As a company that works almost exclusively in the world of business-to-business, it’s a question that has been preying in our minds. Is there real commercial value in furiously tweeting, Facebooking and Linking In, or is this all a passing fad that we’ll remember with a wry collective smile?

The attitudes Plain Text sees vary widely. Some companies we work with run virtually no social media activity. They see no relevance for their customers. Others have a social free-for-all, with Twitter feeds and LinkedIn discussions springing up in different departments and different parts of the world. Yet others have a highly regulated approach, with social media activity rigorously controlled to keep it ‘on message’.

It’s very similar to the early days of the Web. Remember when companies questioned whether they really needed a website, or wondered whether e-commerce would ever take off? And it’s reflected in studies that show that while some companies are investing in social media, few are measuring their results and fewer still (11%) have formal policies for social media. Or this study, which suggests small businesses are aware of the potential benefits of social media but not acting on them.

Just like in the mid 1990s, though, a lot of early adopters are embracing the new technology. In fact some of our clients would be shocked we’re even asking the question that headlines this article. For them, the value of social media is beyond question.

From broadcasting to sharing

In essence, social media breaks down the walls between companies, suppliers and customers. All of a sudden – just as with networks of friends on Facebook – you can see a very great deal of what everyone else is doing and thinking. And, of course, you can share your own activity too. It’s a big shift from the ‘broadcast’ model of email and the web. A constant ‘everyone to everyone’ network of shared information now augments ‘one-to-one’ or ‘one-to-many’ communication.

B2C companies have been taking advantage of this for a while. Who’d have thought, for example, that a conservative airline brand would be mining Twitter to pinpoint and resolve customer service issues?

In B2B, there are endless applications for social media. Here’s just a selection:

Improving search engine results. The Google algorithm gets cleverer all the time and you have to work hard to get noticed. At the moment it ranks shared content higher in organic searches. So a well written and shared blog post will bring your website up the search engine listings.

Tapping opinion and sentiment. A whole ecosystem of applications – like Radian6 and Metrica – has appeared to help companies make sense of the firehose of tweets and posts – and use them for a huge range of applications from marketing and PR to customer service and product development.

Due diligence. Hiring people? Checking out prospects? Now their CVs, thoughts, opinions, etc. are there for all to see.

Innovation. Could the wheel have been invented by email? Or even by Wiki? Collaboration and serendipity drive invention. Social platforms make it easier – now you can even outsource your own.

And, of course, brand building, opinion forming and communication. Even CEOs are getting social media savvy now. Some of them have even banned email.

So with even seriously technophobic customers playing with LinkedIn, peeking at Twitter and almost certainly lurking on Facebook somewhere, the audience is out there for B2B companies thinking about whether social media is likely to be worth it as a communications channel.

Social: here to stay in B2B

We will almost certainly tire of minute-by-minute Facebook updates and crazily over-prolific tweeters. But it seems unlikely that we’ll look back on today’s social media explosion with a knowing smile and go back to our email inboxes and bookmarked websites. Why? Because social media is better than what we had before. It gives businesses what they want: more insights and more opportunities.

Plain Text has teamed up with Honey Digital to help our clients make sense of social media. From an initial audit we can help you with blogging and content, social media channels and monitoring – and ensure your social media strategy fits together for both your staff and your clients. Contact us to learn more.

It’s all part of a project to create a digital ‘fossil record’ of human culture by tracking the frequency with which words appear in books over time.

And as if to prove they’re no fossils themselves, the researchers have given their new discipline a name of its own – ‘culturomics’.

This word, of course, is not yet in the dictionary. Neither will your spellchecker like it, whatever form of the English language you use.

“Apple has discovered something that other companies have long forgotten, if they ever knew: language can also be beautiful and easy to use. Words can be fun to read. They can look elegant. They can make you laugh.”

Is this the beginning of a bright new dawn for business writing, in which everyone follows Apple to the broad sunlit uplands of clarity? Hardly, suggests Kellaway, going on to compare Apple’s bright words with Microsoft’s stodgy copy:

“It is one of the great mysteries of capitalism that there is no invisible hand that joins good language and good profits. If anything, the hand pushes the two apart”

It’s a fair observation. Plenty of successful firms write drivel. But would they be more successful if they didn’t? Take the first para of Microsoft’s press release announcing the Windows Phone 7:

“The goal for Microsoft’s latest smartphone is an ambitious one: to deliver a phone that truly integrates the things people really want to do, puts those things right in front of them, and either lets them get finished quickly or immerses them in the experience they were seeking.”

Huh? A gadget that lets me get finished with the things I really want to do right in front of me? C’mon guys, you’re up against the BlackBerry and the iPhone here! Get clarity!

Good copy may not correlate directly with profitability. But it surely has an impact on the way people feel about a company or a brand. As the queues of crazed fans at every new launch attest, people love Apple. Would people love Microsoft a little bit more – or even a little bit – if it spoke a language they could relate to?

Anyone in the writing business should take cheer though that what XKCD’s map depicts is a world of words. This is where many people live today. Being good with the written word – whether the language is ‘txtspeak’, ‘forumese’ or ‘business website’ – remains an important life skill.

* DVXL (TM) ready
* Full 2.0 feature suite
* Cross-platform compatibility
* Cloud computing ‘out of the box’
* Deep, rich, wide content-mining options
* Plug-and-play widget performance analysis
* Multiply scalable format distribution extensions
* Optimized, extensible interface handling parameters
* And more.

You had me well before the eighth bullet point. I just don’t want any more. And these scream-inducingly unnecessary final words also of course beg the question: “and more” what? Bananas? Trilobites? Cuddly toys? It’s as if the writer planned to use ‘etc.’ but decided at the last minute to be a little more formal.

Apply the “and more” test to real life and it’s clear what a waste of words it is:

“I love you. I need you. I want you. And more.”
“And more what?”
“I dunno, just… more stuff, y’know?”

“Hey kids, we’re going to the seaside tomorrow. And more.”
“Hurray! And more what, daddy?”
“Just more, OK? Now go to your room.”

In copywriting as in life, “and more” is just two words too much.

Still, it’s about time someone poked a bit of fun a it. So thank goodness for The Ideas Brothers, (one of whom is a Plain Text alumnus), who have imagined where Twitter might go next. And for Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau, also poking gentle fun.