Going Social With B2B Lead Generation: Q&A With Chris Brogan

Chris Brogan has a well-deserved reputation as being one of social-media's true community-builders. Chris, who is a co-founder of PodCamp co-founder as well as the Vice President of Strategy and Technology for CrossTech Media, presents on Successful Lead Generation in a Social Media World at the Marketing Profs B2B Forum. Chris will pull from his own experience building successful social networks to show companies how they can do the same. He'll also talk about using social networks as lead generation tools to build your customer and client base.

Let's say I am a B2B marketer, and am constantly hearing buzz about social media and how it can help my marketing. Why is social media important to my business and why does it deserve my attention?

First, social media is a set of tools that comes with a notion of how those tools might be used (more personable and less cold, hard business). But once we get past that definition, it's important to realize that social media tools are a great way to build relationships of trust and develop business connections long in advance of needing them. These tools manage reputation, attention, and value chain sharing very well, and these are the tools that build business from trust.

What about using social media in a B2B versus B2C context? Are the approaches different or the same?

I approach B2B almost the same way as B2C, because businesses are still full of people. People do business with other people. The only difference is that in B2B, it's not about "how many," it's about "who." I make more specific relationships when in the B2B space. In B2C, I'm a lot more open-ended.

Blogging is scary. What if readers leave comments that are insulting or incorrect? How do I handle negative feedback?

Negative comments happen on and off the blog. The important difference is whether someone is just being rude and obnoxious or whether there's a complaint. If information is incorrect, it's reasonable to correct it politely. If someone is cursing and acting inappropriately, I'd delete the comment and replace it with a brief statement of your policy around such things. NEVER remove what might be a legitimate complaint, comparison to a competitor, etc. THOSE must be dealt with in the community's eye, or trust will be sacrificed.

I like the idea of using social media to expand my client and customer base. But how difficult is that, and how long would it take?

It hasn't taken me more than six months to double my email contacts organically (from 2,000 to 4,609) without much effort. I'm not out harvesting, but through the use of social media, and some other more old-school tools (email newsletters still work great), my relationship tree has grown very nicely, and I'm finding more and more value in it every day.

From a business perspective, what do you think is the biggest misconception that most marketers have about social media?

When marketers see social media as yet another channel to drive a message down, they're missing the boat. Worse, they're making themselves look insensitive, unpleasant, and not worth the community's time. It's a lose-lose. Take the time to understand the digital natives, and your results will be MUCH better.