My colleague, Andrea, won Super Bowl tickets by participating in a contest on Twitter sponsored by the Bay Area Super Bowl host committee. I know, incredible luck, right? This got me thinking about how companies encourage user input to increase engagement.

It used to be that only “influencers” could blog on LinkedIn. But that changed in 2014 when LinkedIn made this capability available to all its members. Now with just a click of the pencil icon under your profile image, you can compose and publish your insights via the LinkedIn Publisher tool.

The value of face-to-face connections for lead generation potential keeps events at the top of marketers' priority list. According to Forrester, 20 percent of the average B2B marketing budget is dedicated to industry events.

Thought leadership content is not just about sharing ideas. It’s about offering a credible, well-reasoned, and occasionally provocative point of view on topics your audiences care—or should care—about. Not for the purpose of making the quick sale, but to start conversations, impart a vision, and engage others. You can use it to position your company as a potential valued partner or your executives as influential authorities in their fields, but in the end, it’s about building trust and relationships. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

I spend the bulk of my time managing LinkedIn company pages for two drastically different clients: one is a boutique branding consultancy, and the other is one of the largest tech companies in the world. Although the size of these organizations differ greatly, I still approach them with the same principles in mind. 

Whether you're an expert on mindfulness, productivity, Cloud or Big Data, raising your online influence can help establish you as a thought leader and burnish your company's reputation. But if you go about it the wrong way, you can inadvertently alienate the very people you're trying to win over.

Does size matter? When it comes to social media metrics, not as much as it used to. Success in social used to be measured by followers and likes, numbers that indicate the size of your audience. Many brands these days, however, are looking for more sophisticated and enlightening metrics, such as engagement and conversion.