Social media is one of the most powerful B2B marketing tools to reach new audiences and influence individuals and business alike. The dynamic nature of information exchange that social media allows creates an opportunity for IT businesses and channel partners to broaden the reach and user experience.

In fact, current research has reported that 81% of B2B IT organizations, and their decision-makers, are using social media.

But how do suppliers and vendors leverage this medium to its full advantage, and how can channel partners use social media to influence decision-makers in a positive way? How can you know if the "right" people are even seeing what you publish? Empowering your channel partners and direct sales team through social media content syndication is a great approach.

Content marketing is firmly seated in the marketing mix at the vendor level. Providing readers, and ultimately decision-makers, with compelling, relevant information to help the decision-making process move along has always been key. Vendors that provide content that builds industry authority and a "trusted advisor" relationship with prospects see sales opportunities increase dramatically.

There's a fine line in executing this approach and there are some questions you should ask yourself.

1. Should your content seek to inform and educate and how much self-promotion is appropriate?

According to Social Media Today, you should always follow the 80/20 rule. “There's no secret formula to successfully engaging with your audience on social media, but applying 'The 80/20 Rule' should always be a big part of your social media strategy. It simply comes down to this: use just 20% of your content to promote your brand, and dedicate 80% to content that really interests your audience and engages them in conversations.”

2. With all of the time and energy that’s spent on developing content, do you know how, and if, it's being used by your sales team and channel partners?

A plan needs to be in place for content distribution. Whenever new content is created, implement a process where the marketing team provides new content to the sales team and channel partners to ensure the content is properly promoted.

3. Can you measure the reach, traction, leads, and ultimately sales and ROI that’s being generated from your content and social media?

There are a few good solutions in the marketplace that can help with this, but without having something in place, the true impact of content distribution and syndication through social media isn’t measurable. socialondemand for instance has robust reporting and analytics that measures ROI by using an extensive analytics engine that reports the success of each user, post, campaign, and region.

These are some key questions that need to be assessed before any organization spends too much time on researching, developing and distributing content. Create a chain of command for distribution, follow best practices when self-promoting, and ensure you have the proper solution for your company to track, measure and prove ROI.