Social media use among B2B marketers and the commercial real estate industry is on the rise. Twitter beats Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging and YouTube as the most popular social network among business to business (B2B) marketers, but it’s LinkedIn that generates the most leads, according to a study from Pardot.
I personally can’t say that I have experienced the same results with LinkedIn as compared to the other major social tools but the point is that even though a full 95% of respondents indicated they use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or corporate blogs to reach prospects only 70% are monitoring the return for these programs. And among those who do, about 42% of marketers replied that zero or an uncertain number of sales leads resulted from social media programs, a startling high percentage given the time and resources required to operate the campaigns.
The fact that I utilize a multi-platform social media strategy makes it difficult to pinpoint the effectiveness of each specific platform because there is often crossover in terms of exposure from prospects. I personally have had prospects contact me via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and my Blog, but more often than not they pick up the phone and call me after discovering my social media presence.
