The common wisdom has it that consumer marketers are far more active on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the like than their business-to-business brethren.
However, a March 2010 study of 104 B-to-B and B-to-C companies from B-to-B marketing specialist agency White Horse suggests B-to-B marketers are much more social than previously thought.
That 40% figure is significant, given that most B-to-B firms have much smaller marketing departments than typical B-to-C firms, says the White Horse study. In fact, on a separate survey question, B-to-B marketers indicated that having insufficient staffing is their top internal obstacle to social media, along with lack of social media knowledge, particularly at executive levels.
Another surprise was that 71% of B-to-B firms devote two or more part-time marketing staffers to social functions, more than the 62% of consumer marketers doing the same.
White Horse speculates that this broad ownership of social media marketing follows the general pattern in B-to-B companies, where marketing responsibilities are often divided along product groups or customer types rather than into specific marketing channels.
Read the entire article here.