In case you were wondering, yes, social media is right for your small business. The important thing to remember when launching a social media marketing (SMM) strategy is simply to nail down a great plan, and don’t be overwhelmed by the process. SMM may seem like something your business should not invest in, but in today’s market it is becoming more of a necessity to reach out to consumers in this way. Recognize who your target audience is first. This will take a lot of the guesswork out of SMM. When you have narrowed down who you are reaching out to, then you can decide where that audience is (mostly on Facebook, for example) and focus your SMM energy there. Remember your plan. Do not let the vastness of the social media sphere scare you away from marketing there before you have begun to see progress. Keep your main goals for SMM in mind, along with your general marketing goals. Plug away and know that you are building long-term relationships with your customers. Remain an online presence. You must be willing to stay active with your chosen social media channels. If this is a problem for you, consider outsourcing to an individual or agency specializing in social media. See Results. Monitoring your progress can also be something a social media agency will handle for you. It is important to set up measurable goals so you can see your results and go on from there. Rebound. Change your plan, if need be. This will be a time of experimenting with where your greatest target audience is online, so if the results you see are not satisfactory, try something else. How do you use SMM for your small business? What fears do you have about doing so? Join the conversation by leaving a comment below.

In B2B marketing, it is important to monitor social media. This is the only way to know what is being said across social networks and communities. Shellie Foriska suggests four tips on using social media monitoring to benefit B2B.

Use social media tools

According to Foriska, there are special “social monitoring tools” to help in tracking conversations. These can also be helpful in locating keyword tags or sorting demographics.

Analyze keyword tags

“Understand the types of keyword tags people actually apply to social mentions, like blog posts or social bookmarks,” says Foriska. Locate specific words and phrases that your audience uses and then incorporate them into blog posts, page titles, and other web content.

Gain insight from the consumer

Customers are telling you what they need, even if they aren’t telling you. How? They discuss things on message boards and forums. Listen and respond appropriately. Take advantage of your ability to interact within the community.

Better focus local and regional search programs

Foriska believes that analyzing the geographic data will help you “refine your search marketing targeting strategy. This can be accomplished at the country, state, metro, city, or even the neighborhood level.”

Knowing your customer is imperative, especially in B2B. So take Foriska’s advice and monitor the data for your company; then, improve on the things your customer needs.

What social media monitoring tools do you currently utilize?

Business-to-Business (B2B) interactions benefit you in so many ways. Some of the advantages of using B2B are:

• Lower costs
• Integrated information with all parts of your supply chain
• Reduced inventory costs
• Streamlined internal processes
• Optimized resource use
• Real-time collaborative decisions

In many cases, B2B is a natural extension of a Business-to-Customer (B2C) transaction. If you are already engaging in e-commerce and social media marketing to the individual consumer, B2B will not be much of a change. The same rules apply in B2B as in B2C engagement.

Don’t Engage Just to Promote

The intention here is to communicate and engage with other businesses, not necessarily to self-promote. When becoming a part of a community, online or off, it is important to remember that not everyone is going to want a sales pitch upon the initial meeting.

Be a Human Being

Even with B2B, remember that you are just one person collaborating and connecting with other people. Keep some of the human touch in your interactions, always.

Be Relevant and Creative

Relevant content is key, but you can also keep things fresh by being creative in the way you present an idea.

Be Available

Creating a profile, becoming a user, following others, etc. All become meaningless if you don’t check in. Truly engage in your community by responding to feedback and leaving your own contributions as well.

Stand Out

Maintain a solid reputation by following all online etiquette guidelines. At the same time, be an excellent resource for others and earn the respect of more and more businesses in your online social circle. Don’t be afraid to be a little different, in a good way.

How do you interact with B2B? Are you following the rules?

In the past, marketing was all about The Four P’s. They are Product, Price, Placement and Promotion. The P’s were mostly for marketing from business-to-consumer (B2C). Today’s marketing scheme has evolved into The Four C’s. According to Roy McClean, the Four C’s are Customer, Cost, Convenience and Communication.

Customer wants and needs (vs. Product): McClean asserts that instead of developing a product and trying to sell it to the masses, it is helpful to find out what the customer wants first.

Cost to satisfy (vs. Price): Think of the cost of the service or product as not only a dollar figure.

Convenience to buy (vs. Place): Consider where the customer will be shopping (on the internet, for example).

Communication (vs. Promotion): “Promotion is manipulative,” says McClean. This is especially true in Social Media Marketing (SMM). Instead, converse with customers on a personal level.

Although these C’s are relevant, it may be more beneficial in business-to-business (B2B) interactions to employ what Paul Dunay calls The Four C’s. They are Content, Connection, Communication and Conversion. Dunay believes that B2B is “more of a marathon than a sprint in marketing,” so his C’s have a focus on long-term investments in relationships between businesses.

Content – “the creation of a steady stream of engaging content”

Connection – “connecting with the audience you wish to attract”

Communication – “communicating with them in an ongoing conversation”

Conversion – “converting them at the illusive moment of need”

How can you employ the Four C’s of B2C and the Four C’s of B2B in your marketing strategy?

The argument of whether Social Media Marketing (SMM) is just a fad or so much internet hype is rapidly losing ground as more and more businesses (everyone from Starbucks to your local church) engage in social networking. The goal of most of these organizations is to reach out to the consumer.  However, social networking can be vital in Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing as well. Why should your business consider B2B? Because it works.

So many companies garner business from other businesses, it would be a mistake to leave these customers out of the business marketing plan. It may seem easier to connect with the individual customer through social networks like Facebook—after all, one-on-one interaction is why the sites were created to begin with. But today social networking from business to business can be just as effective when it comes to making connections and interacting with the consumer (in this case, other businesses).

These days it seems almost every company and individual is on the internet. There are the typical social network websites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and then there are the niche communities. Some websites offer a free platform for creating these focused groups–Ning is the most well-known—so you can engage in a community of all restaurant owners, or all small bookstores, or all your company genre here.

Kipp Bodnar at SocialMediaB2B suggests gaining insight from your community (once you find or establish it) by searching within the parameters of the group. You can use what you have learned to “develop marketing materials, generate sales leads, and aid product development,” says Bodnar.

The next step is participating more fully within the community. Truly engage with other users, not just to promote your own site—although if an opportunity presents itself, feel free. However, your main goal for being part of the online community is to contribute. Answer those who need advice, comment on posts that are relevant to your business, and create your own posts that relate to the industry as well. These relevant discussions and real conversations will promote good community and relationships between your business and others.

Is there an online community within your industry that you should be participating in?

“The volume of Business-to-Business (B2B) transactions is much higher than the volume of Business-to-Customer (B2C) transactions. The primary reason for this is that in a typical supply chain there will be many B2B transactions involving raw materials, and only one B2C transaction, specifically sale of the finished product to the end customer.”

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business-to-business)

Because of this higher volume of transactions, businesses really should be marketing to each other through social media. However, many businesses do not see the need to do so, or do not understand the power of social media in B2B interaction. Perhaps they still see social media as hype or as too new a medium, but it is in fact one of the most influential ways to market online. According to Laura Lake, “people are tired of ‘marketing speak,’” and social media B2B interactions “allow companies to relate to one another and bypass the fluff.”

To be successful with B2B marketing, Jeffrey L. Cohen suggests first having “a social media strategy with a content strategy, integrated with the marketing plan.” It is also important not to isolate the social media agency or consultant who is working the plan; this could cause delays and slow down your marketing. Instead of relying solely on social media for marketing purposes, “continue to invest in traditional communications, but always include links to social sites to build those communities,” says Cohen. And remember, these things take time. Avoid “drastic, knee-jerk changes,” and give your strategy time to take hold.

What successes or failures have you had within B2B social media engagement?

If you are looking for a company to demonstrate the success of word of mouth marketing in the B2B arena then Intuit are a great example. According to Fortune Magazine they are now the US’s most admired software company.

Kira Wampler, Intuit’s Word of Mouth and Social Marketing Leader, Small Business Division gave an very honest talk about their work.

As she puts it “Social is in our DNA”. Intuit’s first product Quicken was launched by a three person company and it was promoted by nothing but word of mouth. Now the company employs approximately 8,000 people and estimates 80% of sales are still driven by word of mouth. Nowadays of course that word of mouth is facilitated by social media technology. Their latest product Quickbooks was launched in 2008.

Kira offers three tips on creating good word of mouth:
1. Focus on what your customers care about – build your strategy around a subject important to both of you. For intuit this has been building communities around the challenges that small businesses face. Once they have developed these communities they have been able to engage with them to clearly identify future directions for the business.
2. Find ways to get everyone involved – in other words let all your employees get engaged in this process. Employees generally want to make their product better and they gain a huge sense of ownership in being involved in such programs.
3. Forget the marketing speech – focus on letting the voice of your customer come through. If you do it right their campaign will ultimately become your campaign. And even better they will become advocates for your products.

She is really adamant that you should not necesarily go with the latest social media trends. Always start from the customer. Having said this she shared their twitter experience. When they first started listening in on twitter a year ago their expectation was that there would be very little conversation about their product. In fact there was lots and most of it bad. As she put it “if you’re not at the party it is easy for people to gossip”. Now they are an active participant the stream is generally positive and proactive. Interestingly despite the active level of the conversation most of the answers are provided by community “experts” so they have not needed to provide huge resource to manage the twitter stream. Instead their main role has been step in to take away the “heat” from particularly virulent hate mail, allowing the community experts to provide the support to their fellow users.

Her recent story was around Small Business United a new blog focused on small business success. Last year the blog held a grant competition offering 50 grants to small businesses. The results were the highest traffic on their web site. It delivered over 1.2 M visits with a higher than average rate of conversions. Visitors contributed over 2000 stories including some of the best testimonials about their products that they had ever received. This is clearly an example where an engaged community, well focused content and a viral technique have combined to have an excellent effect.

I really enjoyed Kira’s enthusiasm for what she is doing and the passion she has for supporting small businesses. SociaLNK would love to help you develop similar programs in your company!