This blog (Part 1) will cover email marketing basics, and email tips and tricks. Email Marketing Part 2 will share testing tips, measuring email campaigns, and a Glossary of Terms.

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is the first social media. Long before blogs, Twitter and Facebook, marketers used email to communicate with customers and prospects in a similar mode as direct mail. Deploying a message to a list, with an offer, to generate a response.

The elements of email marketing include the list, the email layout and copy, the subject line and the offer(s). Most emails are distributed by email software or an email service provider (ESP). For a modest fee, the ESP provides an interface to design or upload the email (copy, images, html files), upload or manage lists, and provide metrics or dashboards on campaign results. The ESP also has built-in features for opt-outs and removal of duplicates (de-dupe).

Why Consider Email Marketing?

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated! Email is not dead. On the contrary, email marketing is growing. According to a January 2011 survey by BtoB magazine, 63% of respondents were likely to increase spending on email in 2011 (second only to websites) with 29% keeping spend constant. Also, The email Marketing institute recently released Q1 2011 email results stating, “North America Email Trends and Benchmarks Results showed a 39.2% increase in average volume per client from 2010 to 2011.”

The major reason to consider email marketing is because it works, and in comparison to direct mail, email is a bargain. While list costs (when required) may be similar or slightly higher than mail, email does not have printing or postage costs. And when using email software or an ESP, the metrics or campaign measures are robust including open-rates, click-through-rates (CTRs), bounces and opt-outs. The immediacy of email is untouchable by any other marketing medium. And the combination of metrics and immediacy allow you to test subject lines, even offers (more on testing later). Certainly email integrates nicely with websites and e-commerce. And email campaigns can easily be customized, personalized and otherwise targeted to the individual or market segment. Finally, email lends itself to ongoing communications with customers and prospects who opt-in to newsletters and related communications.

But email marketing is not perfect. In email’s infancy (around 1998-2000), open rates and click-through rates were stratospheric until spam-blocking firewalls rained on the parade. Then anti-spamming legislation almost killed email. Now with spam-ware adopted by all email hosts, email open rates are much lower, averaging 10-20% for a business-to-business category (including construction).

Despite these issues, with the marketing mix rapidly evolving to internet, SEO and social media, email is an important conduit to these electronic assets. And the promise of communicating quickly and inexpensively to captive customers and opt-in lists generated from all these internet assets is to good to pass-up.

So the holy grail of email marketing is how to be more effective. How to maximize campaign effectiveness. To that end, the balance of this blog will share email marketing tips and tricks!

Email Tips ad Tricks

1) The List: the foundation of any email (or direct mail) campaign or program is the list. Obviously, home-grown customer lists have the highest potential for opening, followed by opt-in email lists from a variety of your own sources. The problem with email lists in business-to-business is employee turnover. A good portion of email (or mail) lists become inaccurate over time, thus requiring ongoing efforts to purge hard-bounces, or non-deliverables (reported by most ESPs).

Purchased lists are available from publishers, associations, list brokers and online databases. List costs typically range from $100-$400 per thousand records. Often the list seller will not provide the list, but will distribute your email to their list to maintain control. Following is a list of sources for your email list.

Sources of Email Lists

• Publisher lists
• List brokers
• Association lists
• Online databases
• Website registrations
• Website contact forms, questions
• Customer phone inquiries including RFQs
• Sales contacts
• Email has forward to friend feature
• Trade show scans
• Warranty registrations
• LinkedIn

List hygiene, or continually cleaning your list is critical to email success. When using an ESP, un-subscribers or opt-outs will be automatically purged from the list. If not using an ESP, you must perform this task manually. Hard bounces are invalid email addresses and should be removed form the list. Soft bounces should be tested as these can be out-of-the-office auto-responders or server issues on the client-side.

2) Email Design: there are 3 elements to be considered with each email design—subject line, layout, and offer(s) or call-to-action.

One of the most basic email success factors is to avoid spam subject lines. Spam filters are employed by most email providers today. Each closely looks at the subject line and message body to determine the likeliness of spam. Here is a list of what spam filters hone in on that you should avoid:

• Free / Act Now / All New
• 50% Off Call Now Subscribe Now
• Earn Money Discount Double Your Income
• You’re A Winner! Million Dollars Opportunity
• Compare Removes Collect
• Why Pay More Special Promotion Information You Requested
• Amazing Cash Bonus Promise You Credit
• Loans As Seen On Buy Direct
• Get Paid Order Now Please Read
• Don’t Delete Time Limited While Supplies Last
• Stop No Cost No Fees
• Satisfaction Guaranteed Serious Cash Search Engine Listings
• Join Millions Save Up To All Natural
• You’ve Been Selected Excessive $ or !

We recommend testing subject lines, to be covered in the next blog.

Regarding email layout, simple and brief is a good start. A combination of copy and visuals or images is another key. Treat the email layout like an print ad with a strong headline, light support copy, and clear offer (big buttons are good!). Email newsletters can have multiple content areas, but ideally, stay away from long-copy and use abstracts with READ MORE hyper-links to full text. The added advantage of links is the opportunity to measure the click-through.

Always have complete contact information including phone, website, email, and links to your social profiles. Ensure that the unsubscribe link is easy to find.

Following is a sample of an email targeting architects, which included a product highlight, as well as a project spotlight:

3) Email Software and Email Service Providers: we recommend using email software or an email service provider for all email distribution. Why? If you mail from your own email system, you can be blacklisted by the receiver. Second, ESPs will optimize against spam filtering. As mentioned, ESPs provide user-friendly tools for list management and even design. And ESPs offer great dashboards for measuring your email campaign. Finally, ESP fees are very reasonable.

List of Top Email Service Providers (ESPs)

1. iContact
2. Benchmark Email
3. Constant Contact
4. Mailigen
5. Pinpointe
6. Campaigner
7. GraphicMail
8. Vertical Response
9. MailChimp

4) Other Tricks of the Trade

One of the most important considerations for email success is timing, or when you distribute the email. For business-to-business markets, we recommend Tuesday through Thursday, after 9:30 am, or 1:30 pm. Why? Because Monday morning will have a back-up of email, and coupled with staff meetings, email will more likely be deleted. Also, emails overnight will be more likely deleted due to the quantity of other emails everyday. Fridays in the summer, forget about it. If you are doing nationally distributed emails, be sure to take into account different time zones. If marketing to consumers, weekends are actually preferred timing.

Another consideration for email success is frequency. If you bombard your list with emails, recipients will unsubscribe. If you email twice a year, there will be no continuity. Somewhere in between is a happy medium. Each scenario is unique. Do your customers and prospects use or buy your product (or service) frequently? Is your product complex, or require a lot of information, generate questions? A rule-of-thumb would be no more than weekly, and no less than quarterly. This is why a monthly eNewsletter is popular frequency, delivering continuity wihtout annoying your target audience.

Finally, to ensure deliverability, add a message to your emails along the lines of: ‘Please add _______@yourcompany.com to your address book to ensure that you receive our emails”. Again, ESP software may have this feature.

Check back soon for Email Marketing Part 2.

Business-to-business marketing is changing rapidly. The marketing mix is evolving, in a good way. There are many reasons for this metamorphosis. First, business-to-business buyers (like consumers) increasingly use the Internet for sourcing and selecting products and services. Therefore search optimization becomes more important than ever. Internet search engine optimization (SEO) and social media both improve search results.

Second, traditional marketing tactics like advertising and trade shows are expensive, and are being cut back and often replaced with less expensive Internet and social media. To prove this, in a recent study we identified downward trends in advertising, printing and tradeshows. Yes, there are exceptions.

Third, Internet-based marketing (including social media) can be more measurable than traditional marketing. Fourth, a focus on lead generation can be facilitated by website registration pages, and communicated via social media and integrated with traditional marketing.

The new marketing mix still requires a strategic marketing foundation to ensure all downstream marketing supports brand strategy and positioning. But the new marketing mix buckets many traditional marketing tactics as Outbound Marketing, and many Internet and social media activities as Inbound Marketing. Marketing measurement is integrated with both Inbound and Outbound and feeds back to planning and budgeting via reporting as a closed-loop system. See the modern marketing mix diagram below.

A webcast entitled Branding Boot Camp is scheduled for Tuesday, July 26, 2011 at 1:00 pm CST.

Neil Brown, Chief Marketing Officer at FUSION b2b will share highlights of his book “Branding Best Practices” including naming strategy, logo and identity, and sub-branding. Carla Johnson, Principal at Type A Communications, will share examples of brand messaging.

“Effective branding is critical for many reasons. Business-to-business categories are more competitive than ever, and a great deal of loyalty can exist for certain brands”, states Neil M. Brown. “This webcast will share all aspects of branding, and provide case study examples of branding.”

To register for the free Branding Boot Camp Webcast, CLICK HERE

About The Panelists

Carla Johnson, Principal of Denver-based Type A Communications, has a background in marketing, business development, public relations and employee communications. Carla develops and implements marketing programs that increase awareness, create a consistent marketing and sales message, help employees stay engaged and ultimately generate revenue. Johnson served as the 2010-2011 President of the Colorado Chapter of the Business Marketing Association (BMA) and is contributing author to the recently released book, “Advice from the Top: The Expert Guide to B2B Marketing.” She has taught classes for Colorado State University, Regis University and for the Rocky Mountain Direct Marketing Association’s Certificate in Direct Marketing Program.

Neil Brown is Partner and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of FUSION b2b, a leading marketing and communications agency based in Naperville, IL. Prior to FUSION, Brown was CEO of numerous marketing consulting and creative agencies for the past 15 years, managing some of the biggest brands in the BtoB sector. Brown was a brand manager at IDEAL Industries, and later CMO of a metals manufacturer. Neil earned an MBA from Northern Illinois University, and a BS-Marketing from Southern Illinois University. Neil is a frequent speaker, author and contributor to Advertising Age, BtoB magazine, Marketing News and many other publications. In 2009 he published the book, Branding Best Practices: A Guide to Effective Product and Business Naming.

Free Grading Service Now Available!

A new marketing grading service is available that measures company or brand marketing performance on a 4.0 grade point average scale similar to education, and then issues a Marketing Report Card.

The free Marketing GPA™/Marketing Report Card™ service grades five (5) categories including:  brand execution, marketing programs, Internet marketing, social media integration, and marketing results measurement. The service is available to qualified brand owners from FUSION b2b, a Chicago-region marketing agency.

A brief, web-based form must be completed and submitted to FUSION b2b. The “student” or brand owner will receive a Marketing Report Card report with both category (above) grades, and a composite grade. In addition FUSION provides three (3) “Big Ideas” or recommendations for improving your marketing GPA.

“A number of diagnostics are available that measure Internet and social media effectiveness. To our knowledge, there are no free, public services that measure both traditional and Internet marketing,” states Neil Brown, FUSION b2b Chief Marketing Officer. “Obviously, this customized evaluation and recommendation cannot be executed real-time. Our goal is to respond to requests for the Marketing Report Card within 48 hours. We hope this service will be fun and assist marketers in driving change within their organizations.”

To access the Marketing GPA™/Marketing Report Card™ form , Click HERE.

The importance of social media in business-to-business continues to grow, with more and more examples of companies and brands realizing financial results. The promise of social media is improved search engine results, increased website traffic, real interaction with customers and prospects, and ultimately, measurable revenue generation. In addition, a huge opportunity exists to unleash employees, and involve staff as brand ambassadors to amplify your social media initiatives.

As we have all experienced, social media takes a great deal of time. So gaining the support of a “small army” of brand ambassadors is intuitively appealing, but not without issues or problems that can be minimized with guidelines and training. To that end, following are 5 Tips for Social Media Training in your organization.

1. Create a company social media policy guide
2. Seek, recruit and develop thought leaders as editors
3. Develop a social media plan
4. Conduct staff training
5. Ongoing communications and reporting

A Social Media Policy?

Depending on the the scope of your organization, a simple to extensive social media policy will provide guidelines to staff AND partners to ensure corporate and/or brand objectives. A social media policy will also Ensure messaging and tone are consistent. In addition, dealing with negative situations and unprofessional conduct can be defined, including disciplinary actions. The policy can also serve as a training vehicle with detail on corporate and brand social media assets and procedures. Below is a sample guide for Intel.

Below is a link to policies for hundreds of corporations:

http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php

Recruit Social Media Editors

The new media revolution has transformed marketers and other employees into authors and publishers. While marketing, communications and PR staff have always participated in content development, ideally a broader social media program will recruit and leverage thought leaders and subject matter experts across the enterprise. Content is king in social media and thought leadership can come from engineers, executives, and yes, even sales people (we have to take a stab when we can). Ideally, marketing assumes the role as managing editor, guiding content strategy, editorial calendars and assignments. Which leads us to the next tip, planning.

Develop a Social Media Plan

Like all marketing plans, goals and objectives should be defined. We suggest both overall objectives, and specific goals for each of the top social media platforms including blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Some of the obvious objectives are Fans and Followers, however, keep in mind that quality is more important than quantity.

A basic part of planning is benchmarking or evaluating other companies and brands social media. Certainly evaluate competitors, but also analyze those brands recognized for best practices. Obviously you want to deploy social media better than competitors, and understand what some great new ways to leverage the different platforms for marketing results.

Developing and managing content is one of the biggest undertakings with social media, so assigning a social media project leader or managing editor is critical. This person should bring together key thought leaders and subject matter experts for brainstorming, planning and scheduling. This person should publish a detailed content schedule, remind and coordinate content for all platforms. Ideally, the plan will coordinate social media integration across platforms. As an example, note how a single marketing initiative like a webcast involves multiple communications and social platforms in the flow chart below. Which leads us to the next tip, training.

Conduct Social Media Training

So you have recruited the dream team of subject matter experts (SMEs) who likely have little (or zero) editing or social media experience. Both content and social media platform training will be required. Not to mention, you still want to enlist the small army of brand ambassadors that are your employees to comment, Retweet, Like and bookmark corporate blogs, posts and Tweets.

First, conduct platform-specific training including Blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Detailed training for your editor team and basic training for employees. Following are some specific training considerations for each social platform.

Blogs

1. Train SMEs and employees how to Retweet blogposts
2. Train SMEs and employees how to Facebook Like blogposts
3. Train SMEs and employees how to bookmark blogposts including Digg, Delicious, etc.
4. Train SMEs and employees how to comment on blogposts

LinkedIn

1. Train employees how to link corporate website, blog and Twitter to their individual profiles
2. Train employees how to list company, brand, industry and partner events via the EVENT application on their profiles
3. Train employees how to upload company SlideShare presentations converted from brochure PDFs or Powerpoint presentations to their individual profiles
4. Train employees how to link their profiles to the company page
5. Train employees how to add LinkedIn connections, along with tips for business development
6. Train employees how to join up to 50 LinkedIn groups, and provide guidelines for group discussion posts
7. Train employees how to use InMails to communicate thought leadership, offers and programs to their respective connections

Facebook

1. Train SMEs and employees how to set-up their personal Facebook profile.
2. Train SMEs and employees how to Like the Facebook business page
3. Train SMEs and employees how to comment on Facebook business page posts
4. Train SMEs and employees how to post updates and share content on the Facebook business page
5. Train employees how to find relevant customers and prospects and engage them on Facebook

YouTube

1. Train SMEs and employees how to set-up their individual YouTube accounts
2. Train employees how to view company YouTube videos
3. Train employees how to comment on company videos
4. Train employees how to share and embed company videos

Twitter

1. Train SMEs and employees how to set-up their Twitter profiles
2. Train SMEs and employees how to Follow relevant Twitter profiles
3. Train SMEs and employees how Tweet and Retweet content including URL shorteners and hashtags (#)
4. Train SMEs and employees how to use external programs and applications including HootSuite, TweetDeck, WeFollow, etc.

Ongoing Communications and Reporting

Communicating social media activities, measures and successes is key to building interest and participation among employees and key contributors, while building management support. Providing frequent reporting and sharing successes will create enthusiasm. Depending on the scale of your enterprise, weekly or monthly reporting may be sufficient. Such reporting can be combined with ongoing training programs. Recognizing individuals contributions is another key aspect to these group meetings.

Measuring results of your social media program includes the metrics of individual platforms, which we cover in our blogs for each platform. In addition, website traffic and analytics should be included. Finally, social media monitoring tools like Radian6 that measure conversations across the Internet should be used.

Now, go train someone!

Want to know more about FUSION b2b? Click Here!

FUSION b2b recently published a new white paper “Is B2B Marketing Obsolete? How to Thrive in the New Marketing Revolution.” This white paper is now available for download on the FUSION b2b website. Below is an abstract from the white paper:

Abstract

Traditional marketing is not obsolete, rather evolving with traditional budgets shifting to online (Internet, social and mobile). The role of traditional marketing in business-to-business will transition to supporting new marketing.

New marketing is broader than online, with content assuming a major role in success (think marketing as authors and publishers). In the new marketing mix, strategic marketing, outbound and inbound marketing are a seamless process. Database marketing and automation are increasingly used to manage lead generation and measurement.

The New Marketing Revolution is the effective integration of traditional marketing with online marketing, managing and developing content, and more effectively capturing leads and measuring results.

PR assumes a larger role in both content generation, and distribution through all online channels; traditional ad budgets will shift to PR and media relations for business-to-business.

Business marketers can no longer wait for social media deployment, as business- friendly features and the SEO benefits of social integration prove too valuable.

To thrive in the New Marketing Revolution marketers cannot cling to to traditional marketing. Marketers must embrace Internet, social and mobile media. Marketers must integrate traditional and new marketing. And marketers need to measure marketing results from many sources like never before.

As with all revolutions, you can ignore it at your peril, or embrace it and become part of the revolution, or be left behind with the old regime.

Click Here to Download!

Groups, InMails and Apps!

The Power of LinkedIn Part 1 covered LinkedIn Profiles and Company Pages, and can be found here. This second half  will cover LinkedIn Groups, InMails and applications.

LinkedIn gives us so many powerful features that the best way to learn is through experience. Understanding that the more you use LinkedIn, the better you will get is very important. Over time more features will be released for LinkedIn, but you will be able to learn and adapt how to use those quickly and easily once you understand the basics.

LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn was created for business professionals to communicate within a trusted network. These discussions happen within LinkedIn groups and fuel most of the interaction that happens across the whole site. LinkedIn Groups opens a world of possibilities on the site and allow you to accomplish several business activities using the group features. Your personal profile allows you to join and show up to 50 groups that you belong to, which you can use as a way to demonstrate your expertise and knowledge areas. Groups can either be open or closed. If you join an open group you immediately become a member. Open groups are important because they allow search engines (e.i. Google, Bing, Yahoo) to index the content displayed in those groups, and closed groups do not allow this. Closed groups are good for controlled content, membership oriented groups/associations, or even alumni networks that require you to have actually attended a specific school. These closed groups also allow you to capture emails if you are the group administrator (this will be discussed further under the category of owning a group). Overall groups are an important strategy to attract industry professionals to a specific topic, and use the group as a marketing vehicle.

Join, Introduce, Participate

LinkedIn will always list groups in order of relevance and size when you conduct a search within groups. Joining larger groups is always a good idea, because it means your posts will have a larger reach. However, larger groups may mean that interactions may not be as valuable when it comes to building a business relationship. Whenever you join a new group be sure to introduce yourself to all of the members and let them know why you have joined the group, and what your professional interests are. The more transparency you invite into your LinkedIn activity, the most succesful you will be. If your intentions are to announce webcasts on a regular basis to the group, let them know so they understand your actions and your purpose for joining the group. No one likes to feel like they are being baited and switched. The number one rule behind any social media interaction is to give value, then ask for value in return. Before you ask for people to sign up for and attend your webcast, be sure to post articles and comment on discussions happening within the group. If you do this, people will be much more likely to attend your events because you spend time building that business relationship.

Build your Network through Groups

Some people are inherently social and have no issues with increasing the size of the LinkedIn network because they have so many contacts outside of LinkedIn before they joined the site. For those of us who don’t have a large network of connections, LinkedIn allows us to network with anyone in the entire world at the click of a button. LinkedIn limits our ability to connect with someone by forcing us to tell them how we know them. Groups give us the bridge to connect with someone that we may not have a previous connection with. If you are within any group you belong to, you have the ability to look at the members list. Within that list you can see who you are already connected with, and those who you are not yet connected to. You can request a connection with anyone in that group by going to group member profiles, click on “invite to connect”, then select Groups, and what group you would like to connect with them through (you may belong to multiple groups with one person). If you already have joined your maximum of 50 groups, you can leave a (e.g. smaller) group and join another and continue to grow your network with the steps above.

LinkedIn Group Administration

Understanding how to start and manage a group yields several opportunities for the person who is the group administrator. Content control and management falls onto your shoulders, and if you feel like someone is abusing the group guidelines or policies the administrator can remove their post, and even remove them from the group if the post was egregious. If you are a group administrator you capture everyone’s emails who joins your group (if it is a closed group, if it is open you do not receive their email information). If the group is branded, or covers industry relevant, or company relevant content it will show up in Google results (if the group is an open group). Lastly, owning a group showcases your industry expertise and elevates you to be seen as a subject matter expert within your network on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn InMail Strategy

Once you leverage LinkedIn Groups to increase the size of your network you can engage your connections with direct contact through InMails. InMails act as an email within LinkedIn, and send a message to the users email notifying them of the message you just sent them. Often times, individuals on LinkedIn will have their personal email attached to their profile so they are more likely to read the message you sent them. You can send up to 50 people an InMail all at once, and make it seem like you sent it directly to one person. Please refer to the screen grab below where you can see the “box” where you can check that you do not want the others receiving the InMail to see who else was receiving the message. Be sure to have a descriptive title for your message, as well as a “short and sweet” body paragraph that gets to the point. Let them know you understand their time is valuable and thank them for taking the time to read your message. InMails are great for several things, here is a list:

1. Thank someone for connecting.
2. Group Invites
3. Event invites
4. Company page invites
5. Research (poll, question, survey)
6. Business Opportunities
7. Corporate Web Site Invite
8. Social Media Invite (Please Like, Follow, Watch, etc.)

Be careful about spam, that is InMail that is too self-promotional or frequent. As always, provide value in your offers and communications.

LinkedIn Applications

LinkedIn has a number of powerful applications that allow you to maximize the effectiveness of your personal profile on LinkedIn. These applications include SlideShare, Google Presentations, Behance (portfolio display), Events, and Amazon Reading List. All of these applications have their strengths. There are more applications on LinkedIn than listed above, but these are the most business friendly, useful applications.

• SlideShare – This robust application allows you to upload any size PowerPoint presentation you want to your LinkedIn profile. However, PDF’s can also be uploaded to SlideShare (their orientation can be either portrait or landscape). This is a great application to show off presentations you’ve given, and a way to highlight your expertise through a presentation. You can also show off the company you work for by uploading a presentation that they’ve given in the past.
• Google Presentations – This application is just like slideshare, however it gives you the functionality to add video to your profile on LinkedIn.
• Events – Do you attend a lot of live events? If so this is the application for you! Events gives you the functionality to add a running list of the events you are planning on attending, as well as the events you’ve already attended. Show off all that travelling you are doing to your peers and add a little bit more character to your personal profile by showing where you are spending your time.
• Amazon Reading List – If you do a lot of reading, I suggest adding this application to your profile. If you constantly have a book that is inspiring you to work harder and smarter, show it off to your professional colleagues! Often times knowledge is a springboard for business innovation, and it comes from dedicating time to those books on your shelf. Show off the books you are devoting time to, and how they are influencing your career and company.

LinkedIn Today

Recently LinkedIn released their news platform called “LinkedIn Today” that aggregates content from around the internet. This is a great source to find industry articles, relevant industry information, and what the people within your professional network are interested in. The best articles that are shared the most, and have the most comments are elevated to the top of LinkedIn news, so you see only the most important articles first. The first time you go to the LinkedIn News portion of the site they will suggest industries that have news that is relevant to you. Be sure to follow these and tell LinkedIn what industries you are interested in. These news articles are aggregated primarily from twitter, so you will see a 140 character format for article descriptions. This is a great resource for anyone that is interested in real-time news.

Summary

LinkedIn is important for every business. Training your employees is the key to obtaining success on this social media site. LinkedIn can seem overwhelming at first, but training your employees on the basics and how they can use it on a daily basis will unlock opportunities across the whole organization. Lead generation is another primary reason to utilize LinkedIn. Groups are the strongest way to grow and expand your network, and often times can turn a cold lead into a warm lead. People present themselves in a professional manner and knowingly announce what company they work for, and what their position is. If executed correctly, anyone on LinkedIn can be a potential lead. Inmails on LinkedIn allow you to directly contact other members, and can be an optimal vehicle for your marketing messages. Be sure to not overuse the functionality of Inmails because they can be seen as spam. Use applications to build your profile, and optimize the amount of content on your profile. This is a great way to expand your profile and make it much more interesting and representative of your career and company. Be sure to log-in to LinkedIn at least daily to stay current on your group discussions and to expand your network. 15 minutes a day on LinkedIn will add up over time, and will make you one of the most influential professionals on the social media site!

Part 1 of 2—LinkedIn Profiles and Company Pages

LinkedIn has made significant strides to become the most powerful professional social media site on the Internet. Growing at over a million users a week, LinkedIn showcases professionals from over 18 different industries ranging from Business to Construction. Users are given a profile to build and expand, highlighting their professional accomplishments and allowing other LinkedIn users to connect, InMail, write recommendations and much more.

In terms of branding yourself as a professional in any industry, LinkedIn is a must. If a LinkedIn user has an active profile they will likely show up on search engine result pages. LinkedIn is a place to connect with past and present contacts/clients/customers, along with prospects and groups. There are several reasons to join the LinkedIn community and leverage this site to elevate your company and career.

Why Join LinkedIn?

LinkedIn currently has over 100,000,000 users that are ‘linked’ to the companies they work for, and the people they work with. This is a great place to network, find leads, post jobs and more. This network of professionals is growing everyday and so are the capabilities of the network. Just recently LinkedIn allowed you to follow both profiles and companies, so you can get updates and news. LinkedIn also offers several robust tools to help your company build a presence on the site, such as a company page that links to your employees, products/services, blog, and Twitter. Your company page even offers analytics.

Profiles on LinkedIn

Your profile is a landing page for your personal brand. You may ask why having a profile page is important to your business… Isn’t this blog post supposed to be about LinkedIn for B2B Marketing Marketing? Well yes it is, in fact understanding that your personal brand amplifies the companies brand on LinkedIn is very important. Every single activity that an employee makes on LinkedIn reflects upon the companies brand.

Having a great profile picture is where you need to start when building your profile. This is the first thing someone will notice when they land on a profile. It reflects the level of professionalism that they can expect from you. Be sure to include a link to your company website1 and blog2. Also link your Twitter3 account to your LinkedIn profile so that your Twitter updates will automatically feed into your LinkedIn status updates4. Profiles should also be supported through the use of applications. These applications allow you to add Powerpoint presentations, PDF’s, Videos, Events, Blog Feed and even your Portfolio. Be sure to complete your profile as close to 100% as you can to amplify all LinkedIn initiatives that your company will undertake in the future.

Companies on LinkedIn

The definition most people give to LinkedIn is that it is a digital resume. Most users don’t understand the power of LinkedIn for highlighting your company. Having a fully functional company page on LinkedIn will act as a resource to anyone interested in working with you or your company. LinkedIn will assist you in creating your company page, by giving you a step by step walk through. Below is a list six methods to fully complete and optimize your company page within LinkedIn:

Steps to Complete Company Page:

1. Have all employees listed under your company (on their personal profiles)
2. Fill out company description (use same company description used on other social mediums)
3. Add your company logo
4. Ask for and receive Recommendations for your company
5. Build a Following
6. Create a Products and Services page – This will allow you to highlight your companies products or services, and link to websites, videos, registration pages, brochure downloads and more.
7. Ask for recommendations for your products/services

LinkedIn To Do List

Below is a list of 17 things you can do on LinkedIn today!

1. Request connections with your existing networks (Email address books, your company, customers, suppliers, partners, alumnus and more!)
2. Join and display Groups in your industry, interest and expertise, up to 50!
3. Add your company website, blog and Twitter to your profile
4. Introduce yourself to the groups, request connections in each group
5. Post questions, answer questions in groups and LinkedIn Answers area
6. Promote relevant content, events, offers to RELEVANT Groups (Don’t spam!)
7. Promote relevant content, events, offers to your connections via InMail (Don’t spam!)
8. Add Presentations (convert PDF and Powerpoint files to SlideShare)
9. Add events you are attending or promoting
10. Create a company page, or link your profile to the existing company page)
11. Create Discussions
12. Give Recommendations (Professional Reference)
13. Add your Reading List
14. Post Industry News
15. Share Documents
16. Post Status Updates
17. Advertise on LinkedIn

Creating and building your profile should be your first priority, followed by building and optimizing your LinkedIn Company Page. Keep an eye out for LinkedIn Part 2 which will highlight advanced techniques including Groups, InMail, Presentations and other applications.

The Chicago Chapter of the Business Marketing Association (BMA) hosted the 28th Annual Tower Awards on May 11 at the Hotel Sax in Chicago. An award ceremony that is known for highlighting the best marketing strategy, knowledge, and execution in several categories. FUSION b2b was honored to be awarded with a Gold Tower Award for the Best in Business-To-Business Marketing Communications Blog. FUSION b2b has worked hard to execute content that is adding value to the business-to-business community and their clients.

Overall the night was a complete success for the BMA of Chicago and all of those who submitted entries to the award show.

The BMA of Chicago has not officially released the winners of other awards at this time, but will be uploaded soon! Click here to discover what BMA has to offer you as a Marketing Professional and to see if the results of the Tower Awards have been published.

A  webcast entitled LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter Best Practices for Business-to-Business Markets is now open for  registration on the FUSION b2b website.  The free webcast is scheduled for Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 12 pm CST.

FUSION b2b  Social Media Manager Brian Reuhl and Chief Marketing Officer Neil Brown share  tips and tricks, new business-friendly features and real B2B examples for  these important new media platforms. The Powerpoint presentation deck will be  available to registrants following the webcast.

“Social  media is the fastest growing marketing medium in business-to-business, with a  growing body of success stories that measure lead generation, awareness  building, improved search results and more. But an effective social media  program is much more than managing social profiles. We intend to share more  advanced features of these important platforms”, explains Neil Brown.

To register for the free LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter Best Practices Webcast Click Here!