It’s that time of year again when over 5,000 search engine marketers amass at Search Engine Strategies New York, March 23 – 24, 2010.

This year’s show is set to focus on using search as a means for connecting with your customers. The three-day agenda also features prominent discussions of leveraging the combined impact of search and social media.

Business.com’s VP Sales, Patricia Neuray, will be a panelist in one such session on Day 2 (Wednesday, March 24 at 10:30 a.m.): Social and Search: Integrating Social Media and Search to Drive the Brand. For those looking to increase brand presence through online marketing, this is a must-attend session featuring key insight from Business.com and big brands like IBM.

For those of you looking to the Search Engine Strategies show  for more tactical search marketing advice like keyword selection and usage, don’t miss Business.com’s SES Theatre Presentation on Day 1 (Tuesday, March 23 at 1:00 p.m.), 5 Keyword-Related Traps to Avoid in B2B Search Marketing, featuring Business.com’s East Coast Sales Director Arkady Fridman and Strategic Account Executive Seamus Heaney.

And, if you’re already planning to attend SES New York, don’t forget to swing by the Business.com booth (#300) to say hello and enter to win an Amazon Kindle and $50 American Express® gift card!

Business.com will also be co-sponsoring this year’s car giveaway – learn more on how you can win a brand new Honda Fit!

We look forward to seeing you at SES New York.

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Thanks to all of you who joined today’s live broadcast of the first webinar based on our Business Social Media Benchmarking research, “B2B Social Media: Facts, Fictions and Focus Areas for 2010″.

For those who weren’t able to make it, here’s a link to the recorded version of this B2B social media webinar.

The webinar draws on insights from our recent research on the social media activities of over 3,000 business people and companies to separate fact from fiction in this rapidly evolving space. Social media channels DO offer companies a significant opportunity to engage business buyers online, generate leads, drive revenue and engage/retain customers. However, our business social media benchmarking research and experience over the past year (see our B2B social media case study for more info) suggest B2B marketers are:

• Having trouble identifying the social media channels that offer the greatest opportunity for building their traffic, leads and revenue
• Pursuing too many social media initiatives at one time to be successful
• Confused about where the boundaries for the ’80/20 rule’ lie for various social media initiatives

To help B2B marketers get on track with their social media plans for 2010 and beyond, the webinar covered key findings about the top social media sites and resources people use for business, including important differences across industries, and the business-related information they’re seeking through these channels.

Our free B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study report is good background reading and provides far more benchmarking stats than we could possibly cover in the webinar.

Needless to say, this is a lot to cover in a 60 minute webinar. For all of you who asked questions I wasn’t able to cover during the webinar itself, look for me to address in upcoming blog posts.

Once again, here’s a link to the B2B Social Media: Facts, Fictions & Focus Areas for 2010 webinar.

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Work for an search marketing agency managing campaigns for B2B clients?

If so, check out the B2B search marketing agency resources section of the Business.com Ad Center. There you’ll find a variety of useful resources to help deliver the best B2B search marketing ROI to your clients including:

• Our monthly B2B search marketing agency newsletter with the latest advanced B2B PPC and SEO tips plus detailed overviews of all new Business.com product releases and site enhancements.
• Special Business.com offers for agencies
• Up-to-date resources to help you pitch Business.com PPC, directory inclusion and/or banner advertising to your clients.
• Business.com advertising FAQs for agencies to help you easily answer client questions about Business.com advertising, and more…

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Oil and water. Mars and Venus. Search and branding.

Not long ago (or still?), brand marketing and search marketing were viewed as two polar opposites in the marketing mix. Many diehard pros specializing in one or the other of these areas still struggle to understand find value in, or even imagine, using search marketing to build or reinforce a brand message.

“The 10 blue links of the search results page are simply not a worthwhile medium for building brands,” say the brand marketers.

“Who cares about building brand awareness and preference when we’re driving conversions!” say the search marketers.

We address this debate for B2B brand marketing and B2B search marketing pros in *NEW* Business.com whitepaper “Building B2B Brands through Search Marketing“.

Here’s a quick summary:

The purpose of this whitepaper is to provide a straightforward overview of how to build your business-to-business (B2B) brand through search marketing, and to provide several best practice tips for finding and leveraging brand-building opportunities in the context of search marketing. Specifically, we cover the three fundamental ways paid search and SEO connect with B2B brand campaigns:

1. Brand initiatives provide key inputs for search marketing campaigns

2. Search marketing delivers an impactful, branded experience

3. Search marketing impressions, CTR and conversion rates are affected by brand campaigns

And, in the process, review the mounting research supporting the impact of a strong B2B brand presence in search results on search marketing ROI.

We don’t get into the “which is better” debate that branding pros and search marketers so often fall into. As you review the research it quickly becomes apparent that this debate is a waste of time - brand marketer and search marketers absolutely need each other to deliver the best possible ROI for their companies.

Visit http://www.business.com/info/b2b-online-marketing/building-b2b-brands today to get your copy of “Building B2B Brands through Search Marketing”.

And once you’ve had a chance to read through it, we’d love to hear your impressions below.

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We’re very happy to announce that Business.com’s 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study report is now available as a free download at http://www.business.com/info/business-social-media-benchmark-study.

With 2,948 participants from the US and Canada, this is the largest study to date of how North American businesses, and business people, use social media as well as the value they find across different social media activities and sites. All study participants currently used social media in their day-to-day jobs as a resource for business-relevant information and/or work for a company currently managing, developing or planning social media initiatives.

This 42 page initial report provides excellent business social media benchmarking data for 2010 strategic planning. The report table of contents and list of figures are included below for more detail:

Table of Contents

Beyond Chatting with Friends: Social Media as a Business Resource
     Who Uses Social Media as a Resource for Business Information?
     Most Popular Social Media Resources for Business
Most Useful Social Media Resources for Business
Current State of Corporate Social Media Initiatives
     Respondent and Company Experience with Business Social Media
     Top Corporate Social Media Activities
     How Companies Judge Social Media Success
     Initiative Detail: Managing Business Profiles on Social Media Sites
     Initiative Detail: Participating in Q&A Sites
     Initiative Detail: Using Social Media Monitoring Tools
     Initiative Detail: Sharing Business Content on Social Media Sites
     Initiative Detail: Business Content Bookmarking on Social Media Sites
Upcoming Reports Based on this Reseach
About the Study

List of Figures

Figure 1: Use of Social Media as a Business Information Resource by Job Level
Figure 2: Use of Social Media as a Business Information Resource by Job Role
Figure 3: Use of Social Media as a Business Information Resource by Company Size
Figure 4: Use of Social Media as a Business Information Resource by Industry
Figure 5: Most Popular Social Media Resources for Business Information
Figure 6: Number of Different Social Media Sites/Resources Used for Business Information
Figure 7: Usefulness of Different Social Media for Business Information
Figure 8: % of Work Time Spent Managing or Involved with Company Social Media Initiatives
Figure 9: Experience with Business Social Media Among Those Currently Managing or Involved with Business Social Media Initiatives
Figure 10: Company Experience with Social Media
Figure 11: Most Popular Business Social Media Initiatives
Figure 12: Company Department Driving Social Media Initiatives
Figure 13: Number of Different Business Social Media Initiatives Planned, in Development or Currently Running
Figure 14: Top Social Media Success Metrics
Figure 15: Ability to See Impact of Social Media Initiatives on Success Metrics
Figure 16: Ability to See Impact of Social Media Initiatives on Success Metrics by Company Experience with Social Media
Figure 17: Top Social Media Sites on Which Companies Maintain Business Profiles
Figure 18: Ability to See Business Impact of Profiles on Social Media Sites
Figure 19: Net Promoter Scores for Business Profiles on Select Sites
Figure 20: Top Q&A Sites on Which Companies Participate
Figure 21: Ability to See Business Impact of Participating on Q&A Sites
Figure 22: Net Promoter Score for Participating in Q&A on Select Sites
Figure 23: Most Popular Tools for Monitoring Online Conversations
Figure 24: Ability to See Business Impact of Online Conversation Monitoring Tools
Figure 25: Net Promoter Score for Select Social Media Monitoring Tools
Figure 26: Top Sites to Which Companies Upload Content
Figure 27: Ability to See Business Impact of Content Sharing on Select Sites
Figure 28: Net Promoter Score for Select Content Sharing Sites
Figure 29: Top Sites Companies Use for Social Bookmarking
Figure 30: Ability to See Business Impact of Social Bookmarking on Select Sites
Figure 31: Net Promoter Score for Select Social Bookmarking Sites
Figure 32: Study Participants by Company Size
Figure 33: Study Participants by Industry
Figure 34: Study Participants by Job Role
Figure 35: Study Participants by Job Level
Figure 36: Study Participants by Company Product / Service Focus
Figure 37: Study Participants by Company Type (B2C, B2B or Mixed)
Figure 38: Study Participants by Primary Customer Location
Figure 39: Study Participants by Company Potential Customer Count
Figure 40: Study Participants by Company Average Sales Cycle

We’ll be providing snapshots of some of the data in future blog posts but why wait – download Business.com’s 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study today and let us know what you think!

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NOTE: This is part 4 of Business.com’s Twitter for business case study where we share interesting, valuable insights about B2B online marketing through our @B2BOnlineMktg Twitter account and, in the process, build awareness of Business.com as a key online resource for solutions to business challenges. You can find our monthly updates to this case study and other useful B2B social media case studies here – http://www.smartbusinessresults.com/b2b-social-media/.

Business.com's B2BOnlineMktg Twitter Account Stats On July 6, 2009

At four months into our B2B Twitter experience we’ve been more successful at developing a following and engaging our target audience of B2B marketers than I initially expected. These gains have come through a combination of focus – rather than trying to tackle the entire world of B2B social media opportunities all at once, we tackled two blogs and two Twitter accounts with two FTEs  – consistent measurement and a healthy willingness to test a wide range of Twitter tactics rather than just following existing “best practices”.

Here’s an update on Twitter metrics from our first Twitter post on March 2, 2009 through July 6. After that, we’ll look at a couple basic characteristics of business Twitter users with the highest follower count and what this means for building a large, engaged business audience on Twitter.

Key Stats for @B2BOnlineMktg at 120 Days

Followers: 2,840

Following: 204

Tweets: 585

Tracked clicks on tweets: 8,209

Top 10 @B2BOnlineMktgtweets by number of clicks over the last 30 days (replaced original ow.ly link with [link] so we don’t mess up tweet tracking):

1. 9 Internet marketing calculators – bookmark this one! [link](via @smallbiztrends) #socialmedia #ppc #seo (55 clicks)
2. …And @markwschaefer’s list of B2B social media superstars: IBM, GE, Cisco, Boeing & Ingram Micro – [link] #b2b (55 clicks)
3. New B2B lead gen study shows social media becoming important lead driver (up to 15% of total). [link] #b2b (45 clicks)
4. Social media metrics – 9 key metrics for measuring the impact of your blogger outreach. [link] #b2b #pr #wa (44 clicks)
5. 9 tips for creating banner ads that drive better ROI from @InbarChap – good B2B display advice. [link] #b2b (43 clicks)
6. 64% of C-level execs conduct 6+ searches per day to locate business information. [link] #b2b (38 clicks)
7. How marketing goals impact use of different online ad types – Excellent chart from MarketingSherpa [link] (37 clicks)
8. Who’s watching your online reputation? Good advice for B2B companies getting into social media. [link] (37 clicks)
9. Time for self-reflection…Why your B2B marketing is so lousy - [link](via @admazing) #b2b (35 clicks)
10. Marketing a Software-as-a-Service / SaaS solution? Here are 10 essential tips for better results - [link] #b2b (33 clicks)

A Look at the “Pro Business Tweeters”

One of our goals when starting on Twitter was to learn the fastest route to a large, engaged group of Twitter followers. We had some advantages in building our @B2BOnlineMktg account, like thousands of subscribers to our B2B search marketing newsletter that we could make aware of our Twitter presence, but we intentionally didn’t use all our promotional power to drive followers. As I’ve said before, we also didn’t use the “spam-and-cull” approach - following hundreds or thousands of Twitter users, seeing which ones automatically follow back, culling out those who do not, following another set of users, and so on - because we want a large and ENGAGED following. What good are 10,000 Twitter followers if none of them pay any attention to what you’re tweeting?

To start getting a handle on how to build a large, engaged group of Twitter followers, we followed a number of more experienced B2B Twitter accounts with 5,000+ followers and started watching for patterns. Among these ”pro business tweeters”, there were two starkly different groups in terms of the Twitter Follower-Friend Ratio:

• Follower-Friend Ratio ~= 1
  • roughly equal number of followers and following
  • attract followers interested in tweet content and/or building their own follower count (i.e., great targets for the “spam-and-cull” approach to building a Twitter following)
  • wide range of people and backgrounds but usually have multiple years of Twitter experience
  • tweet a lot of thoughts/observations, some links to interesting content they’ve found and retweet a limited set of other pro business tweeters
• Follower-Friend Ratio = 5+
  • attract followers interested in tweet content only since its obviously unlikely that these accounts will follow you back
  • usually following <300-400 other Twitter users, and often much less than that (<50)
  • may be big brands or social media/Twitter-specific companies with a large customer base already on Twitter, publishing companies with the reach to attract a lot of followers to a Twitter account or long-time Twitter users who chose not to automatically follow other users back
  • may or may not tweet a lot of thoughts/observations, heavy focus on links to their own or other relevant content they’ve found and retweet a limited set of others

The follower-friend ratio caught my eye because, after reseaching many of the existing B2B social media “best practices,” it was clear that there were two very different, and often conflicting, perspectives on the right way to engage in social media. The first is a view of social media as an interpersonal medium governed by interpersonal rules. For example, if someone wants to be your friend, the polite thing is to shake hands, say “hi”, and try to be friends – most people would consider it just plain rude to walk away. Those pro business tweeters with a follower-friend ratio around 1 seem to be following this norm and with automatically following someone back. Since there’s no obvious, objective benefit to blocking a follower if you decide not to be their friend, follower and following counts grow together.

The other group with a follower-friend ratio on the 5+ range seems to be viewing social media as a mass communication medium governed by mass communication rules, and the pro business tweeters in this group are often larger companies, business media and/or experienced execs at mid- to large-sized companies. From a mass communication perspective, its perfectly acceptable and even expected for the relationship to be one-sided or interactive only on demand (such as when a customer has a question). After all, its utterly impossible for someone to follow 5,000+ other Twitter users, let alone 500, and pay attention to all their tweets. If you think reading and processing 100 emails a day is a challenge, try 5,000 tweets.

You see these same styles with newer and much smaller Twitter for business accounts as well – some follow hundreds of others to kick start their own follower base (and then worry about how unfollowing may hurt their reputation) while others follow very few but seem to attract a lot of followers themselves.

Thoughts on Building An Engaged Business Twitter Following

If you’ve though of using Twitter for business and/or find your existing business Twitter presence stalled out with little follower engagement, here are some thoughts to get you on the right track: 

Twitter is a viable business communication channel, end of story – From what I’ve seen in the past four months, Twitter has a role as a business communication channel for most B2B companies. Whether Twitter figures out a way to monetize its business or not is irrelevant because, if Twitter fails, some other micro-blogging platform will take its place. If you’ve already tried Twitter for your business and struggled to make it work, its most likely because the B2B social media rules are still being written. Don’t give up, and keep your eye on this list of B2B social media resources for the straight scoop.

Twitter for business is mass communication- I’m sure I’ll get hate mail for this one but if you plan to use Twitter for business, and you have more than a few hundred prospects/customers/influencers combined, you’re kidding yourself if you think interpersonal norms can govern how you use Twitter or other social media for your business. Why? Because Twitter is incredibly inefficient for forming interpersonal relationships. 140 character tweets are efficient for finding interesting people/content, maintaining contact with existing “friends” (as was the original purpose of Twitter) and asking/addressing simple questions. Establishing more meaningful business relationships through Twitter, though, is highly inefficient – people connect on Twitter, then want to take the conversation elsewhere because going back-and-forth through 140 character bursts is a quick road to carpal tunnel syndrome. For the vast majority of businesses out there, “mass communication” is the model you should follow as you plan your Twitter strategy.

You have a business contact list, so use it – As a business on Twitter, you don’t need to build a following like an individual would. This is a key advantage for business Twitter users that’s either forgotten or, more likely, ignored out of some combination of a misplaced desire to not disrupt existing communication channels and the sheer revulsion many B2B marketers feel when considering how a P2P or B2C trend may apply to their business. Get over it.  Establish a basic Twitter presence, make your prospects and customers aware of this new channel, and let them use it.

Focus on tweet quality over tweet quantity- I covered this finding in my interview with Mark Schaefer about Twitter for business, but we’ve found that tweeting interesting things (e.g., tweets with links that more people click on) has a much bigger, positive influence on follower growth rate than does tweet volume (e.g., making sure you tweet very frequently to keep your tweets in front of your followers). In other words, the best practice for getting people’s attention and interest on Twitter is the same as it is across other business communication channels – talk when you have something important to say. Blanketing your followers with tweets doesn’t work any better than does blanketing the media with press releases about non-issues or hammering a direct mail list with irrelevant offers. One more reason to look at Twitter as a mass communication channel for business rather than a medium ruled by strict adherence to norms of interpersonal interaction.

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At Business.com, we’re dedicated to providing high quality traffic to our advertisers.

As such, we’re very pleased to announce that Business.com is one of the first four pay-per-click industry leaders, including Microsoft (adCenter and Atlas Media Console), to earn click quality accreditation from the Media Rating Council (MRC) certifying full compliance with the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) Click Measurement Guidelines. See our press release here.

The MRC accreditation means Business.com advertisers can be assured that the clicks they pay for on Business.com are generated by real people with a real interest in the product or service being advertised.

Business.com has been an active member of the IAB’s Click Measurement Working Group over the last three years, working with other industry leaders to finalize a clear, standardized definition of a “click” and how clicks are measured and counted, including the identification of fraudulent or other invalid clicks. Published in May 2009, the IAB Click Measurement Guidelines also include auditing and certification recommendation for organizations involved in performance-based advertising.  To earn MRC click quality accreditation, a company must undergo a through MRC-drive audit of its operations and review of the findings by the MRC Audit Committee. Once granted, click quality accreditation by the MRC certifies that an organization has provided full and complete information to the MRC regarding all details of its operation, conducts its processing and reporting substantially in accordance with representations to its clients and in compliance with IAB guidelines, and submits to annual audits of its systems by CPA firms engaged by the MRC.

Suffice to say, receiving MRC click quality accreditation is a lot of work but well worth the effort as part of our commitment to click quality and good measurement practices. While Business.com is one of the very first to earn this accreditation, keep your eye out for more announcements as other leading companies offering performance-based advertising commit to full compliance with the IAB’s Click Measurement Guidelines.

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NOTE: This is part 3 of Business.com’s case study about using Twitter to share interesting, valuable insights about B2B online marketing through our account (http://twitter.com/B2BOnlineMktg) and, in the process, build awareness of Business.com as a key online resource for solutions to business challenges. Also read part 1 ( @B2BOnlineMktg at 30 days) and part 2 (@B2BOnlineMarketing at 60 days) for more background. 

Business.com's B2BOnlineMktg Twitter Account Stats On June 3, 2009

I hesitate to say this, but I think we’re starting to get the hang of Twitter for business – why it makes sense as a business communication channel, how it fits into our marketing plan, the most relevant metrics to track, how to build a strong follower base (without simply following everyone else on Twitter and hoping for a reciprocal follow), what makes a compelling business “tweet” and much more.  I can’t cover all these topics in this post, but I’ll hit the highlights below and we’ll provide more details in future posts (which we’ll tweet via http://twitter.com/B2BOnlineMktg, of course!).

First, an update on Twitter metrics from our first Twitter post on March 2, 2009 through June 2.

Key Stats for @B2BOnlineMktg at 90 Days

Followers: 2,043

Following: 197

Tweets: 404

Tracked clicks on tweets: 6,257

Top 10 @B2BOnlineMktg tweets by number of clicks over the last 30 days:

1. 5 situations where B2B marketers should AVOID social media – great summary http://ow.ly/4N6D (via @btobmarketing)  (134 clicks)
2. Improving conversion rates in a world where “99% of business buying is covering your butt.” http://ow.ly/59nU #b2b #marketing  (84 clicks)
3. US companies to more than double investments in web analytics over next 5 years – new Forrester report. http://ow.ly/ao2R  #wa  (69 clicks)
4. Case study – Customer reviews drive 196% increase in paid search revenue for Office Depot (via @whatworks) http://ow.ly/59P6  (61 clicks)
5. Good laugh for B2B marketers – 7 Infectious Diseases of B2B Marketing (via @michelelinn @RossGraber ):  http://ow.ly/6vPi  (60 clicks)
6. 3,600 LinkedIn users speak – Twitter most important platform for brands to master. http://ow.ly/anO1 (via @SocialMedia411)  (59 clicks)
7. Integrating online and offline B2B marketing strategies – register now for May 11th webinar http://ow.ly/5hGO  (42 clicks)
8. Love this one – reminder to dig a little deeper into marketing research stats before quoting. http://ow.ly/5hAv  (41 clicks)
9. Get the latest update on 2009 B2B Marketing Trends in this MarketingProfs webinar – May 6, 11 AM PDT/ 2 PM EDT http://ow.ly/4Dp2  (37 clicks)
10. The 6 Dangerous Fallacies of Social Media – http://ow.ly/9h3M #socialmedia  (36 clicks)

Drive More Clicks From Business Twitter Users

Over the last 30 days we focused on identifying underlying patterns in how business people use Twitter. To do so, we spread our tweets across days of the week and different times during the day. We also varied the time between tweets and tweet length in characters. Looking across 182 tweets from both our business user-focused Twitter accounts (@B2BOnlineMktg for B2B marketers and @whatworks for business people in general) from May 4th through June 3rd, 2009, we found some interesting patterns…

Average Lifespan of a Business Tweet = 4 days

If you measure the lifespan of a tweet by the number of days on which it receives at least one click from a Twitter user, then business tweets don’t live very long. On average, our tweets with a clickable link received at least one click on four separate days with a range of one day (not a very popular tweet) to 23 days (home run!).

Best Day to Maximize Business Tweet Clicks = Monday

I noticed this phenomena pretty quickly after starting our @B2BOnlineMktg Twitter account in early March and our study bears it out – if you want to capture the attention of business people with your tweets, make sure you’re tweeting on Monday (and Monday morning, in particular) or Tuesday. Tweets we sent on Monday garnered nearly 10 clicks for every day with a click (e.g., if a Monday tweet received at least one click on four different days, we’d expect about 40 total clicks on that tweet). The middle of the week is, well, weak, as is Sunday.

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As 2008 unfolded, our team at Business.com closely monitored exploding interest in B2B social media.  The Business.com site is designed to help people find solutions to business challenges through resources like the leading online B2B directory and over 30,000 business how-to guides, and we were intrigued by the potential to connect with our target business decision maker audience through various social media channels.

Like the rest of the industry, we learned from experts like Forrester’s Laura Ramos as they chronicled how early adopters were leveraging social media. We religiously downloaded Marketing Sherpa special reports to glean where business-to-business brands were finding measurable success.  We also created our own B2B social media case study that looked at what players like Intuit and Dell were doing right. By year’s end, we were chomping at the bit to dive in!

Our first steps? Defining clear, scalable goals. After all, social media might be a new platform but it’s still marketing, folks.  We determined our primary goal is  building awareness of the Business.com brand as a source for business solutions and driving higher quality traffic to our site.  Our short term goals included determining the key differences between B2C and B2B social media and figuring out just how much effort is really involved in making an impact with B2B social media.

With those critical guide posts staked in the ground, we got to work.  In the first half of 2009, Business.com launched two corporate blogs. Each blog targets one of our key audience segments. What Works for Business is the user-facing resource penned by our own small business expert, Dan Kehrer.  B2B Online Marketing is our advertiser-focused blog serving up actionable online marketing tips and best practices for B2B marketers.

Over the course of the last five months, we’ve achieved steady growth in the audience for each blog. By testing design, editorial content, plug-ins and posting frequency, we also gained invaluable insight into our audience’s needs and habits. Having two  blogs has given us the opportunity to test different approaches and compare results.

To help drive readership and engagement of both blogs, we also joined all the cool kids on Twitter. We started an account that corresponds to each blog, @B2BOnlineMktg and @WhatWorks. We tested key variables – number of Tweets each day, time of day, content of tweets, scheduling tweets, hashtags, etc. We began “following” key social media players like Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) and subject area thought leaders like Anita Campbell (@smallbiztrends) for small business, Galen DeYoung (@GalenDY) for B2B SEO and Stephanie Tilton (@StephanieTilton) for B2B writing/case studies to better understand the Twitter universe (plus find great content to retweet). We even worked hard on creating compelling tweets, a process akin to writing great headlines given the 140 character limit.

Don’t get me wrong.  We aren’t always sure what we’re up to is the optimal approach but, hey, that’s what learning is all about and we’ll continue to stumble here and there.

Like most marketers, the biggest challenge we’ve faced has been pinpointing the “right” social media metrics to measure success. Recently, we’ve been focusing on total branded impressions delivered, Twitter follower growth, click through rate on tweets and blog repeat visits to directionally guide our B2B social media efforts. We’ve found tools like HootSuite, Twinfluence, and Radian 6 to be invaluable. In fact, they have become a bit addicting since they show the immediate impact (good or bad) of our efforts.

I think most companies who are honest admit their social media efforts are a bit of an experiment, defined by trial and error. We’ve been particularly surprised/frustrated/overwhelmed by how important the volume of blog posts is to attracting a consistent following and solid search engine rankings. Cranking out quality content is obviously not easy to do with everything else on our plates.

One of our key lessons learned: the importance of clear editorial planning. Don’t expect to do a lot of big posts. Instead, intermix longer ones with more frequent smaller ones. We also recommend finding people on your marketing team with a mix of writing skills. For example, some people are great at writing short summaries of topics, while others can’t seem to write less than 1,000 words to save their lives.

As we begin the second half of 2009, we plan to apply some of the brand extension tactics that the likes of Comcast and Dell discussed at last week’s TWTRCON conference in San Francisco. And we will continue the P.O.S.T strategy that Laura Ramos touted in our recent interview with her.  Here are our social media do’s and don’t's :

• Don’t take on too much- Social media takes significant time to execute well and see results.  Focus is critical. No one – including IBM, Cisco, Intel, or other big B2B names – has been successful trying to tackle blogging, Facebook, Twitter, message board participation, etc., all at once.
• Do use social media as a content play for your brand-  Refine your content strategy  by monitoring key word searches, plugins like “Share This” and Twitter hot topics to gauge most the popular topics in your area of expertise.  The key is not just blasting out your message but creating SEO-friendly and unique content that your audience is looking for online.
• Don’t spam - Spam is a big problem online and only getting bigger thanks to all the social media testing going on out there. Producing quality content is vital to long-term success.   Don’t sacrifice quality for a few more followers or blog visitors.  Period. Remember your company’s reputation is on the line.
• Do figure out what works for you – We’re standing on the shoulders of social media giants, testing out ideas and seeing how they work for us. As we’ve found, some general social media best practices apply to Business.com but some don’t (or apply in unique situations). No one knows YOUR brand and your better that YOU. Look at social media outreach as an opportunity to open a dialogue with your core audience and find out what they want from you. Every company has to experiment with social media and find what works best for them.

Look for more details in future posts as we share important insights from our social media initiatives and visit our collection of best insights and advice about B2B social media strategy and tactics.

In the meantime, tell us: what are your B2B social media do’s and don’t’s?

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Following a very successful beta test with over 70 participants, we’ve now made Business.com Conversion Tracking available free to all Business.com advertisers.

Business.com Conversion Tracking is now available to all advertisers within the Business.com Account Management System

The most exciting aspect of this launch is we’re now offering a simple, free solution to the “last click” attribution problem I wrote about in our study of B2B web analytics market share. In short, the problem is that B2B advertisers who rely on web analytics solutions which attribute 100% of campaign ROI to the last click before conversion get an overly simplistic, and inaccurate, view of the contribution made by different online marketing campaigns to overall results. And its a problem that’s getting worse as the B2B sales cycle lengthens and business buyers interact with more online advertising before finally purchasing, registering for a free trial, signing-up for an event or otherwise converting. This conversion attribution issue was the second hottest topic (behind Twitter) when I spoke at Mediapost’s recent Search Insider Summit – there’s solid recognition among top brands and agencies that conversion attribution is a problem and that “last click” tools don’t provide the full story.

In essence, Business.com Conversion Tracking punches a hole in the black box of “last click” web analytics, allowing Business.com advertisers to easily see how their Business.com campaigns and keywords are performing to support campaign optimization. We designed Business.com Conversion Tracking to be both extremely easy to implement – 44% of B2B web sites don’t even use web analytics today, and a major reason for this is the complexity of implementing many of the solutions available today – and to work as a complement to existing “last click” or more full-featured web analytics tools. The specific benefits vary by the type of web analytics solution, if any, a company uses today:

For B2B Companies Without Web Analytics

For the 44% of B2B web sites without web analytics today (yes, scary, but its true), Business.com Conversion Tracking offers both clear return-on-investment (ROI) metrics for their Business.com advertising and a very simple 3-step process to implement conversion tracking.

For B2B Companies Using “Last Click” Web Analytics 

For those companies using “last click” web analytics tools like Google Analytics, Urchin Software by Google, Nedstat or others, Business.com Conversion Tracking uncovers data often not available, or incomplete, in these web analytics tools. This includes the ability to monitor the true impact of Business.com campaigns on registrations, quote requests, purchases or other transactions.

For B2B Companies Using Advanced Web Analytics

Advanced web analytics solutions like Omniture, WebTrends and Coremetrics enable B2B online advertisers to track the influence of multiple campaigns throughout the business buying process on eventual conversions. As we saw during the beta, Business.com Conversion Tracking is still very appealing to companies using these more advanced solutions because it takes literally just a few minutes to implement, saves time by making campaign ROI metrics conveniently available within the Business.com account management system and offers a useful check against third-party systems.

To learn more, visit the Business.com Conversion Tracking FAQ page or see the Business.com Conversion Tracking announcement.

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