80% of journalists say companies without a website are less credible.

Arketi Group, a high-tech business-to-business public relations and marketing firm, released its 2009 Arketi Web Watch Survey. The survey reveals 68 percent of journalists consider the impact of social media on BtoB reporting to be positive.

A free copy of the findings is available at www.arketi.com/surveys.

“While high-profile social media tools like blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are of interest to journalists, our findings indicate BtoB marketers should not discount tried-and-true Internet technology,” said Mike Neumeier, principal of Arketi. “Search engine optimization and building media-friendly websites site remain vital to reaching the business media.”

When asked how journalists use the Internet:

   --  95 percent say search
   --  92 percent say reading news
   --  92 percent say emailing
   --  89 percent say finding story ideas
   --  87 percent say finding news sources
   --  75 percent say reading blogs
   --  64 percent say watching webinars
   --  61 percent say watching YouTube
   --  59 percent say social networks

88% of journalists say they spend 20 or more hours a week on the Internet

85% have a LinkedIn account

55% are on Facebook

24 % tweet on Twitter.

92% of journalists say they get story ideas from news releases

85% turn to industry sources, and an equal number tap PR contacts.

12% have used Twitter to find a source or story idea.

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5 phases of leveraging Facebook for Business

You run the marketing for a business of any size and you’re trying to figure out how to leverage Facebook to increase your reach and generate more sales. With so much buzz, Facebook is hard to ignore but many people have yet to figure out the most effective way for using the site to generate sales.

Marketing through Facebook does not mimic the standard three step online sales funnel: click, read (learn about the product or service), purchase.

Phase 1: Awareness
In the Facebook sales funnel there are two things you want to make users aware of: your service and your presence on Facebook.

Phase 2: Education
For those visitors that already know your product or service, you may not need to do much education. For the more inquisitive user who has never heard of you or your company, you’ll need to educate them.

Phase 3: Engagement
“Enagement” has become the cornerstone of social network marketing.

Phase 4: Action
In contrast to search engine advertising, which involves clicking an ad and then taking some sort of action, the Facebook sales funnel involves building a relationship and presenting multiple opportunities to take an action.

Phase 5: Repeat Engagement
Now that you’ve presented a call to action and some of your users have taken that action, you need to continue to engage them.

Ultimately each business needs to determine what the best strategy is for them based on the resources available but the Facebook sales process will help you to generate valuable customer relationships, not just one-time customers.

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