I’m a big fan of Social Media. You probably know that if we are connected on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. I recently stumbled upon Drew McLellan’s Social Media Cheat Sheet (see to the right) and had a few thoughts on it as it relates to business. Drew is a public speaker and gets questions from his audiences on which social media networks should be used for business. His response to that question is prefaced with:
Social Media Cheat Sheet
there is no single, magic or easy answer to that question. It all depends on your goals, your overall marketing strategy, your resources and your industry. It’s not a cookie cutter sort of thing.
I agree. Goals must be defined, marketing strategy, target audience, time and resources are all factors that must be taken into consideration prior to identifying which social media networks should be used for business. Drew then took the next step and created “The CMO’s Guide To THE SOCIAL LANDSCAPE,” describing the business value of 10 social media networks.
Today is March 21, 2010 (and the first day of golf season–totally unrelated side-note). If a CMO has not familiarized themselves with the top Social Media Networks and the business value to social media marketing, then they need to do their homework. Social Media Marketing can have a potentially large impact, on both short term and long term goals, for just about any business.
The Social Media Cheat Sheet certainly adds value to anyone unfamiliar with Social Media Networks, but I want to make one thing clear:
B2B Social Media Marketing Is Useless Without a Business Blog
B2B Companies that create LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook pages for Business, with the intention of generating quality traffic to their website and converting that traffic into leads are setting themselves up for failure without a business blog. I speak with business owners and marketers on a daily basis that are trying to figure out why their social media marketing strategy has not yet worked and very few of them have blogs.
Why is blogging important? Stay tuned for my next post on the “Value of B2B Blogging.”
