How valuable is Facebook as a B2B marketing platform?

We’re often asked by our clients about the value of Facebook as a B2B marketing platform. Most recently, B2B Marketing asked us to comment on their article, “Facing Facts”.

Facebook can be as useful a tool for B2B marketing as much as it is for B2C. However, companies often fail by putting the horse before the cart, creating Pages before fully understanding their business goals behind a Facebook presence. It’s littered with orphaned profiles that have fallen short of audience attention.

It is human nature to want to feel part of a community. On the other hand, brands often forget the fundamental elements that make social networks work. Whether you’re a major manufacturer or a village solicitor, success doesn’t come from having lots of Likes. It comes from remembering the things that make good conversation: being interesting, relevant and valuable to whomever you’re engaging with.

Listening is just as big a part of communication as contributing. Social media activity should be divided between listening to what others have to say and contributing your own expertise, thoughts and ideas. Don’t just talk and ignore everyone else, as you may find yourself quickly being ignored by the community or worse.

Take the design community for example. It has a natural affinity with the tools Facebook provides to discuss design, talk about the challenges they face, inspire each other, and ultimately gather around a shared interest. For businesses in that sector, the benefits of having a presence on Facebook to draw them into the brand space are crystal clear.

In five years time, we may not be using Facebook. Chances are, we will be using something that has evolved from it. The tools will develop, but the actual process of online interaction and networking is here to stay.
Google+ is an interesting anomaly in the social media sphere now ““ it has clear benefits to brands and business use, because it has a much clearer delineation between what users do ‘socially’ and what they do for ‘business’ on the site. However, slow uptake is still its biggest limiting factor. It means brands need to spend more time researching if the people they want to target are on Google+ before committing to any time/spend. But if they are, it’s as easy (if not easier) to find them and communicate with them on Google+ (or LinkedIn) in a professional environment than on Facebook. It’ll be interesting to watch the development of Google+ as it opens up to more people and businesses especially.

In summary, it is very easy to have 1,000 subscribers, but a lot harder to have 10 that are actually valuable to your business, let alone maintaining good networking skills that keeps them coming back for more.

Although Facebook has many great facets to make it an interesting space for brands, one must be open to the fact that commercially, it may not the right arena for an online persona. It may well make more business sense to get involved with blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ or even a combination of many. As with any well-integrated marketing campaign, the first thing to do is search out the most relevant routes that will ultimately get the message to the right people.

Ben

Ben is a Senior Creative with a penchant for all things digital at Quick-Thinking. Copy writing and art direction aside, Ben also heads QT's digital team, delivering online and social marketing campaigns with clout. Proudly, he also writes for Technorati.

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