3) Participate on industry forums.
Quora and other mainstream Q&A sites are good, but some industries and areas of expertise are so specialized that a general business site won’t help you attract many serious buyers. In those cases, industry and association forums shine.
These are the sites where industry insiders often hang out. There’s usually very little sales spam, so it’s an environment where peoples’ “sales blockers” may be lowered a bit. Just don’t come on too strong with a direct sales pitch or you might get banned.
If you’re going after a very sophisticated B2B buyer, or you offer products or services that only a very narrow niche of businesses need, try industry and association forums first. Sometimes conference forums and chat rooms are good, too.
4) Leave thoughtful, positive comments on industry blogs.
This is another twist on “demonstrate your expertise as a way to attract leads”. But blog commenting goes further than just making you look smart. Each comment you leave creates a link back to your site. It’s usually a no-follow link, so it’s not too big a win, but it’s a reasonably safe way to build relevant, quality links. Assuming, of course, that you’re leaving comments only on sites with high authority.
But that’s not all. Commenting on blogs also gets the attention of the author, who is often also an influencer. Commenting on influencers’ blogs and guest posts is one of the best ways to get their attention.
And finally, blog commenting gets leads. It’s especially effective if you share some real-world experience. Don’t name clients specifically, of course. But you could say something like:
“We recently worked with a company in the X industry, and tried one of the techniques you mention in this post. It worked really well for us, but we had to do these things differently….”
That’s a nice way to affirm what the blogger wrote, add a useful insider tip, and demonstrate you know what you’re doing. Not only that, but you’re getting results for your clients. That’s some pretty good advertising.
5) Add an overlay app for your curated social media shares.
As you probably know already, it’s good social media etiquette to share other people’s content – aka “third party content”. And you’re supposed to share it a lot: Some sources recommend sharing 80% third party content, with just 20% of your own stuff.
Occasionally marketers worry about sharing so much third party content. They feel like they’re just sending people away to another site, never to see them again. This is a reasonable concern… but there is a way around it.
Several overlay services, like Snip.ly or Linkis, let you add an overlay to any third party content you share. So if you shared, say, this update:
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.
The post 7 Ways B2Bers Can Rock Lead Gen Via Social Media appeared first on Business Intelligence Info.