Last week I was honored to co-present with Parvez Patel, senior director of e-strategy at Grainger, on a session at Internet Retailer Conference 2013, titled "Social Marketing for B2B:  It's Not Just for B2C Anymore."

In this session both of us discussed how we approached B2B social media from a Grainger perspective and from a Cisco retail industry marketing perspective.  Some of the points that we discussed include:

• Clear identification of target audience and objectives before the program.  The Cisco retail social media marketing program was specifically targeted at decision makers within retail to build industry specific relevance and thought leadership, while Grainger goals are to humanize Grainger; connect with  customers and prospects; deliver great multi-channel experience
• Overview of social media properties and observations about target audience reach
• Showcase examples of how to use social media to maximize the investments of other marketing activities, such as events and trade shows
• Lessons learned from Parvez and Kenneth on how to define and execute social media programs in a B2B setting from our respective disciplines

One of the things we ran out of time to play during the session was the new "Mobile Heroes are Everywhere" video from Grainger, which I thought was very effective in delivering the messaging in a humorous manner:

"Using content, that is engaging, relevant and helps Grainger drive our offering and value proposition to our audience is extremely critical. The above video is a small part of a broader content and social marketing strategy that our teams are working on," says Parvez.

I wanted to end this blog with the great video and welcome any questions about our session in the comments area below.

Thank you