There has been plenty of discussion about how and when (or if) social media will impact the world of customer reference management. Savvy reference managers are already pointing reference customers to online communities or blogs where there’s a question about, comment on or criticizm of the company’s products/services, and asking them to make a positive contribution. This attention and effort is only warranted if potential B2B buyers are paying attention. So are they?
Apparently Fortune 100 CEOs are not. The website überceo.com recently published results from a study of Fortune 100 CEOs and their use of social media.
- Only 2 have Twitter accounts
- 13 have LinkedIn profiles (of those only 3 have more than 10 connections)
- 81% don’t have a Facebook page
- Not a single CEO surveyed has a blog
It’s safe to say this isn’t good news if you’ve built a marketing plan around using social media to influence this segment of C-Level decision makers.
We’ve been part of a number discussions focused on the reasons for not participating. Time is perhaps the major factor. Staying tuned into, let alone contributing to, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc., is for many, a distraction, a time vacuum. We know personally the challenge of continuously contributing to this very blog. Could there be a generational gap between the bulk of social media users and today’s decision makers? Perhaps, though stereotyping would likely be a mistake.
At the end of the day it’s all about results. If a reference program can attribute some sales benefits to their social media efforts, then it’s worth continued investment, which is, you guessed it, primarily time.
Executives emails are tweets…they are short and very compact. They read and response to 100-200 a day.
I’m not sure when the day will come that they’ll begin to put anything out they without having PR, Corporate, legal, etc. review so much and water it down that it won’t mean anything. Does anybody seriously think President Obama unilaterally writes and sends out tweets?
The next point is that everyone wants something from them…I’m not sure there is value in them having a LinkedIn account…at that level, that’s not how they network or find their next gig, recruit talent, etc.
And yes, time is a HUGE factor…LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook: They just don’t have time for it and they’d need to justify where the value is.
Reference programs are justifiable!! There is undeniable ROI on these types of programs and it gives both executives and their organization scale and leverage.
Bottom line For reference programs the time/value equation works with Executives, for tweets, LinkedIn, etc. it simply doesn’t.