According to a Social media survey from Business.com, almost 81 percent of B2B firms had a presence on Social networking sites and almost 75% were on Twitter, these statistics were higher in comparison with B2C firms which showcased that only 63 % were on Social networks while 43 % were found on twitter.
New challenges are brought on marketers after the opt of Social media by these large enterprises; these large companies were really quick on the opt of social media as they saw the opportunity to diversify their marketing efforts to reach millions of people in an expanding global market using carefully engineered social media marketing campaigns.
Social Media for large enterprises being relatively new brings challenges for marketers; an interesting fact is that almost all managers spend about 2 hours/day online to find information and 50% of the information is not what they were looking for!
The change has already been brought about with the success stories of Dell, HP and Cisco known to most of the people in the industry. It’s not about Social Media tools that bring you the success, but your objectives. Once, objectives are clear, the choice of tools get much easier! It’s, however, most important to listen to the conversations in relevant communities before defining objectives.
How to generate leads through Social media:
- Pre plan before going Live; Give a good reason why your target audience should contact you, Differentiate your product/service to make you stand out. Be sure that your website is fully functional and you’ve devised the procedure to measure ROI for your efforts.
- Syndicate Content according to customers: your content ought to be customer centered, engaging and urging calls to action. Do not just focus on textual content; Consider Videos marketing over Youtube, MetaCafe, DailyMotion and other platforms, presentations on Slideshare, infographics etc.
- Close in On Influencers of the Industry: Save time by leveraging industry influencers on Social media as it will take your time in building up a community and gaining trust. Leveraging will give you maximum results in minimum time. According to the Social Media report 2011 45% of marketers that have invested 12 months or less in social media marketing have reported new partnerships. You may want to check Audi sales Q7 TDI through Guy Kawasaki, Cisco’s SocialMiner and Capital One’s Launch via Zynga Games.
- Get observed by Social Media Giants: Different major blogs, including TechCrunch and Mashable, have always encouraged the sharing of news, innovative creations and stories of successes and failures of different enterprises. But the only ways they can be talked about are by networking and approaching the editors of those blogs, or creating news.
- Participate in Social Media Events: Be aware of the latest social media happenings like events and gatherings, go for webinars. Being in such events provides a gateway to strategic partnerships.
- Build Affiliates through Social Media: Effort on your affiliate marketing plan instead of gathering twitter followers and facebook fans. Promote your affiliate campaigns by both paid and free options, and don’t forget to subscribe for emails.
- And at the end, do keep a benchmark for measuring ROI effectively!
Social Media Tools for Large Enterprises to Generate Business Leads:
Focusing on creating social profiles doesn’t work on its own. But creating awareness and spreading information about your products/services and answering queries about them on places that are most visited online places have to be coupled with that. This purpose can be served through the introduction of content in your marketing plan. Wikipedia, Hubpages, Step by Step and EzineArticles can be the best platforms to answer questions of your target audience.