Is B2B Better at Social Media than B2C?

B2B marketing can be tricky, time consuming and sometimes unrewarding, and according to the 2011 Global Marketing Effectiveness Program by the Fournaise Marketing Group 73% of CEO's believe that a good old marketer is not able to prove that their strategies to increase sales and improve the organisations market growth will actually work.

Is this true? I don't actually think so! 

B2B historically was all about the trade, and cold calling trade customers or sending informal, discount driven direct mail. For example, buy now and get extended credit until December. Brilliant.

However now we must feel empowered, and realise our potential for B2B marketing and allow the B2C marketer's to do the front facing branding. Stop trying to do it. Now I am a slight hypocrite because I have always been in the commercial B2B market, where now; I believe, there has been a transitional shift. No longer is it trade only, you have to appeal to the end users too.

So lets ask ourselves some questions:

Internal social Media, but why?

You get it, most brands have jumped on the "our team is totally awesome, look at how awesome we are, we wear hoodies" band wagon, so now on a ton of websites you get to "meet the team".  For example meet Janice from HR who loves dogs, and mugs of tea but she also loves her job. Insert picture of her possibly with said dog/mug of tea/or a benign smile proving her adoration for the role she's been in for fifteen years. However, it does appear to work in the B2B market, people actually feel that a value proposition is getting to know the organisation properly, almost becoming a member of the family. Whereas within B2C - the consumers just want the shiny product, and strong advertising to prove their buying worth.

So what's my worth?

Think about what your values are, and stick by them. A question to ask is do you have the resources available to be successful? What I mean by that, is most social networking platforms are free so in the purest of senses it should be cheap to add social media to your marketing mix.

Fact is guys and gals, we know it isn't cheap. It's time consuming and sometimes can be uneventful. I suppose a lot of B2B companies use social media as an experiment. I struggled massively with Facebook, when I was in the commercial B2B market not so much however specialist B2B markets are flat in responding when interacting so was difficult to sustain a following.

Your worth, is quite simply realising that social media is non linear within your market. Your aim is to deliver a website with personality and core values, show leads and customers based on relationships.Be transparent. Be trustworthy.

Its all in the maths

Tell a great story, and analyse it! So story + data analysis = you're awesome! A great B2B marketer should be a fantastic story teller, and no it shouldn't all just be buy my product stories, and aren't we great - it should be informative, interesting and very very quietly pushing your business into their mindset. There are so many great software houses out there, such as Hubspot which will track anything you do social media wise. It really is worth a go.

At data clarity we offer a range of services to suit a vast array of B2B users, from web development, data management to SEO so in retrospect we're extremely versatile so in order for us to have succeeded, we did the above first and we're winning so can you!

Change the way you think about Facebook

When a new social network is born

Since its birth in 2004, Facebook is now eleven years into their social media dominance, and fundamentally nothing has even come close to the continued growth it has.

(source http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/feb/04/facebook-in-numbers-statistics)

Back in its embryonic state, it smashed the quarter  of a million users in its first quarter, toppling to 1 million by the year end, Facebook suddenly had a sense of meaning and value which as we know is something the likes of MySpace had struggled with.

MySpace had no perceptual value to its users as it was so unstructured and non consistent. The layering was wrong, full of jumpy bugs and bad coding. Users were bored, and looking for something new.

To just say quickly, one thing MySpace did bring out of the woodwork, was that most profile pages were mirrored egotistical dreams of what people wanted to be perceived as, not who they actually are. Facebook saw this, and by simplifying the user experience dominated the market immediately.

However Facebook began to grow into a multi usage platform, basically it had/has a personality disorder, and this has grown to a climax in recent years. To some users its an angel, and to some it became a demon; to some an opportunity for maintaining relationships, and to others - to broadcast narcissism.

Recently I've noticed a huge spike in blogging regarding Facebook privacy rights, advertisements etc. I have to firstly say that its my choice to "like" certain pictures or comments that my friends, whom again - I have chosen therefore whats the issue?

Yesterday I understood the issue for the first time, I hit a final straw attitude with the chaps and chappettes at Facebook, and here is why - sponsored adverts are the bane of my life, not only are they not relevant and I would never click on them, but secondly WHY would they think I would? Here's some examples of today's sponsored links:

• Disney Mobile Games - Why why why? I don't have children for starters, and oh...wait, I liked my friends Frozen share....damn 
• JCB - Seriously, no seriously? I am not interested in JCB's at all so....ah, nope that's right I liked my friends Digger land photo.
• Perfect365 - A "make yourself look really pretty app" I can't believe these apps exist and nope I haven't downloaded anything of similar caliber so, oh no wait I'm a woman so I must want this app!! no, no i don't.

These streams dominate my news feed, so I miss out on my friends actual stories which when the sponsored links are totally non relevant really winds my bobbin up.

How to have a more natural Facebook

STOP liking things, yes that's correct - no matter how much you are tempted to like your friends share of a funny cat advert, don't! Write instead "oh how I lol'd at your funny cat video" or something of similar high intellect.

I did this, I completely stopped myself from liking my friends shares of where they've been, specific comments linking to organisations or brands, or to give an example, my friend is getting married and in the midst of this she would write most days about said wedding plans, boom my page explodes with wedding suggestions, and I can tell you as a fact, I'm always the bridesmaid, never the bride so well done Facebook for giving me a complex.

After a week, something beautiful happened....I started to see hardly any sponsored links or suggestions and actually saw what my friends were up too. It was awesome, I call this the organic Facebook and its much, much better. Try it!