More buzz, more qualified leads
Even a biopharma company, or a bank, with many legal issues and constraints, will benefit from social media. The idea to start blogging is an intense cause of fear and doubts for such companies. Two lines published have to be approved by legal department. In pharma, you cannot advertise anything about product brands. But you can talk about a disease, you can connect with patients suffering from that disease, and eventually show a human face on a corporate website, adding a blog section, with pictures, people profile, people signing their contributions.
A chemical industry association wanted to change their positioning, talk to people, not only to industry people, engage with a broader audience, start a conversation. People were tweeting questions, sometimes quite challenging, I was filtering and actually only double countings were not published. That day, I had the feeling that the industry was really doing an effort to open up, as Julie Girling, MEP, asked in a video where she addressed to the industry.
The good news: Your small B2B business can also benefit from social media. First of all, it will expose you much more, and it will work together with your normal networking activities, providing you with more opportunities to identify leads of interest.
Some of those leads will be ready, hot to be visited, they will have a demand right now. Others will stay in the oven for later, and they need to keep hearing about you.