B2B Marketing Blog

How Simon Corbett of Global Dating Insights built a thriving online community from scratch

Global Dating Insights is a thriving community that came about in response to a clear need in the market. Simon quickly realised that even though the global dating industry was expanding very quickly, there really wasn’t a single unified place where companies could interact with each other and get insights. So, Simon and the team set out to build a community of the biggest dating companies and industry stakeholders, and have successfully achieved this by capturing most of the market over the years. Here, Simon shares some great advice and recommendations for those looking to build their own communities, especially in niche industries. You can also stream the full interview here

Topics: B2B Marketing B2B Publishers B2B communities B2B Event Marketing

LeadDev - The pillars of a B2B Community Truly loved by its members

With the pandemic now behind us, community-oriented businesses are still trying to strike the right balance between traditional and virtual community build. It’s clear that there’s a renewed love and appreciation for in- person community experiences yet virtual is something we all need to embrace and enhance throughout our business models, no debate there.

One thing that all communities need to remember is that the best ones are those that are truly loved by their members. That’s the key to community success and longevity.

A great example of such a community is LeadDev. They’ve adopted a set of strategies that have allowed them to achieve exactly this. LeadDev’s community strategies were talked about in detail with Ruth Yarnit, its Founder and CEO and here we dive into the 4 different parts to their approach: 

Topics: B2B communities

InfluenceGroup - Building  Communities in a Post-Pandemic World

Does the pandemic feel like a distant memory already? For many organisations, they're still finding their way around the new playing field.

During the pandemic few organisations were quick to adapt and adopt different ways to engage with their audiences, at least successfully, but those that did planted very strong community seeds that are now paying rewards.

Influence group led by Michael Owens and Michael McCarthy is one of those very organisations and this post summarises the key takeaways from a very thoughtful conversation with Michael on what has been their approach to stay connected to their audiences, partners and key stakeholders.

Today, influence group is going really strong, their approach to engaging with their audiences, building communities and the unique way in which their events are run, has led them to form a partnership with CloserStill Media.

We would really recommend watching the full interview when you have time.
Check out the full interview here.

For the high level summary and key takeaways from our conversation, read on.

Topics: Marketing Trends B2B communities Virtual Events

Building a community of 200k members in Artificial Intelligence - Sarah Porter from InspiredMinds!

Sarah Porter is the CEO and Founder of InspiredMinds!, a global community working in emerging technology and Artificial Intelligence. In just 5 years, this community-led business has grown to a community of over 200,000 people across 167 countries.

Sarah and I had a very interesting chat as part of our series on "Online Community Stories" and talked about how InspiredMinds! rose to achieve such incredible growth and success. Truly this has to be one of the most inspiring chats I've had - not only because of InspiredMinds community success, but because their visions and goals go beyond themselves and beyond commercial. They live by an ethos that's focused on the greater good, which is rare and special. 

The piece below was first published in the Community Leaders Magazine. You can find out more about this community of community professionals here.

Here I share my top takeaways from our chat, but if you'd like to listen to the whole session you can watch the interview on-demand here.

Topics: B2B communities

6 Ways to bring your B2B community alive through virtual

Most companies find fostering engagement among virtual event attendees challenging. But it doesn't have to be. Our good friend Sasha Frieze from the Business Narrative shared some really interesting tips and concepts through a live conversation on how organisers are able to foster engagement.

Here's a summary video of the session and below you can check out the summary.

Topics: B2B communities

Four B2B communities loved by their members

We have been drinking the online community juice for a very long time, and through the many years of working and speaking with leaders in the B2B Media and events industry, I wanted to highlight recent communities that are loved by its members.

Topics: B2B Marketing B2B communities

6 companies that have embraced B2B Digital Broadcasting

We've been keeping our ears close to the ground and over recent months we've come across these six companies that have really embraced change and made a positive shift in the way they run their virtual events. Companies that have pulled out all the stops to ensure their digital events are way above the standard.

In our opinion they've put a stake in the ground to secure a market segment they felt very confident was theirs with physical events and recognised that if they wanted to claim the same spot with their digital events, they needed to raise the bar and deliver a digital experience beyond their audience and partner's expectations. 

What's the answer to a digital event experience beyond expectations? Yep B2B digital broadcasting! Seen by many as the future of virtual / hybrid events, here are the six companies that have taken the steps forward in this direction.

We'll be showcasing what sets these companies and their leaders apart and their approach. If you want to delve deeper we're actually talking to one of them live this week, and if this is something you've been thinking about, then you should save yourself a spot.

What are the key traits of those leaders that have done it?

  1. Embraced change and ran with it
  2. Known that this is an investment in the mid to long term. They will see the real return in their next virtual events
  3. Brought their sponsors/partners along in the journey. Accepted some will drop out, but will gain new ones along the way
  4. Accepted this will be the norm for them moving forward
  5. Taken many steps forward and haven't looked back
  6. Known that many can run a webinar but not many build/hire a studio
  7. Upskilled existing teams and hired when necessary

 


Topics: Marketing Trends B2B Marketing Best Practices B2B communities

Digital Communities of The Future and What It Means for B2B Brands

Many people are falling out of love with the use of social media. It's becoming more common for people to start unfollowing friends and some companies are even putting their social media advertising spend on hold - either caused by an ethical misalignment or more recently public protests against platforms. Users are shifting the attention and use of these social media channels for other purposes other than connection.

The platforms that promised to connect us started to capitalise on our desire for connection, belonging and curiosity.
Algorithms started to control what we saw in our feeds, data was collected to improve advertising, and platforms were optimised to keep us attached to our screens.
Co-Matter

Topics: B2B communities

5 Must Know Myths about B2B Online Communities

B2B companies are getting serious about online communities and to stay in the game organisations are definitely wising up to the fact that it's not in the future anymore. It's now.

The trouble is after the pandemic, the number of companies chasing the attention of your audience has dramatically increased. Anyone can (and many have), launched virtual event businesses for example and many B2B brands are now heavily focused on building and nurturing their own communities to improve brand awareness and lead generation - very with the budgets that were perhaps once yours.

Topics: B2B Marketing B2B communities

LinkedIn Posting Strategy - Aim for the comments not the shares

Many B2B companies are still way behind the curve on their social media strategies and many of their team members are still not incorporating social selling tactics in their daily routines.

These are some of the key thoughts on how we view, execute ourselves and teach social media strategies to our clients.

This post is split in 6 areas: 

This is a post that will help demystify some of the questions on the way people post on LinkedIn and the impact this will have on their exposure to their connections and potential connections.

11 Tips on Successful Posting Strategy

1. Post every day or at least 3 times a week

2. Use a striking headline- same principles of SEO work

3. Use long form and share as much as you can within the post

4. Do not add a hyperlink to an external page, within the post itself, add it in the comments

5. Tag people that you want to see your post (don't abuse)

6. Use hashtags to get better exposure

7. Seek commentary, ask questions

8. Add images that go with the post or add content that is of value, don't let the image come automatically from links you post.

9. Vary the content you post, use video, documents, polls, multiple images

10. If you use video, upload the video into the tool itself. It's okay to embed from YouTube

11. Replicate and repurpose on your company page and it's perfectly okay if other colleagues copy and paste your update and post it as theirs. Performs better than re-sharing (more on that below)

 

 

Demystifying Digital Interaction
Digital Interaction vs Face to Face Interaction

I thought I'd share my personal thoughts and views on the value of a digital interaction on LinkedIn - assuming that social media interaction especially on LinkedIn for all us B2B bods, can be related to a physical networking interaction with peers/colleagues.

The best approach to social media engagement especially for those in Social Selling, is to behave as close as possible to how you'd behave in a face to face interaction and conversation.

This is our view and assessment on the value of digital interactions:

Topics: B2B Social Media B2B communities B2B Event Sales

Building B2B Online Communities on LinkedIn (or other platforms): Tips, frameworks and videos

The time has come for B2B companies to get serious about their audiences. The barriers to entry into the virtual events, content online and communities have come down and anyone can challenge the status quo from the living room of their house.

Traditional event companies have had to think FAST on how they're going to add value to their audiences, sponsors and stay top of mind within their relevant industries - building B2B communities is now an imperative.

Our series of digital pivot events aimed to cover all of these aspects and a specific area that came up again and again was LinkedIn.

When it comes to attracting audiences to your B2B virtual events, LinkedIn is pretty much unrivalled. A business that doesn't have LinkedIn in their marketing strategy is definitely leaving money on the table.

Here is a summary of the key themes we covered in our recent chat with Regan George from fellow agency The Social Effect. As you can see, we did cover A LOT - the content and information shared is truly valuable.

Topics: B2B communities B2B Event Marketing

A Detailed Guide on How to Launch a PPC Campaign For Your B2B Event


Launching a paid per click campaign is not as simple as paying an agency to do it or getting a member staff to simply spend a couple of hundred bucks on it and off they go.

Before you launch a PPC campaign there are certain aspects that you need to cover, we split this into 4 key areas:

  1. Required PPC settings for your websites
  2. Required settings for your Landing Pages to guarantee PPC campaign success
  3. Required assets and materials before you launch a PPC campaign
  4. How to monitor and track responses of your PPC campaign 

This is a guide that will tell you exactly what to do at each of these 4 stages, if you follow them you will ensure that your campaign is successful and more importantly, trackable.

Topics: B2B Marketing Conference Marketing Inbound Marketing B2B communities B2B Event Marketing

B2B Online Communities Mistakes: Marketing departments not owning the content

A common trend among B2B companies developing online communities around their event topics, is that the marketing team does not have any influence on the content that is generated to drive engagement. A big mistake!

Topics: B2B Content Marketing B2B Marketing How to B2B communities

How to leverage your existing audience to run great B2B events

Last week we looked at how running an event could kill your B2B inbound marketing efforts. This week, we're going to come at the topic from a different angle and explore how you go about leveraging your existing audience to run great B2B events. Done right, this works just like the flower and the butterfly. Both get something out of it, no damage is done, everyone's happy.

Topics: B2B Marketing Event Marketing B2B communities

3 models for event companies to make more money from B2B content

Whether you know it or not, like it or not, having a successful event or a series of successful events in the same or similar topic, is the basis of a community - it's all about the gathering of people that share a common interest. So what better way to engage with your community than through great content.

The events sector has a big advantage compared to most industries, in that you have experts at your fingertips - whether that's your production team, stakeholders, speakers or advisors. That allows access to knowledge, thought leadership and future shaping ideas with "relative" ease. 

Topics: B2B Content Marketing Event Marketing B2B communities Event growth

Announcement: BrightBull and Increnta form a joint venture to deliver integrated B2B digital marketing services

We are very pleased to announce that BrightBull has officially formed a joint venture with leading European inbound marketing agency Increnta. Increnta is a platinum HubSpot partner and Oracle Gold Partner with clients in 14 countries, specifically in the areas of Publishing, Training and Education, Financial Services, SaaS, Services, Healthcare and Tourism with a portfolio of 300+ clients.

Topics: B2B Marketing Inbound Marketing B2B communities

Event sponsorship growth: How to attract and secure high value deals

With declining delegate revenues and events still feeling the pinch of a new business ethic, shaped by recent economic austerity, landing the big kahuna event sponsorship deals is more important than ever before. But with companies wanting more for less and keeping a tight hold on the purse strings, how can you increase the value of event sponsorship?  

Topics: B2B communities Event growth

Online event communities: The true cost of inaction

You’d have to have been hiding under a rock the last few years not to be aware of the growing number of online event communities springing up. But there’s a huge difference between being aware and actually putting that nagging sense of “should do” into action and sprinting ahead of all the others (without getting disqualified of course!) If you’ve so far lacked the motivation to fully commit to building your online event community, here’s your incentive.

Topics: B2B Marketing Event Marketing B2B communities

Engaging an event audience online and offline


I took part in a panel discussion at Event Tech Live with Anthony Dunn of i2i Events Group, Neil Robertson-Ravo of Top Right Group, Ade Allenby of Reed Exhibitions; and Tamar Beck from Gleanin. It was a great session (probably the best one I've participated so far) that sparked lots of interesting views. It was mostly focused on how you engage an event audience online and offline, and what kind of tools you need to do it. 

Topics: B2B Marketing Event Marketing Conference Marketing B2B communities

Who benefits from a successful and well run B2B online community?

If the qualitative and quantitative evidence that we’ve provided in other blogs isn’t enough to get the support of your team, or your CEO’s buy-in, the cherry on the cake in your argument will be demonstrating the effects of an online community at every level of the value chain.

There are several groups who will thank you for your efforts in your B2B online community – in terms of both monetary rewards and delegate fandom.

Topics: B2B Content Marketing Content Marketing Inbound Marketing B2B communities