What do you do when you are puzzled by something? You google it, like everyone else, since Google is the dominant search engine. Today millions of business professionals are only willing to reach as far as their keyboard for the answers they need. The question is will they find you? Do yourself a favor, Google yourself and find out if you are on the first page. If you’re not, here are some things you can do to increase your visibility on Google:

1. Update your employees’ profiles (photos, bios, links to their online profiles)

Web analytics reveal that the most viewed pages are the About Us and Contact Us pages. Why is that? It is driven by genuine human curiosity. People want know who they are doing business with, their names and faces, and not only that, they want to contact them too!

2. Blog, Blog, Blog.

As highlighted in our previous blog articles, there are many benefits in blogging. You can write about the things your customers want to know, share your insights in the market, and anything else that may interest your clients.

3. Incorporate Social Media on your site.

Social Media creates much larger audience groups for businesses. The Internet is a public and social place and having social media incorporated within your website means you are connected to more people more topics and subjects, thus increasing the chances your website will be picked up by Google’s search engine.

What else do you need? Commitment, Commitment and Commitment! It is a full time job to maintain your website and do it right. Update your website, blog and social media frequently, as a less active site is not going to rank well on Google.

As we were trying to put together some interesting facts about social media for B2B marketers, we discovered this interesting video. Then, we decided why would we tell you something, when we can show you instead. So, enjoy it.

B2B companies are ahead of their B2C rivals when it comes to social media adoption

• 81% of B2B companies maintain company-related accounts or profiles on social media sites versus 67% of B2C
• 75% of B2Bers participate in microblogging (eg. Twitter) versus 49% of B2Cers

Source: Business.com – 2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study (http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007404)

And the FTSE 100 are just plain running scared of Twitter

• Just 16 of the FTSE 100 companies are using Twitter, despite the fact that 20% of Tweets contain a reference to a product or brand

Source: Virgin Media Business (http://ow.ly/1gDTf)

But CIOs could well be the biggest blocker to social media adoption

• 54% of CIOs prohibit use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, while at work

Source: Robert Half Technology (http://rht.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=131&item=790)

Use of social media by B2B companies is validated by B2B buyer perspectives

• 93% of business buyers believe all companies should have a presence in social media
• 85% believe companies should not just present information via social media, but use it to interact and become more engaged with them

Source: Cone Inc – Social Media in business (http://ow.ly/1dLqJ)

And that’s because the B2B buying process is fundamentally changing

• 9 out of 10 buyers say that when they’re ready to buy, they’ll find you

Source: DemandGen Report

• Over 70% of purchases are restricted to established vendors or are heavily dependent on Word of Mouth recommendations

Source: Buyersphere ebook, Enquiro (http://ow.ly/YbQm)

• More than 8 out of 10 IT decision-makers said word of mouth recommendations are the most important source when making buying decisions

Source: Forrester Research, How to take B2B relationships from Indifferent to Engaged: Jan 2009

• 59% of B2B buyers engaged with peers who addressed their challenge, 48% followed industry conversations on the topic and 37% posted questions on social networking sites looking for suggestions

Source: Genius (http://www.genius.com/marketinggeniusblog/2767/a-glimpse-inside-the-mind-of-the-new-b2b-buyer.html)

Yet there are differing opinions as to where search comes into play in the buy cycle

• 7 out of 10 buyers say that they start their buying process at vendor sites, not Google

Source: DemandGen Report (http://ow.ly/1d82N)

Versus

• 93% of B2B buyers use search to begin the buying process

Source: Marketo (http://bit.ly/9O6pix)

If you think C-level executives aren’t active online, you’re sorely mistaken

• The Internet is the C-Suites top information resource (74% of C-Level executives say it’s very valuable)
• 53% of C-level executives said they prefer to locate information themselves
• The C-suite first turns to mainstream search engines (63%) to locate information
• 6 out of 10 C-Suite executives conduct more than six searches a day
• Executives in IT are the most prevalent users of the Internet for information gathering

Source: Forbes Insight – The Rise of the Digital C-Suite (http://www.forbes.com/forbesinsights/digital_csuite/index.html)

Client marketers are warming to the idea of social media, but many are still to act

• While 92% of client marketers agree that it would be unwise to ignore social media, 63% do not have a social media strategy

Source: The B2B Barometer (http://www.b2bbarometer.co.uk)

The relationship between Marketing and Sales in B2B organisations still remains fractious

• Sales generate 53% of their own leads and marketing contributes just 24%

Source: 2009 CSO Report (http://bit.ly/7EbaHS)

• 90% of marketing deliverables are not used by sales

Source: The New Rules of Sales Enablement (http://tiny.cc/jXRxX)

• 49% of B2B marketers confess to not measuring ROI

Source: The B2B Barometer (http://www.b2bbarometer.co.uk)

And if you still don’t get the whole social media thing, it’s worth bearing in mind…

• 89% of journalists make use of blogs while conducting their online research and 96% turn to corporate websites
• 56% said social media was important or somewhat important for reporting and producing stories

* Note: We have used and abused the above information, as the author insisted. A special thanks for the folks at Earnest Agency.

According to the latest NetMarketShare browser share trend, while Internet Explorer is still the browser king at 60.65% it has experienced a drop of nearly 8% since the same time period last year. Firefox has been at the 24% mark since October of 2009. The biggest gains have been experienced by Google’s Chrome browser, which is continuing its upwardly trend and is currently at 6.13%, up by nearly 4% since April of 2009. Expect this trend to continue with Chrome, who’s no frills minimalistic design and fast page load times have internet users adopting the browser in large numbers. Apple’s Safari made some  small gains, and Opera has remained flat at around 2.5%.

Our own Google Analytics data pretty much mirrors the NetMarketShare report, with the only difference being that Safari and Chrome hover at around 8%. Whatever browser you choose, happy surfing!