Every start-up goes through a phase where they cannot invest on Marketing. HuntShire too had to go through that phase (we still are). There are few things I learned on how to market in Social media.
HuntShire's is a technology recruitment company trying to solve the sourcing and screening problem in the recruitment by combining inbound recruiting, sourcing and assessment with a bit of gamification in it.
In this post, I would focus on strategies that we use at HuntShire to do B2B BD and Sales.
B2B
1. LinkedIn connections It is very likely that you don't have money to buy a premium account. So how to get connected to people?
The first job is the make a list of people (or companies) you would want to get connected to. Go to the company page and check for their employees. If there is anyone in your second level network, send a invitation with a relevant message. This person may not be the concerned person, but by connecting to him you get your relevant person in your second level network :) It is important to realize that once you get your first 10 connections, getting more is not very difficult.
Use LinkedIn search : www.linkedin.com/search ; If you want to get connected to the VP of Sales (say). Go to LinkedIn search and type in 'VP of Sales'. Once you get the list, you can filter people based on level of connection location etc.
The challenge here is to get your first 10 connections in your targeted field. You will find out that all people of a particular industry are well connected.
How to compose LinkedIn message? While sending Invitation, you should do a one line pitch (if you don't have one, get one). If the message is compelling enough, you will get the connection request accepted.
Once accepted, you are allowed to send them Inmails. Keep it short, but make sure you don't miss the essentials. Put anything extra in a slideshare ppt and add a link. In the signature, give your personal email id and phone number.
It takes time, but persistence is the key. It took me 400+ invitations and 100+ Inmails and LinkedIn warning me twice before I got my first lead.
2. Quora : Follow tags related to your start-up. Participate in discussions there. Some gyan (note, don't sell) helps a lot. We got one international PR from one of our answers in Quora :) This again is very powerful. We are still learning the tricks of the trade as I write this.
3. Twitter : You would be surprised to find that you can get hold of lot of relevant contacts here. I have twitter discussions with lot of meaningful people in my space (it is not sales but marketing). Also spreading gyan with relevant hash tags helps.
4. Blog : Blogs like this help get leads. Take blog.hubspot.com ; They don't do sales. They do marketing and their sales team handles only inbound sales calls. (We would also love to do that :P )
