Demystifying Social Media for B2B, and I mean, B2B!

This is a guest post by my friend Sharon Miller. Sharon is one of the smartest, most accomplished B2B marketers I know. Enjoy!

Let’s face it. Using social media in the B2 B space isn’t as easy as everyone makes it out to be. All the articles I read talk about how B to B businesses are using social media, but when it comes to actually citing examples, they always fall back on B to C.

I get it. If you work in the B to C world then yes social media is where it’s at. You have customers, consumers, users and most importantly fans. These people want to hear from you; they want to give you their opinion; they want to know if there actually is slime in the hamburger (*sorry McDonald’s); they want to know why Swiss Chalet changed their fries recipe; they want good customer service; and they would like to feel connected to the brand.

So let’s think about our B to B customers for a minute, and because I’ve been in tech for more years than I can remember, let’s think about hard-core tech customers. And try not to confuse B to B with B to C companies that sell technology, like Kobo, or even Salesforce.com as they both have a huge base of end users/fans. I’m talking hard-core IT.

In my experience, these customers  (i.e. CIOs, CTOs, IT managers, etc). don’t start out as a community that is interested in our brand. Nor do they care about being connected to a brand. And they certainly don’t care about personal connection to your product. What they care about is product support, which is a little different. But lucky for us, they are just people like you and me who like to connect with other people.

Meaningful content, what’s that?

To me social media means sharing “meaningful” content. What does that mean? It means content that comes from the heart; content that is interesting and heartfelt and authentic; and content that engages other people.

At this point I know you are throwing up your hands in horror … but keep reading, I promise it will make sense to you, and the real tips are just a few paragraphs away.

It doesn’t mean, getting somebody who is not involved in the organization to run your Twitter feed or pushing out news stories, as I’m guessing, we all read the newspaper. And don’t get me started on organizations that focus on numbers of followers and nothing else, because you can just buy followers on eBay (but that’s a different article).

So when we talk about meaningful content for B to B, we are in a bit of a bind. Because B to B companies generally don’t have a lot of this type of content, so we pretty well have to invent it by taking a hard look at our brand, our employees and the community. Which brings me to the next point…

How to invent meaningful content

There are many ways to do this but for starters take a look inside your own organization, and what do you see? I’ll tell you. “Ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”

Your employees have a wealth of personal information to share, and you’ll be surprised at all this meaningful content, if you just ask the right questions. Your employees are nuclear scientists, little league coaches, hockey referees, personal trainers, teachers, and I bet they do a ton of volunteer and community work in their free time. This my friends is “meaningful” content. It is bloggable, tweetable, youtubable, etc. (yes I know these are not words, but they will be some day).

Make it fun

Being fun and being social are very well aligned. Why not run in-house mini events that are fun, engaging and simple? I’ll give you an example that’s an old one but a good one. Task your employees with submitting pictures of themselves fitting into the smallest spaces around the office. Give them a specific time frame like 4pm to 5pm so it doesn’t disrupt the entire day. The results are hilarious and well worth sharing over social media. (Everyone loves the pic of the person squished in a blue bin.) These types of mini events are not only good for social media, but good for company morale, your internal brand and more.

Corporate initiatives

Corporate initiatives already exist in most companies, but rarely does anyone think to talk about them on social media. One company I know has a Green Committee who promotes in-house recycling, a paperless office, etc. All meaningful content to share on social media!

Community service

Community service is close to my heart and I know there are tons of B to B companies out there who participate in their community locally and abroad. Another reason to get social!

I could go on, but you get the idea.

In Summary

B to B companies can do a great job in the digital world if they just dig deep and look closer to home.

Sharon Miller is currently the VP of Marketing for a B to B technology company, and also chairs “The Marketing Ideas Group” in Toronto; members include senior client side marketers from a wide variety of industries. She has been a technology marketer for 15 years. Sharon can be reached at sharon@sharonmiller.ca or @SharonMiller

*McDonalds does a stellar job on social media and in fact the answer to the “slime in my hamburger” question was on their home page a couple weeks ago.