The Irony of Using Social Media to Monitor Social Media

by Jason Stewart

I'm pulling together an email to go out to the people who visited our booth at the B2B Online Digital Edge "virtual" trade show last week. It was a really great event with some really good speakers, especially the keynote from David Meerman Scott (author of World Wide Rave and The New Rules of Marketing and PR). All of the talks are recorded and can still be accessed by going here and registering to enter the event.

Anyway, I thought I would share some of the best tweets I could find about the event so went to Twitter Search and typed in #b2bedge to see what I could find. After a few minutes I was struck by how many of the tweets were about social media, and justifying the use of social media as a marketing tool in B2B.

90% of the tweets seemed to be about tweeting. 

That's when I realized that one of the most enduring topics touched upon by BtoB marketing Twitterati is the perpetual need to justify their own tweeting. Hence, most of the tweets from the event included the phrase "social media" or were about ways to get started with (or justify the return on) a social network marketing strategy. 

Is social network marketing really the hottest topic in BtoB marketing right now? What about lead nurturing? What about email marketing? Web analytics? SEO? Event marketing?

Is Twitter all that people want to learn more about right now? Or does it just seem that way because that's what the people who are on Twitter are tweeting about?

David Meerman Scott spoke more about relinquishing control of your brand in general, and not being afraid to let people talk about you (or even provide a forum for them to do it) which seems so much more brave and important than simply creating a Facebook page or Twitter account and monitoring what people say about you. It seems like Twitter and Facebook are the trees that people are fixating on, while truly allowing your company and brand to be OUT THERE and approachable and unafraid to let people say whatever they want about you is the way to truly create a social marketing "forest."

Comments

[David Meerman Scott]

Jason,

You've hit on an interesting point. I've noticed that many people think "new marketing" equals Twitter.

But as we know, Twitter is just one tool. There are tons of ways to publish interesting information online to reach your buyers.

Glad you enjoyed my keynote. Thanks for mentioning it.

David

[Elizabeth]

You have some great points

I think Twitter can be extrtmely useful if its not used alone
I found a blog with some great tips on using social media for B2B lead generation
http://www.gatewaybizdev.com/blog/2009/12/social-media-snake-oil-or-b2b-lead-generation-tool/

[Ricky]

I think now a days Twitter is getting more fame. This had become a famous social media to spread the news or to give out the important information. Till now I have not visited this site. But now I feel that even I must enter this social media.

[Ricky]

I believe that Twitter is simply expanding its service offerings to entice users of other social networks (face book, friend feed, etc) and get them hooked on the Twitter dope.

[Karl K.]

Twitter is as commented above, merely one arrow in the quiver. How effective it is dependent on expertise of user, and the market being targeted. Definitely not the silver bullet it's being hyped as by so many people. In our market, time invested in developing a well tuned marketing automation system and solid content for demand generation and SEO yields far greater returns than popular social media platforms.