I know it’s been a while since we’ve posted here and we genuinely feel bad about it, but nobody really reads it so I guess we can’t feel bad about it… But then again if we posted more maybe more people would read, it’s a vicious cycle, but we’re going to try to put a stop to that. We will be posting more starting now and hopefully you guys will enjoy what we have to say.
Does Social Media have a place in a Business to Business enviroment?
I was just in a meeting at my day job where we have been discussing some changes we are making to our website that will help our customers find what they are looking for. The software/logic that we have been using to run the website’s search hasn’t been the greatest mainly because we never tweaked the software used to drive that aspect of the site. So over the past couple weeks we have been working towards better logic to drive customers to find the products they are looking for. So in the meeting we had today about this situation social media was brought up. With Twitter making headline news pretty much everywhere these days I knew this topic was going to come up sooner or later (if I wasn’t the one to bring it up), but then it got me thinking, does this really apply to our business model? And would it really help anything?
I don’t like to get into too much personal information about where I work, but I work for a decent sized family owned company that acts as sort of a middleman for a specific industry. We buy from manufacturers and also produce our own goods and sell them to one industry that has multiple installations all over the world, not necessarily run by the same companies, just the same industry. These installations then offer a service to the public. That’s probably a terrible way to describe it, but hopefully you get the idea.
In this meeting today Twitter and Facebook were brought up and questioned as to whether or not we should branch out and use these tools to help market our website/company. Another guy then chimed in and started talking about Social Networking as a tool, like Digg, Reddit, delicious, etc (he didn’t know those sites, but we knew what he was talking about). And finally the idea of a blog was brought up, which, as a matter of fact, I had brought up about 2 years ago. I did a long write up on the benefits a blog could have to our company in general as well as a good boost to SEO for the website (which currently doesn’t do anything in the way of SEO).
Now I definitely see the potential of using things like Twitter and Facebook for B2C (Business to consumer) businesses in the fact that there are a lot more potential “clients” to push your business to. You can use it to answer questions about products, offer sales and promotions, or just talk to people in general thus giving them at least a little more reason to visit your store instead of somewhere else. In a B2B world, at least in our case, I don’t see these as being very helpful. Sure you could have your clients follow you on Twitter, but most of our clients have a specific set of products that they can purchase for their location, or they know exactly what they want and how to find it. Our industry isn’t that exciting so I doubt they would want to hear about things every day that are going on with our company, at least these things aren’t going to make them buy any more or any less, in my opinion. I think it also goes back to the people that are doing the purchasing of these products from us for their locations, they aren’t really the most tech savvy people and don’t seem to embrace technology like this. I think our e-mail campaigns are the extent of what our customers would be interested in looking at, they give them all the sale information, promo codes, and all the stuff that they care about directly to their inbox, a familiar place for them.
As for Facebook, whether it’s a “Fan Page” or paid advertising, this isn’t really our market and the only people that are going to become a “Fan” of our company are probably going to be the employees. Now maybe I’m just not giving our customers enough credit and they would love to read about us on Facebook, but having been at the company and in this industry for 10 years now, I really don’t think this is a place to find new clients. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe in paid ads on places like Google and Yahoo, but that’s where people are looking for a company like us, not Facebook.
Social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, and Delicious also don’t seem to apply to use since our website is 99% products. Why would anyone Digg a Towel or a Bed Sheet? I can’t really see a purpose for this on the product pages, however I do believe that we should have a blog that related to our industry and that would be a great place for these type of links, but at the moment we don’t have anything like that, so I feel it’s pointless.
The last one I want to touch on is YouTube, which actually did not come up in the meeting today, but I do feel that this one could potentially help our company and website in general. I’m currently sitting next to a room full of 1000′s of old VHS tapes of videos that we’ve done in the past. Everything from training videos (which obviously wouldn’t be put online) to informative product videos and instructional videos, which could definitely be put online. Even a little monthly video from someone in the company about the interesting things going on in the industry and what we have coming up would be a good way to promote the company and would also allow us to easily put videos on our own website.
So while some aspects of Social Media don’t seem to apply to our business model, there are some good things that we can do to help promote our brand and company. Before I started writing this article I didn’t really think that there was a huge market for Social Media in the B2B world, but after going through some things in my head there does seem to be some good things that you can do with it. And while a lot of them don’t apply to this company in general that’s not to say that other companies can’t benefit from it.
Which leads to me to a question I guess. If you currently work for a B2B company, how are you using social media to build your brand? Do you find Twitter a useful way to interact with clients? Is a Facebook Page really making a difference? Now I’m really curious as to how other companies are leveraging this up and coming marketing method to further their brand and get their name out there so please let me know.
