Social media in B2B: what’s their benefit?

Earlier today I virtually stumbled upon this infographic about the use of social media in so-called ‘non sexy’ business-to-business companies.

As far as this infographic is concerned: the various statistics and insights are quite interesting in their own right. Those figures of course should not be taken too lightly: every industry and every B2B organisation is unique as previous research by dutch marketing intelligence specialist TNS NIPO rightly emphasized.

What lessons can be drawn from this infographic?

Social media often deployed to send

A particularly striking insight is the large emphasis that B2B marketeers (still) seem to place on the use of social media for promotion purposes. Words like ‘listen’ or ‘monitor’ do not occur at all in the infographic. Apparently business exposure and traffic still are way more important measures to marketers than generating relevant leads and converting these into opportunities in close cooperation with sales.

The infographic therewith shows a part of the social business reality. It however is not 100% complete or correct. That applies for instance to the research question ‘how important are the following resources when researching and evaluating technologies and services to purchase?’. After all, only three answers are possible in this context:  LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest.

Infographic: business use of social media

Is the below infographic therefore not useful at all? No, this picture clearly shows how ‘the market’ sees and uses social media. Or rather: partly uses. And therefore where the opportunities are for B2B marketing and salesteams that look beyond throwing some random posts and pictures onto twitter, facebook and LinkedIn.

Do you want to find out more how to – for instance by using HubSpot – better leverage social media in marketing, sales and service? Read more about  marketingautomation in monitoring, and using relevant social signals, conversations and leads. Or contact us with your specific question or challenge.