3 Helpful B2B 2010 Social Media Predictions

As much as I try to resist the wave of "extraspection" (kind of like introspection but broadcast via blogs, Twitter and aggregators), that are the summaries of the past years leading trends and predictions of next year's hot topics, I find myself drawn in.

One of my intents this year is to discover new voices online. Truth is I love blogs. While I am totally committed to Twitter, Facebook and all the other platforms that will emerge and/or dominate this year, there is something about the effort and POV available via blogs that I truly appreciate. So, rather than dive into my own navel-gazing out of the blocks, I wanted to share 3 predictions from other voices online - with a little of my own interpretation -  that I found particularly helpful in some way.

Social CRM will integrate with Social IRM

Paul Dunay from Avaya has a good list of 10 predictions for B2B in 2010. I am not sure I agree with all of them although our differences might be worked out through discussion. For instance, he like many before him have identified 2010 as a big year for Mobile Marketing and that social media was a "warm-up" for the real changes afoot from mobile. You can't go wrong predicting this year as the year for "mobile." Most marketers have been predicting that for the past 5 years or more. And while the iPhone has proven a true improvement on everywhere access (having the conductor on the Heathrow Express just scan my display of my QR Code is great), I am not sure it will somehow elcipse the role social media has grown into.

He has two predictions which I have combined into one:Lead Gen and Managing Advocates Will Become A Priority

"Lead Generation tools must combine with Social Media tools – Right now we have tools to listen, tools to monitor, tools to track clicks to the corporate website, tools to track leads that are being nurtured. But this has to change – its impossible to optimize based on each of these silos – BtoB Marketers need lead gen tools with social media built in so we can optimize effectively. There is a huge opportunity here that some company needs to fill fast."

"How to handle Advocates will become more important – having spoken directly with tons of customers this year and dare I say made (or at least identified) advocates in the socialsphere, we need a place to put them to collect them to harness them and energize them when we have something cool to talk about. This will increasingly become a challenge for most marketers. Having spoken recently to Pepsi, HBO, RIM, Warners Bros, and American Express about their challenges in this space – BtoB or BtoC this is an area where they want to focus on next year."

Social CRM is the  system by which you manage your relationships with your customers and optimizing your marketing and communications effort to make those productive relationships (notice I did not say "profitable"). Social IRM (Influencer Relationship Management) is the system by which you manage relationships with Influencers towards the same end. Clearly these are not two separate groups but rather a largely overlapping set of circles. Customers can be Influencers; Influencers may be customers or they may be KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) or relevant bloggers who don't yet "buy."

We need to better understand the different types of "advocates' available for a b2b brand. You have everything from insiders like employees and partners to happy customers to influencers you may be able to transform into advocates based upon some mutual interest or activity. You may even have brand fans (in our work with IBM, we actually discovered Lotus brand fans - it can happen!) These groups do not all behave in the same way. They require different approaches. But managing your advocates in an organized way that reduces the cost of "acquisition" or activation and stewards a long term relationship is key. B2C campaigns are the worst offender at pinging potential advocates and then letting that relationship fall into the cracks a month later. In B2B (and B2C as far as I am concerned), you cannot get away with that.

Everyone wants to see the connection between social media marketing and conversion whether that conversion is lead generation, intent to purchase or actual sales. The keys there are an accepted form of measurement to gauge how well your efforts are performing and a way to track and optimize what you are doing against that measurement framework (see Conversation Impact - our approach to the challenge). I have a hard time seeing any Social CRM pogram that is not combined with Social IRM in that you value advocacy as much as actual sales. Getting advocates to "advocate" (i.e. share word of mouth) is what we are all doing in social media in the first place.   

Sales Team Entrepeneurs Will Lead in Social Media Adoption in the Sales Force

B2B enterprise sales organizations will slowly adopt social media-based efforts to better connect and sell to their customers. They are already doing this and support businesses like Salesforce.com and Lithium (client) are already providing more social solutions. That type of infrastructure change takes time and it takes believers at the top.

Meanwhile, we will see lead salespeople taking the bull by the horns and adopting use of LinkedIn, Facebook, Listening Posts (Ogilvy's approach to cgm monitoring), NING and all sorts of other platforms to manage their relationships and opportunities with customers. Even in our work with Ford on both B2C and B2B, we see automotive "dealers of innovation" developing all over. These are Ford car dealers who are using social platforms as expertly as anyone to manage customer relationships.

Kipp Bodnar at Social Media B2B put this at the top of his list of 2010 predictions:

"1. Sales Staff Get Social Media Savvy – Next year social media is getting out of the B2B marketing department and starts creeping into other business functions. One of the departments that is going to begin to realize social media’s impact on its objectives is the sales team. With customers changing their habits and getting information differently, sales professionals will have to adapt. Once they learn about the added edge that social media gives them in terms of client and industry knowledge, they will start to slowly change their habits. This will be a slow process but it starts in 2010."

Content Strategists & Managers Will Take the Lead

The guys at Velocity Partners put it this way, "Top B2B companies will make content strategists the most important job in the team."

Couldn't agree more. Now we still see fiefdoms around managing the corporate Web site. That will take second fiddle to the overall Content Strategist who will oversee how the brands information is potrayed and distributed via the brand Web site, the brand's social Web (e.g. their Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter channels), syndication, partners and more. When brands finally sieze the opportuntiy to manage organic search results to their fullest thus "reaching" customers with intent (those seraching for their solutions), they will realize that it is a product of managing all of their content and content "access points' well, not just the corporate Web site. This move may be tough. The Web site owners have enjoyed a good ride being "in-control." But if you are truly trying to reach customers and drive your business, you will need to establish Ninja-like capabilities in managing all of the brands content and how it becomes available to people via social Web and search.

Comments

[Kipp Bodnar]

John,

Thanks for mentioning my post. I agree with all three of your points. For B2B 2010 is very much about integration. I think proactive sales people will leverage social media, to get ahead of the pack.

Great post!

[Warren Tibbotts]

A lot of salsepeople dont really understand Social media, and the benefits that it can achieve, and I think this also goes for a lot of decision makers in businesses. Social networking, and social media as a business sales tool for generating new sales and business in the offline world I believe is still very much at the early adopter stage, and my personal belief is that the true benefits of this wont be seen yet for another 2-3 years. That's when it will be a lot more mainstream

[Christopher West]

I must agree with Warren here. Many sales people have no clue about the social media aspect or what they cah achieve by spending an hour or so online every day.

I believe social media will be an important aspect of anyone's sales goals in the future, and the future is now.

[Jack]

Your Predictions about social media and B2B are very interesting and helpful and informative too.