With so many choices now at their disposal, you need to decide how to best communicate with them. Deliver on content : Just as a winning team in sports needs to field its best players in order to succeed, a good B2B marketing company will deliver content that wins. Have a strategy : The best players don’t always win championships. There’s a lot to be said for comparing social media strategies these days and supporting your favorite team in sports. In fact, one thing Facebook got right early on was allowing people to be “fans” of brand pages. MORE >>

The best way to do this is to conduct a social media audit. It’s been a busy week for social media in financial services…and it’s only Tuesday. For years I’ve been an advocate of using social media in a B2B/financial services setting. recently spoke in London at the Finextra conference about our experiences. It allows you to educate, build advocacy and monitor for issues. There is clearly no doubt that social media has made its mark with consumer brands and in breaking news. But who is lagging and why? In some cases this is true, but in others it is not (e.g. MORE >>

Finally, congratulations to the team at StockTwits for all their hard work, which paid off by being named by Time magazine as one of the 50 best websites of 2010. Image via CrunchBase. We’ve talked in the past here on B2B Voices about using StockTwits to track and follow what people are saying about your publicly traded clients or company. So this sounds great. Sign onto Twitter/StockTwits and start tweeting, right? Well, like all things in communications, you need to nail your strategy first. This isn’t the place to spam users and and not talk back. Let us know. MORE >>

In this case, we are cultivating the “believers” and getting them to best utilize the platform to meet their needs. This is an interesting question. Fortune magazine seems to think they are failing. But the answer is never as easy as the question. For instance, if you build a community targeting CFOs from the Fortune 100 companies what would determine your success? Would it be 100 percent participation? Probably not since we know most people watch and listen online and getting 100 percent is unrealistic. Maybe, but they may do that regardless of your online community. MORE >>

Before you present that B2B social media plan to executives or a client, the best thing to do is prepare. Social media in B2B continues to rise in use. In fact, research from BtoB magazine shows that more than 90 percent of B2B companies are now using some form of social media to communicate with stakeholders. Here are three ways to ensure your pitch is a success: Benchmark : Do your research first and look at not only what your competition is doing, but look at other companies in the B2B space that you emulate. Ask yourself what you like and what you would improve for them. MORE >>