Category: LinkedIn
The use of LinkedIn for B2B sales prospecting has increased by 47.8% since last year, according to US research from OneSource, reported in Emarketer.
Around 20 percent of those polled were also increasing their use of blogs, Facebook and Twitter for prospecting purposes, though the overall majority still do not use social media for prospecting.
The most popular approach for gaining qualified leads remains outbound prospecting, which was rated 3.7 out of five for effectiveness, followed by the company website (2.9), inbound calls (2.6), email campaigns (2.6), shows & events (2.5), social networking (2.1) , direct mail (2.1) and webinars (1.8).
In January Hubspot research showed that 45% of US companies who have used LinkedIn for marketing had acquired a customer through the site. Company blogs were considered effective for 43% of respondents, while Twitter for 38% and Facebook for 33%.
LinkedIn has announced a new job matching service which automatically suggests qualified candidates from their 60 million strong professional database.
Called ‘Real-Time Profile Matches’ and currently in beta mode, LinkedIn say they have developed proprietary technology “to make it faster and easier both for users to find the right jobs and for hiring companies to find the right talent.”
Hiring managers and recruiters will see qualified candidates immediately after posting a job in the form of a ‘job poster’ containing up to 24 profiles of qualified candidates, presented in business card form.
Within the job poster recruiters can view the profile of each match and contact those that are a good fit. More »
B2B marketers intend to increase spend on social media by 43% in 2010, while overall marketing budgets remain static, a survey by US research firm Outsell has reported.
However, when asked which social media sites carried the most influence for B2B marketers, surprisingly, Facebook was considered effective by the most respondents – 51%, followed by LinkedIn – 45% and Twitter – 35%.
As eMarketer points out, this is at odds with Hubspot’s survey of lead generation amongst North American B2B marketers where 45% considered LinkedIn most effective with Facebook at 33%.
The contradiction perhaps reveals a gap between understanding that social networking is important and knowing how to implement a social media strategy in the B2B market. I’m with Hubspot, LinkedIn is definitely the better route for B2B marketers at this point, combined with Twitter.
LinkedIn was the favourite social media site for professionals at work in 2009, with 86% of worldwide internet users referring to it, a jump of 24% on 2008.
The survey from internet security firm FaceTime Communications shows that most professionals use LinkedIn to network with colleagues (79%), to learn about colleagues (66%) and for general research (61%). Only 37% were using LinkedIn for marketing to customers.
While only 13% said they used Twitter in 2008 for work purposes, the number leapt to 76% in 2009, overtaking Digg, Delicious and YouTube in the professional social networking pecking order though these also experienced substantial increases.
Facebook is still regarded as mainly a personal social networking site and in another survey reported in eMarketer, by Liberty Mutual, three quarters of employees More »
The use of LinkedIn for B2B sales prospecting has increased by 47.8% since last year, according to US research from OneSource, reported in Emarketer.