As we were trying to put together some interesting facts about social media for B2B marketers, we discovered this interesting video. Then, we decided why would we tell you something, when we can show you instead. So, enjoy it.

B2B companies are ahead of their B2C rivals when it comes to social media adoption

• 81% of B2B companies maintain company-related accounts or profiles on social media sites versus 67% of B2C
• 75% of B2Bers participate in microblogging (eg. Twitter) versus 49% of B2Cers

Source: Business.com – 2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study (http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007404)

And the FTSE 100 are just plain running scared of Twitter

• Just 16 of the FTSE 100 companies are using Twitter, despite the fact that 20% of Tweets contain a reference to a product or brand

Source: Virgin Media Business (http://ow.ly/1gDTf)

But CIOs could well be the biggest blocker to social media adoption

• 54% of CIOs prohibit use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, while at work

Source: Robert Half Technology (http://rht.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=131&item=790)

Use of social media by B2B companies is validated by B2B buyer perspectives

• 93% of business buyers believe all companies should have a presence in social media
• 85% believe companies should not just present information via social media, but use it to interact and become more engaged with them

Source: Cone Inc – Social Media in business (http://ow.ly/1dLqJ)

And that’s because the B2B buying process is fundamentally changing

• 9 out of 10 buyers say that when they’re ready to buy, they’ll find you

Source: DemandGen Report

• Over 70% of purchases are restricted to established vendors or are heavily dependent on Word of Mouth recommendations

Source: Buyersphere ebook, Enquiro (http://ow.ly/YbQm)

• More than 8 out of 10 IT decision-makers said word of mouth recommendations are the most important source when making buying decisions

Source: Forrester Research, How to take B2B relationships from Indifferent to Engaged: Jan 2009

• 59% of B2B buyers engaged with peers who addressed their challenge, 48% followed industry conversations on the topic and 37% posted questions on social networking sites looking for suggestions

Source: Genius (http://www.genius.com/marketinggeniusblog/2767/a-glimpse-inside-the-mind-of-the-new-b2b-buyer.html)

Yet there are differing opinions as to where search comes into play in the buy cycle

• 7 out of 10 buyers say that they start their buying process at vendor sites, not Google

Source: DemandGen Report (http://ow.ly/1d82N)

Versus

• 93% of B2B buyers use search to begin the buying process

Source: Marketo (http://bit.ly/9O6pix)

If you think C-level executives aren’t active online, you’re sorely mistaken

• The Internet is the C-Suites top information resource (74% of C-Level executives say it’s very valuable)
• 53% of C-level executives said they prefer to locate information themselves
• The C-suite first turns to mainstream search engines (63%) to locate information
• 6 out of 10 C-Suite executives conduct more than six searches a day
• Executives in IT are the most prevalent users of the Internet for information gathering

Source: Forbes Insight – The Rise of the Digital C-Suite (http://www.forbes.com/forbesinsights/digital_csuite/index.html)

Client marketers are warming to the idea of social media, but many are still to act

• While 92% of client marketers agree that it would be unwise to ignore social media, 63% do not have a social media strategy

Source: The B2B Barometer (http://www.b2bbarometer.co.uk)

The relationship between Marketing and Sales in B2B organisations still remains fractious

• Sales generate 53% of their own leads and marketing contributes just 24%

Source: 2009 CSO Report (http://bit.ly/7EbaHS)

• 90% of marketing deliverables are not used by sales

Source: The New Rules of Sales Enablement (http://tiny.cc/jXRxX)

• 49% of B2B marketers confess to not measuring ROI

Source: The B2B Barometer (http://www.b2bbarometer.co.uk)

And if you still don’t get the whole social media thing, it’s worth bearing in mind…

• 89% of journalists make use of blogs while conducting their online research and 96% turn to corporate websites
• 56% said social media was important or somewhat important for reporting and producing stories

* Note: We have used and abused the above information, as the author insisted. A special thanks for the folks at Earnest Agency.

Why should you bother with social media? We came up with 41 reasons, taken from various sources, why you should integrate Social Media into your marketing efforts. Here’s our social media list, redux:

1. Over fifty percent of the world’s population is under 30-years-old.
2. All but 4% of them have joined a social network.
3. Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the United States.
4. Social Media has overtaken pornography as the number one activity on the Web.
5. One out of eight couples married in the United States last year met via social media.
6. Years it takes to reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…
7. Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year.
8. iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
9. We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it. (Ok, maybe some of us do have a choice).
10. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s third largest ahead of the United States and only behind China and India.
11. Yet, QQ and Renren dominate China.
12. 2009 U.S. Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction.
13. 80% of companies use social media for recruitment; Percentage of these using LinkedIn 95%.
14. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females.
15. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the populations of Ireland, Norway, or Panama, which are in the couple of million.
16. Half of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook … people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
17. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé, some universities have stopped distributing e-mail accounts.
18. Instead they are distributing electronic readers such as eReaders + iPads + Tablets.
19. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
20. The second largest search engine in the world is YouTube, though its not really a real search engine.
21. While you watch this 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube.
22. Wikipedia has over 15 million articles…studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English.
23. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs, a majority of them are inactive, but this is NOT one of them.
24. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth.
25. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $1,712.32 per hour, which is a lot more than I make.
26. 25% of search results for the World’s Top twenty largest brands are links to user-generated content.
27. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands.
28. Do you like what they are saying about your brand? Do you even know what they’re saying about your brand? You better.
29. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them.
30. 78% of consumers trust recommendations given to them by their peers. 22%, don’t.
31. Only 14% trust advertisements.
32. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI.
33. 90% of people that can TiVo to skip through advertisments, do.
34. Kindle eBooks Outsold Paper Books on Christmas, but they didn’t outsell Chocolate Easter eggs on Easter.
35. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation.
36. 60 millions status updates happen on Facebook daily, two of which came today from our two blog posts.
37. We no longer search for the news, the news finds us, via RSS and other formats that is.
38. We will no longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media.
39. Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.
40. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Men Listening first, selling second.
41. The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in five years, unless you’re a really bad businessman.

The biggest buzz in the advertising and marketing world this year is the invasion of social media, and how quickly social media has taken a dominant stance in the advertising world. We have seen some successful marketing campaigns centered on Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, which have generated huge ROIs. I have engaged in many conversations about social media, and have been told, repeatedly,  that in the B2B marketing world, we simply can’t ride on the success of the social media as it is in the consumer world. Why is that?

“Because in this business, everyone knows everyone!” Many industries are operating in a small circle with very unique characteristics. In the particular industry that we are in, it is run by the old boys, who swear, smoke, drink and crack wise jokes. At least that is what I’ve heard. The images that pop into my head are the wise guys in “Goodfellas” and “Donnie Brasco”. How do I do business with these wise guys? The way Donnie Brasco did it, to become a wise guy myself.

In the past few decades, the way people do business with wise guys is through their sales force. They march to where the wise guys hangout and make a statement, so formal, so systematically trained, so bureaucratic, just like an army. Do you know what the wise guys are feeling about the army? “Army is about someone you don’t know sends you to whack someone you don’t know. It is not how wise guys do business, wise guys just hangout and have fun!”  So, if you want to do business, you better become a wise guy. How exactly did Donnie do it? Socializing! Laughing at their jokes and listening to what they wanted and giving it to them.

With the advent of social media, it is never been easier to know who these wise guys are, and what they want. Don’t be the one to march to their doors and make a statement, as wise guys resent it so much, they will whack your business on the spot and say “forget about it”. Have fun with them, laugh at their jokes, even if they were not funny. Today, you want to be introduced as, “he is alright, he is a friend of mine”, and tomorrow you want to be introduced as “he is a friend of ours, he is a good fella!” Why, because wise guys only do business with wise guys!

Have you talked to a wise guy today, my friend?