Research Firm Updates Business Technology Buyers Report: Social Media On the Rise

I’m a little slow on the uptake with this one but I wanted to flag Forrester’s report, “Social Technographics: Business Technology Buyers,” which came out about a month ago (April 28) and looks at the social media habits of business technology decision-makers. Good quantitative research into B2B social media usage is fairly thin. If you have access to the full report, it’s worth a review.  Also a summary from B2B Online here.

It shows, not surprisingly, that penetration of social media continues to increase. For instance, 46 percent of business technology decision-makers have joined a social networking site for business purposes, compared with 29 percent in last year’s study. Of those, a third are “Creators,” which means they engage in activities such as publishing a blog, uploading videos or writing and posting articles. Forty-five percent are “Critics,” posting reviews of products or services, commenting on others’ blogs, or contributing to forums or wikis. (Obviously, individuals could select more than one category.)

On the other hand, the report suggests that the sexy public social media services like Twitter or blogs may not be helping B2B tech companies much, compared to information sources like forums and wikis. Moreover, traditional sources of information – your website (note, I am using the new AP standard, people), sales person, tradeshows, etc. – rank higher in importance.

This is a pretty good study, as the group surveyed numbers more than 1,000 across four countries, although the weighting has shifted from a bit more than half the respondents representing IT vs. line of business to more than 70 percent coming from IT. On the other hand, as with all studies like this, you don’t want to over-read the conclusions.

For one thing, people are notoriously bad at evaluating their own behavior.  Evidence: The Economist recently reported on a UK study of television and video viewing habits and found the public badly understated the amount of time they watched live television and badly overstated their use of online video.

The other concern is that the wording of the question (“Which of the following sources of information impact your purchase decision-making process?”) will understate the impact of the earlier stages of the purchase process.

Flickr from LawsonComm

I mentioned in my last post the concept of an “Awareness-to-Advocate Process Path” – the journey people take from being aware of a need to ultimately becoming a customer and advocate for your product or service and the different information sources they use along the way.  It generally starts with awareness of need, advances to understanding of product category that meets that need, then to a consideration set (i.e. a short list), ultimately to a selection, and if the customer has a positive experience, he or she ultimately becomes a brand advocate.

So where does Twitter have the most impact? Where do blogs have the most impact?  Given that they are good at making you aware of new issues, help you identify new experts, and perhaps make you aware of new brands, I’d say they are heavily weighted towards the front half of the Path. As a result, their influence may be less obvious.

It’s also worth noting that word of mouth was the most influential information source, which is consistently what every report I ever see shows. Let’s keep in mind that word of mouth is social media community-building gone inline – it can happen via email, Twitter or around a campfire. Prepare for them all. (hmm, camping trip as trade show…) Moreover, the best way for you to arm those word of mouth advocates will likely come from an inline blend of in-person events like conferences and digital connections like social media, even if they themselves influence future customers via traditional channels like phone calls, face-to-face meetings and email.

Finally, it goes without saying that IT people are different creates from line-of-business decision-makers and habits also vary by industry. It’s best to do your own research on your own target audience.