In a sentence, our philosophy on Marketing is:
Identify organisations to whom your products and services will add value and then effectively communicate your proposition to them.
With this in mind, a blog post entitled “How to Identify an Online Community for Your Business” has to be relevant. Although it is directed primarily at consumer markets (see my last post on the matter), I think it makes many points that are highly relevant in the B2B arena. The article also highlights 3 things to remember before you start:
- If you’re looking to build a quality following, it takes time and effort
- It’s not all about the numbers
- It’s an ongoing process, not an event (a more manual, human-type process)
When reading the article, there is a 4th thing to remember in the B2B market. 4. Social Media is not the only tool Social Media can be particularly powerful in consumer markets and certainly can have a role in B2B marketing but there may be other, more appropriate, media through which to build and communicate with your community (Networking, Offline media, email etc). If you remember this, the principals behind the article are good, and well worth a read. You will find the full post on the seomoz blog here: How to Identify an Online Community for Your Business