I recently read Paul Gillin and Eric Schwartzman’s book: “Social Marketing to the Business Customer”. I liked the book (so much so that I wrote an Amazon recommendation) for a number of reasons. First, I like the format. The book is broken down into three sections: Tools, Technology, Tactics. I also liked that it is a very readable book (about 240 pages, lots of statistics, pictures…). Lastly, there are some actions I think any company could take away from this great summary for current social media users and those looking at how to jump in:

1. In the end, people buy from people. Some of the best examples mentioned in this book have to do with subject matter experts becoming celebrities (example: Scott Hanson at Dell). This is a win-win-win situation. Dell wins because clients connect with Scott. Scott wins because he is building relationships. Dell’s clients and prospects win because Scott creates rich content.
    
2. “Social media isn’t a task to be delegated to the marketing department.” Companies have to rethink their culture and value system AND reject the veneer of infallibility (this from a chapter called “To Err is Human”).
    
3. LinkedIn is a great platform to use to develop customer advisory councils.
    
4. In the future, your website will be a destination providing relevant information that will unlock new marketing opportunities by allowing prospects to self-educate through organic, online sharing and interaction.
    
5. Blogging is not about pushing out information. It is about responding to the interests of your market.
    
6. Many companies focus first on the tools, while they should focus first on goals, metrics, tactics and then tools.
    
7. Traditional marketing is push. Social marketing is pull. Social marketing requires a complete inversion of conventional tactics.
    
8. Useful content is that which provides help in an impartial manner. They go on to say that online interactions that morph into a sales pitch are likely to send all but the latest-stage leads running in the other direction.
    
9. “Social media prospecting works best when experts get involved.” As an example, engineers value conversations with other engineers. Making your engineers brand ambassadors breaks down more doors than marketers talking to engineers.
    
10. The 90:9:1: 90% of the population reads, 9% lightly participates and 1% actively participates in social media (such as comments on blogs). This is important to understand because a small vocal crowd can create movements that may or may not be beneficial or informational (last sentence is my thought on this).

The book is available on Amazon and is worth the read.

By Dan McDade