We recently added a Fan Page on Facebook for Valor Corporation. ÊI wasn’t certain what we would do with it since Valor is a B2B Sporting Goods supplier. ÊValor does not sell to the public. ÊWithout any mention of it we had a following of about 20 people within 2 weeks. ÊNot big numbers by any stretch, but numbers none the less.

We began by syndicating our Blog Posts to the page along with some videos. ÊStill not sure what we would do with it beyond that, I kind of let it sit for a month or so. ÊWe had more fans come along, mostly employees from long ago and current employees.

So two nights ago, I put a “badge” in th footer section of Valor’s website and almost instantly we added fans. ÊSo what so we do now? ÊThere are some drawbacks to being a B2B and operating in public like a page has you do.

Cons

• B2B knowledge between distributor and dealer needs to remain private
• Prices have to remain private too
• There is no real way to determine who is a customer and who is a casual fan of the items we sell

Pros

• Helps your brand by having your name out there no matter the business
• People who are looking for us have one more place to find us
• Great tool for bringing industry members together

So what would make Facebook more user friendly for B2B?

Controlling membership

It would be nice to be able to keep the fans of Valor limited to our dealers. ÊIf we could do that, we would be able to share more info that we don’t want to share with the general public.

An import method to import our database to facebook and invite our customers to become fans directly in Facebook.

You can invite friends to be your friend, why not offer that ability to companies that are able to invite thousands.

I will do some more snooping around and try some different marketing tactics and report back as to what works and what doesn’t. ÊPlus where the fan page is in a few months.

Do you have a fan page for your business? ÊIf so, what do you share on it?

What would you like to see from Facebook to be more B2B friendly?