I come across business owners who still believe that internet tools such as blogging and Twitter may be fine in the B2C world but have no legitimate place in the world of B2B. This is a limiting belief, to say the least.
What internet tools in general – and social networking tools in particular – have done, is to increasingly narrow the gap between the ‘B’ and the ‘C’ of the two business propositions in question. For starters, how many people open one browser for business use and one for personal use? Do you really think that people at work (’business’ people, even) are not also engaging in some ‘consumer’ practices like buying books on-line from Amazon, selling on Ebay that paperweight the mother-in-law brought back from the coach tour of Normandy, or even catching up on the football results on the BBC web site?
The other side of the coin is that a business blog that never gets personal is a very dull read. Also, business Twitter streams which do nothing but tweet company news are hardly going to set the word of mouth genie shaking to get out of the bottle.
It’s time to remember that people buy from people. Forget B2B and B2C when it comes to the internet. It’s all B2P now. P for person. The new tools let you and your business become personal, which allows your customer to see you as a person. You don’t need to wait to meet a buyer at a trade fair or the CEO on the golf course: you and your business have already made your personal mark on the web.
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