MAD Perspectives Blog

There is an ongoing debate about the use of social media by business-to-business (B2B) companies. However, according to B2B Magazine, 93% of B2B marketing are using some form of social media marketing. As expected, Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter are the most popular. However, tactics, resources and metrics are key challenges. These challenges are connected and reinforce the need for a comprehensive strategy, integrating your social media efforts with your overall marketing plan. However, it is first important to understand how you can best utilize each of these social networks.

Here are a few thoughts:

     - LinkedIn:  create a group for your brand, create a company page and promote products, encourage employees to provide links within their profile to the company webpage(s), share company presentations and videos, integrate twitter feeds and corporate blogs, recruit employees

     - Facebook:  share news and videos, , promote and share pictures and comments from events, highlight expert knowledge from both employees and customers, create community through customized product pages (invite Likes, discussion, links to more information on company website), recruit employees

     - Twitter:  listen to what others (customers, competitors, influencers) are saying, share content (provide links to articles, re-tweet influencer content, invite input from your followers to validate strategy

For additional insights and tips on using social media for B2B marketing check out Social Media B2B, Marketo, Hubspot, business.com.

Identify your goals. Consider how these platforms, or others, may augment your marketing, customer service, product development or sales efforts. Be brave and be patient.  Social media is a broadcast channel enabling you to reach a very wide audience.  It takes time to build a valuable following and to learn how to interact effectively with them.

What's your perspective?

It’s a new year and you’re making your resolutions.  How about a resolution to jump on the social media high speed train?  You’ve read the buzz but you’re a bit skeptical about time, effort and results.  These are fair concerns.  There is not a company who has engaged in social media that has not posed questions about how they are going to leverage this dynamic medium.  I have just a few bits of advice about getting started:

1. Get organized.  Figure out who in your organization will be your social advocates.  It will be beneficial if you think about how representatives, from different business groups, reflect your business.  These individuals can provide your customers with unique perspectives that can help them understand your business and its products, strategy and culture.  Align your social communication with your overall marketing plan and strategy.  Commit to a plan!
2. Define your social content strategy.  Think about who your customers are and what content will fulfill their needs.  Social media is about personalizing your business and its content.  This means that simply pointing customers to your website is not going to win a lot of new customers.  However, sharing your insights about industry trends, emerging products or markets, business benefits of your solutions or seeking input from your audience, will drive awareness.
3. Select the relevant social platforms.  You need to be where your customers are.  Here is a quick summary of some of the most popular platforms:
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   •  - LinkedIn – for a business person or business this is the default platform to use.  It’s more than a virtual rolodex; it is a platform for sharing content about your capabilities, engaging in conversations with like minded individuals via LinkedIn Groups, and increasingly a tool for employee recruitment.
   •  - Blogs – I’m a BIG fan of blogging as a means of communicating with customers is a casual way.  Blogs provide the ability to flesh out your thoughts in a less formal manner than traditional briefs or whitepapers.  They also enable feedback from your customers which can educate readers about your company, impact product roadmaps, or simply influence further blog discussions.  A small firm can share insights abut what drives their day to day business while a large company can encourage individual bloggers, from different business disciplines, to discuss the topics that influence their activities and decisions.  In all cases, the blog should reflect a unique point of view.
   •  - Twitter – In many cases, twitter for business can be just keeping up with the Jones’.  However, many companies use twitter to actively listen to their customers.  By searching on keywords a company can capture a trend, discover customer satisfaction issues, and invite debate on a trending topic.  Twitter is immediate and democratic, meaning it is wide open like the Wild West.  However, the Wild West is now very heavily populated and the direct benefit for B2B companies is unproven.
   •  -  Facebook – this is the ultimate social platform for individuals.  And, let’s remember this platform was created by a college student to find, connect and communicated with other students.  Its role is consumer centric.  Its focus remains the individual despite a company’s ability to create a Fan Page.  Companies that have found success on Facebook are those with a consumer audience and who create a unique proposition on Facebook.  There have been debates about Facebook displacing the need for a traditional website.
   • For B2B, I completely disagree.  Facebook does not easily enable a B2B business discussion.  It does not allow you to share documents.  However, it is a great platform for personalizing your business.  Post pictures or videos from industry conferences, community events, internal celebrations.  Emphasize the company culture and the unique individuals employed at your company.  Now prospective employees have a much better understanding about the culture of your company.
   •  - YouTube – Video is pervasive and memorable.  YouTube has changed the face of video forever, making user generated video and its lesser quality – acceptable.  Video puts a face on your business.  I’ve seen whiteboard sessions, mockumentaries, product demos, and corporate advertising posted on YouTube.  It is possible to create your own channel which could be beneficial for companies who want to post a series of videos.  Like all marketing & communication efforts, video efforts must be planned and organized.  See my previous blogs on this topic

Don’t be afraid to just try one platform.  Be persistent.  Don't let social media be the resolution that fades away!  It’s ok to experiment and figure out what content and which platform works best for your business.  Despite all that you read, no single company was an instant success at using social media!

What’s your perspective?

If you ask media pundits about THE big innovation of the last millennium, they will tell you it was the TV.  Social media is garnering a lot of attention in the early part of the new millennium, but where does social media go next?  A natural assumption is that TV and social media will have a marriage of sorts.  One thought is that news broadcasters will incorporate social media more prominently into their every day actions.  Most local broadcasters take advantage of user generated video, regardless of quality, to capture traumatic events.  Here in New York, multiple amateur videos of US Airways Flight 1549 were incorporated into local broadcasts about the event.  But, is this enough? 

Morning “news” programs and talk show hosts, such as the last hour of the Today show or Oprah, now incorporate email and tweets into their daily routine.  Typically the hosts have an assistant, on or off screen, who is online following the discussion and informing the hosts on-air as the hot topics.  This seems to be a natural fit as these programs already have a well defined communities.   From another perspective, marketers are using social media networks to gauge interest and popularity of network programs.  American Idol and Lost are just two examples of programs that have huge followers on both Twitter and Facebook.   And, 77% of broadcast newsrooms are using social platforms to microblog news links to their followers. 

In fact, one could assume that broadcast TV is a natural fit for social media.  TV has driven coffee room and water cooler conversations for years.  Now those conversations happen on Facebook or Twitter.  However, the challenge remains that TV, for now, is” lean back” experience regardless of watching on the network’s pre-determine schedules or our own ad hoc DVR-enabled schedules.  Social media is a “lean-forward” experience.  We need to be on our PCs or mobile devices to post content.  How do we bring the experiences together?

Software vendors at broadcast conferences such as the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and International Broadcast Conference (IBC) in Amsterdam have been demonstrating user interfaces which incorporate both Facebook and Twitter.  Are we ready to give up part of our 42” HD viewing space to tweet on the TV screen during our favorite sporting event, reality TV program or sitcom?  Of course, this means sitting on the couch with a keyboard.  The interest in internet connected TVs will certainly enhance the functionally.   However, today’s 18-30 year olds aren’t watching network programming on their TVs, they are watching on their PCs or mobile devices.  Is an integrated social media/TV experience needed?  Do we even care?  Perhaps it’s about trying out new tools and seeing what works.  And, maybe what doesn’t work will drive innovation to something beyond social media on our TV screens.