Why B2C Practices Won't Work for your B2B Web Community

Posted by on June 25, 2009

As a leading SaaS content, community, and SEO management system, eCrowds incorporates tons of social media tools for creating the most effective B2B Web site and Web community possible. Because we operate in the B2B space and our solution incorporates social tools, we often discuss and evaluate the role social media is playing in the world of B2B Web communication and how it differs from the B2C realm.

Over the past few years, we've all seen the immense increase in use of social media on B2C web sites like Amazon.com, and its success in use of features like personal ratings and testimonials in developing a trustworthy community around the site. But B2C sites are targeting a different crowd. Selling t-shirts to an individual is very different from selling enterprise software, for example, to an established technology corporation.

While the use of social media on B2B and B2C sites is often intended to serve similar purposes, the audiences and respective approaches to target these audiences in the B2B and B2C Web marketing worlds differ in several key ways:

• B2B Web communities and their use of social media should be aimed, first and foremost, at specific and well-defined business objectives, not increasing site traffic.

• B2B Web communities are used to educate site users, customers, and prospects and to facilitate the continual growth of relevant content/resources that serve this educational purpose. While the same is true in some ways for B2C web communities, the aim with use of social media on sites like Amazon.com is less on providing a central realm for product education, and more for the inclusion of inline product reviews that will help persuade the consumer to make an immediate purchase.
  

• Employees of B2B companies are encouraged to participate in their organization's community, whereas individuals at B2C corporations rarely utilize social media tools to communicate with community members directly.

• B2B Web communities will include product and company feedback, ideas, discussions, wikis, and forums, all aimed at expanding resources around a product, service, or company, whereas B2C communities will advertise, discuss, and feature a plethora of items for sale.

• B2B communities will make much of their site's content viewable to the public, but will also include product or service information specific to customers that is only viewable and editable by selected authenticated site users. Depending on how and with what solution the B2B Web community is powered, there are often sections of these communities that are permission-enabled and can only be collaborated on by relevant members (usually existing customers or users of a product/service), adding further value and insight to the community.

• B2B community members expect to find useful resources within their community, whereas B2C site users know and expect they're being marketed to.
  

• Use of social media on B2B sites provide a mechanism for sustainable (and later searchable) communications. I.e. - most B2B community sites feature interactions back and forth between companies, users, and community members. However, because the communities in the B2B realm are more often used for growing broad resources and site content, there is a need for area-specific search functionality, such as the ability to search a user forum, or look for a specific word in comments across the site. (Chances are if you run a search for "Troubleshooting" on Amazon.com, you're going to find books for sale with Troubleshooting in the title). If you search a B2B community for the same, and you'll find forum posts, ideas, discussions, and comments all aimed at this topic.

There are clear differences in the needs, goals, and participants of B2B vs. B2C Web communities. When embarking on the process of building your organization's B2B community and deciding how it's managed and configured, consider the specific business objectives your community will seek to address before deciding what solution and features to incorporate.

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