I’ve seen a few articles recently asking if social media is dying as a business marketing tool. I suspect these have been kicked off by the way in which sites such as Facebook (a long, steady decline) and Twitter (more of a self-destruction) have been struggling. I suspect none were ever major marketing commitments for most B2B businesses, but they could (and still can) generate traffic in many environments and circumstances. Whether we want to be seen on them at all nowadays is a different matter.
Those who have never liked using them probably felt uncomfortable with the lack of control, and the fact that somebody else owned the medium for their own profit. And that’s fair. Our websites do not have this problem. Surveys seem to be showing that LinkedIn continues to be the major platform for B2B marketing, and it might be worth focusing our efforts on this. There will continue to be a desire for discussion and feedback, and LinkedIn might be the best compromise. The alternative is creating our own online chat forums, and most of us don’t have the following, the investment or the time to carry that off.