Think about the cell phone. When it was first developed, the cell phone was a pretty bulky thing, but still allowed people to have phone access from remote locations. However, the only purpose for the first cell phones was to make and receive telephone calls. Then a few years later we found out that we could send messages with our phones without making a call. We saw that we could put a small camera on a phone and integrate it into the phone’s system. Then phones were developed that could access the internet. We know have access to millions of apps online. We can send emails fast from our phones than we can most computers. There is almost nothing that we cannot do with a cell phone these days. The point I want to make here is that cell phones started out with one purpose and evolved into something we would never have imagined 20 years ago.
The same thing is happening to social media right now. You could say that the origins of social media lie in the chat rooms of the late nineties. Now there are many different social networks with different purposes. Sure, the central goal is still about connecting people, but the types of people using social networks is no longer limited to teenagers and college kids. People from all over the globe are logging into social sites for many different reasons. People are looking to find old friends, they are looking for deals on different products, some are looking to unite others around a cause, and some are looking to do business. Over the last few months I have been looking at social media from a B2B perspective (business selling to business perspective). I have been entrenching myself into both this non-consumer based culture and trying to see if there is any way that B2B businesses could fit into the scheme of social media. My answer: B2B companies need to be involved in social media. It’s not just about fitting into the picture, it’s about completing the whole puzzle.
The whole deal here is that as time goes on more people turn to social media for different reasons. This creates opportunities for businesses to jump in to the blender for a wealth of different reasons. Here are my top three:
1. Talent Acquisition – As generations move through the workforce more and more people will take to the internet to find a job. Speaking from experience, I can say that LinkedIn was the first place I went to look for a job before graduating from college. I’ve even seen people put “Looking for Immediate Employment” in their headline on LinkedIn. Also, by being active as a company on LinkedIn, people can find you. You do less searching for desirable candidates. LinkedIn is a place for people interested in being professional (somewhat at least), and it lets you see a person’s connections and past experiences before wasting anytime with interviews or phone calls.
2. Create Your Own Press – If you own a business and don’t have a blog of some sort or a way to address your customers and their customers I urge you to immediately find a way to rectify the situation. Even if you are a grower in the horticultural industry or the owner of a family farm it’s important to have a way to address your customers and their customers. Situations may arise in which you need to say something quickly to large amounts of people. In the green industry we can’t really hold a press conference and it can take days for industry media to type up a story. You need an outlet for damage control. In the fast moving digital world that we live in it’s important to act swiftly in those situations. Blogs are also great tools to keep people coming back to your website!
3. Customer Support – You may sell strictly to businesses, but your customers still sell to consumers. What does this mean for social media? The end consumer is connecting to those businesses that exist on social media. Pages like Facebook and Twitter are where consumers go to connect with the brands they love. So if your customers are on top of things, they should be connecting with the consumer in those places. However, where does your customer get the content to post on their social page for their business? How do you ensure that your plants or products are being represented correctly? Businesses have to be involved with the social media content of their business customers. For B2B companies it’s about providing a content service for all of your customers’ pages. It isn’t about posting a picture that gets 20,000 “likes” it’s about getting 20 other businesses to share your content on their pages. You get to market your plants by providing a content service for your customer. Businesses often get too caught up in how many likes their page gets. However, a better measurement of success is the dollar value behind those likes. If 20 businesses use your page for content and each business is worth $50,000 of business, 20 doesn’t seem like such a low number.
At the end of the day social media will continue to evolve over the next few years. Be ready to use things like Facebook and Pinterest in ways that you had never imagined. The key is to understand that even though you may not sell to the end consumer, your product still has to get there someday, and because more and more businesses are seeking to blur the gaps in the supply chain, social media is a must to maintain relevancy for the future.
- Mason Day
mday55@gmail.com
