It’s a small world, and it seems to be getting smaller. Take a recent seminar held by PA Consulting Group in New York. According to one candidate – Nic Mitham, MD of social media consultancy KZero – about thirty people attended. “However,” he says, “we were actually all in our own offices in different locations across the globe.” He adds, “We were able to listen to speakers from PA Consulting Group talk about the future of three-dimensional environments and also see physical representations of what they were describing. All of this was possible because the seminar was held in the virtual world of Second Life.”
2006 was the year of social consumer media, with YouTube, MySpace and Second Life becoming household names. Brands have started to use new media to market to consumers and B2B marketers are beginning to do the same to their audience. The potential of the medium is huge and something that no marketer can afford to ignore.
Social media: a history
Social media describes websites and web services on which users publish their own content and collaborate, converse and network with each other. It includes blogging, video sharing, podcasting, photo sharing, citizen journalism and virtual worlds like Second Life.
Few of these sites and services are altogether brand new. Fiona Blamey, director at social media consultancy Prompt Communications, says, “People have been creating their own MySpace-like web pages since the birth of the World Wide Web in 1995 when a site called GeoCities allowed people to create and update amateur homepages with ease. And blogging has been around for a decade. Arguably, the first weblog was Dave Winer’s Scripting News, which started in 1997. Citizen journalism has its foundations in sites like Slashdot, where techies have been submitting – as well as voting – on technology-related news stories since 1997. Online virtual worlds such as Second Life are almost as old as the Internet itself.”
However, they have only really taken off in the last eighteen months because of the huge growth in broadband access. The uptake in that time has been remarkable. Blog search engine Technorati estimates there are 60 million blogs worldwide and over two million people have signed up to Second Life. With figures like this, it is inevitable that before long marketers would start to show an interest.
Social media and B2B marketing
B2B marketers have already begun to use social media in several ways. With its low cost of production and high level of creative control, podcasting is proving particularly popular among B2B marketers. Microsoft and Sun Microsystems have both used blogs to forge closer links with their customers; business intelligence software vendor Cognos has created an entire online mini-sitcom to promote its financial analytics software to corporate finance departments; and storage software vendor Hitachi Data Systems hired former A-Team star, Mr T, to promote the benefits of storage virtualisation software through a clip shown on YouTube.
Blamey says, “Hitachi’s idea was very good. It capitalised on the nostalgia amongst its target audience of thirty-something network managers. Unfortunately, at three minutes, the clip was just too long to work effectively as a viral piece and it also attempted to cram in too many complicated messages. Despite this, it has gained some notoriety, as well as 15,000 views on YouTube.”
B2B marketers are also beginning to explore the use of online business social networks. LinkedIn is well-known and popular, but as an online contacts book, its marketing potential is limited. While it can be useful for data gathering, sites such as Ecademy and Viadeo, which allow users to join interest groups, are proving more popular with marketers who are aiming to build online communities of business buyers.
Venue hire company MWB has bought a channel on Ecademy with this express purpose. Penny Power, founder and chief executive, says, “In February 2007, MWB began offering our members a discounted rate, but their association with us is about more than that. They see it as an opportunity to integrate with our community, to run events as well as building trust in their brand.
A whole new world
Then there is Second Life. Peter Davies, account manager at PR agency RMS has set up the first agency in this virtual world, called RMS PR 2. He says, “Second Life has more than two million users and game-maker Linden Lab estimates that nearly five million dollars was exchanged between players in January 2007. How long before we see the major high street chains moving into Second Life? How long before law firms, banks and other service providers turn up to flog their wares to this fast-growing community?”
Mitham at KZero reports that marketers are also finding Second Life useful for customer research. “A US chain of hotels called Aloft is due to launch a new range of hotels targeted at business travellers,” he says. “It hasn’t actually built any real buildings yet, but has built replicas on Second Life and is asking visitors for their views on them. It has its staff in the lobby area greeting visitors and verifying that they are businesspeople, then asking them for their views on the design. It will use this feedback when it comes to building its hotels in the real world.”
Ready for take-off?
And this is just the beginning. Some counsel caution. Peter Cunningham, country manager for business networking site, Viadeo UK, says, “It is still very early days for online business networks, both in terms of number of users compared to the real potential user population, and in terms of the number of existing members that are actual users. Some networks are claiming to have millions of users, but in fact often fewer than five per cent actually use it as part of their everyday business life.”
Yet all the signs are that the use of social media by B2B marketers will really take off in the next year or two. There will also be a great deal of change. Daryl Willcox, chairman of Daryl Willcox Publishing, says, “Social media sites will become more sector and profession specific. Over time this will give B2B brands more targeted opportunities.” There are already several examples of niche social media sites, such as Doctor.net, which claims to be Europe’s largest online professional networking community.
The technology will also change rapidly. According to Stephen Barber, lead experience architect at digital marketing agency, LBI, it will increasingly be left to the end user to create the best environment for themselves and their audience. “Sites like Ning.com offer a set of fully customisable tools for creating any flavour of social site that you care to mention. This allows its users to control the nature of the social experience available to its own site visitors,” he says.
In fact, if there is one theme that unifies the different strands of B2B social media marketing it is that it is a area where companies are able to cede control of the message to customers. David Crane, CEO at 23, which collects, analyses and synthesises online opinion, says, “It is too early to tell whether these new marketing methods are successful or not. We hear of various examples that are both good and bad, and Wal-Mart’s fake blogging campaign is a good example of how over-marketing to this audience can be counter-productive. In today’s world it is the user that actually holds the power and it is essential not to alienate them.”
Here to stay
Kelly Thompson is VP marketing of iStock, a website that aims to encourage dialogue between photographers, videographers and designers, and now claims to be the most visited stock imagery site on the planet with an image downloaded every three seconds.
“When it comes to social media, I think that the bottom line will be profitability, and it may not work for everyone. If your buyers are not passionate about discussing your products or services, or if you are unwilling to manage their reactions to a product with features or a pricepoint that your community doesn’t like, then social media is unlikely to be for you,” she says. “If however you are able to embrace marketing as a collaborative venture and to use all the tools of Web 2.0, then you are very likely to embrace everything that social media has to offer and consquently, will be in a position to benefit greatly from it.”
It seems likely that we will hear a great deal more about social media in the coming months. It may not be for everyone and most will face a steep and potentially dangerous learning curve. But those that do utilise it to its full potential are likely to find it an extremely valuable, exciting, as well as innovative, addition to their marketing activities.
