B2B Social Media Marketing
Online marketers are buzzing about the use of social media web sites, and why not, they are a great way to promote your business, grow awareness and build customer loyalty. I will go in depth on social media marketing in later posts, but today I want to talk about LinkedIn. This web site is a perfect place to grow a network if you offer B2B products or services. If your company is not already on here, I suggest you get at least your sales staff, account managers, and executives on there immediately.
It takes time to grow your presence on any social media web site, but with patience and perseverance, you can turn this marketing channel into fantastic opportunities. To be honest, I am on LinkedIn, but I don’t use it as much as I should. But the reason I really like this for B2B opportunities is the people who make up the LinkedIn user base. They tend to be more sophisticated professionals with ambition and a quick eye for opportunity.
This presents a challenge for your company, you can’t just go in there and start making connections just to send them “buy my stuff” messages, but what you can do is build a presence that represents your business. Reach out to other members you already know, and to new ones, see where you can find possible opportunities to work together, or just lend a helping hand to someone in your network. If you do this, if your company becomes an important part in contributing to your network, who do you think they will turn to when they need products or services you provide, someone they don’t know or trust, or you, the company that has been there for them.
I always like to provide examples when I can and this case is no different. I had a friend, a web designer, who decided to start his own business. Lief joined LinkedIn and I noticed he spent a lot of time on there, pretty much whenever he wasn’t working with a customer. For about a year I watched him expand his network, he offered free advice to his friends and colleagues in his network, and even did some free design work for them on occasion. When I was talking to him the other day I asked how business was, he said “that it was booming for him.” Of course I was interested in how he was bringing in the customers, was he using paid search, SEO, how was he marketing himself. His answer to all my questions was a lot simpler than I had assumed, he said, “I started to get a lot of contracts from the guys I met on LinkedIn, and over the last year as my network grew and the people I knew moved from one company to another, they took my name and gave me a personal reference with their new companies. I’ve had to hire some help to keep up with it all, and you know how I hate managing people, but I can’t complain because I feel pretty lucky.”
I agree he is pretty lucky, he found a perfect marketing channel on one of the social media web sites. I can’t promise you or your company will be as lucky, but I think you would be crazy not to explore the possibilities.
