I’ve written previously how email and social have staked their claim in marketing resource allocation because of their ROI. The channels are alike in that they are both permission-based, requiring marketers to earn their audiences and the attention they lend. Email and social are alike in another important way – they are both forms of Content Marketing.

Content Marketing existed as a practice before it was coined as a term, and then became established as a specific marketing discipline. The premise of Content Marketing is that brands rely on content that is relevant to their audiences rather than advertisements that promote the brand in order to aggregate and engage an audience. The purpose of the content in Content Marketing is normally not focused on explaining or communicating specific brand attributes or a company’s qualifications for doing business, but instead implies authority and expertise so that the audience comes to its own conclusion that the company producing this content knows what it’s talking about and would make a good partner or vendor. A magazine produced by a trade association, such as the National Retail Federation’s Stores Magazine, is a good example. So are conferences and symposiums developed by a company  to educate audiences on an industry issue that the particular company is well-suited to address. And so is this blog, not designed to tell you that Real Magnet is the ESP you should choose, as much as to demonstrate that we’re not a bunch of mouth-breathers, and inspire some confidence in our ability to help you craft and execute a communications strategy.

If you publish an email newsletter, you may already be in the content marketing game. Here is how to bring your content marketing program to the next level, and grow your audience in other channels in the same way you’ve grown your email audience:

Blogs: I don’t just extoll the virtues of blogs in content marketing because we have one; rather, we have one because they’re one of the most effective ways for a brand to tell its story in a way that will aggregate and engage an audience. To be successful in content marketing, blogs should be educational and authoritative, of course. But they should also be empathic, and include content that is highly relevant to the intended audience. Screening topics so that as much of the content is a direct hit with the audience is almost as important as the way the content is presented. Unlike email newsletters, many readers actively seek out blogs. One too many posts with off-topic content that wastes a visitor’s time can erode the blog’s perceived value, losing some of the audience it has aggregated.

Social media: The format here is much shorter than blogs of course, but it still enables a brand to tell its story and to be of use to its audience. (It’s the being of use rather than telling the story that aggregates the audience.) Many brands, particularly B-to-B, use their social presence to relay and comment on industry news. Acting as a resource in this way does not require an 800 word essay, but it’s also not just enough to point at news using your Twitter account or Facebook page. Comment briefly each time to let your audience know how your brand interprets the news. Even if it’s a crisp 5 word comment preceding a link to a piece of news, your perspective is essential to establishing yourself as an authority. Authorities have opinions, and social media allows you to show yours frequently and clearly, while at the same time educating your audience on what is important to them. Do this, and not only does your audience become larger; they become more connected to your brand and cognizant of your point of view.

Video: Like blogs, video is a form of social content that lets brands educate and engage. Consumer brands lean more towards the engage side, particularly through entertaining, but B-to-B brands can use video very effectively to educate. Instructional videos, behind the scenes looks at industry issues, interviews with key industry figures and conference sessions are all examples that work better as content marketing in video than text.

Email Newsletters: Subscribers have invited you to engage, educate, inform, edify and/or entertain them, right in the comfort of their own inboxes. Keep your eye on the prize here, which ultimately is to make sure that they look forward to the next newsletter as much – or more – as they did this one.

In all of these channels, content marketing aggregates and an engages an audience, which is a very different objective than selling to them or driving another action. Next time I’ll discuss how to leverage the audiences from your content marketing programs, in ways that generate ROI from content marketing without compromising the engagement between your audiences and the content that attracted them.

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Most of the topics I’ve covered on the blog over the past month or two have been on the intersection of Email + Social. The focus is understandable, given the new Email + Social tools we’re about to launch.

This 2-part series is only about the social part of Email + Social. Our new tools will go a long way towards lifting both your email and social initiatives, provided that you have email and social initiatives. We know that a lot of B-to-B companies are still wading knee deep in social, not yet ready to take the full plunge. (In fact, that’s one of the main reasons we’ve built the tools – to provide the analytics B-to-B organizations need to move more confidently into social media.) If you are one of those organizations just getting started in social media, looking forward to ramping it up and integrating it with your email program, the pair of articles in this series is for you. They are about social media strategies for B-to-B – what to do, and what to steer clear of.

B-to-B brands need to approach social recognizing that the vast majority of the population there does not know them or care about them, but that harnessing customers’ and prospects’ social graphs through targeted and highly relevant initiatives can nevertheless help find hundreds or even thousands of needles in the 250 million person haystack. Here are a few examples of how B-to-B brands can integrate social media’s unique qualities with their own programs and assets, to expand reach, deepen connections and generate leads.

B-to-B Social Strategies: The Do’s

1. Do aim for a desirable demorgaphic you don’t reach through your traditional channels.
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers turned to Facebook for a recruiting initiative designed to lure younger career-starters and even students towards the industry it represents. The youthful audience was not part of AMSE’s regular reach so Facebook proved an attractive venue. The association aggregated industry content and developed a microsite on job opportunities and career information for people considering mechanical engineering. A Facebook page was a principal channel to promote the microsite, and the efforts earned the page over 10,000 “likes” in a few months. AMSE did partner with an agency for the initiative, but even with thinner resources a similar effort aimed at expanding demographic reach through social could be successful.

2. Harness social communities to demonstrate the community of your events.
No small part of the lure of events is connecting business colleagues and partners on a personal level. Here’s where social media shines most brightly, with viewing, tagging and commenting photos, as well as making new connections consistently showing up as some of the most popular social media activities. If events are important to your organization, consider devoting a Facebook page to events, as a sort of Events Central for your organization. Take advantage of all the social tools already in place to allow your attendees to make connections before, during and after the show, and use the page for distributing content before and afterwards to keep the community alive and engaged until the next show. For examples, see TED on Facebook, and the 1.4million fans it has amassed.

3. Answer the questions you provoke.
Questions – particularly customer inquiries – are a business’ best friend. They reveal genuine engagement and provide an opportunity for deeper education. Most companies are organized to jump on every sales lead that comes in through the website or the phone, but many companies do not treat questions and comments in the social sphere with the same gravity. I think that’s a mistake. A comment on a Facebook page or a Twitter mention might not be the white hot buying signal that a “have a salesperson call me” form on the website is, but they are productive nonetheless. Not only can they start conversations with prospects, but every comment or mention or RT is like an email a prospect is sending, and cc’ing all of his fans and followers, and yours. Social conversations are public, so the education you are able to provide in response is visible to a much broader audience. B-to-B brand Vistaprint recently initiated a new procedure that all social comments, mentions and retweets be replied to – whether they were positive, negative or neutral. The result is that the number of the brand’s fans and followers more than doubled, and it saw an increase in its Net Promoter Score as well. Contributing to conversations pays dividends.

Next time in Part 2, I’ll turn the perspective around, and look at some popular B-to-C social strategies that B-to-B brands would do well to avoid.

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Have you taken a look at our library of free templates?  Real Magnet’s Template Library is comprised of more than 60 eye-catching, easy-to-use templates. All Template Library templates use Real Magnet’s Active Preview technology which allows you to create and edit content within discrete template zones.

Our new addition is the blank category which we’ve added six templates to. These blank templates allow complete customization of all content zones which offers you the maximum amount of flexibility during your message creation.

The Template Library is comprised of the following categories:

• Blank (New!)
• Business
• Associations
• Communications
• Holiday & Special Events
• Technology
• Finance
• Healthcare
• PC – Mobile Hybrid
• Education

Are new additions are below:  (Click on the images to view in full size).

To create a message using a Template Library template, go to the Messages Home Page by clicking the Messages tab. Input a name for your message in the text box beneath the Create New Message header and click the GO button.

On the Template Selection page, click the Template Library link in the left navigation pane and you’re taken to the Template Library Selection page. Here the different template categories are presented. Click one time on a category and the page expands to display the templates available in that category.

Click the Select button that corresponds to the template you want to use and you’re taken to a new message with the template applied to it.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact customer support by emailing support@realmagnet.com or calling 301-652-5074.

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Message Categories let you group together messages (both email and social) for tracking purposes.  For example, you may want reporting on all messages related to a specific product or event promotion.  Using this functionality, you’ll create your own categories and choose which emails, Tweets, and Facebook posts to include in a category. Once deployed, you’ll have access to reports that compares and contrasts the performance of all of the Message Category messaging.

Creating and Managing Message Categories

To create a Message Category, go to Tools>Message Tools>Manage Message Categories. Simply input a category name in  the Create a Category text box (upper left) and click GO.  The category appears in a grid below, along with your other categories and related data points, such as number of messages in the category and category create data.  You also have functionality, represented by icons, to Show Messages in a category, Delete a category, and Modify the name of the category.

By selecting the Show Messages in a Category icon, you have access to functionality to Switch Categories.  Click the Switch Categories icon and select the category you want to switch the message TO from the pull-down menu in the pop-in. Click Submit and the message’s Message Category is switched.

Adding Messages Unassociated with a Category to a Category

From the main manage Message Categories page, you can make category associations to unassociated messages (this applies mainly to messages created prior to the introduction of the Message Categories functionality). Click the View messages not associated with a category link in the upper right and a page is displayed where you can view all unassociated messages. Select the message you want to associate with a Category and click the GO button.  A pop-in appears.  From the pull-down menu, choose the category you want to associate the communication with and click Submit.  This associates the message with the designated Message Category.

Adding New Messages to a Category

You can associate new messages with a Message Category on the main Messages page.  From the top pull-down menu, select a message category, input a name for the message in the text box below, and and click the GO button.  You can also associate Quick Posts with a Message Category by using the Message Categories pull-down menu on the Quick Post platform.

Message Categories under Messages Tab

Message Categories on Quick Post

Categories Reporting

The main benefit of the Message Categories functionality is the reporting it generates.  To view it, go to Reports>Social Reports. Click Categories in the top navigation bar.  The left-hand pull-down menu displays all of your Message Categories.  The right-hand pull-down displays the report types.  Simply select a Message Category and a Report type and that report will run for that message category.

Reports include:

Trends Report – Line graph comparing the number of deployments and clicks for all messages (social and email) associated with the Message Category.

Category Overview – Grid view and pie charts comparing the performance of all messages (social and email) associated with the Message Category.

Click Comparison - Grid view comparing clicks of all messages (social and email) associated with the Message Category.

Category Messages – Grid view of all messages associated with the Message Category.  For each message, data points in the grid include actual content (social) or message name (email), channel, account, date posted, clicks, and a link to details.

Calendar View – For the Message Category, report displays the schedule of deployed Tweets, Facebooks posts, and Real Magnet emails in a calendar format.

Overall Facebook Category Metrics – Bar graph of Posts, Comments, Likes, and Clicks for all Facebook posts associated with the Message Category.

Engagement Metrics by Post – Grid view displaying all posts associated with the Message Category along with details on Comments, Likes, and Clicks, Date Posted, Date Modified, Account, Message (i.e. associated email message), and Category.  A Details icon also allows you to drill down to view details of a specific Post.

Overall Twitter Category Metrics – Bar graph of Tweets, Retweets, Mentions, and Clicks for all Tweets associated with the Message Category.

Engagement Metrics by Tweets – Grid view displaying all tweets associated with the Message Category along with details on Retweets, Clicks, Date Posted, Date Modified, Account, Message (i.e. associated email message), and Category.  A Details icon also allows you to drill down to view details of a specific Post.

Real Magnet Detailed Tracking Data – Grid view showing data on Delivered, Sent, Opens, and Clicks for all email messages associated with a Message Category.  Details icon associated with line item allows you to drill down for details.

This concludes the Messages Categories tutorial.  If you have any questions, please contact Customer Support at 301-652-5074 or email support@realmagnet.com.

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Welcome to Social Magnet Central – your comprehensive resource for information on Real Magnet’s Social Magnet release. Below you will find tutorials addressing the various dimensions of Social Magnet.

Social Magnet is a full integration of Facebook and Twitter (and soon, LinkedIn) with Real Magnet, allowing you to fully manage your social and email activity from a single platform!  In addition to this convenience, you get unprecedented analytics that compares and contrasts the effectiveness of the various channels – helping you identify the perfect marketing mix

Questions? Comments? Please contact us at 301-652-5074 or email support@realmagnet.com

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After Social Magnet has been enabled, an Admin User must configure the organization’s social accounts to its Real Magnet account.  Additionally, the Admin user may assign permission to end users for viewing content, posting content, or adding additional social accounts to the Real Magnet account.

To view the Admin Users in your account, go to Tools>Account Management>under the Social Account Management section>View Admin Users.

Permissions

There are 3 types of permissions associated with Social Magnet.  Permission to:

• add social sites to your Real Magnet account
• post content to social sites from Real Magnet, and
• view your social sites’ feeds from within Real Magnet

By default, end users do not have permission to add social accounts, post to them or view social feeds.  Only Admin users (i.e. users with the ability to grant or remove Real Magnet permissions to other end users) can assign or remove these social permissions.

If you are an Admin user, you’ll see the line items Social Account Set Up and Assign Social Publishing Permissions under the Social Account Management section of the Account Management page under Tools.  If you are not, these items will not appear.

If your are NOT an Admin users, you can see who is by going to Tools>Account Management>Under the Social Account Management section>View Admin Users.  If your account has no Admin users, please email support@realmagnet.com and include your account number, username, and state that you have the authority to be an Admin user.

To assign social permissions, click the Assign Social Publishing Permissions link. From the pull-down list on the next page, select the User for whom you want to grant or remove permissions and click Go.

This takes you to the Social Publishing Permissions Page where you see a line item for each provisioned social site.   The page can be sorted by any of the columns (Channel, Account Name, Date Created and Created By.)

By selecting the appropriate check box(es), the selected user can be granted or denied permission to:

• Provision social sites

• View feeds for any provisioned social site

• Post Content for any social site

Once you have made your selections, click the Save button and the user’s permissions will be updated.

Important: When a Facebook account is added to Real Magnet, both the Profile and the Fan Page are added.  On the Assign Social Permissions page, each Facebook account will be represented by two icons: one represents the Profile and one represents the Fan Page.  In the vast, vast majority of cases, Administrators will NOT want to give permission to end users to view or post to a Profile.  They WILL want to assign those permissions to the Fan Page.

= Facebook Profile

= Facebook Fan Page

Adding Your Social Sites to Real Magnet

Note:  You must be logged out of your personal Facebook or Twitter accounts before you provision any corporate accounts.  If you do not, you risk provisioning your personal accounts to Real Magnet.

To start the process, click Tools>Account Management. Under the Social Account Management section, select Social Account Set Up.

The Social Publishing Accounts page appears. Towards the top of the Add Social Publishing Account page, go to Add New Account list and select the type of  social media account you want to provision (Twitter or Facebook.) Once you have made your selection click Go.

Adding a Twitter Account

First make sure you are not logged into any Twitter account.  Next select Twitter from the drop down menu and select Go.

An Authorize Application page appears. Enter in your Twitter User Name and Password then click Authorize App.

You’ll now be prompted to enter a name for that social account.  Feel free to use the same name as your Twitter handle or choose another unique identifier.

If the authorization is successful, you’ll be put back to the Add Social Publishing Account page in Real Magnet and a line item for the newly provisioned Twitter account will appear under the Social Publishing Accounts section.

Adding a Facebook Page

First, make sure you’re not logged into any Facebook account.  Next, select Facebook from the drop down menu and select Go.

A Facebook Login page appears asking you to log in to your Facebook account with Real Magnet. Input your Facebook Login Information*

If the authorization is successful, you’ll be put back to the Add Social Publishing Account page in Real Magnet and a line item for the newly provisioned Facebook account will appear under the Social Publishing Accounts section.

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Like everything else in Real Magnet, your social messaging is trackable.

Metrics for social content that is associated with an email message can be viewed on the main message Track page.  To access a message’s tracking, click the Track tab, click one time on the message you want to track, and click the red Track button.  Towards the bottom of the page, you’ll see separate grids for Facebook Metrics and Twitter Metrics.

Here you can see all of the metrics associated with your Facebook post or Tweet.  Additionally, by clicking one of the Details icons, you’ll be presented with the metrics for that specific post or tweet.  Below, you see the Overview details of a tweet.  

You can also access details on Retweets and Clicks by clicking the appropriate links in the upper left.

A details view of a Facebook post looks like the image below. You can access details on Comments, Likes, and Clicks by clicking the appropriate links in the upper left.

You can access the metrics for social content that is not associated with an email through the Track Social link on the left navigation bar of the main Track page.

Click it and you’re taken to a page displaying all of your social posts. You can sort them by Post, Channel, Account, Real Magnet Message, Campaign and Date posted.

By clicking the Details icon  or double clicking the post, you can drill down and get the details of a particular Facebook post or tweet (see images above).

This completes the tutorial.  If you have any questions, contact support at support@realmagnet.com or call 301-652-5074.

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There are two ways to create and deploy social content using Social Magnet: 1) via the Quick Post functionality; and 2) by using Real Magnet’s traditional approach of content creation via the Messages Tab and deployment via Send to Groups.  This tutorial focuses on the latter.

Under this approach, users can:

• Associate social content with an email message and send all of the content immediately, schedule it all to be deployed at the a later time, or schedule each piece to be deployed at different times, and
• Create social content only (a tweet, a Facebook post, or an associated tweet/Facebook post) and launch it immediately, schedule it to be deployed at the same time, or schedule each piece to be deployed at different times

Lets look at the first scenario:

Associating Social Content with an Email Message

To associate social content with an email message, log in and click the Messages tab. If you have the Messages Categories functionality enabled, you can select a Category for your message, or create a new category.  Click here for more information on Message Categories.

Now, create your message as you normally would: give it a name, select a template, and create the HTML, text, and mobile versions of the message. Once Social Magnet has been enabled in your account, a Social Version link appears on the left navigation bar.

Click the link and you’re taken to the social content editing page where you can add content in one of two ways: 1) by typing it into the textbox, or 2) by selecting the [ADD ICON] icon and doing a copy-paste from the Message Source. When you are done copying and pasting your content, click Message Source link again to minimize the section, then click Save.  After you click Save, the Tweet or Facebook post will be displayed as a line item in the Associated Posts section. At this point your content has not been deployed/posted, only saved.

You can associate as many Facebook Posts of Tweets to the message as you’d like.

Creating Social Messages, Only

Another option is to create a single or multiple social posts with no associated email message.  To do so, log in and click the  Messages tab. If you have the Message Category functionality enabled, you can select a Category for your message, or create a new one.  Next, type message name in the Create New Message field and click Go.

On the Templates page, you’ll find a special template designed to accommodate social content only.  Find and select the Social Posts Only/No Email Template. (Replace Image).

Next, on the Social Version page, select the social channel and the specific account for which you want to create content.  Type in your content and click Save. After you click Save, the Tweet or Facebook post will be displayed as a line item in the Associated Posts section. At this point your content has not been deployed/posted, only saved. You can associate as many Facebook Posts of Tweets to the message as you’d like.

Scheduling and Deploying Your Social and Email Messages

To schedule and deploy your content, go to the Send tab. In the right navigation, click Send Message to Group on the side menu. Click once on the message you want to send, then click red Send button.

This takes you to the main Send page. Here, under the Select/Input Send Information section, you input a variety of email-related parameters, such as from field, subject line, etc.  In the next section, Schedule Social Posts, you have these options:

• deploy all social content in unison with the email message – either immediately or at a future time.  To do so, select the Post all social content check box, or
• each piece of social content can be scheduled independently by using the scheduler associated with the piece of content.

After you have selected your options and clicked Submit, a Review page will be generated.  Double-check the options you have selected and then click Submit or Cancel if more edits are needed.

Once you click Submit on the Review page, a confirmation message appears and the message is sent to the queue.

This concludes this tutorial.  If you have any questions, contact support at support@realmagnet.com, or call 301-652-5074.

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There are three categories of reports available in Real Magnet’s Social Reporting Module:

• By Channel (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Real Magnet)
• Comparative
• By Categories

Within these categories, there are numerous report types…more on this in a moment.

Every report includes some or all of the following functions, which can be accessed by selecting the appropriate icon in the report header.

Modify Report – Allows users to change report parameters, including time frame. Default time frame is previous month.
Show/Hide Column – Allows users to add columns to (representing a variety of values) or remove them from are report.
Show percentage/number – Allows users to toggle between raw numbers and percentages.
Preview Post – Allows user to preview Facebook post or Tweet.
Return to Parent Report - Allows user to return to parent report when viewing a details report.
Search –Allows users to search for a report by keywords.
Print – Allows users to print a report.
Export – Allows users to export a report.

Many Social Reports are displayed in a grid, such as the Twitter Engagement Metrics Report displayed below. Any grid report can be sorted by any column by clicking the label in the column. Additionally, numerous grid reports allow you to drill down and get the details of a particular Facebook post or tweet by clicking the Details Icon .

Below is an example of a details view.  It shows the details of a Facebook post.  You can access details on Comments, Likes, and Clicks by clicking the appropriate links in the upper left.

And a details view of a tweet looks like the image below. You can access details on Retweets and Clicks by clicking the appropriate links in the upper left.

Reports by Channel

For Twitter, there are 6 reports and 7 for Facebook . The 6 reports common to both are:

Trend Report – Line graph of all tweets or Facebook posts deployed in a given time frame (default is last month).

Engagement Metrics – For Twitter, displays grid-view of all tweets in a given time frame (default is last month) along with details on Retweets, Mentions, and Clicks. For Facebook posts, it displays all posts in a given time frame (default is last month) along with details on Comments, Likes, and Clicks.

Insights (Facebook only) – Facebook Insights provides an overview of the demographic data of your Facebook fans.

Calendar View – Displays schedule of deployed Tweets or Facebooks posts in a calendar format.

Daily Follower/Fan Count – Bar graph of the number of followers (Twitter) or Fans (Facebook) over a given time.

GeoLocation Data – Tracks the physical location of fans or followers who clicked a link in your Facebook post or tweet.

Computer vs. Mobile Usage – Bar graph showing distribution of fans or followers who clicked a link in your Facebook post or tweet by means of a PC versus mobile device.

Comparative Reporting

Comparative Reports compare and contrast the performance of your various communications channels. Currently, there are 5 Comparative Reports:

Trends Report – Line graph comparing the number of deployments and clicks for Tweets, Facebook Posts, and Real Magnet emails over a given time period (default is previous month).

Overall Statistics – Grid view and pie charts comparing the performance of the various channels over a given time (default is previous month).

Calendar View – Displays schedule of deployed Tweets, Facebooks posts, and Real Magnet emails in a calendar format.

Comparative Channel Growth – Line graph contrasting the growth of Twitter followers versus Facebook fans over a given time (default is last month).

Computer vs. Mobile Usage – Bar graph compares the means by which Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and Real Magnet recipients are accessing your messages – via PCs or mobile devices.

Categories Reporting

Trends Report – Line graph comparing the number of deployments and clicks for all messages (social and email) associated with the Message Category.

Category Overview – Grid view and pie charts comparing the performance of all messages (social and email) associated with the Message Category.

Click Comparison - Grid view comparing clicks of all messages (social and email) associated with the Message Category.

Category Messages – Grid view of all messages associated with the Message Category.  For each message, data points in the grid include actual content (social) or message name (email), channel, account, date posted, clicks, and a link to details.

Calendar View – For the Message Category, report displays the schedule of deployed Tweets, Facebooks posts, and Real Magnet emails in a calendar format.

Overall Facebook Category Metrics – Bar graph of Posts, Comments, Likes, and Clicks for all Facebook posts associated with the Message Category.

Engagement Metrics by Post – Grid view displaying all posts associated with the Message Category along with details on Comments, Likes, and Clicks, Date Posted, Date Modified, Account, Message (i.e. associated email message), and Category.  A Details icon also allows you to drill down to view details of a specific Post.

Overall Twitter Category Metrics – Bar graph of Tweets, Retweets, Mentions, and Clicks for all Tweets associated with the Message Category.

Engagement Metrics by Tweets – Grid view displaying all tweets associated with the Message Category along with details on Retweets, Clicks, Date Posted, Date Modified, Account, Message (i.e. associated email message), and Category.  A Details icon also allows you to drill down to view details of a specific Post.

Real Magnet Detailed Tracking Data – Grid view showing data on Delivered, Sent, Opens, and Clicks for all email messages associated with a Message Category.  Details icon associated with line item allows you to drill down for details.

This concludes the Social Reporting tutorial.  If you have any questions, please contact Customer Support at 301-652-5074 or email support@realmagnet.com.

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