HOW TO USE Social Media in the b2b market Maximise your marketing potential before, during and after the event contents 3 5 reasons why your company needs to start using social media 4 How to use social media for the event? 5 Become a thought leader with a blog 6 Grow your reach with Twitter 7 Master LinkedIn! 8 Bring your brand to life with Pinterest 9 Join the media revolution with your own YouTube channel 10 Plus, Google± Introduction Taz Burwaiss is a social media executive at i2ieventsgroup and manages the social media for all EdTech brands, including RWM, The Energy Event, The Renewables Event, The Water Event, Bett UK/ Latin America, BVE, and the CWIEME events. He believes greatly in the emerging force that is social media as an excellent tool to help you clarify your brand values, build a network ‘community’ of followers, and then in time, convert those followers into loyal customers. This e-book has been written to transform exhibitors (and visitors) into social media savvy powerhouses quickly and easily, while maximising their marketing potential before, during, and after the event. Taz is also keen on environmental issues, cycling to work, as well as the creator of the i2iEnvironment Blog. Follow me on Twitter: @TBurwaissi2i 5 REASONS WHY YOUR COMPANY NEEDS TO START USING SOCIAL MEDIA CREATE A TRUSTWORTHY BRAND If done correctly, social media is a fantastic tool that gives you the opportunity to build a trustworthy brand to a targeted audience. In a nutshell the best way of doing this is to be transparent in how you communicate internal content. Identifying and understanding who your audience and stakeholders are, and being clear about what your message is to them, is your top priority. Typically this will involve demonstrating that you’re keeping your finger on the pulse of the hot issues and ‘keywords’ happening in your sectors. There should also be a big emphasis on creating quality, targeted content, as it’s the quality of the content that’s likely to grab their interest. The type of content that you create should be in line with meeting your audience’s interests, while also being aware of industry trends. Generally, the more love you put into it the more love you’ll get back. BUILD BETTER RELATIONSHIPS The first step is to identify who your stakeholders are. The second step is to be clear about what your message is to them. The final, and most critical step, is to ensure consistency and quality in how you communicate with them. Generally, the more love you put into it the more love you’ll get back BECOME AN INDUSTRY LEADER if you find a LinkedIn group that’s relevant to your company, join it and engage in the conversation as a way of warming up potential prospects. You can then pass their contact details onto the sales team to finally close the deal. If you’re interested in establishing yourself as a leader in your market then again social media is the perfect medium to confirm this. Achieving this however takes effort. It involves creating content (which is discussed later), as well as a creative PR team. Platforms such as YouTube for example can be a great media tool, investing in a hot celebrity within your industry as a brand ambassador for your organisation could help you to go viral. MARKET & CUSTOMER INTELLIGENCE The final benefit of social media is that it can act as the eyes and ears of your organisation. By creating twitter lists and identifying and following a range of interesting media publications you’ll be in a prime position to keep up with the latest breaking news and industry trends within your market. This intelligence can then be fed into your sales team, helping them to spot new business opportunities. It can also help your marketing manager paint a better picture of your customer’s interests and lifestyle, hereby enhancing their marketing campaigns. SEARCH FOR LEADS Social media can also be a really handy way of searching for leads. One useful tip is to look at the Twitter Advanced Search Tool, allowing you to narrow down an exact phrase or location you are looking for. LinkedIn’s search function is also quite advanced. LinkedIn allows you to search for people and status updates across it using keywords and company info using its advanced search function. You can also join groups and find collections of people interested in similar topics. When you do find a lead it is typically best practice to try and give them helpful information, rather than approaching them with a hard sales offer. Alternatively, Improved search engine rankings are most prevalent among those who’ve been using social media for a year or longer 95% of marketers conducting social media activities for more than three years agree it has increased exposure for their business Source: Social Media Examiner, April 2012 3 HOW TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA FOR THE EVENT? Attending events are a fantastic way of boosting your marketing goals. There are a number of benefits of attending events including increasing your brand awareness, networking with key stakeholders, leadership, and lead generation. It therefore makes a lot of sense to make the most of the opportunity by following some of these handy social media tips and tricks. USE THE EVENT GUIDE TO PLAN AHEAD First off, do your research before the event and schedule a plan of what seminar sessions your brand would be most interested in attending. There’s a lot to do at these events, so it’s best to organise a plan beforehand of what hotspots you think will be of most benefit to engage in. You can download the event guide from the website. Also, Tweets that contain links receive 86% higher retweet rates than tweets with no links Source: Buddy Media, June 2012 The event hashtag is the easiest and best way to build your network and brand awareness before, during, and after the event have this info at their fingertips and would be more than happy to share it with you. So feel free to ask. Title the list: #Event Networking Opportunities and make it public. This way, the people who you add to the list will see that you’ve added them, making you look like a networking superstar! use the event twitter hashtag to notify people of what seminars you’ll be attending and as an opportunity to network. USE THE EVENT HASHTAG! This is actually my number one tip for you to bear in mind is the all-important event hashtag. I can’t stress this highly enough. It’s the easiest and best way to build your network and brand awareness before, during, and after the event. The more you engage with the hashtag, the more likely you can expect to get re-tweeted. EXCHANGE TWITTER HANDLES The best way of going about this is simply to ask people for their twitter handle (or use business cards) when you meet them at an event. This then allows you to tweet them in the future. A handy tip is to include the event hashtag when you tweet them as a way to springboard the conversation. PROMISE YOUR VISITORS FREE CAKE! TWEET AT THE EVENT Tweeting prior to the event is a great way to get people thinking about your brand and company before you even arrive at the event. Brainstorm different ways to get visitors engaged with your brand. One idea that usually goes down well is to promise free goodies/cakes at your stand. Remember to use the event hashtag. Throughout the event, keep up with the conversations. After each event, speaker, or interesting discussion, tweet your comments using relevant hashtags. STAY IN TOUCH AFTERWARDS The effort put in after an event is just as important as all the planning and execution that had gone into it. You now need to maintain the relationships you began at an event. The sooner you follow up with them, the more likely your connections will remember the conversations you had at the event. CREATE TWITTER LISTS For those of you who are really keen it’s a good idea to create a twitter list of all the big attendees that you want to build relationships with at the event. Usually a social media executive at i2ievents will 4 Some Quick Networking Tips >>IDENTIFY YOUR NETWORKING GOALS. By being well drilled and knowing what your goals are before you bump into someone will significantly enhance the flow of how you communicate and connect with them. >>EASE INTO THE EVENING. If you’re there on your own try beginning by introducing yourself to someone else who is also there by themselves. They will be looking for someone to talk to, and it will help get you more involved in the event. >>READ UP ON INDUSTRY NEWS AND TRENDS BEFOREHAND. Having interesting opinions on the key themes discussed at the event will hugely improve your conversations with others. Also remember to take an interest in what other people’s opinions are. If the event has a blog, it is worth checking that out beforehand. >>NETWORKING WITH A CELEBRITY. Keep the conversation strictly industry related, and if you’ve done your research and know what the key topics are, then almost anyone will be interested to hear what you’ve got to say. BECOME A THOUGHT LEADER WITH a BLOG Quality content is at the heart of a successful social media campaign… Creating a blog often sends terror into the hearts of most marketing managers, mainly because they fear that it’s going to involve too much work. However, investing the time in creating quality content pays off in the long run. How do you think Game of Thrones became such a massive hit? It’s because they invested the time and money to ensure that it was of such a high standard that the public couldn’t resist but tune in. Despite that, time is always a big issue in business, so here are a few tips and tricks that can help you speed up the process! Once you begin to open your mind about where blog content could come from you’ll start to notice that there’s more than enough to keep you ticking over My Top Tips… quality and consistent manner. By having a clear understanding of these basics will help you decide what type of content to use, what tone to use as well as pin down how long each piece should be. Creating quality content is of huge importance, as it’s the quality of the content that will allow you to go viral on social media. Which is the main goal of social media. CREATE A CONTENT STRATEGY The first step is to establish a content strategy. Here at i2ievents we ask our expert speakers and exhibitors if they have any interesting blogs, whitepapers, press releases, videos, or visual content that they wouldn’t mind sharing with us. This is a good opportunity for them to boost their marketing exposure, and a fast track way for us to generate content. So it’s a win-win. Think creatively how your organisation can source content via your stakeholders. Remember that your internal workforce can be regarded as a stakeholder too. It’s not just the responsibility of one poor individual within the marketing department. But rather, it’s a team effort. Once you begin to open your mind about where blog content could potentially come from you’ll start to notice that there’s more than enough to keep you ticking over. TYPICAL TYPES OF CONTENT THAT WORK WELL >>What events you’re attending and why you’re attending them? >>Interesting insights into your products and services >>Interviews with stakeholders >>‘How to’ guides >>Video content >>Re-spinning 3rd party industry news >>Re-spinning press releases ESTABLISH A STYLE GUIDE CREATE A BLOG CALENDAR Your blog is more likely to be a success when it’s written in a consistent tone. This goes back to marketing basics, i.e. understanding who your audience is and being clear about what message will grab their attention, and then communicating that message in a Once you have a strategy in place of where your content is going to come from, and a style guide of what type of content you want create, it’s a good idea to then pin things down into a blog calendar. This is useful as you can begin 5 to schedule blogs to run alongside email and social media campaigns. This will create consistent themes throughout your online marketing campaigns. BENEFITS OF HAVING A BLOG >>A blog allows to you go into more detail about your products/services/ and general musing happening within the industry, hereby reinforcing greater trust with your brand. >>Ideas are powerful. A blog can help you reinforce important ideas into the heads of your customers, hereby helping you build better relationships. >>Quality content is more likely to get shared on social media, hereby helping you expand your reach on Twitter. >>Your content can also be shared on your LinkedIn company page and in your LinkedIn groups. >>When tactically combined within your email marketing strategy quality blog content can help increase email click through rates. The key is to create specific content that your target audience will be interested in. >>By focusing on your keywords, embedding appropriate links, and optimising your URLs, blogging can significantly boost your SEO. GROW YOUR REACH WITH TWITTER A exciting place to grow your brand… For me, Twitter is the most user friendly and popular social media platform in the UK. However, in terms of how well it comes across on an international level is debatable. Additionally, some users complain that the Twitter news streams are overly complicated and thus totally useless. Despite that, most digital marketers will agree that there is certainly tremendous potential to enhance your B2B marketing initiatives on Twitter. My Top Tips… EXPAND YOUR REACH The main objective of Twitter is to share your content with the hope that it will get re-tweeted on such a vast scale that you’re brand will go viral. This involves a combination of factors including knowing who your audience is, having a clear communication strategy, and having fabulous blog, YouTube and Pinterest content to share. Another handy tip is to identify and build relationships with Using a scheduling software tool is absolutely essential stakeholders that have a high number of followers. If you were to get retweeted by them, it would greatly expand your twitter reach. on the train to and from work. Using a scheduling software tool is absolutely essential for achieving this. Here at i2i we use Sprout Social, which works really well for us. CREATE AN INTERNAL TWITTER CULTURE! CUSTOMER SERVICE One way to enhance your company’s brand on Twitter is by empowering all your employees to be part of the solution. By getting your whole company on board will definitely maximize your results. This is how you can take your Twitter reach to the next level. Like it or not people will use social media as an outlet to air their complaints about your brand if and when they arise. You can either choose to ignore it, or deal with it pro-actively. I recommend the latter. Twitter is an ideal platform to do this because it works in real time! CALLS TO ACTION GET YOUR CEO INVOLVED! Yes social media is meant to be more about informal conversations rather than hard sales pitches, but a Call to Action every now and again is definitely acceptable. You want to build trust first. However, making people aware of your services comes second, so don’t forget to do it. The thing with CEOs is that they’re typically two things: busy and powerful. Which is exactly the reason why they are perfect for Twitter. Writing a tweet only takes 2 minutes, it’s all about short thoughts and comments. If your CEO can send a text message, then they can use Twitter. Twitter is perfect for CEOs as they’re constantly travelling and meeting with people from around the world and will also have interesting opinions on your market. This is a great PR opportunity not to be missed. SCHEDULING TWEETS Another thing worth keeping in mind is what time of the day would be most effective to tweet. Typically 7-9am and 5-7pm work well as people may be checking for news on their tablets 6 twitter users are more engaged during busy hours Engagement Rate 30% 20% 24% 17% 10% AVG -10% -17% -20% -30% -24% Busy Hours (8am-7pm) Non Busy Hours (8am-7pm) while Facebook users are more engaged at night Source: Buddy Media, June 2012 MASTER LINKEDIN! The home of B2B… With over 161 million registered users in over 200 countries, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social network. Taking ownership of it is easy, here’s how: LinkedIn allows customers to learn more about you and gives them the power to publicly recommend your products and services to their network CREATE A COMPANY PAGE! In fact, research has shown a 66%+ increase in audience engagement as the result of targeted updates. Additionally, you have the ability to post offers such as e-books and webinars, which will generate leads that help grow your business. >>ADD YOUR PRODUCTS/ SERVICES: LinkedIn also gives you the option to highlight what products and services you offer. This not only allows customers/ visitors to learn more about you, but gives them the power to publicly recommend those products and services to their network. It also enables you to drive traffic back to those specific microsites on your website. >>A STUNNING NEW VISUAL DESIGN: You now have the ability to add a cover style image to your page. >>ADD A VIDEO TO YOUR COMPANY PAGE: You can also make your business’ Company Page more interactive by adding video. >>ADD YOUR GROUPS: If you have branded groups on LinkedIn you can add them into your page too. More about groups below. >>FINALLY: Encourage your employees to link the company page into their personal profile! In case you’re not aware LinkedIn now has company pages, which look similar to Facebook timeline pages. They are being tipped to become an emerging force within B2B social media, so if you haven’t got one, get one! So, the first step is to obviously create a company page, which is pretty straight forward. Once you’ve done that there are a few things to be mindful of, including: >>THE OVERVIEW TAB: In addition to the Summary section, the Overview tab gives you the opportunity to include company updates, job postings, and announce new hires. >>TELL YOUR COMPANY STORY: This then gives you the opportunity to tell your company story, which will reinforce trust with your brand. Posting updates is highly recommended and is pretty much exactly the same process as doing it on Google+ (see chapter 8) so you can more or less keep the same strategy for both platforms. However, what’s great about LinkedIn is you can also target your status updates to the activity feeds of specific users. You can target your updates by criteria like company size, industry, job function, seniority, geography, or by including/ excluding company employees. 7 DD THE COMPANY A ‘FOLLOW’ BUTTON TO YOUR WEBSITE & EMAILS Promote your company’s LinkedIn presence and help grow the reach of your company page by adding the company ‘follow’ button to your website, blog posts, emails and landing pages. PROMOTE AND ENGAGE WITHIN 3RD PARTY GROUPS LinkedIn Group Statistics are a good place to start with this as they will tell you how many members are in a group and how active it is, so it’s only worth joining groups with high activity. When you get into a group it’s a good idea to post your news in the promotions tab, create discussions, and join in with discussions. CREATE AN INDUSTRY LINKEDIN GROUP Creating an official brand group will help establish your company as a thought leader in your industry, it can help you grow a community of followers, generate new content ideas, and even new leads. BRING YOUR BRAND TO LIFE WITH PINTEREST A picture says a thousand words… A lot of businesses are concerned about the value Pinterest can bring to their business. I remember when it was first launched in 2010 my marketing manager completely dismissed it as a great platform if ‘you’re interested in pictures of flowers and rainbows’. However, the reality is that social media continues to grow in popularity and the hot trend that is being tipped to grow further in 2013 is online visual culture. Yes, Pinterest is more B2C than B2B, however there are a lot of B2B companies out there doing Pinterest successfully. I find Pinterest to be a great way of bringing your business and brand values to life. Words are logical, whereas pictures are emotional. It’s key that you combine both creatively to maximize the impact you have on your customers. Pinterest can be a great way of painting the picture of what your customer’s interests are, as well as bringing their lifestyles to life My Top Tips… STRATEGICALLY SOURCING CONTENT BRAINSTORM: WHAT ARE YOUR AUDIENCE’S LIFESTYLE INTERESTS? Once you have your themed boards in place it’s just a case of slowly filling it up with content over time. This can be done via a part of your content strategy as discussed on page 5. A big challenge for all marketers is getting to grips with understanding who their customers are. Pinterest can be a great way of painting that picture for you, as well as bringing your customers interests and lifestyles to life… CREATE A PINTEREST CONTEST BLOG Everyone likes an excuse to get a bit arty. Hosting a creative photography contest can be a great idea to boost engagement with your brand. CREATE A FEW BOARDS BEFORE PROMOTING IT Some ideas include: >>Pictures of your products & customers >>‘Things we love’ (pictures depicting your customers lifestyle interests) >>Info-graphs (always a popular piece of social media content that is likely to get shared) >>Memes, which again revolves around your target audience’s lifestyle interests >>Behind the scenes of your company FOLLOW PINNERS YOU WANT TO FOLLOW BACK Pinterest is a social media site, and like all social media it’s crucial you take an interest in other peoples content too. BOOST TRAFFIC BACK TO YOUR WEBSITE Even though Pinterest adopts a ‘no-follow’ policy, meaning it won’t add any extra oomph to your SEO juice, it’s still advisable to add your URL to all your pins to drive traffic back to your website. Also worth bearing in mind is that Pinterest uses Twitter hashtags, which makes it easy to combine both your Pinterest and Twitter strategies into one. 8 38% of marketers plan to increase their use of photo sharing sites 34% of marketers plan to increase their forum activities 74% of marketers report that increased traffic occurred with as little as 6 hours per week invested in social media marketing Source: Social Media Examiner, April 2012 JOIN THE MEDIA REVOLUTION WITH YOUR OWN YOUTUBE CHANNEL Otherwise known as VLOGS… The good old days of having the standard 4 channels on the telly have well and truly been set in stone, within the dark ages of media and communications. We now live in a society of ipads and ‘on the go’ media, making video content more in demand than ever. Having your own brand spanking YouTube channel will really strengthen your social media strategy with interesting and creative content. It will also keep your brand ‘media savvy’, which is something that modern consumers appreciate these days. Having a YouTube channel will really strengthen your social media strategy My Top Tips… ALWAYS PUT A LINK AT THE VERY BEGINNING OF YOUR DESCRIPTION STRATEGICALLY SOURCE CONTENT When uploading a new video, and include tags. This is the best approach to driving traffic back to your website, as your URL will only be instantly visible to viewers if you strategically place it at the beginning of the video description. I don’t mean to keep harping on about this, but again it all comes back to your content strategy as discussed on page 5. SET UP YOUR CHANNEL With a logo, artwork, social media icons, and an about me section filled in. This is not only good for your brand image but will improve your SEO too. CREATE PLAYLISTS This is a useful way of categorizing your content up logically. This not only makes your channel far more user friendly, but also allows you the opportunity to stamp down your brand values more clearly. FEATURE A TRAILER VIDEO ON YOUR HOME PAGE Now every time a person visits your channel they will be instantly exposed to your chosen introduction trailer, which should be a short and snappy account of what your business is all about in a nutshell. CREATE VIDEO ANNOTATIONS This is a nice little tip to help promote awareness back to your website or other social media channels. Basically, it’s a quick and easy advertising tool you can pop into your video on the sly. Just be careful not to over-do it though, as it people can go over the top with this. Basically, it allows you to create a little speech bubble, add a link, and choose when in the timeline it should appear. (This feature is under Edit Video >> Annotations.) The marketing messages consumers find most useful on social channels are those about discounts or money-saving vouchers (in the UK, France, Germany, Australia and the US) What consumers find useful Those about new products/services 36% Those about upcoming sales 36% Those about upcoming events 24% Those about changes to products/services 21% Those about customer service 16% Those that allow me to interact more immediately and directly with brands 15% Those about changes in company values (i.e. the environment or corporate social responsibility) 12% Those about customer satisfaction surveys 12% Those that allow me to have more effective conversations with brands 10% Those about newsletters 9% Source: Pitney Bowes, November 2012 9 % Those about discounts or money-saving vouchers 38% plus, GOOGLE± Finally a social media site that allows for SEO! Many people under rate Google+, however in this guide we’d encourage you to think twice before completely dismissing it. Google+ has attracted 500 million registrants growing into the second largest social network as of January 2013. Unlike Facebook, it is integrated with other Google products and technologies such as Google Search and YouTube, thus making it a highly attractive business tool. Google+ has attracted 500 million registrants growing into the second largest social network as of January 2013 INCLUDE HASHTAGS TO MAKE POSTS DISCOVERABLE Average Engagement with Social Networking by Region Google+ utilises hashtags to posts. It is advisable then for you to include your own hashtags to help categorise your content into conversations already happening on Google around that same topic. (Average hours per visitor) 7.0 6.4 HAVE AN EMPHASIS ON VISUAL CONTENT north america The Google+ template is designed in a way which is very user friendly in regards to posting visual content. Focusing on images just as much as words is highly advisable in order to grab your visitor’s attention. This is where your Pinterest page may come in handy. 7.6 My Top Tips… SHARE CONTENT DIRECTLY TO COMMUNITIES Google communities are a great place for sharing content, and are similar to LinkedIn groups. The incredibly user friendly thing with doing this is that this can be done at the same time as posting content on your Google+ page, by simply adding them via the plus (+) feature in a status update. Hereby making things quick and easy. Europe 7.2 2.9 middle east & africa asia pacific latin america ADD THE +1 BUTTON TO YOUR SITE To add the +1 button to your site, see Google’s instructions here. latin america is the region most engaged with social networking globally BOOST YOUR SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION Here at i2i we use a tool called Sprout Social that allows you schedule tweets on multiple platforms in one go. So it’s actually possible to automate your tweets and Google+ messages at the same time if you wanted. This is really useful in regards to allowing The great thing about Google+ is that Google rewards profiles that post often, share, and connect with active, influential Google+ profiles, and generally use Google+ with a bit of respect. So it’s advisable that you get into the habit of posting often. 10 Source: comScore, April 2012 you to post in a regular and consistent manner. One of the other main stand-out features of Google+ compared to other social media sites is that your backlinks actually have SEO value. Making it by far the best social media platform in regards to SEO. About i2i Follow us on Twitter 3-7 FEBRUARY Spring Fair 2013 International NEC BIRMINGHAM, UK @SAF_Int VOLUME SECTOR OPENS 2 FEB 3 - 7 February 2013 NEC Birmingham, UK The Jewellery Show @jewelleryshow CWIEME @CWIEMEexpo LOGO LOGO WITH PARTNERSHIP CREDIT Latin America leadership summit NOV 2o13 – SÃO PAULO Exhibitions Large scale events i2i Events continues to create some of the brightest and most inspiring exhibitions in the world. Each is structured to help exhibitors and visitors profit from a global business environment promising growth. Among our exhibitions are Spring Fair International, Autumn Fair (Spring Fair’s seasonal equivalent) and Pure London. Each is a major retail show sited at the heart of its specific business community, delivering inspirational buyer content and an unmatched range of products. Add to these a series of diverse, equally important and ever popular events such as Resource and Waste Management (RWM), CWIEME and Bett, and you can see why i2i has become a yardstick for all that is excellent in events organisation. Our large scale events division specialises in creating first-class meeting places for leaders in retail, architecture and healthcare. i2i’s large scale events are founded on compelling content, devised according to our customers’ needs. In establishing forums for influential business speakers and thought leaders, these events have become indispensable for their respective sectors and are regularly the platforms our customers use to unveil exclusive, market changing research and product initiatives to their industries and related media. As well as content, each large scale event is further enlivened by workshops, networking sessions, and retail tours, giving delegates invaluable opportunities to push towards both professional and personal career goals. LOGO WITH PARTNERSHIP CREDIT AND DATES Bett @Bett_show RWM @RWM_with_CIWM CMYK POSITIVE The Energy Event @i2iEnergy The Renewables Event @TRERenewables CMYK NEGATIVE Pure London @PureLondonShow BVE @BVExpo MONO POSITIVE Education Show @EducationShow Naidex @naidexshows MONO NEGATIVE 15th-17th September 2013 Glee @Glee_Birmingham World Retail Congress @worldretail & QUALITY CONGRESS MIDDLE EAST 2014 & QUALITY CONGRESS MIDDLE EAST World Architecture Festival @worldarchfest Patient Safety Congress @PatientSafetyUK NICE Annual Conference @NICEcomms