Social Media B2B

Ron Casalotti, Social Media Lead of Bloomberg L.P. presented a case study of the Business Week Business Exchange site at the Marketing Profs B2B Forum. This video is a recap of his presentation, which was part of a session featuring four case studies moderated by CK.

The goals of the site, which was launched in September 2008 were:

• Increase user engagement on our sites.
• Participate in the conversations that are important to our users (and target users) outside of our domain.
• Extend the useful life of our business orientedcontent beyond the typical magazine or online news-site lifecycle.

The strategies used were:

• The concept of the wisdom of the crowds
• Long-tail marketing and the social media hook of people like me.
• Basic human motivation for participating in social networks for the benefit of others.
• The desire to be recognized as a thought leader and subject matter expert.
• The need for a professional online persona.

Results

• A growing list of over 1,700 topics suggested by users
• Over 40,000 key influencer users contributing over 1 million article links.
• Over 7,200 Twitter followers grown organically in 18 months (@bwbx).
• Over 60 current and former business-side and editorial associates sharing links with personal Twitter accounts

Jeffrey L. Cohen is the Managing Editor of SocialMediaB2B.com. Follow Jeff on Twitter at @jeffreylcohen or on Google+.