Along with Donna Kent, Televerde’s SVP, I recently attended the Business Marketing Association (BMA) 2011 International Conference in Chicago. As Televerde’s representatives at the event, our goal was to glean as much useful information and best practices as possible about B2B marketing. Mission accomplished!

We dedicated three days to learning from the industry’s best practitioners, service providers, researchers, authors and consultants from credible and authoritative organizations like Siemens, Forrester, Avnet, IBM, Accenture,  Xerox, Google, Salesforce.com, Dell, GE, and so many more.

Three days of exposure to B2B marketing’s best and brightest succeeded in enlightening us and generated a combined 20+ pages of actionable and share-worthy ideas. There’s too much information for a single blog entry so I’ll bucket and deliver them in multiple entries, beginning with a list of the “Top 15 Ideas and Practices for Web & Social Communication.” Thanks to all the presenters and others we networked with who are the sources for these ideas, including Paul Gillin of Gillin Communications who presented a number of them in a thoroughly useful session called “Unleash Your Inner Publisher.”

(Some of these ideas may be obvious to some of Televerde’s blog readers with more web and social communications experience and skills. If that’s you, consider these ideas as refreshers and reminders. For those who are somewhat new to the game, definitely start doing many of them.)

1.     93% of B2B buyers search the web as the first step in their buying process. Companies need to have a presence on the web to be available during these “Zero Moments of Truth” (credit to Google for the “ZMOT” framework) when a buyer decides to do something about their problem but isn’t sure what to do about it or whom to solve it. So create and spread content that addresses the ZMOT in your market.

2.     Information posted to web sites, blogs, social media sites, presentations, etc. must be helpful and insightful to buyers. Selling isn’t the goal – informing and connecting is the need to fulfill and the gap to close.

3.     Trust is the currency of content publishers. Create useful, insightful, credible content to create trust. Think of content as gold nuggets to provide readers. Gold nuggets are the currency.

4.     Be prepared to sustain an online community on LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. with ongoing content and bi-directional communication.

5.     Presence, passion and knowledge are requirements for good communication. You can’t fake your way through the communication and information-sharing process. Know what you’re talking about and demonstrate conviction when you communicate.

6.     When developing a communications strategy, the process should start with knowing your business goals, then determine how to measure the results of your plan, then decide what tactics you’ll use, and then pick the tools you’ll use. Social media is a set of tools to deploy a communications a strategy; social media in and of itself is not a strategy; it’s a means to an end.

7.     Blogs are critical to an inbound marketing strategy because search engines favor blogs. Limit blog posts to 500 words, state only 2-3 main points per entry, and post updates weekly.

8.     If there’s too much competition in your market for keywords and short key phrases, then instead optimize for long-tail searches. These are more ownable.

9.     Humanize your company’s interactions on social media. It’s okay to be a little goofy, offbeat and outrageous on occasion. Remember that your purpose is to get noticed. It’s okay to mix business with personal messages. The worlds of work and life are inextricably linked.

10.  Try to get a link on Wikipedia to your company’s web site or blog. Wikipedia is considered by search engines to be a highly credible and authoritative source, which boosts your site’s SEO.

11.  When communicating on social platforms, think “conversation” instead of “lecture.” Always encourage readers to talk back. End your blogs with a question or request for feedback.

12.  Pepper your communications with words that conjure imagery. “Business-speak” tends to be blah so tell a colorful story and use image graphics.

13.  If you can’t create enough of your own fresh content, then be a content curator. Curating has value to readers, especially if they trust your opinion.

14.  Spread your content by publishing in multiple, right places on the web.

15.  Return on Investment (ROI) is a financial measure of results. In the context of the “return” you’re targeting from your use of social media, think of “results” (e.g., number of fans, followers, subscribers and responders), then measure the relationship between these results and the conversion to their financial value (i.e., the value of a fan and follower – the “Return on Results”).

I’d like to know if these ideas are useful, if you’ve already implemented some of them and the results you’re seeing, or if you have other ideas to add to the list.

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