Yesterday Business.com released additional results of its milestone study of social media  usage across American business, this time with a focus on B2B.  This research should put an end to the argument over the relevance of social media in the industrial sector. In fact, it appears that by percentage, B2B is ahead of B2C in some key categories.

Like the general study I reported last week, this report is chock-full of details by industry, job type, and social media platform. It’s significant because of the scope of the study and the statistical rigor applied to the results. I recommend spending time with this survey, but here are some highlights that caught my attention:

• B2B (defined as companies with >2/3 sales to other companies) actually show as much, or more, involvement in social media as counterparts in B2C.
• Professionals working on social media devoted 21% of their time to this activity versus 18% for the study average (this would imply a much lower rate for B2C but the number is not broken out).
•  B2B company respondents have somewhat more experience with business social media initiatives than their peers in B2C and mixed companies – 30% of B2B respondents have less than one year of business social media experience versus 35% across the study
•  The study showed a statistically significant difference in social media activity with B2B’s dominating in 11 out of 14 social media categories. The three exceptions are – there’s no B2B versus B2C difference in the percentage of companies managing online communities, and B2B companies are significantly less likely than B2C companies to monitor online ratings/reviews of their products or services and to advertise on social media sites.
• B2B’s are more likely to pay for social media monitoring platforms.
• B2B’s are having better fortune seeing an impact of social web projects on their web traffic (70% versus 62%); Revenue (60%/52%) and sales leads (57%/53%).
• Marketing owns the social media initiative in 76% of the B2B’s versus 63% B2C.
• B2B companies maintain a high presence on social media sites, with 81% maintaining one or more accounts on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. B2B companies are much more likely to engage in micro-blogging on Twitter than B2C companies.

It should be noted that of the total survey participants, just 25% were B2B, indicating that overall adoption of social media probably lags B2C.  And while the most highly-publicized success stories are eminating from B2C, this study shows conclusively that among those participating in the social web, B2B’s may be engaged more deeply and more broadly than their B2C counterparts … some of the most surprising, and compelling, conclusions I’ve seen in this field.

What are your thoughts on this research?

10 Comments

• 

  By CK, November 17, 2009 @ 9:22 am

  These stats are better than chocolate ;-). The thing is, for the B2B side, the social media value proposition is so obvious (professionals conduct much upfront research, need to ask others to limit risk, relay on third-party feedback, need to problem solve, etc.) so it’s a breath of fresh air to have a set of strong stats to back this all up.

  Yup, this is a good day.
• 

  By Jonathan Sherman, November 17, 2009 @ 4:35 pm

  First and foremost nothing is better than chocolate. I’m really surprised to see that with 338 b2b companies measured against 652 b2c companies, b2b is still dominating. In fact, I wonder if the sheer difference in number is why b2c is leading in facebook. Had it been 338 b2b against 338 b2c I wonder if it would have been a different story. Nonetheless, these finds are AMAZING!!
• 

  By Steve Dodd, November 17, 2009 @ 5:12 pm

  These findings are terrific!
  There is no question that the activity levels and adoption of Social Media is picking up. We’re now even seeing evidence of real value! But, we need to continue to translate these surveys into recognizable case studies which validate these results. Unfortunately, for every positive study like this, there is another that shows the exact opposite.
  The only real way to drive the point home is with absolute proof.
• 

  By Mark, November 17, 2009 @ 7:24 pm

  @CK I’m worried about you. Wake up and smell the cocoa.

  @Jon — Be sure you are reading the results correctly. These are relative values. For example if there were only one B2B against 1,000 B2C’s the numbers could still be better for B2B if that one company reports more value, more time, more results, etc. I encourage you to look at the whole report. I don’t do it justice here.

  @Steve I have seen few, if any reports that are as broad and statistically valid as this one. One of the biggest issues I see with this field is that people are really loose with the numbers and statistical discipline is almost non-existent. Yet people are so hungry for information, they will run with anything. That’s one of the reasons I have given so much space to this report. I believe the numbers.
• 

  By Don Lafferty, November 17, 2009 @ 7:30 pm

  Good stuff, especially, as you point out, when we’re all starved for data.

  As I mentioned in the comment I left over at CK’s crib, the companies I deal with – high tech electronic manufacturing – are not just dipping a toe; they’re dipping the freaking pinky toe, so getting data on and from this crowd is going to be a challenge because they notoriously don’t want anybody to know what they’re doing.

  Sometimes even internally. ;-)
• 

  By Michael Selissen, November 18, 2009 @ 3:29 pm

  An excellent slicing and dicing across industries and job functions.

  While some of the data was as expected…
  - Marketing owns social media
  - Marketing, technology and consultant roles are heavy users
  - Companies prefer fluffy metrics like web traffic, brand and engagement over, I dunno… revenue and lead conversion
  - SM is weighted to new sales and not customer satisfaction, retention and NPS

  I did find some interesting surprises…

  - 77 percent of B2B companies work on SM initiatives. Much higher than I expected
  - General SM sites heavily dominate while industry-specific ones (like ITtoolBox) and company-sponsored communities didn’t register a blip
  - Mismatch in the ability to see impact of certain forums versus their NPS (like Answer.com). So company perception of value doesn’t always match reality

  Overall, putting in an average of one day a week on SM seems low, at least in absolute terms. Maybe companies are making the best of the tools they’ve got. Wonder if they are choosing the right ones?

  Can’t wait for the next installment!
• 

  By Mark, November 18, 2009 @ 6:08 pm

  Yeah the one day a week seems low .. but it is higher than B2C! Just a thoroughly surprising study.
• 

  By Ben Hanna, November 18, 2009 @ 10:58 pm

  Mark – thanks for such great coverage of the study.

  CK – Love your “these stats are better than chocolate” comment! Hope you don’t mind that I quoted you in an internal update on how the research was being received. :-)

  Jonathan & Steve – Agree with you that with so much “research” coming out around social media (or any marketing channel, for that matter), its absolutely right to approach any new findings or stats in this space with a very critical eye. Knowing this, I was quite careful with study design, data cleansing – I threw out more respondents than the total sample size of most studies you’ll see in this space – and the statistical analysis. While no research is ever perfect, I think we have a pretty solid set of benchmarks here. You can see a little more about how I approach these things in an interview Mark did with me back in July (http://businessesgrow.com/2009/07/13/twitter-for-business-four-breakthrough-insights/).

  Michael – great to see how you’re digging into the results. There is so much depth to the data that we all benefit from calling out what stats make sense or are expected and which are surprising. Gives me much more to think about for subsequent reports.

  My high-level take on all this is that “business” is definitely finding a role for social media, both as a source of business information and a marketing/customer engagement channel. This said, the activity level is almost frantic – too little time devoted to too many initiatives without clear and consistent reporting on key success metrics – with a tremendous amount of learning-while-doing going on as social media rapidly evolves. This suggests to me that we’re definitely in for a bumpy ride over the next few years and those marketers/companies which can stay focused on the underlying reality amid the swirling hype will benefit the most.

  Next installment, by the way, will cover the small business social media slice. Should be out the week after next.
• 

  By Steve Dodd, November 19, 2009 @ 12:44 am

  Ben, thanks for the clarifications! I’m really glad to hear you are going to cover the small business aspect of this. Its one area that doesn’t get nearly enough attention. So many of the studies, case examples and general racket is all focused around large businesses and “heavy” users. But, what I’ve seen is there are many, many terrific examples of how small businesses are leveraging social media in very creative and extremely profitable ways. There are also many “not so obvious” examples of social media successes that never get discussed. I truly believe that this is where we are going to find the real value of what social media will ultimately deliver.
  This morning I read a blog by Umair Haque (http://bit.ly/2LJ0OM) about becoming a “Constructive Capitalist” which is all about creating new ways of doing things and new approaches that will pull our economy out of the mess we are in. It’s not about using technologies like social media to deliver the old methods more efficiently (improve productivity) but using it to reinvent the way we do business all together.
  I truly believe we’ll find these examples in the smaller businesses and other more subtle applications of social media (ie: the legal community). There are thousands of them flying below the radar and doing great things. Big companies (with some notable exceptions ie: Apple) typically look at technologies to “improve” current processes and defend their market dominance. Smaller, more nimble challengers look at applying technologies in ways to displace these dominant players with new, creative approaches that better serve the customer demands.
  I’m really looking forward to this next survey and would like to go past “adoption statistics” to really look at what they are doing, why they are doing it and what results they are generating. I expect these findings will be a surprise to many and will help lead us through the next few bumpy years.
• 

  By Shara Karasic, November 19, 2009 @ 2:22 pm

  I am really looking forward to more small business social media success stories coming out of the woodwork – which I anticipate will happen after we release the small business version of the business social media study. There are obvious ones such as food trucks (@kogibbq) and restaurants such as @coffeegroundz who have gotten great PR and visibility through social media (Twitter). But we’ve also heard of thousands of dollars of deals being made by consultants through participation in business-focused Q & A sites (our own is http://answers.business.com in case anyone reading this wants to scout for some leads there and become an example success story ;-)).

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