Accenture Report on the Potential for B2B Social Media
The report presents the findings from a survey with more than 200 North American B2B companies with annual revenues of $1bn or more. The analysis of the results shows that whilst execs agree upon social media being an important mechanism to communicate with customers, partners and other stakeholders, few have really started leveraging social media to its full potential.
Accenture goes further on to outline recommendations for B2B companies wanting to enter the social media sphere, earlier outlined in the Social Media Management Handbook.
- Make social media one of the cornerstones of your customer strategy.
- Move from social media to “social CRM.”
- Measure social media’s effectiveness.
- Adopt a highly flexible and iterative approach to social media implementation.
- Invest in the right technologies.
- Achieve organizational buy-in.
They further goes on to conclude that there is large opportunities for first-mover advantage for B2B companies in the social media space.
A No-Bullshit Lecture on B2B Branding
Scot McKee is the managing director of a B2B branding agency who believe in creative branding for B2B companies. McKee is the author of the unconventional marketing book Creative B2B Branding (no, really), where he takes the boring lot of B2B brands by it’s horns, which is the focal point of this lecture; he speaks about how new digital media changes everything for B2B Brands, and he presents different B2B branding cases of different sizes with different impact. The University, where he held his lecture, didn’t want it’s name associated with the video nor the slides of his lecture because they didn’t want to locate their brand ”next to the deliberately provocative brand image he presents”.
Focus on what you really want to get out of social media
Mike Rowland, Impact InteractionsIt starts by not focusing on the tools and the tactics, but focusing on what is it that you really want to get out of using social media. So at the end of three months, at the end of six months or a year and then three years, which is probably pushing it, but just to frame the conversation around; what is the business objective that you're trying to solve or you're trying to realise by offering social media.
Blogging in Norwegian
This blog has received far too little attention from myself the recent months. It’s not that I haven’t had the time to write nor topics to write about. I have been motivated – at times – but I never got started. Had to give it some thought and I think it’ll lower the threshold if I start blogging in Norwegian, my mother tounge. So – what I’ve done is to sort all my previous articles in a single folder called “English” – not sure what I’ve was thinking with ten categories anyways, as they’re all about B2B social media – and I’ll start with clean sheets (categories) with my norwegian blog posts.
The topics for future blog posts will evolve around the use and development of the digital media. I will rely on my theoretical background from B2B branding and B2B social media, but more importantly my experiences and key learnings from working with and implementing social media in SpareBank 1 SMN, an organisation with 1,200 employees.
They will, however, be written in Norwegian. At least to start with… but hopefully I’ll translate the better ones. I will sort out an English-only RSS feed. So… here’s to my duo language blog.
To be continued…
How to enter the social media space
Social media is important for any company. Period. And I mean any. The extent of the social media involvement does however differ from company to company – and it sure does differ significantly. At the very lowest level any company should monitor the buzz around their brand, their competitors and their industry. This is the first article in a series which will cover how a company should enter the social media space.
Four ways the iPhone changed my digital life
It’s been a while since my previous post, and two significant things have changed since last time. The first and most important change is that I’ve got a job working with digital media for a a Norwegian savings bank, SpareBank 1 SMN. I will blog about that later. The second change is that I switched my old Nokia N82 for one of them iPhones.
What are the implications of social media for B2B brand management?
As the new digital world embraces participation, openness, conversation, community and connectedness through social media, it brings new opportunities and challenges to B2B branding. It is not to suggest that social media will change how businesses do business, but it is another layer to brand management that needs to be treated different from traditional marketing efforts.