Inviting the Cool Kids to the Table: How to Integrate Social Media Tactics with Lead-Generation Webinars

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March 2010, Issue 73

Social Media
Inviting the Cool Kids to the Table: How to Integrate Social Media Tactics with Lead-Generation Webinars
By Kristin Farwell, Marketing Program Manager, and Katie Walsh, Media Strategist, Bulldog Solutions

As social media has opened new doors for BtoB marketing, our cross-departmental Social Media Task Force here at Bulldog Solutions has embarked on a mission to integrate social tactics and tools into our demand-generation strategy. As part of our Behind the Scenes series, in this article we'll share some of the best practices we've developed for incorporating social media into lead-generation Webinars.

Share with a Colleague

Know someone who would be interested in the content of this article? Share it with them using the links below.

Content-sharing continues to migrate from traditional tactics like e-mail forwarding to a more robust social experience. So it's increasingly important to make it a no-brainer for your audience to spread the message. We took a critical look at a bread-and-butter lead-generation tactic—Webinars—and decided to use our Webinars as a social media lab to test creative ways to integrate social with our existing marketing campaigns.

Making Sharing Easy

We weren't so successful right out of the gate. Our very first attempt at adding social links to Webinar e-mails didn't get one single clickthrough (sad face). Upon review, we realized that our original layout, which simply slapped a few social media icons below the traditional "Refer a Colleague" option, didn't go far enough to create an integrated sharing experience.

Back to the drawing board.

Earlier this month, in conjunction with our "Roadmap to Demand Acceleration" Webinar, we rolled out a new iteration of the "Share with a Colleague" function. The previous "Refer a Colleague" function, included on our promotion e-mails, allowed users to forward a copy of the e-mail to interested colleagues with a pre-populated subject line (and then, of course, allowed us to track referrals on the backend). It's been growing less and less effective since we began using it years ago. To integrate social into the experience, we pulled the icons all into the same box and refreshed the language to make it a more cohesive section.

The new "Share with a Colleague" section appears within the sidebar of the e-mail, and enables the use of four channels to spread the word: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and, of course, trusty ole e-mail. Rather than linking to our own pages on each of the social media sites (which is more in line with a "connect with us" effort), we nudged recipients to share the Webinar with their networks by embedding a suggested tweet and facilitating a robust Facebook post. Marketo has a great "Modern B2B Marketing" blog post with tips on how to create these custom social links.

On Twitter, it's a best practice to craft your pre-populated tweet at about 90-100 characters (rather than the max allowed: 140) to leave room for people to "retweet" (RT) and personalize with their own comment. If the original tweet is too long, the end user may end up modifying your suggested message to make it fit. For this campaign, we used "I'm attending the @BDSolutions Webinar on Mar 16, Roadmap to Demand Acceleration [registration URL here]".
On Facebook, it's important to optimize the sharing experience with a clear page title, description and imagery (thumbnail) rather than text alone, which won't stand out on the user's wall. We used an article on the Facebook Developers wiki to optimize the campaign registration page with these elements using a combination of ‹link› and ‹meta› tags.

We monitored traction on the new, social-savvy sharing function in two ways: using our e-mail and referral link tracking in Eloqua, our marketing automation platform, and keeping a close eye on our Twitter @replies. We were pleased when we received a handful of Webinar registrants via sharing on this campaign.

Creating a Forum

Aside from sharing, which is directly related to promoting registration for the Webinar, we've experimented with a couple of other social dimensions on Webinar campaigns designed to reinforce our thought leadership by encouraging conversation.

For example, it's becoming more common to assign a Twitter hashtag for live tweeting on the day of the event to streamline the conversation both for yourself and your audience. We've added the hashtag #BDSWebinar to our Webinar interface and mentioned it verbally on the event a few times with good results; next time we'll begin referencing the hashtag within pre-event e-mail communications and including it within the embedded sharing messages.

We're also exploring the other opportunities that live-event Twitter dialogues present, including the ability to "continue the conversation" and create fresh campaign content; perhaps by pulling in great questions that didn’t get answered during Q&A.

Always Evolving

In the future, we'll use follow-up communications like auto-confirmations and reminders to offer "connect with us" links directly to our various social media profiles. Since they won't detract from any other call-to-action in this type of message (see this article on call-to-action overload), it's a great resource for social network building and exposure. We'd suggest urging that recipients "Connect with us to hear about future events" or offering some other value proposition. Another idea is to tease special offers or inside information for becoming a fan or following. But if you offer, be prepared to deliver!

The new iteration of our "Share with a Colleague" feature on Webinar invitation e-mails.

Our first attempt at adding social links to e-mail fell short of a fully-integrated sharing option.

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Kristin Farwell is marketing program manager at Bulldog Solutions.

Katie Walsh is media strategist at Bulldog Solutions.

Marketing Watchdog Journal is a monthly newsletter from Bulldog Solutions, an online marketing agency that changes the way BtoB companies define demand-generation strategy, engage prospects and convert leads to customers. We welcome your feedback on this newsletter's content and design, and encourage you to share your ideas for topics you would like us to cover in future issues. Please send your comments or questions about Bulldog Solutions to Amy Bills, director of Field Marketing.