Do B2B Companies Need Social Media?

Posted on 22 March 2013 by Allan Schoenberg

This question was posed to me by Paul Gillin for a Q&A I did with him for BtoB Magazine. There are a number of ways to define the word “need” but it is a good question for companies to begin when they think about starting or expanding social media.

The mistake and trap B2B companies get into is the idea that social media should equate to sales. While the ultimate goal of communications should be to help drive revenue, there are many ways that social media can be used that are just as critical to a brand. Without getting into the tactics of how to do social, here are three ways to think about how social media can build on a company’s efforts.

Don’t get so focused on social media to help sell that you can’t see the forest for the trees.

Recruiting. Recruiters and job seekers more and more are turning to social media to look for a job. Because of this, they are trying to follow and discover more about your company. Whether you use social media to directly recruit employees or not job candidates are researching you online to learn more about you and to decide if they want to be associated with your firm. In addition, tomorrow’s leaders of your organization have grown up with social media. They too are looking online and deciding if they should work for you or your competition.

Crisis communication. When something goes wrong with your organization people more and more are turning to social media for the news or to see what people are saying. In addition, if you are focused on media relations remember that news stories about a crisis will quickly spread online. If you are there to respond as quickly as possible you can learn to leverage social media to your advantage.

Education.Think of your social channels as an extension of your website and event activities. Using social media for brand awareness to celebrate your wins, promote your news and talk about what you are doing can make a difference as you work to build on your brand.

Don’t get into thinking that social media is just about sales. There is more to using these channels than just a sales tool and you need to help your management and sales team understand that your group of stakeholders is much broader than just customers. We continue to see ways that social media is changing the way we consume and communicate information, as B2B brands we need to be listening and a part of these streams and discussions.

If you enjoyed this post you may also want to read the following:

What drives your social media strategy?

Blogging isn’t supposed to be easy

How Well Do You Know Your Social Network? Probably Poorly

Five lessons learned after five years of B2B social media

Do most online communities fail?

Still pitching to use social media?

What drives your B2B strategy?

Tuning into your industry

SXSW: R “Ray” Wang on Customer Engagement

Posted on 16 March 2013 by Aaron Pearson

I had an opportunity to sit down with R “Ray” Wang, CEO of Constellation Research, in San Jose a month ago, and discussed his 9 Cs of Customer Engagement. As I have a SXSW Interactive video sharing those 9 Cs courtesy of Software Advice and CRMSoftware.tv, this now gets to be a SXSW post!

Video: 9 Cs of Customer Engagement

Wang brings strong B2B credentials, having been a top enterprise apps industry analyst before becoming a founding analyst at Altimeter and now CEO of his current firm. Constellation has concentrated particularly on disruptive technologies like gamification, social CRM, enterprise social media and digital content marketing.

The 9 Cs break down this way:

People-Centric Values: Culture, Community and Credibility
Delivery and Communications Styles: Channel, Content and Cadence
Right Time Drivers: Context, Catalyst and Currencies

You an watch the video for a discussion of these in more detail or read more on Wang’s HBR blog post from last year. I’ll highlight a couple of particular note.

First, Content. He rightly observes we are in danger of drowning in it and tuning out. I saw a survey of B2B marketing pros indicating their No. 1 concern was generating enough content for their content marketing efforts. The bigger concern to me, given we’re buried in content, is whether it’s any good. Which means what? It has to add value, it has to not be about your product – nobody cares – and it has to be creative and compelling. Too often that last factor is taken for granted. After all, this is business right, so it doesn’t need to be entertaining. Well, as the classic Corning Day Made of Glass video shows, you can make a dry video and get 500 views or you get get 21 million that entertains as it educates.

Second, Catalyst. For B2B marketers, we are engaging ultimately to sell or reinforce loyalty (to sell). How we give our audiences a catalyst to take the next step needs to be handled deftly and in appropriate proportion. I come back to Bodnar and Cohen’s 10-4-1 rule (my interpretation is basically 10 curated, 4 original content, 1 marketing call to action as a general guide). The 1 only works if you do the 10 and the 4. But the 1 – the call to action tweet or button to landing page or post – needs to be both compelling and super simple for the audience to follow through on.

Watch the video or read the post for more on the other seven. I welcome your thoughts!

SXSW: Vertical Communities Seeing Growth

Posted on 10 March 2013 by Aaron Pearson

I attended a SXSW session yesterday called “Professions Go Social,” which looked at how new profession-based social networks have emerged to extend B2B social networking beyond LinkedIn, moderated by Altimeter Group’s Rebecca Lieb. Some of the networks are doing quite well.

For example, Jay Hallberg, the co-founder of Spiceworks, said they have built a community of more than 2 million SMB IT pros, supported by 1,500 advertisers. Spiceworks designed a very user-friendly place where these pros can talk to IT vendors about what to buy, and also talk among each other. It’s sort of an iTunes for IT. Hallbert says there are no barriers put up to discourage IT pro engagement – no freemium tricks, no charge for charge for support, just totally free.

Another panelist, Kirk Simpson, is a co-founder of Wave, which makes small business financial software, but also launched the Wave Pro Network as a community for these professionals to connect with real professionals in accounting and bookkeeping.

One of the key points was that these specialized communities have been built with the unique workflows of their industries or professions in mind, something a LinkedIn can’t do. I had an opportunity to develop a proposal for a company that wanted to market to golf course superintendents, a niche community if there ever was one. Do they have their own vibrant online community? You bet they do, TurfNet! Their forum not only covers niche topics like irrigation system pressure monitoring, integrated with educational webinars, and with a mobile version for an audience often on the course rather than in an office.

The key with all these sites is to get to a point where a lot of pros feel like they need to be on them. From the in-depth conversations I had with golf course superintendents, I know Turfnet made it, and they actually use a paid membership model. Hallberg indicated that reaching three percent of the addressable workforce segment might be the point at which those positive network effects kick in.

SXSW: We Still Need to Get Together in the Real World?

Posted on 8 March 2013 by Aaron Pearson

How ironic that 25,000 digitally connected interactive pros have to fly to Austin each year to network with each other and find out what’s new, right?

Actually, it’s not ironic at all that SXSW Interactive should be so valuable to them, and it’s worth understanding why as we consider the continuing value of customer events and trade shows in the B2B marketing mix.

SXSW Interactive Opening Party 2012 – Credit: JoJo Marion

Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman point out in their excellent book, Networked, that research shows we are actually seeing more friends offline at least once a week. Moreover, heavier Internet users appear to be the ones most significantly increasing the number of friends they see in person. The Internet and social technologies do not replace in-person meetings. Rather, they reinforce relationships and create new relationships that must be strengthened by at least the occasional in-person meeting. Otherwise, those ties remain weak.

Meanwhile, virtually every study I’ve ever seen shows the most influential source of information in B2B purchases comes in the form of word-of-mouth from people the buyer knows and trusts. The more we can strengthen and reinforce the relationships within our customer communities and from our best customer advocates to other people, the better off we’re going to be! (Assuming, of course, we have an awesome product or service that’s generating said advocates.) It’s the power of our audiences talking to each other, not just brands talking to audiences.

Bottom line: Creating and activating a strong customer community means using periodic live events – organized for networking and engagement – to grow strong relationships, and then sustaining them with smart social media engagement strategies the rest of the year.

The Three I’s of Social Business Media

Posted on 6 November 2012 by Allan Schoenberg

While we continue to hear more about social media and the ways companies are leveraging these tools, I want to point out the significance of the business purpose for using them. As these tools have evolved from communication experiments to integrated marketing tools the next phase we need to watch will be the transition to how Twitter, LinkedIn and other tools become part of an organizations’ business processes. As we expand the use of new technologies and how to integrate them into communications, the emergence of social media on such a broad scale is making it more attractive to use them in the mainstream operations of management and business.

Influence, Information, Interpretation

Part of this transition will cause frustrations. We fought early on to prove how useful these tools are to the business (“Social media is nice to know, but my kids only use it”), and now the business function is realizing the potential (“Thanks for getting this started for marketing, but I’ll take it from here.”). But businesses will need to evolve with the growing use of social media among customers and the rise in data — how will you play a part in that change?

I believe this transition over the coming years can be successful through following what I call the three I’s of social business media: Influence, Information, Insight, Interpretation.

Influence: If you want social media to “have a seat at the table” or to be taken seriously by management, you’re going to have to focus on developing influence with key internal stakeholders. Your number of followers that you’ve built up are great. The Google analytics looks strong. The feedback from your community is positive. But none of that matters if you aren’t talking to the right people and communicating what this means. You need be able to actively participate with the people who matter internally and get them to understand why social media is making a difference; to the company, the brand and to them. The bottom line is that if you want social media to have more of an influence than you need to spend time with the people that are important to the business. How do you get there if you are not already? You can focus on two other I’s.

Information: Business leaders thrive on information from customers, about competitors, on legal matters and trends. We continue to be awash in data from social media and how we use that data is important. If you are not getting closer to the data and the people and tools that help you track what is happening than I suggest you change that now. Successful business leaders know that information is key. A quote I often reference is, “The most valuable commodity I know of is information.” Information allows business leaders to sort and sift through data in order to find out what’s happening in their world. And good data can you answer the question, “What are we trying to achieve?” But information alone won’t get you there. You also need the next I.

Insight: I do believe that having unique insights is extremely useful for someone to be successful in business. That means over time you need to continue to work on developing your analytical skills in order to answer questions and provide ideas. In addition, you need to get really good at asking the right questions. Being able to look at data, understand the trends you are seeing, and then provide interesting thoughts on how to help the business will help you stand out. From my experience, really good business managers like working with and using people who can help them read into trends and what those trends mean for the company’s future. In addition, they value unique viewpoints that may actually differ from what they are seeing. Having the communication skills to interpret the economic value of what you are seeing from social media activities can be a powerful opportunity for you.

There is no doubt in my mind that social media can and will play an important role in the business function of a company. I continue to see examples from large and small companies alike that are leveraging these technologies and their ability to connect with people to create unique advantages. Taking it to the next level requires time and resources, which I know not everyone has these days. I challenge you take some time to think about what it is that can help you make a difference, learn from the many best practices and examples that exist, and then see if the three I’s make a difference for you.

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Three Things B2B Communicators Can Learn from the Olympics

Posted on 5 October 2012 by Allan Schoenberg

One of the benefits of living in London was the opportunity to attend and be a part of the Olympic events. We were fortune enough to attend three events and my oldest daughter’s school spent a full day at the Paralympics. While attending the athletic events was a great experience in and of themselves, we were also caught up in the ongoing festivities. In fact, my son last night pulled out his Olympic athlete trading cards to tell me stories from the summer and how his favorite athletes performed.

Are you going for the B2B gold?

Witnessing such an amazing global event has made me think about some lessons learned for B2B communicators. Here’s are three key takeaways I’ve made from being so close to the Olympics.

Make one event a truly unique experience. Every four years pundits think that the opening and closing ceremonies will never be as good as the last. Whether you watched the ceremonies live, on television or followed the stream on Twitter, these events proved to be amazing. So how can you take your trade shows or executive events more memorable? Not everyone can hire the Pet Shop Boys or Spice Girls, but you should consider choosing one event each year and go “all in”. If it’s done properly, your customers will notice the investment you’ve made in them — time and money — and they will be talking about it online, at the water cooler and with others in the industry for some time.

How can you leverage Social Media: Social media should rarely be a standalone communications activity. The Olympics demonstrated how using social media can be used to leverage photos, news stories and service updates. While none of our organizations can compare to the size and attention of the Olympics, the lesson to be learned is that content matters — visuals tell stories sometimes better than words; news shared across multiple platforms can reach your audience, and inviting others to participate and share on your social platforms. We rethink these strategies constantly and so should you.

Customer service goes a long way. One of the brightest spots for London during the Olympics was the overwhelming kudos given to the City for the great service and help from its volunteer staff. Focusing on customers does make a difference and it’s the simple things. Do you respond to their inquires in a timely fashion? Does your staff go the extra mile at trade shows to be helpful? Do you reach out to them with new ideas? How do you share news and trends with them? Look at some of the best brands you admire today — B2C and B2b — and I bet you they almost all have a “customer centric” approach to their business. What are you doing to make that part of your firm’s culture?

If you enjoyed this post you may also want to read:

A rundown of B2B news from Social Media Week

What drives your social media strategy?

Tuning into your industry

Social media management

Blogging isn’t supposed to be easy

Klout Gets Closer But Can It Ever Arrive?

Posted on 24 August 2012 by Aaron Pearson

Those who know me are aware that I’ve long been a Klout skeptic. Anyone who mostly does B2B communications should be, quite frankly. How pointless is it that we walk around bragging about some sort of “Klout” score? I’ll keep that 75 score in mind the next time I have a new mobile data management application to market.

As of today, however, Klout has rolled out the results of another round of tinkering with their algorithm. I gained about 10 points, so of course now I’m a huge fan! ;-)

To be fair, I do use Klout from time to time as another data point despite its limitations. When you’re helping a client get a new or revamped Twitter presence off the ground, it can be encouraging to use Klout to simply show that the world is noticing. Also, although Klout doesn’t give as much attention to topics, there have been instances when the site has helped uncover other relevant peers in a space. And the fact is that a score of 10, regardless of how relevant the person or how niche the subject, doesn’t bode well for their social impact. Finally, and not insignificantly, basic Klout is still free. Better alternatives like Traackr and Appinions cost hundreds of dollars per month.

And while Klout’s efforts to get people to obsess over their Klout scores seems vain to me, the corresponding efforts to make the formula behind their Klout score better should only be encouraged. They’re making it easier to understand what’s driving your score (that feature is still coming) and introducing new data points like Wikipedia activity. All good.

Still, I’d like to see a lot more attention given to topics. I’m influential on “Minnesota” and “B2B”? What does that even mean?

Meanwhile, I would really caution marketers – especially in B2B – that we’ll probably never get an uber-powerful, magic list of just the right influencers. One of the points made in The B2B Social Media Book by Jeffrey L. Cohen and Kipp Bodnar’s book is to not over-target. You can’t know with enough precision today (or anytime in the foreseeable future) who exactly is going to be the key to spreading that great story about your brand or product. If you have something compelling, cast as wide a net as practical.

Read more about influence on B2B Voices:

How Are You Measuring Influence?

Social Influence Matters! No it Doesn’t!

Where Was PR at the BMA International Conference?

Posted on 15 June 2012 by Aaron Pearson

I got a lot of great insights from attended the BMA International Conference in Chicago the last week of May, which brought together a great mix of corporate and “agency” types to discuss B2B marketing. That included the power of Net Promoter Scores, the differences between marketing transactional and complex sales, where creativity in branding comes from, and what makes a successful marketing communications campaign.

Guy Kawasaki at the BMA Grow Conference (photo courtesy BMA)

What I heard precious little about is public relations. I didn’t see evidence of many PR attendees, and I didn’t hear more than the occasional passing comments about it in presentations. Moreover, PR is poorly represented in BMA’s own B2 awards, while piles of categories are dedicated to traditional advertising.

I don’t know why this is, though it’s probably always been that way. When I got my MBA in marketing, it was pretty obvious that most marketing students and professors regarded PR as a mysterious niche capability hardly worth mentioning. But that was a decade ago. Meanwhile, year after year, PR agencies outgrow their advertising counterparts (albeit from a much smaller base), and on the B2B side, most of our clients regard us as their crucial partners in building their brands, advancing awareness, rallying influencers, building thought leadership and building engagement through social channels. I think those are all pretty important, don’t you?

I do believe that PR pros often do a poor job connecting their results to objectives that the CMO appreciates, and even less at doing it in a way sales appreciates. Impressions and clip counts aren’t going to do it. We need to have an open dialogue with sales and marketing to understand where the problems are in the marketing funnel and align public relations efforts accordingly. Maybe the need is awareness, maybe it’s correcting misperceptions about the brand, maybe it’s about providing resources to help prospects research, maybe it’s about activating customer advocates AFTER the sale. But I can tell you that I would design the PR campaign very differently depending on which of these issues is first and foremost.

Then I believe we need to be more aggressive in helping our sales and marketing colleagues envision what is possible through PR across owned, earned and shared media platforms. We complain when they don’t “get it,” but where were we when they had their quarterly retreat or annual summit? Too busy tweeting?

We’re doing some awesomely powerful work with digital storytelling, video, events and straight up media relations. Let’s make sure we’re clear on how that work is helping drive the business.

BMA Report: Social Media and B2B are Peanut Butter and Chocolate

Posted on 4 June 2012 by Aaron Pearson

I got to see my friends Jeffrey L. Cohen and Kipp Bodnar, authors of the B2B Social Media Book, last week at the BMA Conference. You’ll recall I published a Q&A with them and a review of their book earlier. As Jeffrey said:

The notion that social media marketing is a business-to-consumer-only activity is most misunderstood. Many conservative B2B companies think that just because there is less volume of conversation around their company, products and industry, that social media is not for them. This ignores the benefits that social media brings to search, and the ability to leverage and share the knowledge and expertise imbedded in B2B companies to build and nurture relationships required for lead generation.

Jeffrey and Kipp had the unenviable task of waking up the crowd at 8 in the morning after what was for several attendees a rather late night at the House of Blue (not for me, but I heard some stories). Of course they did a great job, and kicked off what was a top-notch Thursday. Here are a few vendors who, in Kipp’s words, are “crushing it.”

BreakingPoint Systems – Check out their blog here. In the Q&A I had with them earlier Kipp said they were generating a 2,800% ROI on their social media efforts. They sell network testing equipment, which is a high-consideration and long buying cycle B2B purchase, and they have done a great job of SEO and moving potential buyers to action.

Fluke Corporation – Can you believe this manufacturer of test and measurement equipment has 45,000+ likes on Facebook? I mean if you don’t think industrial and social goes together, look at what they do. Lots of video, lots of photos, lots of engagement, really fun.

GE – Admittedly, the products depicted are partially consumer, but there are plenty of B2B products on GE’s Pinterest page too, withy 667 pins and more than 2,100 followers. How about boards like From the Factory Floor and Making Data Work?

Great photo on the ClearRisk Facebook page.

ClearRisk – Another successful B2B corporate user of Facebook, ClearRisk provides risk management solutions for the insurance industry. The Facebook presence prominently features their blog and ebook and also includes plenty of multimedia and other valuable content.

B2B Voices

Thoughts on B2B marketing and PR in the new age…..

Tag Archives: B2B marketing

SXSW: R “Ray” Wang on Customer Engagement

SXSW: Vertical Communities Seeing Growth

Where Was PR at the BMA International Conference?