[Ed: This post was written by guest blogger Kevin Gaither. To read more about Kevin, click here...]

Being a regular user of LinkedIn, I’m disappointed when I see marketers that are not utilizing LinkedIn effectively to share their brand (either business or personal).  If you take the simple and effective actions that I discuss below, you’ll be taking great steps to increase your marketing visibility and success that your competition is not taking…yet.

I recently attended one of MarketingProfs Take 10 webinars called “How to Build Your Reputation at LinkedIn (in a Few Minutes a Week)” which was hosted by Jason Alba.  Most people have a profile on LinkedIn but most people don’t know what to do once they get set up either because they’re overwhelmed with all the options or simply don’t have the time.  Here’s 10 actions he suggested to take that can help you build your reputation that are effective and time efficient.

4 One-Time Actions You Should Take

1. Enhance your profile.  This is one action that is going to take more time than most of the others, perhaps a few hours. I’d recommend making sure that your employment and educational history is fleshed out as much as possible.  Pay particular attention to your ACCOMPLISHMENTS and less on your duties. How have you or your company helped other people/companies?  What results did you achieve?  Got testimonials? Ask for recommendations from trusted colleagues or customers.
2. Modify your settings.  Make sure you have included multiple email addresses. Why? Should you switch companies, you want to be able to maintain control over your LinkedIn profile.  So have at least your business email and one of your personal email addresses. Also modify your Email Notification settings as you see fit. 
3. Pick a few applications.  Applications are a great way for you to distinguish your brand/profile and share additional content with people viewing your profile.  Applications are added to your homepage and profile.  The host pointed out the BlogLink which allows your blog posts to be automatically posted to your LinkedIn profile. Promote your blog and develop your brand! I really like the SlideShare Presentations app. If your company creates pdf or power points presentations that you want to share, this is a great way to do that within LinkedIn.
4. Join Groups.  This is powerful.  Joining groups allows you to communicate with people in the group that may not be part of your LinkedIn network.  This can be prospects or people you’re trying to recruit.  Think of Groups as targeted audiences. If you or your brand appeals to a particular demographic, find groups that are made up of that demographic.  You can join up to 50 groups and there are all kinds of groups from Professional Groups to Alumni Groups.  Check out the Groups Directory and use the Search Groups feature on the upper left-hand side.  

6 Ongoing Actions You Should Take

1. Ask Questions.  This allows you to have a much bigger footprint within your network and to communicate in different ways with your 1st degree network.  For example, at least once per month ask a question about a problem you faced recently or if anybody else has heard of a particular vendor that called you the other day. If you have a big network, you can ask questions more frequently. 
2. Answer Questions.  This is a great way to profile you/your brand and to generate leads and real business.  Remember, to be considered an “expert” in any particular area, you only need to know more than the person reading the answer! Get in there, search for questions that you think you can answer and answer them.
3. Start Group Discussions.  Once you’ve joined some groups, go in there and participate in discussions that are happening or start group discussions. Remember that these are targeted audiences and people have joined these groups for a specific reason.  You can also set up notifications within the group so you get a digest of discussions that are happening within the groups you’ve joined.
4. Do An Advanced People Search.  In the upper right hand corner click on Advanced.  Search for titles of people or people at companies that you may want to connect with.  My sales team is using this feature daily by searching for “marketing” titles at companies they’re trying to penetrate.
5. Search for Companies.  In essence, this is competitive intelligence.  What are your competitors doing?  Who should you be connecting with?  What content are they publishing?  There’s a great new feature that was launched this year called Follow Company.  This feature “allows you to keep up on occurrences within those companies by sending you updates through your LinkedIn account” and gives you something to talk about with the contacts that you find.
6. Update Your Network Status.  Do this once per week. Remember, this is not Facebook but status updates serve a similar purpose in a business context.  Status updates are essentially mini performances.  When you post a status update, you’re giving your network information about yourself or your brand.  Here’s a good example from one of my connections that I saw today:  “Fantastic article — The Difference Between B2B and B2C SEO – Proteus SEO.”  What does this tell me about the person that posted this?  He’s in the know.  He has access to information that might help me. His status update has elevated his profile in my mind as a possible expert in this area.

The author recommends that you actually place the six ongoing actions on your calendar so that you don’t waste time on other extraneous things within LinkedIn.  It’s easy to start browsing and get lost.  Stay focused.  Your competitors will be taking these actions soon (if they’re not already) so if you take these actions, they will help you share your brand and generate business in a different way.

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We’ve said before that answering business questions in online Q&A sites is an effective marketing tool. Here’s one success story from Business.com Answers, our B2B question-and-answer forum, to back up that claim. Chris Countey, web marketing manager at Priceless Imprinters in Cherry Hill, NJ, started responding to questions on Business.com Answers last March. Within a few months, the company had seen more than $5,000 of new business from new customers who found him via Business.com Answers.  We asked him about his experience.

Business.com: Tell us about Priceless Imprinters.

Countey: We distribute promotional products and advertising specialties. We sell custom-imprinted products via our website www.PricelessImprinters.com and by telephone. We’re a small business and are always looking for ways to improve relationships with the other small businesses who happen to be our customers.

Business.com: Why did you start answering questions on Business.com Answers?

Countey: Actually, I found it when I was working on another startup business website; I thought participating would help the website owner establish an online presence more quickly. Seeing questions from real business owners really opened our eyes in terms of the issues regular people were facing when starting a new business. And that helped us create new, relevant content for her website.

Business.com: What kinds of questions do you look for?

Countey: The first type of question I look for relates in some way to Priceless Imprinters’ business. As an SEO professional working for a promotional products company, I want to answer questions that involve marketing and advertising. I also look for questions regarding general website development, SEO, design, software issues, and hardware issues. I try to answer anything I can, because I know I’ll be helping both the other business professionals and our own business.

ROI: Business.com Answers helped Chris Countey generate thousands in new business for Priceless Imprinters

Business.com: What results were you looking for, and what have you seen, from your participation in Business.com Answers?

Countey: I was pleasantly surprised to see traffic coming to our website from answers.business.com just a few days after I started answering questions. It’s been clear that the incoming traffic from answers.business.com has outpaced all other non-search-engine websites in terms of quality inbound links. We were even able to track new customers back to questions we had answered, which was really exciting. As you can imagine, I answered a lot more questions after that! The new business we’ve gotten directly from Business.com Answers is about $5,000 now and continues to go up.

Business.com: How much time do you typically spend reading new questions and posting responses?

Countey: I typically get emails with new questions daily [via the Business.com Answers category subscription feature] and try to respond as quickly as possible. Answering questions can take as little as five minutes if a link to another site will help the user more than I can, or up to 30 minutes if I need to provide a lot of detail.

Business.com: You post both answers and questions on Business.com Answers. Do you use other Q&A sites?

Countey: I’ve used hundreds of forums and help websites to ask questions about everything from SEO to how to change my oil. Unlike most of those other sites, I actually get an answer when I post a question on Business.com Answers. [See Countey’s Business.com Answers profile for links to the questions he’s asked and answered.]

Business.com: Does Priceless Imprinters use other social media?

Countey: Priceless Imprinters is active on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and several others. We also manage a blog about promotional products, which we update almost daily. We’re planning to establish a YouTube channel within the next few months.

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So I’m sitting here watching these brilliant Old Spice videos on YouTube, trying to find a B2B social media angle to write about. And all I can come up with is: Would B2B marketers see better results from their social media campaigns if they found more ways to include shirtless guys with washboard abs?

My answer: YES. (Okay, now you know something about me.)

The real answer: Depends on who the customers are, I guess. If you’re selling to me – you know what to do.

Handsome men aside, there are at least a few elements of this wildly popular consumer-oriented social media video campaign that do have implications for B2B marketers:

1. In each video, Old Spice Guy responds individually to tweets from his followers and fans – some of whom are celebrities with their own huge followings, as in the Alyssa Milano video above. That’s a non-traditional and very public way to respond to comments from your audience; it takes advantage of the medium to turn what might otherwise have been an invisible one-to-one interaction into public theater. Thanks to Eric Wittlake (@wittlake on Twitter) for pointing this one out.
2. Celebrity name-dropping always gets people’s attention. Always.
3. Old Spice is coordinating this campaign diligently on all its social media channels: Twitter, Facebook, and of course YouTube. And content from one channel feeds the others: Videos address comments made on the company’s Facebook wall and via Twitter; tweets push links to the videos; etc.

What else?

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[Ed: We are excited to introduce Kevin Gaither as a contributor to this blog. Kevin is Business.com’s Director of Middle Market Sales and will cover various B2B Online Marketing topics. Learn more about Kevin by clicking here.]

How many fans does your Business Facebook Page have?  If it’s less than 624 (the average), then listen up!  Here are 5 tips that will increase your fan base and get your content shared with more people.  More importantly, leveraging your Facebook network effectively may help you generate more leads for your business. 

I recently attended a webinar hosted by HubSpot called “The Science of Facebook Marketing” presented by Dan Zarrella.  Dan shared key insights on how to effectively use Facebook as a marketing tool and here are my top 5 takeaways. The full slideshow is available at the bottom of this page.

#1 – Help your users look cool. 

Being on Facebook is ultimately a performance.  When you post a status update, you’re performing.  When you “like” something, you’re in essence performing for your friends and fans.  Nobody is going to “like” a Wart Remover Fan Page!  Dan tossed out the idea of creating a fan page called “Being Awesome.”  So if I liked it, my status update would read “Kevin Gaither likes Being Awesome.”  Cheesy example but you get the point.  Do things with your brand that help users look cool or “perform” based on their affinity with your brand. 

#2 – Get to know your audience. 

 One of the things that Dan measured was Facebook Profile Activity by Age, slide 17 below. This tells us that younger people tend to have more friends and wall posts. Older people like talking about themselves more.  If you’re trying to reach a younger audience, you really want to focus on the social aspect of your marketing campaign.  If you’re trying to reach an older demographic, focus on activities that would get them to like quotes and books for example.  How do you find out the demographics of your audience?  Among other methods he mentioned, you can go to Quantcast, which is a free service, put in your URL and it will give you US Demographic information. 

#3 – Stay away from buzzwords. 

Of a sample set of marketing terms, pages mentioning SEO or even Blogging had less than average fans, displayed in the graph below.  Facebook users will engage with topics such as Ice Cream or other kinds of food but they won’t share SEO or Branding topics, see slide 27.  Be creative with your brand to incorporate references that are NOT buzzwords to get your content shared and more fans to your page. 

Science of Facebook Marketing by Dan Zarrella, slide 25

#4 – Have content around Movies, TV Shows and Books.  

More users “like” pages about these kinds of topics and less likely to speak about topics regarding services, education and local business.  Perhaps you can have content on your page that profiles a popular documentary or a book that’s relevant to your brand so that people will be more inclined to “like” or share it. 

#5 – Make your content sharing-friendly. Here’s some data he cited that will help you do this: 

There was much more to this webinar but these were a few of the juicy tidbits that I felt might help you out today.  Below is the slideshow in its entirety.

What are your thoughts?

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Hats off to Cisco for making one of the bigger B2B viral video splashes we’ve seen in a while. The video, titled I Am the World’s Most Interesting Intern, created by Cisco social media intern Greg Justice, appeared today on Cisco’s blog The Platform and already has the social media Twitterati buzzing. And with good reason, we think:

• It’s edgy: How many B2B powerhouses would give an intern a speaking role on a corporate blog?
• It’s giving the brand personality: We’re getting a glimpse of what it’s like to work at and/or do business with Cisco – and it looks like a lot of fun.
• It’s a great recruiting tactic: We bet they’ll be drowning in applications for their internships for a while.
• It’s unexpected: This video really stands out among the rest of Cisco’s social media conversation. They’re pretty chatty online, but it’s mostly business. This is business with a twist.
• It’s got legs: As interns everywhere take up Greg’s challenge and compete to top this, the companies they’re working for will ride Cisco’s social media wave and reap the benefits – with lots of credit given and links back to Cisco.

See for yourself:

Greg was even thoughtful enough to include the lyrics for his rap in his post on Cisco’s blog. A new classic or a flash in the pan? Love to hear your thoughts.

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[ Ed: We are excited to feature B2B specialist Christina “CK” Kerley as a contributing blogger. A strong voice in modern B2B marketing, learn more about CK here ]

Diving into social media and mobile media can be quite daunting for B2Bs. After all, it’s an entirely new way of marketing, communicating, engaging and selling. The tools may be easy, but the environment is complex. One-way messaging habits are now ineffective as new media calls for two-way and multi-way communication with our audience, consequently a lot of content needs to be created to reach this target audience.

However, don’t let this discourage you. Fact is, your vast archives of data can be “recycled” in new ways across text, audio and video that foster new conversations and spread your ideas to new audiences on a broader scale. But how, you ask?

Use this 3-point framework to help you think differently about the content you’ve already created, as well as your efforts moving  forward:

#1 REPURPOSE existing content.

Start with information-gathering and assessment through:

• Audit - Conduct an audit of all the thought leadership your company has created—especially content created in the last 2-3 years. Whether the content was delivered through an article, white paper, Webinar, PowerPoint presentation, speech, case study or any other format, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you aggregate ALL applicable content for your audit.
• Organize - Pinpoint and categorize the various themes, topics, challenges, benefits, key messages, methodologies and “hot buttons” that you have gathered. And make sure you’re focusing only on the content that is still timely, as some content is “evergreen” but other content may be obsolete.

#2: REPACKAGE your content in entirely NEW ways through text, audio and video.

From your findings in step #1, start mapping out how the content can be ‘repackaged’ into new formats across these new tools, channels and platforms. The possibilities are near limitless. For example:

• Position papers can become a series of blog posts to be read, or a bunch of informative audio podcasts your audience can listen to during  daily commutes.
• White papers can translate into a series of forum topics and discussions.
• Video tapes of speeches by your company’s subject experts can become a series of online videos.
• Categories, themes and challenges addressed in your content can give rise to a LinkedIn Group… or a community that you build.
• PowerPoint presentations  can become an online slideshow perfect to view on screens both large (laptop) and small (smartphone). You can even overlay the audio onto the slides so that the presentation is that much more dynamic and personal.
• Industry trends and news can become a stream of mobile SMS alerts that your audience can subscribe to and remain informed of industry developments instantly.
• Case studies can become a “best practice series” delivered through a set of Webinars where users can post questions via Twitter and Facebook with your team answering them in real time.
• Findings from a recent study you commissioned can become a set of tweets, status updates and wall postings… that redirect to a blog post, podcast, or video.  

#3: REFINE content for SEO and provide the best experience possible for audiences across VARIOUS environments.

• Optimize content for search engines. The content that you’ll repurpose and repackage should be refined to include the universe of keywords that will help your site rank highly in search engine results. SEO could be a post all its own, but just be mindful that you’re not only marketing your content to your audience but also optimizing for the search engines that pull your audience to you.
• Optimize content for multiple environments. The best practices of social-media content are vastly different from the best practices of mobile-media content—because the devices from which your audience views your content are completely different. Just pull up the same Web content on a laptop and a smartphone and you’ll understand exactly what I mean. Optimizing for screens both large and small requires more effort, but it’s worth going the extra mile. For more detail, I recommend that you review this post on refining content for mobile environments.

All that said, the benefit of recycling your thought leadership is far from just a way to more easily dive into social media and mobile media. At its core, this practice is an argument rooted in ROI. Why? Because you are MAXIMIZING the investments you’ve ALREADY made—as creating all that smart content took your team a lot of time. Plus, it didn’t come cheap to your budget. So you want your content to have as many legs across as many media as possible.

And now you can repurpose, repackage and refine your thought-leadership content as far as these tools and your imagination will take you.

To learn more about the author of this post, Christina “CK” Kerley, click here.

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When word-of-mouth marketing experts Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends and John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing sat down this month in Las Vegas at the Corporate Executive Board’s Enterprise Council on Small Businesses Summit, every B2B marketing executive in the room paid attention. Here are some of the important tips they shared for B2B companies marketing to small businesses online:

General advice on encouraging word of mouth

• Campbell’s advice on marketing to small businesses: Being human goes a long, long way with small business owners. “They love to see people’s faces,” she pointed out. If you’re targeting small businesses, include employees’ pictures and individual voices on your site and in your marketing materials.
• Your enthusiastic advocates will emerge within the online dialogue about your company, said Campbell, so make sure you do everything possible to encourage and support them. These are your most valuable assets in the world of word-of-mouth marketing: They’ll defend you to critics and praise you to their trusted circles.
• How to enable a viral “ripple effect”? It all starts with a mind-blowing experience, said Jantsch. That might be content, or product, or customer service – but to get a lot of people talking about you, you have to do something extraordinary. (Easier said than done, as we all know.)
• Many small businesses are already using social media, advised Jantsch, so do your homework. If you’re making a sales call, know what your target has done that day on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn before you walk in the door.
• You’ll get more word-of-mouth power by using social media to educate your audience rather than selling to them, said Campbell: “Always think about how you’re adding value.”
• Jantsch recommended asking customers about their experiences with your products and services, and capturing those comments on video. Customers love it, he noted, and it’s great content that’s easily shareable on your site or theirs, or through other marketing channels.

Online reviews

• Don’t assume Yelp doesn’t apply to B2B, said Campbell. She’s found some very interesting B2B companies reviewed there – she listed San Francisco marketing company Vertical Response as an example.
• Jantsch encouraged B2B marketers to take online reviews for what they are: an opportunity to engage with customers, both the happy ones and the less satisfied ones. When you find an unhappy customer talking about his or her experience, get in there and make it right – in public. That will go a long way toward establishing trust with your audience. He also challenged B2B marketers to “get bold” about asking for feedback from customers.
• Another good reason to encourage your customers to write online reviews: shelf life. Campbell said product reviews she wrote four years ago are still drawing significant traffic on Small Business Trends.
• Distribute the reviews you do get via other marketing channels, counseled Jantsch. Have you gotten a few good reviews on Yelp or Citysearch? Reprint and link to them them on your website and in your email newsletter.
• How should businesses deal with outspoken critics? “The line between love and hate is very thin,” Jantsch reminded the audience. Hear them, acknowledge their dissatisfaction, help resolve their issues, and talk about it every step of the way to turn a critic into a fan.

Resources (as in “How will we staff this function?”):

• Jantsch suggested rotating responsibility for responding to online comments and inquiries throughout the organization, up to the CEO (yes, he said this with a straight face). Once top management has a sense for the kind of online conversation happening with your customers and target market, they’ll be more likely to see the value – and authorize the funding necessary to maximize its potential.

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[Ed: We are excited to feature Jay Baer as this weeks' guest blogger. He is a popular social media strategy consultant and reknowned blogger. To learn more about Jay, click here. ]

Sure, social media takes a lot of time, but probably not as much time as you think. Too many companies and organizations are reinventing the content wheel for every social outpost they maintain. A better approach is to create a content ecosystem that allows you to repurpose and cascade your best information.

 Instead of a series of self-contained initiatives, build yourself a content ladder.

 Here are 5 steps to get there:

 1. Understand Taxonomy

Taxonomy is incredibly important in social media because it’s the most direct link between the worlds of social and search marketing. Remember, your most important customers are search engines, and your content ladder needs to maximize your chances for search success

When creating and promoting social content, include specific, relevant keywords and search phrases wherever possible. (This is especially important now that Google and Bing are incorporating social content into real-time search results).

 Find keywords and search phrases to include in these three places:

 Web site Analytics

Look at your keywords report to find phrases that are driving traffic to your site. I recommend using a mixture of your Top 25 phrases and some that are highly relevant to your business, but perhaps aren’t sending as much traffic as you’d like at present.

 Social Mention (or a paid social media listening package like Radian6, if you have one)

Go to www.socialmention.com and search for your company or product name (in quotes), and set the pull-down to “all.” You’ll then see a search results page that shows a comprehensive list of places you’ve been mentioned on the social Web.

 Below, you’ll see a keywords chart that lists common terms associated with your name in social media. Consider adding some of these to your list if they differ from your analytics results.

Twitter Lists

How your company or product are referred to in consumer-created Twitter lists can yield important taxonomy insights.

Go to your Twitter account, and click on “listed” next to your followers count, and see how the lists that include your Twitter account are named. Consider including some of these phrases to your master keyword list.

Incorporate your phrases into your social content wherever possible, but only when relevant. Nobody appreciates keyword spam on the social Web.

 2. Seek Content Inspiration

Creating successful social media content isn’t just status updates. Take your top  keywords (including your company name, product name, etc.) and search for them on Google, Bing, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and SocialMention.

What shows up in these search results? How much photo and video content appears? Content from your competitors? From fans? You’ll be amazed at how many content-creation ideas this simple exercise can generate.

3. Understand Your Frequency Ecosystem

The key to a content ladder is organizing your rungs. Your scenario may of course vary, but for illustration purposes let’s assume you have a Twitter account, Facebook fan page, blog, and email newsletter.

To create an efficient ladder, you must understand the comparative publishing schedules that you typically employ for each of these outposts. Ordered from most frequent publication to least, let’s assume that your program looks like this:

• Twitter (5x/day)
• Facebook (2x/day)
• Blog (3x/week)
• Email (1x/week)

Create your own integrated frequency schedule to better understand how your outposts interrelate.

4. Test & Track

Create a piece of content (remember to include your key phrases), and post it to the first rung in the ladder (Twitter, in this case) Use a tracking system (I prefer bit.ly) to determine how popular that specific piece of content was with your audience.

Remember, however, that many factors influence popularity at the individual content piece level. Don’t make assumptions – test them. Vary time of day, day of week, phrasing, link placement, and other options, and thoroughly document your results.

Social media scientist Dan Zarrella has some excellent research on social content best practices.

5. Tweak and Repurpose

The content pieces that are most successful on the first rung of your ladder should be appropriately tweaked and redeployed on the second rung of your ladder (Facebook).

Test and track content success on Facebook using bit.ly (or number of likes and comments), and add the most effective content pieces to the next rung on the ladder. Note that as you move down the ladder, your repurposing will be more complex – a blog post requires substantially more content than a Facebook update in most cases.

If a piece of content is successful on your blog (measured by visits as determined by Web site Analytics), add it to the next rung – your email newsletter.

By understanding how your various social outposts can work together at the content level, you can develop meaningful efficiencies. Also, because a sprinkling of the content included in the lower rungs of your ladder has already proven successful on higher rungs, the relevancy and popularity of your content should increase for most fans/readers/subscribers.

Of course, this content ladder approach assumes that you do not have the exact same audience for each of your social outlets, and I believe that to be an entirely realistic assumption. You may have some overlap (especially with Facebook and Twitter), but consumption of status updates and consumption of blog posts and email newsletters are meaningfully different activities, and attract different groups of fans.

To learn more about the author of this post, Jay Baer, click here.

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I’ve been keeping an eye out for good examples of companies using social video to speak to its customers – and this one crossed my desk today. It’s from WebVisible, an online local advertising company in Irvine, CA, and it’s called “The Great Divide.” Why? Because a study WebVisible did with Nielsen Online found that while businesses and consumers were using the Internet to look for local products and services, local businesses weren’t embracing online advertising to market their businesses.

In the video, you’ll hear local businesses state confidently that their business comes from word of mouth or the yellow pages. And then you’ll hear real people say otherwise. For any local business that’s been holding back on advertising online, it should be a bit of a wake-up call. And for WebVisible? Just another way to get their message out to their target market – small local businesses – and smooth the way for their B2B sales efforts.

The video goes along with a contest WebVisible is running through June 30, 2010. They’re asking people to tell them about their biggest challenges in growing their businesses – the winner gets three free months of WebVisible’s online advertising services. [More details on the WebVisible contest]

Watch the video:

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If you think answering questions in online business Q&A sites like Business.com Answers isn’t worth your time, I’m going to try to change your mind. Opt out of online Q&A and you’re leaving money on the table, period.

First, consider these statistics from a recent report by search marketing agency Enquiro:

• 39 percent of people researching for a first-time B2B purchase say they will rely on word of mouth and the opinions of other business people
• More than half of business buyers talk to other people who use a product as either their first or second task in the purchase process

Bottom line: Word-of-mouth recommendations play a starring role in today’s business purchase process.

And how are people looking for this word-of-mouth input? In business-focused online Q&A sites. Consider this excerpt from a recent string from Business.com Answers, our B2B question-and-answer site:

Subject: Top email service providers for campaigns

Kelly (user): I am looking for the top ESPs (Email Service Providers) for sending tactical and operational emails. I am looking for an on-premise or hosted solution. Could you please let me know what you recommend?

Answer: I have used both Constant Contact and Streamsend to manage mass e-mail distribution. Both have worked very well. I preferred Streamsend due to their pricing structure (based on e-mails sent, not contacts in your database). – Jeff Arnold, Pocket-Promo.com

Answer: Infusionsoft also offers a great service. You can watch a demo on their site and they also offer a free trial service to see if they’re a fit for your business and your needs….I’ve just switched to them. – Anita Campbell, Small Biz Trends

Answer: Some email service providers are Constant Contact, Delivra, iContact and Yesmail. You may also want to look at Lyris, a powerful email marketing service. – Jim Alimena, BlumbergExcelsior

[ Read the full exchange about email service providers on Business.com Answers ]

See anything you like here? If you’re one of the companies mentioned, I bet you do. And once your company name is in the mix, it’s in your best interest to dive into the dialogue. This isn’t a hard sell opportunity, but rather a chance to thank the person who recommended you and jump into the conversation. With someone who clearly needs to buy a product or service that you sell.

You’d respond: Anita, thanks so much for throwing our name in the hat here – we really appreciate it! Kelly, we’ve been providing exactly the services you mentioned for more than a decade, and I’d be happy to talk with you about how other clients are using our services and whether we might be a good fit for you. Feel free to call me at 555-555-5555 or email me at myname@mycompany.com. Looking forward to talking with you!

Now imagine that you’re scanning incoming inquiries about your industry (you can do that automatically in just a few minutes a day on Business.com Answers using our Category Subscription feature) and a question like this comes in. The person who’s asking the question sounds like she’s pretty close to ready to buy, doesn’t she? That’s a live lead. You want to talk to her now, while she’s narrowing down her choices. And answering questions like this on Business.com Answers or other business Q&A sites is a direct way to open those lines of communication.

As a vendor, should you jump in and answer? Absolutely. But again, it’s about sharing information, not a hard sell. Try to help the person understand the issue in a way that makes you look smart and responsive, and you’ll be top of mind when it’s time for that person to evaluate purchase options.

You’d write: Kelly, as you’re putting together your list, I hope you’ll include us and give me a chance to show you our most recent offerings. I’m sure you’re thinking about how your email tool will integrate with your existing CRM solution, and we’ve worked with all the major players, so getting everything running smoothly and passing information back and forth should be straightforward. We know there are lots of great options to explore – if you need a hand making sense of all the possibilities and parameters, I’m happy to help, whether we end up working together or not. Here’s my contact information – don’t hesitate to get in touch.

The point is that people making B2B purchase decisions are looking for input in all kinds of places. In online Q&A forums like Business.com Answers, they’re asking very direct questions about very specific (and often imminent) product and service needs. Other users may recommend you, and that’s great: Peer recommendations carry a lot of weight. But there’s an effective way for you to be part of that conversation too.

At Business.com Answers, we get questions about everything related to starting and running a business. Everything. If you sell it – whether “it” is software, accounting services, replacement parts for tractors, restaurant equipment, SEO advice, office design consulting, or a thousand other products or services – someone out there is thinking about buying it and is asking about it online. And if someone’s asking, you should be answering.

Are you convinced yet?

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