B2B marketing using Social Media

We heard lots of chatter on what social media is, it depends who you ask. For starters, we know that it has a powerful reach and it is the fastest growing marketing tool for B2B and B2C platforms. Shrinking budgets, the economy are shifting former media to this newer media and are now valued by marketing teams. I have been experimenting on a couple of the most popular social media sites: LinkedIn and Facebook and have used Twitter. The best social media for professionals is LinkedIn by far and for B2B. Here you can reach decision makers and get to the point and start dialogue for a business contact which may turn to a sale. LinkedIn is overwhelmingly used at 81% of B2B marketers and Facebook coming at a close second. ROI is quite different from these two. A colleague and I experimented on Facebook to see what results you get. For a social event or a meeting or party Facebook proved to provide better ROI. Now the ROI is a question of who you ask. With budget restraints the web provides the fastest and less expensive ROI, which in this case is almost free. As an economist I was taught that there is no free lunch on anything. I guess the investment here is time and market segments, who you are trying to market to. Facebook is better at B2C and LinkedIn is better at B2B. I have gotten great contacts on the latter reaching as far as China and India for my Export/Import business. Going back to the brief experiment, my colleague and I made changes on our Facebook profile to see what effect. I opted on the marital status and he opted on the job status; he received several emails expressing concern and help for his lost of job and provided a quick synopsis of who is reading. My experiment provided me with a funny insight as my sister and family quickly contacted me to see what was going on with my "is complicated" status. I deemed it a mistake but it provided me with the knowledge that whatever you write or post on these sites, whether you get an email response or not, people are reading it. Someone told me that before you post something on the web is open to all eyes. I enjoyed the experiment and it proved that the marketability of this new social media is powerful and is here to stay. So I recommend to do some research, try new marketing for your business or personal development and see what happens.
Happy chatting

Hanniba Chinchilla
Principal at Barca Financial Group.