The Three Most Frequently Asked B2B Social Media Questions:

1. Who has time to participate in social media? I’m too busy working.

2. Why should I care what Oprah ate for breakfast?

3. What if people make negative comments about us?

We have helped several of our B2B clients successfully engage in the initially “scary“ social media universe and it always seems that these three questions come up.   But our answers to these questions usually convinces them of the need to get involved as soon as possible. Here is how we respond.

ANSWERS:

1.  Unless you are selling buggy whips it‘s very likely that thousands of your customers are already conversing on social media platforms like LinkedIn Twitter and Facebook and many more are logging on every day.  Do a search on these sites for groups related to your products and check out the social media sites of the industry associations and trade magazines.  Now check out your competitors‘ websites and see if they are using social media.  Your customers are already online talking abut your products and your company and if you aren’t participating you are probably losing sales and damaging your brand reputation.

2. We also don’t care what Oprah ate for breakfast and most of your customers probably don’t either.  Your social media efforts shouldn’t be focused on the millions of consumers following the latest cool thing.  Your social media efforts should be focused on the thousands of customers and prospects who have chosen to be on these platforms and are looking for meaningful conversations about industry issues.

3. You need to know if people are saying negative things about your company and/or products and manage your reputation as best you can.  You can often nip problems in the bud before they become a major issue.  If you are not aware of false or negative claims then you could be losing sales and credibility.

What type of questions are you hearing out there?