Page 141 - SKU-000506274_TEXT.indd

Market Smart: How to Gain Customers and Increase Profits with B2B Marketing

for you. Check in on your groups a few times per week and
try to participate as often as possible. Replying to previous
comments, sharing your thoughts or insight on a topic, and
asking thought provoking questions will help add value to
discussions.

Once you have a feel for what makes a popular post, you can
start your own discussion—ask a question, solicit advice, or
post a relevant or interesting article or resource for the group’s
benefit.

If the discussions you start prove popular with other group
members, you may be recognized as “Top Influencer” in
the group page sidebar. This recognition can help you build
trust within the group. And as long as your personal profile is
company based, everyone will know what you do without you
having to consciously market yourself.

A caveat on LinkedIn—it does have a downside. Recruiters are
very active on LinkedIn, and by making employees’ information
widely available, you are allowing the possibility that they will
be approached to take work opportunities elsewhere. This may
not be an issue in your organization—but I’ve seen situations
in which updating an employee’s LinkedIn profile was the first
step on their road to leaving a company.

Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging site that has exploded in popularity
and now has over 100 million active users. It is particularly
popular with professionals in the technology, marketing, and
communication fields. Twitter’s unique feature is that it allows
communications of only 140 characters or less.

Twitter helps increase a company’s presence on Google,
because tweets are now searchable in real time and appear
in search results. Beyond enhancing SEO, the key question
for B2B companies considering Twitter is this: are your

159

© 2012 Lisa Shepherd