4 Reasons B2B Businesses Should Be Investing The Time On Social Media

I hear excuses all the time from B2B Business about how Social Media won’t work for their business

“I can see how it will work for a restaurant or a shop, but not my business”
“My business is boring – nobody wants to see tweets on XYZ”
“I don’t know how I’d find something new to write about every day – it’s a static business”

And yet I’ve worked with B2B businesses in the past 12 months that have earnt 5 figure sums via Twitter alone

Businesses just like yours that aren’t on the high street. Businesses that have fairly static businesses offering. Businesses that find something new to say every day

Here are 4 Reasons B2B Businesses Should Be Investing The Time On Social Media

To all intents and purposes, many small independent B2B businesses are invisible unless they get out and market themselves. There are no government funded campaigns to encourage businesses to “shop local” with their local friendly accountancy or law practice in order to save our side streets and empty offices in the same way we hear about “Saving The High Street”

Social media is the platform that gives you a voice and a touch point with your target market. And just as many restaurants and retailers take to twitter, so to are many new startups and established B2B businesses

Altrincham for instance has the well known legal district, but despite a large number of companies being based there, it is 2 firms that instantly spring to mind when you think Altrincham Solicitors. And those are the 2 firms that are active every single day on twitter with not just one account, but multiple twitter accounts for each key member of staff

Trevor Holt of local Office Supplies and Stationery company Holt Business Solutions uses the hashtag #worldfamouswithin5miles – and that’s the question you need to be asking – is your B2B business at the top of everyone’s mind and therefore at the tip of everyone’s tongue within your local area

If you’re not present on twitter everyday and active on LinkedIn to many you simply are invisible

Believe it or not B2C Brands have it tough – they’re competing for attention on facebook against baby photos, Buzzfeed articles and holiday snaps

It’s a noisy market place and you’ve really got to go big on the creative and excel to stand out from the crowd. You’ve got to trendjack better than your competitors and have visual content with the WOW factor to really standout

Social Media works for B2B because the people you’re trying to connect with on LinkedIn and Twitter are already in heads down business mode. If you can present a service or product that makes their life easier, helps their business to grow, can provide the same level of service at a better price then you will have receptive ears

Stats show that if you post a status 20 times a month on LinkedIn you will reach 60% of your LinkedIn connections … and yet many people don’t actively use LinkedIn

And on Twitter 72% of followers are more likely to buy something from a business they follow … and yet many B2B businesses don’t see the value in a twitter conversation

In the past 5 years I’ve used the services of Solicitors, Web Designers, Printers and IT specialists – all because of conversations that started on twitter

If I told you that some of the worst examples of Social Media Marketing come from the voluntary and charity sector you’d probably be surprised

Often the barrier to Social Media is not technological, but the psychology of Social Media and the reason Charities often fail on social media is they forget all the great storytelling and narratives they use offline and go straight into Social selling

B2B Businesses are often schooled in the art of Social etiquette via face to face business networking – the realisation that givers gain, the etiquette of not hard selling, the building of relationships and the idea that you have 2 ears and one mouth

It’s these ideas that fit perfectly with Social Media and just as in business networking meetings those that approach Social Media from a relationship building perspective rather than a sales perspective will actually sell

In the last month I’ve been retweeted by Deborah Meaden from Dragons Den (198k twitter followers) and our blogs have been tweeted out a number of times by Social Media Thought Leader Mari Smith (350k twitter followers)

It’s the support from local B2C businesses that put ourselves in the spotlight several times a day though

The restaurants that retweet us because we care enough to take foodporn photos or the new retail business that loves the fact we tweet about their new business to 7500 twitter followers and wants to give us some love back

Social Media is inherently human to human and people love to be talked about whether they’re B2C or B2B

Next time you laugh at the person taking photos of their food in a restaurant, tweeting constantly about a new bar that’s opening or talking about the local football team – it’s worth noting that their updates are probably reaching more eyes than yours and they’re probably winning more business via social media by the act of simply being human