Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business, 2nd Edition

Chapter Fifteen

Social Media for B2B

Many business-to-business (B2B) companies are struggling with what their social media strategy should be. Unfortunately, executives often incorrectly believe that social media isn't applicable for their B2B company. Rather, they think it's something reserved for business-to-consumer (B2C) companies.

This is flawed thinking. Many of the same social media principles we preach for B2C companies also apply to B2B companies. Some tactics and philosophies, however, need to be adjusted accordingly to address idiosyncrasies particular to the B2B space. One quick difference is that the volume of interaction is often less: 32 percent of B2B companies engage with social media on a daily basis, whereas 52 percent of B2C companies engage on a daily basis.¹

Here are a few social media B2B musings that will hopefully help clear things up and explain why we see that over 90 percent of B2B companies actively participate on Facebook.²

Phil Mershon of SocialMediaExaminer conducted an extensive survey that uncovered where B2B companies experience digital success:³

• Over 56 percent of B2B marketers acquired new business partnerships through social media (compared to 45 percent of B2C marketers).
• Nearly 60 percent of B2B marketers saw improved search rankings from their social efforts (compared to 50 percent of B2C marketers).
• B2B marketers are more able to gather marketplace insights from their social efforts (nearly 69 percent versus 60 percent of B2C marketers). ...