B2B social: part 1

B

b2b-marketingIn 7+ years of blogging, I’ve never posted about social for B2B. I’ve had B2B clients all my professional life and other than a few differences, I contend that we’re still working to address the needs of people. There’s even a book written to support my opinion called H2H. It’s about rapport and solving problems. This post is about those differences and how you may want to think about connecting with business people first! And now for the differences.

Motivations - These are different than B2C. Getting a promotion is one that comes up quite frequently. (Hard to get a promotion at home.)

Wallet – Employees have bigger wallets. They’re spending money on behalf of the business. They’re buying more/larger items. When this amount of money is on the line, people tend to get a little more apprehensive. (see ‘Motivations’)

Repercussions – If a poor decision is made at work, you could in fact lose your job. Or push you out of contention for a promotion. This not only impacts your work life but can hose your home life.

Information sources – An employee tends to get information differently than when they’re at home. e.g. LinkedIn groups, Quora, etc. B2C social is more focused on Pinterest, Instagram and something called Facebook. In the end though it’s content and it needs to be created by a subject matter expert (SME). Content created by interns – B2B or B2C – will get your brand ousted.

Specialized languages – When you get and education in something and then do it for a living, you have learned a specialized language. And when talking to industry peers, you expect to hear that language. Simple (insert the language of your choice) just won’t due. This expectation touches shapes the social content businesses create.

By Michael Myers