Face plant or twaddle?

Businesses that market to other businesses have to varying degrees jumped on the Facebook and Twitter bandwagon. But is it for you and will you waste precious energy and resources pursuing something that’s really just not suited to your business?

The operative word in social media is ‘social.’ It isn’t commerce and it isn’t transaction based. Just ask anyone who bought into the Facebook IPO and is now watching their shares trade a half the list price within months of trading. Facebook and Twitter have become the favoured vehicles of movie stars, rocks stars, politicians, sportspeople and other celebrities intent on promoting their celebrity. Facebook and - to a lesser extent - Twitter are also very widely used around the world by ‘normal people’ - because our friends really need to know what we had for lunch, don’t they?

OK, so I’m not a big fan of either. But I am not averse to using them for situations where they clearly work. In fact I’m working on an awareness campaign for the Institute of Architects now where I’m recommending a Facebook component because of the social or community nature of the campaign. It’s just that when it comes to business to business marketing, the effort often does not seem worth the reward, unless you’re prepared to put in a big effort (which may be disproportional to the return).

The exception would be businesses which have a very large, social pool of followers and customers. Think a football club, for example. The Brisbane Broncos have a quarter of million ‘likes’ on their Facebook page. (The Brisbane Lions by contrast have only 54,000). These are big numbers, and not surprising when you have such large followings, especially when your teams are doing well (which maybe explains the Lions’ figures?).

Contrast this though with www.news.com.au – a very large online news site run by the Murdoch empire. You’d think given the traffic volumes on this site and the broad reach of its media interests, there’d be some reflection in Facebook support? News.com has just 37,000 ‘likes’.  Brisbane Times – a news site owned by Fairfax – doesn’t seem to much bother and has just over 8,000 ‘likes.’

Some large retail businesses are actively targeting the social online space.  Mega electrical and home wares retailer Harvey Norman has 140,000 ‘likes’. David Jones has 168,000 and Myer, 137,000. These are significant numbers but given the national nature of these businesses and their prominence, not exactly huge. On the other side of the coin, fashion label Lorna Jane has a massive 450,000 likes on FB. This could reflect a younger and heavily female demographic, it could reflect a more popular brand image with a strong  and loyal following, or it could mean they’ve put more effort into it than, say, Myer.

But when it comes to businesses that market to other businesses, particularly in the professional services space, the numbers become entirely unimpressive. In fact, you’d wonder why they bother. One large, international architecture practice has 446 likes on its Facebook page. A highly prominent national advocacy group has 42. A quick scan through my own networks of businesses with Facebook Pages or Twitter accounts shows, generally, pretty miserable support via these mediums.

But there are no shortages of marketing experts selling a message to business, irrespective of the nature of that business, that ‘you must be in the social media’ space.  Google “should my business be on facebook” and you’ll find a host of articles and experts telling you why you should. Sure, your customers are there, and sure, it’s a big network. Huge in fact. But it’s a social network, used by people for social reasons and not generally by a business promoting itself to another business. More to the point, because these are social in nature, attempts by business to convert social networks into commercial opportunities can flop. Consumers are smart enough to see what’s going on.

I know this will find a lot of disagreement, and yes there are times when bad business practices can have a much bigger collateral impact through social media (because people tend to share things they don’t like, as opposed to things they do), but even with this in mind, my suggestion is to first consider who your customers are, and whether social media is really for you.  

To do it properly, you’ll need to invest considerable time in maintaining the presence, and the rewards may simply not be there. Putting that energy into more traditional ‘outreach’ marketing activities might pay a bigger dividend if your target audience involves people using business accounts to pay for what you’re offering.

So be careful of falling for the hype: think carefully about how well social media might work for your business (or not) and if it’s marginal at best, don’t bother if you’re only going to be half hearted.