Social Media Monitoring in the industrial Business to Business Sector

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to provide new knowledge of social media monitoring (SMM) in the B2B sector. Specifically, we study the quantity of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) found on social media sites concerning B2B companies, as well how B2B companies view the nature and importance of eWOM. This case study research combines eight qualitative theme interviews executed in the autumn 2011 with a quantitative web data based on 3849 social media mentions collected with a social media monitoring (SMM) software rom the 25 August till 25 October 2011. Thus, the research contributes to marketing research both methodologically and theoretically. The results of this paper suggest that B2B companies can leverage social media monitoring to gain insights into what customers genuinely think about the company and to identify the volume of company-specific online discussions and where they happen. Nevertheless, several pitfalls remain, and SMM software products seem still to require product-development action.