We've seen the entrepreneurs; here are the social media heavyweights among shipping co.'s
By Ryan Skinner (email)
Two months ago I had the temerity to crown the biggest social media entrepreneurs in shipping. Now I repeat the task for companies (note: not media companies or recruiters). Without further ado, here are the ten shipping companies who have dived deepest into social media to drive new business, in no particular order.
AMVER - The folks in the US Coast Guard who run this are clearly devoted to their social media presence. Along with the frequent blog postings and tweets, AMVER is easy to find on LinkedIn and in Facebook.
Crowley Maritime - Anyone who offers an RSS subscription is pretty confident of their news feed. Crowley makes sharing on social media easy, and participates on both twitter and facebook.
ShipServ - Perhaps the biggest and best of the lot, when it comes to social media for B2B demand generation, and pretty much everything else. A heavy, and useful, flow of content is channeled into videos, blog entries, a social media pressroom, tweets, a podcast sponsorship and surely many other outlets. A standard.
UKFreight - Actually RW Freight, they're on twitter and facebook, issue an e-bulletin and encourage sharing. Social media B2B is as easy as that.
Alatas Cranes - Basically the same offering as UKFreight (above)
Florida_FST - Probably the most prolific distributor of Swagelok seals, they are not bashful in sharing the advantages of their products via twitter, and it works! Useful content is the best kind of content!
Unofficial Networks - OK, you won't find them "on social media", but they're behind a lot of social media (The Maritime Executive, Marine Money International and gCaptain, among others).
RCCL's Oasis of the Seas - This is perhaps a different league. The social media campaign Royal Caribbean rolled out to accompany its new trophy ship was news itself. This is the works. Even Rihanna's there. (Note: RCCL was earlier burned for stealthily trying to recruit netizens to do its PR dirty work.)
NCL, Carnival, etc., etc., etc., you get the point. The cruise companies are into this thing big-time. One might expect it, as they are the kind of B2C companies looking for social media-driven buzz and word-of-mouth marketing.
But recent studies show that social media is perhaps a bigger thing for companies looking to communicate to other companies. It's wisdom of the crowd - we want to buy what everyone else is buying.
The list above of the biggest enterprise social media brands in shipping is surely not comprehensive. Am I missing one of your favourites? Propose it! Leave a comment!
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