ProspectSoft have been active on social media networks for about 4 years and with some renewed enthusiasm and effort found quickly ourselves at a stage where we could really start taking advantage of the opportunities that social media had offer. After reading an interesting case study a similar B2B organisation who had newly introduced social initiative, we began to ask ourselves:

Could ProspectSoft ‘get social’?

Given the task to get ProspectSoft more social, I put on my social media tiara on and got to work. From researching case studies and market statistics, it became clear that social media could play a massive part in ProspectSoft’s future. 36 YouTube videos, 17 advice blogs and 3 books later ‘ProspectSoft: Let’s Get Social’ was born!

The Let’s Get Social initiative involved structuring a 5-stage process aimed at optimising the opportunities from our social media.

Stage 1, ‘Social Start’.

We started with corporate social media networks in place which we posted from a few times a week. The majority of ProspectSoft employees were also active on social networks.

Although we were already present on social media we did not have a particular strategy or policy surrounding it. Jess and I created a social media etiquette guide that acts a policy for ProspectSoft employees and developed a strategy guided by social media personas.

Stage 3, ‘Training’

This stage of training employees on social media is nearly complete. I have been working with each member of the ProspectSoft team to optimise their LinkedIn profiles through consistent branding, value proposition tag lines & keyword analysis to improve SEO. Introducing Let’s Get Social along with our Social Star of the Month award has already seen some impressive results with Jack increasing his LinkedIn views by 450%. It has also sparked our competitive spirit – our Client Services Director has even knocked me off top spot in our company rankings (not for long though Jon!).

Stage 4, ‘Application’

The application stage was initiated by creating customer communities, starting with the Web Clinic LinkedIn group where customers who attend our Wednesday sessions can get more advice, ask questions and hear about upcoming topics. We have also started an Alumni group for past ProspectSoft employees, again using social media as way of enhancing relationships.

Stage 5, ‘Optimisation’

Once Let’s Get Social has been implemented – the hard work will not end. I will be measuring the success of the campaign and introducing ‘social intelligent listening’, monitoring industry related mentions to help us understand what is important to our customers and how we can incorporate this into our business.

So, what are we waiting for?

Let’s Get Social!