How to Build a B2B Community in Facebook

Yes, B2B marketers lean towards LinkedIn as the social network of choice…and for good reason. But that doesn’t mean that a very real opportunity doesn’t exist to create a community in the world’s largest social network – Facebook.

Consider this, according to Hubspot’s “Intro to Facebook for Business”, 41% of B2B companies have acquired a customer through Facebook.

Mike Lewis,VP of Digital Strategy TATA Consultancy Services, kick starts the panel discussion with a challenge to marketers to consider the opportunities they may be missing in Facebook. With his challenge heard, Lewis shares his methodical approach to determining how to best create & nurture a B2B community in Facebook by launching into his ‘3 Initial Keys to Standing out on Facebook’.

1) Pay Attention

Before you ‘listen’ for your opportunities, begin with an understanding of:

1. Why are you listening?
2. Where is the conversation happening?
3. What are you going to pay attention to?

As Lewis points out, the amount of information in Facebook is seemingly insurmountable to harness. For brands to be effective listeners who actually pay attention, a more organized approach to identifying and tracking key conversations is needed.

What to listen to in Facebook:

1. Your company & brand
2. Market landscape
3. Competition
4. Customers
5. Influencers
6. Buying intent
7. Your page

2) Interaction

Continuing his systematic approach, Lewis encourages brands to identify their various audience types and to nurture their involvement differently based on their level of participation.

1. Passive Followers

• Who they are: Silent observers
• How to interact: Ask questions

2. Moderate Interactors Regular Engagers

• Who they are: Regular engagers
• How to interact: Publish content consistantly

3. Active Interactors Top Fans

• Who they are: Top fans
• How to interact: Make them champions

4. Influential Interactors

• Who they are: Influencers who regularly engage
• How to interact: Guest post or co-creation

3 Content

Corey O’Laughlin, Content Marketing Manager at MarketingProfs, takes the stage to share a story on the power of letting your audience inform your content. It all started with MarketingProfs asking their Facebook audience what topics they care about. They received an overwhelmingly response for ‘mobile content’. Surprisingly, when they did produce content on mobile, their audience wasn’t engaging. So what gives?

That is precisely what O’Laughlin needed to know. So she turned to her audience once again for that info, this time cleverly asking her Facebook ‘mobile marketing is _______?’ What she found based on the audience response was that they love mobile…but fear it as well.

Armed with this information, O’Laughlin was able to more effectively break down content on mobile marketing to produce the information their audience was craving.

And Remember!

As the session wraps, Kristen Curtiss of Constant Contact offers some important and often overlooked counsel: don’t saturate your audience with content. With a customer empathetic approach to social, Curtiss encourages marketers to really consider if the content your publishing is valuable and whether the rate at which your publishing is helpful to your audience.

So cultivating a B2B following in Facebook requires sound listening, strategic interaction and customer-driven content? What marketer could resist this opportunity?

Stay tuned for more from the 2013 MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum. Up next ’10 Key Influencer Marketing Questions’.