Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Wikipedia... what's the best social media platform for your strategy?
Social media platforms have exploded in popularity...creating tough choices for companies that need to communicate in public. Which ones actually reach a B2B audience? Do I have to join dozens of sites to even get into the game? Listen as our expert panelists wrestle with these questions and more on the Astadia Cloud Computing Forum podcast.
- Matt Glazer Obama Campaign
- Steven Woods Eloqua
- Karin Pindle Astadia, Inc.
Karin Pindle:
A lot of people are discussing whether Twitter or Facebook or blogs are the best social media tools for businesses to use. The ones that I think provide the best results in B2B are LinkedIn, Facebook, and Wikipedia. We’ve also dabbled with Youtube and Twitter with some success.
LinkedIn is definitely the best place I would recommend to kick start your social media program.
LinkedIn has the ability for you to develop a page for your company. Put your business in there and members can see who’s who in your company and get an idea about whether they want to work with you. Potential customers can dive deeper into your company, which will help to cultivate relationships that are vitally necessary when people are deciding where to spend money.
Steven Woods:
It’s an interesting question whether Twitter or Facebook or other social media platforms are the best, but I don’t think it’s the right question.
If you look at these forums, each one has a vibe and a conversation associated with it. I think the goal is to find the right conversation and join.
But, you really have to stick with the vibe of the forum you’re entering—the same way that certain conversations are appropriate for a board meeting or cocktail party or a family gathering that wouldn’t be appropriate in the other settings. Same with social media.
If you are having a personal conversation, Facebook works. If you’re having a business conversation, LinkedIn might be better. If you have a visual, entertaining message, Youtube is your better forum.
So, it’s really about the message rather than whether one particular media type is better than others.
Matt Glazer:
If you are talking about businesses or corporations, I would create a LinkedIn profile, because that’s the nature of the community you are targeting—but, supplement that with either Twitter or Facebook.
Facebook is more static and Twitter is more dynamic. Twitter is about creating a conversation and a dialogue and it’s really much more social, but it really depends on your purpose.
One thing I recommend is to work backwards—people tend to want to come up with tactics before they identify goals. I recommend figuring out what your goals are, then determining your strategies to achieve goals, and finally developing tactics to achieve the strategies.
Steven Woods:
You need to understand your audience—particularly the influencers in your audience and how they want to absorb the messages that you want to provide. That will then lead into understanding which social media sites will work for that purpose.
You have start with the audience first, rather than the technology first.
Matt Glazer:
The reality is that you have to do what you feel most comfortable with and if you feel comfortable with the technology then you will succeed. And if you don’t, then you are going to fail.
Emulate the companies that are doing it well. Ask the people who you are engaging how they are doing it and why they do it that way.
Steven Woods:
Understand how you are going to add value to the audience and guide them along. It’s fairly easy to figure out the technology, but it’s a matter of whether the content engages with the audience.
There is a lot to be said for experimentation. So get on Facebook, get on Twitter, get on LinkedIn—if nothing else, just to understand how and whether it pertains to the message you are trying to communicate and the audience you are trying to engage.
If you start with the audience first and understand how you want to communicate with them and how to add value, then you have a good framework for understanding whether the media is working for that purpose.
