What

June 06, 2007

What's Wrong With Social Media For B2B Marketing?

I believe social media has an inherent bias against the realities of B2B marketing. This is the topic of my new article "What's Wrong With Social Media For B2B Marketing", now available as part of Search Engine Land's Strictly Business column.

There’s no topic that bloggers like to write about and link to more than blogging itself. And because links are what people (and search engines) use to rank blogs, this creates the perverse incentive to write about social media more than other marketing topics, especially other B2B marketing topics.

I’m not saying that social media doesn’t play a role in B2B marketing, since it clearly has a big role to play in driving traffic, building thought leadership, and facilitating word of mouth referrals.

But to B2B marketers, social media is just one tactic in a portfolio of techniques that best practice companies use to generate awareness, drive leads, and nurture relationships. The reality of B2B marketing today is that more prosaic methods such as PPC campaign management, lead nurturing, customer case studies, and good old-fashioned PR still matter more than social media techniques.

What do you think?

Check out the complete article, What’s Wrong With Social Media For B2B Marketing.

Jon Miller is VP of Marketing for Marketo, a provider of affordable, easy-to use-marketing automation software that helps B2B marketing professionals drive revenue and improve accountability. Jon\'s blog, Modern B2B Marketing, explores best practices in business marketing, ranging from pay-per-click management to lead nurturing to marketing accountability. The Strictly Business column appears Wednesdays at Search Engine Land. For more information check out http://www.marketo.com or http://blog.marketo.com.