General Electric (GE) is generally recognised as leading the way in business-to-business social media. The company has developed a powerful social marketing strategy over the last five or more years and is now present across a wide variety of social channels. It is often one of the first to use new social channels.
This has been accompanied by a content marketing strategy whose prime objective is to make its B2B products (such as jet engines, turbines and locomotives) interesting to a wider audience. It broadens their appeal and gets experts and non-experts to get excited about these apparently boring machines.
By publishing this interesting content on social media platforms that are often seen as being reserved for consumer products they have achieved high levels of engagement. In other words, people find the images and stories behind these B2B products interesting and want to show others how exciting they are. They become true brand ambassadors.
GE is now further developing their use of social media into the field of social selling – using social media to create relationships that lead to sales, beyond the sometimes more vague objective of improving brand image.
Have a look at our Storify to get a glimpse of some of the tools GE uses. They have invested a lot of time and money in this approach and appear to be reaping the benefits. Not everyone has their resources, but developing a strategy to produce “engaging content” and publish it on the best adapted social channels for your particular industry and target group is a great way to start.
https://storify.com/FirstPointMktg/b2b-social-media.html