Social Media Begins with The Buying Process

This past week-end I attended SoCon ‘09, a social media conference held here in Atlanta. We had over 300 attendees and we covered a lot of topics. I facilitated one of the break-out sessions - "Using Social Media to generate leads for a B2B company - and it was well attended with about 40 participants. I had, of course, spent some time prepping for the break-out session, but based on everything I had earlier that day, I scrapped my approach (and my PPT) and decided to really get back to basics (and used a white board.) It struck me as I was listening to all the dialog (while I was twittering my impressions of the conference) that this crowd was very focused on the "pretty-shiny widgets" of social media and this crowd was also very passionate about social media and what could be done with it. I heard people say things like "I've been trying to get my company to blog for 3 years now!" or "If my company would just listen to me about social media."

While your company does need to listen, I think the more fundamental approach to social media for a B2B company is - Where are your customers? Do they go on-line and if they do, where do they go and why?

So to answer this question, in our break-out group, we:
1. Created a basic Customer Buying Process
2. Generated a list of social media tools
3. Identified the boulders - stuff we couldn't do anything about
4. Used 4 different buying scenarios - A transactions buying cycle with a buyer who has some knowledge and use of social media, a transactions buying cycle with a buyer who is a big user of social media, a complex buying cycle with a buyer who has some knowledge of social media and a complex buying cycle with a buyer who is a big user of social media.

I gave the 4 teams 30 minutes to talk through their scenarios and to identify which social media tactics and strategies they would use and why. The result? The RIGHT kind of conversation around if and how you need a social media strategy.
Ah-ha"s included:
- Wow, never thought about a buy cycle (Well think about it now! The power is now in the hands of the buyer!)
- Wow, my brain is bleeding (Yes! Thinking about how and why your prospects act on-line and with what tools is brain bleeding work but necessary.)
- We can use a lot of the same tools all along the buy cycle, we just will use them a bit differently - We can see that LISTENING is key in the early days of social media for lead generation

Lesson learned is that technology is still just technology. This stuff is beyond cool and we all need to be playing with it, learning it, and thinking about it. However, it is the smart application of that technology to drive a business result that creates new relationships and new business. With that said, we are still early days in understanding social media and the impact it will have on all of us. So for many, setting up social media as an experiment and as a way to listen is Step 1. Some people are getting "leads" through social media, but not in an automated fashion. We'll have to see about Step 2 in which we will find a way to "monetize" the chatter through automation.