B2B Companies Homeless in the Digital Frontier?

In a world where 30% of couples meet online and where friendships are initially formed on social networking sites it’s no surprise that businesses are beginning to use these sites to their own advantage.


But one has to wonder: why? What do these businesses plan to accomplish? And should all businesses even be on Facebook at all?


There are those who believe that it couldn’t hurt to have one, but I can’t help but feel as though Facebook has its limitations, especially when a business’s target is other businesses.


According to an article on Social Media Today by Chris Koch, an analyst of B2B marketing for Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA), “Much of what works on Facebook seems to fall into two camps: Charity…(and) Contests/giveaways/games.”


One could argue that B2B companies could use these techniques as well. My response to this is, who would see these posts?


Before a company posts charity campaigns or various contests on Facebook, the company needs to have a group of people who “Like” the company. Here’s where the trouble comes in.


Facebook users consist of the general public, and therefore most users “Like” various brands or products that they use. If you follow this line of logic, the people who “Like” a B2B business wouldn’t be the average Facebook user; it would be other businesses.

Source: http://mashable.com/2011/02/08/why-consumers-
unsubscribe/#9479Reasons-People-Unlike-Brands-on-Facebook

But B2B businesses do not need to be too upset about this. Erica Swallow, an editor at mashable.com, writes in an article on mashable that “81% of consumers have either ‘unliked’ or removed a company’s posts from their Facebook News Feed.” She also posts that one of the top three reasons people “unliked” a company is because the content eventually bored them.


This shows that maybe Facebook isn’t the best tactic in the long run, but this doesn’t mean that B2B companies are without a home in the Internet frontier. Other social networking sites have been created to target businesses.


LinkedIn, a social networking site geared toward business professionals, could be the solution to a B2B company that wants to move to the Internet. Top rank, an online marketing blog, createda post that includes numerous ways B2B companies can use LinkedIn to their advantage.


What do you think? Do you think there are ways B2B companies can use Facebook to their advantage? Should companies use other social media sites instead?