It's pretty much accepted these days that social media is a channel that B2B marketers cannot afford to ignore. Business buyers are using social media more and more often to gather information, so B2B brands need to be out there telling the world exactly what they can do.

But, of course, it isn't that easy. Or rather, it isn't that easy if you want to do it effectively. And one of the most important steps is to plot out the social media landscape for your target audience. Where are they going? Which websites do they get information from? What do they do when they're there? In short, one of the first things that you need to do - before you worry about whether you are going to run YouTube video interviews or a series of whitepapers - is to find out who are the key influencers in your marketplace.

If you can convince those key individuals that you have something worth talking about, it will give your social media presence an instant lift.

But first of all you have to find out who they are - here are a few simple tips for identifying the "go to" people in your corner of the social media world.

What to do when your brand is under attack?

More and more companies are going social and have established a presence online as a means of engaging directly with their target audience and building communities around their products or services. As most social media departments will know, when starting a campaign it is always important to monitor the brand to find out why, what and where they are being talked about. This will give the campaign a structure when setting up profiles on various social media platforms and creating  engaging content, whether it's in the form of a blog post, tweets, video, etc. There is quite a lot of work involved when setting up and executing what a business might think is the perfect social media plan and strategies.

What happens when it all goes wrong & the consumers start to attack a brand? In the last couple of weeks I followed the John Lewis group on Facebook. The company had been subjected to a series of verbal attacks for advertising their Christmas video. The video was advertising their Christmas message, which caused somewhat of an uproar towards the end of the video when it showed a child coming out to hang a stocking on his dog's kennel, with the dog sitting outside in the snow. This prompted animal lovers to complain about animal cruelty in there droves. A series of very negative mentions continued to pour onto the Facebook page over the next few days.
 
To view the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpV-xagkTDU

When you are an established brand, how do you deal with such a series of negative mentions?
Firstly, you need to listen to the key points of contention to gain an idea of how to approach and placate the audience. The worst thing a brand can do is shy away and ignore comments being made as brand credibility will be lost immediately, which could potentially lead to a loss of sales/loyalty. The audience are giving their feedback and they will at some point want to be have their concerns and opinions addressed by the brand.
 
John Lewis monitored their Facebook page and with the initial comments, simply passed on the complaints email address. As momentum built however, this was not feasible and it became apparent that they would have to address the issue 'en masse.' After a day or two John Lewis released the message below:



This message was intended to reassure the audience with the tone that they adopted, and offering a willingness to make a shorter version of the advert. Since then there were still negative comments being made, however, the Facebook wall was updated the next day with a resumption of their normal social media activity.
 
This is a great example of how a brand or a large business tries to resurrect their brand's image. Above, I touched on 'the tone that John Lewis adopted,' and wanted to further explain this. A company's tone is extremely important in social media as a means of defining the brand's values and bringing recognition for the sort of company that they are. It is therefore really important to understand the brand so think about the tone every time a response is required. It's not the end of the world when your brand receives negative mentions, act on it sensibly and you will either sway those criticising or you will take the emotion out of the equation.
 
On a final note, I obviously had an opinion on John Lewis's Christmas advert and I was for keeping the old advert. This was simply because it was meant to depict a light-hearted scene, cleverly designed to evoke positive emotions related to the Christmas season.


 

This piece complements a post I wrote about a month ago, where I explained the reasons why forums are a frequently neglected but highly effective part of the social media toolkit for marketers.

Online communities as we have already established are a great way of building conversation and attaining engagement, however, it's important to adopt key tactics especially when joining a forum as a B2B Marketer. I was fortunate enough to be taught from a person who has been on the social media scene since it's pretty much started and is now heading up the social media division at Brands2Life.

Let's start shall we? Here are a few factors I take into consideration when approaching a forum:

• It is important to have a set of brand guidelines that will tell us who the target audience are. That way you'll be able to sign up to forums that are relevant to the brand's category. This should also apply to other social media platforms such as Twitter.

• I have found the most important factor to consider in all of this is the TONE. The tone that is adopted within the forum will not only be representing your brand but it  will also allow other community members to relate to what is being talked about within a thread. The tone is easily identifiable via monitoring conversations within the forum before signing up; it is important to watch & learn.
  *Note that if you are representing a brand it is important to sign up as the brand's name so that other community members can trust who they are speaking to.

• Once comfortable with the tone that will be used, the first post made should always be an introductory post. It is important to create a presence and become recognised. Ensure to state that you have 'joined the forum as a means of.... and are representing the brand.'   
  

• Become conversational by talking to other community members who have topics that are relevant to your brand. Continue to build the community's trust for 2-4 weeks before you decide to start up your own thread and get conversing about the brand. 

• Forums are great means of driving traffic and one can do this by adding a signature that will link to the brand's website (again, only once you have become established) so that one doesn't  necessarily need to keep talking about the brand as that could be deemed as spam.   
  

• Lastly, have fun. Going into a forum is a little bit like going to a party. You join a crowd of people by firstly engaging with on-going conversation. What you will not do is join a crowd of people and completely change the topic because that would be plain rude.

I hope that this blog post has helped answer why forums are just as effective and how they can be better used to our advantage. I would strongly recommend forums as a suitable social media platform and another way of maximising a brand's exposure/awareness.  

I'm going to start by taking you way back to the classic 'The Tortoise and the Hare'.

I am sure that a lot of you can remember that story - a fable that in many ways reminds me of the social media mix and how some platforms are similar to the Tortoise and others to the Hare. I very much feel that online community forums and discussion boards could be deemed as the Tortoise, compared to the whizzier, more flamboyant medium of Twitter etc. A slow moving result but a true winner! Let me explain why...