If you can get your head around social media in a consumer environment such as venting one’s disquiet over Twitter when a service provider messes you about, why is it a struggle to see that there is a place for social in a business-to-business environment?
The world is changing fast and people’s rising ‘consumer’ expectations are driving a seismic shift in business behaviour. Ashley Carr, Founder and Managing Director at Neo Engage, a brand of Neo PR, explains:
There has been a fundamental culture change taking place in the minds of all of us as consumers and the worlds of business-to-business and business-to-consumer are on a collision course as a consequence. As individuals, our demand for immediacy fueled by the ‘Amazon’ effect is driving our expectation across all aspects of our lives. And we are finding it increasingly difficult to separate our expectations in our consumer lives from those in our business lives.
And it’s not just about how fast we can get something delivered, but also in how we communicate or interact. No longer is a simple telephone number or generic email address acceptable as the only means of communication. It’s just not necessarily the default way that everyone wants to interact with you anymore.
Shifting from direct to indirect
Your web presence arguably remains your greatest asset in your communication portfolio, but interacting with a web site is often cumbersome and slow with form filling or chat usually the only options. But social media brings many more options for your target audience – whether they are prospects or customers – to choose the way they want to both absorb information from you and to then interact.
And it’s not just the level of interaction or the mechanism, but the timing also. Unless you have some sort of always-on support organisation, you are probably keeping ‘office hours’. Great to have all those traditional media manned by your workforce then, but what happens at 5.31pm? Consumer-driven behavioural change now starts to make you look a little backward if your marketing switches off at 5.30. The great thing about social media is that it doesn’t have to – scheduling a series of tweets out of hours for example offers more ways to keep in touch with those interested parties when the office lights are off, and allows you to also make the most of consumer led social spikes such as live tweeting during a popular TV show.
Leads from Social Media? – the million-dollar question.
There is growing evidence that social interactions – especially business social interactions such as those through LinkedIn – are having a positive effect in the B2B world. In fact, according to recent research as many as 72% of your Twitter followers will buy from you at some point in the future.
From promoting direct conversations with prospects and clients to having a strong influence on your Google organic positioning, it has become a key tool in the marketing toolbox. And as consumer behaviour continues to spill over into the business world it is becoming increasingly common for conversations to be taking place on Twitter with some support organisations using this as a primary contact tool for example.
And if you accept the old adage that ‘50% of marketing works, but you just don’t know which 50%’, then it follows that any outbound or inbound marketing across the gamut of marketing tools available to you is going to have at least some effect on nurturing that relationship with your prospect to the point where they are in the buying mood.
So why are you still playing lip service to it?
Maybe you are still a non believer because you’ve yet to see the ROI – or maybe it’s just not in your comfort zone and you just can’t understand why everyone under the age of 30 seems to spend so much time on it – or maybe it’s on the too difficult list because you just don’t know how it all works and don’t have the time…
Whatever the reasons, there are two fundamental things you should consider: a) at least some of your competitors are probably doing it already better than you and b) you are missing out on better Google rankings and target audience interaction.
And yes it does take time to get it right – the content creation; keeping on top of the different media and formats; and interacting with your audience – but that’s why outsourcing it (just like you do with lots of other aspects of your business) is the way to go.
Social media is no longer just the realm of the spotty youth, but instead has made the successful transition into the business world and has a whole industry of tools built up around it to make it function more effectively – from outsourcing execution to measurement, there are a plethora of ways to help manage the workload.
And social in business is similar to social in consumer, but with some change to the subtleties in the tone and execution. So it would be best to get the advice of the new breed of social media professionals out there who can help with finding the right voice and then executing at the right level.
A dead feed is worse that no feed at all!
Lastly, but by no means least, if you have signed up for all the social channels you think are appropriate for your business, neglecting them at that point is really not sending the right message. It’s akin to not answering the phone or an email – if your target audience finds you there and looks for updates and your last one was last month – or worse – what message do you think that sends?
Social media is a valuable business tool that deserves the same level of attention as all the other business tools you use. And whatever your perceptions of it were, look again – social media has gone business-to-business and you’re being left behind.
Ashley Carr, @Ash_NeoPR Founder and Managing Director at Neo Engage, a brand of Neo PR,
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