All the buzz about social media swarms around big consumer brands. The same is true with social media monitoring. Even though B2C companies get the most coverage, social media is actually a better fit for B2B companies because of long sales cycles, complex and expensive products, relationship selling and more decision makers involved in the process. Let’s look at how listening and monitoring apply to B2B companies.

The most common use case for social media monitoring is volume of online mentions. Big consumer brands need a platform like Radian6 to manage the flow of data, route it to the right people and respond if necessary. Reporting on this activity is also a core reason to explore this type of monitoring solution.

And one of the most common questions about social media monitoring is why do companies need to do it if nobody is talking about their brand or company. Most B2B companies are in this category. Except for the largest brands, B2B companies do not have the name recognition or the brand awareness for prospects and customers to talk about them by name on the social web. This is even more of a reason to use a robust social media monitoring solution.

5 Simple Approaches to B2B Social Media Monitoring
(when no one is mentioning your company by name)

1. Search for Your Products by Their Common Names
People talk about products online, but they use common names for them. If you understand how your customers refer to your products, you know what keywords to begin searching for. Use Google and Twitter searches to refine your keywords, so you come to a monitoring tool armed with the most relevant terms.

2. Find Your Customers and Prospects
After keyword searches bring back results, the next step is to determine where your customers and prospects spend their time. Not every social media platform is right for every B2B company. Rather than assume Twitter, for example is the optimum platform to focus on, you may discover a niche forum that is very important to your business.

3. Fine Tune Your Personas
Many B2B marketing plans are driven by a series of personas. Make assumptions about your personas’ online behavior and use social media monitoring to determine if you are right. Revise your personas based on your results. Continue to review this data at least every six months to make sure your personas haven’t changed.

4. Discover Content Ideas
B2B companies need to develop and share remarkable and valuable content with their online networks to connect with customers and prospects, and drive them back to the company website. Establish regular searches to look for awesome content ideas. Find posts that you can reference in your content or look for new ideas that can only be seen when viewing the industry as a whole.

5. Follow Industry Trade Shows and Events
Many industry events try to build a social presence by using a hashtag on Twitter, posting to a blog and establishing a YouTube channel. Track all these sources to discover people, companies and the latest news from your industry. By aggregating these conversations through social media monitoring, you can uncover trends that you would not otherwise see.

What are some other ways you can use social media monitoring for your B2B company? Have you seen success with any of these approaches?

If you are looking for some guidance with social media for your B2B company, download this free B2B social media ebook.

Jeffrey L. Cohen is a social strategist at Radian6 and the co-author of the forthcoming The B2B Social Media Book. You can follow Jeff on Twitter at @jeffreylcohen.

Tags: B2B, B2B social media, beginner, Social Media Monitoring