We were in a new business meeting yesterday, discussing blogging and social media, and the prospect brought up a common misconception: that social media has less relevance for businesses that market to other businesses. Although on the face of it, this may mean to make sense – many equate social networking with social media, and the largest networks like MySpace and Facebook seem to be more about fun and games than serious business – if you dig a little deeper, it just does not hold water.
Regardless of whether you are a B2B or B2C, you can rest assured that your business prospects go online to find information related to your business. Isn’t this the way that just about anyone finds info these days? Yellow pages and other paper directories are quickly becoming anachronisms, as are trade magazines.
So, you need to consider search engine optimization and online industry media, that much is clear. But it is also true that people are increasingly discovering and sharing content through various forms of social media. Bloggers buzz about topics and share links. More and more people are doing the same on Twitter, including people in your industry segment, in all likelihood.
Business and tech stories that originate in traditional media can be buzzed about endlessly online, and this can effect future coverage and the trajectory of the story. Bloggers are increasingly becoming sources for stories and breaking news on their own.
While it is true that the networks and forums might vary – and you simply need to take the time to understand these – in my experience, in just about every tech industry (and non tech, too, I would guess) there are forms of social media that are very important for B2B. It is also true that your goals and strategies will almost certainly be different for a B2B social media program when compared with a B2C play.
Right now, while you are reading this, people are buzzing about issues related to your area of business – and very likely about you and your competitors (don’t just take my word for it; you can go ahead and plug the right key word or brand name searches into the following social search sites: Social Mention, Same Point, uberVU, Twitter search, Google blog search, etc.)
Don’t you want to take part in the conversation?
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