Our Director of WOM, Andrew Krebs-Smith, recently went to the Blog World Expo in Las Vegas. Below are notes from a session on Social Media for Business to Business (B2B) clients.

Often B2B companies find it hard to enter the social media space, because they see it as a direct-to-consumer method of communication, which doesn’t help their corporate client audience. But social media has something for everyone, and this panel underlined the value of social media for B2B companies.

Most of all, social media is valuable for B2B companies because it is all about creating and strengthening relationships. As most salespeople in the B2B world will attest to, making a sale involves much more than just having a product that people want to buy. When B2B client relationships can involve multi-million dollar deals, and long-term relationships, the purchases/agreements are not made on a whim. Rather, they inv0lve creating a relationship, not just between companies, but between people.

So how can social media help? Teach your salesforce to leverage social networking tools (LinkedIn, Twitter to name a few) to create and maintain relationships with clients, prospects, and anyone in-between. This also lets all the salespeople within a company know what each person is up to, so efforts aren’t duplicated and networks are maximized. Make sure to track these efforts through your CRM tool so that you can assess return on invesment (ROI), cost-per-lead (CPL), and other key metrics.

So how do you get the ball rolling? Bring together interdepartmental team to hash out differences, get everyone on the same level, talk about situation, etc. Talk about best policies, talk about what is recommended, allowed, and how social media can help achieve your business objectives. You don’t want employees neglecting these powerful tools, but they need to have specific goals and training on how to use them so they aren’t spinning their wheels trying to figure everything out.

And please, PLEASE don’t just use these tools for blatant promotion. These tools can be harmful if you abuse them and see them as just another place for your corporate message. Someone on the panel had a great analogy: “[you] don’t walk into a cocktail party and say ‘hey! buy my book!” Instead, give your prospects value. Share your resources with customers. Use these tools to keep in touch with customers and give them support.

The question is no longer IF B2B companies should be using social media, but rather HOW, WHEN, and WHERE. Any questions? You know where to find us.

Speakers on this panel: Kipp Bodnar, David B. Thomas, Kyle Flaherty, Mica Viehamn

We would like to officially welcome Howard Mont to The Cyphers Agency as the new Vice President of Sales and Marketing. He will be leading the agency’s business development team to create new client relationships.

We don’t like to brag, but Howard is pretty awesome, and we are pretty lucky to have him. In his 40 years of professional and entrepreneurial experience, he has worked at and owned a number of prestigious firms, including Ackerman, Mont, White, a full service advertising agency in New York City. He is more than passionate about what he does and really knows the biz.

Aside from his professional experience, Howard also loves to cook, and doesn’t hesitate to give us culinary tips and advice. If only he would cook lunch for us every day…

We are happy to have Howard (and his huge ring) on our team here at The Cyphers Agency. We look forward to working with you!

In a year of joblessness and disheartening economic conditions, Julianna Wittig was among many individuals who were laid-off and forced to begin the job search.

In her search for a new job, Julianna, who is now The Cyphers Agency’s newest Account Executive,  headed straight to her computer. In her online search, however, Julianna didn’t rely on typical job search sites such as Monster and Indeed.  Using social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, Julianna took a proactive approach to finding a job. She kept her profile updated and her eyes open for any opportunities she found on those sites.

While Julianna was searching, Darren Easton, Vice President and Creative Director for The Cyphers Agency  was using social networks to find a candidate to fill an Account Executive position. For the position, Darren wanted to find a social-media-savvy individual, who could handle several accounts in the agency’s Push-n-Pull division.

Julianna saw the posting on LinkedIn and began researching The Cyphers Agency–checking into the culture, environment, clients and other employees. Darren was researching too. He asked others online if they knew of Julianna and if they thought she would be a good fit for the Account Executive position.

Thanks to word of mouth and social networks, Darren told Julianna in the interview that he “already knew everything he needed to know about her.” It was clear that Julianna knew how to effectively market herself online, therefore, Darren knew she would certainly be capable of marketing clients online.

Social media has impacted so much of our daily lives. It changes the way we do businesses, network, communicate and even find jobs. The days of faxing resumes and mailing resumes on crisp resume paper are done.

Job seekers can use social networks to search for jobs, interact with potential employers and create online profiles that display their skills. Employers can social media to post jobs, find qualified candidates and ask others about these candidates.

We’re glad social media enabled us to connect to Julianna. Welcome, Julianna, we’re happy to have you here at The Cyphers Agency!

Our office found out about Chick-fil-A’s “Cow Appreciation Day” via twitter last Friday morning. Cow Appreciation Day is an annual event, where customers receive a free Chick-fil-A meal for dressing up as a cow.  The Cyphers Agency’s Word of Mouth department does work for the National Chicken Council, so we’re already big on anything that has to do with chicken. And free chicken, who can turn that down?

The catch: to get free chicken, you  had to dress up like a cow. As the intern, I took one for the team so that we could show everyone else how to do it.

This is just one of the fun ways to create media for your Facebook page, YouTube account, or website. We used this content as material for our Chicken fan page (for the National Chicken Council), that has grown to 3,234 (and climbing) fans in six weeks. How did we get so many fans? We give them fun content (like the above video) and other information that they find valuable, like chicken recipes around dinnertime. Giving your audience the information they want, in the places they already interact, is a tried-and-true method of increasing your fans or followers. Speaking of followers, you can also find @chickenftw on Twitter. So get out there and give your audience something they WANT to pass along (not some cheesy marketing message).

We recently launched a new site for Strayer University at www.strayeru.com. This site focuses on Strayer University campuses in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia. Strayer focuses on working adults seeking to continue their education with a certificate or degree program. They offer flexible programs that are online or on campus that fit the busy schedules of working adults.

Visitors to the site can read stories about continuing education such as learning which degrees are most financially rewarding in 2009 by reading the blog section of the site. The site allows visitors to interact by leaving comments or filling out a form to request more information about Strayer’s programs. Here is an excerpt from a recent post:

“The recent economic recession has put a squeeze on the national job market, forcing employment hopefuls to reach back into their skill set to seek out jobs they may not have been prepared to go after. FastCompany recently posted a list of the top employment opportunities for 2009. These are the top ten areas to seek employment this year:

1) Nursing and Medical Services….”

Link to their site in your reader and keep up-to-date on continuing education.