IBM and Oracle are two examples of companies that have it right. No, not because of their size or reach. Not due to their technological prowess.
I’m talking about their fearlessness when it comes to social media.
Both of these companies, who have legal departments bigger than a warehouse, have implemented a culture that encourages their employees to blog. They give them space to do it, time to do it, and have people who organize and categorize for them. Both companies understand the value that the average worker or expert has to their buying audience. They know that being the company shill is probably not the primary motivation for posts with subject lines like “Incremental Statistics Maintenance – what statistics will be gathered after DML occurs on the table?” They see the value of content that doesn’t necessarily begin and end with their public relations department.
Business buyers are different from consumer. I’ll talk about this a great deal in this blog but the differences need to be understood. A business buyer is an expert. They also have a secondary motivation for making a good purchase rather than an impulse purchase. They want to keep their job. The better job a company does in laying out all the reasons to buy their product or service – and in providing the research and information these buyers need to persuade their bosses – the more likely you will be the beneficiary of this buyer’s money.
