At Rostrum, we knew this whole social media thing was going to be big when I pitched up for a creds meeting at a firm of patent and trade mark lawyers in the summer of 2009.  A smallish firm in a fairly niche area of the legal market, our conversation covered the usual PR topics of profile-raising, generating new business leads, integrating what we do with their marketing team’s activity, etc.  So far, so standard.  At the end of the meeting, the marketing manager casually asked “so should we have a Facebook page, then?”  It was then that it became clear that b2b marketers across the board were under pressure to come up with a plan for social media, and online reputation generally.

But what’s the relevance of social media to b2b marketers?  Well, despite the relative immaturity of the medium, leading b2b brands are already using social media as a communications tool to target senior decision-makers.  One consulting firm we work with holds regular business breakfasts.  To build a relationship with the senior attendees signing up for the events, we’ve used LinkedIn on their behalf to engage the attendees and to create a ‘home’ online for the breakfast’s organisers and attendees in order to communicate exclusive content and ideas to those who attend.  The effectiveness is easy to measure and it uses a channel that many b2b professionals are familiar with.  That’s one simple example of how b2b brands can deploy social media to good effect to reach senior decision-makers.

The Linkedin development wasn’t intended to increase the number of attendees at the breakfasts i.e. it was developed primarily as a marketing and comms tool rather than a sales channel (although we have had several applications to join the groups from other LinkedIn users).  It’s a community for those who attended the event.  The idea is to give them exclusive content and access to the consultancy firm, and to give the consultancy firm a way of engaging with the hard-to-reach senior attendees before and after the actual event.  The feedback from the attendees was really positive – a number of discussion points and messages have been posted to the groups so we’re seeing early signs that people are happy to engage via LinkedIn, providing they’re not being ‘sold to’ too heavily.

Twitter and Facebook may have relevance for professional services firms – it all depends on what you’re trying to achieve.  Facebook can be particularly good for graduate recruitment, for instance.  Twitter provides a fantastic method of ‘sniffing the air’ i.e. getting unfiltered analysis of what’s driving debate.  Like a blog, a medium which many b2b marketers do feel comfortable with, Twitter needs time, care and the right tone to succeed in building up a worthwhile group of followers, though.  If all you’re planning to do is put the first line of your press releases on Twitter, don’t bother as its unlikely to be read.  If you can’t find the resources inhouse, consider bringing in a specialist to produce some or all of the content, which you or your subject matter experts or usual company spokespeople can then review, approve and post.

Whichever channels you deploy, it’s important to think about social media in the context of your wider online strategy.  It helps to think about social media in terms of a 3-4 stage process.

1.     Analysis. Where are we now?  Who’s saying what about us?  Can we seed into their conversations?  Web listening and seeding software can help with this.  We like Freedata Labs because they’ve got the data specialists to help you make sense of the information the software throws up, but there are other applications out there;

2.     Strategy. Based on the analysis (1) – what do we do?  What’s the plan, how quickly do we need to make it happen and what resources do we need to make it work (and how do we measure it?);

3.     Delivery. As a PR firm, a natural product of our efforts is to generate lots and lots of positive, compelling content for our clients.  This can form the basis of your social strategy, and you can add more stuff in as time goes by.  The flow of content must be regular though, or your online reputation will start to suffer.  Measurement also  needs to be realistic, effective and bear some relation to other metrics you trust for other marketing/comms activities;

That’s a simple starting place.  You could complicate things – you might decide to draft a set of social media guidelines for instance, create a YouTube channel or undertake social media training for your inhouse experts, who will need to get their heads round this stuff as well.  It might look and feel very similar to ‘what we’ve always done with PR’ – but there are important differences and you need to be aware of these.

My answer to the marketing manager, by the way, was no (and, at the time of writing, the firm doesn’t have a Facebook page).

Mark is managing director of Rostrum Communications.