Social Media Relevance in a BtoB World

By: Joe Kiefer

In 2009 Social Media made its way into our conference rooms as a topic of discussion, as I'm sure it did to your conference rooms as well. As a 33 year old marketing professional I will admit to having some bias. I don't feel old in most situations, but my experience revolves around direct mail, e-mail and more recently search marketing. Talking social media with twenty-something year olds instantly puts me in the old category.

My experiences with social media up to that point were infrequent use of Facebook and a very short stint in Second Life. If you are in Second Life, you may bump into my avatar, who I believe is still flying around the training island.

Whatever my biases may be, I also know that testing is the best way to win or lose an argument and I try not to let my biases get in the way of smart business decisions. That being said, we formed a small task force assigned to different social media initiatives. I chose starting up a blog.

As we rolled out some new social media accounts I started to get a feel for each site and some of my preconceived notions were backed up, but some of them were proven wrong as well. As with most new media, you can't really get a feel for it until you are experiencing it first hand. Business networking can sum up and explain everything that happens on LinkedIn.

Going into the testing Twitter probably took the brunt of my criticism of social media. Although I still believe Twitter will go by the wayside within the next two years, it does provide the ability to research and find information quickly. If you are big into competitive research this would be a good tool as well. As a marketing vehicle, not so much, unless your plan is the long term branding effect of the goodwill caused by contributing free and useful information. Sorry, that does not fit into my marketing budget.

Facebook's popularity gives it an instant allure to all marketers. Who isn't drawn to a huge audience that is engaged on a daily basis in many cases. Although my experience is limited to personal use on Facebook, I am going to boldly predict that a BtoB marketing environment will be fairly limited. The great thing about social media is the viral word of mouth nature they have. On Facebook you are connected to your friends and family and although this may include some of your co-workers, most people are trying to avoid the work overlap on Facebook. I get annoyed with any Marketing material that invades into my Facebook pages, much less if I was getting marketing material for my job, while I am online chatting with friends. Okay, or playing bejeweled.

I am saving my favorite for last, which is LinkedIn. The networking opportunities on LinkedIn seem to be limitless. In a short amount of time I have almost 300 connections, formed 2 groups, joined 20+ relevant groups, taken polls, recommended colleagues, found new business partners, generated training ideas... anyways, I think you get the point. I am not going to go as far as saying LinkedIn is a huge revenue generator, but I believe it could get there and for now I am content with the functionality it provides. ASM just passed 2,500 group members as I was writing this article. Wow!

I don't feel as old now that I have joined the social media wave. Sometimes you just need a little push to get in the pool. If you are standing on the edge wondering if you should get in, let me help... JUMP! If you don't jump now the wave will pass you by.