It’s important to remember that a B2B social media strategy is remarkably different to a B2C one. Unlike the B2C environment, B2B sales often occur over a longer timeframe. Looking in the vicinity of months as oppose to hours, B2B social media strategies shouldn’t fuel the immediate purchase hype of a B2C campaign. Rather they should be focused on fostering new partnerships. An effective B2B social media campaign becomes a public front on which to set the scaffold for forming new long term business relationships, and then maintaining those relationships through the sales cycle. Our B2B internet marketing services are a great way to start this process.

Reach Further Online

The key advantage of online networking over its offline counterpart is simply in its reach. The internet has allowed many businesses to extend out of their home ground, playing in markets interstate and overseas. By providing business with a public platform to demonstrate their expertise, B2B social media campaigns have the potential to tap into new markets and forge new customer relationships.

Social networks recognise this, and have acted accordingly. Only last year LinkedIn launched its business pages, a free way for business to establish their presence on the network. Location-aware network Foursquare has now followed suit, announcing their new business pages on their blog on August 2. These business pages open up the new possibility of starting B2B relationships on a location-basis, and can then extend those relationships onto other networks.

Google+ = Potential+

Google+ is also making waves on the B2B social media scene, recognising the need for business pages from the outset (they have asked business to hold off creating personal profiles as pages are on the way). We expect Google+ business pages to build on the success of Facebook Pages and LinkedIn business profiles allowing for a powerful marriage between search and social media.

There’s huge potential for B2B marketing within social media, and an effective strategy can unlock some stellar new business partnerships. We can help you reach a larger client base with our B2B social media strategies. You can contact us for more information and a free consultation.

Image credit: tungphoto / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

For two weeks, the Green Peace online army has been driving negative sentiment towards the brand, encouraging users to “boycott Nestle” due to the company’s involvement in purchasing palm oil from an Indonesian company that has been accused by Green Peace of the mass destruction of rainforests in the pacific that are home to endangered Orangutan populations. The anger against Nestle ignited when a Green Peace report was released depicting a parody of the infamous ‘Kit-Kat’ brand logo, which has been doctored to read ‘Killer’. This logo has been brandished all over the web in the past two weeks, in conjunction with a graphic YouTube parody that entails a morbid display of a man “Having a break” with his Kit-Kat… When he proceeds to open it, he pulls out what appears to be an Orangutan finger and starts to chew on it. It’s pretty horrible stuff… (for the curious types, simply search for it on YouTube). Nestle has since made formal complaints to YouTube about the defamatory nature of the Green Peace video, but the copies continue to surface on YouTube and elsewhere on the web.

It’s getting pretty nasty for Nestle, and as the vilification of their brand continues, it is abundantly clear that their public relations efforts via their social media platforms are only rubbing salt in the wound. The biggest mistake the company made was to attempt to go authoritarian in the governance of their Facebook page by threatening users with fan page deletion if they were seen with any branded logos in their profile pictures… The undermining tone of the admin appointed to the fan page only exacerbated the situation even further. See for yourself:

It seems that Nestle’s PR disaster contingency plan has since been put in place… But I think it took them a while to get something in effect (does it suggest that they never had one in the first place?).  If you look at it now, the company’s Facebook fan page is now littered with various links to articles aggrandizing green initiatives, public statements relating to the company’s decision to abandon the supplier of the palm oil and their intentions to address an alternative source to palm oil however the damage has already been done. Big brands are the most volatile when it comes to negative sentiment online. The company failed in its duty to properly educate staff about public relations online and the ‘ripple’ effects of the social web. As the company goes into damage control and tries desperately to salvage any positive reputation it will be interesting to see how long it will take Nestle to recover from such a debacle.

If you’re not familiar with gaming applications on Facebook, it’s pretty straight forward stuff. The walls of Facebook are plastered with application activity – paid ads, news feed posts from friends and endowed deep within many search results. If you’re looking for a game on Facebook, you don’t really have to look hard at all. Aside from littering your friend’s wall posts with activity spam, the games on Facebook are generally pretty harmless. So what’s the issue with Facebook gaming apps?

Well, when you signed up for Facebook, you were made to agree on one of the more critical sign-up terms that forebodes you of all personal information being stored forever in the great mystical Facebook inf0rmation vault. So how does this apply to gaming applications?

If you have actually been bored enough to immerse yourself in a Facebook game, upon syncing your facebook profile to the application you’re hit with a disclaimer that blatantly states: “Allowing access will let it access your profile information, photos, your friends’ info and other content that requires it to work.” The terms are given in black and white, and there’s even a game rating to give you an idea of the game quality. You are presented with simple terms that do not hinder your attention away from the intent of the game. But it’s just a disclaimer, right?

It is a common consumer trend to ignore the fine print, and it’s been that way since the dawn of time really… When you buy something from the store, you disregard the terms and conditions specified on the receipt. The same applies within the online world… You create an email account and check all the boxes to speed up the process and ignore the fine print up until you’re getting inundated with spam down the track. The digital realm is an informational society. Each time you are registering with something online, in this case the gaming apps on Facebook, you’re giving a third party both qualitative and quantitative access to your personal data.

The question arises… What exactly are developers doing with your personal information, and is it ethical?

When we sign up for Facebook, we disregard any matters of security given such wide acceptance of the brand name and its household popularity. It’s a natural inclination, a compulsion to sign up without thinking of an dire implications. Blind trust is never intelligent, but we are all guilty of confiding in respected brand name without giving it a second thought.

This is what makes us vulnerable, and this is where game developers on Facebook are acting unethically in preying upon the loyal Facebook subscriber base and their blind trust in the website. Games like Farmville have been extremely sly in developing an “in-game currency” that works to build up your strength in the game and haplessly fuel your addiction to sitting online and literally watching your grass grow. It basically works like this – if you want to get anywhere in the game at all, you need to have in-game wealth. To obtain your wealth, Farmville allows your to purchase this in game currency using your credit card – which is fine – as it is a secure application, and such practice is common throughout the internet (see habbohotel.com for a textbook example). Upon signing up to Farmville, allowing them access to your personal data is a condition of playing – this is perfectly reasonable given that the terms are made abundantly clear. Essentially, upon even getting you to sign up, the game’s mother company is given invaluable amounts of marketing data that can be used for future scams… *cough*… I mean initiatives.

Here’s the sneaky part. Games like farmville provide free ways for you to earn in-game currency – and for the helplessly addicted users, this means more Farmville credits and no money spent. The catch is that in order to earn this free currency, you need to participate in lead gen-type offers – some of which can actually fool you into giving out your phone number or credit card. Start-up game developers who create the popular viral games such as Farmville are coaxed into the generous offers given by dodgy advertisers to have their scams synced up to games like farmville… Check out the post from Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.com and you’ll see exactly what I mean. If you want something even more eye-opening, read the guest post by Dennis Yu, aptly titled “How to spam Facebook like a pro: An insider’s confession“.

It is only fair for developers to be getting paid for their hard-work in creating online games, however there needs to be restrictions imposed on the dodgy deals taking place between developers and spam sharks to gain access to the millions of users obliviously playing Facebook game applications. How can a developer detect a scam? I guess it all comes down to the advertisers intent. Developers need to assert higher levels of integrity when funding their applications, and take a lesson out of business ethics 101. As for the scam sharks, they will forever continue to exist wherever there are advertising loopholes.

Do you use Farmville…? Does giving away potentially comprimising data make it worth the harvest… Or are you effectively joining a rural village of the damned?

In amongst the re-shaping of the world of Web 2.0, we are in fact witnessing the evolution of a new kind of relationship between businesses and consumers. Large corporations are exploring these new avenues as a means of enhancing their customer experience and generating customer loyalty by offering a genuine response to meet their needs, and this puts the power in the consumer’s hands. But what are the real benefits of social media?

Social Media, when integrated effectively, can pay some serious dividends.

Within the marketing realm, brand name is everything, and what better way to promote your brand than to advertise through online social networks used by millions of people globally? But we do ask you, when considering a social media campaign, there are a few things you should ask yourself:

• Will it entice your target market online? – Not every company is born to have visually stunning and engaging content to work with. So you need to consider whether or not the mainstream avenues of social media, with younger demographics, are applicable to the goods or services relevant to your business. We call this ‘common sense marketing’ – after all, you’re hardly going to promote retirement funds and superannuation plans to a social site comprised primarily of users under the age of 25!
• What will it do for your brand name? – When embracing social media, it is of utmost importance that you are always thinking about the effect of your actions online that can either positively or negatively impact upon your brand name. You need to be aware of the cause and effect of certain actions when interacting with users in the online world. Creating a positive image for your brand name online can create some valuable leads, and will increase rapport amongst your online customers.
• Can you meet the demands of your campaign? – A lot of work goes into building up a social following, and the larger and more successful your social media campaign becomes, the higher the demand required of you. Scope out the time and resources required based on the scale of the social media campaign you want to launch, and always over-estimate the scale of the campaign to ensure future viability.