Comment on Buzz Marketing for Technology: Is Social Media more difficult in B2B than B2C?
Buzzmarketing makes a point about the difficulty of applying social media to business marketing. That is certainly consistent with my experience. Subject areas in business marketing tend to be complex and technical and do not lend themselves well to social media marketing. In practice, they have difficulty resonating with users of social media platforms, of which only a tiny fraction may be interested in the subject matter.
Social media are, of course, built around individuals. The atom is an account with a detailed user profile. In business marketing, the atom is is conten. That’s why business uses knowledge management and content management systems, and not social media.
The same distinction applies to viral marketing. It’s hard enough for a video to go viral, but in business, it’s nearly impossible. Fortunately for business, there is usually little value of videos being watched by a myriad of random users.
Branding is the exception. It applies to business and consumer marketing alike, but with quite a different twist. Brands in consumer marketing are often strongly associated with advertising. In business marketing, it’s more about alignment of a whole organisation reflecting the same image while working towards a common goal.
