B2B Can Benefit from Social Media

Because I spend my days working with social media, I sometimes forget that the rest of the world isn’t seeing what I see. I am always brought back to reality when I hear “I’m B2B so social media isn’t for me.”

I believe most people in business are aware of the value of social media to engage consumers, but haven’t made the leap to understand the value to business clients. I say ‘leap to understanding’ because as a B2B business (business-to-business) we think of our companies as a body of products or services as it relates to the value of another company.

This is where the shift and leap occurs as social media brings B2B into P2P (People to People). Social media puts us in the right places to begin building relationships with the people at those companies that are either making the buying decision or influencing the purchasing process. These people are our consumers.

So, let’s take a quick look at how social media does in fact play a role in the B2B market.

Recently Mashable posted a great blog giving 5 examples of B2B companies that have had great success using social media. These companies range from aviation maintenance, equine dentistry, commercial paper supplier and a paint manufacturer and are successfully using platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Not the sexy stuff you are used to seeing in headline news is it? Your business doesn’t have to have sex appeal to have social media success. You also don’t have to go for hundreds of thousands of friends, followers and fans to be successful – you just have to get the attention of the eyeballs of those that matter.

This is where strategy becomes important in gaining some traction and success using social media to generate leads and grow your business. Not sales and marketing strategy but engagement strategy.

A client of ours who is in the B2B service industry has been experiencing success getting in-person appointments with key decision makers by first connecting and engaging on Twitter, as well as using video creatively to break down the barriers and getting him invitations into accounts where in the past they never had success. Their activity on Facebook and Twitter as well as video blogging helps to keep their web site at first or second place in Google searches, which in turn generates leads.

Still not convinced?

Recent Hubspot studies support companies that use Twitter have greater success with their blogs, and companies that blog regularly have better results with search engines and those that use video do even better. The power of Linkedin is often times under rated by companies and underused.

There is no silver bullet and no single activity or platform that will bring instant success. It takes time and effort, and like any other form of communications and marketing, the quality of your message and your presence will be the final kiss of glory or death. These are tools – and in the right hands are quite powerful. The better you understand each platform, the better you are at using them, the better you know the audience, the better your chance of engaging with them to earn their attention and their trust, which increases your rate of success.

So get out there and blog, vlog, tweet, post, comment, friend, follow, like, digg, and link and we’ll see you at the top.