At a conference recently I was asked by someone what I did, as soon as I mentioned the term social media she scoffed and mentioned something along the lines of "Social Media in B2B? So you help write blogs for thought leader?"
Aside from the general disdain seen for B2B marketing amongst the B2C Über cool brigade it got me thinking where social media really does fit across the different make up of an organisation but especially within B2B as this is where I work. I tried thinking beyond the standard norm of the PR/Marketing approach to this and how all departments within a company can join the social media revolution.
Following on from the afore mentioned C.A.R (Collect Analyse Respond) approach I see to social media I've mapped out some thoughts here. Utilising software and tools that help find the correct information will help enormously, applications such as Radian6 or SM2 are very powerful to help mine through the vast mass of data and connect with the right people.
Sure there are more that I've missed but here's a start with 13 examples that are not about blogs and 1 that is!
Sales
Lead generation - finding posts where people are actively looking for help with a problem or looking for information regarding a purchase can help create a pro-active sales approach. Important here to see this as an opportunity to provide information about the services your organisation provides to help solve the problem problem an individual or organisation may be having (important though to avoid the hard sell here, it's about knowledge sharing)
Competitor intelligence - look what your competition are doing in this space, you may pick up some new ideas or vital info that can help you place your offering above them when selling against competition. Look beyond just the company but at what their customers are saying as well
HR
Recruitment - instead of relying on expensive employment agencies to find you the right candidates why not look on the largest employee registers available; LinkedIn, Xing etc Likewise use communities to help advertise positions for free
Employee feedback - this may be controversial in some cases but why not look to see what employees are saying or thinking about their company, there may be ideas used to improve employee satisfaction and therefore have a positive impact on the customer experience
Training - if employees are spread far afield try to help reduce travel costs by posting training programmes online by video or podcasts, these can be hosted on intranet resources rather than You Tube! Look to also develop training for channel partners who may be more geographically spread out
IT
Risk Management - use communities or discussion boards to look for recommendations regarding specific IT solutions or vendors
Support - user forums and online support groups have been a staple for years of software developers etc looking to solve specific problems they may have. Finding the right community can help reduce support costs
Customer Service
Pro-active support - scan the web for customers who may be experiencing problems with your offering and offer to help
User support - make it easy for customers to connect and solve problems themselves by setting up communities with online services such as Lithium, Ning, Groupsite (free). Examples of companies already using this method include; Sage, HP Software,
Customer experience - try and calculate how much customers are recommending you to others online, any review site usually allows customers to rate their experience and even if it's not to the scale of Net Promoter (0-10) the scores can be adapted to present an idea of how well your advocates and detractor scores are stacking up
Then we have the more commonly seen marketing/PR elements;
PR - follow what journalists are talking about around specific topics on blogs/Twitter to identify themes and use these vehicles yourself to send out information. Also can be used for crisis communications in helping to deal with problem situations
SEO Optimisation - use monitoring tools to see what terms customers and influencers are using to describe your own products and services or key terms associated with your industry. This can help tailor your SEO or paid keyword campaigns more precisely.
Advocacy - ok this covers a lot of these points already mentioned but ensure those customers who are recommending you and the comments they say are everywhere they should be to help influence future business. For example does your LinkedIn site include references or customer lists? Do you post customer testimonials to You Tube? Also use social media to help thank customer advocates
Thought Leadership - yes the mighty blog that according to some is all there is for B2B Social media! However it is a powerful tool to help promote a company's views around their expertise and offer free advice and information to a community
It's not just marketing's responsibility
How many of these social media initiatives are carried out in your company? Is social media simply seen as a marketing activity and therefore entirely this teams responsibility. As this post shows social media can be sewn into the fabric of all departments across a company and not just in B2C companies!