Social Business: Analysis – Part 5: Social Business In B2B Environments

The Fundamentals series continues the analysis phase with a mini-series on assessing the value and effectiveness of social business. This mini-series will cover the following aspects:

• Reasons to participate in social business (covered in parts A, B and C)
• Internal considerations (covered in parts A and B)
• Debunking myths (covered in parts A, B and C)
• Social business in B2B environments

Today, we’ll look at social business in B2B environments myths related to your business.

There’s one more misconception that I haven’t mentioned so far and that is that social business is more for B2C companies that B2B companies. While B2C companies and products gain more traction in social media—they have more customers after all—it is blatantly untrue that social business wouldn’t work in a B2B environment. I’ll explain why and give you some pointers on what you can do to make social business work in B2B environments.

They’re Everywhere!

In B2B environments, the business is also conducted by people. People are increasingly on the social web and the social web spans across all age groups with increasing adoption by 35+ year olds. And why wouldn’t you expand your efforts on trade shows and in trade publications to finding your customers online?

More importantly, social business allows B2B companies to focus more strongly on some of the key factors that really matter in B2B environments:

• Trust B2B sales typically require a higher investment than B2C sales and as such, deeper consideration. Trust plays decisive role in these considerations and the eventual decision to make the purchase.
• Relationship Social media enables people in B2B environments to have constant contact, building a relationship to establish rapport and trust. When dealing with long sales cycles, the effect of using social media can be profound.
• Information A relationship takes time to develop but information can be provided instantaneously. Providing the right information and/or high-quality content online—and distributing them through social media—helps improve your image and facilitate your prospective customers in their purchasing process.
• Loyalty What about after the sales? Social media gives you an opportunity to improve your after-sales relationship with the customer. Grab this opportunity to build loyalty and drive repeat sales.
• Protect I always advocate this and it applies to any business environment: protect your brand. You can decide not to engage on certain social media platforms, but do register an official account. You don’t want to have your brand hijacked on, for example, Twitter and causing you enormous damage.

Moving Forward

What can you do to help make your social business efforts more successful in B2B environments? Here are some pointers to get you in the right direction:

• Observe your customers Get an idea of what’s out there and what’s currently being said by your customers. If they are already sharing their opinions and/or experiences online, this is valuable feedback for you.
• Ask your customers Find out what your customers think about social media and how they’d like you to engage with them. This can be done with a survey or with one-on-one interviews.
• Work with your customers Include the right customers in your social business approach by “promoting” them to an advisory board. This gives you a foundation to work from and makes them feel rewarded for being your customer.
• Let your customers work for you Ask your customers to share their experiences with your company. This can be in the form of a media interview, a case study, a blog post, et cetera. You’ll generate interesting feedback and they’ll be able to take center stage by sharing their success stories.

The most important thing to remember, however, is that there is no single off-the-shelf approach that’ll work for everyone. Social business is still largely uncharted territory and the truth will reveal itself only through taking action.

If you have questions or comments, I’d love to hear them. Next week, we’ll start another mini-series as part of analyzing value and effectiveness by looking at caveats and pitfalls. See you then!