When those in business marketing discuss social media and how to make the most of it, many immediately say, “That stuff is great for B2C but I’m not seeing the value for B2B.”  While most will agree that the value to B2C is easier to find when you look at social media, there is value for B2B. You just can’t take the same path as your B2C counterparts.

The Big 3 in order of value to B2B:

Twitter is a fantastic tool to create relationships, monitor trending topics and engage with customers.  It’s astounding growth and viral demeanor has spread all around the world.   Twitter has become a great way to get involved in people’s real time discussions on various products, industries, and professions.  Connecting with new prospects, business partners, and media in your area has never been easier.  As the majority of B2B investments are not made immediately as in the consumer world, staying involved in the right conversations on Twitter can definitely boost a company’s share-of-mind with their prospects.

Linked in provides great business value in terms of recruiting and personal brand development.   In regards to B2B, getting involved in the right groups and interacting with others is a good way to build your brand.

Of course we can’t forget Facebook, with 300,000,000 users come 2010 it would be hard for any company to shy away and attempt to create a brand name for themselves.  While Facebook is definitely a consumer and B2C platform, many B2B companies are still creating fan pages while they try to figure out how to make the most of the platform.  With Facebook recently launching vanity URLs, there is at least the benefit of additional SEO value.

The key thing to remember about all of these platforms is that they were built with the goal of connecting people to other people. Depending on what your B2B solution is and who your customers are, joining these sites with no strategies or set goals is pushing a square peg in a round hole.  Companies need to have a strategy and know what platforms are best for them, if any.  As platforms continue to grow and companies continue to embrace social media, better opportunities will arise for B2B.  At FYIndOut, we’re pushing to be that platform.

Photo by Zach Hill (Zach the Photo Guy) on flickr

There were a few good conversations going on around B2B on Friday and Saturday.  The first one was around Chris Brogan’s “The B2B vs B2C Thing” blog post.  In the post, Chris talks about the difference in using social media for B2C vs B2B.  There were over thirty comments to go along with what Chris wrote and it was all good.  I tried to contribute to the conversation by pointing out the following,

“It’s interesting that most people still view B2B as selling to the huge corps. Granted, that’s where the big money is but when you look at large corps as a percentage of all businesses out there, it probably is less then 30%. We see a majority of B2B being small businesses and entrepreneurs that are out there looking for a good web hosting site, accountant, IP lawyer, project management software, etc., and we believe a majority of those professionals are touched and reached via social media just as in B2C. Anyone have a take on that?”

Another commenter, Bill, added, “@ Scott Manley – It’s very interesting you bring this up – having been in the VAR/Solution Provider business in the past, one of the most under-served segments was the SMB market. These SMBs are generally looking to compete in highly competitive markets, save money and generally are more apt to embrace new technology much more readily than a larger business or corporation would. I think the SMB market would be key to jump into social media mixing to try and reach them, collaborate with them and find out who these SMBs truly are: their needs, desires, competitive atmosphere and pitfalls they face – in essence gain an understanding of the customer as never before through social media – then when they feel valued, you get your value back.”

Tim Walker also jumped in by saying, “@Scott Manley – You make a very good point. Most of the jobs in the United States are created by small businesses (not even medium-sized), and the SMB sector represents a huge chunk of the economy. Of course, these companies also have different needs, and they can’t afford the mondo-sized products / service packages that the big dogs can. In other words, selling to SMBs (which, by the by, has been a specialty of my employer for many years) can be un-sexy, but the value there can be huge…”

Also on Friday, we took the time to introduce ourselves to Tom Pick, author of a great B2B lead generation and marketing tools blog called WebMarketCentral. Tom not only took the time to look at our site and reply to us (Believe me, you don’t always get replies when you’re a startup.) but put us to task by asking some great questions which resulted in a very good discussion.  To paraphrase one of Tom’s questions, he asked how we planned on getting people to provide reviews on B2B solutions when most companies have policies against employees speaking in a public forum.  Again, the point I tried to make is that B2B isn’t all large companies. “…when we looked at the market of who is actually buying and looking for business apps and services, it’s over 70% small businesses, many of which do not have the same rules.  They don’t have a purchasing department, executive hierarchy, vendor management, or IT review group…”  As a small business ourselves, we realize that we are pretty much always representing our company and we think that it’s critical to our success to participate in social media just as much on behalf of FYIndOut as we do in our personal lives.  We also respond and interact pretty much the same in both roles.  We’re the decision makers and we’re the ones connecting online.

To wrap this up, I believe that in this economy, there are going to be even more small businesses out there and we’re going to be looking to buy and sell business applications and services while large companies continue to merge and downsize.  For those companies out there looking at B2B as selling strictly to large corps, you’re going to find yourself missing out on a lot of great opportunities.