Fred Abaroa

I hear this statement a lot, so what is my answer??? It could! Let's take a look at a couple "It"s. For a lot of businesses, especially B2B, Facebook is the wrong choice. (Isn't it) You have to build yet another website, sort of. You have to provide content. Finally you have to build up your fans. The later being the hardest thing to do. I looked at one of the largest fan pages for a business, Best Buy, and it is over a million. Of course one TV commercial has a lot more than that. Marketers will go as far as telling you, "The Facebook fans chose to be a fan and are thus loyal." That may be true but it still takes more than that million for a big company like Best Buy. Still we are not talking B2B.

Another "Wrong Choice" for B2B is Twitter. All the same things I talked about with Facebook apply here, build the landing page, which is probably only seen once. Provide content, only 140 char at a time. And getting people to follow and pay attention to what you tweet.

By now those of you who know me are wondering if this is really Fred writing this. Those of you who really know me and have heard me speak know that I have found great success with social media for myself and clients. Yes those of you who paid attention to my talk know that it was twitter itself that worked for me but the publicity I could generate by showing it works.

Yes it is the free publicity. Dell made headlines telling the world sales have been up since using twitter. But was it really twitter or the fact they bought alienware and other factors. Your success in sales is due to people knowing you exist. The right people. A good piece of publicity goes a long way. Especially with the internet where a story can resurface over and over again. Every year around July 4th Costa Vida is mentioned in the news. Why you ask? Well one of the competitors of Nathan's Famous Hot Dog eating contest is Tim "Eater X" Janis the Costa Vida World Burrito Eating Champion. I have my google alerts turned on to my clients and the competitors and it always amazes me how many times I see the same story surface. I am also seeing my tweets, linkedin updates, and Facebook status coming back at me through other peoples blogs. You see many blogs now have running Facebook and Twitter updates on that site. Search Engine bought hit it the right time and your mentioned all over again.

So here is my advice. Measure your sales now. Start up a twitter and Facebook presence. Market the heck out of your product. Then measure your sales again. Take the best looking number and tell the world since using social media sales have been up. Since reporters are still looking for this kind of story, they'll jump on it. Especially if you say you never thought B2B could benefit from social media!

Do I even need a call to action here? If this makes sense and you need a marketing, talk to me.

Fred Abaroa
The Marketing Imagineer

fred [@]TMIFred.com

Twitter:
@FredXpress
@TMIFred

Blogs:
www.TheMarketingImagineer.com
Podcasts:
WordOnTheTweet.net
MakingMountainsOutOfMoleHills.com