Comments on: B-to-B Social Media: Yes, You Can!

By: Social Media-Tipps für B-to-B-Unternehmen « Reputation Management Blog

Social Media-Tipps für B-to-B-Unternehmen « Reputation Management Blog — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:37:35 +0000

[...] http://socialmediab2b.com/ http://paulgillin.com/2009/01/b-to-b-social-media-yes-you-can/ [...]

By: Unleashing The B-2-B Of Value Social Media | iThnk.com

Unleashing The B-2-B Of Value Social Media | iThnk.com — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 04:34:50 +0000

[...] promote each others’ books, sites and products all the time, they do it in their blogs, podcasts and tweets, why should it be any different for companies? If your business has established a great [...]

By: Avery

Avery — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:20:20 +0000

[...] Gillin on business-to-business social media. Excerpt: Some of the most ambitious corporate blogging campaigns have been primarily aimed at B2B [...]

By: Stephanie Rogers

Stephanie Rogers — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:36:26 +0000

Paul – great post; thanks for helping to educate the masses with regard to social media and B2B. We’ve picked up the thread here: http://www.artandscienceblog.com/blog2/2009/02/media_roundup_022709.html

I look forward to your future posts on the topic.

Stephanie

By: Goam Media - B-to-B social media

Goam Media - B-to-B social media — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:36:00 +0000

[...] Gillin on business-to-business social media. Excerpt: Some of the most ambitious corporate blogging campaigns have been primarily aimed at B2B [...]

By: Business-to-Business Social Media | Gino Cosme

Business-to-Business Social Media | Gino Cosme — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 07:17:36 +0000

[...] This said, more and more B2B marketers are utilising social media in some shape or form, the most popular being blogs and social networking sites, specifically for the purposes of positively influencing the purchasing decisions of B2B buyers. As Paul Gillin writes: [...]

By: B-to-B social media - Online Media Managers

B-to-B social media - Online Media Managers — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:57:13 +0000

[...] Gillin on business-to-business social media. Excerpt: Some of the most ambitious corporate blogging campaigns have been primarily aimed at B2B [...]

By: laurent

laurent — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:35:22 +0000

ROI and excuse for inaction and not understanding . I think most BtoB companies (and BtoC) don’t understand what they can do with social media. To their credit, it’s new, it’s still being tested, the technology keeps changing and it’s extremely chaotic. They don’t understand that instead of spending $$$ for once a year survey, they can now get an ongoing stream of opinion/reviews on their brand and products. They don’t understand that, by unleashing the power of their own people (well MSFT, SUN, CSCO, IBM do get it), they can grow their influence and build tight relationship with their communities.
It’s a big change, it’s a new change, it takes time to understand how to operate when the way you’ve been operating for 20+ years is becoming obsolete

By: admin

admin — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 11:57:57 +0000

ROI is a convenient excuse for inaction. What’s the ROI on a magazine ad? We don’t know for sure, but we’ve been doing it a long time, so we’re confident that there’s a payback there. What’s the ROI on your employee benefits package? Or your R&D organization? Or your T&E budget? Or the company holiday party? Businesses make lots of investments without a clear ROI because experience has taught them that the expense is worthwhile.

You can measure how many people are visiting your blog or downloading your podcast or watching your video. You can track where they came from, where they went and how long they stayed. This is much richer information than we’ve ever been able to get about print advertising, yet businesses willingly spend $100 billion a year on print advertising and then question the ROI of comparatively modest online investments.

You don’t blog to sell something. You blog to share wisdom with people who matter to you. You blog to converse, maybe to show off a little. You do it for the same reason you pay to fly executives around the country to speak at trade shows for no compensation. It’s part of building your brand. If you do it right, sales will happen, but that should never be the guiding principle.

Thanks for bringing this up.

By: Chris Herbert

Chris Herbert — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 11:33:50 +0000

Paul, I was at an event yesterday about this very topic. B2B companies are scratching their heads a bit on how to use social media. They are starting to ask questions and paying attention to how to integrate social media with how they communicate.

The ROI question came up and while ROI is a factor it is not the primary lens to look through in my opinion and many others (Chris Brogan, Charlene Li to name two). ROI, too often is about “sales” and “leads” in the B2B world. The question a B2B company needs to ask itself is “would you tell a prospective customer that you are blogging to sell her something? If so, would you tell her that upfront?”. This gets to the core of the issue when it comes to how one uses social media and more importantly behaves in the social media world. Social media is about being authentic, human, sharing and having a conversation. In fact, it can separate the “me toos” and lazy companies from the ones that matter and strive to provide legitimate value to customers.

If you’re gonna blog to create leads…you’re missing the boat.

I’m glad you mentioned Groundswell. This is an awesome book! I’m doing a chapter by chapter book report on Groundswell that includes blog posts and a dedicated FriendFeed. It may be of value to your readers. Here’s the link to what I’ve finished so far: http://marketingthatmatters.blogspot.com/search/label/groundswell