One of the most evident goals of a social media program is to grow the fan base. Publish great content, develop a voice, reach out to others in social networks, rinse and repeat.

But as social media becomes more accountable, marketers look for ways to generate leads throughout the process.

So how do you best turn fans into leads? Should they be considered in the same sentence? How do we separate followers from potential leads?

In our latest session of #B2Bchat, we dive into these questions and more. Join us on February 2, 2012 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific to discuss How to Turn Followers and Fans into Leads (and when not to).

Q. What is the definition of a sales-ready lead?

Q. Do you enter your followers and fans into Salesforce.com (or other CRM)?

Q. How do your social media followers fit into lead generation?

Q. What is the transition point between being a fan to being a lead?

Q. What’s the quickest way to turn customers into followers?

Email marketing and social media marketing – two core marketing channels – were born approximately a decade apart. And among most B2B marketing organizations, social media and email are still handled as two separate entities.

Chris Hosford, in his recent article in BtoB Magazine, points out that social and email interactions depend on each other much more than is commonly acknowledged. Should there be a stronger push towards the convergence of social media and email as it relates to customer and prospect communication? What are the best ways to leverage the two mediums in tandem?

Join other B2B marketers for a lively Twitter chat on Thursday, September 8 (5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern) as we dive in to the following questions, and more!

Q. Do you collect social profile info for your customers/prospects?

Q. Does an opt-in mean the same thing in social media as with email?

Photo credit: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

Okay, so you’re sold on the value of having a blog for marketing purposes. In fact, as a B2B marketer, you have probably been at the blogging game for three or four years now.

But how have social media changed the way you blog? Are you getting everything you can out of your corporate blog? What are the latest tips and tricks needed to turn your blog into the backbone of your content marketing strategy? Do your Twitter and Facebook followers read your blog?

We’d like to hear from you in our upcoming live Twitter chat, June 23, 2011. Follow the #B2Bchat Twitter stream starting at 5:00 p.m. Pacific where we will discuss Blogging in the Social Media Ecosystem.

Questions will include:

Q. How do you come up with good topics to blog about?

Q. How often should you blog?

Q. What are the most useful blogging plugins?

Q. Should your blog content feed into your social channels, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn?

Q. How would you describe a good blog commenting strategy?

Q. What are the best ways to leverage existing blog content with social channels?

Why do companies pursue content marketing, and how are they doing it? A new Infographic from Marketo and ColumnFive Media reflects the growing importance of content marketing, and gives us some insight into the specific tactics being used today.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Companies with over 1,000 employees use an average of 9 content marketing tactics. Some of the most popular include social media, articles, newsletters, case studies and blogs.
• 54% of marketers use Facebook to distribute content.
• The two biggest challenges when it comes to content marketing are: producing engaging content (36% of respondents) and producing enough content (21% of respondents).
• B2B marketers allocate approx. 26% of their total marketing budgets to content marketing

The data for this Infographic came from Marketo’s Content Marketing Cheat Sheet and the 2010 B2B Content Marketing white paper on benchmarks, budgets, and trends from MarketingProfs and Junta42!

It was just over two months ago that Robert Scoble gave an implicit endorsement for Quora, asking the question: Is Quora the biggest blogging innovation in 10 years?.

Quora, made available to the public in June 2010, was co-founded by Facebook’s former CTO Adam D’Angleo, and at first glance appears similar to LinkedIn Answers, Wikipedia, Focus.com or Yahoo Answers. But do we need another Q&A site? And why is Quora getting so much attention lately?

B2B Marketers are starting to cross paths ever more frequently with this knowledge market site, whether it is a Quora listing on a Google search results page, or going to the site itself to exercise thought leadership.

In this Thursday’s B2Bchat, we dive into Quora’s role in B2B marketing.

Q. Which ‘knowledge market sites’ do B2B buyers go to for information?
Q. As a marketer, what is the best way to get involved with Quora or similar sites?
Q. Will Quora kill blogging?
Q. How can you manage brand reputation in the ‘knowledge market’?
Q. What is the future of Quora?

Join us on February 24 at 5:00pm Pacific for a live #B2Bchat on the relevance of Quora for B2B marketing!

Marketing and public relations departments tend to be the ones driving social media within companies. But what about Sales? How can they best contribute to carrying the brand message and communicating with prospective customers?

Join us for our upcoming #B2Bchat session on Thursday, December 16 at 5:00pm Pacific, where we’ll dive in to: Aligning B2B Sales and Marketing Efforts in Social Media.

Q. What are the do’s and don’t's of posting for members of the sales team?
Q. What can marketing can do to help the sales team be more effective with social media?
Q. How much time should sales people spend on social? does the answer vary based on level of skill, experience or responsibilities?
Q. What guidelines, if any, are helpful for sales and marketing so each can become more effective in their use of social media?
Q. How can sales and marketing avoid conflict in their use of social that might negate each other’s efforts?
Q. What is “social CRM” and is it mostly a consumer thing or does it also apply to B2B?
Q. What is the dividing line between sales and marketing’s “ownership” or responsibility for a social relationship? Is it the hand-off of a qualified lead? does it have to be defined?

A big thanks to Steven Parker, @sparker9, for suggesting this topic and these questions!

Here is a new, must-see video for B2B marketers interested in social media. It has been prepared by our friends at Earnest Agency in the UK.

Of the stats presented, here some which are especially noteworthy:

1. CIO’s could well be the biggest blocker to social media adoption. Fifty-four percent of CIO’s prohibit use of social networking sites while at work.
2. The use of social media by B2B companies is validated by business purchasers. 93% of business buyers believe all companies should have a presence in social media.
3. If you think C-level executives aren’t active online, you’re sorely mistaken. The Internet is the C-Suites top information resource (74% of C-Level executives say it’s very valuable)
4. 89% of journalists make use of blogs while conducting their online research and 96% turn to corporate websites.

To read more on the data presented here, check out Earnest Agency’s accompanying blog post which contains further detail and sources:http://earnestagency.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/vital-statistics-for-every-b2b-marketer/.

How many social media sites do you update on a regular basis?

Perhaps it would be better to rephrase the question as: How many social media sites would you like to update on a regular basis?

Ping.fm is a useful aggregation service which allows you to do just that: post content simultaneously to a large group of social media sites. It covers dozens of sites and includes these better known social networks:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• WordPress
• Tumblr
• MySpace
• LinkedIn
• Delicious

With ping.fm, you can also direct an RSS blog feed to all of your social networks.

There are other services, such as the popular Twitter client Hootsuite, that allow you to post to the biggest social networks. But if your social media strategy involves reaching audiences on a diverse set of social networks, ping.fm is definitely worth a closer look.

Over the past couple of weeks, a storm of angst has been gathering over Facebook’s new Instant Personalization Program. The program has been criticized by privacy advocates as many Facebook users are unaware that it now shares your personal information with partner websites, by default.

Here’s how you can opt out of the new instant personalization program:

In the top right hand corner of your Facebook page, click on Account and then Privacy Settings.

On the privacy settings page, click on Applications and Websites.  At the bottom, you’ll see Instant Personalization Pilot Program. Click on the Edit Setting button.

Un-check the tick box beside “Allow select partners to instantly personalize their features with my public information when I first arrive on their websites.”

That should do it.

Twitter Feasibilty Study Excerpt (2006) from 747 Media on Vimeo.

When did you first hear of Twitter? Four years ago, could people have predicted the evolution of this micro-blogging site at its onset?

Apparently, yes.

The 20-somethings that were interviewed as part of a study by 747 Media were able to assess the power of Twitter quite accurately, even though they had never used it. In this video, you will see them react to the information they’re given and talk through several of the applications that have made Twitter into what it is today.

Story originally posted by Mashable.