Here are the top Internet strategy, marketing and technology links for the week of May 19, 2013…

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facebook engancha (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As a Business-to-Business (B2B) company, you may feel like you have to uphold a very professional image, so Facebook doesn’t make sense for you. Or that your prospective customers won’t be on Facebook because it’s clearly for kids and grandparents.

B2B companies may have larger average purchases and longer purchase cycles, but both of these require building relationships, and Facebook can help. Facebook is the world’s largest network, and while people may be there to connect with friends and family, they’re not adverse to building business relationships, as long as it’s done in the right way (think resource & relationship rather than advertising and gimmicks).  People want to buy from people, and there are a lot of people on Facebook.

We’ve had a lot of luck using Facebook with B2B companies to build relationships around topics and ideas that their prospects are passionate about. What about you?

But at the end of the day, what really matters is having a social presence, showing your personality, humanizing your business, and having a little fun in the process of course. We all know the B2B sales cycle is long. Your Facebook posts are little touch points that can make all the difference in staying top-of-mind with your prospects. B2B marketers really underestimate the power of this, so there’s a lot of opportunity to show improvement. – Marketo’s Jason Miller On Facebook For B2B: Why So Serious? by Dennis Yu

Image via CrunchBase

What is Facebook’s future? It seems to me, like it does to Derek Brown, that perhaps it’s stumbling slightly.  The seeming failure of Facebook Home isn’t making the future look any rosier.  Add to that the meh type of changes lately.  More importantly, look at the so-so record of marketers being able to use Facebook, as well as to accurately gauge how well their efforts are even working.  Unlike Google, which makes measurement and analytics as transparent as possible.  Facebook is kind of a pain in the butt towards marketers.  And if companies stop wanting to spend money there … and if people find a better way to communicate with grandma. What does Facebook have left to offer?

Suffice it to say, the company is not exactly setting the world on fire with these efforts; more importantly, these are not (individually or collectively) doing much (if anything) to materially enhance Facebook’s relationship with its users; substantively increase the level of dependency felt by its advertising clients; and/or fundamentally alter the trajectory of its franchise or business. Said differently, where is Facebook’s second act, like Android (acquired, transformed and massively scaled by Google) or iPad? Where is its money-printing AdWords product? Where is its PayPal (acquired, and massively scaled by eBay)? Where its its quantum leap forward? Where is its disruptive force? – Will Facebook Go Out With A Bang? by Derek Brown

What are your thoughts?

Here are the top Internet strategy, marketing and technology links for the week of May 12, 2013…

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newspapers (Tehr?n) (Photo credit: birdfarm)

We all know that the B2B buying cycle is much longer than the typical B2C cycle (hello, <5 mins?).  B2B selling is about building relationships with potential customers and being a knowledge resource. Producing quality content can help B2B companies connect with potential customers and build up relationships that may lead to a sale.  Forrester has found that B2B buyers found 70% of the content they used to make a purchase decision themselves (as opposed to through marketing or advertising efforts).  While a good marketer can be fairly invisible in their content distribution methods, it does show the need for making sure your content gets in front of the right people (and not just on Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn).

Content marketing has therefore become much more than product and solutions collateral, campaigns, mailings, and fulfillment. B2B marketers have to be great at being found by buyers in their early research phase (the phases we call discover and explore). In a way, successful marketers will “fool” their buyers into consuming their thought-leadership and educational content in stages 1 through 5 — while hardly realizing its source. And the most successful marketers will learn how to mix their brand “scent” into that content without appearing to be selling — to the extent that buyers will count it as part of their 70%. – STRENGTHEN YOUR B2B BRAND WITH BETTER CONTENT DISTRIBUTION by Peter O’Neill

English: Slalom race in urban street Italiano: Corsa slalom in strade urbane (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As we all know, producing quality content takes quite a bit of time and effort.  There is so much drive to produce more and more content, faster and faster, but I think that Geoff is on the right track here about slowing down, but producing better content.  It’s something I’ve also considered.  In order to keep regular visitors, I feel like I need to continue to curate content, but maybe there’s some value in slowing down and just offering valuable insights instead.  Something I’m going to think about and consider carefully.  What about you?

There’s only one answer to the content quality problem. The market needs to move away from frequency and form as the primary focus, and return to delivering substantive insights that are differentiated and valuable.

Differentiation includes more depth and passion to provide greater insights. It means committing to our craft to deliver high quality content that stands out in both the standards of information and presentation. Consider tearing down existing form factors, and rebuilding to develop new approaches and ways to excel. Content Marketing Institute Founder Joe Pulizzi calls this epic content marketing. — The Content Quality Problem Here and There by Geoff Livingston