The Social Side of B-to-B

A sense of community—how to build it, maintain it and get customers (and management) to buy-in and engage in it—was on the minds of many at the MarketingProfs B-to-B Forum in Boston this week.

Ron Casalotti, social media lead for Bloomberg LP, cautioned attendees to not get too caught up in the numbers as they build an online community. While it can be easy to get wrapped up in stats like how many fans or followers you have, the key is to engage with the right target audience in a meaningful way. “You need to be out there, be real and be responsive,” he said.

When Bloomberg acquired Business Week last year, it saw quickly that the magazine was engaging participants successfully in the social space—Casalotti said brand advocates in the Business Exchange forum were the first to tell the company the forum was worth keeping live after the purchase.

Of course, engagement can be hard to track on a spreadsheet. Rachel Happe, principal of The Community Roundtable, noted that community ROI can’t be gauged as quickly or even on a quarterly basis like many other types of media. This makes coming up with a meaningful ROI strategy to show the big bosses a slow process.

“However long you think it will take, multiply that by 50%,” agreed LaSandra Brill, social media marketing manager for Cisco.

Austin, TX-based National Instruments sells software and hardware for engineering and science applications to high tech pros in verticals ranging from aerospace to zoology, and has a 140,000+ strong global community of engineers. With social media, it wanted to create a framework to connect likeminded individuals, said Deidre Walsh, community and social media manager.

It began building its online community in 2008. Today, over 50% of online support questions are answered by other community users.
Getting users to participate so actively can be a challenge, and sometimes it requires thinking outside the box of your stated target and topic.

Mark Wallace, vice president of social media at environmental due diligence firm EDR, noted that on his company’s forum the most looked at and commented on thread has been about where to find the best sandwich shop. Some folks have complained that the thread is inappropriate, because it isn’t serious and is off topic. But, it helped draw out first time comments from members who had been lurking and not participating—and once they get their feet wet, they’re more likely to join into more on-topic conversations.

Adam Zawel, XPC community manager for The Palladium Group, notes that managers of both private and public communities need to be able to stand up to their employer, as well as be an advocate for the company. They need to be able to push back, for example, to keep salespeople from trolling forums for comments that make a user look ripe for a sales call, because that violates the user’s trust.

The question of whether to have a private or public community for your audience can be tricky. Sure, a group on Facebook or LinkedIn can be set up quickly and easily. But a vice president can post a question on a private community targeting her vertical and have a true peer-to-peer interaction. In contrast, if she posted the same question on a LinkedIn user group, she risks getting a flood of self serving information from vendors looking to solver her problem with their solution.