Sometimes I answer questions on LinkedIN’s Q&A section when they deal with public relations and/or social media. Today, Mark Micallef from AXIMA asked a question about how and if B2B companies should use social media. You should use the link to read all of the good answers that Mark got from the users of LinkedIN but below is just Mark’s question and my answer if you are in a hurry.

Mark’s question: Is the social web relevant in a B2B context?

Enterprises with a focus on selling to the consumer end-market have realised the potential of the social web (twitter, facebook, buzz, etc) and established their brand presence accordingly. But is the social web relevant to enterprises who’s market is other businesses? Does a B2B need to monitor social channels for messages about its brand, and does it need to communicate its own messages?

And my answer:

Hi Mark, the short answer is yes, definetly and that would be smart but via dialogue – not push marketing

There are several ways that a B2B company can be involved in social media, as I see it:

1) The company itself can have an online presence in the form of profiles on relevant business-related networks such as LinkedIN. Establishing a good profile there can help you in many ways because other companies can access a lot of information about the company and the people, you employ, who recommends them, how much experience they have got etc. Just as a Facebook profile might be my “social media face” to the world, your company’s LinkedIN profil could become yours.

2) A business is also “in social media” when the people it employes are involved in various social media. As was stated above by others, business is ultimately the result of relations between PEOPLE. So a B2B company definetly also needs employees who are active in social networks and use social media to establish valuable relations and connections.

3) A B2B company can use social media and social networks to reach out to their partners and help them improve their business by finding out what it is exactly, that their stakeholders need.

The third example leads me back to your second question: should B2B monitor social media for messages about its brand?

I’d say absolutely – but don’t just do a brand monitoring, you should also monitor subjects related to your business and your stakeholders’ businesses!

Let me give you an example: A major manufacturer of washing machines would like to sell more units. They would also like to improve their relationship with the plumbers and electricians who install and repair the units in people’s houses and use that relationship to get valuable feedback on how the units are doing and what the customers think of their purchase.

So, the washing machine manufacturer starts monitoring social media services and networks and find out that an amazing number of enthusiastic plumbers and electricians are actually making their own videos on how to repair a range of issues that frequently occur when washing machines are used in an unintented manner or just get old. These videos are actually quite popular in the trade and get watched a lot by other plumbers and electricians.

This gives the washing machine company an idea: start a dialogue with the video creators and find ways to help them continue to make videos. Perhaps they need better cameras or a microphone? Perhaps they have always felt that a particular design was stupid and took too long to repair but could be fixed with a simple design change – but they never before had an easy way to make a suggestion to the washing machine manufacturer?

Pretty soon a respectful and mutually beneficial dialogue is happening. The washing machine manufacturer does not “take over” the video production but simply uses it as a platform to establish a new form of dialogue with their key stakeholders.

This example, btw, although annonymous is far from fictional

Always remember in social media: “sharing is caring” and social media is not just another marketing channel for brand messages – it is a place for dialogue between equals.

Hope this helps you out!

Jesper

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You have probably heard about the “sticky accelerator pedal issue” that forced Toyota to recently begin a major recall. Such situations where consumer safety and trust are in danger are always a nightmare for the company that finds itself  down the creek without a paddle (and, of course, also highly unpleasant for the consumers ). In my years as a PR consultant I came close to some cases where product recalls where deemed necessary and of course there are lots of case examples out there for you to study, if you are interested in those kinds of things. Fundamentally, the recall adds another dimension to the regular crisis management and crisis communication because you are dealing with a genuine threat to people’s lives. This isn’t some sort of corporate scandal about e.g. mismanagement of funds – the customers that you earn your living from are suddenly experiencing that your product can hurt them and their families, and that broken trust needs to be handled immediately, delicately and with a lot of empathy.

Which is why I was pleased to see this video below with the president of Toyota USA on YouTube, adressing the problem and trying to regain the trust of Toyota’s customers. There are five basic rules to solving a crisis situation that almost always applies:

1. Stop the accident / prevent whatever went wrong from causing more damage or harm
2. Accept responsibility whenever and whereever you have a responsibility
3. Demonstrate empathy with the people who have suffered in some way because of the problem – show that you are genuinely sorry
4. Give out information regularly and as soon as you have it – keep feeding the news cycle to prevent rumours and speculation
5. Show the way forward – tell your stakeholders what is going to happen now

In the video, the president of Toyota USA, Jim Lentz, does an excellent job on all 5 points. If you listen to his presentation, you can actually cross the items off the list one by one. He demonstrates that he understands that this is about trust – not money – and although he speaks on behalf of 172,000 employees and Toyota dealers, he assumes the full responsibility and apologizes personally, demonstrating empathy and humility.

I got this clip from the Norwegian blog Colt Kommunikasjon by Ole Emil Johnsen, who wrote about it in Toyota-krisen løses med YouTube (in Norwegian). Ole Emil Johnsen notes five things that makes this an interesting case for Toyota and social media enthusiasts in general:

1. The message is personal – it is delivered on camera by a charismatic and genuine spokesperson directly to you – the customer
2. Toyota gets the entire message out – not just a six second sound bite on television or a quote in the newspaper
3. Toyota spreads the message to social media channels used by their customers making it easier to reach them
4. Toyota initiates a dialogue, inviting people to participate, partially enabling them to follow the conversations that their customers are having about the sticky pedal issue
5. Toyota is pro-active and gets their message out there in cyberspace where a lot of the critisism is happening, hopefully thereby influencing the dialogue

If you look at the commentary below, you might get the impression that this little tactic by Toyota isn’t working because the company is really receiving a lot of foul language, but remember this: angry or disappointed people are much more likely to went their anger in an online forum and the ones who do forgive Toyota are most likely still annoyed and weary and not likely to start writing a praise in the comments sections. Time will tell whether this video will help Toyota regain their customers’ trust again. My bet is it will.

If you are a fan of Super Bowl and especially the Super Bowl commercials, you probably noted Google’s latest ad: “Parisian Love”. It is a nice little flick about using the search engine, which takes us through a developing romance in Paris ending in the assembly of a baby crib.

This is exactly the kind of story that is open to take offs and spoofs that can continue to take it off in many different directions. One example has already emerged – Parisian Love par 2 (original creator is unknown to me). It has a nasty tweak to the original story, but I think it is kinda funny and it definetly shows how one can be creative and interact with content on the web – which I am also pretty sure that Google does not mind in the least.

This little movie, “The World’s Biggest Signpost”, I got from the newsletter from Poets & Plumbers – a Danish marketing company that specialises in online, viral and social media marketing and campaigns. It is an interesting example of how NOKIA took a simple concept and converted it into an interactive, social media marketing campaign about mobile navigation with lots of buzz potential.

The World’s Biggest Signpost from adghost on Vimeo.

The setup of the LinkedIN profile has for a long time by many been perceived as too static and not very user friendly. But now LinkedIN has introduced a new drag-and-drop system that allows you to rearrange the different sections or ‘boxes’ on your profile, so you can chose the order in which information is presented from top to bottom. Watch this quick video to see how it is done.

You can find a lot more interesting tips on using LinkedIN on the LinkedIN YouTube profile at http://www.youtube.com/user/LinkedIn!

Ever wanted to create a Facebook page for your company or client and found yourself in need of inspiration? Willis Wee, a blogger at Penn Olson, has put together this excellent Top 50 presentation of the best, most innovative and most popular Facebook pages in 2009.

See the presentation here:

Last week one of my favourite speakers on all-things-web 2.0, Clay Shirky, gave a speech at New Media Days 2009 conference in Copenhagen (Denmark). The speech was recorded on video and although it has not appeared on YouTube yet, you can watch it at the New Media Days’ website: Clay Shirky: “New Motivations and Opportunities – Understanding the Amateur Producer”

Enjoy!

Alright, time to get started on the actual tutorials here on AskAboutSocialMedia.com! The first thing I want to talk about actually has very little to do with what we usually think of as ’social media’ – it’s RSS. But because RSS is a clever way to subscribe to many of the news feeds that are generated by e.g. blogs, it is a handy thing to know about when you are getting started.

So, RSS. The name comes from “Really Simple Syndication” and the easiest way to explain what it is all about is to have you watch “RSS in Plain English” from the Common Craft Show on YouTube. If you get annoyed by the poor sound in this video, go to the homepage of the original video and watch it there instead.

So, that is RSS in one easy lesson for you. Up in the next tutorial: how to set up different RSS readers.

A few days ago Twitter and LinkedIN announced the implementation of a new feature: shared status updates. It was announced on the LinkedIN Blog and the news was later picked up by e.g. The Guardian.

The new system basically allows you to channel your tweets directly into your LinkedIN status update and vice versa.

On the LinkedIN Blog you can read all about this new feature and how to use it. It includes this short video featuring an interview with Reid Hoffmann, co-founder of LinkedIN and Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter:

I have toyed around with the concept for a few days and I really like this new feature. However, I strongly suggest that you chose the feature only to send tweets with the hashtag #in to your LinkedIN profile – otherwise your contacts on LinkedIN will see all of your Twitter replies and broken bits and pieces of conversations that will probably make very little sense to them.

Text100, a global public relations company, has published their survey of 449 blogs from North America, Europe and Asia. I found it especially interesting that even though bloggers behave very similar and have similar interests there are still cultural differences that affect e.g. how they respond to being contacted by public relations companies, who wants them to write about products or clients.

See the blog post “PR folks: Time to listen – global bloggers tell it like it is” and dive into the survey’s results in the presentation below.

Thanks to Jonas Rugaard for bringing the survey to my attention!