Proof B2B Social Networks Work
By Kipp Bodnar
Wed, Apr 15, 2009
We started this blog as a way to generate conversation and provide concrete examples. One of the biggest concerns we continue to hear is that social media doesn’t apply to B2B becasue “our customers aren’t online”. Do you sell to restaurants, food distributors, or really anything to the restaurant industry? Then you don’t have that excuse, your customers are online.
Recently I came across a niche social network for the restaurant industry called FohBoh which is short for Front of the House, Back of the House. Fohboh is a great example of what a niche B2B social network can and should be. Why? It has over 10,000 members from more than 180 countries, but members don’t make a successful communities, active members do. This network member base is extremely active with more than 1,000 videos posted, 10,000 images, and an average of 300 blog posts per month.
Another thing to note is that a quick look at the source code for Fohboh shows that it is built on Ning a free platform to build niche communities.
Fohboh was smart the didn’t try to reinvent the wheel, instead focused on building a strong community instead of getting caught up with technology.
Listening To The Community
Once you know that your customers are online, what is next? Regardless how conservative your organization is, their is no excuse not to listen. Lets use Fohboh has an example, with 10,000 members posting regularly their is most likely a lot of great data that can be mined to help your organization. I would recommend using Google Site Search to search for terms only within Fohboh that relate to your business.
Once you look through relevant search results you should have insight that will help you develop marketing materials, generate sales leads, and aid product development.
Taking The Next Step: Participating
Once you have listened and you realize that their is so much value in a community that you want to take advantage of it and build relationships with its members, what do you do? I recommend having an internal discussion to determine which people in your organization plan to join and participate in the community. Regardless of who decides to do this here are a few tips for participating:
- Aside from your user profile don’t mention your company unless asked by another member.
- Comment on posts, images and pictures related to your industry and expertise in a conversational tone, that answers questions instead of selling.
- Contribute your own posts on relevant industry issues.
- Help solve people’s problems.
The few suggestions above are the best way to build long-term business relationships that will lead to sales and referrals. If you come in product focused then you will be marked as a spammer and not welcome in the community.
Is their a niche community in your industry? One way to find out is to head over to Ning and do a quick search.
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Tags: B2B, fohboh, Social Networks
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I’m writing a book on B2B social media with Paul Gillin for Wiley and am intently researching this subject. Following on a tip from Shel Israel, I interviewed Mark Yoltan who runs the SAP Community Network and was absolutely blown away to learn how they are celebrating imperfection to gain trust, profiting from surrendering to customer conversations, building deeper professional relationships by mixing business and pleasure and leveraging user rating to improve product performance. Based on your professed interest in B2B social media, I think you’ll really like this: http://bit.ly/9LtFLI