Increasing business to business customer engagement through social media

In a highly competitive business environment, engaging customers is critical for companies to succeed. Customer engagement creates deep connections and long lasting relationship, which drives purchase decisions, build trust and cultivate loyalty over time. Business is happening where customers are. Companies are offered great motivations to be present in social media. However, many businesses are not able to engage with customers efficiently and effectively due to insufficient understanding of customers’ preference and expectation. This research aims to investigate how to increase business to business customer engagement in social media. Firstly, possible perception gaps between customers’ expectation and business people’s assumptions were studied through surveys in four countries. In addition, interviews were conducted with business people to learn from their first-hand experience. It intends to find out the means to advance and deepen customer engagement through social media. Research results indicated that there are clear perception gaps between business people’s assumption and customers’ social media preference and behavior. Business people are twice more likely to think that customers are willing to engage in business-related activities in social media. Business people assumed different set of activities that are popular for customers. In order to engage customers more effectively, companies should build a clear corporate identity in social media, generate quality content that appeals to customers, establish a dedicated cross-unit team with a coherent working process and have synergy among different business operations and projects