In a poll of the audience at the beginning of the session, the overwhelming opinion among the audience at this panel discussion at Marketing Profs B2B Forum 2008 was that it's harder to executive a Business-to-Business social media strategy than it is for Business-to-Consumer. That's how I voted as well.
But the panelists were more evenly distributed. Robin Fray Carey, CEO of Social Media Today LLC, led off by saying it's actually easier for B2B, because "you're dealing with well-defined communities" - sale & marketing executives, entrepreneurs, etc. - and often you can start with pre-existing offline communities and work to bring them online. Once they're on the site, "there's a presumption that they're there to be sold to," making it easier to introduce a conversation that might sound a bit like a pitch.
Lewis Green, President of L&G Business Solutions, said he thought both types of sites are hard to execute. "If marketing and sales were easy, CEOs wouldn't keep asking us about ROI." His own first attempt at a blog was "a miserable, miserable failure," so before trying again he spent a lot of time reading other blogs, and did a strategic plan for his new blog, which generates a lively discussion in the comments section of several recent posts.
Scott Monty, the Consigliere of crayon marketing, said "I think B2B is harder, but it doesn't have to be." The key principle to keep in mind is "social media is about giving before you get" - in other words, make yourself useful to people before you tell them anything about your own products or services. He was the only panelist to invoke the ancient Roman statesman Cicero, who "got" B2B social marketing more than 2,000 years ago: "If you wish to persuade me, you must think my thoughts, feel my feelings and speak my words."
AboutFaceDigital CEO Richard Krueger thought B2B is easier, but B2C is sexier. Picking up on a discussion among the panelists about Service Oriented Architecture, he said, "face it, S.O.A. does not equate to S.E.X." It's easier to set goals for B2B because you're "narrowcasting."
Props to moderator Paul Dunay of BearingPoint for suggesting the topic in a post on his blog.
My own take: The hardest thing about B2B social media is getting around the word "social," which is sort of a synonym for "not business." But once someone understands that B2B social media IS for business, the term helps reinforce the thesis of the Cluetrain Manifesto - markets are conversations.