One of the repeating topics I hear come up at conferences and with businesses is whether or not social media and B2B can work together, and how they differ from B2C applications.

I happen to think that in many respects, B2B actually has an advantage with social media, because most of their business is centered around longer term relationships between suppliers and consultants and clients, and there are so many needs and touchpoints for information sharing that don’t exist as much in the B2C cycle.

Here’s a bit on what I mean.

Content

One distinct characteristic of B2B businesses is that their work centers around helping people do their jobs better somehow. It’s less about lifestyle and personal interests, and more about how the business ecosystem improves.

From a content marketing and sharing perspective, this is a huge arena for B2B companies. By creating useful, helpful and informational content, we can increase the knowledge and expertise of the people we’re hoping to do business with. It’s like demonstrating through specific, applied knowledge that we’re qualified to help you with the bigger picture. A content-driven resume for a business, perhaps.

The very nature of social technologies supports sharing, distributing, and creating content easier and faster than ever.

Networks

In the world of B2B, your professional network is everything. Because your business is about business, the potential of who you know and who they know is where powerful connections happen.

Before something like LinkedIn, the potential of our network was a bit invisible to us. In order to know who our contacts knew, we had to ask, and usually with a specific need in mind. Now, we can simply search. Investigate. Research.

With social technologies, the knowledge base of our professional network is exponentially multiplied, too. If  B2B endeavors overall are about helping me do my job better, having several layers of connections, the ability to filter and segment my lists by knowledge areas, and the powerful search to target both the people and information I need are all incredibly valuable to my work.

Impact Points

We all know that the Almighty Relationship dictates so much of B2B sales. The purchase cycle is longer, and often the pricetag is quite a bit higher. As a result, it’s even more important that we have a sense of established trust and reliability with those we do business with, and that we have a certain expectation for what we’ll get out of the relationship.

Interactions through social networks can provide the personal touch to business relationships that we’ve often found on the golf course, or over drinks or dinner. It’s business development, but rather than all touchpoints being live and in person, some of them are geographically independent, and happening online.

The content channels provide context as well, more from an information standpoint. It’s all the supporting stuff for the eventual transaction. The relevant knowledge base that’s sharable, searchable, and always growing..

These interactions, as they always have, bridge the gaps between purchases and continue contact around and between the sales. But now we’re not limited to just the phone or meetings, we have Twitter or Google Wave or blog comments. We aren’t limited to brochures and trade publication articles but we have blogs, YouTube, Flickr, forums, and all manner of social channels through which to tell our business story.

The Bottom Line

As simple as it sounds, all business transactions happen between human beings. We want to be equipped with the knowledge, context, information and framework of a relationship that makes use feel like that transaction is low risk, high reward, and rooted in a sound business framework. And we want to get to know and trust the people we’re buying from or selling to.

There’s nothing about social networks that can’t help all of those elements in some fashion. Step outside the tools for a moment and think about what they help you do rather than what they look like on the surface.

I’ve worked in B2B for a good chunk of my career, including now, and I’m finding the collaboration and connection possibilities growing every day.

What would you say about social media for B2B? Still unconvinced? Let’s talk in the comments.

Addendum 12/27: For more solid reasoning on why B2B feels different but is much the same, check out Jay Baer’s post on Crushing the Myth of B2B Social Media. I think he said it better than I did. Again. 🙂

image by frozenchipmunk

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