What Business Alliances Expect From Social Networking
I’ve been in some discussions with a half dozen partners of one of our top technology companies. The purpose of these discussions is to look at best practices and how this partner group can improve in this tough economic climate.
While I have another 6 more discussions to go, here are some early returns in how they are using conversational media techniques and social networking to improve their presence – not only from the perspective of their partnering aspect, but also how they are using it in general.
Two points of clarification – the partner ecosystem that I’ve talked to is primarily focused on business-to-business (B2B) and they include both private (< $100M in revenue) companies and one large public company. All the private companies have been in business 2 or more years and would be considered successful and fast growing in their specific area.
As part of the project that I’m working on, there are another half dozen companies I will talk to that will include more public companies in the mix. So that may alter some of the following conclusions. But here’s what I can tell you so far, at least from the perspective of the non-public companies.
- They all want to use LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to a much greater degree, but it must serve their business purpose of course.
- They feel that they are just scratching the surface.
- They are engaging in, acquiring or employing internal resources to learn and explore more of the possibilities in regards to employing some of these social networking techniques.
- They do not have a clear set of goals in mind about which social networking technique is best, under what situation or for what purpose.
- They feel that there is a lot more to accomplish with social media and their common partner, and they will look to their primary common partner for more help, support, guidance and cooperative business social networking in the future.
Whether it’s the current economic atmosphere or not, all of them want to employ these techniques to open up new channels of customer contact and eventual revenue. Customer contact is a primary motivation for everyone.
While I will be sharing more of these general findings in the future, I’d like to summarize this in 3 points:
- We are quite early in the cycle of using social networking with a specific business “revenue” goal in mind. But we are closer to using LinkedIn, for instance, to acquire or talk to new prospects and perhaps get professional feedback on our product or service.
- There is still minimal hard business evidence to look at which will firmly guide us right now.
- And no one wants to be left out of the game!
More to come on this subject soon.
Right, we all want to start using or make a better use of social media but still wondering the best way to do it. I believe social media is a new media that needs to be integrated to the overall Marketing strategy. Twitter, Linkedin… yes, but not as a stand alone startegy. We need to connect the dots between different media using each of them differently but complementary as to address specific objectives. For decades the media we were using were Radio, TV and print then internet arrived and now the social nmedia. It’s now a question of setting the right expectations for each of the media available and resource allocation…
I believe the key bullet above that presages success is “They do not have a clear set of goals in mind about which social networking technique is best, under what situation or for what purpose”. This open-mindedness will be critical as we all learn collectively what works best, and when.
I remember the early days of email that reached beyond the four walls of the company – perhaps the mid 80’s. Then as now, managers demanded to see the business case before deploying this new (and arguably risky) technology. Of course, this was an impossible task – who could have predicted the myriad ways that email would add value (and the myriad applications of the technology that were a complete flop)? Luckily it hit a critical mass of adoption anyway, and eventually folks got on board if for no reason beyond keeping up with the competition.
Stephane – I agree that connecting the dots between traditional and digital is important and the best companies are on that track. The amount now spent on social media in marketing campaigns is as high as 40% of the total budgets. Two years ago it probably averaged 20%. So the trend is there. The bulk of spend still goes to TV/Radio/print. But internet and social media are growing rapidly as we know.
If they need help, I just listened to a very good webinar delivered by Greig Wells of Social Media Magic – a company that also does in depth training on each of the key networks you mention. I assure you I don’t work for this company – I was just genuinely impressed by the webinar so thought I’d pass it on.
Thanks Erica…Here’s the URL I found on them.
http://www.socialmediamagic.com/
I have no knowledge of them one way or another, but it looks like they cover the bases as you say.
Hi Ralph,
I think your article is spot on – I believe the major challenges with social media will be to figure out which medium meets the (each) target market…they are a varied group. I’m not a fan of Twitter – but I like Facebook and LinkedIn. Each has its specific purpose – to me – the challenge is for a company/partnership to decide which will get the most eyeballs. Tough to know. Looking forward to how it all rolls out. Can a company cater to each persons/group preferred method of communication?