Company is the Content

In the consumer market, social media marketing is well understood. Consumer-facing companies constantly create new content to engage with their customers.

In the B2B world, however, the value of social media marketing is still not well appreciated. Too often social media is thought to be too frivolous and the domain of cat videos and chatty teenagers.

In my course “Company is the Content: B2B Social Media Marketing”, I work with students to uncover how B2B companies can successfully use social media to reach their business customer.

I rely heavily on case studies and real world examples to demonstrate that social media is integral to any B2B thought leadership, lead gen., or customer service campaign.

I start with the Cluetrain Manifesto and its iconic premise “Markets are a conversation.”

In that book, the authors posit that end-users aren’t interested in being told about a product or a service or a company. If a company lucky enough to catch someone’s interest, if even for a moment, then it needs to be prepared to engage the end-user in a conversation.

If a company immediately tries the hard-sell (ie: not engage in a conversation) then it will lose the end-user, who’ll talk about the company in none-too-flattering terms.

So that is the Cluetrain Manifesto’s central premise. What is mine? Glad you asked.

The question I’m interested in exploring via my course is if markets are a conversation, then who are the speakers? In a conversation, you need people talking to each other, right? Well, who are they? And what are they saying? And why?

In a market, there are many different participants and each has something to say, but it is always a few central companies that drive the conversation in a market.

Not many companies can do that. But the good ones can. Sometimes. Once in a while.

So if markets are a conversation, and the company drives the conversation, then the company is the content.

And that’s where we begin.

Student Evaluations

Student Evaluation: Spring 2012-2013

Student Evaluation: Spring 2011-2012

Lectures

Lecture 1: Core Themes

Lecture 2: Talking

Lecture 3: Listening

Lecture 4: Strategy

Lecture 5: Wrap-up