Yes, it can be done. Social Media Marketing (SMM) is not a black hole in the marketing budget. And if you haven’t already started, its not too late to begin now. We see SMM everywhere and we see it done successfully. From our own work and conversations with clients and prospects, case studies we’ve seen at conferences, to blog posts and articles we’ve read – many B2B companies are finding their investment in social media marketing well worth the results. So much so, that budget for traditional forms of outbound marketing are shrinking, as investment in SMM is growing.

Are there exceptions? Should everyone jump on the bandwagon? The few exceptions we’ve seen so far include high-ticket item software companies with a finite list of customers (echoed by a ReadWriteWeb article). But for the vast majority of B2B software companies, social media marketing can work – and it can do wonders for lead generation, brand awareness, and customer loyalty, if executed with a well defined strategy.

The Secret Sauce: A SMM Strategy

We know it may seem pretty basic, but it is in fact planning and strategy that differentiates the winners from the losers in social media marketing. As part of our consulting work, we routinely come across social media marketing content that doesn’t seem to have a purpose. It’s seemingly not tied to an overarching business goal, and it often lacks the fundamental element of social media marketing – it’s not social.

There is a vast amount of content out there from B2B companies that talks at their prospects and customers. It’s not engaging, not delivering value to the audience, so it falls flat. The key element of social community building is fostering conversations between your customers, users, prospects and other external stakeholders – without your company being involved. Do this well and the real power of social media is unleashed.

Building a SMM Strategy: Steps to Success

So if it takes a planning and strategy to succeed, where do you begin? To build a SMM strategy you begin with the business goals, as you would with any other marketing initiative. Key to establishing attainable goals is not only defining what you want to get out of social media marketing – but how you will measure it.

When we work with our clients to establish goals and objectives, the only way an item stays on the list is if it can be measured. Our rule of thumb is – if you can’t measure it, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. Granted some goals may have direct and some indirect measures – but there is no point flying blind. Our clients expect us to justify our expense to them – as you should with your marketing team.

Here are the steps we follow, when we build a SMM strategy:

• Understand your audience. Here’s where the work begins. You’ll need to research and find out just how your customers and prospects are engaging with social media. What tools do they use? What do they talk about? Where are your opportunities to engage with them by providing value. For example, you may find your prospects on Twitter – and you can engage with them by pointing them to resources, timely information, and by responding to questions they raise. Remember – the purpose of social media marketing is to establish relationships, and relationships imply value. This is not the place for the hard sell or to blast them with unsolicited information.

• Analyze the Competition. Take a good hard look at how your competition is using social media marketing. Specifically, you will want to understand where they are succeeding, where they are failing, and what green field opportunities remain open to you. You goal is to capitalize on the green fields.

• Define Your Goals. This is a critical step, as you’ll need real detail to have it be meaningful. As you define your goals, list out every possibility you can think of. You may not pursue all of them but it’s good to capture them anyway, just think of it as a brainstorming session. From your long list, select 1-2 goals at most to begin with. Keep it simple. The goals you select should be attainable ones. How will you know if a goal is attainable? For each goal you select, you’ll need to map out the subsequent execution steps or objectives to complete the goal. If you can’t figure out how to get there, put that goal on the back burner.

• Select your Social Media Marketing Channels. Once you have a good sense of your audience and your goals, you will need to select the most appropriate channels that will help you get there. What you’ll want to avoid is the selection of a particular platform, just because you think you need to use it. You see everyone else is using it – so you think it will work for you too. Don’t fall into that trap. Don’t get wrapped up in “we should be on Twitter” or “we should have a Facebook page,” these tools only make sense if your audience uses them and they match your goal.

• Decide on Metrics. Next, figure out how you might measure your success. For example, let’s say your goal is enhancing customer loyalty and engagement. You could measure success in a number of ways including – total number of participants and conversations (and share of positive comments) from existing customers in community forums, Twitter and blogs; open rates for your customer communication email and readership trends for your blog and web pages; or ultimately increase in the number of support renewals and reference customers to name a few. The parameters will vary by organization, SMM channel and depend on what other tools are in place to provide measurement outside of direct social media metrics. At the beginning, even an increase in negative comments may be welcome – especially if there is pent up frustration that has built up over time and social media interaction provides that release. At least you are now aware of latent issues and can resolve them, enhancing your customer loyalty over the long term.

• Choose the Social Media Team. You understand your audience, you’ve defined your goals and metrics, and you’ve selected your social media tools. Almost done. Now, you need to decide who in the organization needs to be part of the execution team. If you don’t have the team you need to support your goals, you may need to go back and refine your goals and step through the process again to fit with the team you have. Ideally, your team would include members of your marketing and product organization as well as representatives from the customer service and technology organizations. Effective social media strategies are built on quality content. To actively engage, your social media team will need to include individuals who can create interesting content as well as those who have the authority to build meaningful engagement with customers and resolve issues that come up. Strong executive support is always advisable, as social media marketing will impact and potentially improve many aspects of your business.

• Program Launch and Execution. Last step in your plan is to set milestones for launch of various social media channels, and your monitoring interval for assessment and adjustment. The monitoring interval is when you look at your progress against your goals and metrics and fine tune the program as needed. Give yourself enough time to achieve some momentum. Monthly or bi-monthly reviews should be sufficient to begin with. After three months, you should really begin to see some progress. If not, you may need to go back to the drawing board and look at the goals, objectives, and analyze what’s missing and what needs to change. Keep in mind social media is dynamic and adaptable, so you’ll need to be flexible and revise and tune as needed.

That’s it. The steps perhaps are the same as what you’ve done with your traditional marketing programs, only tuned for social media. Let us know what you think and what works for you.

– Alison