing in fantasy business models that promise a #socmed utilization they cannot fully comprehend! #in

MahaTweeter followed up with a quote from our Aril 14th post to highlight Facebook’s ridiculously low revenue per subscriber and net income per subscriber numbers:

April 16, 2012 – #Social #media by numbers: FB generated $4.39 in revenue per active sub and $1.18 in net income per active sub in 2011. http://wp.me/p1zesw-8h

In late April, MahaTweeter wondered about the efficacy of advertising-based social media models in this tweet:

April 28, 2012 – The success of advertising-based #social #media models depends on how effectively those impressions transcend brand to generate demand! #in

By Mayday, seeing no discernible drop in Facebook fever, MahaTweeter warned:

May 3, 2012 – #IPO: It’s no #GOOG–without a plan to monetize its active subscriber base of photo-swapping millennials– #FB is all sizzle and no steak! #in

As FB’s IPO date drew near, some alarm bells finally started to ring.  MahaTweeter read what Francis Gaskins, President of IPODesktop.com, had to say and tweeted accordingly:

May 7, 2012 – #Social #media bubble stress test on May 18th – meanwhile IPO expert warns of getting egg all over your #Facebook http://yhoo.it/J8jgm0 #in

The following day, MahaTweeter was tickled by the hoodie roadshow and remembered how even his hippie idol, Steve Jobs, had to clean up for Apple’s IPO back in December 1980.  It resulted in a Bob Dylan and Dire Straits laced “MahaTweet” that would have hopefully made Jobs proud:

May 8, 2012 – The Times They Are A-Changin’–“don’t-judge-a-Facebook-by-its-cover” #WallStreet raises Money for Nothing during the #hoodie roadshow? #in

During IPO week, MahaTweeter fired daily warning shots as recounted below – even referencing a cautionary Wall Street Journal report on IPO eve:

May 15, 2012 – Caveat Emptor–unless #B2C #social #media demonstrates sustainable, long-term monetization model, we are headed for Internet #Bubble 2.0! #in

May 16, 2012 – Planets aligned for the big #IPO–Jupiter will spawn instant millionaires–but can #social #media reconcile with notion of capital gains? #in

May 17, 2012 – #FB #IPO: public investors rush in where private ones have fled–http://on.wsj.com/JklbRY –we Face growing pains, as they Book early gains! #in

Finally, MahaTweeter put out this deferential (to the markets) tweet on the morning of the FB IPO:

May 18, 2012 – #FB #IPO: When Social Met Capital–markets will now validate whether a billion non-paying subscribers warrant its $100 billion valuation? #in

After the disastrous debut of the Facebook IPO, MahaTweeter expressed relief in a rare Saturday tweet that at least there would be no social media bubble:

 May 19, 2012 – All that glitters is not Google – #FB #IPO indicates dot com bubble redux unlikely; #social #media must learn to walk before it can run! #in

But then Monday after the IPO, we were disheartened to learn that the company that had made its name by encouraging people to share all sorts of information had actually withheld pertinent financial information relating to its future growth from the investing public!  Even before the call for congressional inquiries had begun, MahaTweeter had one last blast on the subject:

May 22, 2012 – More egg over your Facebook–during hoodie roadshow, rev est. cut while IPO price raised–no wonder #FB is tanking! http://yhoo.it/KIzl4W#in

And so, here we are on Memorial Day weekend doing a post-mortem examination of the highly-anticipated, yet badly-botched Facebook IPO.  Our intent is to present readers with what we referred to earlier as the “Seven Doggone-Its of Highly Effective People,” who were involved in some material way with this fiasco:

  1. TAS (Total Active Subscribers) is not equal to TAM (Total Addressable Market)!  Infinity times zero is still zero–even in the new math!  A billion non-paying subscribers can be active for several hours a day on their Facebook pages, yet not move the needle on company revenue.  Typically, TAM is what businesses count on for revenue-generating opportunities, and investors are beginning to understand that TAS is not the same as TAM.  Unfortunately, the highly effective analysts who rave over the social media juggernaut seemed to have missed this distinction.
  2. The Facebook Like has more social value than business value!  It’s pretty apparent that Facebook’s legacy subscriber base (i.e., students from U.S. schools, colleges and universities), which indulges in the use of “likes” in its collective vocabulary, transferred that same sentiment pretty liberally through the use of Facebook’s infamous “Like” button.  From a business perspective, if there is no easy way to monetize that Like, it offers very little redeeming value.  Again, investors seemed to have figured out that the Facebook “Like” thus far has not been all that it is cracked up to be.  So when will the highly effective social media quants come up with a measure already?
  3. Facebook not only made “friend” a verb but also devalued its meaning!  According to HubSpot, an inbound marketing company, the average Facebook user has 130 friends.  In the age of social media that might seem low, but The Marketing Id believes that is a high number of friends for the average Joe to have.  Since its birth in a Harvard dorm room, Facebook has gradually blurred the distinction between friend and acquaintance.  In fact, in the rush to appear popular (i.e., well-connected), Facebook subscribers are quite likely friending strangers.  From a business standpoint, a non-celebrity subscriber is unlikely to influence the purchase decisions of such a “questionable” network of friends.  The highly effective people that derived Facebook’s lofty valuation seemed to have based at least a part of it on an over-valued “friend” factor.
  4. Facebook squandered a “mobile in the hand opportunity for two PCs in the bush!” Facebook had admitted in its S-1 filing that it does “not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products.”  This confession seemed to have not garnered a lot of attention prior to the IPO but gained some currency after the fact.  This “revenue immobility” situation could be attributed to the fact that Facebook’s legacy subscriber base is likely more mobile than its newer and smaller desktop subscriber base from the business world – a possibility that seems to have eluded Facebook’s highly effective management until recently.
  5. Facebook’s “too much, too little, too late” platform strategy?  The Facebook platform had been largely static (i.e., computer-based as opposed to mobile device-based) for five years until Instagram, which was hastily acquired (so it seemed) by Facebook’s highly effective management about five weeks before the IPO.  Most social media pundits believed at the time that Facebook paid too much – $1 billion – to jumpstart its mobile strategy ahead of the IPO.  Then on May 24th Facebook Camera was launched and Forbes suggested that “Facebook purchased Instagram to remove the competition.”  It is unclear how Facebook Camera monetizes mobile, so even if the platform is great and may not be too late, it still remains a too little strategy from a business standpoint.  Again, Facebook’s highly effective management needs to reconcile Instagram with Facebook Camera for a skeptical investing public?
  6. Facebook’s IPO roadshow violated its own mission statement!  A company that wants to “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected” stumbled right out of the starting gate.  It appears that during the Facebook roadshow, its lead investment bank, Morgan Stanley cut its second-quarter and full-year forecasts for Facebook and “shared” this vital information with only a handful of clients.  It reminded The Marketing Id of that classical Orwellian line from Animal Farm – “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.” This is a doggone it at the heart of the social media experiment, which needs to be addressed by the Chief Highly Effective Officer himself!
  7. NASDAQ’s embarrassing ~$100 million glitch over a $100 billion IPO!  In the grand scheme of things, NASDAQ’s 20-minute black hole at the start of trading amounted to only 0.1% of Facebook’s market value at launch.  The stars might have been aligned to spawn insta-millionaires as MahaTweeter had tweeted, but according to the Wall Street Journal, “The market-making arms of UBS AG (UBS) and Citigroup Inc. (C) suffered combined losses of about $50 million on trades made during last Friday’s glitch-plagued listing of Facebook Inc.”  Any wonder that FINRA is investigating how the highly effective NASDAQ went dark on FB trades for 20 minutes – an eternity in today’s high-frequency trading environment!

So after a tumultuous week (ending May 25th) as a publicly traded company, FB stock closed 16% below its IPO price.  Notwithstanding the seven doggone-its of the various highly effective people that we have outlined above, it might be still too early to judge whether FB shares had been priced appropriately for the IPO.  Nonetheless, the fallout from the Facebook IPO has significantly reduced the risks of a bubble in social media stocks for the foreseeable future.  Unfortunately, the foreseeable future always comes sooner than later in Internet time; so doggone it, we all need to be vigilant!  Happy Memorial Day!

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“Kony 2012” Viral Marketing Phenomenon–Top 8 Takeaways for B2Bs/B2Cs

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 12, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

The social media world was abuzz last week as the “Kony 2012” video became the fastest viral marketing phenomenon – tallying over 100 million views in a week!  After reading a review of this unusual March madness in the Weekend WSJ, “How ‘Kony’ Clip Caught Fire Online,” The Marketing Id determined there might be some lessons here for the B2B and B2C world:

  1. A picture is worth a thousand words; a video is worth a million views.  This is going to be The Marketing Id’s new mantra in the age of social media.  It has become pretty apparent since the dawn of social media that video is the key to virality.  The pen used to be mightier than the sword, but now the videocam is the mightiest instrument of them all.
  2. What’s good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander.  Before “for profit” companies start going crazy about the lack of virality in their marketing efforts, it’s worth noting that most major viral successes have occurred in the personal domain – with videos of baby acts, pet tricks, karaoke performances,  music videos, etc. – most of which cannot be actually monetized. A possible exception was when Susan Boyle sang her “I Dreamed a Dream” song in the Britain’s Got Talent 2009 contest, which WSJ says “ranks among the most-watched viral videos of all time, with 480 million views.”  Even if a small fraction of those 480 million viewers were spurred to buy Ms. Boyle’s attendant album – it would make that video a monster viral marketing success.
  3. “Kony 2012”producers finally realized that the medium is the message.  Any message that has “Invisible Children” as its subject matter should immediately take one through The Marketing Id’s complete “I” journey from Interrupt to Inquire.  Yet this powerful message lay sort of dormant on the Invisible Children web site for a few years until they decided to deploy social media using that key medium–video, and more importantly posted it on YouTube, which always transforms into Viral Central when the stars are aligned!
  4. Don’t blame the messenger–no kidding!  WSJ noted that “the presence of the toddler son of one of the filmmakers, to whom the narrator tries to explain Mr. Kony’s crimes…”  A child as messenger about a topic that covers “invisible children” – “Kony 2012” must have boosted Kleenex sales as well!
  5. Another marketing communications fundamental–know your audience!  WSJ writes that “To make their nearly 30-minute movie about such a serious topic appealing to young viewers, the filmmakers asked themselves: ‘How do we make this translate to a 14-year-old who just walked out of algebra class?’”  The “Kony 2012”video seemed to have nailed that answer as well, as WSJ reports that “the video first took off among a younger audience, with early data showing that the average viewer is 24 years old, according to Visible Measures.”
  6. The right message to the right person at the right time.  This marketing automation mantra seemed to have been in play simultaneously to a huge audience, albeit inadvertently, with respect to the “Kony 2012” video launch.  After Invisible Children held a premiere of the film in Hollywood last Monday, WSJ points out that they “posted the video on YouTube on Monday and also promoted it to its followers on Facebook and Twitter.”  It immediately took off among the extensive chattering classes of schools and colleges alike.
  7. Promotion is free on social media.  WSJ noted that “rapid dissemination was fueled in large part by links on the Invisible Children website that allowed viewers to send online messages seeking the support of ‘culture makers’—including Oprah Winfrey, Rihanna, Justin Bieber and Bill Gates—and ‘policy makers’ such as former U.S. presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.”  Of course, the caveat is that such spontaneous promotion – pushing key influencers such as those mentioned here to participate in spreading the word via social media – requires a perfect storm of events to occur, which they did in the case of “Kony 2012.”  Again per WSJ, “two main factors contributed to the virality: young people were drawn to the story, and celebrities and other public figures promoted it through social-media sites such as Twitter.”
  8. If you have the inclination, we have the time.  A 30-minute video might work in the non-profit world, where stories such as “Kony 2012” require time to get their message across.  However, in the typical YouTube world, comScore reported back in February 2011 that “The duration of the average online content video was 5.1 minutes.”  So it would be interesting to find out what percentage of the 100 million viewers of “Kony 2012” watched the whole thing?

In summary, while “Kony 2012” is an interesting case study in viral marketing, The Marketing Id believes that it has largely succeeded as a brand recognition exercise.  Whether the virality translates into generating the response that Invisible Children sought is still to be determined and will largely depend on what percentage of those 100 million viewers actually saw the whole film.

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Five i-Factors That Can Ensure Every Business Tweet Counts

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on February 19, 2012 | 1 Comment »

In the B2B world, Twitter has the potential of becoming the launching pad of choice for all sorts of business communications beyond traditional PR and marketing to include sales, financial, engineering, operations, customer relationship management, et al.  Given the fact that a tweet can be used to initiate several different types of business communications, never has a tweet’s 140 characters seemed more valuable to the enterprise.  The Marketing Id has previously written about “The Art & Science of the B2B Tweet and Strategic Intent!”  In that post, we had discussed strategic intent and its tactical implications on the actual construction of a 140-character tweet.  Here we will take a more holistic view about the desired psychological effects of a business tweet.

The Marketing Id believes that every tweet, regardless of which business function it pertains to, must conform to a behavior-inducing pattern that runs as follows: Interrupt, Inform, Interact, Investigate and Inquire.   The sequence in this “I” pattern is important, in that, the more of these behavioral characteristics that a tweet induces, the more empowering its effect.  So let us consider the relevance of each one of these “i-Factors” in the proper sequence and their attendant impact on the composition of a tweet.

We begin by assuming that a typical B2B is active in the social media realm and its brand equity has been built to a level where its corporate brand and/or its desired line(s) of business have generated a substantial number of Twitter followers.  So its primary challenge when trying to engage followers, who in turn might be following a significant number of other Twitter accounts, is how to grab their attention with a periodic tweet –which in most cases amounts to them (the followers) looking for a needle-in-a-haystack?

Interrupt.  Despite the identification of tweets by monitoring services, lists and hashtags, it is still difficult for a tweet to make the desired impression.  Therefore the guiding principle for any business tweet must be to interrupt the thought processes of as many as of its followers as possible.  This is a tall order that requires marketing acumen. As followers scan their monitored tweets, lists and hashtags of choice for ones that they might actually pause to read and digest, your company’s tweet must necessarily interrupt their scanning process and get them to pause for that critical second look.  Thus your tweet must not only have a pertinent objective, but also have been constructed using the AIDA principles that have been discussed previously in the above-referenced blog.  It is vitally important to remember that the very first purpose of a tweet is to interrupt a follower’s thought processes.

Inform.  Once a follower’s thought processes have been interrupted, your tweet has but a few seconds to engage and captivate the reader.  In the business world this does not imply sensationalism, which in fact could cause an adverse reaction and affect a follower’s future behavior towards your company’s tweets.  The business tweet must always seek to inform followers in a manner that will peak their curiosity, prompting them to instantly seek more information than what your tweet has to offer.  So it is key for a tweet to inform an interrupted follower just enough to push them towards taking the next step, which is typically solicited within the tweet via an embedded link or hashtag.

Interact.  A follower interrupted, now feeling insufficiently informed, seeks to instantaneously learn more.  Your tweet offers either an embedded link or a hashtag(s) that a curious follower can click on.  The tweet must necessarily enable interested followers by allowing them to interact – when your tweet initiates a click through, it then succeeds in its secondary objective, which is to direct interrupted followers to go where you want them to.  This is no mean achievement because interrupted followers have now acquiesced to instantly finding out more about what your company intended to convey than what was available in your cryptic tweet.

Investigate.  In a non-hashtag click through, followers exit Twitter and land on an external page, where they must be able to satisfactorily investigate what they assumed they came looking for. In a typical B2B marketing scenario, a follower that clicks on an embedded link within your tweet is likely seeking specific subject matter expertise or thought leadership, which your company must be able to provide.  So it is imperative that this landing page empowers the follower to further investigate the subject matter that had been referenced in your original tweet.

Inquire.  If the landing page is intended to create a sales enablement opportunity for your company, it must provide an inquiry form for the curious follower to volunteer contact information.  Form completion is often driven by a need to acquire additional non-public information that followers desire based on their preliminary investigation of your landing page data.  So this additional non-public information must offer substantial value to your followers, such that they feel compelled to complete your inquiry form.

Any tweet that accomplishes the complete “I” journey from Interrupt to Inquire for a follower has successfully transformed that follower into a future business prospect.  The Marketing Id believes that this i-Factor value chain is integral to inducing the required behavioral pattern in a typical B2B’s follower base.  The further along a follower is prompted in your B2B tweet’s value chain, the greater the likelihood of engaging that follower into a more meaningful relationship with your company. And, speaking of relationships, a tweet is like a pickup line–if it is good, followers read it; if it is great, they click on its embedded link; if the ensuing landing page rocks, they offer you their contact information!  So B2B marketers go forth and tweet your best pickup lines – your company is bound to benefit from them in the long run!

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When BI Harry Met SM Sally–Why Business Intelligence Needs Social Media?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 3, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

It’s a classical marketing conundrum when the logical, left-brained, structured, quantitative world of business intelligence (BI) clashes with the creative, right-brained, random, qualitative world of social media (SM).  Some BI purists believe that 80% of SM data is chaff and should not even make it inside the corporate firewall.  Most SM aficionados are adamant that a broader collaboration is the future of the social enterprise.

At the outset, it’s important to understand the difference between social media intelligence or social intelligence vs. social media integrated business intelligence.  Zach Hofer-Shall of Forrester Research defines social intelligence as

“the management and analysis of customer data from social sources, used to activate and recalibrate marketing or business programs.”

So it is apparent that to develop social intelligence, an enterprise needs to monitor social media in real time for mentions of or references to–not only its own, but also its competitors’–brands, products, services and assorted related topics. It must simultaneously collect this data and analyze it for both quantitative and qualitative insights so that it can make informed decisions relating to its marketing and business performance.

So what is the difference then from traditional BI? BI also incorporates computer-based systems and tools that allow a company to collect, store, extract, access and analyze business data to aid in decision-making.  However, BI activities such as data mining, online analytical processing, querying and reporting typically use corporate data not only on a much larger scale, but also more securely inside the firewall–social media data from the public internet has until recently been excluded from BI.

The great Yogi Berra once said, “You can see a lot by just looking.”  And, he was “clearly” right!  In today’s social media world you can learn a lot by just listening to all the various sources of chatter relating to your company.  You can then collate, categorize and analyze that data into valuable information that affects not only your marketing mix–product, pricing, placement, promotion; but also your competitors, customers, influencers, prospects, et al.  This is what standalone social analytics provides today via the practice of, what has come to be known in the business as, “social monitoring.”

But the real value add is in integrating this social intelligence into your company’s business intelligence–“Harry met Sally” is no longer sufficient–it is absolutely necessary for the enterprise to “connect the dots” and use its integrated intelligence in a more effective manner.  BI Harry and SM Sally must come together so corporate performance can be better managed in any number of ways, such as using:

  1. Sally’s sentiment analysis to validate variations in customer service traffic on Harry’s operations dashboard.
  2. Sally’s conversation volume analytics to track sales fluctuations on Harry’s sales dashboard.
  3. Sally’s applause rate (e.g. Facebook Likes) to quantify gains in brand equity on Harry’s marketing dashboard.
  4. Sally’s amplification rate (e.g. Twitter Retweets) to manage media expectations on Harry’s CXO dashboard.
  5. Sally’s engagement volume (e.g. blog comments) to justify product roadmaps on Harry’s engineering dashboard.

These are just a few examples of how social media data can enhance the quality of typical business intelligence used by the enterprise today.  Again, it seems like social media integrated BI will probably be first adopted largely by the B2C domain, where social media has had much more of a positive impact on the revenue cycle.  Nonetheless, it is only a matter of time before social media integrated BI will penetrate the B2B world as well.  Those that choose to lead in this regard will be what The Marketing Id has previously referred to as the social enterprise that conforms to our E=MC5 theory of connectivity.  This is simply because an E=MC5 enterprise already has the infrastructure in place to ensure that BI Harry meets SM Sally more than half way!

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Top 20 Social Media Savvy Companies of the Fortune 100 (Part 2)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 14, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Social Media Category 3: F100 Top 10 FiFo Ratio

Imagine being the only company in the F100 with a FiFo ratio under 1 – that distinction belongs to UnitedHealth, which is the only company to be Following Outbound (Fo) more than it has Followers Inbound (Fi) – see Top 10 list presented in Table 4: F100 Top 10 FiFo Ratio.  This typically is the case with most personal Twitter accounts of the average citizen.  By its generosity (when the FiFo ratio falls below 1, there can be no reciprocity), UnitedHealth might convey the impression that it is a very caring provider concerned for the well-being of its patrons.  However, its Followers Inbound (Fi) count is barely 20% of the average F100 Fi of 2851.  Besides, UnitedHealth’s Fi seems like a low number for a large healthcare provider.

Table 4: F100 Top 10 FiFo Ratio

The key takeaway from Table 4 is the social media savvy of Ford Motors with its Following Outbound (Fo) at more than a third of its ~97K Followers Inbound (Fi).  Ford reflects a high level of social curiosity and reciprocity with its base, much of which has been noticed in its TV advertising campaigns throughout the 2010-2011 timeframe.

A graphical representation Figure 3: F100 Top 10 FiFo Ratio is shown below.

Figure 3: F100 Top 10 FiFo Ratio

As the bar chart in Figure 3 shows, Chrysler has a better FiFo ratio (1.1) than Ford (2.9).  So it would appear that Chrysler is even more socially aware and reciprocal with its fans than Ford.  However, Chrysler has about 26% of Ford’s Followers Inbound (Fi) and is thus covering a much smaller fan base.

Social Media Category 4: F100 Top 10 Company Tweets

The Coke vs. Pepsi war is not even close in the social media context.  Coca Cola is a winner by spades over PepsiCo in 5 of 6 social media categories.  Coca Cola is #1 in Tweets–its total Tweets are ~2x that of #2 Sears and ~5x that of competitor PepsiCo–as seen in our Top 10 list presented in Table 5: F100 Top 10 Company Tweets.

Table 5: F100 Top 10 Company Tweets

The average F100 company sends ~3 Tweets a day (see Introduction and F100 Social Media State-of-the-Art to understand how we arrive at this number).  So the key takeaway from Table 5 is that for a company to crack the Top 10, it would have to post at least 7 Tweets a day.  Incidentally, #1 Coca Cola has averaged 42 Tweets a day over the past three years!

A graphical representation Figure 4: F100 Top 10 Company Tweets is shown below.

Figure 4: F100 Top 10 Company Tweets

Sears Holding appears as #2 Tweet sender in Figure 4 above.  Despite its seemingly high-level of social awareness via Tweets, Facebook Likes and a low FiFo ratio, Sears recently announced the closing of over 100+ stores due to poor Holiday sales.  This might appear to suggest a disconnect between its social media and sales enablement efforts.

The Marketing Id can only reiterate a cardinal rule of social media usage in business – it should not be used only for brand building, but also in sales enablement.

Social Media Category 5: F100 Top 10 Facebook Likes

Who would have thought that people “like” Coke more than they “like” Mickey Mouse?  But if Facebook Likes (Li) are to be believed, Coca Cola beats Walt Disney by ~7 million Likes!  Verizon (note: we rated its wireless Facebook Page as opposed to its corporate Verizon Communications Facebook page) rounded out our Top 10 list presented in Table 6: F100 Top 10 Facebook Likes.

Table 6: F100 Top 10 Facebook Likes

The key takeaway from Table 6 is the stark difference in the social media strategies of #1 Coca Cola and #2 Walt Disney.  Disney’s Following Outbound (Fo) tally is 33, which gives it an astronomically high FiFo ratio of 33,027.  This clearly suggests that Disney is not trying to cultivate its fan base via Twitter, but seems to be maintaining strong brand equity using Facebook.  In fact, this perception is reinforced by the low number of Tweets (939) that Disney has put out so far.

A graphical representation Figure 5: F100 Top 10 Facebook Likes is shown below.

Figure 5: F100 Top 10 Facebook Likes

The bar chart in Figure 5 above probably validates the notion that there is no relationship between likeability and a Top 10 Fortune 100 rank.  Except for Wal-Mart, which garners 11+ million Facebook Likes, there is no other F10 company that is “likeable” enough to warrant an appearance in our Top 10 list.  Also, despite the 2008 financial meltdown that significantly tarnished the entire financial sector, it is reassuring to see American Express make an appearance at #8 with 2+ million Facebook Likes.

Social Media Category 6: F100 Top 10 LiFi Ratio

The LiFi multiple basically suggests that a company is heavy in its Facebook activities and light in its Twitter activities – thus, a company with a very high LiFi ratio has a significant opportunity to increase its Followers Inbound (Fi) base on Twitter.   Our Top 10 list presented in Table 7: F100 Top 10 LiFi Ratio shows that #1 CVS Caremark and #2 Costco Wholesale are both well-liked companies that do not seem to have made an effort to garner a proportionate Twitter fan base.

Table 7: F100 Top 10 LiFi Ratio

The key takeaway from Table 7 is that The Top 3 companies have below average Facebook Likes (F100 Li average is 1.25 million) and below average Followers Inbound (F100 Fi average is ~110,000).  In fact, their very large LiFi ratios are a result of weak Twitter activities.

A graphical representation Figure 6: F100 Top 10 LiFi Ratio is shown below.

Figure 6: F100 Top 10 Facebook Likes

In the bar chart in Figure 6, #4 Wal-Mart and #5 Coca Cola are the only ones with LiFi ratios derived from above-average F100 Li and Fi numbers – indicating a healthy balance between their respective Facebook and Twitter activities.

The Marketing Id’s Top 20 Social Media Savvy Ranking of the F100

Now that we have identified the Top 10 F100 companies in each of the six social media categories, it’s time to present our ranking of the Top 20 Social Media Savvy companies from the Fortune 100 list.  In computing this rank, we first determined which of the companies ranked multiple times across our Top 10 lists in the afore-mentioned six categories.  Only one company appeared in five Top 10 lists, two companies appeared in four Top 10 lists, five companies appeared in three Top 10 lists and twelve companies appeared in two Top 10 lists.  To break a tie between similar number of appearances by different companies, we used a formula that weighted Fi, Li, Lo, and Tweet count in a descending order of importance to calculate a company’s weighted social media savvy sum.  The outcome of these calculations produced the results shown in Table 8: Top 20 Social Media Savvy Ranking of the F100

The categories highlighted in yellow indicate those categories in which a company appeared in the corresponding Top 10 Lists.

Table 8: Top 20 Social Media Savvy Ranking of the F100

As can be seen in Table 8, Coca Cola is a clear winner as the only company making an appearance in five of our six Top 10 lists in the social media categories that we analyzed.  Coca Cola was #3 in Fi list, #1 in Fo list, #1 in Tweets list, #1 in Li list and #5 in LiFi list. American Express ranked #2 over Sears Holding #3 based on our weighted formula.

As far as industries go, Retail was the most social media savvy sector with 7 companies in our Top 20 rankings.  The Food & Beverages sector was the second most social media savvy with 3 companies, including overall winner – Coca Cola.  The Automotive sector had 2 companies in the Top 20 rankings.  The remaining eight spots were shared by various different industries.  A graphical representation Figure 7: F100 Top 20 Social Media Savvy Sectors is shown below.

Figure 7: F100 Top 20 Social Media Savvy Sectors

It is important to note that this report by no means suggests that there aren’t more savvy social media companies out there.  We limited our analysis to the Fortune 100.  If we had expanded the pool and considered the Fortune 500, these results could produce a different Top 20.

Finally, The Marketing Id realizes that there is a proliferation of social media networks out there, but from a F100 perspective they are either drops in the ocean or niche players lacking a broad appeal.   So we decided to keep it simple and focus on two of the most popular in the business domain, namely, Facebook and Twitter.  We did look at LinkedIn, but its business model is still evolving from that of being a primarily job-seeker network.  In any case, we compared the number of Linked Followers to Twitter Followers (Fi) in our F100 Top 20 list and the results are shown in Table 9: LinkedIn Followers of the Top 20 Social Media Savvy Companies.

Table 9: LinkedIn Followers of the Top 20 Social Media Savvy Companies

As can be seen in Table 9, our F100 Top 20 Twitter Followers (Fi) exceed their corresponding LinkedIn Followers by over 5.6 million and validates our reasoning.

We hope that this limited analysis of social media usage amongst the Fortune 100 offers some guidelines to other companies as they pursue their own efforts in this regard.

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Top 20 Social Media Savvy Companies of the Fortune 100 (Part 1)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 9, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Introduction

Social media usage has been baked into the business psyche for at least three years and its adoption in the commercial domain continues to grow. So The Marketing Id felt there was sufficient history to determine which of the Fortune 100 (F100) companies have been leading the social media charge. In conducting its analysis, The Marketing Id made a few assumptions and also defined some new terms.

  • In keeping with our penchant for a six count calculus, we analyzed a company’s social media activities in the following six categories:
    1. Total number of Twitter Followers (where “Fi” indicates a company’s Followers Inbound).
    2. Total number of Twitter Following (where “Fo” indicates a company’s Following Outbound).
    3. FiFo Ratio defines a company’s social curiosity and its level of reciprocity; e.g., a ~1.0 ratio suggests a high-level of mutual interest in its Followers.
    4. Total number of Tweets put out by a company.
    5. Total number of Likes (Li) recorded by a company’s Facebook page.
    6. LiFi Ratio defines a company’s likeability fidelity or amplitude; e.g., a ~10.0 ratio indicates that a company’s has ten times as many Facebook Likes as it does Twitter Followers–thus any LiFi ratio > 1 suggests the possibility of attracting more Twitter Followers.
  • All Twitter and Facebook activity for all F100 companies was recorded as of December 28, 2011, except for ExxonMobil data which was updated on 1/2/2012 due to a previous recording error.
  • In calculating averages, we assumed an across the board 36-month previous life for business-related Facebook and Twitter activities.
  • In the case of four companies, we used data from popular or available, instead of seemingly static or non-existent corporate Facebook Pages–these companies were Verizon (where we used its wireless FB page), Sunoco (where we used its NASCAR official fuel FB page), CVS Caremark (where we used its CVS pharmacy FB page), and IBM (where we used its IBM Research FB page).
  • We were unable to locate corporate Twitter handles for 22 of the Fortune 100 companies, so we assumed that they did not have Twitter accounts. Apple did not have a corporate Twitter handle per se; but it did have multiple Twitter accounts for iTunes – but these were too many to consider in our analysis without prejudicing other companies that might also be using multiple Twitter accounts for their various brands.

F100 Social Media State-of-the-Art

To better understand the overall picture, we start off with some summary statistics on social media usage in the F100.  In Table 1: Social Media Usage in Top 10 Companies of the Fortune 100, we present social media usage data in the afore-mentioned six categories.  It might be noted that two (namely, Fannie Mae and Berkshire Hathaway) of the Top 10 companies do not seem to operate Twitter accounts.  As we noted in the Introduction, 22% of F100 companies did not have a Twitter account as of 12/28/2011.  This appears to be a rather significant percentage of F100 companies, who have not yet started their “climb up the social media ladder” as it were.

Table 1: Social Media Usage in Top 10 Companies of the Fortune 100

In any case, we offer below averages of social media activities in the six categories for the Fortune 100 companies:

  1. Average Number of Tweets in the F100: 2674
  2. Average Number of Tweets in the F78: 3429
      (not including 22 non-participating companies)
  3. Average monthly Tweets over 36-month period: 95
  4. Average Number of Following Outbound (Fo) in the F100: 2851
  5. Average Number of Following Outbound (Fo) in the F78: 3656
      (not including 22 non-participating companies)
  6. Average monthly Following Outbound (Fo) over 36-month period: 102
  7. Average Number of Followers Inbound (Fi) in the F100: 85,279
  8. Average Number of Followers Inbound (Fi) in the F78: 109,332
      (not including 22 non-participating companies)
  9. Average monthly Followers Inbound (Fi) over 36-month period: 3037
  10. Average FiFo ratio in the F100/F78: 30
  11. Average Number of Facebook Likes (Li) in the F100: 1,259,185
  12. Average monthly Facebook Likes (Li) over 36-month period: 34,977
  13. Average LiFi ratio in the F100: 15
  14. Average LiFi ratio in the F78: 12

The key takeaway from these averages is–for a company to be as social media savvy as the average F100 company was in December 2011, it needs to send on average 95 tweets a month, attract on average 3037 new Twitter followers a month, follow on average 102 new Twitter accounts a month, maintain an average FiFo ratio of 30 or below, and obtain on average 34,977 Facebook Likes a month to retain a LiFi ratio between 12 and 15.

Note on the FiFo and LiFi ratios:

Everyone has heard of FIFO (First In, First Out) as used in asset management and inventory control.  Our FiFo (Followers Inbound, Following Outbound) ratio is a measure of a company’s social curiosity and its level of reciprocity.  The Marketing Id believes that the ideal for a company is to get its FiFo ratio as close to 1 as possible because it greatly expands the company’s social network and its monitoring abilities.  While all followers might not be worth following, a company must attempt to cull the undesirables out and reciprocate following as many of the rest as is feasible.  Such reciprocity is based on the simple premise that by following today’s follower, a company plants the seed for tomorrow’s customer.

Yesteryear’s lexicon had HiFi; today’s lingo has WiFi, so why not LiFi in tomorrow’s vernacular?  LiFi makes sense because it defines a company’s likeability fidelity or amplitude.  There are enormous possibilities for a company with a very high LiFi multiple – even the average 15x more Facebook Likes than Twitter Followers suggests that a company can logically attract a much larger follower base.  Again, today’s follower when properly nurtured can turn into tomorrow’s customer.

Social Media Category 1: F100 Top 10 Twitter Followers Inbound (Fi)

On March 3, 2011 USA Today reported that the Guinness Book of World Records had confirmed that “It took Sheen 25 hours and 17 minutes, between March 1 and 2, to reach 1 million followers.”  Yes, that was actor Charlie Sheen drumming up the fastest million Followers on Twitter – companies could only wish that they could have it that way!  In the business world, The Marketing Id has always believed that quality is more relevant than quantity.  Nonetheless, we were surprised to find that among the F100, the company at the top of the list in Twitter Followers had almost 4x more Followers than the company second on the list – Top-ranked Google with its 4+ million Twitter Followers swamped second place Walt Disney with its 1+ million Twitter Followers.   The Top 10 list is presented in Table 2: F100 Top 10 Twitter Followers Inbound (Fi).

Table 2: F100 Top 10 Twitter Followers Inbound (Fi)

The key takeaway from Table 2 is that both, Google and Delta Airlines have managed to maintain a LiFi ratio of 1.  In Google’s case, with 4+ million Facebook Likes (Li) and 4+ million Followers (Fi), this is a notable achievement.  But it also indicates that new growth in its Follower (Fi) base might be harder to come by.

Also of note is Coca Cola’s FiFo ratio of 7 and American Express’ FiFo ratio of 12 – both, coming under the F100 average of 30 – indicates a higher level of social curiosity and reciprocity than most companies.

A graphical representation Figure 1: F100 Top 10 Twitter Followers Inbound (Fi) is shown below..

Figure 1: F100 Top 10 Twitter Followers Inbound (Fi)

As the bar chart in Figure 1 shows, Wal-Mart, #1 company in the F100 list, squeaked into our Top 10 Twitter Followers Inbound (Fi) list at #10 with its 129,424 Followers – which is a mere 3.2% of #1 Google’s 4+ million Followers!

Social Media Category 2: F100 Top 10 Twitter Following Outbound (Fo)

If there is one thing that stands out, from our Top 10 list presented in Table 3: F100 Top 10 Twitter Following Outbound (Fo), is the fact that all ten companies in the list have low FiFo ratios (less than or equal to 12).  In addition, two of those companies, PepsiCo and Kraft Foods, also have LiFi ratios of 1, which suggests they will have to work harder at attracting new Twitter Followers (Fi).  In fact, PepsiCo has less Facebook Likes (Li) than Twitter Followers (Fi).

Table 3: F100 Top 10 Twitter Following Outbound (Fo)

The key takeaway from Table 3 is that 6 of the 10 companies belong to the more socially-aware Retail and Food & Beverages sectors, which seem naturally pre-disposed to better understanding their consumers’ preferences in choosing to follow them with a higher reciprocity.

A graphical representation Figure 2: F100 Top 10 Twitter Following Outbound (Fo) is shown below.

Figure 2: F100 Top 10 Twitter Following Outbound (Fo)

As the bar chart in Figure 2 shows, Coca Cola, #1 company in our Top 10 list, is following approximately 2x Twitter accounts than that of #2 Home Depot and roughly 11x Twitter accounts over #10 Kraft Foods.

{NOTE: Top 20 Social Media Savvy Companies of the Fortune 100 (Part 2), which includes an analysis of Social Media Categories 3 through 6 and our Top 20 Ranking based on all six categories ,  will be published next week.}

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Top 10 Social Media & Inbound Marketing Tips for the B2B Marketer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 31, 2011 | 2 Comments »

Social media is to sharing, what Google is to searching and GPS is to driving.  It is important that B2B marketers not fall into the 80-20 trap of social media, where 80% of traffic is generated by 20% of users, who tend to talk more than they listen.  So B2Bs need to get SMART (Social Media Acquisition & Retention Tools) while implementing inbound marketing techniques and marketing automation platforms.  The Marketing Id would like to offer some tips that a B2B marketer might find useful in this regard.  Per our guidelines listed below, B2B marketers must:

  1. Realize they will cause more pain than gain by jumping onto the social media bandwagon without a coherent marketing strategy and adequate resources.

    2. A B2B should therefore not launch a blog, create a Facebook page, or acquire a Twitter handle, etc., if these activities are not “owned” by a dedicated marketer, who is committed to developing and maintaining pertinent content on a regular basis.

  2.  Ensure that their social media marketing plan conforms to basic marketing communications principles including message, medium, messenger, timing, target, frequency and metrics.

    3. Per the old adage if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail–when a B2B marketer implements social media by creating a casual Facebook page or sending out arbitrary tweets–such random actions invariably lead to “social” chaos.

  3.  Grow an inbound footprint, relative to other demand generation activities, as an increasing fraction of the B2B’s total addressable market.

    4. Success of a B2B’s social media marketing plan can be measured by the increase in the ratio of inbound marketing leads to total leads generated by the B2B over appropriately comparable periods.

  4.  Recognize a critical persona distinction between B2B and B2C social media segments–in that; consumers generally socialize, whereas business folk typically network.

    5. A consumer’s likes and comments do not necessarily indicate a propensity to buy, but business prospects are more likely to purchase if their level of social media interaction is pertinent, inquisitive, repetitive and rising.

  5.  Remember that the quality of B2B social media followers is as important, if not more, than the quantity.

    6. The corollary to point 4 above is that B2B followers, unlike their B2C counterparts, must be chosen and cultivated in a more circumspect manner–this might result in smaller but more meaningful followers, i.e., ones that are more likely to convert to customers.

  6.  Recognize the real value in a long sales cycle is not only exposing latent demand but actually creating & nurturing it using inbound marketing techniques.

    7. B2B marketers need to be persistent with their followers and today’s marketing automation platforms make this possible–casual inbound visitors can be nurtured over an extended period of time until they are ready to convert into willing customers.

  7.  Develop an ABC (Access Better Content) mindset in order to ensure the success of their inbound marketing efforts.

    8. Successful B2B sales folks are known to maintain an ABC (Always Be Closing) mindset.  In the social media marketing world, the B2B marketer has to develop an ABC attitude as well–albeit, a slightly different ABC–Access Better Content mindset!  It is incumbent on B2B marketers to own and manage their inbound marketing content–build it and they will come!

  8.  Ensure that their social media efforts add value to an inbound visitor’s decision-making process.

    9. When inbound visitors are drawn into a B2B’s digital “Field of Dreams,” the B2B marketer’s ABC efforts have to assist them in moving forward in their respective decision-making processes.

  9.  Make each inbound marketing experience a minor variation of Caesar’s “Veni, Vidi, Vici” proclamation for an inbound visitor–“I came, I saw, I was conquered!”

    10. After a B2B marketer has built a digital “Field of Dreams,” inbound visitors should be so enamored by what the B2B has to offer–they will eventually surrender to the totality of the inbound marketing experience and become a customer!

  10.  Adopt a “moneyball” approach to inbound marketing­ by increasing OBP (on-blog percentage) to boost SLG (sales leads generated).

    11. This is a baseball analogy taken from the recent popular Brad Pitt movie, “Moneyball” to drive home a point to the B2B marketer–get visitors to your blog by adopting that ABC attitude mentioned in point 7 above.  The higher a B2B marketer’s OBP, the more likely that they will increase their SLG!  After all, generating qualified sales leads is the moneyball of social media and inbound marketing!

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Attention B2Bs! Is your marketing mix social?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 17, 2011 | 1 Comment »

After Marc Benioff asked during his opening keynote address at Dreamforce 2011 in San Francisco,

“Customers and employees are social. Are enterprises social?”

The Marketing Id responded with an enthusiastic “Welcome to the Social Enterprise – It’s Not What You Think, B2B Skeptics!”

So in revisiting Mr. Benioff’s concept of a social enterprise; for a B2B to become one, it needs to follow a three step process:

  1. Create customer social profiles in its CRM database
    • Who they are, what they say about you (via Twitter) what they like (via Facebook) and who they are connected to (via LinkedIn)
  2. Establish an employee social network by deploying
    • Salesforce Chatter – profiles, status updates, file sharing, groups, feeds, app updates
    • Salesforce Chatter Now – presence, IM, collaboration, workflow
    • Salesforce Chatter Connect – Sharepoint, Lotus Notes, 3rd party apps, etc.
  3. Integrate these with customer and product social networks
    • Perform social marketing via crowd-sourcing – listen to and analyze what customers are saying using social media monitoring tools
    • Make a ubiquitous product-friendly social network available across all platforms and channels

While a B2B might prefer taking a more incremental approach to “climbing this social enterprise ladder” as it were, there are already a number of social interactions that the B2B’s inbound marketing efforts continually record in its CRM database.  Two weeks prior to Dreamforce 2011, The Marketing Id had shown “How Inbound Marketing Is Driving the B2B Marketing Mix–Viva La 4Ps!” by suggesting that these social interactions can influence the manipulation of a B2B’s marketing mix, either in its current revenue cycle or in a succeeding one.  Hence, in that sense, the concept of a social marketing mix actually precedes the B2B’s progression to a full-fledged social enterprise.

So with apologies to Mr. Benioff, The Marketing Id would like to ask,

“Is your marketing mix social?” 

The good news is that–if your B2B has implemented a CRM-integrated marketing automation platform that is engaged in inbound marketing and social media–the answer is yes! However, the catch is that at a typical B2B, the inbound marketing activities are mostly focused on demand generation and sales enablement.

Every such B2B marketing department has to realize that it has a treasure trove of information in its CRM database that can be of tremendous import to its product marketing team (for details, see afore-mentioned Viva La 4Ps blog post).  It is therefore imperative for that B2B’s inbound marketing initiatives to not only engage in demand generation, but also drive its marketing mix.  This necessarily means that the new “cool kids” of B2B marketing–its inbound marketing team–have to sit at the same lunch table as the old “geek kids” of B2B marketing–its product marketing team–and share all of that critical CRM data!  Quite simply, a social marketing mix can positively impact the 4Ps of a B2B’s solutions portfolio, which in turn translates into more predictable revenue performance. More predictable revenue performance resulting from marketing efforts is what is going to get a B2B’s CMO a permanent seat at the CEO’s decision-making roundtable!

With Marketing thus firmly established as a revenue driver on the demand chain side, it becomes easier to convince the B2B’s other functional departments about the necessity to create a larger, more encompassing social enterprise.  And, in this regard the three-step Benioff process, which has been outlined above provides a simple incremental approach.  So what are you waiting for B2Bs?  Interconnected social networks–employee, customer and product–are becoming increasingly vital to the long-term success of your business!  If your marketing mix is already social, well begun is half-done!

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The Art & Science of the B2B Tweet and Strategic Intent!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 20, 2011 | 3 Comments »

Given the reality of inbound marketing in the B2B realm, especially in the long sales cycle kind, marketers need to have a well-crafted social media strategy that combines creative talent with logical skills in order to achieve desired results.  This is especially true with Twitter, where 140-character messages inundate the social media networking space, so getting noticed is challenging enough, not to mention eliciting a reaction to your tweet.

The Marketing Id assumes that the underlying purpose of a B2B tweet goes beyond the traditional “broadcast and inform” variety and that the majority of B2B tweets have a strategic intent.  In doing so, they are part of the B2B sales enablement process and thus support a desired phase of the B2B’s overall revenue performance management cycle.  Accordingly, it becomes critical for every strategic B2B tweet to be embedded with an appropriate click-compelling link, which a percentage of readers are expected to click through to per the B2B’s marketing plan.

In order to better understand the art and science of a strategic B2B tweet, The Marketing Id needs to deconstruct its 140 characters approximately as follows:

  1. Actual strategic message text             100 characters
  2. Related hashtag(s)                             20 characters
  3. Go to compressed link                        20 characters

While Twitter provides 140 characters to communicate, the actual message text needs to be less than 100 characters for a strategic B2B tweet.  The other 40 characters are of critical importance to a B2B marketer – these 40 characters will invariably become the source for either an existing customer/prospect or better yet an originating source for a new one! In dissecting the actual message text – 100 characters allows for approximately 10 to 15 words in which the B2B must succinctly convey a very powerful message.

From the halcyon days of those “Mad Men” of Madison Avenue to these present times of rather chaotic social media marketing, the age-old AIDA concept for messaging and advertising still rings true.  For a B2B’s 100 character message to resonate on Twitter, it must instantly draw Attention, grab its reader’s Interest, create sufficient Desire so that the reader will be compelled to take instantaneous Action and click either on the related hashtag or on the link embedded in the full 140-character tweet.  It is important to use URL compression, such as offered by TinyURL or Bitly, on the actual link address so that the URL is shortened to inside 20 characters.  Twitter has also recently integrated its own t.co auto-shortening service for tweets.

So what about the hashtag and how is it related to the embedded link?  B2B marketers can use the hashtag to promote marketing campaigns, events, collateral, products, PR etc. with a related link that can direct readers to a landing page where they can be processed per the B2B’s strategic intent.  The B2B’s purpose might be to make available, in exchange for basic reader contact information, a critical white paper from a subject matter expert, or a product-related webinar on demand, or an invite-only new product demo, etc.  Associated hashtags also embedded in the tweet allow readers to link with a specific audience that is already participating in related Twitter discussions.  The marketing possibilities are endless but each one of them must be geared towards supporting the B2B’s revenue performance management cycle.

The Marketing Id believes the best way to illustrate the art and science of a strategic B2B tweet is by example.  So we will draw from a couple of recent blog posts that cited certain key events and create the requisite strategic tweet in each case to promote those specific events.  The Marketing Id’s readers can then decide if the generated tweets meet the AIDA test and are click-worthy enough to compel them on to landing pages associated with their respective events.  The Marketing Id’s sample tweets are as follows:

Example 1:

Learn how a social enterprise can become the Holy Grail for B2B marketers in sales enablement–watch #Dreamforce2011 keynote @ bit.ly/nDVDcO

The hashtag (#Dreamforce2011) takes readers to a Twitter page that highlights all the tweets relating to this event. The compressed URL (bit.ly/nDVDcO) takes readers to a YouTube video that plays the “Opening Keynote: Part 1 – Welcome to the Social Enterprise.”

Example 2:

Here’s how a B2B marketer can incorporate social media at every stage of the revenue cycle–download #Marketo whitepaper @ bit.ly/9ofVoF

The hashtag (#Marketo) takes readers to a Twitter page that educates them on other reader experiences with Marketo. The compressed URL (bit.ly/9ofVoF) takes readers to a landing page that lets readers download “The Definitive Guide to B2B Social Media.”

From these couple of examples, it can be seen that Twitter is a powerful social media tool that can be used very effectively to generate demand in the B2B world, if a marketer recognizes that there is an art and science to every strategic B2B tweet.  So let your B2B marketers creative juices flow and intermingle with their logical streams – the result could very well be a lead that began with a simple, albeit strategic, tweet!

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