I used to think I was a social media guru. I’ve been using Twitter since before it was “cool.” I have accounts on Instagram, Pintrest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Foursquare and an embarrassing number of albums on Facebook. So when my boss at my summer internship asked me to help him develop the company’s social media strategy, I confidently accepted the task. I was in for a rude awakening. I quickly learned that tweeting on behalf of a $23 billion electronics distributor was a far cry from managing my own personal account. Then there’s the analytics behind the whole operation and translating that into ROI. I was in way over my head.
I understand the social benefits of social media. I’ve seen first hand how it can add dimension to your relationships and enable you to engage with others in unprecedented ways, making it easier than ever to maintain connections. Is knowing that Taylor Swift’s cat is tired today really going to enhance our relationship? No, but part of social media’s greatness also lies in its ability to provide sheer entertainment to an audience of over a billion viewers:
The difficulty is figuring out the role this all plays in the world of business. We’ve seen countless examples of consumers turning to social platforms with customer service issues. We’ve also seen artists turn into megastars through grassroots marketing campaigns fueled by social efforts (i.e. Lady Gaga). These are examples of companies whose end-user is the consumer, but what purpose does social media serve in business-to-business companies?
More B2B CMOs continue to ask this question and are beginning to seriously evaluate the value of social media in their marketing efforts. In November 2012, Eloqua asked 548 B2B marketers about their approach to social media. 36 percent said their organization doesn’t have any sort of social media strategy in place. I believe this is a tremendous opportunity for recent grads to find their niche in certain businesses. That is why I am taking this course. While the job opportunities grow, so do the number of professionals who include ‘social media skills’ on their resumes. Knowing what a hashtag is does not make me a social media guru, nor will it guarantee me any job offers.
Next time my boss asks me to help the company gain a presence in social media, hopefully I’ll be more equipped for the job.
I really agree with this post. I like the cartoon at the end that says we’ll figure out how to use it later and I think that’s so true. I do agree with you that social media can add value to a business, but the trick will be figuring out HOW to do that correctly. Just using twitter and facebook isn’t really enough, we need to learn how to use them effectively in a business setting.
I agree with both you and David above. I love how the cartoon encompasses the exact situation that I think a lot of companies run into- how do you run a successful marketing campaign, and how do you know if it is successful?
I could not believe the statistic that you mention, “In November 2012, Eloqua asked 548 B2B marketers about their approach to social media. 36 percent said their organization doesn’t have any sort of social media strategy in place.” This seems unbelievable in today’s workplace, considering social media has such a presence in our daily lives. It comes back to the point to of: how we will be able to measure the success of utilizing social media in the workplace and how “clicks” and “tweets,” etc. will impact or reflect ROI for companies.
I am taking the course for the same reason as you, so hopefully we will learn some social media strategies to bring into the workplace!
Really great blog post, Jillian! One of the main reasons I took this class was to see if social media is really necessary for every type of business. For the past two summers I have worked at a small B2B company in NYC and they had absolutely no social media set up at all. After all, who is there to please? If one of our clients had a problem, they would contact our office directly. But when I searched for the company, they did have multiple Facebook pages set up but they were covered with spam. Not a good look for the company. They now use SM more effectively but I really wonder if it has made that huge of a difference. Awesome comic at the end.
I agree with your reasons behind taking this class, and I hope we will be able to leverage the knowledge from this class in our future jobs. This past summer, I worked on a website development project for a company in Egypt, and my attitude toward that project is pretty much summed up in that cartoon-that everything will fall into place somehow, and we’ll figure it out along the way. That did not turn out to be true, and a well communicated strategy was much needed. Nice post!
This is a really great article (nice catchy title too). And I’m actually not at all surprised with the statistic that Eloqua produced. I working on the internal marketing team of a small B2B company this summer and was a part of their initial social media efforts. I had my fair share of frustrations with using Twitter and Facebook for a B2B company, and there was one major flaw that I recognized with how most professionals used the social networks. I saw that most users were only posting their content and then exiting out of the page. Everyone came and said what they had to say, and then left, leaving out an essential aspect of proper communication: listening. As a B2B professional, I believe that in order to attract other users to your content, you need to first engage with them by reading their contact. Show some interest and then hopefully the will respond!
You’re absolutely right. I think that a lot of us consider ourselves social media “experts” because we’ve been using the technology for what seems like forever, but as soon as you consider the implications and analytics behind a major operation like the company you were working for, it becomes clear that there is much more to social media that most people think.
The impact of social media on ROI (or lack thereof) for companies is something that really interests me and is what I am planning on examining for my course project. While analytics allows us to track impressions, retweets and the like in terms of brand exposure, there is clearly a major disconnect between traditional ROI measures and what we can gleam from social media. Anyway, hope that this class helps you the way that you want it to!
I think the focus for B2B companies looking to use social media for marketing purposes is Targeting. While a CPG company can get away with blasting all their Facebook friends and Twitter followers with updates, a B2B company must look to capture the attention of decision makers at the companies they view as potential customers. I think that for most cases B2B companies should focus less on platforms like Facebook and even Twitter, and more on blogs and LinkedIn. The goal for B2Bs should be to become opinion leaders on their specific niche or market, so that they can first draw in the “independent” opinion leaders and ultimately the potential customers they want to acquire.