Social Networks for B2B Companies – A Beginner’s Plan

If you haven’t already made social networks part of your 2008 plan, it’s understandable.  Confusion reigns on how to use these venues for B2B business advantage.  However, I’m sure you’re experiencing a nagging feeling that you’re missing the boat somehow and the rest of the business world, including your competition, is out there making fast and furious work of social networks.  First, there are two questions you ask about how your company will use social networks:

•  What can I hope to gain from participation in social networks now?  It pays to be realistic about the potential for business impact using social networking in its current state.  If you hope to use it as a major lead generating mechanism, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.  Social networks can currently be used to connect with constituents and colleagues, collect valuable client feedback and establish a rapport with your buying community.
• Which ones?  There are a dizzying array of social networks springing up, some more general business and others dedicated to specific audiences.  The answer lies in the service you’re offering and the target audience you’re attempting to reach.  For business, I’m partial to Linkedin, but am hearing so much buzz around Facebook becoming more business-friendly that I think it’s worth checking out. (Gaining personal information about a prospect with whom you are about to meet is a definite advantage to Facebook.)  If, however, your products/services are geared to a very specific audience, I would recommend finding the most trafficked networks for that community.  Here are just some samples of social networks that I’ve come across and their associated participants:

• Information technology:  http://www.ittoolbox.com
• General business: http://www.xing.com/ , http://www.linkedin.com/ , http://www.jigsaw.com/ , http://www.facebook.com/ , http://www.viadeo.com/en/connexion/
•  Marketing b2b community:  http://www.beetoobee.com/
•  Health Care:  http://www.dailystrength.org , http://www.patientslikeme.com , http://www.sermo.com/ , http://www.organizedwisdom.com/Home , http://www.revolutionhealth.com/ , http://www.sermo.com/
•  Finance:  http://community.dynamics.com/ (sponsored by Microsoft), https://www.cakefinancial.com/app/pubHello.do   

Once you’ve chosen the right social network for your business and buying community, here are some actions I’d recommend taking now to leverage your participation.  These are relatively low in resource consumption, but will allow you to test the social network waters with an appropriate amount of effort.

1.  Listen to your constituency: If there are groups already dedicated to your particular product area, assign someone in your organization to read postings, engage with readers and really understand the needs of your target prospects.  As with all interactions with prospects and clients online (including personal blogging and blog responses), I would recommend producing a company communications guideline that outlines acceptable behaviors, such as no discussion of products in development, no competitor bashing, no discussion of revenue plans/goal, etc.
2. Challenge your management team: Social networks are all about connections between individuals.  Let’s face it – B2B sales are all about relationship building with your prospects.  It’s a natural fit, but sometimes cumbersome to execute on a grand scale.  Here’s an idea to put the two together.  First, challenge your management team and Board of Directors (if you have that type of relationship with your BOD) to complete their profiles (I recommend starting on Linkedin).  Second, ask sales to create a Top 50 list of prospects that they’ve been trying to penetrate.  Finally, review the list in light of their new connections to find any opportunities for introduction.  It’s amazing how many 2^nd level introductions can be accomplished if the effort is made.
3.  Sponsor a group:  Companies are beginning to sponsor groups with their company names to engage customers and prospects in an open dialog.  Yes, it’s risky.  Someone may enter an uncomplimentary posting to which you will have to respond.  However, the benefits of hearing what your clients have to say directly should outweigh the risks.  Just be sure to have a mature (read:  someone not likely to fly off the handle and who is familiar with company’s public relations messaging) person be responsible for monitoring and responding.  Once you’ve established this trusted forum, you can use it to garner new product ideas, announce product enhancements, promote company events such as webinars, local meet-ups and trade shows, launch new products or use as a recruiting tool for the company.  Don’t forget to market the group’s existence across other venues, such as on your web site, at customer events, and in company literature.
4.  Answer questions in your category:  Make sure that your company is known as an expert in your field.  This might require time and effort on the part of your engineering staff or product managers to produce quality responses that jive with the company message.
5.  Ask questions in your category: Want to know what your audience would like to see in new products?  Ask them!  Along with more structured surveys and focus groups you might be conducting, social networks might yield some surprising results for product enhancements.
6.  Learn about the competition:  In the same way that social networks are an open forum for discussion, they are as well an open book for information.  Take advantage of this and assign someone to perform regular competitive analysis. 

I hope these suggestions are helpful.  They represent a minimal effort, but potentially a big cultural shift for your organization, so don’t forget to garner buy-in at all levels prior to launch.  Establishing your social network presence could also be a cause for celebration for your company and should energize employees and customers alike.  After all, it represents an exciting entry into the new media world that holds more and more promise daily.

What’s in Your Plan for 2008?

  Over the last several months I’ve been reading about how new media might apply to B2B Marketing.  With the announcement of Open Social support from Linkedin (http://blog.linkedin.com/blog/2007/10/linkedin-open-s.html), it seems every day there are leaps and bounds towards creating new interactive environments for professionals and thus, for companies engaging to reach those individuals.  Still, it’s not always clear how to leverage these new ecosystems for clear return on investment.

 There are a few sentiments that seem to commonly weave their way into almost every posting/article on the topic of new media and B2B marketing: 

• Social networks, community email groups and independent blogs are the first in a long list of tools that individuals will use to form their own communities to pull information, rather than be the victim of push by marketers.  Some industry experts are predicting that smart filters will enable users to avoid unwanted information altogether (see http://www.conversationagent.com/2007/11/web-30-artifici.html )
• Marketing efforts are generally perceived to be evil (see bullet one) due to the constant and annoying push of promotions.
• Marketers must change their way of thinking to engage in a two way conversation with their constituencies in order to both offer value, resolve customer service issues and glean product requirements.

 So what’s a B2B marketing exec to do?  Warnings abound about waiting to jump into the fray of new media.  No doubt these execs are struggling to resolve serious cultural and practical issues around control of messaging, resource allocation and a fundamental strategy change that will have ripple effect on every function in the company.  If I was running a B2B marketing organization right now, here are the questions I’d be asking myself about integration of new media techniques in my 2008 marketing plan: 

• What new media venues are my clients and prospects using and which are the most trafficked?
• By starting a direct and open dialog with my constituencies online, what risks do we incur and how can we mitigate these risks?
• What resources should I allocate to new media as opposed to traditional marketing efforts?
• What new media are my competitors using?
• How can I measure the success of new media efforts?
• Do I have the talent on my staff to manage new ways of communication and promotion?
• How might my proposed changes effect the sales organization and processes?  Product development? Customer support? Other groups?
• What consensus do I need to build with my peers, my CEO and the Board of Directors for any significant changes in marketing strategy using new media?

 I thought I’d outline what I’d recommend for B2B companies to do right now about new media, starting with participation in social networks.  Check back here in a bit and I’ll compile a list of actions that I think you should take in early 2008.  How aggressive you will be will depend on your style, your audience and the tolerance of company for such changes.

What new media activities do you have in your 2008 plans?  I’d love to know.

New Media – What’s it all about for B2B Marketing?

Any new venture deserves at least one defining moment and writing the first blog entry of Chocolate Vine feels like such a moment.  The tagline for Chocolate Vine is “Growing Business with New Media Marketing”.  So I think it’s fitting to explain what is meant by New Media Marketing to the B2B Marketer and how Chocolate Vine envisions a role therein.

To be clear, there is no consensus on exactly what constitutes “New Media”.  Wikipedia has one definition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_media ), Whatis (http://searchwebservices.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid26_gci213507,00.html ) has another and the hundreds of marketers caught in the middle have still others.  However, I believe that most would agree that the primary goal of New Media is to reach communities of users where they live online, rather than through other traditional media, such as print, outdoor or direct mail.  The hype is furthered by the use of the “Web 2.0” term which has been described as “a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users.” (source: Wikipedia).

The following could be considered “New Media” vehicles: Webinars, Podcasts, online paid advertising (especially using behavioral targeting), search engines (and associated optimizations), email marketing, online video advertising, social networks (communities), social bookmarketing (news sites), blogs, Wikis and RSS.  I’m sure there are more than a few I’ve left off the list, but my point is that it’s a bit daunting for a B2B marketing executive to understand if and how venues can be used.

The shift to open communications and an emphasis on the individual represents a change in how B2B companies will be communicating with their constituencies.  An open exchange of opinions and information is rapidly becoming the norm.  It’s frightening to essentially give control away of branding and product messaging, but the benefits of engaging in value-based exchanges with prospects and clients can out way the risk.  However, even if a company accepts and embraces this new form of engagement, there are so many new media opportunities, there is a real danger of fragmentation such that one’s messages may become lost.Still, statistics bear out that more and more marketing dollars are going to reach audiences online. 

-     Jupiter Research recently reported that 48% of brand marketers plan to use social marketing tactics in the next year, a 10% increase over the past year.

-        In February of this year, the American Advertising Federation issued a press release from a survey that stated “Seventy-three percent of respondents said that one to 20 percent of their budget is reserved for experimentation and new media properties. Significant, however, is the finding that 12.37 percent of respondents list 21 to 40 percent of their budget as reserved for these items.”

-        Another Jupiter Research study for iProspect found that the top reasons for placing content on social networking sites include driving traffic (51%); creating brand awareness (32%); direct selling (25%); and influencing a purchase decision (15%). 

-        A study by MarketingSherpa found that free trials, webinars, white papers, blogs and podcasts topped the list of the most effective lead generation tools used by business technology marketers

  Let me circle back to Chocolate Vine here and address the vision for it’s participation in this New Media wave.  First, as a marketing professional, I’ve never been afraid to try new things, but prefer to put most of the eggs in my basket into the tried and true.  Hence, the first services offered by Chocolate Vine are Webinar Services.  This is because, if executed properly (and that means with highly valuable industry informative content), webinars are a proven method to attract qualified prospects in an online environment.  I believe that offering this content through some of the New Media venues can be one way to create a valuable interchange between a company and it’s target audience.

 Chocolate Vine is committed to using New Media venues in a socially acceptable manner, with best practices and non-intrusive methodologies.  I will be happy to share my experiences using New Media venues and encourage you to provide comments here as well.  Together we can crack the New Media nut for B2B companies and marketing professionals.