Getting Sales Out of the Social Struggle

It doesn’t take long to find out that social media challenges businesses to go where traditional marketing has never dared to venture. Before the technology existed, it has always been rather impersonal and plans were based on mass collected results instead of the individual customer experience.

Clearly, the playing field has changed. Through social media, one customer’s complaint can soon blow up into an entire movement that could topple your organization.

Now for consumer businesses, a disaster like that is still easier to handle since interacting with customers is already part of their experience.

But for B2B organizations and enterprise software vendors, I find that even giants like Oracle don’t always do it right. Then again, it’s really not that surprising. From LinkedIn to Facebook, social media can be a struggle for industries that normally don’t express much of their social side.

Think about it. When you say ‘social’, you’re thinking celebrity profiles, controversial tweets, or promo events from your favorite fast food chain. There are examples of good B2B pages too but it’s hard to say if this is still comparable to what Starbucks or Disney have already done.

One might even say that B2B companies are just ripping off the B2C examples. This just further demonstrates the difficulty given that the nature of B2B business hasn’t really left much of a social side for them.

Still, putting that social side can be quite simple if you implement the following.

• Emphasize the ‘person’ in salesperson. – Some common mistakes in social media marketing involve spamming. That includes spamming for connections or spamming the newsfeed with ads. Instead of that, just be more active in reaching out. Search and communicate as if you were in an actual networking event

• Be as real as you can get – The more anonymous you are, the less successful you’ll be. How do you expect potential clients to trust you if nobody in your company wants to show their faces? What about your products? Being cloud-based is no excuse (just look at Salesforce). Your social media presence is supposed to represent a real company so be as real as you can get!

• Yes, you have a lighter side – It sounds awkward but it goes well with trying to be real. You can’t get any more real than giving your followers the occasional glimpse of your office. If there’s an event at work, don’t hesitate to put some pictures. (Although, you obviously have to set some boundaries for the sake of good PR).

Social is now an important element in marketing and it is here to stay. However, you won’t have to struggle so long with the alleged ‘norms’ if your business is not just a business but a group of real people your customers can count on.

via Business 2 Community http://www.business2community.com/sales-management/getting-sales-social-struggle-0628482?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=getting-sales-social-struggle