Why is Social Media Different than Traditional Marketing?

by | Jul 5, 2011

In the B-to-B space and especially when it comes to the more traditional manufacturing sector, lots of marketers treat social the same as their other marketing efforts and wonder why it’s not working for them.

The truth is social is a long-term tactic while many of the traditional marketing efforts are focused on a stimulus/response model.

Here are some tips on how social media can be an effective marketing tool for you:

  • Make your message conversational – I’m sure you can remember possibly a family member who was a great story teller. When they spoke, you hung on every word, got excited, laughed, but more importantly, you connected with that person and interacted with them. Most importantly, you remembered the story. Socia,l to be successful, needs to follow the storytelling path as opposed to the feature/benefit bullet points from a sales sheet. Let’s face it, there’s not much emotional response in sales sheet copy. Instead, tell a story of how this new left-handed widget made my life easier on a jobsite.
  • Engaging your audience – You need great content, but you don’t want a one-way conversation. Be active on Twitter or make comments on forums or Facebook pages. Social is a two-way street.
  • Networking – You need to build online networks again using LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. These are all good ways to spread the message. Every connection helps you reach out to new potentials.
  • Keyword Search – One of the big benefits for social is that it’s trackable and indexable using keywords. You need to make sure they are in your titles and photo captions to insure pick up.

Those are some points from my view; what elements of social are you using to maximize your B-to-B efforts?

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