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Angela Hribar is chief sales and marketing officer of GlobalSpec, Inc., the leading specialized vertical search, information services and e-publishing company serving the engineering, technical and industrial communities. She has more than 25 years of experience in marketing, sales, business development and operations management, and is an expert in building and facilitating a collaborative environment across cross-functional executive teams.

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Leap of faith: Social media and B2B

Written on
Nov 25, 2009 
Author
Angela Hribar  |
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Leap of faith: Social media and B2B

leap_small.jpgADOTAS – Social media is different from marketing channels whose purpose and capabilities are limited to broadcasting or simply publishing marketing messages. Rather, social media is about generating conversations around topics important to a specific user group or audience.

This means social media is not about promoting a specific marketing agenda, or directly converting leads or sales. An executive that expects that type of return will be disappointed and frustrated, and might insist this “social media stuff” doesn’t work.

It takes time to build the resources, skills and enthusiasm for new tools and tactics. The last one—enthusiasm—may be a particular stickler in B2B because of the leap of faith required to understand one of the top business benefits of social media: something called “likeability.”

The Benefits of Social Media

Social media offers businesses an opportunity to connect with individuals, rather than just promote product or services. A face in a video or an opinion in a blog entry provides useful and relevant information beyond what a standard website can offer.

These softer, social touches can go a long way when potential customers with many choices, are deciding which company they want to do business with.

Another benefit of social media is that you become a part of the “conversation,” and being a good conversationalist means being a good listener, not just a good talker. You will be able to hear what others are saying about your company—both the good and the bad—and use that feedback to improve your company image, products, policies and more.

When to Adopt

It is likely the use of social media in B2B will continue to grow at a rapid rate. Remember, some companies needed to be convinced that a website made good business sense.

It was difficult to measure the ROI of a website in the pioneering phase. Now no company can be in business without one.Once companies understood the need to have a website, they had to understand the value of subsequent phases before adopting them.

Carrying the analogy to social media, if you accept the conclusion that social media can help raise your brand visibility, stature within the industry and your “likeability,” then the time to get started is now.





Reader Comments.

We are big fans of the social media channel. We have setup a weekly podcast (Relevantly Speaking) and robust, channel-specific blog at blog.mediatrust.com. The key for us has been making sure that the information we relate is highly relevant to our audience and it provides real value. Obviously, occasionally, we promote our own products/achievements to make sure we are getting the word out, but we try to make sure its not too interrup-tive and is still relevant to the conversation. As a result of our strategy, we have enjoyed much higher awareness of our brand (and we have also enjoyed heightened lead gen metrics as well)!

Posted by Trip Foster | 9:47 am on December 1, 2009.

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