<p id="trln">After releasing the first version of its forecasting and management tool for small businesses,60mo, a 10-person startup in Cleveland, Ohio, needed to raise capital. Buchholz&#8217;s first choice was Lightbank, a new fund in Chicago. Buchholz tried all the usual channels &#8212; phone calls, emails, submitting through Lightbank&#8217;s website &#8212; but received no response.<!--more--></p>
<p id="trln">So he Tweeted, &#8220;Hey @Lightbank, we should chat sometime. Mid-westerners gotta stick together, yo.&#8221;</p>
<p id="trln">Someone from Lightbank responded immediately, setting up a meeting for two days later. Buchholz left that meeting with an offer.</p>
<p id="trln">&#8220;With email and phone, [a company] can ignore you, whereas with social media, when you publicly mention them, you&#8217;re calling them out to some degree,&#8221; says Buchholz. &#8220;They want to appear as though they&#8217;re plugged in, transparent, and communicating with the world.&#8221;</p>
<p id="trln">Some people might think of social media as a B2C (business-to-consumer) play, but it&#8217;s really a better fit for business-to-business sales, according to Jeffrey Cohen, social media marketing manager for Howard, Merrell &; Partners, a strategic branding and advertising agency based in Raleigh, North Carolina.</p>
<p id="pageStart_paginator_15552980_2">According to Social Media Examiner&#8217;s 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 52.6 percent of B2B companies said they&#8217;ve been using social media for one year or longer, compared to 46.2 percent of consumer-facing companies. It also found that the smallest businesses often reap the most benefits, and that 61 percent of B2B companies had formed a new partnership as the result, compared to 51 percent of companies selling to consumers.</p>
<p id="trln">&#8220;In the B2B environment, there tend to be long sales cycles, often sales are based on existing relationships, and there&#8217;s a committee of people making the decision,&#8221; Cohen points out. Profiles on social networking sites allow pros to showcase their expertise &#8212; and check each other out. &#8220;If you&#8217;re hiring an accountant or lawyer, they may have passed a number of standardized tests, but at the end of the day, you have to trust they know what they&#8217;re talking about,&#8221; says Cohen, who is also managing editor ofSocialMediaB2B.com.</p>
<h2>Where To Go</h2>
<p id="trln">When you think of B2B networks, LinkedIn probably comes to mind first. Launched in 2003, it&#8217;s the big gorilla of professional networking sites, with more than 100 million members in over 200 countries and territories, and some 7 million small businesses on board. Many see it as a recruiting and job-hunting tool, but the percentage of users actively seeking jobs is only 15 percent, according to Ryan Roslansky, director of product management for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions.</p>
<p id="trln">&#8220;People come in to build and manage a professional identity, create and strengthen business relationships, share knowledge and opportunities related to their careers, and make smarter and faster decisions,&#8221; Roslansky says.</p>
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