How to get started – this is the right time for industrial companies to put resources into Social Media. Why and How?
There has been much scepticism about the use of Social Media in the industrial market place – even late in 2012 I saw a paper which suggested that 30% of engineers did not use social media in their work – with the implication that this was a poor result but nonetheless also implying that 70% do use them. I myself was very sceptical for a long time until I carried out a 2 year survey and realized the possibilities – after 6 months of operating a social media plan for our major clients we found almost an 80% increase in their webprofiles gained by PR and Directory Management alone – and I knew the time was right – now nearly 2 years on it is just automatic for us to propose a social media program for any client in the knowledge that we would not be doing our best for them if we did not.
Even so I still think that the approach needed to be cost-effective with industrial B2B companies is different from that employed with B2C mainstream/retail activities – because industry always takes a little time to adapt new marketing techniques to the industrial specification and buying process – but I believe this is already changing as younger engineers come through with their greater awareness of, and comfort with, social media and the mobile devices they are best suited to work with.
Consequently we have found a way to optimize the use of Social Media for industrial SMEs by interlinking the corporate website with an active blog and posting on relevant SM sites – this Online Marketing Program compliments our PR Program of press releases and directory management.
Read the Whitepaper here for even more information.
