And when it comes to breaking into the blogosphere or, more directly, getting bloggers to write about and engage with them, brands seem to be on one side of a canyon asking bloggers to jump on over instead of building a bridge. Consider this: 65% of brands participate in influencer marketing, or, active, direct outreach to bloggers. This typically consists of making “asks” of the blogger, things like: Do you want to take a first look at my product? You see, the path to influencing bloggers is a tough one to pave. And brands want in. Sometimes. MORE >>

A recent Gartner survey asked the question “Who is leading social media initiatives in your business?”. B2B Blogger35% of the respondents answered “Marketing.” 10% said “PR.” Nobody said “Sales” or “CRM” teams. The immediate conclusion to this is that companies are still falling short of using social media, and the web to listen. While marketing departments are getting much better at tracking brand in the B2C space, most B2B organizations would most likely hold their hands up and say they still ‘don’t get it.’ There’s no time in the day to use it. MORE >>

If you know an order or a lead is worth “x,” it’s easy enough to calculate an ROI on your social spend.  B2B Blogger B2B Marketing B2B Social MediaA question we get repeatedly from B2Bs that are new to social media marketing is, how much should we budget? There is obviously no single answer, but this post will lay out ideas and guidelines to help you assess what social spend is right for your business. Minimum Budgeting Requirements. With social media, a large portion of the cost is time.  Connecting with customers, prospects, peers, and potential referrers. Brand monitoring. MORE >>

I was on a serious mission: amass followers, craft clever content, lead the industry, innovate online communities, be the first to promote emerging trends. A guest post from {grow} community member Taryn Erickson. perpetual ‘go-getter’ by nature, when I jumped into the Social Media scene it was a calculated attack.  Then, I read “ The Go-Giver &# – which forever changed my attitude as a Social Media strategist. And that’s saying something. Like me, you may have lofty goals for domination in your online communities. Take a big step back. well, that changed my success rate too. MORE >>

There must be a critical mass of influential bloggers out there accepting money for blog posts, otherwise these people would go away! have built my blog and my community on excellent content and I’ve built trust, in part,  by not allowing outside companies to convert these great people into sales leads. This is probably the same reaction you will receive from other trustworthy bloggers, or at least I hope so!  If you do a search on “how to pitch to bloggers” I think you will get much of the same advice I’m providing here. Are you interested? MORE >>