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But be warned, you won’t see many cat memes on LinkedIn; it’s strictly for professionals. The site is set-up as a hotspot for professionals and companies of all ranks and sizes to come together online and discuss industry insights, networking prospects and hosts of other topical subjects that may not be appropriate in the casual free-for-all that some social networks have become.

Because LinkedIn’s company pages place less emphasis on company/brand identities and more on developing personal networks, it’s critical to develop connections with users that allow your business to loop in high-value leads. This plays an important role in generating customer referrals as you’re essentially forming a friendship-based relationship with a potential lead right on the site. No offline interaction required.

As you’ll soon notice though, LinkedIn requires a certain degree of tactfulness when beginning to participate. Keep in mind that the platform is a heavily expert-driven community and to break into it you’re going to need to start some serious, professionally minded conversations.

 

The first way to do this is company status updates. Shoot for around 1-2 status updates per day that are relevant and interesting to your industry peers. As a result of your quality status updates, also be getting shares and likes that propel your brand to the farthest corners of LinkedIn’s network, driving more traffic to your site and presenting more opportunities to capture leads and potential referrals.

Remember: the idea of company updates is to create a dialog that establishes your business as an expert in the field, not to annoy your followers with banal status updates about your personal life.

Another opportunity to participate within the B2B community is LinkedIn Answers. LinkedIn members can use this platform to ask questions specific to a particular topic or industry in the hopes of getting an expert answer. People need help and guess what, you’re the expert that’s going to give it to them.

Answering questions regularly helps establish your business as a thought leader in your niche and gets people talking about your brand, two key markers of successful B2B referral generation. You can also share helpful resources or blog posts in forums, but make sure to include a solid call-to-action that optimizes them for lead generation and referrals. You never want to miss an opportunity to actively engage users in the sales funnel.

The combination of a professional audience with a focus on personal social influence creates a perfect storm for B2B marketers entering into social media sales. In fact, a recent Hubspot lead generation report found that over 60% of B2Bs have acquired a lead through LinkedIn vs. 52% from Facebook and 44% from Twitter.

But as LinkedIn grows, your prospects of getting found decline so now more than ever is the time to get your foot in the door and start generating B2B referrals with highly targeted efficiency.

Again, the goal on LinkedIn is not only to get people to view your page, but to become engaged enough with your brand’s community to become an expert capable of generating leads and referrals. Leveraging LinkedIn’s business-heavy network with targeted messaging can pay back dividends, and optimizing your company presence is the first step towards getting high-value referrals down the line.

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Is your company also debating whether or not to engage with customers via social mediums like Facebook or Twitter? Let’s take a look at the facts concerning social customer service: The benefits of fast response times, its effect on a customer’s brand engagement, and how your brand can create a great social customer service experience that keeps customers coming back for more.

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So going back to the original question—Is social media customer service relevant for B2B brands?—the answer is yes, very much. And here are two reasons why B2B brands need to invest in social customer service now, as well as some advice for how to do it right.

1. Positive Customer Service Equals Positive Word of Mouth

In 2012, American Express reported that 47 percent of customers share information about their service experience with a wider audience; 48 percent will praise a company for providing great service; and 46 percent will vent their frustrations about poor service.

These numbers are too big to ignore, especially for B2B brands that rely on a low customer acquisition cost and churn rate—two things that are directly correlated to positive referrals. Customers do talk about your brand online; make sure you’re there to answer the call.

What can I do?

• Be proactive. If you’re aware of an issue that affects your customers, don’t wait for the complaints to start gaining traction. Use Facebook or Twitter to announce that you know about the problem and are addressing it as quickly as possible.
• Show some personality. One of the main benefits of social media is the ability to communicate with customers in a more personal manner. Show a disgruntled customer that there’s a human behind the account by using personalized language and even some humor. No one likes talking with a robot—and especially not when they’re dealing with frustrating problems.

2. Customers Expect Customer Service Via Social Media

According to The Social Habit, 32 percent of customers who contact a company’s customer support department through social media channels expect a response within 30 minutes; 42 percent expect a response within 60 minutes.

If this expectation seems unreasonable, then you’re missing the point of effective social media marketing. It’s not just about the products your brand sells, but how effectively you can show value to potential leads. A strong lead-nurturing process more or less requires a customer support infrastructure.

What can I do?

• Set up a Twitter handle specifically for customer concerns. Creating an entirely separate customer service account may seem unnecessary, but it’ll save you a huge amount of time in the long run. And with all of the Tweets coming in to your main Twitter feed, it’s easy to overlook potential issues or complaints. Maintaining a separate account ensures that your social customer service strategy is tidy and organized.
• Always be listening. Again from The Social Habit: “Among those respondents who have ever attempted to contact a brand, product, or company through social media for customer support, 57% expect the same response time at night and on weekends as during normal business hours.” While you’d like to believe that your customers are dormant at night and on the weekends, the business world never sleeps. Of course, offering 24/7 customer service support doesn’t make sense for smaller B2B companies, but you should still monitor what’s being said about your brand and respond to any issues before the Tweets hit the fan. There are a number of social media monitoring tools that can help keep you organized and efficient.

The social landscape is evolving in tandem with your ability to serve customers across multiple channels. Social media is no longer a clever marketing gimmick; it’s a necessary component of any brand’s customer service strategy—including B2B.

How are you using social media for customer service?

Image Courtesy of Google

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Social customer service is increasingly becoming a necessary component of social media marketing. In fact, it’s acknowledged as being an integral part of forming powerful relationships between your brand and its supporters, and—most importantly—building brand loyalty. Therefore, you should not only listen to your fans and followers, but also engage with them and provide support when questions or concerns arise.

Yes, gone are the days of call centers, wait times, and terrible on-hold music because customer service has made the leap online. So are you ready to get started? Here are three ways you can provide effective social customer service in order to build stronger brand loyalty:

1. Provide Personalized and Efficient Customer Support

According to a 2012 study by Oracle, which surveyed 3,111 consumers in 15 countries, “more than half of Twitter users expect a personal response within 2 hours of asking a question or posting a complaint”; 51 percent of Facebook users expect to receive one within 24 hours.

Without an efficient way to respond to complaints, your brand won’t meet customer expectations, and you’ll miss a golden opportunity to provide valuable responses and ultimately generate positive word of mouth from satisfied customers.

Some brands have set up independent social media accounts that are exclusively for handling customer service requests. This makes it easier for brands to separate their online marketing from customer support, while still providing real-time service and updates.

But of course, not every company has the resources to respond to every complaint so quickly. So to avoid causing your customers to feel ignored, someplace on your landing pages and social networks you should spell out some realistic expectations for when customers can expect to hear back from someone. At the very least, your customers will feel catered to, but you’ll also buy yourself some time in which to adequately address their concerns.

2. Integrate Your Strategy across Multiple Channels

Social networks are unique in their ability to provide instantaneous feedback and support. For example, because Twitter is geared toward quick, bite-sized content, it’s the best channel for communicating time-sensitive information regarding any issues that need to be recognized and addressed immediately (e.g., software malfunctions or product recalls). Meanwhile, Facebook is better suited toward addressing issues in a more comprehensive manner.

So the next time an issue arises, immediately send out a Tweet letting followers know that you’re aware of the problem—and then go to Facebook to provide more information on the status of the resolution.

3. Respond Quickly

A hallmark of social media marketing is the virality of messaging and content. While this creates the potential for highly positive word of mouth, the door opens both ways. Social media also allows brands the opportunity to quickly address customers’ concerns or negative feedback and squash any negative publicity.

This means you should consistently monitor your social media channels for customers’ questions and concerns and then respond with valuable information. Not only will you put a cap on potentially harmful word of mouth, but you’ll also show that your brand cares about its customers and is dedicated to resolving issues.

Ultimately the best thing your brand can do is respond quickly, efficiently, and accurately. Too often customers are forced to navigate confusing call systems or complete lengthy online forms in order to get their needs addressed—not a good approach for businesses looking to build strong customer loyalty and passionate ambassadors.

How are you providing support to unsatisfied customers? Let us know your best practices!

Image courtesy of Google

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The short answers to those two questions are yes and a lot.

Leveraging social media alongside your email marketing campaign greatly extends your brand’s reach by encouraging email recipients to share a message within their own social networks. And it also allows businesses to do a better job of identifying key influencers.

The following suggestions will only scratch the surface. But in the interest of time, here are five ways to ensure that you’re getting the most out of your next word of mouth (WOM) marketing campaign through the power of emails:

1. Ask Your Email Subscribers to Share with Their Friends

Simply asking people to share your brand can be a surprisingly effective method. Include a brief call to action in your email asking subscribers to follow you on various social networks. It’s a great way to not only loop in new ambassadors who may not have known about your referral program, but also re-engage former ones who may have fallen off the map.

2. Include Social Sharing Widgets in Your Emails

Virtually all of the relevant social networking sites offer widgets that you can integrate within your emails to take readers directly to your chosen landing pages. Your widgets should be noticeable and easy to click on, as this will reduce friction and make it easy for your subscribers to share content.

3. Include Social Commentary in Your Emails

If you have a flattering customer review, an e-book you’d like to promote, or even a helpful blog post, include it in your email and allow readers to retweet or share your message easily. Including your supporters’ messages will help build a stronger community for them to participate in and make them more engaged in your referral marketing program.

4. Promote Email Signups Directly on Your Social Pages

Here’s an easy one: create an integrated form on your social media properties to make it easy for fans to sign up. This goes back to friction: It shouldn’t be difficult for potential leads to subscribe to your emails. Make sure you’re effectively leveraging multiple acquisition channels to make the greatest impact.

5. Provide an Incentive to Share

There’s no better way to re-engage brand ambassadors than simply reminding them of your program and offering new incentives. For example, you can offer new subscribers a special discount in the form of a coupon that only they can see. Or allow them to sign up for your referral program right on the spot. In other words, you want to offer a reward for sharing that will give customers a nudge in the right direction.

Building a community via email is an oft-overlooked component of successful WOM marketing programs. But with such easy wins, there no reason not to integrate email marketing into a broader brand strategy.

Did we miss anything? How are you leveraging email marketing techniques?

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One of the most underappreciated aspects of social mediums is their ability to set industry leaders apart. However, businesses today tend to shy away from social media engagement as they fear their efforts are time consuming, and insignificant—but that simply isn’t the case. Effectively managed, brands can utilize these mediums to garner client feedback, engage ambassadors, identify competitors, improve their products, and set themselves apart in the eyes of consumers.

To keep you from spending hours on the hunt for the most effective social media management tools, we’ve cut through the noise, and selected a few of our favorites to share.

Without further adieu, here are 7 of our top picks—both free and paid—for listening in:

1. Google Alerts

While not overly robust, notifications available through Google Alerts serve as a simple tool to manage your brand in real–time. With a simple adjustment to settings, Google Alerts will ping you each time your brand name is mentioned—an easy and barebones way to put an ear to the ground, and get notifications on–the–go. Hard to beat for those who have little time or budget to devote to new tools.

2. Social Mention

Free, fast, and surprisingly robust—social mention will scour blogs, videos, comments, and more, to bring you on–the–go information pertaining to brand discussions (i.e. sentiment, top users, sources, etcetera). The sort by date feature also allows you to review the most recent conversations had about your brand, or ones held in the past you might have missed. It might not be as detailed as other paid solutions, but it’s a great way to get a lot of information in a pinch.

3. BoardReader

While the term “social media” might bring to mind Twitter, Facebook, and other major networks, businesses tend to overlook the discussions held in forums—many of which are not indexed by Google. BoardReader is a forum search engine that can illuminate these hidden conversations. Forums lend themselves to lengthy, detailed discussions, great for garnering in–depth insights into, and engaging with, a more deeply invested audience.

4. Loudpixel

Lost in a sea of customer responses? Loudpixel is designed for just such scenarios. This distinctive monitoring app serves up a wealth of information, including actionable reports of statistically representative client data. Receive daily alerts about priority­–based consumer posts requiring follow–up, keep a pulse on relevant data, and effectively analyze your businesses progress against industry and competitor benchmarks.

5. Engag.io

With so many available networks, it’s tough to be everywhere at once. This tool allows you to monitor your various social presences, track conversations, and respond to all posts, tweets, +1’s, and more, from a central location. Get new interaction notifications, and immediately join in on a conversation.

6. Brandwatch

At $250 per month (EDIT: the kind folks at Brandwatch informed us that the price is actually £500), the price tag might not suit every budget, but Brandwatch serves as a powerful tool for those wanting to take monitoring to the next level. Sophisticated sentiment analysis gives you the nitty–gritty details beyond whether or not people like or dislike your product, while visually stunning charts and graphs turn data into actionable insights. Detailed filters help you cut through the noise, identifying key influencers who might not have otherwise been on your radar.

7. Sysomos

Real–time tracking and analytics, automated sentiment analysis, demographic tracking, competitor comparisons—what more could you ask for from a listening tool? This tool can provide particularly powerful insights into the “whom” driving online conversations: age, location, interests, and engagement levels. You’ll have all the information needed to reach out and build relationships with the seed influencers who matter most.

Honorable Mention: Radian6

No list of social media monitoring tools would be complete without recognizing the juggernaut in the ring, Radian6. While we’ve yet to see the implications the recent acquisition by Salesforce will have on the tool, Radian6 remains the top choice among marketing professionals. Clean dashboards and real-time charts make it easy to see the most common words associated with your brand, monitor the highs and lows of social mentions, ascertain sentiment, export data, and allocate workflow. The tool excels at turning data into appealing visuals—helping you cut through the clutter, and focus on data meaningful for marketing decisions. With some of the most robust help and support of any tool mentioned, putting the immense power of Radian6 to work seems less daunting and more exciting.

Social media listening tools can be your most useful set of eyes and ears on the web, providing insights you could never have gathered on your own. Just remember—the key to any successful customer management tool is engagement. Be prepared to listen, converse, and build relationships with your potential brand ambassadors.

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