Channel Partners: 4 simple steps to embark on the social media path..

A lot has been written about leveraging the power of social media and using it in business today. Most of the articles while insightful are centered around B2C. This article is focused on advising the B2B channel community on getting started on the social media path. 

I recently attended a training on social media by Profitecture. During the course, there was one statement that stood out  - “Its no more about what you know or who you know that’s important. What you are known for and who know’s you, now that’s what’s important” Replace the word "you" with "your company".  Makes sense? Social media is all about building Social Authority with your target audience.

So how does a midsized channel company build social authority with their target audience?

Here are some practical steps for the channel community who are looking at leveraging this powerful medium.

Step 1: Ask yourself the fundamental question, why do I want to use social media?  What’s my objective?

Is it to build an ongoing dialogue with  my target audience or be considered as an expert in my area?

Step 2: How do you do this? Simply put content is the King. It’s all about getting the right message out & showcasing what value your company delivers.

Now given all our busy schedules, the question is; is this solely the job of a marketing manager?  From where do you get content? Here are three  options

a. The biggest asset that any organization has, is its people. Every organization has SME’s. It’s time for you to start leveraging their expertise. Get the  SME’s in your organisation to blog or tweet on their area of expertise. Its a first step towards towards building social authority for your company.

b. Remember, your principal vendor has a lot of content. Retweeting or sharing those with your target audience, or offering expert opinions on your principals new products is another route.

c. Leverage on customer case studies you have built over a period of time.

It’s very important to have a pipeline of content available for the next 1-2 months to keep the traction going.

Step 3: Build an engagement with your target audience. I have seen a lot of companies, who have started on this journey but have not been able to sustain it due to lack of quality content. They start on a facebook page, and when you visit the page there is minimal content, few followers despite having launched this over a year back. So here is the deal – start simple!  



Social Media: An exciting Journey ahead!

 Twitter is a great way to getting started on this journey. Infact it’s the simplest.  It’s much like SMSing. Requires only 140 characters and links to an external article or your company website for more details. My recommendation,  tweet daily and have a minimum of two tweets a day. Ensure you interact with your followers by asking & responding to questions to keep them engaged. You could also manage and schedule your content posting to twitter by making use of free tools such as hootsuite.

Linkedin is another great platform. Simply join existing groups and atleast once a week post content or offer insights on the group topic or invite the relevant audience for your sales events. It takes off the pressure of managing your own linkedin page till the time you are ready to do the same.

It’s very important to not only sell your product or service. The intent of any social media engagement is to offer content which would be a useful read to your target audience.

Step 4: The most important one. Measure the effectiveness of your social media endeavor. Now how does one do this.  There are lots of free websites which helps you measure how influential you are on various topics, and calculates your followers and retweets. That is a very good way to begin measuring the success in the short term. One such wesbite is Klout, a simple, easy to use tool, that shows you a trend over a 90 day period. Over a period of time as you start engaging with your audience, you will see your Klout score increasing.  This means people are talking about your company.

In the long run, there are other ways to measure the impact of your social media campaign. But that’s a topic for another day.

Social media is a long term engagement strategy. To really enjoy the fruits, you have to keep nurturing the seeds.  When someone else starts talking about you and that multiplies exponentially, imagine the free publicity for your company. Remember, what is important is “what you are known for and who knows you”!

In early 2012, IBM conducted a CMO survey, which stated that 80% of CMO’s plan to use social media as one of their marketing strategies next year. The question that I have for you, are you one of the 80%?