Last year, we wrote over a hundred blog posts on sales, marketing, and social media. At VA Partners, we frequently leverage social media tools to provide sales and marketing support for our clients, as part of our B2B social media services.

In honour of the New Year, here are the top 5 B2B social media blog posts of 2012 from the VA Partners blog (as measured by the number of reads):

• Leveraging Social Media in the B2B Sales Process How Twitter and LinkedIn can help the sales team to grow revenue, including the strategies and tactics that sales people can use to close more business through research, connections, and moving relationships from on-line to off-line.

• Managing Both a Personal and Business Twitter Account Twitter is a steady growing social media platform that has a number of uses, anywhere from broadcasting personal messages to friends to creating valuable business connections. Twitter has a lot of potential when it comes to business; therefore, it is important to balance out the personal aspect of twitter versus the professional.

• Are You Satisfied With Your Social Media Efforts? This blog recaps the B2B marketing session hosted by Sprouter Community Manager Jon Spenceley that addressed the topic of “Social Media Satisfaction.” With Jon’s previous experience in social media at Freshbooks coupled with his current position of community manager, he provided some high level, yet classic and transferable tips for any marketer, entrepreneur, startup or growing organization.

• Choosing The Right Social Media Tools For Your Startup It’s a reality that some social media tools will be better than others for building relationships with the customers you need to reach. Here are 3 questions to ask yourself when considering what social media tools you should be utilizing.

• 6 Easy Ways To Measure Your Twitter Success Twitter is a great social media platform to engage with current clients, potential customers, and industry leaders by both creating and curating valuable content. As a Twitter account manager, you put in time and effort to maintain your Twitter stream. Therefore, it’s important to evaluate what sorts of return you’re getting for your hard work.

From everyone at VA Partners, best wishes for a happy and successful 2013! If you're looking for help with your sales, marketing, or social media efforts, don't hesitate to send us an email.