Almost every B2B client of mine is curious about Facebook. Who wouldn’t be? It’s much more than a social network, it’s actually the third largest “country” in the world.
Despite that, B2B marketers prefer to ignore it. Or, to keep it compartmentalized as a recruiting or a philanthropic hub. But shouldn’t you dream bigger than just creating a press release warehouse or “like” inventory?
Facebook offers low cost, simple ways to activate the audiences you care about – quickly. Polls, custom landing pages, contests can be done be done within days or even hours. But in our own programs, we’ve seen that the most successful Facebook “footprints” concentrate on doing one thing really well.
Every winning B2B brand shares content that matters to their audience. It need not always be their own content, but they have to:
1) Understand what matters to their audience
2) Share content that hits on community needs, pain points and opportunities
3) Talk, discuss, converse and engage every day, multiple times a day about those issues
But don’t just take our word for it. We’ve curated a list of resources to help you get started:
The Basics:
- Content marketing using Facebook
- Facebook Marketing: The ultimate guide (includes SEO considerations)
- 26 tips for enhancing your Facebook page
- The top 75 apps to enhance your Facebook page
- How to add a Like button to your Facebook tabs
- 15 ways to inspire loyalty after the Like
- 5 simple ways to create custom Facebook landing tabs
Thought Leadership
- How Facebook Messages will boost B2B sales
- How Facebook decides what to put in your newsfeed
- How marketers can use Facebook’s new location features
- 5 ways for B2B companies to engage on Facebook
- Facebook marketing tips from the world’s top experts
Stats:
- Facebook by the numbers in 2010
- The year of Facebook: U.S. traffic has grown by 55% in the last year
- Facebook global monitor
- Facebook vs. Twitter
- Is Facebook bigger than Google?
Studies
- Measuring newspapers’ Facebook engagement in 2010
- Top reasons for Facebook unfriending
- When are Facebook users most active?
- Facebook says “likers” click links to external websites 5.4x more
- 6 scientific findings about Facebook users
Case Studies*
- Top 10 Facebook pages and why they are successful
- State Farm uses Facebook game for brand building
- 25 brilliant examples of Facebook pages
- Johnson & Johnson tries social media
- 10 B2B social media case studies
*This list has many B2C examples – there just are not a lot of stand-out B2Bs. If you know of one you like, will you add it in the comments section?
Tools:
- Facebook Tab App Funnels Customer Feedback into Actionable Suggestions
- Real time Facebook newspaper PostPost launched
- New Facebook app streams live video from pages
- What everyone should know about Facebook analytics – top 4 services
- Facebook’s 3 instant personalization partners
- A real time feed of the most shared stuff on Facebook
Special thanks must go to Inside Facebook, our very favorite blog on Facebook developments. We urge you to subscribe.
What about you? Will you share your Facebook starting successes and failures with us? Is there a resource that you’d add to the list?
To reach Elizabeth:
Phone: 212.840.0017
Email: elizabeth@blisspr.com
Twitter: @elizabethsosnow
LinkedIn: Elizabeth Sosnow
01/16/2011 at 8:15 PM Permalink
WOW!! Thanks for teaching my next class. Amazing resource — thanks!
01/17/2011 at 12:29 PM Permalink
Glad you found it helpful, my friend. Sometimes the flood of Facebook information makes it hard to find the good stuff. Yet, as social media marketers, it’s impossible to ignore the power and potential of the network. I predict that 2011 will be the year where B2B decides to aggressively experiment with appropriately scaled projects on FB.