B2B : Businesses and social media: tips & trends

Social media in a B2B environment is often summarized into these words:"no use for". Well, I think that summary isn't correct, as I see a huge benefit for businesses to connect to their suppliers & clients by using social media

 

 

 

 

Why?

Well, social media is using the internet and with an internet penetration of more than 70% in the western world, chances are that your business client is wired and hooked onto the internet. So it's not a speech about new technologies like 3G, Wimax or the iPad. But rather be present where your audience is

Easier than B2C?

I believe that B2B is indeed "easier" than B2C as you will have a more limited amount of platforms compared to B2C. But don't forget that your business contact is also a consumer. So combinations of the two worlds are possible.

Which platforms or networks to focus on?

The platforms can be split into 2: location based and not location based

Not location based

Networks like Linkedin or Plaxo is where everybody would think about in the first place, but not a lot of companies use it as an active tool:

• company info: did you enter all the info yet? Did you attach a slideshare.com presentation with the presentation of the company. Don't forget you can also insert a company video in that presentation, so that you get a far more powerful story.
• did you create a group of fans in Linkedin? You can make it a closed group, so that your competitors are blocked away and you could share more than just the most generic information.
• do you actively recruit on Linkedin? That's where it starts in a B2B environment, "do what you say you think!"

Linkedin allows you to maintain at a very easy way a close group of customers and you could commuinicate with them on a daily/weekly basis. It also allows you to send updates on products and services on a regular way. As people are open to comment, you get an immediate feedback from your customers and customer support will have a lower acceptance rate (you remove several hurdles compared to having to make a telephone call). Here is an example of McDonalds:

A second network that can be interested is Facebook. Facebook is starting to becoming the dominator in most Western European countries when talking about people connecting to each other. In some countries, their popularity is so big, they have a penetration of above 90% of the online population. So as a business, not being present there would be stupid.

You could argue that it's about consumers. Yes indeed, 90% of all cases you read about is talking about B2C. But if your target audience is online, than probably they will be on Facebook as well. And being social means that you are present where your target audience is. So Facebook is a good way of promoting your business, even in a B2B environment. Other reasons why you should be on Facebook:

• possibility to actually start a conversation in colour: you could launch new products and services with pictures, animations, videos etc. You can have extra tabs(tab = on top of a page, you will notice tabs like "wall, info, photos, etc") on pages with a presentation of the company, your products, etc.

 

• Ability to have a customer forum, where your customers start talking to each other
• Ability to present your products and include a shop
• people are looking for the man behind the machine, so ability to present the people behind your products and services
• ability to have an online support desk with questions & answers
• your image & reactions are not only seen by your target audience, but also by their friends & business colleagues.

If you think you have nothing to tell about, than you are wrong. You wouldn't be in business if you don't have anything to tell about. Any presence at fairs, events is worthwhile talking about with your customers. Any product update or new product is again a reason of "being social". And by involving your audience into the production cycle with the ability to ask questions and suggest improvements through a question & answer program on Facebook, your audience will be become the driver of your success in a social environment.

 

 Twitter... use Twitter to have for your audience a very simple, quick ability to ask questions. When you have a dealer network, this is most of the time a very valuable tool. Imagine you sell cars and the client has a question about a specific item. You are already typing in the clients details, having the ability to post a tweet on the same PC is extremely valuable and he or she does not have to call, so he can continue focusing on getting the deal in and not waiting for the head-office to find the information. This also means that customer support is shifting away from phone support to chat & tweet support. This means change management and the education of your support staff in new tools and ways to answer questions.

 

Let's take it a step further and enter the world of location based services. Social media combined with location based services can offer a service level, you couldn't imagine before.

Location based

You business exists in the offline world, but most of the time, your target audience will not know where you are located. And if they are on the road to you, how often do you get a call where your client asks, where is your building? I can't find the street? I'm looking on Google maps and apparently, your street doesn't exist... So driving directions or knowing where the closest department store is, can be solved by location based services, some examples:

 

As GPS systems as we know them now will vanish in the future and being build in into mobile phones, services like foursquare or Walhalla will become more and more important. As a small business you can now already make a difference as the big companies do not have those services on their marketing radar. But be aware, recent studies show that people are not yet fully used to such services, so start small and don't have too much high expectations. But at least, be the first!

 But there is still a long way to go... if you look at these statistics, than it's time that B2B marketers wake up and start discovering the power of social networks:

 

 

Interesting presentation:

A Visual Guide to B2B Facebook Pages

View more presentations from HubSpot Internet Marketing.

Comments

[Integration Solutions]

Really great information on Social Media Tips. I mainly prefer to use the twitter and Facebook for optimizing my website. It helps me to get more traffic to the website.