B2B Social Networking - Lead Generation on SlideShare

Lead generation through business with personality, shortcomings of star-ratings functionality, driving B2B social networking activity, making sharing beneficial to community members and encouraging responsible behavior by discouraging anonymity with Rashmi Sinha, CEO of SlideShare, which recently unveiled new, branded channels.

If you're a regular listener of this podcast, you'll notice these show notes are different. They are more complete and more narrative. I am currently writing a book with Paul Gillin on B2B social media engagement, and will be incorporating insights from this podcast. There seems to be a great deal of interest in understanding how B2C might differ from B2B social media engagement. Paul and I are working to articulate the distinctions. This is one of many B2B oriented podcast interviews I will be releasing. Expect a few guest hosted episodes by Paul as well.

Also, with the release of this podcast we have posted an audience survey link on our show blog and are asking listeners to please, take the survey.

SHOW NOTES

00:47 -- Rashmi Sinha's previous appearance on the Supernova Podcast, hosted by Christopher Carfi on Blog Talk Radio, where much of the discussion focused on object-oriented social networking, and what makes these types of services different from more popular social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

01:15 -- As in the real world, and particularly in a business-to-business context, interaction is usually focused around a particular activity, like a meeting, convention or demonstration. Popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter, when interaction is not focused around a specific activity, are sometimes awkward because there is no construct for that experience in the real world, where exchanges are organized around actions.

02:07 -- SlideShare branded channels, a new area of the site which allow organizations to establish a custom, micro-site with their own look and feel inside the service, so they can engage with the broader SlideShare community. Microsoft and Adobe have established their own branded channels, as has the White House and the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project. As part of the launch, SlideShares new branded channels are now open to other organizations and brands by request, which at the time of this podcast can made be submitting a form within that section of the website.

03:09 -- The majority of SlideShare's community members are business decision-makers. Community members use the service mostly in a business context, since the social network is designed to host, share and promote discussion around PowerPoint presentations, which are used mostly in business to help make a point. As a result, SlideShare is primarily a business-to-business social network. On Feb. 6, 2010, just days after SlidShare's branded channels launch, there were 11 featured business channels, 2 featured education channels, 4 featured nonprofit channels and 1 featured event channel.

03:54 -- The Slideshare Virtualization Channel, a new, curated channel put together by the B2B social networking service is one of many they intend to add over the coming months, to provide organizations with an opportunity to associate their product, brand or service with premium content appealing to a specific business audience segment by way of a sponsorship.

04:49 -- According to Rashmi, Facebook is a personal social network that has been edging towards business. Twitter is a social network that has always had a mix of personal and business applications. And Linkedin is a social network that is completely professional, with no room at all for personal interactions. She calls SlideShare a social network occupying the space between Facebook and Twitter. She acknowledges that SlideShare is very business oriented, but says that because it is such a visually oriented network where the most popular presentations usually incorporate a great deal of personality and flair, the service is conducive to interactions that are more personal than on Linkedin.

05:49 -- SlideShare may be business-to-business, but the service's real strength is its ability to promote business with personality. For example, on SlideShare's homepage, the presentations that tend to rank high, combine a great deal of personality with their subject matter, rather than more dry, reference-type presentations, which may be packed with relevant, useful content, but are often suffer from dense copy block, too few images and no real visual punch.

07:12 -- From a user-interface standpoint, there should be no difference between a B2C and B2B social networks, according to Rashmi. She reminds us that as is true in all forms of social media, ease of use drives adoption. And popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are benchmarks for just how easy a social networking service needs to be to lure members. We have become accustomed to interacting with others online in a certain way, and if a B2B social network is going to be successful, it should be as user-friendly as popular online social media.

08:21 -- Connecting with perspective business customers in hopes of generating leads is the dominant behavior on SlideShare and Rashmi says her B2B social network is built around that purpose. Presentations are used to pitch products, brands and services. They support more extended, in-depth explanations. Display ads may work to entice you to click and go somewhere, but they can't walk you through the types of explanations that are typical of more complex products and services. It is the explanation that determines the length of a company's sales cycle. At this point, presentations are a good consultative sales tool, since they make it easier for marketers to incorporate the various business processes, case studies and best practices decision-makers like to appraise when evaluating business products that could be incorporated into a company's everyday processes.

10:17 -- Currently, from a measurement standpoint, Slideshare reports the number of views, embeds, favorites, comments and downloads. In the future, the company plans to report referrals as well and offer more in-depth reporting capabilities.

11:29 -- People upload their presentations on the site not just to share them with their existing business partners, but to get in front of other members they may not know, but who may have a need for their products and services. As is the case with popular networking services, if you see other members there who you want to connect with, it encourages you to join. So the network effect is just as important in a business-to-business social networking environment, as it is on Facebook and Twitter. For business-to-business marketers, niche networks may also have additional value by aggregating a more targeted, premium audience.

12:20 -- Rashmi reveals the typical pattern by which SlideShare embed codes wind up getting used to display member presentations. First, members tend to embed their presentations on their own sites Then they tweet it out or share it on Facebook. Next, people who find them on SlideShare may embed those presentations on other sites. The owner of the presentation tends to embed it only on their own side. But if it's good content it just takes off. Slide share offers numerous ways to syndicate presentations. But the quality of the presentation, as determined by the SlideShare community, determines how broadly it permeates online. In some ways, this makes it impossible to game SlideShare to generate leads. "Your content has to be good," says Rashmi. "We provide the tools for sharing, but if your content is getting distributed everywhere, it's because your content is good."

14:31 -- In a business to business social networking environment, the absence of spam is a key component of getting people to comment. The quality of conversation must be high. "People have higher standards for B2B sites than on B2C sites. They don't want to put up a professional conversation in a place where they might encounter trolls," says Rashmi. She also points out that...