Four B2B Social Media Success Stories: How B2B Companies Can (and should) Use Social Media

marketing communications
pwb
Four B2B Social Media Success Stories
How B2B Companies Can (and should) Use Social Media
Chad Wiebesick
www.PWB.com
@PWB_Marcomm

What We’ll Talk About
Dispelling the myth of B2B social media.
Six smartest things you should do with social media.
Four B2B companies doing it right!
Questions you should ask yourself before launching a social media program.
Oops…don’t make this social media mistake!
One thing to start doing today.

Social Media Is Business Media
Crushing the myth of B2B social media
Social media may even more transformative for B2B, since B2B has a smaller customer base, higher price point, and a customer decision funnel more influenced by word of mouth and reputation.
Differences in B2B and B2C lie in tactics not strategy.
Everyone is using the Big 4.

Six Smartest Things To Do With Social Media
Integrate your social media with your other marketing efforts.
Alignment is key. Social media is not a campaign it is a commitment.
Tie your social strategy to your business objective.
Relatedly, have a code of conduct for how employees should represent the company.
Generate compelling content – educational (and entertaining).
Build trust, credibility, and your brand as an expert resource.
Humanize your brand.
People do business with people they like. Humanize your business with humor, personality, and interest.
Cultivate a community.
Build a long-term relationship with customers and prospects. Embrace customer ideas and suggestions.
Nurture brand evangelists.
Evangelists spend 13% more than the average customer and refer business equal to 45% of the money they spend!

Kinaxis – Humanizing A Brand
Supply chain management company servicing aerospace, industrial, and life sciences markets.
Business Objective
Increase web traffic and leads.
Social Media Big Idea
Use humor to attract prospects and engage new customers.
Create a viral video series starring Kevin Pollak and Ray Wise.
Their video series gives their sales team a way to open the door to business they sell to. Videos promoted on their blog, corporate site, and custom microsite.

Video Episode One
Microsite
Kevin Pollak

What does Kinaxis do so well with social media?
Incorporate content, community, and comedy.
Kinaxis uses interesting, relevant and (gasp!) humorous content to create an active community within an industry typically perceived to be dry and incongruous with engaging online content.
Results
Tripled leads and more than doubled web traffic.
Winner of BtoB Magazine’s “Social Media Marketing Awards”.
Ask Yourself: How will you translate your brand voice, tone, and message – keeping on strategy with the rest of your marketing efforts?

Provider of risk and compliance solutions for financial, healthcare, government, technology, and telecommunication markets.
Business Objective
Build awareness and interest.
Launch an online social community for customers to interact, share best practices, and provide feedback to help drive Archer product development.
Archer Technologies – Community Building

Archer Community – Social network

What does Archer do so well with social media?
Get customers talking together in a viewable space.
Use customer feedback to drive and enhance change.
Results
5,871 members have generated 1,877 ideas for new products.
Community site receives 4,000 visitors and 20 new members each week.
Winner of Forrester Groundswell Award for B2B social media
Ask Yourself: How can you increase engagement and participation?

Indium – Content is King
Global solder supplier to the electronics, solar, semiconductor, and thermal management markets.
Business Objective
Be seen as a thought-leader and build relationships for driving leads and sales.
Get 14(!) engineers to blog about everything from flux cleaning to soldering to tombstoning.
Engineers embraced it because they were not asked to become marketers. They were simply asked to write in their own voices.

Indium Blog

What does Kinaxis do so well with social media?
The company allows engineers to be engineers – they can blog about anything they like (as long as it addresses customers’ needs).
Talk with their customers (not at them).
Results
Blogging has created opportunities to contribute articles to technical trade magazines, chair panels at industry events, guest blog on other relevant blogs, and deliver technical papers at conferences. All of this reinforces their thought leadership brand position.
Ask Yourself: What content does your organization have that can be reimagined as video, podcasts, white papers, blog posts, etc.?

Cree – Create Evangelists
Manufacturer of LED lighting for businesses and organizations.
Business Objective
Build awareness and promote the benefits of LED technology.
Create an interactive social site. Include online video, photo contest, blog, real-world stories, and social media profiles on Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter.

Microsite

What does Cree do so well with social media?
Blogger outreach strategy (yes, there are such people, such as Jim on Light).
Photo contest (uncommon in B2B scenarios).
Microsite has good use of mixed media.
LED lovers can submit photos and videos of their successes.
Grouped into mini case studies on a map dramatizing the spread of LED technology across industries and geographies.
YouTube Videos
Results
Microsite yielding a 25% increase in unique visitors month over month (launched 8 months ago). Viral video generated 5,000 views.
Ask Yourself: How will you align your marketing to your business goals?

Oops – Chrysler Tweet

Let’s Review…
Social Media Best Practices
Social media integration does not mean your Facebook posts are linked to your Twitter feed.
Facebook is not a strategy.
Tie your social media strategy to your business objective.
Remember, content is king.
One thing to start doing today is to subscribe to these newsletters:
BtoBOnline.com
MarketingProfs.com
SocialMediaB2B.com

Chad Wiebesick
Social Media & Interactive Marketing Director
Email: cwiebesick@pwb.com
Office: (734) 369-9177
Twitter.com/PWB_Marcomm
Facebook.com/PWBMarcomm
PWB.com/blog
Thank You

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Four B2B Social Media Success Stories: How B2B Companies Can (and should) Use Social Media

by Chad Wiebesick

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Four B2B Social Media Success Stories: How B2B Companies Can (and should) Use Social Media Presentation Transcript