We know that social media – or the social web as I prefer to call it – has an increasingly powerful effect amongst B2B buyers, but at this early stage it’s also not easy to get right. It takes time to do, and there’s no ‘magic formula’ – it’s going to work in a different way for every business.
Right now, in its infancy, many people are dipping their toe into the water, but not many are getting any measurable effect. It’s difficult to know if it’s worth the effort.
Evangelists describe social media as an unstoppable force, onwardly marching forward. You’d better get converted quickly.
Aren’t you tweeting yet? You loser, your business is screwed. OK, that’s a bit facetious, but if you’re not in the cool gang, you may feel a bit left out. Don’t worry, actually you’re just normal. I’d like to sidestep the hype and instead add a little perspective into how the social web could work for B2B businesses.
Does social have to be separate?
First off, I have an issue in treating social media as a separate media, which its name suggests (just like 10 years ago when digital was called ‘new media’ and lived in a parallel world to ‘traditional’ marketing – how ancient does that feel now?). That’s why I use the term ‘social web’ – I think it provides a more holistic feel of the place where people and B2B businesses interact online, and where increasingly business decisions are made.
In fact, it’s what the web was designed to do in the first place: Tim Berners-Lee, the Internet’s creator said, “The web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for social effect – to help people work together – and not as a technical toy”.
Right now I also wonder if we are a little dazzled by the tools and media that are out there – don’t get me wrong there are some fantastic ones – but maybe we get a little distracted and are not creating interactions in the social web that really build value for your business. There’s lots of evidence of this out there: it doesn’t take long to find a blog that has three entries enthusiastically published on the same day, then a gap of six months, or an empty support forum, or ‘0 user comments’.
Make it a quality contribution
A ‘build it and they will come’ mentality will fail, as will throwing everything at the wall and hoping something will stick. There’s no point building something if you don’t have the commitment to see it through. Or – more crucially – there’s no point in building something that’s not really wanted by your audience in the first place.
There is a maxim on the social web that I think is particularly valid in the B2B buyers’ environment, and that is: ‘Personal Value Precedes Network Value’. This states that people first need to find value for themselves before they can start to contribute to a wider community, or network.
One way to interpret this in a B2B milieu is that it’s more about the quality of what you say, and the value in it for your audience, if you take the view that B2B audiences are going to be reading it because they have a job-related information need. Let’s face it, they’re probably not reading it for entertainment or to hang out with their friends.
Think about your audience
So what I’d like to proffer here is a slightly different view of how you could approach the social web for B2B. Instead of telling you how to tweet, I’d encourage you to think about your audiences’ personality types – their motivations, and how they interact and behave online in their at-work persona – what value you can add with these interactions and to accept that most of your audience may never contribute – it’s just not what they are like – but that’s not to say they aren’t interested or can’t get value.
This fact also means that it’s key to identify what author Malcolm Gladwell would call your connectors, mavens and salesmen (if you haven’t read The Tipping Point, you should). These are a small minority of your users who help you create and spread the value that helps the silent majority. You or your agency may play one or more of these roles here, in the B2B world I believe this needs to be facilitated.
An example to mull over
Here’s one example. The person in our office who has been using the social web the longest is probably also one of the quietest. He was an avid consumer of social media before it was even known by that name, but he almost never participates, he’s never been anywhere near Facebook. He doesn’t think Twitter is for him. Not interested. He won’t blog.
But he researches deeply, and respects expert- and user-opinion, and every purchase decision he makes is ratified by online reviews or user comments. He finds most of the answers to technical questions via the social web. If you were selling to this type of user, what would the best approach be?
