Posted By
Eric Anderson on 07/27/2010
A couple
of months ago, White Horse released the results
of our Pulse of Social Media Marketing survey comparing adoption of social
media marketing by B2B companies vs. B2C, looking at issues of staffing,
management buy-in, and the use of specific tactics.
The
report got some good pick-up among our marketing blogging brethren, and their
individual spins on the results were a veritable study in glass
half-full/half-empty interpretation. Ssome declared that the B2Bs were stuck in the social stone age (not my conclusion), while others observed that B2B
marketers were right in the thick of things, social-wise, if only they could get their C-levels to see
the light (which was pretty much my conclusion).
As the
author of the report, I feel I owe B2B marketers an apology. While I did manage
to place the blame for the B2B social lag squarely on C-level naysayers in the
report—noting that only 9% of B2C upper managers are bearish on social, compared
to a whopping 36% for B2B—I offered frustrated B2B marketers a rather narrow
and unsatisfying remedy: contact White Horse, and we’ll set those C-levels
straight.
Yes,
it’s true. I sullied the sacred cause of knowledge-sharing with a shameless
agency plug. And the proof of my transgression is that not every B2B marketer
in the land has so far beaten down our door to learn how we can turn things
around for them. This could mean
that they’d prefer some method of building a business case for social media that
didn’t involve talking to me. That is understandable.
And so
as penance for my transgression, I now devote the rest of this post (and all of
the next one) to sharing what I know about building the B2B business case for
social media marketing—a kind of DIY for those who would prefer a sharp stick
in the eye to an agency phone call. (Again, I get it.) There are just three
things you really need to know.
1. Social media is not what your
CEO thinks it is.
Imagine
yourself as a busy CEO living in a kind of info-stream bubble, wherein a narrow
stream of content demanded nearly all of your attention, and the only streams
that filtered in from the outside were the ones that were too annoyingly
pervasive to ignore. What stuff would get through?
Actually,
we don’t have to imagine that, because Twitter’s Trending Topics will tell what’s
floating at the top of the social stewpot. So let me just pop over there and
see…OK, at the top of the list we’ve got Mel Gibson, #youlookprettystupid,
#oldpeoplenames, and Bachelorette.
While it
is demonstrably true that some old people have funny names, this alone will not
bolster your business case for having a corporate Twitter account, especially
if your CEO is old and has a funny name. A cursory glance at social media’s dominant
content might leave any executive
with the impression that it consists mainly of debates about Justin Bieber’s
hair. They might also be forgiven for concluding that social media is comprised
of Facebook, Twitter, and something vaguely sinister called ChatRoulette.
Which is
why every B2B social media business case needs to begin where few of them
actually do: by pointing out where the actual conversation is taking place. If
this seems perfectly obvious to you, then at least allow that it may not perfectly
obvious to your execs, and B2B social adoption has suffered for it. Our survey
found that B2B marketers are about one-third less likely to participate on
industry-related bog commentary and forums than to maintain outposts on major
social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Yet our
own client research persistently shows that the vast majority of useful B2B
conversations—the kind that influence decision-makers—take place on blog
commentary and forums. This isn’t a revelation; studies of B2B social usage by
Forrester Research, American Business Media, and Business.com have also
underscored the importance of these venues.
B2B
marketers need an expansive definition of social media. The litmus test is
simple: is it a place where a) business conversations are occurring and b) you might
be allowed to participate? When viewed through this wide-open aperture, social
media becomes urgently relevant. B2B sales tend to be complex and consultative,
after all, and where do B2B buyers go for consultation? A surprising number
start with simple Google searches, and those Google searches increasingly lead
to, yep, industry blogs and forums.
This, of
course, begs the question: assuming all this juicy B2B social stuff is out
there, waiting to be plucked and presented in a Teflon-coated business case,
how does one set about doing that? This is the part where I leave off my blog
post with shameless question-begging, so that you’ll read the next installment,
in which I’ll cover what tools and metrics work best.
Tags: Blogs, Web Communities, Social Networks
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