Social Media B2B

Last month we announced giveaways of four of the latest social media books to celebrate the 2nd birthday of SocialMediaB2B.com. To enter each giveaway, readers needed to leave a comment that related to each book. Congratulations to the winners, whose comments are below. If you didn’t win, click on the link for each book to learn more about it and purchase your own copy. Thanks again to the authors and their publishers for supplying us with copies of the books to give away.

Winner of Content Rules by sharing a creative example of content.
Janet M. Kennedy
There once was a marketer from Kent,
Whose social media skills were bent,
They only sent SPAM
And not from a can,
And to marketer Hell they were sent.

Winner of The Now Revolution by indicating which of the seven revolutionary shifts is most critical to their business.
Petter Nilsson
The point that I find the most intteresting for our company right now is #4 [Listen at the point of need and answer the social telephone] because you need to be proacitve and intercept problems, needs, etc. if you want to be successful with your social media strategy. You need now WHAT people are saying about your business/company when they’re saying it. And then of course join the conversation =)

Winner of Enterprise Social Media Strategy by sharing their biggest social media challenge.
DJ Lein
My biggest enterprise social media challenge is convincing senior managers that social media isn’t a productivity threat, but is something that can add true value to both our customers and organization.
Being a B2B manufacturer, a lot of them think this doesn’t apply to us.

Winner of Social Marketing to the Business Customer by discussing the difference between B2B and B2C social media.
Felix Hemsley
B2B & B2C share one core concept in common, relationships. The differences come in how to build those relationships. The B2B environment necessitates the provision of value without exception. Adding value to a contact at any stage in the relationship is vital. This leads to a key requirement to nurture contacts through the buying cycle. Here, content marketing plays a key role, decisions are not made lightly and require insight and consideration. Within the B2C space, decision can be made on a whim, a wrong purchasing decision is unlikely to bring a person’s world crashing down. In a B2B environment the same can not be said. By providing relevant material which offers value and addresses each touch point and pain point of a lead, the eventual outcome if all goes well is a sale.

We also need to look at the timeliness of the activity. A B2B sales cycle can be a long term process spanning months at a time, a B2C cycle usually spans days if not hours, it’s a much easier quick win. Building emotion into a B2B sale is important, but a real challenge, we are of course still dealing with people who can be emotionally involved with any aspect of life. One of the major limitations here is that in B2C, businesses can have a kudos and emotional attachment, such as Apple. Their products may not be the best, but they have a “must have” persona attached. Replicating this in B2B is almost impossible, so we must look to pamper to the needs of the buyer with content which is aligned to their vertical and strategy and corporate requirements.

Jeffrey L. Cohen is the Managing Editor of SocialMediaB2B.com. Follow Jeff on Twitter at @jeffreylcohen.