I have been discussing with one of the biggest brands in India towards partnering with them on their social media marketing initiative. To give you the basics, they are in the B2B space and the idea of being present in the social media was initiated by their CEO.

As expected, they put together a team that wanted to study the space and figure out vendors who can help them. I happen to visit their office to discuss on social media and it so turned out that we submitted a proposal to them with a plan to help them be on the social media. There were a number of other vendors that had submitted their proposals to them. It so turned out that we were the only ones in the fray that had expertise in B2B segment, whereas the rest of them were all B2C vendors. That got us thinking, and we figured out that there are very few players in the B2B space and are negligible in comparison to B2C.

Social media by its nature rewards popularity, not necessarily accuracy and quality. B2B marketers pride themselves on the quality and accuracy aspects. But usage of social media is picking up in the B2B segment as brands cannot ignore this medium, for this is the fastest growing medium. There is always a conflict between the rewards and the risks social media poses and this company is worried about their IP being there in the social medium. Hence, they have a policy where every communication that goes out of the company is scrutinized by an editorial team of 5 that looks through with the help of a microscope and add to the complexity.

The moment I heard this, I told them that they are not ready for social media and they should probably revisit their communication policies. I also suggested to them, with the current scenario, no vendor relationship will last more than a couple of months as both the vendor and the customer will find it difficult to be in a relationship. I also suggested that they need to arrive at a middle path through which they allow communication to be open and only then would they be able to leverage social media. 

We are looking at keeping this lead warm with the hope that this company will one day seriously re-look at their communication policies.