Breakfast Roundtable Social Media Series Fall 2009

Social media is fast becoming the "must have" marketing tool for
business-to-business companies. It's easy to see why:  social media offers a seemingly limitless range of prospects, and the costs to join can be low.  The barrier to entry for most people is the overwhelming number of options for online interaction, and the feeling that one has to be a highly skilled technician to navigate the alternatives.  Senior executives worry about the time investment:  will they become buried under a host of new obligations to update, blog, post, and update again?  Will they have to hire a host of expensive new social media specialists?
 
BMA Chicago’ Breakfast Roundtable series on social media will offer practical ideas you can start acting on now.

Previous sessions:

Wednesday, September 16, 2009
“Markets are conversations. Conversations are fire. Marketing is arson.”
- The Cluetrain Manifesto

The kickoff will be led by Fleishman-Hillard’s B2B Digital Practice Group Leader, Alex Kepnes, and CME Group Director of Corporate Communications Allan Schoenberg. 

The panelists will share best practices for getting  B2B companies off the ground using social media, and will include insights on how to get started, and how to manage the program, including risks and rewards. 

They will share experiences and aim to answer many of the “getting started” questions, such as “will social media really do anything for my business?” “Where do we start?” “Who should own social media?” and “How much of the marketing budget should go towards it?”

Get the insights and learn best practices of other B2B companies who are using social media to drive business goals. Among the practices that will be discussed is a four-step process created to help business customize a social media strategy. The process includes:
     • Exercises in listening to what’s already being said about your business online
     • Defining your company’s policy for responding to existing dialog
     • Determining what content your business should be creating and sharing 
     • How your social media strategy integrates with other marketing programming 
     • Building and managing daily experiences related to a social media program, including perceived and real pitfalls and rewards.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009
A Deep Dive into the How-To's of Social Media for B2B Marketers
Mike Volpe, VP of Inbound Marketing, HubSpot

Social media marketing can be a powerful channel to attract website visitors and leads while building thought leadership for your company.

Learn how to harness the power of social media - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other networking sites - to get found by more prospects and generate sales leads for your business, all from a B2B perspective using HubSpot and other B2B companies as case studies.

We're thrilled to welcome well-known social media guru Mike Volpe from HubSpot for the October 21 Breakfast Roundtable.  Mike (@mvolpe) is VP of Inbound Marketing at HubSpot, an Internet marketing software company, where he leads the company's lead generation and branding strategy through inbound marketing, including blogging, search engine optimization, social media, landing pages and analytics.  He is also a co-host of the weekly live marketing podcast HubSpot TV and maintains a personal blog at http://www.MikeVolpe.com/.ci

Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Leveraging Integrated Marketing to Optimize Social CRM Investments
Ray Villares, Principal/VP Digital Services, Symmetri Marketing Group

Search, mobile and social marketing are more than the latest craze, they represent new opportunities to create direct, intimate and two-way dialog with your customers.  In this session see first-hand examples of how leading B2B companies are aligning both traditional and emerging tactics to extend their reach, convert prospects into customers, build brand loyalty and even improve their offerings. 

Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Ira Sager, Special Projects Director, BusinessWeek

BusinessWeek has done a tremendous job at building businessweek.com into an online community with deep engagement measures.  He will speak to what's resonated with BusinessWeek’s audience to make a community involved and genuine and give you advice on doing the same.

All sessions in the series will take place at Stuart IIT GSB, 565 W. Adams. 
Networking begins at 8:00 a.m., followed by the program from 8:30 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.