It is at this point that most firms will throw their hands up in dispair, sensing that the only things that truly “go viral” on the web are squarely in the realm of the masses (e.g. popular music, celebrity gossip, love of pets, etc.) and not at all in the realm of the serious work that they do for a living.

But that reality did not deter ad agency John St. from Canada.  Taking a “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em approach,” they leveraged the web’s peculiar obsession with cats in a humourous way that also introduces their people and creates awareness about them and what they do:  

Of course not all B2B marketers are as naturally creative as are advertising agencies (not to mention as able to execute content as well).  But it does illustrate how humour is not antithetical to B2B marketing and that even professional marketing services can dream of something approximating meaningful virality on the web.

On your page, you can engage in conversations with your visitors, direct readers back to your site for the latest updates, send tailored messages to specific groups of people, and see how many +1’s you have across the web. Google+ Pages will help you build relationships with your users, encouraging them to spend more time engaging with your content.

Over time it is more than likely that how business pages can look will evolve. But the screenshot below of Amazon’s presence shows how they will tend to look now:

Amazon on Google+

With limited time and resources, what’s a business to do about it? Here are a few key bits to know.

1.  Orgs need to claim their space.

Google+ is not going away, so it is essential to stake one’s claim over one’s rightful business space sooner rather than later (just ask Bank of America what the worst case scenario is if one does not). That goes too for brands/products/services that have their own identity.

2. Google+ will help with search engine optimization. 

That is one thing that will make Google+ somewhat different. The Google+ business page will also display a tally of all one’s 1+’s collected from across the web – reminding continually of the organic connection between Google+ and search. 

3. It IS like Facebook for business.

Trying to make quick sense of what Google+ for business is? It is essentially a platform that will help organizations interact with customers, clients, and fans. Like Facebook, it is in one sense “just” another place most organizations who compete or serve need to be. 

4. It IS NOT like Facebook for business.

One thing that seems to be unique is how Google+ is able to let a firm or brand segment its audience using circles. Imagine, one can make different content for different audiences all under one identity!  Imagine being able to segment different kinds of communications for clients, end-users, investors, etc.  A millenial who understands the power of marketing segmentation might call that capability “pretty sick.”  Again, from Google:

Circles allow you to group followers of your Page into smaller audiences. You can then share specific messages with specific groups. For example, you could create a Circle containing your most loyal readers and offer them exclusive content. 

5. Early experimenting will lead to learning.

Once one has staked one’s claim, one’s own forays into familiarization and use can begin. As surely as night follows day, B2C firms and brands will be rushing into the space. The bleeding edge learning from their experimentation will be sure to soon follow. And many B2B firms (as well as small businees and B2C) will be the beneficiaries of the first wave of trial and error. They will simply need to stay tuned.

But fret not!  There are likely a multitude of techniques that can help find high-value prospects and influencers to connect with in your local area. Here’s one technique that uses Google+ that seems particularly promising.

Because Google+ is still in its infancy (relatively speaking), business professionals who are on Google+ as of right now (i.e. November 2011) tend to be both very connected and very active when it comes to social media.

For example, let’s say one is interested in connecting with lawyers who just happen to be particularly social media savvy. By simply going to Google+ and searching for the term “lawyer” and a specific geographical area, four tabs of results will appear (i.e. Everything, People, Google+ Posts, and Sparks).

When we conducted a trial search (no pun intended) in our local area of Vancouver, we found quite a few actual local area practicing lawyers who are also generally on the leading edge of social media activity.

Finding local area "influentials" with Google+

And when we substituted ”legal” for ”lawyer” we quickly stumbled upon a list of the top lawyer Twitter users in the country. So a useful collateral finding as well without too much wasted time.

At this point, you can then start checking people out to find who might be a someone worth connecting to. And how you make that connection, well, that is a whole different matter!

But for finding ”influentials” with a view to building a relationship, this kind of searching technique can truly be like looking for needles in a stack of needles. At least for now!

Building relationships with influential others is key.

In the “real-world” of much B2B business, when people talk about influence many think in terms of C-Suite, VP level, Fortune 1000, etc. Each industry and functions within them will have their own influentials as well.

In the social world, however, it is becoming much more common to hear about “influencers” in the sense of those who are able to directly communicate with large numbers of others via various social means (Twitter, FB, LinkedIn, the other usual suspects). You’ve maybe heard of services like Klout and Kred that assign scores to Twitter users, or Technorati which does something similar for blogging. These analytical tools are proxies for social influence.

These two quite different notions of influence are in the process of merging:

Influence Worlds Collide

Finding and making connections with those individuals who inhabit the “sweet spot” zone are worth their weight in gold for the B2B marketer who wants to share their messages faster, further, and with real credibility.

Fortunately there are tools and techniques that may be helpful to finding these people The good news is, there are a lot of like-minded people and businesses who are likely looking to do complementary things to what you are doing. I put the question to question to a B2B discussion group I belong to on LinkedIn, and got a few tips straightaway:

David King offers some advice:

Google – do a search for “top/best Twitter handles on XYZ”. There are a lot of blogs/articles and other resources specific to various industries.

Organically – When you see someone retweeted a lot by those you’re following, be curious, be proactive about meeting people.

Twitter.com/search – when you do a search, in addition to searching tweets, you can click on a sidebar to find profiles that match your keyword. The ones with a large following tend to show up on the first few pages.

The real world – your analysts, authors, speakers, and other influencers, who are influential right here in the real world – outside of Twitter. Even if they don’t have a following on Twitter, you still want to network and influence them.

Your business – customers, prospects, partners, etc.

And from Tim Cawsey:

A few manual ways of doing it is to speak to sales people and customers to ask what they read/who’s influential. Also some keyword strategy helps whereby you define your top keywords i.e. “Mobile Payment” and then do searches on Google, www.socialmention.com and also in Twitter and see who’s got lots of followers and which blogs/websites have the best Page rank. Lots of other ways too but that’s a cheap way to start.

These seem like decent and practical points to get started.  Another potentially particularly interesting  way is to use Google+.

It’s also helpful not to simply focus on growing certain kinds of connections to the exclusion of others (i.e. focus just on getting Twitter followers for examples). In today’s world, for better or worse, the reality is that people are increasingly needing to be able to communicate with people in a myriad of ways. 

After finding those who are in or close to the “influence sweet spot”, the task can turn to how to begin to develop a social working relationship.  But the time you spend developing these relationships will have a better chance of bearing fruit as time goes by.

When it comes to social media and content marketing much is providing lists that are focussed around media tactics (i.e. technologies and content types used to generate leads, manage the on-line funnel) and less on showing actual executions that work. Tactics poorly executed, however, are at best worthless. When it comes to content, design and content quality need to be there too.

And seeing actual examples of killer content for businesspeople is important too.

We did a quick scour of content in late October 2011 on Facebook on strictly business/economics pages that already have established fan-bases, readerships, and serious business “cred.” Here are a few particular posts that stood out for being particularly shareable (if not necessarily viral a la “Will it Blend?”) and how and why they work:

Euro-Zoning In

The England-based Economist creates a tantalizing tease on their FB page about an organized tranche of fact-based insight articles on the Euro currency debt crisis.

Economist Curated Page Post Facebook

Why it works: This is content curation of the highest order. The topic is both highly relevent and current to many readers. The post is simple and clear, the visual supports the content. The pay-off page delivers the content promise.  And for the Economist, the FB post helps lure readers over to their a highly sticky landing page, with internal linking galore. Plus, who can pull of a more delightful and penetrating analysis of Euro-economics than the semi-European Brits?

Insight-ing a Riot

The FB post, playing off the “occupy movement”, creates interest in story content that centers on a new analysis of where power really resides.

Forbes Spreadable Facebook Post

Why it works: One thing that is attention-getting in the post is the visual, which is intriguing and impactful.  And being from Forbes, who knows whether the article is going to support the 99% or the 1%? Curious yet?

Celebrity Tour

Every sphere has its celebrities. In the worlds were business and academia intersect is Rosabeth Moss Kanter. When she writes something, she usually rights something. That’s what she promises to do in this post:

Harvard Business Review Viral Facebook Post

Why it works: People not only like to read Moss’s stuff, they like to spread the word, and not only because its relevent, insightful, etc. Sharing content like this directly from the known authority on the subject area (or from HBR in general for that matter) never hurts when it comes to polishing the sharer’s own image as someone who’s in-the-loop.

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So far, what we’ve found is that for the top global management consultancies (the Big Four plus a few other strategy-oriented firms), the more fans they have, the lower the relative level of fan engagement.

Accenture’s Two Official Facebook Fan Pages

Take Accenture. Its has two official Facebook pages. The first (let’s call it just Accenture 1) has over 78,000 fans and frequent postings. Actually really frequent postings – often several per day. Content is ostensibly at least generally relevent and even includes time-sensitive content. So it is following some of the basic tenets of fanpage management.

One would therefore expect to find high levels of engagement (i.e. commenting, liking, sharing, linking to content). But instead the engagement seems tepid for this size of fanbase (remember, its over 78,000 strong!), as the example below shows:

Accenture's Low Like Ratio: Over 78,000 fans but relatively few likes and nary a comment or share

In contrast, Accenture’s second Facebook page (let’s call it Accenture 2) has only about 1/10 the number of fans. Yet the number of likes per post ratio is much higher. Here is a fairly well-liked post:

A More Likeable Accenture: With 1/10 the fanbase but with much better likes-ratio and much more sharing in absolute terms

So why not more “demonstrated engagement” for Accenture 1? This is largely the same effect that is seen throughout Facebook among B2C brands and firms. What’s going on? 

Social Media Loafing Effect?

Sociologists might be inclined to call it social loafing – when you know others are around to do the work you don’t feel compelled to do it yourself. Malcolm Gladwell might suggest that it relates to the rule of 150 (the maximum number of people you can have a meaningful relationship with).

Not all Fans are the Same

Our sense is that, for the most part, large fan bases on Facebook are really not fan bases at all in the normal sense of the word. Larger fanbases, particularly when they are developed using the normal set of tactics recommended by Facebook to grow a fanbase in size, are generally comprised of a fairly unwieldy amalgam of people with varying and often narrow, specific and sometimes tangential interests to the page’s intent. In the case of firms in the management constultancy field, larger bases will consist of a mix would-be and wannabe consultants, current clients, ex-clients, intelligence seekers, environmental scanners, etc., all with differing informational needs.

Segmentation and Content Customization

The Accenture 1 fan page may actually be meeting the needs of its environmental scanning and intelligence seeking fans.  But to service the informational needs of others, though, a more niche-oriented fan page such as Accenture 2 has the potential to be more relevent. Timely content is required for sure, but so is more specific content based on specific interests. 

Creating multiple fanpages to more specifically address needs can be an effective strategy. Think of it as “horses for courses”.

For Accenture, the sharpened targeting of Accenture 2 seems to be paying dividends in terms of increased relative engagement – the kind of thing that will help when it comes to rating higher with Edgerank (how Facebook determines what content is displayed on a FB homepage) - and maintaining a more virtuous-cycle relationship in general with so-called fans.

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@Twitter #goodversusevil Are you wasting my time or going to save us?

As we type this (in October 2011) there are currently 250,000,000 tweets (give or take a few) flying through the air on any given day. That is over 100% more than one year ago. So, that brings lots of thought-provoking (and sometimes rhetorical) questions for marketers, such as:

- So Twitter really appears not to going away, heh?

- Does that mean our firm needs to be there too (or double down on our efforts)?

- Is the twittersphere now so cluttered that there is little point to being more than decorously active there? I mean, what is this “bird in the hand” really worth, especially now, when its getting harder and harder to stand out every day?

When we examined in February 2011 what sectors the firms with largest number of followers were from, we found that a few types of industry sectors that stand out for being Twitter-oriented.

Twitter Followers of Top Brands and Organizations (not including Celebrities) By Sector (Top 350 Followed Entities Combined - February 2011)

What does it mean for B2B marketers? For one thing, if the end consumers of the target groups that a B2B marketer is interested in reaching are themselves being impacted by Twitter, then chances are that decision-makers are also taking it up as well.  Some examples:

1. News, Sports, Entertainment.

If your business touches any one of these, chances are that having a strong presence on Twitter is important. B2C “tweeple” actually read and share tweets! Well, sometimes at least. That’s because time is of the essence and Twitter is nothing if not fabulous at being very fast. But more importantly for B2B, professionals within the industry often tend to care about Twitter too.

2. Retail or other time-sensitive sales oriented businesses.

Same deal. Twitter is great at reaching the “deal-oriented” crowd and driving them to retail.  Just ask Whole Foods if it works for them. Or “daily deal” firms.  Retail needs to do more than think about this for sure. And if your B2B firm markets to retailers, then you won’t look particularly smart when you draw a blank when someone asks you about hashtags or should they be watching trending topics, etc.

3. Technology (and related) firms.

If you are selling to businesses who are tech firms or on the the periphery, then this is the ultimate no-brainer.

What about professional services firms or other firms more off-the-Twitter-grid in general?

It is clear that the uptake of Twitter, especially among decision-makers for B2B marketers in many sectors, is much lower than for their B2C cousins.

Fortunately, “getting into” Twitter, even if nominally, can be something done with little effort, and if done right, with little downside risk. First step, obtain a corporate Twitter presence. Remember, there is a potential cost of not at least claiming your name on Twitter (maybe a firm on the other side of the world gets it before you!). Plus there is a potential image cost to your firm if a client wants to make contact with you that way by can not.

As importantly, don’t get stressed about Twitter. Start ”follower collecting” via your corporate portal (e.g. “Follow us on Twitter”) and other means. For example, scour your existing client contact base and let all your contacts with known Twitter identities that you can be followed. Use it to send out new news about the firm or other content of interest to primary and secondary target groups when you have something to say.

As time goes by and you gain experience with the medium, you can make decisions about being more proactive. We tend to think that Twitter is much better suited to some sectors than others and that its meaning for much B2B practice (especially for those marketing to non-tech firms) is generally less important.

Nonetheless, a “toe-in-the-water” approach at the very least is well-advised for most B2B firms. And remember, while your non-tech B2B firm may not be the first on Twitter, it could be among the first on Twitter among your competitors. And at least in that part of the twittersphere, the cacophony has the potential to be more bearable.

So, the answer as to whether we all need to be on Twitter is likely to be yes. At least for most businesses. But whether one needs to devote a lot of time and resources to a Twitter strategy is a completely different question.

Now bring them together as “B2B Social Media” and what do you get?

When Google brings them together, what we find “at the top” are links to many “awesome” reports and other resources as well as service providers catering to this end of the spectrum:

SERP (Search Engine Landing Page) for B2B Social Media: October 2011

When you dig deeper into, it won’t take long until you see that much of what you find in terms of social media advice is geared towards technology (e.g. software), para-tech, or non-tech companies who market a relatively commoditized product or service to a potentially large number of customers.

The defacto operational sales cycle is one that generally begins with SEO or PPC or social sphere, proceeds through the social media engagement and interactions, possibly integrating with other direct selling messages, incorporating into the CRM tools, then on fairly directly to a purchase decision.

Problem is, many B2B firms do not really operate like this.

Take the “professional services” segment within B2B, for example. 

Professional Services Firms Segment

This segment often includes firms such as law offices, accounting and management consultancies, marketing research or advertising agencies, architecture and engineering firms, etc. Below are some of the ways that those operating within this B2B segment may differ from the googled B2B picture depicted above, and why it matters for how they approach social media:

Size of Firm: Professional services firms often tends to be smaller, with offices often consisting of 50 people or fewer (althought they can also be part of larger national or even globally active entities). Some firms, including the many that are boutique offices of 10 or fewer, are generally be too small to have a dedicated internal champion for social media or otherwise large marketing budgets for social media.

Clients: Professional services firms will tend to have relatively fewer clients although they generally will be “higher-paying.”   As physical proximity of the firm to the client tends to be at least somewhat important, professional services firms may benefit from targeting a limited number “local prospects” as opposed to those from the other side of the world.

Professional services B2B firms operate somewhat differently than other B2B firms that offer commoditized products and services to large groups of customers. This mismatch between how B2B social media is marketed and what professional services needs are can be truly headache-inducing.

Marketing Mix: Social is rising in importance, but other things, such as event marketing and personal selling are often the most important factors. How to integrate and extend the value of social media with these other marketing mix elements is a key question for such firms.

Firm Image: Tends to be important and developed over longer periods of time. Professional services firms, particularly the olders ones, are often concerned to a fault with not alienating their existing perhaps conservative client-base who they may perceive to be more uncomfortable with social media (and perceived concerns about privacy). Such concern can become an obstacle to getting into social media. Creating quality content is key. While professionals generally are confident in the quality of what they do, they may perceive a deficit in being able to make that quality “come across” properly in a social media setting.

How Business Operates: Professional services firms often consists of a mix of highly educated practicing professionals (usually credentialized) along with a functional support team in-house to service client needs. Finding will and capable help internally among the functional team to help turn content into social media is an ideal situation for many such firms. Further, as the practicing professionals themselves may be semi-autonomous (i.e. responsible for development of their “own business” within the larger “group”), finding a way to align social media practices that benefit both firm and individual is often a challenge in these kinds of firms.

Being able to understand the various aspects that make B2B segments and sub-segments operate will help firms be able to better help them do social media.

Is social media a good use of time? It depends.

When it comes to the topic of “wasting time versus enhancing productivity” with social media in the workplace, we are dealing with a version of the classic “tastes great versus less filling” or “chopsticks versus forks” debates. Proponents of one side carefully select facts and/or anecdotes to support their position and then defend attacks from the other side the using whatever tactics are handy.

Of course, as with all phony debates, both sides are right and both sides are also wrong. Who’s right then? As the consultant mantra goes “it depends”.

The value of the debate is in helping everyone think about the real costs and benefits to a given organization in their field of play as well as to fine-tune how to manage social media more effectively.  More nuanced fact-based reasoning is in shorter supply but appreciated when found.

The reality is that the internet in general, and social media in particular, is a candy-store for people who are social and curious at heart. But whether that curiosity and desire to interact will lead to good outcomes in the office is another question!

But here are some signs your employees are more likely to be wasting time with social media at work:

1. Consuming without producing

Employees who consume content with social media but don’t produce anything are missing the point a bit. While the creative process and idea creation are fabulous outcomes of floating in the social media stream, social media generally becomes valuable when one becomes an active actor with something unique to say, and not simply a passive consumer.

Side note: It is too bad that more creative and insightful people were not more active and that less creative people were not a little less active.  Then Google would not have to try so hard to get the search algorithms right for “amazing content”!

2. Lack of training

Employees who have never been trained how to use social media properly are not likely to use it well.  Lack of training inevitably leads towards bad (i.e. non work productive) social media habits. For example, limiting social media consumption and production to certain times of the day is a good way to avoid time-sinking and perpetual distraction.  Yet for some, Facebook is up the whole day at work. Hmmmm.

3. Lack of a social media policy

All too often there is a lack Where there is no policy about how social media is being used in the workplace, this deficit definite guidelines about acceptable, encouraged, and unacceptable usage, personal-oriented use of social media and other unintended social media consequences will tend to filter in and become normalized.

4. Lack of connecting specific activities to specific goals

Because employees often do not tie activities to firm business objectives or even goal-oriented actions, it becomes hard to know what to make of a statement such as “spent one hour connecting with others”. Doing what? To what end? While its true that some random and occasional ”environmental scanning” can have some pay-off, and that idea-creation can be a great serendipitous outcome of checking out discussions that are trending on Twitter, the question remains, “how do these outcomes help themselves or the firm create better outputs?” This is not a plea to measure everything, but rather simply to acknowledge that the goals to which activities are meant to support need to be identified.

5. Not all jobs are the same

For some jobs the connection between social media and organizational value is more tenuous.  This is particularly true of jobs which are heavily “task-oriented”, where distraction is a detriment to doing the job, or where legal liability or regulatory issues may lurk in the background.  Social media tools can be amazing and value-producing and relevant to job outcomes for some, but let’s get real, it is not a no-brainer net-gain for everybody in every organization in every industry.

Having said that, for many jobs there may be activities “around the edges of social media” that could have payoffs for employee satisfaction as well as more direct organizational payoffs.  And many organizations that are too narrow-focused on a “conveyor-belt” concept of efficiency, of course, might do well to change how they operate in general.  But alas, until and unless they are committed to embracing such change, it is not likely that allowing employees to “do social media” at work will help them assemble more boxes, type faster, etc. And in fact, allowing social media can open a Pandora’s Box of distraction that will drive measurable productivity down.

We don’t fall at all into the camp that thinks that social media is inevitably or intrinsically time-wasting. But the threat is real to be sure.

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Contact: shemerling[at]strategicbit.com