Continuing the social media question - Facebook.

Columnist Mark Ritson writing recently in Marketing Week - The seven dumbest sins of social media - sparked off considerable debate about the effectiveness and value of social media as a marketing tool, not least in eliciting a response from the publication's editor who replied: "But all three of these social networks (Facebook, Twitter and Google+) are still in their infancy. We’re still finding new ways for them to add relevance to our lives as users. The fact that brands haven’t yet figured out how best to exploit social media channels is no reason to rule them out as valuable to marketers just yet." Ritson previously had written " If you have opted for a social media budget that is going to be allocated exclusively on Twitter and Facebook, you are not budgeting or planning your marketing properly." A telling point that emerged was the absence of real success for brands and examples of some downright and expensive failures. Clearly there are success stories as others have documented, for example David Meerman Scott in his best seller book "The New Rules of Marketing & PR".

With the major brands still trying to figure out the best use of social media, it is perhaps unsurprising many b-2-b marketers are still proceeding warily. In the last blog we pointed out how Twitter could be useful as another self published channel for headline news and links back to your main site's news office or blog. The next one to think about is Facebook. Undoubtably  it is extremely popular as a social media tool, but does that make it a marketing tool? And if it does is it relevant for b-2-b marketing? With 750 million accounts by July the numbers are compelling but how many of these are buyers of industrial components for example? Some clients enthuse about Facebook and maintain a company page while others scorn the idea of association of their company with such a site. As yet we have still to see any sales that can be attributed to a Facebook lead for our clients that use Facebook. Typically b-2-b marketing is not about gossip, so the more common use is news stories, snippets of news that don't rate a real press release and general chit chat rather than actual campaigns that involve the 'friends' and test the strength of their interest.