Aren't all of your B2B interactions like this?

Well hello there! This week’s roundup is all business. So business, we’ve got a slew of articles here for you on B2B. Emarketer has some info-packed articles on mobile, email, websites, and social media use among B2B, and MarketingSherpa serves some knowledge made of social media tactics and B2B sales.

So be on the lookout every week for news, tips from pros, reviews, emerging technology, and a whole bundle of thought-provoking articles on this ever-developing, exciting world of social media.

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Website and Email critical b2b investments: Emarketer gives us another insightful article, showing that online marketing spending in 2011 has website and email with the largest increase in funding, followed by social media. This article’s packed with additional stats on what the B2B industry is doing.

How and When to Use Content in the B2B Sales Process: MarketingSherpa has three of their panelists from the “How To Develop Content for Specific Buying Stages” panel break down their systems and advice into essential elements of cohesiveness, defining the buying stages, and involving sales. Read the thorough explanations of each element via the link.

Social Media Tactics for B2b: What are the most common B2b social media marketing tactics? MarketingSherpa graphed it out so you can find out what’s most effective for other B2b groups like your own.

B2B possibilities for mobile: Forbes Insight surveyed C-Suite executives in October 2010 and found 82% had a smartphone, with 56% saying they’d clicked on mobile ads. If you wanted to know about the real presence of mobile in the business world, this Emarketer article breaks it down well. How often do you work on your smartphone?

Howdy ho, folks. This week’s roundup focuses on an often peripherally noted and somewhat understated social media icon: LinkedIn. So we’ve assembled a useful package of information on this fantastic professional networking site and what it can do for you, should you choose to use it. Go ahead, see how you like it.

First off, what’s LinkedIn? LinkedIn is a social networking website for professionals. LinkedIn is great for B2B marketing, job searching, establishing your credibility in your field, and generating leads for your business through building meaningful and helpful professional relationships and communities. On it’s face level, it can also be your professional calling card.

The links below should tell you more about some LinkedIn tools, including the Resume Builder, LinkedIn Answers (where you can ask industry leaders questions), the Job Finder, LinkedIn Groups, and more.

We’ve said in our seminars before, it can be tough—with all these social media options, each taking time—to decide what social venue is best for you. So you’ll rarely hear us say you need a LinkedIn.  But you’ll never hear us say it would hurt. Remember, strategy first.

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What It Can Help You Do

Learn How To Get New Clients From LinkedIn [VIDEO]: This is a short, four minute video that talks about some of the main features of LinkedIn and building up a professional profile. It’s pretty informative if you’re starting out and has some good tips for generating new clients.

Why LinkedIn Is High Octane Fuel For Job Searching: Whether you’re an employer or a potential employee, it’s important

Recruiting Employees Through LinkedIn: But if you are an employer, here are some advantages to recruiting through LinkedIn, if you’re not already.

How To Make LinkedIn Answers Part of Your Routine: LinkedIn Answers is a unique opportunity to show off (in good taste) your expertise to other industry professionals and create a name for yourself in a community. But these kinds of things can be hard to pick up–they take time. This article suggests some ways to make LinkedIn answers routine, and increase your chances of lead generation or possibly employment.

Resume Builder Takes The Hassle Out of Updating Your Resume: One of the most convenient tools on LinkedIn, they have a smart Resume Builder that allows you what information from your profile goes onto your resume, and in what style.

How To Do It

LinkedIn Top Tips To Improve Your Profile: So you may have a LinkedIn, but it’s not much use if you’re at 10% completion and your information is bare. Having a strong profile is like having a strong first impression–it can make or break you.

26 Tips To Enhance Your Experience On LinkedIn: This is additional material building off the above link for getting the most out of LinkedIn.

8 Tips For Managing a LinkedIn Group: LinkedIn Groups are one of the most powerful and convenient tools from LinkedIn, because you create niche, sometimes exclusive groups of professionals. If you don’t find the one you want, you create it and, with due follow-through, become a leader in this new community you’ve started. Here are some management tips.

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And finally, we have this helpful “LinkedIn” for dummies video that really hits the basics of LinkedIn. Did these links help? What else would you like to know? Show us some love in the comments section and we’ll talk back. We promise.

Best!

-Neovia

Howdy, everyone. Welcome back to the roundup!

This week we’re giving you some content for some of the key social media outlets–Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and general blogging tips. In addition, this week we’re presenting you with some additional tools, including a list of 40 not-too-shabby articles, followed by two successful models from which we thought you might want to draw some inspiration.

So be on the lookout every week for news, tips from pros, reviews, emerging technology, and a whole bundle of thought-provoking articles on this ever-developing, exciting world of social media.

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Tips on the Big Ones.

LinkedIn: 5 Ways to Use LinkedIn Groups to Build Influential Connections—In a social network of professionals, it’s incredibly useful to become a positive personality, and to continually add value to those in your field. But it can be an intimidating task. This article gets past a few of those apprehensions and makes getting started that much easier.

Blog: A Look into the 2010 State of the Blogosphere Report by Technorati—This is an interesting review of blog activity in 2010. Of particular note is the rise of the mom blogger, which could be an important fact for businesses to come to recognize.

Twitter: Twitter For Brands: 6 Winning Strategies To Learn From—At the core of successful twitter campaigns is always a personality, which is something that should stick with you. That said, building on this fact can really do some social media wonders, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Facebook: 5 Creative Facebook Places Marketing Campaigns—Geolocation is in. But while we often see Foursquare campaigns take off, it’s not as often we see Places campaigns do the same (take a look at that University of Kentucky campaign–great, great stuff!). Let it be a lesson, I suppose. All of these tools can be powerful ones if you’ve got the right person, mindset behind the wheel. So we encourage taking a look at this one.

Then secondly…

More Resources.

40 New Social Media Resources You May Have Missed: Yep, 40 of them. You’ll see some repeats of things we’ve already posted, but if you’ve got the itch to learn, learn, learn, Mashable’s divided up the articles for your convenience.

And thirdly…

Examples.

How the NCAA Stays On Top of the Social Media Game—This story illustrates the usefullness and rational behind having a social media policy. After some of the trouble we’ve seen professional athletes get themselves in through Twitter and other outlets, it’s no surprise the NCAA attempt to regulate social media use to keep a level playing field for recruitment.

Disney: Doing Social Right: Disney is adding 5 million fans a week to their array of 200 Facebook pages. We know. It’s hard to compete with Disney. But if you can’t beat ‘em, “like” ‘em, and find out what they’re doing right (which seems to be quite a bit).

Image by Roman Gonzalez. Base photo from glasgows of flickr.

Get pumped, people! It’s roundup time, 2011 style, so that means we’re buckling down, walking in the nitty gritty with our game face on. And if your resolution involves being awesome, this is your week. So stick around and we’ll keep rounding up the top stories in the social media world to help you stay up to speed with trends and developments that will excite your online marketing strategy and experience.

This week it’s all about riding that new year’s energy and getting going for the new year. We’ve got tough questions from Logic+Emotion, philosophical light from Brains on Fire, a dating website that does it its own way, and what you need to know to get that twitter contest rolling. No more talk. All action. They call it ’11 because there is one and only one way to do business this year–and that’s social.

Be on the lookout every week for news, tips from pros, reviews, emerging technology, and a whole bundle of thought-provoking articles on this ever-developing, exciting world of social media. Welcome to 2011, folks. It’s gonna be a good one.

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It’s Time to Move the Needle: It’s a new year but how are you going to prove it? Facebook fans and retweets aren’t enough, Logic+Emotion argues. Think bigger. What thing of value will you bring to life and how will you do it? A great set of things to think about for any time of the year, really.

Thoughts from the Brains on Fire Community Manager Team: Why do it? Why bother managing a community? Brains on Fire gets to the core of social media in revealing their personal motivation to change people’s lives and to pursue meaningful dialogue, along with other practical ideas you won’t hear in most other articles. You might want to bookmark this one.

No Need For An Agency: We don’t need no stinkin’ ad agency! Match.com recently released over 100 short self-made ads out of footage from real dates. How can you use your resources to make stellar videos? Think about it. Get back to me. Check these videos out.

How To: Launch A Successful Twitter Contest: Bet you didn’t think about using Twitter for contests. Think again. You have an opportunity for your business to shine by using this popular microblogging platform to raise interest and reward your followers. Run and tweet that.

Search Engine Optimization: Rock and roll and…search engine optimization? Well, it’s very important. If you’re interested in learning more about it, raising your SEO, finding out how it work the thing, then this article is for you.

Stoked,

Neovia.

This week we discuss a recent feature story from Fast Company, Mayhem on Madison Avenue, about the death of the traditional advertising agency. But the real meat of the story, we think, is the end of mass marketing and media and that means for social media, small businesses, the marketing industry, and to business in general. We discuss the end of pay-to-play and the bullhorn, and the rise of the small business as a major contender in the marketing arena.

What’s making us happy this week? Facebook stalking.

[STUFF WE MENTIONED]

Mayhem on Madison Avenue
Nestle & Greenpeace Facebook incident

[LISTEN]

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