You’ve probably heard people say that eavesdropping isn’t nice. And it’s not. But, in the B2B world, it’s essential. Why? Because “listening in” on what your customers and prospects have to say, using a variety of social media channels, provides insight that surveys and questionnaires can’t match. Through LinkedIn, Twitter and many other social media channels available anywhere today, you can learn what people are really saying and thinking about your market, your specialty, or even your company, product or service. All without significant legwork, or the task of creating surveys and questionnaires.

When a Godfrey client, a manufacturer of insulating panels and other components for homes and businesses, asked us to gather insight for them through social media, we quickly found several opportunities to get the info they needed. We found out that while there may not be formal “discussions” about insulated panels online, that doesn’t mean people aren’t interested in them. They’re just making their presence felt in blog posts, YouTube comments and LinkedIn conversations. So for example, even though our client’s YouTube channel wasn’t visited very often at the time, there were plenty of comments about insulated panels (including our client’s) on other YouTube videos.

Based on this insight project, here are 6 ways to eavesdrop, productively, on B2B customers and prospects. It’s a non-exhaustive list; the same principles described here can work for many different social media channels.

1. Participate in relevant LinkedIn groups. Your area of specialty is being discussed on this channel right now, and there may even be significant concentrations of potential customers participating in these discussions. Being part of LinkedIn groups discussing topics such as (in this case) insulated panels, allows you to monitor what’s being said and participate where appropriate.
2. Rethink your YouTube channel. Not getting enough views? Try creating videos optimized for search to help people gather information about your product or service. Keep in mind that high production values don’t matter if people can’t find your video. Monitor the comments routinely (especially after you start getting views) and respond as appropriate.
3. Rethink others’ YouTube channels. Competitive YouTube videos can also provide a benefit to you, through gathering insight. They’re a great way to find out, from the comments, what people think about marketplace issues and about your competitors. Godfrey’s client has been advised to comment on relevant YouTube videos, using their company name, to provide advice and answer user questions.
4. Monitor Twitter. Tweets can contain interesting insights into the mindset of potential customers, including their level of knowledge about your product. Updates on developments in your market may surface on Twitter before they appear anywhere else. In the case of our client, Twitter comments alerted us to the opening of the first residential home made entirely of insulated panels, the installation of these type panels in a large housing development, and a number of insulated panel workshops being developed for trade shows.
5. Explore Google+. We advised our client to take their Facebook posts and also post them to a new Google+ page, spicing them up with visuals and articles about product benefits. Then, we sat back and watched the responses. We noted that anyone who posted anything about insulated panels tended to receive positive feedback (generally +1 or a comment). This may help gauge overall market feelings about insulated panels in general.
6. Take an interest in Pinterest. We advised our client to create a Pinterest board and use interesting panel applications as repins, driving traffic to their web site. The amount of traffic could then be used to gauge the level of name recognition for the client (note that this is likely to be consumer traffic more than B2B traffic, but name recognition is still a good thing).

This, of course, only scratches the surface of what is possible in social media “eavesdropping.” There are many other possibilities, with more on the way as social media mature. Keep in mind that the lack of legwork doesn’t mean there isn’t work involved – primarily in interpreting the results. But in today’s B2B marketing insight world, there’s a lot of value to be gained from high-tech, social media versions of old-fashioned eavesdropping.