Born to B2B Social

It doesn’t matter if you’re churning out great content for your B2B blog. If no one is reading you, you’re going nowhere. No prospects. No leads. No nothing at all.

Lead Generation

Pay-per-click has traditionally been one way of getting visitors to your website and still has a role to play. If not, Google wouldn’t still be pushing so-called “sponsored links”.

It maybe beneficial though, that as the owner of a small-medium business, to also consider using social media channels to win some traffic and generate really meaningful leads. That’s not because pay-per-click doesn’t work. It’s just that with all those chunky costs you’ve got, pay-per-click isn’t always cheap. And anyway, given the lengthy B2B purchase cycle, social media lead generation might actually be a more effective path to go down.

Word of (Digital) Mouth

Just as we listen to our friends when they recommend or refer us to a business, the same goes for social media connections on sites like Twitter or Facebook.

Even the big guns are witnessing the power of social. For example, this week, Martin Clarke, who runs Mail Online (British newspaper The Daily Mail’s website), revealed that 10 percent of the site’s UK traffic is generated by referrals from Facebook.

According to Clarke, who was speaking at the Society of Editors annual conference, only Google delivers more traffic to their site!

A number of our clients are also witnessing similar figures. At a meeting today, I was going over some stats with a client that revealed Facebook sends them over one third of their traffic – second only to Google.

Make Social Work for You in Your Area

Forget dreaming of business from Chicago, Oslo or Cannes, as a small business with local knowledge and local contacts, you should also be using social media to target local people – especially if you own a bricks and mortar store. But even in the B2B space there’s plenty of room to connect on social channels with other local businesses.

In a country like Sweden, were we don’t really have many people (approx 9 million), B2Bs have taken advantage of the Twitter hashtag #svpt to connect with other B2Bs, generating a local dialogue of sorts.


If you’re a web design shop in Baltimore or sell air duct cleaning services, why not tweet your news, offers, services and personality (!) with a #baltimore hashtag.

Social Media is a Commitment

Every small B2B getting started with online marketing needs to realise that you don’t just throw money and time at social media for a week or two. Or even a month. It’s a slow burn. A commitment that takes time as you as you gather more followers, grow your network and in turn influence. Get it wrong and you’ll no doubt head back to pay-per-click. But get it right and you may find that online word-of-mouth generates leads and prospects every bit as valuable as those pay-per-click visitors or (expensive) ads in trade magazines generate.