An article published by the World Economic forum earlier this year described businesses looking at social media as simply ‘nice to have’. At IBA, we often come across B2B organisations that are still guilty of this – and the longer they maintain this position, the further they’ll fall behind their competitors who are actively engaging with prospects, partners and customers via social media platforms.

Social media prowess is increasingly being used as a metric to demonstrate business success and industry relevance – something that looks set to become the norm. We’ve covered the impact of social media on the Rio Olympics and the U.S. Presidential race in recent blogs, and the lesson remains very much the same: underestimate social media at your peril.

IBA provides bespoke social media content for our clients, and we work closely with local marketing teams on the ground to tailor content to their specific needs and regions. We’ve been putting our expertise to good use across October, ramping up our social media services for our enterprise communications client. We placed a particular emphasis on linking content back to specific industry topics, including one area our client will shortly launch a new enterprise solution into. To secure more media ‘buzz’ around this launch, IBA has drafted and placed bylined content discussing wider market demands to coincide with the product launch. Just a small example of the matrix methodology we employ for all our clients!

Aside from our social media activity, we’ve been very much events-focused for our Aerospace & Defence client in recent weeks. IBA secured the attendance of ten top Asia-Pacific A&D journalists at our client’s Bangkok event, where a new aviation solution was announced to the assembled media. Resulting coverage has been excellent, and stories produced by attending journalists has made October a record month for coverage. We furthered our event success this month by securing the attendance of other top-tier A&D journalists at a conference-style client event in Sweden.

To round off an excellent October, IBA outreached news of major new investment into our payments processing client, gaining a huge volume of clippings from the North American payments media.

In a whirlwind world of Brexit or no Brexit, Clinton or Trump, B2B PR goes on.

Jamie Kightley is Head of Pitch&Place at IBA International

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