21 Feb B-toB Social Media to Grow Your Organization
Social media is a fundamentally transformative and rapidly evolving business tool for sales, marketing, communication, business development and the dissemination of information to today’s consumers.
What many business-to-business executives question is how social media applies to their business. Maybe its right for companies that sell directly to consumers, but I don’t see how it would apply to business-to-business transactions. How is Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube or a blog going to benefit my company?
Actually, executives that dig a little deeper are quite surprised. There are a number business-to-business companies utilizing social media to cost effectively grow their businesses. These companies harness social media to develop brand awareness, enhance customer communication, drive website traffic and significantly improve SEO (search engine optimization) to seize business opportunities. There’s a great deal that social media offers companies that sell business-to- business:
1. Build Brand Awareness
2. Cultivate Customer/ Prospect Communication
3. Drive Website Traffic
4. Boost SEO (search engine optimization)
5. Improve Opportunity Identification
Build Brand Awareness
While it may be true that a business-to-business blogs or Tweets are not going to be followed by as many people as a consumer offering, it doesn’t change the fact that it will influence the decisions of your prospects. Social media creates brand awareness among potential clients.
Social media provides a powerful and cost effective channel for displaying critical information about your company and its products and services. Talking about your industry in an intelligent way via Twitter and a regularly-updated Facebook fan page can raise your company’s brand awareness as a thought leader and expert in your field of endeavor.
If a prospect sees dynamic tweets with insightful information, reads informative posts demonstrating your company’s knowledge, and comes across recommendations from other users on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, they’re going to be far more inclined to purchase your products and services.
Cultivate Customer/ Prospect Communication
In today’s “Internet Savvy” world, businesses, just like consumers seek, and demand information instantaneously. These purchasers use smart phones, the Internet and social media to get a pulse on industry trends, product recommendations and customer satisfaction levels.
The Recommendation Age is transforming the way we share information on the Internet. The proliferations of social networking sites like LinkedIn, Face Book and Twitter are taking the Recommendation Age to a new level. This process of recommendations and customer reviews strongly influences the buying decisions of millions of people each day. The power of these recommendations can have a profound impact on the future success or failure of companies and their products and services.
Social media provides companies with the opportunity to frame the conversations and recommendations taking place on these social sites. Companies that don’t embrace social media allow their competitors to frame the conversations; conversations that many companies who don’t embrace social media aren’t even aware are taking place.
Drive Website Traffic
Quality content is highly sought after in social media networks. After all, content is what helps influence decision makers. If you want to drive traffic to your website using social media, deliver insight and expertise to your followers.
Using social media to drive traffic to a website can be an extremely efficient and cost effective method to increase awareness for your website.
Boost SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Make social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook work to your advantage. The keywords and Tweets that you will be using will not only boost SEO, but will also influence the number of followers you have and the type of followers.
Give your business a Facebook fan page and make use of some keywords on your page. Facebook fan pages can be found in various search engines. These fan pages rank well and can really help you in your SEO activities.
Improve Opportunity Identification
At the end of the day, if business-to-business companies are going to grow they need to be able to improve their ability to identify opportunities. Social media is an extremely powerful and cost effective tool in allowing business-to-business companies to identify opportunities.
If you and your business have a strong social presence, it’s simply easier for potential partners, customers, employers, and businesses to find you. In business, it’s about growing your business by closing the deal and differentiating your organization; social media is one of the most powerful and cost effective ways to achieve this goal.
Share with us how your company is embracing social media. What business-to-business companies do you think have done a good job of engaging in social media?
Have some of these potential benefits changed your mind regarding social media? When do you plan to implement social media into your marketing mix?