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I believe that the most frequently asked question within the social media marketing is "What about B2B?”
While everybody would like advice that works cross industry, these advices tends to be so generic that they aren't much use or at least doesn't add much new. I usually suggest focusing on a specific sector or type of business and working through communications & pr, branding, marketing, sales, customer service, product development, partner & supplier management, recruitment which are all very different depending on sector and industry.
Recently business.com did publish an interesting benchmark study that ran across industries and across job-functions.
Here are some of my key takeaways:
· Webinars and podcasts were the most popular resource for information (69,1%), while producing webinars and podcasts is only seen as the 11th most important social media initiative.
· the customer service job role use social media significantly less than other job roles, while customer service is the second most likely department to drive social media initiatives
· ability to see impact of social media initiatives on company metrics are overall well or very well received
· Facebook is number one priority for B2B companies! That was a surprise. Or maybe it is simply a matter of lack of alternatives. Twitter is runner up and no surprise here for North American companies, but the services of LinkedIn are simply not strong enough to compete yet.
· LinkedIn Answers are being actively used by 71%
Here are some non-surprising findings:
· advertising and marketing industry and computer and software industry use social media significantly more than others
· legal industry use social media significantly less than other industries.
· marketing. communications and consulting job roles use social media significantly more than other job roles.
· Google (alerts) and twitter are the most used tools for social media monitoring.
· YouTube (67%), Flickr(30%) and Slideshare(22%) are the most used content sharing sites that businesses upload to, while you tube and slideshare are the two on top to measure impact on their businesses.
Here are some of my concerns with the study:
· only people already using social media were asked 77% use more than 10% of their working time with social media initiatives
· half of the attendees are from small companies. · the questions asked are mainly focused on how businesses find information on social media, very few questions around how they and their customers engage with each other.
But the report is interesting to study - looking forward to the next - taking it a level deeper.
Source: Business.com’s 2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study (http://www.business.com/info/b2b-social-media-benchmark-study)
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