Many an IT services company has felt flummoxed by social media and how to take advantage of its diverse capabilities. After watching B2C businesses convert social media marketing efforts into wild successes-think about the forums and blogs dedicated to tech gadgets you love, cars you want and the music you listen to-B2B businesses have been working to generate the same level of marketplace engagement and fan frenzy.

On November 10, ClearEdge Marketing was delighted to host a Webinar on social media and its marketing applications to an audience of TechServe Alliance members. From business owners and presidents to sales, recruiting and marketing professionals, attendees were there to learn how their businesses can use social media to engage clients, prospects and candidates. As presenter, I was challenged to make the content useful to social media neophytes and enthusiasts alike.

Well I like a challenge, and I think the Webinar we came up with did a good job of explaining the fundamental value of social media to businesses today and how to put the tools to work. For ClearEdge (we are a B2B company too), social media has become a way to continuously underscore and share the knowledge, value and hard work of our team through Facebook/LinkedIn postings, tweets and blog entries (that’s right, you’re in our social media Web right now). Our whole staff is out there interacting in the marketplace, and that is expanding our reach and the market’s understanding of our skills, experience, resources and expertise.

For IT services and staffing firms, social media offers numerous ways to do the very same-share knowledge, engage with clients, prospects and candidates and build a captive, vocal base of fans. And while it’s easy to see why Apple, Applebee’s and even Fiona Apple have fans and followers, several industry professionals have asked me what the value of a fan base is for an IT services firm. I encourage clients to see a fan base as a way of momentarily giving your company Star Trek-like capabilities to beam valuable and welcome knowledge directly into someone’s world. Do it well, and those fans will leverage the insights you’ve provided, share them with an even wider audience and praise your brand across their expanding networks.

To learn more about the core value of social media marketing, current trends and successful approaches, I invite you to review my full Webinar presentation online here as well as the transcripts of our event Q&A session, which can be found below. I also encourage you to see the results of the polls we conducted during the Webinar of IT service industry attendees, which you can find on our Facebook and LinkedIn pages. I think you will find it interesting to see how your peers are feeling about and using the tools today.

With social media, there is always more to learn, so I encourage you to share your insights and perspective by comment or tweet. We are big “fans” of learning, engagement and lively debate at ClearEdge Marketing.

Social Media Webinar Q&A

If I have multiple social media accounts (i.e. LinkedIn and Facebook), should I list all of them in my e-mail signature or focus on only one?

• a. You should include all icons in the signature and hyperlink to profiles. See the screenshot below for an example of how to do it without clutter. 

Does it take a specialist to build social media pages and profiles?

• a. Not at all. Setting up a profile on LinkedIn and Twitter or a Page or Group on Facebook is easy work. Our Webinar presentation (posted here) includes some tips and best practices you can follow as you do it. In addition, each site provides a step-by-step wizard that makes building profiles and pages quite simple. However, if you don’t have the staff and bandwidth or want to create more elaborate profiles with custom graphics and coding, outsourcing is certainly an option.

What is the difference between a ‘friend’ and ‘fan’ on Facebook?

• a. A friend is someone within your personal profile while a fan is for company (or organization) pages.

Is Twitter effective for posting job openings only or should we add other content?

• a. We suggest tweeting a mix of both job openings and content relevant to your Twitter followers. Try not to tweet about ‘what are you doing,’ but rather what great content or information ‘has your attention.’ For example, tweet about industry information/insights/stats that you stumble upon throughout your day or events that may be of interest to your audience. Request feedback about industry news and information you post. And when tweeting a link (or URL), always send a question or explain what your link refers to.

If you have multiple offices, is it better to have one corporate Facebook profile or separate corporate and office pages?

• a. I think having one corporate Facebook Page (or profile) that is central to your organization is important. This is where you can concentrate company-wide information, press releases, events, photos, videos, etc. And if you want a place to share local information relevant to only a particular office, you can create Groups for offices and list them on the main corporate Facebook page. A good example can be seen on Spherion’s Facebook page. They have a main corporate Page and created Groups for several of their local offices, including them in a separate tab on their corporate Page (see screenshots below). This provides the best of both worlds and centralizes it in one place as well.

 How do you find enough content to share with your audience?

• a. Besides your company’s news (press releases, events, photos, videos), you can also keep your audience informed of industry news, statistics, conferences and events. Good, useful information is what keeps your fans and followers engaged and paying attention.

You can keep yourself up-to-date with industry news by subscribing to blogs, using RSS feeds and visiting industry publications online. You can then share links and insights to your fan base and followers as long as you are always attributing the content to its original source. When you share third-party content you must always follow Fair Use and Copyright laws and you need to clearly identify the source of your information as you see in the Twitter feed example below. 

Leslie Vickrey
President & Founder
ClearEdge Marketing

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 5:47 am and is filed under Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.