Social Media News

Earlier this year B2B company SAP launched their “Run Like Never Before” campaign with television, print, digital and mobile ads in the U.S., Brazil and Germany, according to this press release. There is no lesson in the fact that the enterprise software company launched an ad campaign, but it is instructive to look at how they supported it with social media.

Social media profiles of B2B companies frequently use default backgrounds or designs, and this campaign shows how SAP leveraged all the options available to further promote their campaign message through its graphic look. Another thing that B2B companies don’t often do is dedicate resources to building and promoting their brand image. It is usually their products, services and generally company culture and attitude that creates a sense of brand for their customers and prospects. Using some of these ideas below, with the necessary resources of course, you can start to build some of that brand image.

YouTube

SAP produced a television commercial as a core part of the campaign and shared it on YouTube. There’s nothing new or magical here, but B2B companies produce videos all the time, and forget to share them on their YouTube profiles. It’s a way to get an additional audience for videos that you are making anyway. In SAP’s case both the video and the video description have links to drive traffic to the campaign landing page.

Twitter

SAP updated their Twitter background with images from the campaign. If your B2B company has the resources to develop a compelling look and feel for your company, make sure to extend that to your Twitter background. SAP was also able to leverage Twitter’s enhanced profile pages. This is currently only available to select Twitter accounts (advertisers), but if it rolls out broadly, your should take advantage of it for your B2B company. SAP added an extra banner (835 x 90 pixels) at the top of their Twitter stream and pin a single tweet at the top as part of their enhanced profile. They wisely choose a tweet that contains the Run campaign video. This promoted tweet is always shown in the expanded mode, so the embedded media (photo or video) is always visible.

Facebook

SAP updated their Facebook Timeline cover photo with a graphic image from the campaign. This makes a big statement about what message they want to convey to visitors. B2B companies should think of the cover photo as their first impression on Facebook. Most people will come to your Facebook Page one time, and if they like what they see, they will like the Page. Future updates are seen in their newsfeed. And that is more likely if you can get some engagement with them, as Facebook’s algorithm determines what shows in fans’ newsfeed.

When you update your cover photo, it shows as an activity in your Timeline. You will notice that SAP added some descriptive text and a link to the landing page with this photo. This also means that whenever anyone clicks on the photo they will see this description and link. This update can be pinned to the top, which SAP did not do, so that visitors to the page can learn more about the campaign and have the opportunity to click the link.

Linkedin

SAP also extended the look of the campaign to their LinkedIn product page, which lets you create free banners (640 x 220 pixels) that can link to a landing page. This follows the theme of all these profiles we’ve been looking at. Create a compelling graphical look, brand your social profiles with that look and send people to a landing page for more information.

Google+

By adding a cover photo to their Google+ page, SAP tied this additional social network to their campaign. Thanks for the heads-up on this one Bill.

Slideshare

Customize Slideshare when you pay for the pro edition. It also includes private uploads, lead capture and video uploads. SAP made it look like their other social profiles, so when people download their presentations, they saw the message again. Kevin added this one below, so I moved it into the post.

Landing Page

And that brings us to the landing page, which SAP has made consistent with the rest of the campaign. The most important thing they did was embed a tag in all the links that drove here from their social profiles that identified that traffic as coming from social. This lets them track the success of their social activity against other activities. If you want a little more background on the SAP Run Like Never Before campaign, here’s a post by SAP marketer Michael Brenner.

This example was meant to inspire you to raise the level of your social media marketing and learn some simple things to do to create a larger branding impression, even if you are not supporting a global marketing campaign. Let us know you thoughts, inspirations, other examples and how you have implemented any of these ideas in a campaign oriented manner.

Source: Social Media B2B