Using Social Media to Connect Directly with Customers

This post is a contribution to Jordan Behan’s request for ideas for a presentation he is putting together on how businesses can use social media (Web 2.0) to connect directly with customers.  Jordan’s blog is TellTenFriends.  I suggest that Jordan’s presentation include examples about business-to-business companies’ use of social media. 

Most social media success stories are typically examples of consumer companies.  Important, but how about those in the B-to-B space?  So, here are two B-to-B social media examples:

Chordiant Customer Experience Solutions uses wikis (web sites that visitors can add to/edit) to both shorten and improve their new product development process.  They have a select group of customers that collaborate on the private wiki with Chordiant’s product engineers.  The customers help define features for the next product release.  eWeek wrote a great article about this and other companies using wikis. Here is my earlier post.  Here is eWeek’s comprehensive, well-written article.

Autodesk is a leading software and services company for the manufacturing, infrastructure, building, media and entertainment, and wireless data services fields. According to their web site, Autodesk first revolutionized the software industry with the AutoCAD® product, which introduced drafting on a PC. Now Autodesk has developed online communities that are (my opinion) a model for other B-B-to-B companies. 

Autodesk hosts the communities solely for the use of their customers, users and partners. Marketing content is part of the community sites; marketing materials remain at Autodesk.com. Separate communities exist for manufacturing users, artists/designers, etc.  Autodesk does not market on the community sites. The community sites are just that–communities. This is my earlier post on Autodesk’s online communities.  (Personal note:  I’m an Autodesk fan because they offered a dog-friendly workplace as early as the 1990s. I am a hopeless dog-person. Just ask my 11-pound, overly-bossy Lhasa Apso.)

Josh’s Social Media presentation should address some suggestions for business-to-business companies dipping their toe into using social media to connect directly with customers:

– Start small.  Choose a select group of customers that are your raving fans/evangelists. Have a conversation with them about how/if they would like to interact, collaborate with your company. Or with each other. Then select the best social media tool–blog, online community, message board to fit your unique community.

– Ask about user-generated content preferences.  Have conversations with your evangelist customers what types of information about your products and services they like to find out from each other. Autodesk communities share tips and other user-submitted how-to information.

These are my findings. Does anyone else have business-to-business social media suggestions, case studies?