Social media marketing for B2B: From information to decision to retention

This chapter explores the benefits and challenges of social media marketing from a B2B perspective. It synthesizes theoretical and practitioner frameworks for understanding and resolving challenges relating to social media strategy development, tactical implementation and performance measurement. Practical recommendations along with best practice case examples highlight strategies a marketer can consider as they design, plan and integrate social media content for the modern, socially connected B2B buyer. The chapter employs the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as the framework to explore factors that facilitate and inhibit adoption of social media sites in a B2B context. This framework has been successfully utilized in recent research exploring social media adoption by B2B companies. B2B adoption of social media has been driven by new technologies and evolving buyer expectations for more consumer-like experiences. Social analytics refers to the tools a marketer can avail of to monitor the effectiveness of social media.