@fredericgonzalo

It does sound like he’s doing ALL the right things. Maybe instead he should focus on doing just one thing really well?

Not knowing much about his business I’d survey his current customers and find out where they hang out online, and focus there.

Maybe his audience doesn’t use any of these platforms. If they don’t, then he may need to try other channels outside social media.

@fredericgonzalo

I’m getting public slapped again if I’m repeating: Social Media is not for every kind of B2B.

The mainstream says: You have to be there, Social Media is the only way to stand out.Now, let’s separate this. As  @rich-brooks already said, maybe he is focusing to broad and tries to be everywhere. The industry where your friend is doing business may not be that active across above mentioned channels.

In this case I would focus more on LinkedIn. The page followers are second. More important is to gain more visibility over there. He should focus on getting in touch with people in his industry. It’s not done by setting up a LinkedIn page. He should use his profile to drive conversation with members in his industry. This would be more useful.

YouTube, it could be a hard thing to catch a lot of subscribers but he should make sure to represent his product in this case. Show some videos how helpful the product is not only the product range. Show me why your product is better than the one I’m currently using.

Facebook Fan Page and Google +, well, I wouldn’t say you should drop them as more content gets indexed and hopefully cross-linked to the corporate blog. But without a growing base of interested followers, it is a bit of time wasting. But this depends on how active he is on both networks.

Twitter, could be improved. The important thing is the correct targeting. It’s not done by just listening. In this case he has to be active. Get in contact, engage with others. Show that you are there.

All in all, it’s all about the right focus and a great targeted engagement. So I would suggest to concentrate more on LinkedIn and the corporate blog.

@fredericgonzalo Thank you, you are welcome! Good luck with your customer!

Here’s the thing about those staple selling kinds of industries. Long before online mktg + shiny things came along, these businesses were just dang boring.

So they usually spent some money on brand awareness, but most went to PR firms to build relationships and focus on community marketing. People focus, team focus, community project focus.

Scale that up and slide it over to the internet and your friend’s company should be having conversations on FB and elsewhere about how Joe and Sonya in the Copy Machine Room are helping Habitat for Humanity build a house for a family whose house burned down. And how they’re having little competitions at the worksite with Bob at XYZ company and his fellow workers, all who live and play and socialize online and offline together.

In the past, the only way companies like that competed in the past is by price (which varied little among competitors) and happy personable I-wanna-be-your-best-friend type salespeople building those warm relationships.

That’s what can’t be moved online. What can be is the reporting of all those common interests and relationship-building activities that no one had a chance to see in action before. Show a prospect what a great fun, caring relationship he’s going to have if he becomes a client of your friend’s company and he’ll be more motivated to say yes to the switch.

So bottom line, use FB to tell the ongoing relationship story, give those in the relationship a reason to check back in online every once in a while like SME does here with there camper points, and keep the company and employees immersed in community activities and involvements where all that love spills over online in those running FB updates and conversations.

Just ideas from my experience…

Robin Carlisle

@fredericgonzalo