In line with B2B Marketing’s month-long campaign, ‘Social September’ (#SocialSep), and the release of the Social Media Benchmarking Report 2015, I look back at the most downloaded social media whitepapers from B2B Marketing in 2015.
1. A recent study found that people are now spending considerably more time on their mobile devices than on their PCs: average monthly consumption is up to 41 hours 42 minutes and 29 hours 14 minutes, respectively. On these devises, media and content are consumed in multiple formats – articles, videos, games – and users expect the experience to be consistent across all platforms. For marketers, this is a big opportunity, but one fraught with challenges. How do brands reach the right customers, with the right content at the right time, and on the right device?
The most downloaded social whitepaper this year is Citrix GoToWebinar’s Dynamic marketing: How programmatic, mobile, social and native will reshape the marketing landscape in 2015, which explores the opportunities that are brought forward by this shift in consumption method.
2. Brands need to utilise their social channels to create and promote content that prospects want to consume and share. However, this is easier said than done. Research by Tomorrow People showed that 55 per cent of marketers don’t feel their content is achieving maximum ROI. Meanwhile, only 31 per cent of marketers believe their social listening is fully effective.
Next up on the 2015 social media download chart is Listening in: how to use social tools to create content which converts from Tomorrow People. The paper reveals the importance of social listening, and offers six ways marketers can use social tools to create content that converts with customers.
3. In today’s business environment – where buyers can access a seemingly unlimited amount of resources about your brand and industry with a few clicks of a mouse – understanding prospect preferences by capturing their online behaviour has become a critical aspect of the demand professional’s job. With social tools and methodologies, organisations can get a fuller picture of all the actions that lead a prospect to buy: the conversations they carry out with peers, the content they share, and whom they trust.
The third most downloaded social whitepaper was Oracle Marketing Cloud’s Grande guide to social demand generation. It demonstrates how, with a social demand generation strategy, marketers can organically extend the reach of their campaigns, see who is influencing their prospects, and pass high-value data to sales.
4. Creating a strong brand reputation and a thriving social community is the key to fostering brand advocacy among social media users. While word-of-mouth brand advocacy has always been important, its scope was previously limited to the people you connected and interacted with on a regular basis. Social media has removed that limitation and given new power to customers.
Torpedo’s entry, Listening in: how to use social tools to create content which converts, emphasises the importance of relationship building in customer advocacy and provides social strategies that will enable companies to acquire more advocates.
5. Social networking is an invaluable tool in the promotion and delivery of webinars. As your social footprint grows, so does your ability to drive registration to your events, create a more engaging virtual experience, and extend the reach of your content.
Providing a step-by-step guide to enabling your social networking to increase the value of your webinars, the final place in our top 2015 social downloads goes to ON24 with their whitepaper: How to use social media to increase the impact of your webinars.
Top B2B Marketing downloads
1. Dynamic marketing: How programmatic, mobile, social and native will reshape the marketing landscape in 2015 – Citrix GoToWebinar
2. Listening in: how to use social tools to create content which converts – Tomorrow People
3. Grande guide to social demand generation – Oracle Marketing Cloud
4. Building brand advocates through social media – Torpedo
5. How to use social media to increase the impact of your webinars – ON24
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