To that end, we teach clients that best practice is to have a rich, informative, and consistently flowing social feed comprised of at least 80% non-branded content, 20% branded. But where, oh sweet social media community manager in heaven, where does that 80% come from?

Many modern day community managers have dynamic job descriptions that span reputation monitoring, orchestrating feed content, publication management, and handling intra-community bloodshed and brand crises.

It’s not feasible to spend hours each day hunting down topical articles, videos, and infographics worth tweeting and posting to Facebook. Agency CMs who spread themselves across multiple communities with which they may be more or less unfamiliar are at more of a disadvantage.

The solution: Automated content aggregation!

No, we don’t mean turning on a robot at a desk and letting it run the show. Tisk tisk. But there are fabulous tools to be leveraged for streamlining the aggregation of top-shelf content that can then be generously shared with your B2B community. Gone are the days of scouring the Web for quality content your community will dig!

Here’s a run-through of some tremendous content aggregators that make locating awesome content to share fun and incredibly easy.

First thing’s first. Look to classic keyword research and social demographic research for keen insight on how your target audience talks about your company’s goods and services, and what their own interests and hobbies are. Focus on the short-tail keywords and map those babies to some or all of the aggregators below.

AllTop

Whenever we speak at conferences on the importance of content aggregation, we’re astounded to learn that some marketers and community managers still don’t know about AllTop. This is the mother of all content aggregators!

­­AllTop operates on preset categories, so you actually don’t have to be too inventive with how you navigate the site or surf for content. Ten main categories break down into dozens upon dozens of subcategories, and each subcategory is a portal for a heaping pile of topical blog feeds with links to the five most recent posts.

Libraries, for example, is a subcategory under “Interests.” Check out the loot:

You can get lost for centuries cruising around all the fresh posts and photos… or you can spend five minutes in the morning with your cup of coffee and skim the goods, bookmark a handful links, then sprinkle them with thoughtful editorial in your corporate B2B tweet-stream throughout the day. Heck, you can even schedule the tweets, check in periodically for @mentions, and focus on another task at hand.

Buzzfeed

Want to share something fresh, fabulous, popular, and trending with your community? Skip on over to Buzzfeed, one of a few homes for “the hottest, most social content on the Web.”

Links on Buzzfeed have a serious propensity to go viral, or are OMG-famous already. Spend a few minutes plugging in keywords or targets from social demographic research to hone in on tasty, topical content your target audience will love.

Note: Everyone loves adorable cat / puppy / sloth / red panda / furry animals in general photos. Everyone.

Pinterest

Oh yeah, we went there. The trendy social bookmarking darling many B2B brands think “just isn’t for them” actually has a variety of uses beyond powerful content aggregation.

But for starters, go ahead! Stick in some interests or keywords related to your community or business. See if there’s nothing there for you to scope out. Odds are, there’s a gem or two, at least.

Factor in social endorsements. Look for content with an intersection of quality, relevance, and repins, likes, and comments.

Special Bonus: Pinterest for Friend-Making & Cunning Competitive Intelligence

So… did you find a cool piece of relevant content pinned by someone you don’t know? Check out PinReach to learn a little more about him or her. Enter a profile URL, identify their far-reaching pins, popular pins are, and more. Perhaps this is an authority user you should begin wooing…

In the mood for a little reconnaissance? Go here now! http://pinterest.com/source/COMPETITORWEBSITE.com.

Behold: Everything anyone in the world has pinned from your competitors’ sites. Are your corporate rivals doing something you’re not? Creating or rebroadcasting hot content you’re not? Use their activity and engagement for inspiration. Devise a counter-attack… and strike!

Happy sharing, hunting, sleuthing, and friending.

As an attendee, you’ll absorb rich information from true thought-leader s– info you can bring back to the office so the whole team stays on the cutting-edge of technologies, trends, tactics, and techniques specific to your biz.

As a blogger, you’ll churn out a ton of valuable content sure to beef up your B2B publication (fresh traffic, readers, links, hooray!) and get on the radar of the conference organizers and speakers (because who doesn’t like when their genius is favorably promoted?).

And lest we forget: The bevy of after-hours networking events, opportunities to mingle with industry rockstars and soak up some juicy secrets of the trade….

So yes, congratulations. You’ve got the green light to attend cover dominate B2B conferences. And. You. Are. Stoked.

But Where Do You Begin? What Tools Do You Need?

The exact contents of any conference blogger’s arsenal will vary depending on who you are and what show you’re at. But there are some tried and true goodies every conference attendee should have on hand, or at least have access to.

Read on for a list of essential 10 tools that help ensure ultimate coverage and optimal experience.

1.  Conference Agenda + CTRL+F (Or Command+F)

First things first. Before the show kicks off, you want to know where you’ll be going, what you’ll be seeing, and who will be doing what. That means cozying up with the conference agenda for at minimum a day prior to the opening keynote. Put on a pot of coffee or open a bottle of wine and pour over the event homepage, list of speakers, and day-to-day agenda.

Get a little CTRL / Command + F action going on… find names of speakers you recognize and keywords in session titles or descriptions that may be of interest to you and your social community (“Mobile,” “Local SEO,” “B2B,” “Social,” etc). Plan your coverage schedule accordingly.

We’d actually recommend doing this well in advance for a few reasons:

• With a comfortable understanding of how the conference is laid out, you’ll feel less frazzled in when you get there.
• You can start talking about the conference before it even begins. Follow the event hashtag, tweet to see who’s also attending, get on the radar of the conference organizers and speakers.
• Publish a blog post with a schedule of the sessions you plan to cover… simple, fresh content that plugs the event and showcases your excitement and dedication.

2.  Notepad & Excel

Without a doubt must-haves for turning live-tweets into rockstar conference coverage. Scrape tweets, sanitize formatting, reorder tweets, remove junk, connect the dots, and behold! A stunning showcase of the pearls and gems shared by speakers mere moments ago.

3.  Digital Camera / Smartphone

Nothing says, “Hey, I was there!” quite like a crystal clear photo snapped by your very own hand. Keep a digital camera or smartphone nearby and don your field journalist hat. Snap pictures in the expo hall, crowded keynote ballrooms, of the speakers, of attendees, or the guy who made you coffee in the convention center lobby.

Post them to Twitter, Facebook, or save them for your blog posts. Your online community wants to feel like they’re with you, so take them along.

4.  Irfan View / Pixelmator

If you do decide to save the photos for your conference coverage blog posts, show them a little extra TLC before releasing them to the masses.

A quick run through a streamlined image editing program a la Irfan View (free, super stripped down, for PC) or Pixelmator (cheap, more features, for Mac) can turn an ordinary photo into a glamorous feast for the eyes.

Crank saturation, tweak contrast, up the brightness, and resize appropriate for your blog in a snap. Quality images from the frontline will only add authenticity and value to your coverage.

5.  Hotspot

Any conference blogger will tell you, convention center wi-fi ain’t always so good. It’s no discredit to the conference organizers – a ton of people are clamoring to hook up to the Internet, and there’s only so much bandwidth in the universe.

Pack a Hotspot or similar wi-fi device in your laptop bag and activate it when the conf signal gets weak going gets tough. Share the password with a neighbor to make a friend for life.

6.  Power Splitter

Speaking of friends for life, nothing solidifies absolute devotion and loyalty (or, at least gratitude) like giving the gift of electricity to a conference attendee in need. Power outlets are precious. Should you be the shining savoir brandishing a gadget that turns one outlet into multiple, be prepared for an instant spike in popularity.

7.  Comfortable Shoes

Some conferences have a dress code, typically business casual. Do yourself a favor – wear something presentable, but leave the spike heels and sole-destroying (get it?!) dress boots at home. We’re not suggesting scuffed Reeboks from yesteryear. Go with some conservative and comfortable (repeat, comfortable) kicks that compliment your snazzy ensemble.

Break time between sessions is sometimes as little as 15 minutes, and you want to get to your next room as early as possible to ensure a seat at the head of the class. Choose comfy kicks. Seriously.

8.  Granola Bars

Or some similar snack that suits your taste-buds. Ask any conference blogger… food can become a coveted item during these events, and many media members skip lunch to meet deadlines and publish timely posts. Chuck a couple granola bars or high-protein yummies in your bag and avoid fainting mid-PowerPoint presentation.

9.  5 Hour Energy

Whether you down it before heading out to a star-studded networking event or nurse it the next morning to stave off a hangover amp up for the day, these little babies come in handy when your fuel tank is running low.

10.  Thick Skin

Believe it or not, not all people appreciate conference coverage. If you’re live-tweeting, some followers may complain about the frequency of your updates. Some folks may totally disagree with philosophies or teachings you rebroadcast from various speakers. Some people are just hate-spewing trolls. Get over it!

Shake off the Negative Nancys and remember: You’re doing an awesome service for your company, industry, community, and the conference itself. So chin up, and go get ‘em!

But where there’s people, there’s opinions. And there was something about that article’s point or perspective that didn’t sit quite right with some of your community members…

Yes – while you, the good-intentioned B2B Community Manager, were fast asleep in your bed, dreaming of sunshine and pussycats and holistic befriending in cyberspace, that benign Facebook post begat a runaway comment thread. Now, it’s spiraling out of control, a mass of aggressive debates, all pouring in the gate faster than you can mediate, or even monitor.

Your community members are at each other’s throats. What do you do?

Discussing digital crises, from prevention tactics to boots-on-the-ground management, can give some companies the willies. They don’t want to imagine living in a world where consumers have negative brand experiences and broadcast said negative experiences across the Internet.

We find most reticence to discuss the darker side of social media often comes from the B2B end of the spectrum — companies that may be a bit more buttoned up and a bit less familiar with letting their community do the talking for them.

The hard truth is it doesn’t matter how anxious the subject makes you. Social community crises and/or conflicts happen whether or not your company is comfortable addressing them. Best to prepare yourself for such an event, so when it does happen for real, you’re ready to take the helm with a cool head and calculating hand.

Tomorrow morning, should you log into your business Facebook page to find a runaway Facebook comment thread, consider this 5-point action plan and address the issue with confidence, grace, and master-ninja authority.

1.  Keep Calm

Sounds irritatingly obvious, but skip this crucial first step and good luck trying to follow the rest. No matter how nasty the comment thread has become, keep reminding yourself that no one died (unless your product, service or company actually killed someone, then… call the lawyers), and this is something you can handle.

You’re not a headless chicken, you’re a professional! And ninety percent of the time, you won’t even be dealing with a true crisis, but more of a conflict. Go ahead and toss that word “crisis” out the window when thinking about the issue, it will instantly shave a few digits off your blood pressure.

2.  Identify Intent

Scan the thread to get the general themes and tone of the conversation. Get an understanding of the main characters in the conflict – is the thread a stream of new people dropping by to share their two cents on the controversy? Or is it more a group of two, four, six community members coming back repeatedly to expand their arguments? Are things getting personal, maybe inappropriate? Or is it a healthy, albeit heated, debate?

This knowledge will come in handy while you make your next moves as the community’s Master of Ceremonies, not to mention when you debrief the upper-ups (or client, if you’re an agency doing the community management). Either way, it’s just good practice to know who’s who and what’s going on in your cyber microcosm.

3.  Monitor Diligently

The deep B2B Community Manager is the voice of her brand, but she’s just as much the eyes and the ears. That means always having a finger on the pulse of the community, in good times and bad. All serious CMs should be armed with a smartphone if possible, for tackling (among many other things) emergencies and overall active crowd control on-the-go.

Real-time alerts are essential. If you’re a registered admin of your Facebook page, you can opt to receive email notifications when people post to, comment on, or message your page. Facebook will simply send alerts right to your FB-associated email address. Simple enough.

For whatever reason, if you don’t have an email address associated with the Facebook page in question, and access to said email account isn’t the easiest, you can always leverage third-party tools. I’m a fan of Hyper Alerts. You can track by Facebook account (which, we know in this hypothetical case, would be inconvenient / impossible), or track by URL.

Yup, just enter the URL for any Facebook page under the sun and receive timely email alerts (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or as soon as possible) whenever a post or comment is made to that page. *Cough* killer competitive intelligence *nose tap* *wink* *elbow nudge* *more winks* *creepy smile*.

4.  Keep Out Of It (Until You No Longer Can)

Yes, diligent monitoring is vital, and community managers should always be ready to step in and mediate as needed. But some conversations, however controversial, are better left uninterrupted. As the page owner and as the poster of the content in question, you’re the host of the debate. You don’t have to take sides, you don’t have to participate at all.

Let the thread uncoil naturally– let your community members vent, rant, make and defend their cases. Provided no one’s getting picked on, even the most intense exchanges can create value for the community by illuminating different perspectives. If nothing else, it’s spirited engagement. That said… onto the final action point…

5. Prune Accordingly

If people do start getting nasty, kick them out. It’s your page, it’s your space. Remove comments and ban fans as you and your company see fit. Weigh all comments against your Social Community House Rules (which you should have established before the cyber-stuff hits the fan).

If someone’s breaking the rules, eliminate them – they don’t deserve the privilege of interacting in your community. Keep the thread of constructive criticism intact, and prune for troll-spew nonsense.

Post inspired by one SEL post’s truly tweet-tastic comment thread.

One solution is to attend a few industry conferences, conventions, trade shows, seminars, or networking events throughout the year and churn out rockstar blog coverage on behalf of your company.

Covering events in your B2B industry by way of live-tweets and blog posts is a surefire way to amplify your content and link building strategies, not to mention help establish your brand as an active, engaged, beloved contributor to your B2B community.

The influx of fresh, unique, valuable content, showcased on Twitter and your company blog will attract new eyeballs from interested readers / potential subscribers, customers, and evangelists. More social shares of content from your blog mean more positive social signals sent to the search engines, and impressive coverage can definitely garner inbound links from a variety of relevant sites.

Another great perk of covering industry event is you don’t have to be the thought-leader; you just have to be quick enough, deep enough, and caffeinated enough to rebroadcast the gems, jewels, and pearls of wisdom thought-leaders in your industry share straight from the podium.

Live bloggers in the front row @SMX

Live Tweeting

Live-tweeting is a terrific means to get the goods to the masses in real-time. Instant coverage is welcomed and appreciated by folks who can’t attend, and shows the community you’re a trusted and reliable source to follow during that (and future) events.

The crown jewels of conference coverage, however, are the comprehensive recaps you post to your B2B blog. Real(ish)-time blogging might seem more daunting than live-tweeting, but it doesn’t have to be– and you can provide both real-time tweet coverage to the community as well as follow up (same day) write-ups that serve as stand-alone, powerful resources and live on your company blog.

Follow this 7-step guide to turning live-tweet coverage into rockstar conference blog coverage and you’ll be well on your way. It provides maximum harmony between quality and efficiency so you can deliver amazing work without burning yourself out.

1.  Scrape Tweets

Step 1 is really ”Live-tweet the heck out of a conference session,” but let’s assume you already did that.

• Go to your Twitter.com profile and with your cursor, highlight every tweet from that session.

Naturally, the initial bits of coverage will be towards the bottom of the page and the closing tweets will be towards the top. So…

• Scroll back as far as you have to to reach the first tweet of the session.
• Once you have every shred of live-tweet coverage highlighted, copy onto clipboard.

2.  Sanitize Formatting

• Paste into Notepad on a Windows machine, TextEdit on a Mac.
• Notepad automatically strips formatting from where you copied the content. If you’re working in TextEdit, click “Format” -> “Make Plain Text”.

This will remove things like your avatar, hyperlinks, and other messy nonessentials from the web.

3.  Remove The Junk

Sanitizing format won’t strip all messy nonessentials, such as timestamps, your Twitter handle, or hashtags. So…

• Copy your text from the notepad into a Word document and get ready to prune some more.
• Take a look at what’s there in abundance and should be hacked out.
• Do mass “find” (CTRL / Command F) for what you want to hack and “replace” with a single space bar. This will, in effect, remove those nonessentials.

Remember, we’re going for efficiency here. When you approach step 4 and start to turning the tweets into a blog post, you’ll want as little filler present as possible. Sanitizing format and removing the junk will leave you with the Grade A Top Choice meat of the tweets.

4.  Reverse The Timeline

Now you have a long list of tweets from your session, fat trimmed and ready for business. Only one problem: They’re in reverse-chronological order! To quickly flip the timeline of your tweets, head to Excel.

• Paste your tweets in Column B.
• In Column A, fill in the numbers, 1, 2, 3, etc – one number per cell.
• Select your three numbered cells and drag the corner down to the cell next to your last tweet. The numbers are what we will use to reverse the tweets.
• Highlight Column A, click the “Sort” button.

Et voilà! Column A should house a stream of numbers, largest to smallest, and Column B should house a stream of your tweets, from the start to the finish of the session. Next…

• Copy Column B, paste back in your notepad to remove formatting carried over from Excel.

5.  Dump In Backend Of Blog

• Paste tweets from notepad in the WYSIWYG of your blog.
• Make a fresh pot of coffee or pop open a can of Mountain Dew. Now onto the fun part.

6.  Connect The Dots

Just as infants don’t come out of the womb ready to discuss Einstein’s theory of relativity, live-tweets aren’t ready to thrive in the blogosphere without a little TLC.

Connect the dots between each individual tweet– each individual thought, tactic, tip, and takeaway– until you’re left with cohesive, sensical content. Make it flow. Add transitions, clarification, (perhaps even mild humor!) where appropriate. If you’re a strong live-tweeter and the speaker delivered a strong presentation, there really shouldn’t be too much work to do in this step.

7.  Polish Formatting

Make it look like a blog post.

• Add images, whether stock or photos from the show
• Link to speakers’ names or companies, if so desired
• Break up dense paragraphs with bullet points or numbered lists (like this one!)
• Add sub-headers to indicate new topics
• Bold important tips

Use blockquotes to hammer home significant takeaways, or as another way to spice up the aesthetic of the post.

Ah yes, there is one final step to this guide:

8.  Have Fun!

It’s one thing to showcase news, events, or other industry contributions of note on a company blog or a business Facebook page or trickle it in a corporate Twitter stream. But if branded content completely saturates social properties, the good-intentioned company runs the risk of boring, irritating, and even alienating its online community.

This is far from breaking news—it’s just another fundamental of social interactions: No one will like you if all you do is talk about yourself.

Map that to blogging and social media— broadcasting branded content 24/7 isn’t sharing, it’s blaring. It’s an ineffective way to connect with current or potential customers, and could result in lost sales or would-be brand evangelists. (Did your CEO’s ears just perk up?)

Despite these teachings, some exceptionally stubborn, self-centered, or simply buttoned-up B2B or B2C brands remain hard to convince, panicked at the suggestion to share content made by “some other company!” no matter how valuable the content or non-competitive the source may be.

Despite how beautifully social we know B2B companies can be, it seems they can also be the harder of the two to get on board. Perhaps resisting parties fail to see the point, or feel uncomfortable, discouraged, even threatened by the sudden shift in spotlight.

Whatever the reason, it’s the diligent B2B community manager’s duty to try her hardest to get her company on board. She knows a harmonious blend of branded and non-self-promotional content must be achieved to create and sustain an engaged audience.

So, what’s the compromise?

Here’s one solution: Re-share content shared by others but repurposed by you! In other words, become an industry conference blogging rockstar.

Providing coverage of industry conferences, expos, trade shows, conventions, seminars, and networking events is an extremely powerful way to:

• Contribute topical, valuable, authoritative content to your community…
• Without being obnoxiously and perpetually self-promotional…
• While remaining the author of the material you’re sharing.

You don’t have to be the luminary or thought-leader or undisputed master of your field – you just have to be there when those folks get together and dish their two cents on breaking news, developments, emerging technologies, trends, or other special techniques, tactics, and takeaways that apply to your specific B2B industry.

It’s a titillating trifecta!

1. Boss is happy you’re posting content created by the company.
2. Community is appreciative of the wealth of information
3. Community manager’s glad to be learning new things while establishing the brand as a participating and knowledgeable force in the biz.

Now, onto tactics and best practices.

If you’ve got the bandwidth, it’s ideal to live-tweet events, much like an on-the-scene journalist, delivering immediate reporting and feedback to the readers at home (aka your online community), and support this on-the-fly coverage with comprehensive write-ups to be posted on a company blog, then syndicated across branded social channels.

The live-tweets are what help garner instant attention and popularity, while the blog posts provide long-lasting value as proprietary resources for the community that can have legs well beyond the event itself (not to mention draw traffic to the mothership and associated social assets).

Want to up the ante? Arm yourself with a flip cam or other portable recording device to capture rich multimedia content you can feed your community. This doesn’t have to be a Hollywood production – snag a few minutes of footage in the expo hall (if permitted!) or casual interviews with speakers and attendees. Embed in blog posts, post to YouTube, share on Facebook, the works.

Here are some more killer tips for optimal coverage:

• Create an Excel database or Google calendar that keeps track of industry events (and any corresponding event #hashtags) in your area (or around the world, if you have the budget!). From mainstream conventions to casual meet-ups (even online tweet-ups), be aware of what’s going on and attend when you can.

Don’t know where to start? Scope out Yahoo’s B2B directory, filtering down to get the skinny on Tradeshows and Conferences. Check out prominent industry publications, forums, and other online social circles to see where the cool kids hang out. Seriously lost? Go ahead and Google “[industry] conference” (add [city] for regional results). Do your homework. Get involved.

• Create keyword columns in TweetDeck or a Twitter client of choice that track hashtags specific to events of interest. Follow conversations ongoing – before, during, and after. Participating in conversations before the event can help pave the way for smoother social interactions IRL. Monitoring during certainly gives you a deep look at what’s going on real-time. Take note of what other companies are tweeting up a storm. Are they your competitors, or non-foes worth befriending? Are they doing anything differently, better, are they getting Retweeted more? Learn from them. (Then, either befriend them… or destroy them!) Keep tabs on conversations after to learn what’s happening next for a given event and its following.

• Create an Excel database of speakers for events you plan to follow. Include significant information such as name, current place of employment, job title, Twitter handle, follower count, and links to other social profiles. Get to know the conference participants before you show up to the party. Don’t be afraid to reach out before, during,  or after a presentation with a friendly @mention thanking speakers for their insight. You may be surprised by the response.

• Use event hashtags as often as possible. This is not limited to tweets! Stick that hashtag in the title of a blog post that covers an event or conference session—just make it gel (ex: “25 Groundbreaking Takeaways from #B2BIndustryConferenceX 2012″). When you or any other interested community member rebroadcasts / retweets your post, it will milk the exposure of that hashtag in a non-spammy way (because hey, your post is about #B2BIndustryConferenceX, is it not?).

Don’t believe the serious value rockstar coverage of an industry event can deliver? Keep an eye on the #SMX hashtag and surrounding coverage for this week’s convention in San Jose… and try not to faint.

Fiction! Fiction, I say! Clever marketers embrace the opportunity to market B2B because they recognize and respect the challenge it embodies: To make the ostensibly boring not only saleable, but beautiful.

The good news is this is a goal any ambitious marketer can achieve. Even you. All you needs is a creative mind (or team of creative minds), willingness to think outside of the box, courage to test the legal department’s limits, about 90 minutes to spare, a fair amount of caffeine, and this trusty blueprint for more fruitful B2B ad creative brainstorms.

Ready? Here we go.

Lay Out The Literal (10 Minutes)

A great way to kick off ad copy brainstorms is to lay down the facts:

• What are we marketing?
• What are its features and benefits?
• What is the call-to-action?
• Who do we want to click?
• What keywords are being targeted?

Consider any proven key messaging that may already exist. Use it for insight and inspiration. Collate all the goods in a spreadsheet or map it out on a whiteboard.

Build Out Your Buckets (15 Minutes)

Once you’ve identified the information above, write the most literal ad ever. Now’s your chance to be boring. The goal is to isolate each element of the ad that conveys your message and assign it to a bucket.

If you’re selling virtual meeting software to businesses, a sample ad might read:

Virtual Meetings Software
Streamline remote conferences with
Powerful software you can afford.
www.SampleURL.com 

(I saw that yawn.)

Well actually, that ad wasn’t so terrible. But surely we can spice it up.

Buckets to create from this example might be “streamline,” “remote conferences,” “powerful,” “software,” and “afford.” You can also create buckets for any other concepts you want to convey that may have not made it into the ad– such as “top-rated,” “easy,” “trusted,” and the like.

When you have your buckets assigned, it’s time to build them out. Explore the rainbow… that is to say, the spectrum of how colorful you can be while remaining true to the brand, relevant to consumers and topical to keywords.

How many different ways can you say “best,” or “software”? Spend time on Thesaurus.com, or even with the Synonyms tool in MS Word. Bring in some team members to help. Two, three, four minds are better than one.

Once you have your beefed-up buckets, it’s time to write some ads.

(Intermission: Independent Ad Writing)

Reconvene & Review (30 Minutes)

Come together with your group and go over what you’ve come up with. Redline concepts that don’t work and highlight ones that sing. Then… fasten your seatbelts for some quality lightning round freak-out time.

Let Your Freak Flag Fly (10 Minutes)

Armed with your first round of ads, dedicate a controlled chuck of time being super silly, insanely out-of-the-box, one-too-many-cans-of-Mountain-Dew weird.

Channel your inner-target-customers. Rattle off headline concepts and body copy that play off their personalities, priorities, inside industry humor, concerns, vulnerabilities, fears, desires, and fantasies. During this lightning round, forget you have to run anything by legal (or a client) and just let your freak flag fly.

Aside from being a fantastic mental exercise and break from the norm, we find that these truly uninhibited brainstorms allow your mind to really connect with the end user, concocting ad concepts that are daringly honest, poignant, bizarre and unique.

When cooled down and polished with a sophisticated touch, the ultimate results can be massively effective and genuinely attention-catching.

Which leads us to… 

Co-Mingle The Literal & Maniacal (Time: 25 Minutes)

Attack a fresh round of ad writing with your new sideways concepts, tempering them with valuable messaging from your literal buckets (not to mention target keywords). A few additional rounds of redlining, highlighting, tweaking and optimizing should leave you with a glorious collection of ads worthy for client or legal department review.

Final Words of Advice: Remember Who You’re Writing For

This is search. You’re writing for two parties– the algorithm that decides what ads are displayed when a query is entered, and the human being who entered the query. Be creative, but calculating.

A literal, keyword-rich headline gives you freedom to play around with hyperbolic body copy. If you go for an edgier headline, make sure your body copy clarifies it, ideally with KWs in the upper left of the ad.

And there you have it! Now go sprinkle some chili powder in your coffee and get started.

Resolutions are just that – things we resolve to do, or… to do less of… typically after learning the hard way what we were doing didn’t work, and it’s high time to try something different.

Here’s a list of 6 New Year’s Resolutions for B2B Community Managers to consider while charging forth into 2012. Some ask the community manager to be more buttoned-down and calculating— others seek to draw out compassion and patience.

The overarching goal is to help mold a more actively engaged community manager, one who seamlessly blends both science and sensitivity on a daily basis.

1. I will establish realistic social KPIs. You cannot know if what you’re doing works, to what degree it works, and of equal importance – if it isn’t working – if you don’t have clearly established Key Performance Indicators. Willy-nilly tweeting and arbitrary Facebooking simply for the sake of participating in a hot channel is so 2008. Check out SEOmoz’s Tracking the KPIs of Social Media for an in-depth look at this crucial system of goals, metrics, and measurements. Be committed to creating thoughtful and attainable KPIs, executable strategies, diligent monitoring, and honest self-assessment.
2. I will appreciate quality over quantity. Social media is about making friends, but let’s be real… it’s chiefly about making sales. The intersection between these two concepts? Making social media friends who matter,i.e. socially engaged, ideally authoritative, like-minded people probable of evolving into friends, fans, customers– even willing and enthusiastic brand evangelists. Make a commitment to roll up your sleeves and kick it in their natural habitat, be it Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, or runaway forum comment threads.
3. I will make friends before selling. When you do identify watering holes populated with social media friends who matter, make a conscious effort to not hop into conversations wielding your 2012 Product Catalog like a Viking sword. A superb first social media tactic is to make friends before selling. Earn the trust, respect, and interest of your target friends by leaving your goods and services at the door, at least for a little while. Challenge yourself to not sell, even soft-sell, until the third or fourth touch. Remember: The best way to befriend someone is so do friendly things, which leads to…
4. I will listen. Simple, but absolutely essential. Listening to potential, existing, and even ex-customers is a crucial social media tactic every business must embrace if it aims to succeed. Consumers are leveraging platforms like Facebook and Twitter to be heard. Your job is to listen, engage, respond, and solve.
5. I will embrace the smiley face :) . If customers aren’t connecting with your brand to, despite your social media efforts, do a quick social media presence audit. Does your tweet stream read like a stuffy scrolling press release? Are the majority of your Facebook posts links to branded content? There are easy ways to make online voice more believable and beloved without sacrificing credibility. One way is to change up your voice (“We are proud to announce…” vs. “[Brand Name] is proud to announce…). Another is to make use of that little emoticon known as a smiley face. Even an exclamation point here and there can make all the difference. If you want consumer engagement, give your consumers an online personality worth engaging.
6. I will keep my cool in the face of foes. As you enter the New Year, make a resolution to keep your blood pressure low and your sanity intact. PR disasters and social media crises happen. Your job as the community manager is to be the calm, controlled, and composed face of the brand— during good times and bad. Bookmark the Community Manager’s Guide to Intra-Community Bloodshed for crowd-control tips and soothing mantras for when the going gets tough.

Happy New Year! 

There’s little room for pricy platforms with superfluous bells and whistles in the social-savvy B2B marketer’s arsenal. This post explores five popular (chiefly free) platforms authoritative in nature but often overlooked as useful tools for hardcore marketing.

Leverage their insight for dead-eye targeting of paid search and social ads, identifying meaningful potential customers and friends via organic outreach tactics, or any combination of the two. Their versatile functionality might surprise you. 

1.  Wikipedia

Yes, Wikipedia, the free, online, peer-edited encyclopedia you were forbidden to use under pain of expulsion throughout your high school and college career. With over 3 million articles in English (nearly 20 million across all languages), 90,000 regularly active contributors and an estimated 2.7 billion monthly page views  (that’s U.S. only, folks), Wikipedia is, as they say, a pretty big deal.

The sheer volume of statistics, data and definitions alone make Wikipedia a formidable resource. But there’s an even greater underlying perk: a serious amount of internal linking to related Wikipedia pages. In addition to the “See Also” and “References” link roundups, it seems peer editors link to meaningful articles wherever they can, presenting countless opportunities for eager B2B marketers to explore heaps of social synonyms.

Targeting plumbers by way of Facebook precise interests in hopes of branding your no-slip-guaranteed utility belts? Think of the sweet juicy inventory you’re missing if you target by basic occupational keywords alone.

A quick look at the Wikipedia page for “Plumber” reveals a treasure trove of terminology these professionals may very well identify with on Facebook — terms you can likely target in the precise interest bucket. Let that keyword-rich anchor text lead you from page to page as you populate a righteous pot of targeting ideas and increase your own knowledge of your potential customers’ day-to-day.

2.  Google

One of the granddaddies of search, Google represents an amazing tool for researching topical hubs in any B2B market, niche or not, that can be applied to social channels a la LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

If your aim is to target hospital administrators to buy your cutting-edge task management software, look no further than the Google search box. (Well, look further eventually, but this is a terrific starting point.)

Spend a few hours researching physical real-world clusters where these people congregate en masse: conferences and conventions they attend, groups and trade associations to which they may belong, books and publications (both print and online) they might read. Map these to your social spaces and dig in.

3.  Facebook

An exploding user-base of over 750 million accounts makes Facebook the largest social sampling of human interests our world has ever known; a nigh-addictive amalgamation of human contact and mind-numbing entertainment make it a seriously fertile playground for B2B marketers on the cutting-edge.

You better believe those 750 million aren’t just college kids and tweens. They’re your off-duty target audience, self-disclosing occupations by way of workplace and precise interests.

Play with alpha-patterns to uncover a spectrum of segments, i.e.: type [term] “a,” then “b,” etc. Occupational targeting in Facebook for B2B leads and sales is a very real concept and, when executed with a careful hand, can be extremely effective.

4. LinkedIn

In March, LinkedIn’s targeting platform underwent a noteworthy facelift. The power to finger job descriptions by keyword or category was now in the hands of the cunning B2B marketer, and filtering pearls such as seniority, function and age helped yield a tightly focused audience for soft branding or direct response ads.

One unique targeting edge LinkedIn holds over Facebook is the ability to view specific group names along with estimated inventory (membership) on the paid side of things.

Cross-reference your findings with organic search to identify potential customers and let the organic outreach commence. LinkedIn Premium Filters on the organic side, indicated by a gold badge, also include Years of Experience, Function, Seniority Level, Interested In, Company Size and other targeting nuggets.

5. Twitter

The original way to keyword-based tweet-stalk (read: gauge topical conversation frequency), search.twitter.com continues to be a beneficial tool for B2B marketers unafraid of “tweavesdropping.”

Applying advanced search filterssuch as negative keywords, locality, basic sentiment and more help concoct a sophisticated query string and refine results.

If you like search.twitter.com for mining Twitter conversations, you’ll love The Archivist. This platform, powered by the very same Twitter Search API, offers up more or less identical results for a given keyword or query string on an arguably longer timeline.

The Archivist also produces good-looking graphs, charts and other data visualizations to depict various trends, like number of tweets over time, top users and keywords, sentiment and more.

The ability to export data as Excel spreadsheets gives The Archivist a unique advantage over Twitter search, allowing savvy B2B marketers to construct a comprehensive keyword report and potential-customer catalog sortable by various data points. 

Et voilà! Five platforms you may very well frequent daily, on a mission to kill time or get answers, that most definitely warrant a spot in your B2B marketing arsenal. Happy hunting!

By leveraging tweet-based search engines, user-powered directories, Twitter lists and other tools, both advanced and basic, we were able to hone in on potential customers, or in the very least, valued community members.

Now that you, a B2B community manger, have capitalized on these tactics and compiled a spreadsheet of a few dozen target BFF candidates– with columns featuring name, Twitter handle, location, bio, follower-to-following ratio, links to additional social profiles, personal notes, and any other significant information– you’re ready to charge forth and tactically (not to mention tactfully) connect with said users.

But how?

There are loads of resourceful posts that highlight holistic social media tactics for businesses, both B2B and B2C, to approach and thoughtfully engage customers using Twitter. Before engaging with potential friends or buyers, it’s essential for brands and community managers to take a step back and ask the question:

“Are we giving people a reason to want to engage with us?”

Here’s a 4 point audit to assess how your B2B Twitter brand can become more believable, beneficial, and beloved, i.e. worth talking to. Some routes require buy-in from the C-suite, and some require boots-on-the-ground journalism.When optimized in unison, these elements can seriously boost your brand’s likability levels in the Twittersphere.

1.  Who You Are

Well, who are you? This isn’t a philosophical issue. It’s about identity, i.e. the voice and avatar you use as you tweet on behalf of the company. First, lets tackle voice. Put on your grammar caps.

• Third-Person Singular. Are you tweeting in the third-person, as if you’re a press secretary for the brand? E.g.: “Company X is proud to announce its new, better product!” On a left-to-right spectrum of Boring to Beloved, tweeting in the third-person is leaning towards the left. Unless you have the luxury of working for an already-adored legacy brand with a logo people want to talk to, third-person isn’t very engaging. Let’s move on.
• First-Person Plural. Oui, oui! Or rather: “We, we.” Make that: So-so. First-person plural gives tweets a touch more personality, but there’s still a disconnect between @CompanyX and target-friend @CustomerBob. The community manager for @CompanyX is speaking on behalf of the brand, but he/she’s still just one person, as is Bob on the other side of the monitor. If he doesn’t know or understand which part of the “Royal We” he’s talking to, he might be less likely to let his guard down and really connect.
• First-Person Singular. If you get buy-in from your brand, first-person singular is a choice voice to embrace. This is one time it’s not only justified, but effective, to make it all about “Me, Me, Me, I, I, I.” On the spectrum from Boring to Beloved, this baby is off the charts. Direct, engaging, transparent—when you tweet at @CustomerBob, “Hey! I hope you’re having a great day, Bob =),” you’re almost guaranteed a genuine response, provided Bob’s up for chatting.

Examine your brand’s Twitter avatar (profile picture) with a similar spectrum in mind. Of course, it is important to maintain the company’s branded image, but a logo avatar isn’t always the best, or most engaging, solution.

Consider testing the effectiveness of a Community Manager headshot vs. branded logo to see which pictorial representation users respond to more.

2. How You Talk

Repeat after me: “I do not fear smiley faces.” Alright, so not every tweet has to squeeze in a “=)”, but it is important to observe the conversational habits of your Twitter community, and if allowed, emulate them.

Do they use silly, nonsensical hashtags to emphasize points of view, or instead leverage legit hashtags to tap into trending conversations? Does a majority seem to use “LOLZ!!!” over a quieter “hehe”?

Twitter is a good platform for public relations, but chiefly, it is embraced as a tool for human-to-human communication. Consider injecting an appropriate amount of casual vernacular into tweets (dare I say… mild Internetwebz slang? #justsayin) to create more colloquial, personable vibe, and move away from a stone-faced PR façade.

In short, attempt to speak as your community speaks… within reason.

3.  What You Talk About

Adopting the first person voice is ideal, but that doesn’t mean it’s cool to talk about yourself (i.e. your company) all the time. Make a commitment to chat with folks about things unrelated to your brand, or even your industry, and do your best to stick to it.

Community management best practices point to the “80/20 Rule” – with 80% of your stream dedicated to “Hi, how’s it going?” type tweets as well as sharing third-party, non-competitive, complimentary content, and 20% to branded content.

Remember: Your aim is to connect with professionals on business-related matters; that said, be realistic about the fact that they have interests beyond their profession. The results of your openness to shoot the breeze about last night’s baseball game or how great the weather is today may turn heads, turn into friendships, or even create brand evangelists in the long run.

4.  Where You Go

A fantastic way to stay in the vertical-specific vein of conversation without being self-promotional 24/7 is to attend industry conferences, conventions, seminars, events, and the like. Take the opportunity not only to learn more, but to share knowledge with your community.

Live-tweeting and broadcasting blog coverage of said get-togethers can be your ticket to becoming recognized as an eager and enthusiastic authority among your niche. It’s also a valuable way for you to share important information without being self-serving.

Armed with this roadmap to a more beloved B2B brand on Twitter, go forth, and start engaging your target community!

Deep community managers know these forms of engagement must be tethered to actionable marketing key performance indicators (KPIs), making them community marketers, as well as managers. But at its core, the function of any Commnunity Manager is to remain loyal to that initial need for brands to connect with relevant people in a meaningful way.

In B2B Community Manager’s Guide To Identifying True Twitter Friends, we explored how to leverage a variety of listening tools and user-powered directories to identify target audiences based on topical conversations and self-tagged categories.

In this second installment, we’ll learn how to hone in on B2B targets based on content consumed and authority users they follow– continuing down the road with our example of Company X, which is marketing to owners of wineries.

Let’s get started.

Identifying Target Audiences By Content Consumed

Scope out content aggregators for awesome, relevant content your target audience might gravitate towards. Sites such as AllTop, Buzzfeed, Digg, Reddit, and the like pre-vet content by category and by propensity to go viral, or at least to be “cool.”

Pique your interest? Check it out.

Plugging the article URL into Backtweets.com will show you everyone who’s tweeted that piece of content.

Maybe Beau isn’t our target audience, but I’d bet you a bottle of ‘97 Screaming Eagle Cab Sauv (priced at a cool $2.5k) he follows them.

Ready?

In the time it takes to pop a bottle, we found 76 wineries on Twitter, worth following, as vetted by our pal Beau the wine enthusiast and social media savvy guy. This is just the tip of the potential-Twitter-BFFs-iceberg.

Socialmention.com and BlogPulse.com are other awesome resources worth checking out:

Filter by sweet advanced criteria:

Identifying & Mining Power User Profiles

Just as we did with Beau, we can vet the profiles, lists, hashtags, and content created and shared by super power users. For the wine industry, folks like Rick Bakas (@RickBakas) and Gary Vaynerchuck (@garyvee) are smart starting points.

Like Beau, these power users might not be the people we want to whom we aim to sell our stainless steel tanks. They’re more useful for…

• Tracking topical hashtags
• Mining elucidating Twitter lists and similar followers
• Identifying reputable or viral content
• Honing in on tight pockets of target audiences

These power users might not be your customers, but they’re the people your customers are probably listening to. Let’s dive in.

Power users aside, feel free to qualify any wine enthusiast (e.g. Beau, or now, Jordan) you come across in your research with authority ranking services like Klout, PeerIndex.com, and Twittercounter.com.

Similar to vertical celebs, journalists and critics are terrific leads to follow. They’re paid to provide opinions and advice for the world to soak up. And guess what? They’re also on Twitter. Visit JournalistTweets.com and MuckRack.com, specify your category, and comb through the goods.

Once you’ve identified sweet pockets of your audience by way of conversation or category, it’s up to you how you proceed. Will you reach out with a branded avatar on behalf of your company, or sneak in more subtly as your own charming self? There’s cases to be made for both.

Whatever the method, the first step’s well underway: you’re learning where you want to be and who you want to befriend. Arguably more than half the battle! Go get’em, marketers.