I’ve been paying more attention to Facebook with regard to B2B, especially with all of the changes going down (including Timeline, which deployed worldwide last week). I’m particularly intrigued with the competition between G+ and FB. I absolutely LOVE how G+ has forced FB to become more transparent and easier to use.

I also love how it’s now much more transparent that FB is no longer a strictly social networking platform — which it used to be. It’s now a network marketing platform.

Viewing FB from this perspective has made me re-evaluate it with regard to B2B. Can B2B companies use FB effectively? I say yes, but with a couple of caveats. One, FB is a place where you talk to people versus selling to them, which a huge mind shift for companies bent on measuring “ROI” in hard numbers (i.e. leads that become sales), and two, FB is a place where you can let your hair down a little bit and have some fun, also a huge mind shift for companies that have a more conservative approach to business in general.

With all of this in mind, I was particularly interested in the new report from Eloqua — 10 Ways to “Solve” Facebook for B2B. After reading it, I had a few questions, which Joe Chernov, VP of Content Marketing, was happy to answer.

Dianna Huff: Joe, in this report you talk about sweepstakes. How can B2B use these? They seem more B2C.

Joe Chernov: Dianna, you’re correct. Sweepstakes can be tricky for B2B. After all, the potential audience for a B2B product is typically more finite than for consumer goods. That said, sweepstakes can work for B2B marketers, it just takes a little creative thinking.

For example, we ran a sweepstakes in concert with EmpireAvenue a “virtual” stock exchange in which members invest virtual currency, called Eaves, in one another. EmpireAvenue is immensely popular with our target audience: marketers and digital media professionals. So when we gave EmpireAvenue members a chance to win Eaves by joining our Facebook community, it was a natural fit. We were attracting the right audience.

DH: Interesting! You’re actually the second person I know to mention EmpireAvenue. Now I’ll have to check it out.

Regarding weekend posting, which you talk about briefly in your report, I think this is a really important consideration for B2B, especially since so many companies block FB. Can you expound on this a little bit?

JC: You’re exactly right: the “weekend Facebook” audience is comprised of different people than “work hours Facebook.” The goal on weekends isn’t necessarily to reach massive numbers of business professionals, but rather to reach new members, like those who work for companies where Facebook is blocked, or those who just don’t think to get on Facebook during work hours. A community is comprised of all members, not just the members who are available when it’s convenient for the brand.

DH: Joe, I like how you put that — reaching new members. That ties in with the report comScore and Facebook put out in July, The Power of Like: How Brands Reach and Influence Fans Through Social Media Marketing. According to the report, only 16% of Fans are reached by branded content by a brand that posts five out of seven days. One reason for this is that people miss content if they’re not logged on when you post the content.

In your report, you mention the Golden Ratio. Can you explain what this means?

JC: The Golden Ratio is a mathematical term that is derived from nature. Apparently the shape of a nautilus, the veins in leaves, even the proportions of humans, all share the same mathematical dimensions. So we decided to see if on Facebook there was a “Golden Ratio” … that is, a normal balance between “Likes” and comments, and whether or not that ratio differed between B2B and B2C companies.This data is in the deck so that brands can see if the way their Fans engage with them is consistent with these norms or if it differs sharply from them. It’s a baseline.

DH: Ok, excellent. And one last question. You also mention that automated posting tools have a NEGATIVE impact on posts being seen. Can you talk a little about that, too?

JC: In our experience, auto-posting tools had a NEGATIVE impact on our posts being seen. Historically Facebook’s algorithm has frowned on third-party publishers.That appears to have changed, according to a November 7 post at AllFacebook, but in our experience, our “jobs at Eloqua auto-publisher” had a negative impact.

Joe, thanks for taking the time to answer these questions!

Be sure to download Eloqua’s report. And, if you haven’t already, come join me on Facebook. I post content that you might find interesting — everything from links to new reports and data to articles that have ideas about how to improve your thinking.

What do you think about Facebook and B2B? Do you think Timeline will be a game changer and force more B2B companies to incorporate FB into their marketing campaigns? Leave your comments below.

I’ve been blogging since 2006. Since that time, marketing has changed — dramatically — and so has my business.

I want to make sure this blog is relevant, engaging and helpful to you. Help me help you by taking my blog survey. It will take just a couple of minutes. Your responses will remain anonymous — and at the end, you can see what everyone else had to say.

TAKE THE SURVEY!

I did a survey very similar to this one for my e-newsletter and was rather surprised at the responses. I’ve been sending out my newsletter on the first Friday of the month, for example. Survey respondents said, “We want it on Wednesdays!” All righty then!

Thanks in advance for your time.

With all of the changes going down on Facebook, it can be tough to keep up. One of the changes that I love — which I found by accident while poking around — is that Pages have news feeds.

I like this feature because it allows me to follow companies on FB without having to clog up my personal profile feed with a lot of gunk.

To see your Page’s news feed, do the following:

1. Log into FB and click on your Page on the left.

2. Click on “Use Facebook as [your Page]” on the right.

3. Click “Home” at the top. Viola! Now you can see the feed of the Pages you’ve Liked. You have to be logged in as your Page in order to Like other Pages and have them show up on your Page. You can see your Page Likes when you’re on your Wall — they’re on the left. Facebook shows five at any given time; you can change this by editing your Page.

To see which Pages have liked your Page, go back to your Wall and click “like this” under the number of fans or Likes you have. This brings up a new window.

In that window, click the drop down menu in the top left corner where it says “People.” Check “Pages” and now you can see which companies / Pages are following you.

Is that cool or what?

What new tricks have you discovered for FB? Feel free to share.

Since I’m in marketing, I’m pretty wary of marketing gimmicks. I know that if something is offered for free, you have to hand something over in return (your name, your phone number, your email address, your first born child).

When I walked into the crowded Heav’nly Donuts this morning, Bill (in photo at right), from the New England Coffee Company, handed me a card for a free cup of coffee. I didn’t take it.

“What’s the catch?” I asked.

“No catch,” said Bill. “Our company loves its customers and this is how they show appreciation. Take one — no catch, honest.”

So I did and after I had my cappuccino in hand, I took Bill’s photo and said I’d put him on my blog.

Why? I like refreshingly good marketing — and coffee.

I needed to reprogram my thermostat, so I carried my iPad over to it and looked up the product name in order to find the manual online.

Ha! The company’s Website looked good on my iPad but for some reason I couldn’t access the drop down menus, nor could I find a sitemap link on the home page.

I had to boot up my Mac to navigate the site. If I hadn’t needed the manual, I would have ditched this company and its site seconds after encountering it on my iPad.

Here’s the deal: Apple sold 8 million iPads last quarter. It sold 15 million iPads last year. It sold 4 million iPhone 4ses in the first 24 hours.

That’s a lot of mobile devices people, and judging from what I see simply walking around in the world (e.g. the mall, restaurants, airport, grocery store, etc.), these iPad- / iPhone-toting people use them — a lot. I’m finding that I leave my Mac turned off unless I need it to do work and am using my iPad for everything else.

Before purchasing my toaster oven, for example, I researched prices on my iPad and then called the store closest to me to make sure they had one in stock. If this company’s Website hadn’t “worked” on my iPad, they would have lost a sale — without knowing it.

To make sure your Website works on the iPad or any mobile device, you can do the following:

Ask your Web designer to look at your site on all devices. This is something I do for clients as part of my value add even though I’m not a designer. Personally, I think all designers should have these devices for testing sites before they go live as it’s part of their job. #justsayin

Make sure you can access pages if you have drop down menus. I had a similar problem to RiteTemp when I first converted my site to WordPress and couldn’t navigate my site using my iPhone. I fixed that pretty fast.

Put your phone number at the top of every page of your site. Crazy busy people (and we all are) don’t want to spend the extra seconds hunting around for your phone number — especially if they’re on a smart phone. Put your number at the top of every page and no matter where they land on your site, they’ll have it. They can then “touch to call” you. Easy.

Ditto for email.

Test carts and downloads. If you sell stuff on your site, test your shopping cart to make sure it’s easy to buy stuff. If you have reports or other PDF documents, make sure people can easily download them, save them to the iBooks app — and most important — open them. I downloaded one PDF from a company and couldn’t save it as it was “password protected,” which necessitated a call to the company.

Do you have an iPad or iPhone? What are some of your Website pet peeves that you’ve encountered using these devices? Feel free to post them below.

Last night I met three other bloggers at the Publicity Club of New England’s “Blogger Relations for PR Pros” event.

You can read the Tweet stream to see some of the questions and comments. The questions were really good and everyone was engaged.

It was good for me to get out and meet other bloggers and to hear what PR pros are trying to accomplish. The one thing I learned, that wasn’t brought up at the meeting, is this: When you’re pitching bloggers, you definitely need a strategy.

You need to determine what your news is and which type of blogger you should be pitching. A huge difference exists between a blogger at a news agency or publication and someone like me. The news agency blogger needs content all day long. This person is following Twitter all day looking for trends and breaking news.

Someone like myself, on the other hand, needs a post or two a week — or maybe even less than that. I’m definitely not on Twitter all day because if I were, I’d never get any work done. My blogging objective isn’t to post breaking news.

To be successful at pitching bloggers, you definitely need to take this into account when developing your strategy and your objectives.

The panel, of which I was a part, featured four bloggers: two from actual news agencies, a food blogger who blogs at night after her day job, and myself — a crazy busy marketing consultant who blogs when I can squeeze it in.

All of us love blogging. All of us want to feature great content and great stories.

But all of us have different objectives and focus and needs, which is why it pays to develop a strategy first. This doesn’t have to be time consuming or even difficult. You’ll want to answer the following questions:

• What is the real news and who is our target audience?
• Why is this news important to them and what benefit is it to them to read it?
• What action (if any) do we want them to take once they read our news?
• Who are the bloggers and reporters in our space who might find this news of interest and who either reach or influence our audience? What is the best way to contact them? (This doesn’t have to be a huge list to be effective, by the way.)
• What will constitute success and how will we measure it?

That’s it.

Thank you to the New England Publicity Club (@PubClubofNE) for having me as a guest, and thank you to my fellow panelists, Jason Keith (@jaykeith), Rachel L. Blumenthal (@blumie), and Greg Gomer (@sliggity). This was one of the better events I’ve attended, mostly because I learned a lot, plus I came away with a great deal of respect for bloggers and PR pros alike.

And a special thank you to Jennifer McDowell, my rep at BusinessWire, who rescued me. I left my wallet at home; she graciously loaned me the cash to get out of the parking lot.

Katie Meurin, of Komarketing Associates, an SEO firm, posted a stat that I found interesting in her post, “15 Content Marketing and Social Media Takeaways from the B2B Marketing Summit.”

Of the 79% of B2B marketers using social media, only 28% use a blog.

If you’re a B2B company using social media, including Twitter, FB or LinkedIn, then a blog should definitely be part of your strategy. Why do I say this?

Simply put, a blog is how you easily, quickly and cost-effectively create fresh content on a regular basis. And if you’re using social media anyway, why not use these tools to get people back to your Website via this content?

Unlike an e-newsletter, which has its own specific format and publication schedule (generally once or twice a month), a blog gives you a number of benefits as it allows you to:

1. Respond to news and industry events as they happen — This is especially good if you work in an industry where timely response can position you as a thought leader and/or expert. I had one prospect say, for example, “Yeah, we wish we had a blog because so much has been happening in our space. We need to write about it.” A once-a-month newsletter, while good, doesn’t give you this timeliness.

2. Post customer stories / pictures — If you manufacture products and then install them at customer sites, you can take photos and post these to your blog along with a testimonial. In many cases, these photos and testimonials are much easier to obtain (and cheaper, too), than a case study.

3. Answer customers’ questions — If you’re like many small business owners or marketers, you probably hear the same questions repeatedly. You can write blog posts answering these questions. Or, consider using one of your engineers or product specialists and creating an “Ask Bob,” type of column where Bob answers technical or other types of questions. (Bob doesn’t have to actually write it — you, the marketer, can write it but get the info from him.)

Tip: Go through your Google Analytics keyword report to see what types of “How to” searches you’re getting and create “Ask Bob” posts from those, too.

4. Publicize your reports, case studies, company news, etc. — A blog is a great place to post your new content as people can link to it, retweet it, etc. Also mix in news about your company, including tradeshows you’re attending, new products, and anytime your company is featured in a mainstream or industry publication.

5. Show your personality — The one thing I love about working with small companies is the fact that they have so much personality. Once I get to know the owners and/or marketers, I hear all kinds of neat stories about the company and the owners themselves.

These stories make great blog posts. Why? Because people do business with people they trust. As you post more about the people inside your company, the people who read your blog get to know you. As they get to know you, they build trust in you so that when they’re ready to do business with you, they already feel as if they know you.

So instead of posting pictures of your building (zzzzzzzzz) or sticking with safe but really boring bios of your management team on the “About Us” page, let your hair down a little bit and post what’s happening inside your company. That’s the stuff people like to read — and keeps them coming back for more.

Notice I didn’t say that having a blog helps your content show up in the search engines. Yes, yes, yes, that’s a benefit, but it’s not the main reason you should write one. Writing for search engines means you’re writing for a bot, not people, and bot-driven, keyword dense content is pretty yucky, in my opinion.

What other benefits can a small B2B company derive from having a well-written blog? Leave your comments below.

Edited to add: Just read this great article by Robert Rose in the Chief Content Officer Magazine, “Best Practices . . . mediocre results” about why focusing on ROI can suffocate your “escape from the herd” thinking. He gives a great example of how this type of thinking killed what was going to be a great company blog.

I would definitely attend the Publicity Club of New England’s October 19, 2011 program, “Blogger Relations for PR Pros,” even if I weren’t on the panel. That’s because I’m on the receiving end of a lot of really bad pitches.

I’m really glad that the Publicity Club asked me to be on the panel, however, because I have quite a bit to say about the topic.

I don’t bill myself as a PR pro, but I’ve had to do my fair share of PR for clients. Just two weeks ago, for example, I had to contact editors and reporters of trade publications to invite them to my client’s tradeshow booth (hint: I had better luck with the phone than I did email). So trust me, I know how hard your job is.

If you are a PR pro, and you want to know how to get the attention of a blogger like me, my number one piece of advice is this:

STOP SEEING ME AS A FRICKEN NEWS AGENCY.

Ok, whew. I’m glad I got that off my chest.

Here’s the skinny, PR pros. Spend just a minute or two on my blog and you’ll see that it’s part of my Website. Click around on my site and you’ll see — in about 10 seconds — that I’m a B2B Web marketing consultant. Heck, it even says that in my header of my site.

What does this mean? It means that I make a living as a consultant / copywriter doing billable work for clients.

It means I’m not Reuters, the AP, or Mashable where I post “breaking news” and content all day every day. All you have to do is look at how often I post (like two to three times a month) to know this about me.

Because I’m a consultant, and because I’m great at what I do, I’m crazy busy. And, like most everyone these days, I’m overwhelmed with email. When your untargeted, poorly written email hits my overflowing inbox, I delete it immediately — without reading it — as I can usually tell by the subject line whether or not you’ve even looked at my blog.

If you are a PR pro, perhaps you can tell me why I was sent a pitch concerning Xtract Research, which is a company that deals in research for financial institutions (I think).

Does the company know what the PR pro is doing on its behalf? And, how does this PR person report his / her results of such poorly targeted pitching?

If you’re a PR Pro who wants great results for your clients, I’ve got a few tips for how you can reach a busy blogger like me:

1. Do your homework.

It shouldn’t take you very long to see what I write about: B2B Web marketing, SEO and social media. I don’t post much industry news as lots of other bloggers already do that. So I’m not really interested in news, products or content that doesn’t relate to what I write about.

2. Get to know me.

As you can see by my comment stream, those who read my blog are pretty engaged. I do make a concerted effort to get to know the “regulars” who leave comments. I follow them on Twitter or G+, have added their blogs to my blog roll and as time permits, read their stuff. You can become part of my community by leaving a thoughtful comment or two. I’ll notice this way more than your email pitch.

3. Help me do my job better.

I blog because I love it, not because I’m trying to be an industry publication or to get my content in the search engines for particular keywords. I’m pretty busy — and as you can surmise from my irregular posting schedule, I post when I have the time.

You can help me by emailing me topics or tidbits that I and — this is key — MY READERS might find interesting. Two or three sentences will do. But before you do this, be sure and read points #1 and #2 again.

If you’ve gotten this far reading my rant, thank you for listening. If you’re a PR pro in the Boston area and want to learn how to reach stressed and/or cranky bloggers, be sure to attend the Publicity Club of New England’s program. And if you do read my blog and you’re attending the meeting, be sure to introduce yourself to me. I’d love to meet you.

You can also follow me on Facebook — I’ve started posting “Blogger Relations” tips.

I went into business the same year that Apple went into near-bankruptcy. Because of this, I made the decision to go PC, even though I loved Apple computers and had used one at my corporate job. It seemed like the smart thing to do.

I spent the next 12 1/2 years cursing Windows, Microsoft and PCs and spent way too much time battling viruses, computer crashes and lots of other things I don’t care to remember.

Then one day about a year ago, malware took over my PC — and my printer and scanner, too. “That’s it,” I said. “I’ve had it.” My son and I already had a date to buy him a MacBook; instead, I bought two. The second one, for me, was a total impulse purchase I made in about three minutes. I’ve never looked back.

I love my MacBook not because it works — which it does, every single god damned day — but because it’s beautiful. I run my hands over its sleek body. My fingers move quickly over the keys that don’t clack. Even crappy Websites look good on the high resolution screen. With my Mac I can work anywhere — from my bed to Starbucks — and do what I do best: create. Steve gave me and others that gift.

Good bye, Steve. Thank you designing beautiful products and for your service here on earth.

I started reading Getting Past Ok: The Self-Help Book for People Who Don’t Need Help, by Richard Brodie last week. I picked it up not because I need help (in fact, I’ve sworn off self-help books and instead am relying on my own judgment) but because Richard Brodie is a name regularly bandied about in our home. Brodie, in case you don’t know, wrote the first version of MS Word and retired rich.

Family friends of ours are friends with Brodie and due to this connection, my son, who is a total geek, was able to meet the famous Brodie at their house one night when he spent the night. He and Brodie took an instant liking to each other. (My son attracts intelligent adults the way his bedroom floor attracts his dirty clothes — like a magnet. It’s rather amazing.)

I’ve actually had Brodie’s book for a while, but due to the aforementioned ban on self-help books, it was gathering dust on my shelf. Another friend had passed along the URL to Randy Gages’ e-book, Accept Your Abundance, where Gages mentions Brodie in passing. I had no clue Brodie’s tentacles reached so far and wide, so I started reading his book.

In the book, Brodie talks about what makes up our truths and belief systems and how memes — pieces of information that get replicated — become the basis of our belief systems. (If you’re short on time, you can bypass his whole book and just follow his advice in the last sentence of the first chapter: trust yourself. You don’t need a self-help guru to tell you what’s right and wrong.)

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been on a social media hiatus, which started when G+ came out. I remember thinking at the time, “You know what? I’m a little overwhelmed with social media and need a break.” So I took one — without telling anyone even though a social media “truth” is that you’re supposed to tell everyone when you’re taking a break.

This break gave me time to think through the memes that I’ve bought into with regard to social media.

• “Because I’m in marketing, I have to be a social media expert.”
• “I have to produce content on a regular basis.”
• “I have to be ‘on’ 24/7.”
• “I have to be a thought-leader.”
• “My content isn’t that great if it’s not getting retweeted or reposted all the time.”
• “I need to read all the experts out there and keep abreast of all the new trends.”

After thinking about these memes and how they’ve upended my business and personal life, I came up with some new truths:

• “Social media has been fantastic for my business but I don’t need to be connected to it 24/7.”
• “It’s ok to do social media my way versus how I’m being told to do it by the experts.”
• “Less is more: More time, better quality work, more business.”
• “Tuning out the social media hype has allowed me to focus what’s really important to me: building the type of business that reflects who I am and my values.”
• “Social media is based on the old-fashioned value of forming caring, trusting connections and relationships with others.”
• “Forming relationships and connections is not new. I’ve been doing it since before social media and indeed, the Internet, came into existence.”
• “I’ve made some real connections with people that I highly value and these connections have absolutely nothing to do with scores, or numbers of followers or RTs or any of that stuff.”
• “My strongest connections are with those people I’ve connected with offline and with whom I’ve built trusting, solid relationships.”
• “Many of these people have become clients; all of them have become friends.”

Someone I’m following on G+ posted a link to an article about how social media is driving the publication of too much content, much of which isn’t very good. I found myself nodding in agreement.

During my hiatus, I found myself vowing to stop posting so much stuff in order to meet someone’s definition of a social media “truth.” Instead, I’ll post when I have something to say — and that I think you might find interesting. This means I’ll be posting irregularly — versus regularly, which is another one of those memes we’ve all bought into. I’d like to spark more discussion and hopefully, more connection.

What do you think? Are you overwhelmed by social media? Have you taken a break? Do you find yourself doing more of it or less? What are your social media truths and are they yours or someone else’s? Leave your comments below.