are you in social media?
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Here's a little convincing on why you should totally foray into social media.TRANSCRIPT
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This ebook was written back in late 2010 when I was stillemployed by another startup. It was meant to address theconcerns of B2B businesses foraying into Social Media.Unfortunately, it was never published.
On the bright side, I now have full ownership of this ebook. I’veupdated on its writing style to add in a little humor but I haven’tgot the time to update the statistics found in this ebook (northe time and talent to do a set of pretty presentation slides). I’lladd it in when I’ve got the time.
Internet social warrior,Elisha Tan (@elishatan)
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Social media is a new platform that allows individuals to communicate multi-directionally and more effectively. By effective, it means that a message could bespread quicker and with a wider reach than before and one can express himself withmore mediums (words, pictures, videos).
The tools can be categorized into 5 general categories as shown below with examples of what tools belong to respective categories.
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Blog
• Wordpress
• Blogspot
• Livejournal
Social Networks
• Ning
Social Bookmarking
• Del.icio.us
Social News
• Digg
Video hosting
• YouTube
• Qik
• Vimeo
Wow, that’s fantastic. I totally need to know its definition….
Obviously, definition is academic. You don’t need to have social media defined toknow it is important.
It is getting increasingly urgent for businesses to adopt social media in their marketingand public relations departments. The numbers below will prove the point.
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Twitter• As of this year, there are 106 million registered users•55 million tweets are published per day, which translate to an average of 640 tweets per second.
Facebook• More than 500 million
active users.• Average user has 130
friends• People spend over 700
billion minutes per month using it.
• Over 1 million developers and entrepreneurs from 180 countries uses Facebook.
LinkedIn• As of 2010, there are 70
million members• A new member joins
LinkedIn every second.• About half of the members
are outside the U.S.• Executives from all Fortune
500 companies are LinkedIn members.
Wordpress• 11.4 million blogs hosted on
WordPress.com as of 2010.
• Over 260 million people worldwide visit one or more WordPress.com blogs every month, and they view over two billion pages on those blogs each month.
• About 350,000 new posts on an average day
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Youtube• People are watching 2
billion videos a day on YouTube
• Every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.
• Fifty-one percent of users go to YouTube weekly or more often
Ning• Host some 4 million social
networks, with tens of millions of members
• Billions of page views daily.
Impressive numbers do not mean anything if there isn’t a clear benefit that thecompany can get by adopting social media. There are four main areas of benefits thatcan be gained, depending on what you want your social media to focus on.
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• Customers’ satisfaction with direct contact to service staff
• Lead generation
• Referrals
• Cost savings
• Brand awareness
• Information search on competitors and industry
•Opinions monitoring
• Establish as a thought leader
• Create and maintain relationships
Corporate Identity
Market Research
SalesConversion
and Promotion
It may be difficult to be convinced of what benefits you can get, here we explore whatArcher Technologies, The Equine Practice Inc and Joie De Vivre have gained fromSocial Media.
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• Tucker: Facebook alone has generated about 100 leads and 10-15 customers.
• Joie De Vivre: over 1,000 hotel room booked from a discount posted on Twitter.
• The two social sites by Archer collectively attracted 21,000 unique visits, 1,600 downloads per week.
•Archer Technologies created their own forum for users to interact and it enhanced Archer’s product development, creating many successful products
• Geoff Tucker, the man behind The Equine Practice Inc, used his Facebook page to draw attention to himself as an expert. It won him radio airtime.
Corporate Identity
Market Research
SalesConversio
n and Promotion
1. Social Media helps build vital relationships.B2b marketing is based on trust. Social Media creates opportunities for B2B companies to buildtrust and create new relationships with people that the company has no prior contact with, aswell as to maintain existing relationships. It does so by providing B2B companies a platform toengage with customers, narrowing the distance between the buyer and the seller.
Not only that, information provided by via socialMedia can help enhance the corporate image as athought leader in the respective field, convincebuyers while in their information search processand help in branding.
Various studies have shown this result. Communityusers spend 54% more money than non-community users(eBay, 2006), blogging creates trust (see figure), and a Facebook fan spent $136.38 more than a non-fan.
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2. The information search process is changingInternet is a world of information and customers are becoming very sophisticated. They searchonline for information, seek the opinion of other existing users of your products beforepurchasing.. Based on DemandGen Report,
More than 20% connected directly with potential solution
providers via social networking channels
48% utilized a wider variety of sources
27% relied more on live customer feedback and
recommendations
59% engaged with peers who addressed the challenge
41% followed discussions to learn more about topic
37% posted questions on social networking sites
looking for suggestions/feedback
All these suggests that communicating with customers online is more vital than ever, and socialmedia provides just that! You may be skeptical if social media is applicable to your B2B businessin a particular field. However, this myth is clarified. As shown by the figure, there is a widevariety of industries currently using social media for business information. Should your companylose out? 9
3. Cost is loweredSocial media marketing, or termed inbound marketing, is more cost-efficient than theusual traditional marketing (or termed outbound marketing), as shown by the findings inthe diagram by HubSpot.
By engaging with customers and gaining trust, cost of advertisements drop as word-of-mouth marketing increases. Furthermore, most commonly used social media platformsare free of charge, helping to keep cost down even more. Social media can also lower costof after-sales services. For example,if it costs $10 every time a customer service staffpicks up the phone, imagine if a ‘how-to’ video ismade to guide troubleshooting instead. 100 viewsof that video, instead of having to call in, will havesave you $1,000.
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After learning about the what and why of Social Media for B2B businesses, we will conclude part 1 of our series with a case study on why Mircosoft Advertising adopts Social Media and what tools they use.
WhyMicrosoft Advertising wanted to listen to, educate, support and market to their customers and potential customers
What A variety of blogs catering to different groups
of customers Three Twitter accounts A couple of Facebook Pages
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Blogs TwitterFacebook
Pages• adCenter
• (5,894 followers)
• MSAdvertising (11,343 followers)
• MSAdvertisingNL (7 followers)
• Microsoft Advertising Community
• (3,790 fans)
• Microsoft Advertising Asia (716 fans)
• adCenter Blog
• adCenter API Blog
• Advertising Blog
• Atlas Blog
• pubCenter Blog
CommentsEach account serves different purposes. One retweets popular posts, news and announcements, the other for engagements and troubleshooting.
CommentsDifferent blogs have different update frequency that are not too far spaced from each posts. Thought leadership is build in the process although comments are lacking.
CommentsThe accounts share useful articles and announcements. However, engagements and housekeeping seems to be lacking as queries are unanswered and spam are on the walls.
A psychology and social media practitioner, Elisha Tan devotes her time to study the applications of social media and its impact on the social, economy and business arenas. As a hobby, Elisha maintains a blog where she pens down her thoughts and experiences on entrepreneurship and social media.
You may drop her an email at [email protected], follow her @elishatan or link up with her professionally on LinkedIn.
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