I attended a large Tech Breakfast Club event this morning near my home in Northern Virginia where three panelists from local B2B tech companies shared ROI and lessons learned from using social media to engage leads and customers. online.
SafeNet (3rd largest provider of information security solutions in the world)
ROI: $1 million in revenue last year directly from the LinkedIn information security community, with 4 members of SafeNet’s marketing, systems engineering, and product management team each putting in just a few hours a week to interact with the community and manage it.
Holger Schulze (@HolgerSchulze), Director of Product Marketing and Marketing Operations, and founder of the InfoSec Community on LinkedIn, shared how he started the LinkedIn Group on his own as an experiment, only to see it grow to over 50,000 members in little more than 2 years.
The company carefully measures ROI by tracking original sources of leads and sales conversion through:
• Marketbright Marketing Automation Software
• System Engineers and Product Managers report which members connect directly to SafeNet sales for follow up (at member request).
• Salesforce.com
One important note is that Holger also started a LinkedIn company group for SafeNet at the same time he started the InfoSec group, and the SafeNet group barely attracted any members, so it became an internal company group for employees. . This is really valuable as it confirms that people will not join a group to hear about your company, but rather actively join groups that focus on specific topics that interest them.
Vocus (PR software provider)
ROI: $500K in revenue last year directly from social media
Frank Strong (@Frank_Strong, @Vocus), Director of Public Relations, shared how Vocus shifted its focus and turned its marketing and public relations teams into a kind of in-house publishing company to consistently produce content in a variety of formats that Public relations professionals find them very valuable and want more.
Social media is used to support their strong content strategy by distributing it effectively to interested followers who then share it with others, but Vocus is very careful to share both content that was not created by them and their own. They discovered through trial and error that focusing too much on their own content put off leads and customers and eventually found the right balance.
Vocus primarily uses Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as they are the most popular social networks used by their audiences. To measure ROI, the company uses its own products to track original sources of leads and Salesforce.com to track sales conversions.
CompTIA (Not-for-profit trade association promoting the global interests of information technology companies and professionals)
ROI: Significant increase in new memberships and renewals
Susan Cato (@susancato, @CompTIA), Senior Director of Marketing, Web and New Media, shared how for the past 2 years the organization has focused on a two-part social media strategy. First, like Vocus, the marketing team works much like the publishers, with a 6-month editorial calendar providing the framework and details each team member needs to create content effectively and efficiently. . This isn’t a rigid plan though, Susan noted that flexibility is key as she figures out what types of content are successful (and not) and makes appropriate changes. Also, inserting content on the go to stay up to date is important to stay on top of big industry news impacting members.
The second part of the organization’s strategy has been to create and nurture several online communities, each with a very specific niche focus. While it’s clear that each community is part of CompTIA, each is separately branded, has its own online presence, and is open to everyone, not just CompTIA members. For example, SoftwareCEO is one of their online communities specifically for entrepreneurs and executives of software companies. These communities have been very successful in attracting new members that they might not otherwise have, as well as retaining current members who have the opportunity to connect and interact with their peers.
The organization created more than 60 LinkedIn groups to support each of its online communities, as well as the organization itself. They also use Twitter and Facebook.
CompTIA uses website analytics software and marketing automation software to track original sources of leads and CRM software to track sales conversions.
Lessons learned by 3 panelists
1. Social networks must be embedded in the culture of a company, it is not just a strategy
2. Social networks will not be effective without a very solid content strategy
3. Before dabbling in social networks:
A. Have a plan for how to deal with people who make negative comments about you, your company or organization so that everyone knows who will respond and what actions to take (and not take). Be prepared, be quick to respond, and be genuine, but recognize that there will always be people who will never be happy no matter what you do. Treat “haters” with respect, but focus on those who are positive to establish and build a following.
b. Train employees participating on behalf of the company on how to use tools (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, etc.) and guidelines on the type of content to share and how to interact with prospects, customers, partners, and others.
4. When providing content to several different communities, offer exclusive access to certain content to one community for a limited time, and exclusive access to other content to another community for a limited time, to achieve higher perceived value and keep people engaged for a long time. -term
5. “Happy Accidents” are common when experimenting with social media, don’t be afraid to try and try new ideas.
The Tech Breakfast Club is a quarterly regional gathering of high-tech B2B public relations and marketing executives hosted by technology public relations firm TechImage.