Adding UGC to B2B and turning communication into sales

Mon, Nov 16, 2009

By Jimbeau Andrews, as part of the Guest Blogger Series

At the heart of Social Media are Communities (SMC’s) that facilitate B2B communication in unique ways. B2B marketers that tap into powerful SMC groups can enhance their brand marketing objectives, establish Word of Mouth brand rapport and facilitate the resale of their client products. Social Media embodies the very spirit of B2B marketing by utilizing partner platforms to proliferate the use of their own products and in the process establishing a new virtual retail frontier.

When Digg, a site for people to discover and share content from the web, announced the addition of a new Trending tool, they built a special Twitter account to make it easy for users to follow the action. Twitter, a micro blogger community has utilized relative and meaningful business partners to make itself indispensable. Last month, Twitter and Microsoft struck a search deal to integrate Twitter within Bing and the same day they struck a similar deal with Google. More than likely if you hear about a top story these days it will come in the form of a feed from your favorite SMC instead of the front page of your daily newspaper.

We are living in a connected world where digital wrecking balls are tearing down communication barriers enabling cross-platform billing and universal data feeds to devices that can trans-code multimedia on the fly. This clear path of information exchange is giving rise to close relationships between brands that target likeminded consumers and the SMC platforms that support them. A B2B marketer’s challenge is to anticipate the unique needs of each SMC and provide tools customized to these niche groups and their needs.

The spirit of B2B partnerships can be seen on LinkedIn, a popular business network that now enables users to sync their status updates with Twitter so your updated LinkedIn status will also appear as a tweet on Twitter. Reddit, a site that enables users to vote on what is most popular on the web is composed of hundreds of sub-communities, each focused on a specific topic. There’s a Reddit for Music and probably a Reddit for your nearest city. Note that when you access Reddit Science, content has been uploaded by users and often times from companies such as The New York Times, Wired Magazine and the tech division at Yahoo.

One of the highest grossing films of all time, Paranormal, used the business platforms of Delicious, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon and Eventful to promote, market and enhance their film. The User Groups that evolved from these SMC’s helped ensure the film was released by submitting over 1 million votes on the website Eventful.com. The viral nature of this program spawned hundreds of niche groups including a Paranormal Dating group on the dating site Geek 2 Geek.

According to ChannelAdvisor, Social Media sites are now among the top 10 referring Web sites for most online retailers. With Monetization at the heart of every business enterprise, a virtual store within a niche SMC creates a direct connection to a targeted consumer. As more and more businesses seek to expand their identity and relevance on the WorldWideWeb, they are increasingly turning to SMC’s to establish storefronts.

While some SMC’s like Digg focus on advertising platforms and branded soft-goods, a few SMC’s are providing commercial applications that will drive partner sales. On Facebook, 1-800-FLOWERS was the first retailer to launch a full-service online storefront so users leave birthday wishes for friends, and then order them a bouquet of flowers without ever navigating away from the home page.

Paving the way for cross-billing platforms are payment options from companies such as Amazon’s Flexible Payments and PayPal’s Payvment API’s that give developers full access to billing systems for SMC’s. The ability to accept and distribute payments within SMC’s establishes a new commercial platform ripe for B2B marketers. Companies like Alvenda have taken newsfeed purchasing to the next level with plug-and-play shopping platforms that enable shoppable advertisements that can be embedded into any blog or SMC site.

About the Author

Jimbeau Andrews is an award winning filmmaker and mobile content pioneer who is also credited with creating the sport of Freestyle Motocross. He has built digital solutions for key brands such as Cirque du Soleil®, Sony, Kawasaki and The Oakland Raiders. As CEO of HotClickVideo Worldwide, Inc. he leads a team developing proprietary video software technology and UGC transactional tools that help anyone monetize video. He has spoken at The Adobe MAX Conference and has been a Featured Innovator at both the 2009 NATPE and the 2009 LATV Festivals.

Share and Enjoy: