usvi-on-line
Social Media for Business?
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chicagoans
- Posts: 1586
- Joined: Thu Jan 18, 2007 2:51 pm
- Location: IL
Social Media for Business?
OK this is a long shot but there's a thread about Facebook that got me thinking about it, and you're all a bunch of smart people (or smart a$$es but whatever) so I'm throwing it out there.
Does anyone work for a firm that is successfully using social media for B2B marketing efforts? I've been tasked with exploring this for my firm (small software company, I'm the marketing director.) I've done alot of reading but the success stories are either B2C or come from much larger firms with alot more resources. Our lawyer has also brought up some concerns about legal issues that can be associated with public-forum media.
If your firm is using social media in B2B efforts I'd love to hear about it.
Thanks and sorry to geek out on you. PMs are great if you think others wouldn't be so interested (or you don't want to publicize what you're doing.)
PS- Anthony if I could convince our CEO that our target buyers hang out on VIOL, I'd be your top advertiser!
Does anyone work for a firm that is successfully using social media for B2B marketing efforts? I've been tasked with exploring this for my firm (small software company, I'm the marketing director.) I've done alot of reading but the success stories are either B2C or come from much larger firms with alot more resources. Our lawyer has also brought up some concerns about legal issues that can be associated with public-forum media.
If your firm is using social media in B2B efforts I'd love to hear about it.
Thanks and sorry to geek out on you. PMs are great if you think others wouldn't be so interested (or you don't want to publicize what you're doing.)
PS- Anthony if I could convince our CEO that our target buyers hang out on VIOL, I'd be your top advertiser!
Who is your target buyer? 
I am doing a lot of consulting for people who are feeling the need to jump into social media for business and for web marketing - but it is almost all B2C.
I think LinkedIn is definitely a place where B2B is happening though - they have a lot of groups where like minded professionals hang out.
I think I would have to have some more specifics of your case to give you a better answer though. And please - if anyone else can chime in have this conversation here and not via PMs. I would love to see some thoughts about this stuff.
I am doing a lot of consulting for people who are feeling the need to jump into social media for business and for web marketing - but it is almost all B2C.
I think LinkedIn is definitely a place where B2B is happening though - they have a lot of groups where like minded professionals hang out.
I think I would have to have some more specifics of your case to give you a better answer though. And please - if anyone else can chime in have this conversation here and not via PMs. I would love to see some thoughts about this stuff.
Anthony for Virgin Islands On Line
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bubblybrenda
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chicagoans
- Posts: 1586
- Joined: Thu Jan 18, 2007 2:51 pm
- Location: IL
Brenda: B2B = Business to Business (selling products to other businesses); B2C = Business to Consumer (selling consumer products)
Anthony - I agree that LinkedIn is being used for this; I joined a group relevant to my industry, which is rather niche, but haven't seen alot going on with it. I follow a couple of industry analysts' Twitters and blogs also.
My target customer is usually in a firm's IT group -- VP of application development and peers; CIO. Also sometimes a business analyst or 'subject matter expert' like an underwriter uses our product to author their own decision logic within a software application. (It's called business rules technology. We have some customers doing some cool things.) These folks are technically savvy and many of them use Facebook and LinkedIn, a few write blogs. But you need to be careful entering an online community as a marketing person... as soon as someone smells a sales pitch, they get wary. So I'm still trying to figure out how to approach this.
Anthony - I agree that LinkedIn is being used for this; I joined a group relevant to my industry, which is rather niche, but haven't seen alot going on with it. I follow a couple of industry analysts' Twitters and blogs also.
My target customer is usually in a firm's IT group -- VP of application development and peers; CIO. Also sometimes a business analyst or 'subject matter expert' like an underwriter uses our product to author their own decision logic within a software application. (It's called business rules technology. We have some customers doing some cool things.) These folks are technically savvy and many of them use Facebook and LinkedIn, a few write blogs. But you need to be careful entering an online community as a marketing person... as soon as someone smells a sales pitch, they get wary. So I'm still trying to figure out how to approach this.
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Pete (Mr. Marcia)
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- Joined: Mon Aug 07, 2006 4:48 pm
- Location: Madison, Wisconsin
I have a small law firm and have pondered this. FB seems like an inappropriate vehicle for marketing a law firm. Linkedin is totally unsexy and boring. There should be a happy medium.
I mostly see FB being used for B2C, and mostly retail businesses at that.
Although this is not entirely responsive, I have moved to Constant Contact as a way to send email blast marketing that looks pretty decent...and for not a lot of money.
I would like to hear more thoughts on this subject from others.
I mostly see FB being used for B2C, and mostly retail businesses at that.
Although this is not entirely responsive, I have moved to Constant Contact as a way to send email blast marketing that looks pretty decent...and for not a lot of money.
I would like to hear more thoughts on this subject from others.
Wisconsin, smell the dairy air
Just as a trend observer and amateur blogger, it looks like b2b and the social web are at an awkward point in their relationship. As some here have already stated, broad reaching social webs like Facebook and MySpace aren't appropriate for every business. I think as the popularity dust settles (and the imaginary gold at the end of the rainbow disappears), the social webs will spread out into more niche-based networks. It might not be a good idea to ignore Facebook, MySpace etc...but it remains a questionable value and it could be a liability in some situations.
I had a similar conversation with a friend a while back. We were pondering online marketing and sales in general. He had an interesting quote. He said, "Why fish in the ocean if you can fish in a pond?". I think the same theory goes for b2b and the social networks. You might get more productivity from your pond than you will from the ocean.
One other thing that might add to the success of b2b would be if business "Associations" created their own social networks it would strengthen their respective industries or interests. It would also allow the positive aspects of social networking to occur in a more moderated environment with different expectations. This sort of "business/social web" would of course be a great opportunity for uber-targeted advertising. Getting people to embrace the CPA Association Social Web might be a tough sell in the real world, but it sounds good in concept.
There are so many questions to answer. Like why do people who, ten years ago, would never go online into a chat room....now feel it's ok to Twitter about their visit to the proctologist? The other question I ponder is why I would want to integrate the social web into my business. Don't my employees waste enough time in places like the VIOL forum?
I had a similar conversation with a friend a while back. We were pondering online marketing and sales in general. He had an interesting quote. He said, "Why fish in the ocean if you can fish in a pond?". I think the same theory goes for b2b and the social networks. You might get more productivity from your pond than you will from the ocean.
One other thing that might add to the success of b2b would be if business "Associations" created their own social networks it would strengthen their respective industries or interests. It would also allow the positive aspects of social networking to occur in a more moderated environment with different expectations. This sort of "business/social web" would of course be a great opportunity for uber-targeted advertising. Getting people to embrace the CPA Association Social Web might be a tough sell in the real world, but it sounds good in concept.
There are so many questions to answer. Like why do people who, ten years ago, would never go online into a chat room....now feel it's ok to Twitter about their visit to the proctologist? The other question I ponder is why I would want to integrate the social web into my business. Don't my employees waste enough time in places like the VIOL forum?
Interesting comments everyone. I have been germinating this thought: I think Facebook and the rest are really just evolved versions of AOL. AOL had "everyone" in the beginning because of their marketing and the Internet access component. And then they blew it -
Today, with MySpace first (for teens really) followed by FB for college students and now the world, Twitter, and LinkedIn for the "boring" adults (among many other networks) - the trend of people gathering into spots is obviously one that can't be stopped. AOL had everyone and couldn't make it work. MySpace had tons of people, Murdoch bought it for a ton of money, and it is killing him. FB has tons of people now and is trying to make it work (by work I mean payoff commercially).
Anyway - back to my point. On the web, no matter where anyone tries to steer people, they all seem to want to huddle together in huge masses. I think the concept of "vertical" never really worked (meaning a site where you could do/find/purchase for any specific thing) - partly because something else mentioned above - that once people smell marketing/sales they leave. TripAdvisor got huge, and really hurt people like us, but notice that you don't buy anything from TripAdvisor - you buy it from Expedia, Hotels.com , etc. (even though they are owned by the same corp. they are kept "separate" - why? - to fool the consumer into thinking they can be trusted as "people" or as an independent source).
So what am I rambling about... in a way, I think you HAVE to fish in the ocean, because that is what we have. Millions of people a day don't come to niche websites. You have these huge numbers at the so called "social" networking sites. Where everybody knows everybody. So if you can get your product, site, service mentioned there by a real person it can have substantial impact. The analogy is sort of like television now - with the big places like FB being the ABC, NBC and CBS of the past.
Where it ends up is anyone's guess. I just said to a friend last night that I think Twitter is a bit of a fad - it is crazy how something can become so ubiquitous when most people don't seem to have a clue about it! I am trying to dabble in it - to let people here have some options, but it seems to have a lower penetration with the demographic here than RSS feeds did.
It seems we are also moving more and more to the "personal" brand or branding - which frankly I hate - but consumers seem to love...
Today, with MySpace first (for teens really) followed by FB for college students and now the world, Twitter, and LinkedIn for the "boring" adults (among many other networks) - the trend of people gathering into spots is obviously one that can't be stopped. AOL had everyone and couldn't make it work. MySpace had tons of people, Murdoch bought it for a ton of money, and it is killing him. FB has tons of people now and is trying to make it work (by work I mean payoff commercially).
Anyway - back to my point. On the web, no matter where anyone tries to steer people, they all seem to want to huddle together in huge masses. I think the concept of "vertical" never really worked (meaning a site where you could do/find/purchase for any specific thing) - partly because something else mentioned above - that once people smell marketing/sales they leave. TripAdvisor got huge, and really hurt people like us, but notice that you don't buy anything from TripAdvisor - you buy it from Expedia, Hotels.com , etc. (even though they are owned by the same corp. they are kept "separate" - why? - to fool the consumer into thinking they can be trusted as "people" or as an independent source).
So what am I rambling about... in a way, I think you HAVE to fish in the ocean, because that is what we have. Millions of people a day don't come to niche websites. You have these huge numbers at the so called "social" networking sites. Where everybody knows everybody. So if you can get your product, site, service mentioned there by a real person it can have substantial impact. The analogy is sort of like television now - with the big places like FB being the ABC, NBC and CBS of the past.
Where it ends up is anyone's guess. I just said to a friend last night that I think Twitter is a bit of a fad - it is crazy how something can become so ubiquitous when most people don't seem to have a clue about it! I am trying to dabble in it - to let people here have some options, but it seems to have a lower penetration with the demographic here than RSS feeds did.
It seems we are also moving more and more to the "personal" brand or branding - which frankly I hate - but consumers seem to love...
Anthony for Virgin Islands On Line
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mindehankins
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I think one of the unique things and potentially the most useful is the "live" search. The fact that everything posted is immediately in their search index is pretty cool, and it can give you a shape of news events that you don't get from other places. The "live" component of this is one of the things that seems to have Google's attention.
Anthony for Virgin Islands On Line
this feature has helped me follow some Springsteen set lists on a given night. #Springsteen in the search box and I can see what people are tweeting from the shows.Anthony wrote:I think one of the unique things and potentially the most useful is the "live" search. The fact that everything posted is immediately in their search index is pretty cool, and it can give you a shape of news events that you don't get from other places. The "live" component of this is one of the things that seems to have Google's attention.
WHY they are doing that is another story but it helps me
I don't twitter, but Margo posted a link from this on her facebook page- this is the absolutely funniest thing I have ever read. By the time I got to the end I was crying.
I would definitely subscribe to this guy if I was a twitter person.
Or just check it out on the web:
http://twitter.com/Shitmydadsays
I would definitely subscribe to this guy if I was a twitter person.
Or just check it out on the web:
http://twitter.com/Shitmydadsays
"Sponges grow in the ocean...I wonder how much deeper it would be if that didn't happen."
