Business Social Networks Which Engage

Business Owners Don’t Buy It

For a couple of years now we’ve been trying to engage business owners in the business oriented social networks.

Advice from the marketing gurus suggests hanging out in on-line forums, and helping, chatting, swapping stories with the folks there. This, they claim, is the new approach to selling. Engaging with prospects in a social environment is a great way of letting our value show through, without the confrontation of the sell/buy tension. Social sites are the new tennis club, or cocktail party.

There’s so much noise being made by experts, this has to be right. Or does it? Is the world full of people wanting to buy stuff, but not doing it elsewhere? Does reading somebody’s status update persuade them to do something about it? Does having a Wall for them to write messages on, or an @address they can Tweet make a difference.

Results in our case suggest the answer is a resounding “maybe”.

We have attracted registrations from people we’ve met on Twitter and LinkedIn – although not many. Whether we’ve built sufficient motivation to change the way they do things is open to question. Getting them to join in our efforts to create our own business social network has been a flat out failure. We have our own groups on Google, LinkedIn, Facebook and Get Satisfaction. We have nearly 2,000 followers on Twitter. We even have our own Ning networks (2).

But we don’t have people in conversation with us.

Where’s the Problem

This lack of engagement might just be us of course, although that doesn’t apply one to one. And the problem isn’t just with small business owners. It’s exactly the same in our medical business where even consortium partners won’t join in a network set up specifically for them.

The problem might be the on-line technology. That’s unlikely since ours is an on-line service, and they found us on the Internet. It might also be the social engagement, but some of our contacts are quite active on Facebook.

More likely, business people don’t like engaging in groups, particularly with others they don’t know, and especially in public.

Yep, I know that engagement stuff appears to work for MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc. But, even there, things might not be as rosy as it seems – more on that elsewhere.

Is There an Answer

Months of kicking around possible barriers and potential solutions have narrowed my thoughts down. The particular combination of business and social we’re all superimposing on a concept developed by kids, for kids, might be the problem.

The industry’s attempts to construct business social networks are failing, and will do until we separate the business from the social.

Business owners like doing business in a business environment – buying and selling. They don’t need to know (or tell) about kids, pets, new phones etc. They don’t want to be preached at by the social experts, they don’t want to be spammed off the network, and they don’t want their business in public view.

They do want opportunities to pitch their offers, and are probably happy for others to do the same. They do want to have some influence, be informed and also be entertained. Given all these wrapped into one site, business owners will probably spend some time, every day, doing it.

My Recipe

So here’s my recipe for a successful business social network:

* Opportunities to do business
* Access and influence
* Information
* Entertainment

Actually a bit like a farmer’s market, with a trading floor, a news channel, a bar, and a card table.

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Building a Business Social Network