One approach to overcoming this fear of commitment is to think about it as community building rather than content creation. Each platform represents a community, actually a subset of the total community of people who are interested in your business or organization. They might be customers, prospects, partners or employees. Once you start conversing with these communities, you cannot let these conversations go dark. What would happen if you stop talking to your neighbors and you never appear to be home? They would think you moved away or don’t care anymore. There is nothing worse in business than communicating to your customers that you don’t care about them. Well, except for shutting down, turning off the lights and going home. Your competitors are waiting for these opportunities, or even the perception of these events. And with the social web, it is easy for them to get their message out to your community.

The more planning you do on the front end of your social media communications will help you succeed.

• Make sure that you start with a social media strategy that maps onto your marketing or communications plan.
• Make sure everyone understands the goals of the plan and why you are pursuing this strategy.
• Create a content strategy and editorial calendar that tracks major events like product releases and trade shows. Consistent, relevant content will grow your community.
• Dedicate a bit of time each day to interacting with the community. The more you interact, the more it will grow.

Understanding what you are committing to will make it easier for everyone to commit to the social media plan. What fears are keeping you from embracing social media?

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When I talk about social media, especially to people who are just starting to wrap their heads around it, I tend to get excited. I speak with my hands. I also needed to point to the slide on the screen just a little bit. I decided that I would stand at the end of the table. I waved my arms. I walked back and forth while I made eye contact with our prospective clients. I spoke about our social media plans with passion. I had a few notecards with some bullet points on them. I didn’t look at them, but just waved them around. Below are some of things I said as an introduction to Social Media in the B2B space.

Social Media’s Role in Public Relations

There is an ongoing discussion about whether social media lives within marketing or public relations as a primary communication medium. While most social media strategists would recommend that social media needs to be pervasive throughout an organization, one department or function frequently launches the foray into social media. Using the conversation prism model, this demonstrates the modern view of public relations that includes an ongoing feedback loop with traditional sources, as well as social web outlets.

Public relations involves crafting messages that express the company’s position or touts their products. What if you can send those messages out into the wild and let them go? Find the influencers that can take those messages, change them, make them their own, and spread them further than the reach of a news site or a printed trade magazine. And you must monitor those messages and mentions. Traditional PR services involved clipping. Now we “clip the web.” And this can be done at a simple level using basic monitoring tools, or at a deeper level with more complex tools. These choices are determined by the scale of your online universe. As these idea come back through monitoring you can determine what worked and what didn’t in a continuous evaluation and analysis process.

Content

Much of the legwork of the content creation of a social media plan can occur within the PR function. They interact with company subject matter experts. They interview industry thought leaders. They are in constant contact with editors, writers, bloggers in the industry to keep a pulse on what is happening. While press releases are happening in this world, this is not important to this part of the story. We are more interested in the deeper dives of the case studies and white papers. This information can be turned on its side for the more informal content required for a blog, which is the core component of social media for a B2B company. The best thing about a blog is that it shows how a company thinks. Don’t talk about products, services, features and benefits, but use a blog to show industry leadership. What are the questions others are asking? You can answer them. And all this content needs to be published on a regular and consistent basis. Your PR team can develop and maintain an editorial calendar to keep this on task.

And this blog content can now radiate outward. Repurpose it on a Facebook fan page. Post links to in Twitter. Share it on LinkedIn. When people ask questions in an online forum use content from the blog to answer them. You can tell them you wrote a blog post about it, excerpt the relevant section, and provide a link if they want to read the rest of the post. This will start building relationships.

Relationship

So now the question comes up is social media right for B2B? Is it too early? Are we ready? Well, B2B selling is all about relationships, engaging and a long sales cycle. That’s why social media is perfect fit, because that’s what social media is all about. It’s about building relationships. Engaging with others with similar interests. Developing trust by providing value and solutions. Social media provides many opportunities for continuous touch points over a long sales cycle. But social media can’t fix your product. If you have quality issues, those become magnified through these relationships. No social media plan can cover up company problems. In fact, many times, these types of programs provide the incentive to get the product right. And if you brand stands for quality, now is the time to back that up.

Community

So the last piece of the social media landscape is community. These relationships don’t happen in isolation. The point is to connect with others in an ever-growing web of connection and influence. By engaging and building trust with your connections, they can share you ideas with their connections. The influencers are the leaders of these communities. Some are formal, while others are informal. Yes, there are opportunities to sponsor and support these communities, but companies and brands will never lead them. There is more value in letting go of control and letting your message spread organically through the community. This is building your brand through social media.

While I was speaking within the context of a larger presentation, these concepts work as a stand alone explanation of the benefits of social media in a B2B organization. What are some the keys points you use to sell social media either within your company or to your clients?

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