B2B Social Media Resources

For B2B marketers interested in the potential and pitfalls of social media for business, here’s a collection of the best B2B social media strategy advice, tactics, case studies, metrics and more from around the web.

We’ll update this page frequently so make sure to bookmark it!

Business Social Media Benchmarking Research

• Business.com studies-
• • Integrating Search & Social Media – See how over 450 participants are finding B2B marketing success integrating their search and social media efforts.
  • B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study – how more than 2,500 business people use social media for business today as well as insights into the social media initiatives of over 500 B2B companies.
  • Engaging Small Business Decision Makers Through Social Media – over 1,700 participants
    
• Other research
  • The State of Social Media Marketing – MarketingProfs
  • 2011 Social Media Benchmark Guide – MarketingSherpa; includes four charts from Business.com’s Business Social Media Benchmarking Study

B2B Social Media Case Studies

• B2B social media case study – Business.com
• B2B social media example – Siemens
• B2B social media example – ArcelorMittal (with follow-up video)
• B2B social media example – Boeing
• B2B social media newsroom example – Scania
• B2B social media all-stars – IBM, GE, Cisco, Boeing and Ingram Micro
• Twitter for business, part 1 – @B2BOnlineMktg at 30 days
• Twitter for business, part 2 – @B2BOnlineMktg at 60 days
• Twitter for business, part 3 – @B2BOnlineMktg at 90 days
• Twitter for business, part 4 – @B2BOnlineMktg at 120 days
• Twitter KPIs for @minethatdata

B2B Social Media Strategy & Guides

• Facebook for Business SuperGuide by Robin Broitman
• The four ways companies use Twitter for business by Sarah Perez
• 7 steps to creating a B2B community on Twitter by Kent Huffman
• 10 business blogging best practices by Jeff Cohen
• 7 topic tips for writing great B2B blog posts by Frank Strong

B2B Social Media Metrics / KPIs

• 18 observations about Twitter and SEO from Econsultancy
• Twitter growth and demographics – Sysomos (June, 2009)
• Twitter KPIs, including the Twitter Quality Score
• Relationship between Twitter followers and site traffic
• Nine key metrics for measuring the impact of blogger outreach
• The power and value of a social media fan

Conversations with B2B Social Media Thought Leaders

• SAP’s Mark Yolton discusses building B2B online community
• GE’s Social Media Wizards
• Social media best practices from SAS – part 1 and part 2 (video)
• Social Media Insights from Forrester’s Laura Ramos
• Mike Rowland’s Top 5 Myths about B2B Online Communities

Social Media User Profiles

• Twitter users – Harvard Business (May, 2009)
• LinkedIn users – most important platform for brands to master (May, 2009)

Putting Social Media in Perspective

• 10 ways to decide if your business should use Twitter
• Five situations where B2B companies should avoid social media
• The REAL Math Behind Your Followers, Mr. Twitter Bigshot!
• Five reasons social media for B2B is not a fad

Helpful Social Media Tools & Resources

• How to create a professional Twitter background for your business Twitter account
• Manage multiple Twitter profiles and users with HootSuite or CoTweet
• 2009 Big List of B2B Marketing Blogs

Please comment below to suggest additional resources for this list.