Social marketing winner prominently in corporate plans-BtoB Magazine

Social media takes firmer hold marketers attention and budgets, richly favoured social channels, their primary uses and their individual strengths becomes clearer, according to a new survey by BtoB.

"New trends in b to B Social Marketing: insights from the field," released today found that 93% of all b2b marketers participating to some degree in the social media marketing with the most-used channel, LinkedIn, employed by 72% of survey respondents. Facebook (71%) and Twitter (67%) is almost as popular, and these three together constitute the core of most b2b marketers social media programs.

Online survey was conducted in January and February, and attracted 577 respondents.

"We are using both LinkedIn and Twitter as our two main social channels, mainly in order to provide another way to communicate with our partners and customers," said Sue Watkins, Director-Marketing at project and operations software company Meridian systems.

"LinkedIn allows us to achieve our social media-savvy customers want to network with other customers, so they are more active in our society and are more likely to be champions of our cause," said Watkins. "We post messages and also start discussions around topics."

Watkins said Twitter can Distribute her company and product news in the real-time push model, and used to support the Meridians press release activities and customer newsletter.

Facebooks inclusion in the top level of the b2b social channels is something of a surprise in view of the sometimes appears by marketers as oriented towards family and friends. But Facebook's marketing value to b2b companies is clear, according to the Btobs investigation.

"We have discovered that there is a better attention to Facebook, unlike Twitter," said Dan Rickershauser, marketing researcher with customer relationship management company landslides technologies. "People seem to spend more time on Facebook, because it is a bit more clean and controllable. I think the real winners are the companies that use Facebook Marketing because they are still relatively in front of the pack ".

Other popular channels is the sharing of video Web site YouTube.com, used by 48% of survey respondents, blogging (44%) and customer communities (22%).

While most marketers involved in social media by using a combination of channels, there is a clear preferences. When marketers were asked to name the single most important method used for b2b outreach was LinkedIn again clearly chosen leader, with 26% of respondents.

Facebook was selected as the single most important channel for 20% of the respondents with blogging (19%), customer communities (14%) and YouTube (7%) also cited above.

Despite being widespread overall, chosen Twitter as only 13% of marketers as their single favorite.

"A lot of things I look at Twitter's lack of strategy, and as a result you have Twitter somewhat flooded with" contains "communications" Rickershauser said.

These marketers, tightly integrate their social media marketing channels recognises the individual strengths of each — forces are not necessarily shared by all channels — according to the study.

Branding, considered Facebook, blogging and YouTube, primary strength, while the customer feedback and research competition-related information is perceived as customer communities greater strength.

Professional networking site LinkedIn biggest virtue is its lead-generation power.

Customer communities, on the other hand, is perceived as primary listening posts for marketers and natural ways to solve customer problems.

"In addition to Facebook, use most of our customers targeted debates, such as Amazon's sellers Center and Ebay's the Community Board," said Eric Nash, Director of online marketing in the online Postage company Stamps.com. "They look to the debates find our other customers with similar transactions."

Nash said, as his company began participating in customer communities, together with other social channels negative feedback has fallen from 32% of all comments in 2009 to 18% in 2010, while positive comments have risen to 51% from 28% in the same period.

Twitter, often featuring shortened URLs that advertises, landing pages, product launches, and white papers, seen first and foremost as a support website traffic and product/event promotion, according to the Btobs investigation.

Companies of different sizes were represented in Btobs study, even though small businesses dominated; 56% of respondents represented companies with an annual turnover of $ 24 million or less; 23% came from companies with annual revenues of $ 25 million to $ 499 million; and 21% represented businesses with annual revenues of $ 500 million or more.

Technology companies comprised 22% of respondents, followed by production (15%) and consultation (11%), with financial services (6%), Internet/online services (5%), advertising (5%), publishing/media (5%) and whole-sale trade/distribution (4%) are also represented.

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