by Steven Woods | Tweet this There’s no doubt that social media has been a disruptive force on B2B marketing. Yet, many marketers struggle with how to use social media to go beyond awareness, to actually drive revenue. m here to tell you it’s not magic. In fact, by attaching social media marketing to the 5 Revenue Performance Indicators high-performing companies have adopted, you can drive actual results. Here are five ways social media marketing can be used to drive revenue. Extending Your Reach. Social media has once again changed that model. Buyers were once defined by search terms. MORE >>

Do you know where you most valuable customers are talking about you? Harvard Business Review says 44% of businesses don’t know. That’s a problem. Without proper monitoring and measurement, you’ll never know where opportunities are for growth and you won’t be able to identify issues before they become problems. It’s crucial to measure everything you do on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere. When you measure, you can see what is working and what is not working, and you can do more of what’s working. Facebook and other social networks equip you with limited analytic tracking tools. MORE >>

Seeing that my last post was about a report that showed B2B websites were critical to marketing but not performing up to their potential, I thought I'd share some ideas about what your website must accomplish in order to start climbing that ladder of opportunity. It really doesn't have to be that difficult. After all, a B2B website must serve as a centralized hub for all of your online content marketing efforts. Orient Visitors Immediately. You've got 3 seconds. This doesn't just mean for your homepage, it means for EVERY page. Speak Directly to Visitors. Always. Yes, I know. MORE >>

Last week journalism professor Matt Waite wrote a blog post worrying about the typical defeatist reaction of journalism students when faced with a coding challenge, whether in HTML, JavaScript, or other language: “I can’t do this,” they tell him. This is impossible. ll never get this.” When I tweeted a link to the article, I wrote “”Journos: If you fear coding, you fear the future.”. That prompted a response from a practicing trade journalist and former colleague, who asked “I can see why knowing things like HTML and CSS can be helpful but do most journos need more than that?”. don’t think so. MORE >>

This week I was asked to speak on a panel about social media to a group of B2B marketers in financial services. It was great getting the perspective of marketers outside of technology. But they call it “financial services” for a reason: They have all of the same struggles as technology services companies—with the added complication of tons of regulatory requirements. But when the panel was over, I realized something scary: Most of the success factors we wound up talking about had nothing to do with social media. Social doesn’t happen in B2B without a culture change. 30% said yes. MORE >>