With the development of social networks, people in the cross-border B2B market have clearly recognized the important impact of social networks on e-commerce. B2B buyers study blogs, white papers, webcasts, podcasts and social media profiles of potential suppliers’ purchasers to understand product features, grasp price information and read product reviews. They are influenced by people who can provide reliable answers to their questions online. Therefore, exporters can influence importers by providing practical information through social channels.
Today, there are mainly two ways of social tools that are widely used in B2B e-commerce. One way is the online community in the corporate portal, such as announcements, industry news, classified ads, recruitment, forums, etc., which brings together various information that all parties are concerned about. The other way is to use dedicated social network platforms for B2B business activities. These network platforms include blogs, wikis, aggregation websites, video websites, image websites, etc., such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Youtube, etc.
Social commerce brings many new opportunities for cross-border B2B e-commerce, mainly including:
(1) Find more business partners and sales opportunities;
(2) Maintain relationships with business partners and manage customer groups;
(3) Advertise products and services to increase brand awareness;
(4) Better understand new technologies, competitive situations and business environment;
(5) Conduct market research, obtain customer feedback, and improve operations and management.
China’s B2B foreign trade companies currently mainly use foreign social networking platforms to develop customers, promote products and obtain market information. There are many web pages on the Internet in my country that introduce how to use social networks to find customers to open up international markets.