Social Media Fitness From a B2B Perspective

an interview with
Jenny Weigle Social Media Manager, CareerBuilder.com

A lot of people talk about social media.  Jenny Weigle does social media.  And I might add she does it really well for the socially savvy brand, CareerBuilder.com.  I met Jenny at MediaPost’s Social Media Insider Summit back in January and was delighted to catch up with her afterwards to discuss some of the findings of the soon to be released Social Media Fitness Study.  (Thanks for the insights Jenny.)

DN: Can you shed some light on how your organization came to have a disaster plan? Did you have a disaster first?
It’s all about communication. We didn’t have a disaster take place, but if one does, we feel confident in our ability to work through it because of the strong communication across departments in our company. We have social media guidelines and a community management playbook that both outline the steps to take in a crisis. My supervisor and I collaborated with people across departments to create these documents.

DN: Can you speak to the benefits of having a cross-discipline team in place for social media?
In my opinion, it’s not just a benefit for social media to cross departments…it’s a necessity. A tweet or a post on your company’s Facebook wall could pertain to any topic: customer service, job openings, products, services, advice, etc. It’s essential that the person in charge of your social media efforts is in touch with every department so that he/she can provide an answer to the fan/follower as quickly as possible. That’s what makes a company stand out and stay connected to their fans through social media.

DN: How are you developing such effective content at CareerBuilder?
Our team listens to the feedback coming from our fans on social media and looks over a report on that feedback on a regular basis. Also, each person creating our social content is up-to-date and informed on our industry so that we can give our audience the most relevant information.

DN: How have you been able develop to a consistent customer experience across all of your social channels?
Again, it comes back to communication. I stay in touch with our customer service team on a regular basis (at least monthly). They’ve been fully trained on our engagement tool and I keep them updated on major changes to the social platforms. We are a team, and it’s important to know that and do whatever it takes so that all admins feel that they are a part of the team, working together to achieve our social media goals. We also regularly recognize our team members for outstanding performance.

DN: Can you offer any insight to as to why you decided to streamline your accounts and address the benefits of doing so?
If someone wants to connect with us through social media, it should be very easy for them to find us and begin engaging. By having too many accounts, a company can make this harder for a user to find and connect with them. We evaluated which accounts were most important to us, and in some cases we merged them, in others we closed them. We did this with our audience in mind and what would make it easiest for them.

DN: Do you have any thoughts on why large B2C companies scored higher [on the Social Media Fitness Test] than B2B firms and smaller B2C companies?
B2B has been slower to adopt social media overall. In my opinion, it’s easier for a consumer to pick up on social media because he/she can use it and learn it on their own time. For a business to use social media, it must first consider what needs and goals it will fulfill, who will run it, what content will be shared, what metrics will be measured, etc. This takes more time, research and consideration for the business.

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