Social media often comes from humble beginnings, but can quickly evolve into a communications channel for the masses – including all B2B brands. For example, it has the benefit of real-time interaction with an engaged audience and can help to position you as a real thought leader in your field.

There is a lot of hype around social media, and this is where B2B brands can often come unstuck; it is tempting to jump on the bandwagon, but a poor social media presence is worse than having no social media presence at all.

It’s essential that brands take the right approach to social media to give them the best chances of success. On that note, here are eight top tips to getting started in social media:

1. Strategy

Before getting started, it is vital to have a clear strategy in place based on a rigorous analysis of the social media landscape you are operating in. This should tell you where your audience are, how they are using the various channels, what competitors are doing, and the opportunities for your brand.

Your strategy should also include key messages for every channel and a list of short, medium and long-term objectives based on what success looks like for your business.

2. Style

As any communicator knows, styles need to be adapted for different forums. For example, on twitter you need to learn how to communicate in just 140 characters and appreciate the ins and outs of short URLs, memes and hashtags. On Linkedin, you need to know how to capture a Group audience and encourage members to share their ideas and experiences.

B2B brands need to research and understand these new styles of communication, and ensure that everyone appreciates the subtle nuances that can help you to cut through the noise.

3. Sustainability

Setting up a social media account is one thing; having a social media presence is quite another. Before getting started, you need to know you have the resources and commitment required to keep it going.

Help yourself by creating a calendar of content and make sure you always have something to talk about.

4. Substance

As with any medium, content is key to a successful communications programme. There is a vast amount of information out there and people will quickly tire of feeds that are of no use to them.

Content must be fresh, unique, interesting and engaging. If you’re using social media to demonstrate thought leadership it must be new, or at least add value to the existing debate.

People often ask us how many followers they should have and how to increase their following, but perhaps there’s a better way of thinking about this. If you have the right content and promote it in the right way, the right people will come. It’s better to have 1,000 engaged readers of your blog than 10,000 disengaged followers and the right content will ensure that the high value interest keeps coming back.

5. Spokespeople

Getting key spokespeople on board is vital if you are to create a compelling social ‘product’. Some will be more familiar with the channel than others, so training needs to be tailored. They will also have varying perceptions of how much time they need to put into this and what they will get out of it, so you need to set reasonable expectations up front.

6. Stamina

It takes planning, dedication and perseverance to make a success of social media and to start seeing results. This needs to be built into your strategy and objectives, so that your targets are achievable and to manage expectations internally.

7. Suitability

A major benefit of social media is that it enables you to talk in real time to a niche audience. It is vital that your content focuses specifically on what’s affecting them. Getting the right spokespeople on board with the necessary insight and experience is the first step to achieving this.

8. Succinct

Generally speaking, easily digestible content works best as people have a limited amount of time to spend on social media. There are various analytics tools available to determine what works best on which channels. Keeping a close eye on this and recent industry reports will help you to tailor your content in various formats to keep your audience engaged.

The UK’s most award-winning B2B PR agency, specialising in content and communications for the service economy, entered the chart at number 146 overall and number 35 outside of London.

Man Bites Dog is one of the fastest growing companies in the list, reporting significantly higher than average growth in fee income. Its strong performance has been driven by a number of factors, from major new client wins including ABN AMRO Commercial Finance and RSA, to the growth of its international PR practice and digital and social media consultancy and services.

Claire Mason, founder and managing director of Man Bites Dog, comments: “This is an incredibly proud day for Man Bites Dog. To be ranked amongst the strongest performing agencies in the UK is a great testament to the quality of our work and team.”

PRWeek’s Top 150 PR Consultancies report is the most authoritative analysis of the British PR and communications industry. It records the fortunes of the country’s biggest PR agencies and is a strong indicator of what is happening to communications budgets.

For more information and the full table please see here.

It’s no surprise that the Climate Map was a hit online, as it combined simple but effective design with a great conversation-generating idea. People were more than keen to discuss their own workplace climate in relation to Hay Group’s data, sparking debate across traditional and social media. Kudos to Redhouse Lane, who brought the interactive inforgraphic to life. You can read a case study of the campaign here: Hay Group Climate Map case study.

The award win has put us in a great mood, so we thought we’d share some of our ideas to help you create your own compelling visualisations and infographics:

So what’s the best way to go about creating an infographic?

First understand why you are doing it. If it’s because everyone else is – this is the wrong reason. Determine whether an infographic fits in with the overall objectives of the campaign and take it from there.

Next, involve a designer that understands your company and what you are trying to convey. As well as developing a clear brief and coming up with your own metaphorical and visual ideas, hold an ideas meeting with the designer to hit on the best concept.

As all infographics are different, development tends to be quite an iterative process. Prepare your designer for more than two rounds of approvals so they don’t try to complete the whole thing in one go. Everyone must be comfortable with a more dynamic development process.

What works and what doesn’t?

Simple, beautiful graphics that speak for themselves work best. It’s also important to choose the most interesting data. If it’s particularly revelatory or new, this will obviously help. Remember, an infographic can’t make boring data interesting, your information has to be relevant to your audience in the first place before making it beautiful.

Try to focus in on a central idea for your piece so it’s immediately clear what the visualisation or graphic stands for. Throw in too many ideas and you’ll miss the mark and the message you’re trying to convey.

One of the best ways to stay focused is to hit on a simple, effective theme that gives scope for creative data graphics – for example, the weather. Make sure it’s related to your topic though, and not too tenuous. You should also consider the 3-4 most important bits of information and build out from there. Be brutal though, infographics should make data easy to understand and fun to read. Cut unnecessary stats and keep it simple!

How do you promote it?

If you’ve got good data and a great design, chances are it will get passed around a fair bit on twitter. To oil the wheels though, launching an infographic alongside a standard data-driven press release is a good tactic to increase interest in the overall package.

Use photo-sharing sites like Flickr, or your pressroom if it has this functionality, to host high and low definition versions of your infographic for use on the web and in print publications. Also, make it easy to embed, download or share the image directly from your page using appropriate sharing buttons. This will ensure bloggers, twitter users and online media outlets can access and use your infographic as they desire. Social media news release sites also offer image hosting services if you don’t have this facility on your website.

As part of this outreach it’s important to propagate your infographic throughout your own social estate, e.g. over twitter, Facebook, via LinkedIn groups etc. LinkedIn has also recently launched a ‘Company status update’ tool, allowing easier communication with your followers.

How do you measure its success?

For measurement to work your objectives need to be smart, measurable, achievable and relevant. Now decide whether you have met them or not.

Other key metrics you can look at as part of your infographic outreach are: linkbacks from sites that embed the image stored on your server; sharing of your infographic across the social web (use sites like bit.ly to create trackable links); and good old fashioned coverage across blogs and online publications.

Likewise, if there is a compelling call to action in your infographic, you may want to include a short link or special phone number for interested parties to contact you – you can then measure direct response as a result of the buzz you have created.

Check out or blog on ‘PR Beyond the Page’ for some of the most useful sites for infographic inspiration.

Man Bites Dog has been nominated in the ‘Outstanding Public Relations Consultancy’ category, which recognises excellence and best practice in the PR profession.

In addition, Man Bites Dog is shortlisted in the ‘Corporate & Business Communications’ category for its Cost Boomerang campaign for KPMG.

Claire Mason, Founder and Managing Director of Man Bites Dog, said: “After winning a string of agency and campaign awards last year, we’re thrilled to be shortlisted for the prestigious CIPR awards alongside the cream of the UK’s communications industry.”

Jane Wilson, CEO of the CIPR, said: “To make the CIPR Excellence Awards shortlist is a statement of achievement for any individual or organisation. The sheer number of high quality entries received this year, especially when things are still pretty tough out there economically, is testament to a thriving industry. There really is no greater recognition of professionalism, creativity and hard work than to reach the final stages of the Excellence Awards.”

The winners of this year’s Excellence Awards will be announced at a black tie dinner at London’s Park Lane Hilton on 28 May 2012.

Man Bites Dog will be supporting RSA on media relations and thought leadership to cement RSA’s position as the UK’s largest commercial lines insurer.

The six-figure retainer was won following a competitive pitch. Account Director David Mercer will lead the Man Bites Dog team working with RSA.

Simon Kutner, RSA’s Head of External Communications for the UK and Western Europe, said: “We were impressed by Man Bites Dog’s real understanding of our business, the wider industry and creative take on how we can build on the good work done to date. Their expertise and creative nous is a great combination as we look to extend our reach beyond key trade press and develop a strong authoritative positioning.”

Claire Mason, Managing Director of Man Bites Dog, commented: “We’ve built a solid reputation for our insurance and risk communications capabilities. We’re delighted to have been selected and looking forward to working in partnership with the in-house team to help RSA take its rightful place as a leading authority on commercial risk.”

Schneider provides commercial foreign exchange services to FTSE-listed companies, financial institutions, corporates, SMEs and private individuals and is consistently rated by Bloomberg as one of the most accurate forecasters of exchange rates worldwide.

The six-figure appointment will see Man Bites Dog take responsibility for delivering a tailored communications strategy to promote Schneider’s commercial forex expertise to the UK corporate and not-for-profit community.

Shelton Fray, Director at Schneider Foreign Exchange, comments: “We have been very impressed by Man Bites Dog’s creative ideas and proactive approach to demonstrating our expertise. They’ve already made a significant impact among our target media.”

Claire Mason, Managing Director at Man Bites Dog, comments: “We’re proud to be working with one of the world’s most accurate commercial forex forecasters, at a time when currency issues are front page news and of critical relevance to business and the wider economy.”

Man Bites Dog is a finalist for the ‘Freshest Consultancy Team’ award. In addition, the consultancy is nominated in the ‘Freshest Business to Business Campaign’ and ‘Freshest Corporate Campaign’ categories.

Claire Mason, Founder and Managing Director of Man Bites Dog, said: “We’re thrilled to be nominated for these awards which showcase the strength of our unique proposition and the outstanding work of the Man Bites Dog team.

“Being recognised in this way is incredibly important to us and we look forward to building on this success throughout 2012.”

The win follows a string of awards in 2011, including B2B Marketing’s PR Agency of the Year, PRCA’s Specialist Consultancy of the Year, and CIPR’s Outstanding Consultancy of the Year 2011.

The winners of this year’s 2012 Fresh PR Awards will be announced on 1st March at the Hilton Deansgate, Manchester.

Though many of these ‘modern gurus’ are spending time building and nurturing their own personal brands, corporate communicators can also channel this enthusiasm. Especially for those in professional services, the ability to foster well known, content-rich and influential spokespeople, could be hugely beneficial to overall brand building. Likewise, where ideas are often the only source of differentiation, propagating your company’s deep insight across the web is invaluable.

So what are the key factors to consider in creating the modern guru?

1) Time

While corporate communicators can take on a lot of the legwork themselves, always-on social networks like twitter require active engagement. This means any spokesperson must be able to commit time to the strategy. Getting this included in their objectives, or even job description, is a great way of securing a spokesperson’s time. If this isn’t an option, giving them the taste for fame through relevant examples is another good strategy.

2) Ideas

The modern spokesperson is built upon ideas and content. This means producing substantial amounts of useful and interesting content for your target audience. Trying to undertake this process with a spokesperson that has nothing to say simply won’t work. If your spokesperson is an ideas machine and you can access and wield content from across your business, you’re probably on to a winner.

2) Enthusiasm

spokespeople also need the enthusiasm to give the programme the effort it needs to succeed. This means creation of regular blogs, articles and multimedia content, regular tweeting etc. While you should look to share copywriting loads internally and externally, becoming a true ‘brand’ is a long-term process, which requires staying power from your spokesperson.

4) Focus

As with most online B2B communications, you aren’t aiming to speak to everyone, just a niche audience that matters. Likewise, trying to cover everything relevant to your audience will inevitably reduce impact and not help your SEO. Work to understand that audience, how they find and consume information and focus your ideas and the content you produce accordingly.

5) Engagement

Engagement – engaging with appropriate communities around the content and ideas produced is a must to building your spokesperson’s profile. Identify top target groups, for example within twitter or LinkedIn, and focus your efforts on engaging in useful, interesting conversations and sharing content where relevant.

6) Tools

The proliferation of tools and channels to promote and propagate content is at the centre of the personal brand trend. These tools help share ideas in more ways than ever before and allow people to find them and be influenced. Some of the top tools and channels are: twitter, LinkedIn, Slide Share, YouTube, Vimeo and iTunes.

7) Media

To truly increase a spokesperson’s profile, the use of different media is a must. Don’t try to do everything, but consider the best opportunities based on your audience and your spokesperson and start there. You might, for example, want to create a regular video interview hosted by your spokesperson to share via your blog, website and email to communicate directly with your audience.

8) Risks

There are inherent risks in the ‘guru’ approach for example, what happens when people change jobs? Organisations should ensure they recognise the opportunities and risks of this approach before undertaking an active guru building programme. Things to think about here include the ownership of online pages, twitter handles etc. and ensuring the overall company benefits from your efforts. Getting these questions out of the way in advance will help avoid any conflict later on and help smooth the path to spokesperson success.

The list recognises award-winning agencies that have demonstrated strong growth and turnover and created top-notch work.

Managing Director, Claire Mason, said: “2011 was a really exciting year in which we doubled in size and were named top dog at various awards ceremonies for our campaigns and company culture.

“Being recognised in this way is incredibly important to us and we look forward to building on this success throughout 2012.”

The win follows a string of awards in the past year, including B2B Marketing’s PR Agency of the Year, PRCA’s Specialist Consultancy of the Year, and CIPR’s Outstanding Consultancy of the Year 2011.

For further information please visit thedrum.co.uk