25 Must-Read B2B Marketing Blog Posts

The title speaks for itself and the list is here.

Banking Ads on Social Networks

While this is a UK statistic, I think it’s interesting nonetheless (here): 20.9% of online banking ad impressions were on social networking sites

 

 

B2B Thinkers

I think the name of the post says it all 14 B2B Thinkers to Follow on Twitter

Social Search for B2B

A look at Google’s social search functionality plus a post posting whether search is the justification for B2B social media (here).

Extending Your Social Media

A good exchange on Chris Brogan’s blog on how to extend and drive sopcial media within and through the organization. See the post here

Twitter in B2B

From Velocity:

Payments and Social Media

From the PYMNTS.COM Press Release (here):

PYMNTS.com will address a variety of topics, including the “mash-up” of payments and mobile, payments and social media/social networks, and payments and online media as well as the technologies and applications that are driving the sector’s innovation and evolution worldwide.

A joint venture of Business Wire, a Berkshire Hathaway Company and Market Platform Dynamics, PYMNTS.com will redefine the ways in which B2B news and information is both generated and distributed.

Real World B2B Social Media

A detailed look at a real company’s social media work with some metrics to boot. The story is here

Social Media ROI for B2B

A good highlight of what makes ROI calculations difficult for B2B social media (here). I think this point is critical:

B2B social media is as much about “influencing the influencers” as it is about reaching buyers directly.

I mentioned in previous post that getting to the influencer or knowing that your message impacted the key influencers — of which there are typically more than one in a B2B sale– are difficult to know. So a hard number on ROI for a B2B sale naturally gets much harder to calculate especially as in B2B you’re looking at usually a longer sales cycle, more influencers or types of influencers and a more complex sales process.  I think this makes it all the more difficult to gauge as well.

Social Media in Banking

According to this article (here), the social media standouts, or most “engaged”,  are USAA and Wells while the least engaged are Citi and Chase:

USAA and Wells Fargo are clear front-runners in being truly “engaged.”  They are the extroverts of the group, using a variety of social media tools – and each in a meaningful way.  They are answering customer questions, encouraging comments about new products or services and posting “how to” videos on YouTube.  As a result, the “Jane Q. public” user gets a generally positive, customer-friendly impression of the banks.

On the contrary, Citibank and Chase are the least engaged banks in our analysis.  They are using few social media tools, and didn’t appear to be actively engaged with customers.  Negative sentiments and complaints were quick to bubble to the top of our online searches.

The article is a good read.