Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

It used to be a difficult task to find examples of B2B companies achieving success in social, however as the channel has matured more businesses have been able to drive awareness and sales using various social platforms.

A survey published this time last year found that a majority of businesses (64%) were using social media as a marketing tool, so it’s likely that this number has increased today.

That research found that the most popular reasons for using social were for brand awareness (83%), encouraging social sharing (56%) and gaining trust and followers (55%).I’ve previously highlighted five B2B companies that were achieving success in social marketing, but here are five new case studies to give further insight into social platforms for B2B marketing...

The following infographic is based off of social media research from Boston College’s John Gallaugher & Sam Ransbotham. Their “3M Framework” lays out the type of communication social media enables between businesses and customers.

It’s important to realize that this framework highlights the greater social media ecosystem. Individual websites such as Facebook or Twitter are components of this larger ecosystem. The infographic provides a basic visual representation of this ecosystem, explains three types of basic communication, and provides some helpful tips and information on six of the most popular social media sites...

So you want to get good at social media?

You need to have a plan. A guidebook. A strategy.You need some rules.

And rule number one? That’s obey the rules. As for rules number two through eighty, check out this fantastic infographic courtesy of Jeremy Waite, head of social strategy at Adobe.

And remember: while you can’t get anything done in the world without rules, sometimes it’s just as important to know exactly when you need to break them.*...

Pinterest isn’t just for sharing photos of delicious recipes or crafts anymore. Check out this infographic to see how retailers are driving traffic to their brick and mortar locations using Pinterest....

When it comes to social media, there is an ongoing focus on driving traffic to your digital home bases and outposts such as websites, blogs, and social networks. But how about using these channels to drive traffic to your physical store?

In a recent post on Harvard Business Review, Alexandra Samuel presents a series of data-driven Pinterest tactics that drive sales to brick and mortar retail locations. These findings are part of larger study, From Social to Sale: 8 Questions to Ask Your Customers, that offers some great insight on the factors that impact consumer social purchasing decisions.

This infographic summarizes the 5 key tactics that retailers can use to help drive in-store traffic....

A three-year study from Scratch, an in-house unit of Viacom, found that a third of millennials believed they won't need a bank in the future. These millennials, defined as those between ages 18 to 33, also ranked the top four banks in the "ten least loved brands" and would rather go to the dentist than to their bank.Is this surprising?

This segment of the population has grown up in an era that saw trust in banking erode due to the financial crisis and a near stagnant economy. This is also a period when new technology has enabled firms like Simple, Moven, Square and PayPal to be more relevant with a generation that would rather handle finances on their phone than in a branch.

Here are some of the findings from the Millennial Disruption Index:

Digital marketing offers greater opportunities for businesses over the next year than more traditional channels, according to a new report.

When asked to identify which three marketing channels offer the greatest opportunities, half of brands (50%) mentioned social media followed by email (43%) and websites (35%).In fact the top 10 most cited channels are all online, with the most popular offline channel being direct mail at 8%....

When debate around sheryl sandberg's 'lean in' took a negative turn, agency sparks and honey urged client to scrap key theme of upcoming effort.

When Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's modern feminist manifesto "Lean In" ignited negativity, Hyatt was forced to pull the plug on a main element of its content marketing strategy, months in the works. The quick decision was based on numbers as much as gut instinct. Hyatt's agency Sparks and Honey was monitoring digital discussions surrounding a theme the young Omnicom shop had determined was a good one for the hotel chain to hook to its brand: "women having it all."

"They called me up to say it's getting a little bit dark in that space," said Dan Moriarty, director of digital strategy for Hyatt, who said the firm originally intended to include the concept of women having it all as one of the trends around which it planned to build a campaign aimed at career-minded women.

When, about two days before the activation was planned to start, Sparks and Honey showed Hyatt it had tracked 80-some negative reactions to Sandberg's book, the partners decided to scrap the theme, despite three months of planning.

Instead, they replaced it with "travel hacks," or digital tools for making the most of travel. Other trends that Sparks and Honey had isolated as appropriate to align with Hyatt this spring were also relatively innocuous: among them yoga and meditation, getting a good night's sleep and maintaining rituals while traveling....