Buyers Link to Case Studies from Blogs, Wikis
In just the past six months, marketers have really begun embracing social media. They’re blogging, building Facebook fans and Tweeting.
Yet, much of it is still experimentation.
The question is, how do you get people to link to the content on your site from social media venues?
Case studies are a top draw for technology buyers, but mostly linked from blogs and wikis versus other social media, according to a recent report from IDG Knowledge Hub.
The report, Social Media and the IT Investment Process: Linking Social Conversations to Content, includes findings from a survey of 100 information technology buying team members regarding the links they most want to see.
According to the report, the wrong content types can be worse than none at all.
"Over 40% of social media participants are interested in pursuing links to vendor-generated content…Winners’ will be vendors that build a relevant content bridge to draw the conversation towards their own hosted platforms and insight."
What works?
The report points out that preferences vary by investment type, buying role and the type of business impact (technical, financial, business impact).
Here are the top three preferred content items for various social media tools:
Blogs
Case study, advertisement, tutorial/how-to
Discussion boards/forums
Tutorial/how-to, free-event registration, evaluation version
Messaging/live chat
Free-event registration, ROI calculator, presentation
Microblogs
Advertisement, technical knowledgebase, free-event registration
Social networks
Free-event registration, advertisement, ROI calculator
Wikis
Tutorial/how-to, technical white paper, case study
Do you track your content consumption by incoming links? What are you seeing in terms of linkage from social media?
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