Social Media and B2B Comms
Lance Concannon, UK Social Media Lead , Text 100
Joe Hanley, External Relations Director, IBM EMEA
http://www.socialmedia-forum.com/europe/
13. B2B Challenges
⢠Niche audiences
⢠Less forgiving environment
⢠ROI question
⢠Brand management
14.
15. Most useful research channels
Press releases
Company websites
Official company blogs
Wikipedia
Independent third party blogs
Official company Twitter profile
Independent third party Twitter profiles
YouTube
LinkedIn
Official company Facebook page
Independent Facebook pages or groups
Google+
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Discuss IBM & Text 100 relationship, set scene for why were are presenting together.
There are lots of exciting things happening in social media. Channels like Twitter, Facebook and blogs have become firmly entrenched in peopleâs lives, and weâre seeing a constant stream of innovative new ideas, with platforms like Pinterest, Quora and Google Plus getting a lot of attention over the past couple of years. There are lots of great opportunities to reinvent business models and change the way we do things for the better. And thatâs particularly true for communications professionalsâŚ
Everywhere we look we see brands doing amazing, creative things and engaging with their audiences in completely new ways. Weâve seen a blender manufacturer become a global phenomenon with a low cost viral video, Old Spice managed to completely reinvent a stale brand image, hundreds of other businesses are using social media to surprise and delight consumersâŚ.
But weâre the boring men in grey suits of the marketing world. Thereâs no point in us doing sexy consumer campaigns because we sell products and services to other boring men in grey suits. Most people have little idea what we do, but nevertheless we work for some of the worldâs most valuable brands and just like everybody else, our world is changing because of social media.
The opportunity â business decision makers are consistently more engaged in social media and online activity than average internet users (60% use social media) so thereâs clearly an opportunity to engage and influence them through these channels. While senior decision makers are ahead of the norm, thereâs even greater takeup of social media amongst their junior colleagues â that makes sense, since we know that younger people tend to be more likely to use this stuff, but itâs also a good indicator of what we can expect in future. (Hat Tip to GWI)Why has this happened? What changed?
This is how information traditionally flows around an organisation:Hierarchical flow within the businessExternal comms are strictly controlled through the comms function, via the media (a relationship that can be managed) through to the external stakeholders/audiences
But this is how social media has changed that flow of information. Within the organisation the communications hierarchy has been disrupted â itâs easier for people at all levels within a business to communicate with each other.External communications have also been disrupted â information flows in and out of the organisation with little control. If you think you can control it, youâre lying to yourself. Everybody from the interns to the CEO could be using social media channels to discuss their work and the brand
Net result: weâve got a lot of scared B2B comms people â they know the world is changing but itâs hard for them to understand what they should do about it. Weâre bombarded with facts and stats about social media, and in it seems like thereâs a whole industry which has developed around publishing and republishing endless pieces of insight around social media â so itâs extremely difficult for businesses to make sense of it all and plan a coherent strategy for social media.
So, understandably, a lot of people in B2B continue to do business as usual, either putting their head in the sand and ignoring social media entirely or simply treating it as another channel to broadcast their messaging across. Weâve all seen Twitter accounts which are only ever used to publish links to press releases, or B2B brands inexplicably using Facebook to share dry corporate updates on a fanpage with just a handful of fans. The rationale often seems to be âIf I just take the stuff Iâm already doing and push it out on these new channels, then Iâve done social media, so I can tick that box and get on with my lifeâ. But this is obviously a wasted opportunity, and in fact itâs counter productive because it consumes resources while adding no value and can even damage the brandâs reputation if itâs done particularly badly. Farm it out without making internal change
Reaching a consumer audiences through social media easy because of volume, even relatively niche audiences are likely to have communities and channels that you can reach them through. Itâs very different when youâre trying to reach, for example, CIOs of insurance companies â those guys donât hang around on Facebook fanpages or follow Katie Price on Twitter.
IBM Case study
IBM is a vast and complex organisation with many different business units and new acquisitions regularly being brought into the company. With over 400k employees (not to mention partners) you have to accept the social media is going to happen in some shape or form, whether you want it to or not. Even when youâre only looking at the people whoâs job it is to communicate the brandâs messages, there are lots of different attitudes and approaches to social media, and somehow IBM needs to find a strategy that works.
Talk about the challenges for the IBM comms team here:Fragmented across different parts of the business â lots of different approachesSome have gone off under their own steam and started using social media without any real strategy â( this has created lots of semi-official profiles on SM channels)Inertia â some donât want to use SM and are resistant to change because theyâve been doing things a certain way for a long time
IBM has some well thought out guidelines for how employees can use social media, and the company positively encourages staff to use these channels to talk about their work at IBM, so long as they stay within these sensible guidelines. The company also has a number of internal social champions (Ben Martin, etc) who are charged with supporting those who want to get more involved. But the comms team are a special case â for the them itâs absolutely essential that they embrace social media in their day to day work and that they get it right, so we need much more than a set of guidelinesâŚ
Talk about the optimised for sharing approach here, along with the Social Media Checklist document designed to encourage teams to think about
(LC to talk through the Sales Eminence training) - Looking beyond the comms team, IBM understands that its own consultants are uniquely positioned to tell the world about the companyâs products, services and expertise. Over the course of 2011 over a hundred of IBM UKâs top consultants went through a two-day training programme to learn how to use social media channels to build a personal profile within their specific industries. More importantly, we spent a lot of time working with them to build a message around their field of expertise and to understand who their audiences are, where to find them in social media and best practice for engaging with them.