Tags: B2B, linkedin, Social media, websites

I was at a CIM event in Cambridge recently and got talking to a marketing person from a small gas testing company who wanted to explore how she could use the company website to generate more interest and revenue.

I may be wrong of course, but gas testing doesn’t strike me as an area where you can build a vast, young, vibrant social media site and get people going on about what they’re testing at that moment. But, let’s think about social media for a second…what does it really do? It provides people who have something in common with the opportunity to tell each other things or find out what’s going on. In short, get something valuable.

(linkedin.com is of course one of the best known social media sites that doesn’t focus on the latest pop videos.)

Anyway, back to Cambridge…I suggested the marketer think about her customers and what is important to them in their work. Apart from needing gas testing products, they’ll be gas testing for a reason, so probably interested in research information on gases, and news on the gas industry, maybe comparative industry information on the liquid chemical industry, who’s got a job at the big gas companies. And then there’s the information about what else they do in their lives. We might research them with some qualitative research and find out they are big book fans, or big travel fans, or love good food, or have high disposable incomes and like cars to escape their working day in the lab. You get the idea. Whatever it is, provide the things on your site that they’ll find valuable, doesn’t have to be about your products directly.

This works because the gas testing customer base is probably smallish, so we’re not trying to build a facebook rival, just a place where gas testing product customers can go, feel they’re getting something valuable, loving your brand, and so buying more of your stuff. Because that’s what people do when they like somewhere.