It was somewhat of an experiment as Polymer Studios and our client AND the banking industry, as we’re guessing that nobody in the industry has seen anything like it before. Like I said, we’ll write it up soon and include pictures, video clips, statistics, anecdotes, etc., so others can draw whatever they wish from the experience.

Social media in the Facebook/Twitter sense probably won’t have much value for B2B customers of the type you described above. Even if they are on Facebook, they won’t get interested in your client’s company via a widget, or a fun game.

Your client should look at social media as a way to demonstrate expertise in the field. They could write helpful articles, and solicit questions from clients – which they would then post on a blog. I would say that they should focus more on having quality content that proves their thought-leadership than on getting huge amounts of subscribers. They could answer questions, and write about how current events (or different times of the year) affect the decisions their clients should be making.

This could even be done as a weekly instructional podcast or YouTube video.

The improved search results and the ability to demonstrate their expertise consistently will prove to be very helpful to them in the long-run. It’s very important for them to develop that base now, and then if they find that Twitter or the more “fun” social media tools have relevance, they can easily add those things later.

Your client is right in thinking that not all social media is right for them. But that shouldn’t keep them away from it – it just means they need to carefully chose their mediums.

Lastly, I want to post a reply that I received from Tim Naylor, Creative Director at Yamamoto Moss Mackenzie. Thanks, Tim!

“My answer would be, no, not a special b2b social media site. Those CFOs are human too, and I think they are indeed waiting around online to be engaged. If they’re not, they won’t have their jobs for very long, because they won’t have a clue which way the culture is going.

To put it another way, did you have to watch and understand television in 1960 to be a successful upper-level manager? You bet.”

Craig’s points were excellent. I would add there is something to be said for transparency whether you deal directly with consumers or other businesses. Use social media to humanize and add authenticity for your operation. While there is a time investment in creating this authentic and human presence, there is no cost to join most social networks and build relationships. One way to get started is to assign staff who are saavvy and wise enough about message to start engaging in a handful of networks as a professional development activity. LinkedIn, WordPress, and Twitter might offer a handful of points of departure. Have them tell your story and theirs with the organization. See how the visibility and following builds.

I recommend the following articles when sharing information with novices about social media in business:
*The See-Through CEO from Wired Magazine which eloquently describes the paradigm shift from closed secretive business practices to radical trust and social openess:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/wired40_ceo.html
*Brave New World of Digital Intimacy from the New York Times where the term ambient awareness and the phenomenon of the current generation of tools is well-described:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Meg Canada

1. You know their are B2B solutions ALREADY out there right? I wont bore you listing them all, because I’ve already spent precious hours compiling them for the masses here: http://www.sniki.org

2. Your perfectly right Executives, big spenders, and top notch managers will not wait around for you to engage them online. Neither will I. Nor will trillions of other consumers world wide. If it’s done rarely in your industry right now, that doesn’t mean that your target audience isn’t out there. It just means either you haven’t gone looking for them, or they don’t yet have a place to all join together. Be that place. Build that place. Be original. Be innovative. Enough said on that point.

3. If you want to get out their, no better time then the present. Sit down, figure out your goals, figure out what your high priced world class consumers are looking for, and give it to them — IMMEDIATELY before someone else does.

4. Worse case scenario… blog. With the right theme, the right voice, and information that is interesting and helpful to your B2B consumer you will have a great start. Just stay classy San Diego. Ok, that was just a little Will F. quote.

5. What are financial managers looking for? Tips on improving ____? What do CFO’s do on a daily basis? You can improve that by ____? Or building ____ software program to integrate into your ____campaign.

Think Mint.com think WebMD, Facebook, Twitter, or finra.org (but a little better design and a little less dull..), give your site a little pizazz, offer advice like financial-planning.com, be a place they consider professional and a prime knowledge base like alltop, consider what money.msn.com is doing, check out my.wallst.net, be the linkedin of your community. Now don’t be any of those things.. be all those things and more, up the ante.

Up the ante by hiring a social media strategist who can help you brainstorm new ideas, poll ideas from the community you will be building for, and do everything 250%.

Desarae Veit

http://www.dveit.com

We have dabbled in social media and there have been some positive effects, and some unexpected frustrations too. The first question I would ask about Social Media is this: are you willing to participate in a two-way conversation? Social media is (drumroll) social, which means that it is no longer a one-to-many messaging model. Conversations are a two way street, and if the company is not willing to be transparent, and open to feedback–and more importantly making changes based on the feedback, than social media will be a frustrating endeavor–producing little fruit, and costing lots of time and energy.

While your friend may be correct that C-level financial exec’s may not be as active users of Social Media as other demographics, I think that she may still find benefit from participating in Social Media for two main reasons:

1) Better quality leads trumps quantity of leads. The connections made through active and authentic participation in social media are more than likely going to be much stronger than connections made through traditional mass, or direct marketing. Even though you may reach fewer potential clients than you could through other venues, you are more likely to convert a higher percentage (assuming you are targeting the right people, and not just trying to be friends with everyone with a Facebook account) to sales.

There are other positive side effects to Social Media that will help out your traditional marketing/sales efforts as well.

2) Brand recognition. For us, as we started participating in Social Media, we saw greater brand recognition – meaning our traditional marketing efforts (cold calling, email marketing, print ads, etc) were better received than ever before. We would get comments like “oh yeah, I’ve heard about you guys on twitter [or facebook, etc].”

3) Search Engine Optimization = really good leads. Probably my proudest Social Media accomplishment is leveraging a company blog for the purpose of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The blog itself has some impressive traffic stats (for us, anyways), but here are the stats for our main site (which hasn’t changed) compared to 9 months ago when we first started blogging:

-traffic is up 10% overall
-traffic from referring sites (links) is up 14%
-total number of inbound links is up 400% (these are largely pointing to blogposts, but they are still helping give search engine credibility to our domain)!
-traffic from search engines from relevant keywords (i.e. not our name) is up 15%.

The last stat is important, because these are people who are searching for keywords relevant to our business. A sales rep can’t ask for a better lead than one who found your company in that manner. They are actively seeking products or services like yours, and they found you!