Industry experts continue to encourage businesses to adopt social media best practices. And it looks like they are starting to listen. According to a White Horse survey, 86% of B2B companies are investing in some form of social media. If you want to compete in your industry, it’s time to get social.

Let’s use LinkedIn as an example. How do you know if LinkedIn is right for your business? Ask yourself these three quick questions:

1. Do you offer a product or a service?
2. Do you have a sales force responsible for engaging new prospects?
3. Does your customer base have a presence on LinkedIn?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, there is a place for your business on LinkedIn.  In a recent HubSpot article, they described LinkedIn as being similar a tradeshow. Imagine LinkedIn as a place where you can share new products, a recent whitepaper, get involved in industry discussions and get introduced to new prospects.  And it’s hard to get noticed if you don’t have a presence – being aware of and involved in the conversation can sometimes be the most important – and effective – first step.

Are you ready to take that first social step? What social media tool performs best for your business?

I can’t even remember how long this LinkedIn feature has existed.  Does anyone else find it hard to remember pre-Twitter days? Regardless, the secret of CXO social media adoption is introducing the LinkedIn status update Twitter integration.

For psychographic fiends, it may be helpful to appeal to the inherent narcissism of C-level executives by approaching the effort as “gaining recognition for the impressive volume of industry-specific, relevant content they voraciously consume in running your successful business and/or serving your clients”.

From the default LinkedIn Overview screen visible upon sign-in, the steps are simple.

1. Enter brief comments – or perhaps even better – a provoking question related to the content.
2. Utilize the “Attach a link” text link to display the field in which to paste the business article link and “Attach”
3. Share

A more advanced method would take the LinkedIn Social Share process above and add simple enhancements such as: 

• Optimize your introductory comments in the 140 characters – which are all that will display in the Twitter feed
• Include any Twitter hash tag references (or @references) as valuable in optimizing search value of post
• Use a trackable URL shortener such as bit.ly
• Select the image you feel most engaging from the options auto-pulled when linking asset.  In my example there were 8 choices!

• Choose where the update is displayed by selecting from “Visible to” options of anyone, connections or specific groups. This makes great sense for professionals who engage in numerous vertical markets and seek to maximize value to their connections by preserving relevance of posts.

Demonstrating success is where the fun begins.  First, literally show them proof that their post populated their Twitter feed (which you – or your digital friend in the agency probably established on their behalf). 

Ta-da!  It worked…even capturing my capitalization error as proof of automation (I couldn’t miss that 2xs – really).

Next, show them real proof.  I know you are using metrics to track your social media engagements, so use this as an opportunity to show the lifecycle of their own LinkedIn Status Update and tie it to dollars and cents wherever feasible.

At a minimum:

• Track Comments and Likes on the CXO’s LinkedIn Profile
• Track RTs of pass through tweet
• Track Replies to tweet  and/or DMs
• Review link analytics from URL shortener used

Do your company executives participate in Social Media?  LinkedIn membership among Fortune 500 is 100% so Twitter can’t be far behind now, right?

Gap launched a new black-on-white logo with an off-set blue box:

This week however Gap announced it will discontinue all print advertising and in-store uses of the new logo and will return to its logo of old. Why? Because its customers hate it and Gap gave them the perfect platform to voice their distaste by launching this new logo using social media. When the logo was launched, Gap created a Facebook Fan page & Twitter campaign. And, much to Gap’s dismay it learned quite how much the Internet can influence a company’s brand messaging.

That being said, Gap did have the right intention. By using social media as a platform for audience feedback, it opened up the conversation about the logo, engaged its customers to weigh in and, ultimately, Gap listened and is making changes—which is what social media in business is intended to do.

The lesson learned? Social media can be a great, low-cost, marketing tool, yes, but be prepared as to the power it can give your audience and do your homework as to how to handle this. Sometimes the results can be great, but other times, as Gap learned, the money you ‘save’ by utilizing these free tools can cost you far more.

Now, there is a day dedicated to the fabulous field of social media. Today, June 30, has been designated Social Media Day. This day, created by Mashable, was designed to be a global celebration of the revolution of media becoming a social dialogue.

To celebrate Social Media Day, there are more than 460 meetups in 74 countries around the world that will take place tonight. In the Phoenix area, Social Media Arizona is hosting the Tempe Social Media Day Meetup at MADCAP Theater from 5-7 p.m. Guests will have the opportunity to meet other social media enthusiasts in the area and give a verbal, in-person Tweet about why they love social media, their favorite social media tool or their successes with social media. If you can’t attend the meetup, you can stay involved with the activities by following Tweets that include #smday.

Will you be at MADCAP tonight? What are you doing to celebrate Social Media Day?

How can this benefit B2B companies?

If a customer or prospect comes across the Twitter Place page associated with your business, he or she can view the Tweets and check-ins listed on that page. If someone has never heard of your business before, that feed can have a huge impact on that person’s first impression of your business.

So, B2B companies, make sure your corporate Twitter account is associated with your office location before you Tweet, and inform co-workers who are on Twitter to associate their Tweets with your business’ location while they’re at work. This will enable your Twitter Place page visitors to connect with your employees. And, I think it’s important for employees to make a connection with customers and prospects that goes beyond the products or services a business sells.

Twitter Places is now available. Below your tweet box you will see “Add a location to your tweets.” Simply click on the “Turn it on” link.

Do you think this feature could benefit B2B companies?

Obviously Twitter’s business model is evolving as we speak, and surely its technology will continue to evolve to compensate for this. I’ve put together a few predictions for how I think Twitter will evolve to be more useful to marketers

1. Contextual tweets: I see more Twitter-gration in the future. Twitter will integrate with other platforms like Facebook, 4square, Google and whatever is next. Therefore, Tweets can be prioritized by what you’re searching for, where you’re located, your most recent update, etc.
2. Opt-in DMs: Marketers will be able to respond immediately with customized DMs to Tweets like: “I’m looking for a good e-mail marketing software with Salesforce.com integration, please DM me.”
3. Automatic segmentation: Currently, you need an application like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to organize Tweets, but I think Twitter will develop more sophisticated segmentation algorithms, so you’ll be able to receive messages that are most relevant to you.

Do you have other Twitter predictions? How do you think other social media applications will evolve to be more relevant to B2B marketers? What’s next for social marketing?

As PR professionals, it’s our job to educate our clients and bosses about the importance of social media and online reputations. Much like great print coverage, social media conversations deliver valuable information about a company or brand directly to current and prospective customers and influence opinions.

In my opinion, the best part about social media is that you can participate in the conversations about your company or brand that are already happening and you can engage with your customers on a more personal level.

Instead of sharing your daily thoughts 140 characters at a time, Dribble gives you 400 x 300 pixels of space to share visual creativity. Another great feature is that, like Twitter, Dribbble allows you to “follow” your favorite designer, illustrator or developer and keep up with what they are working on.

As Twitter can be helpful to trend what’s happening in this great b2b world of ours, I believe that Dribble can also help us keep up with all things design related and keep things fresh!

Are there any other b2b resources you use to keep at the top of your game?

With ratings data, demographics, psychographics and the like, it can be easy to figure out when people listen to the radio or watch T.V. But, how do you know when they’re logging onto Twitter?

According to Fast Company, the best time of day to Tweet in the U.S. is 9:00 a.m. PST, because people are getting to work on the West Coast and taking lunch on the East Coast. The best time to Tweet if you want to be re-tweeted is at 4 p.m. on Friday.

But what about YOUR target audience?

Luckily, there are a couple tools that will reveal when your followers are logging on:

• Tweet O’Clock is ideal for seeing the best time to Tweet a particular person
• When to Tweet analyzes ALL of your followers and recommends the best time to Tweet

Another thing to consider is repeating your Tweeting. It’s OK to repeat a.k.a. re-tweet useful Tweets because people log on to Twitter at different times throughout the day. Once every six to eight hours is a good amount of time between re-tweets. Be cautious not to do this ALL the time, because it could border on spamming. Speaking of Spam, please don’t Tweet about what you ate for lunch.

How do you decide when to Tweet? Have you tried either of these tools?

With social media trending all over the Web these days, social media links have become a part of just about every Web site and blog. And from this, designers are finding various, unique ways to customize these buttons. To cater to the ever-growing demand for such tools, unique Web sites offering freebie icons have been hunted and gathered.

There is a handy new list of 40 New and Trendy Free Social Bookmark Icon Sets available by YouTheDesigner. Take time to check out the list and download your favorites or browse and get inspired to come up with your own.