Initial steps towards a B2B social media canvas: Investigation of social media opportunities for a manufacturing business

Nowadays, the engagement of all kind of businesses in social media activities seems to be developing towards a basic marketing activity. However, even if many investigations are conducted on the B2C area, few theory can be found on the topic of B2B operating companies and their social media engagement. The conducted research is investigating one manufacturing business of the B2B area which is part of the international steel industry, with the aim to test whether social media engagement is an adequate tool to enhance its external communication. Within the research, the social media canvas by Spil et al. (2016) is adjusted to develop an adequate social media engagement for the company. As a result, the social media canvas is added with a further building block of relationships. In order to be able to give recommendations for a possible social media engagement, a competitor and customer analysis of the business is conducted after detecting the prevailing status quo of the business’ external communication.