Social Media Marketing Strategies for B2B Businesses Despite the popularity of B2B Social Media Marketing, there are a lot of companies that have not started leveraging its power. Most of these companies don’t know how to get started or don’t have the time to do more.
However, with the rising power of social media channels, the B2B market shouldn’t miss out on using it for increasing traffic, converting leads, and nurturing those leads to convert them as customers.
If you too are stuck with the question of how to start, then the first thing that you need to do is to have great content on your social media profiles. Next, you need to come up with a social media strategy that is effective for B2B businesses and can get more success for your company.
Social Media can not only grow your brand awareness but will extend the reach of your content and will drive more traffic back towards your site. It is like adding gasoline to your content, that creates an unstoppable fire.
To move ahead with this, here are the 5 best social media practices that you should incorporate to get your B2B business going ahead towards success.
Research your Targeted Audience
You need to start with researching who your ideal customers would be. Think what information would they find helpful?
Remember that these people are more interested in finding solutions to their problems than your company and its products and services.
You can find out which social media channels they use? Then establish a presence of your brand on those channels where they are already gathered up.
Find out if your potential customers use one of the big social media networks or a niche site targeted at people interested in a specific industry or domain. You don’t need to be there on as many social media platforms as you think, but only a few.
Think why do they use social media channels? Do they use them for business or personal interest? What type of content do they consume and appreciate?
Optimize your Social Media Profiles
Each social media site that you use should represent your brand to the fullest extent. It should display your company’s logo, brand message, and website URL.
Also, you need to use all the related graphics and dimensions that are correct for each social media platform. Just like with your website, you need to use keywords to get your social media profiles found in search engines.
Usually, search engines crawl social media profiles and display them if they are optimized properly for the user.
Don’t forget to use a link back to your site to make it convenient for visitors to find more about your business by visiting your website.
Increase your Reach
Reach is a measure of your potential customers. So, it is not only about your followers but the followers of your followers.
On social media, you need to start following and connecting with prospects, customers, and industry leaders. Remember that your social media presence can only be good based on your content and engagement rate.
Talking more about engagement. Have you ever been to a place and met a person who only talked about himself and didn’t show any interest in you? Well, on social media you can’t be that person if you want to grow.
Social Media is all about socializing. So, you need to follow the 8:2 rule. You can share useful and interesting content for your audience 80% of the time. You can post pictures, videos, e-books, blog posts, quizzes, contests, giveaways, and more.
The other 20% part of your time can be directed towards engaging with your audience. Under this, you can plan out discounts and offers, and other promotional content for your potential customers.
Engage with them directly by responding to their comments and messages and spark a conversation with your audience.
Customize your Content Strategy for Each Social Networking Channel
When you post on social media, no matter how great your content is, it will be meaningful within the context of the platform where it appears.
You can’t simply use the same hashtags for LinkedIn and Twitter. Or post a Tweet directly from Facebook because you are feeling lazy to customize it.
If you do so, it is a sign of laziness which can cost you and your business. So, for each social media channel, you need to present your brand message in the context of the platform from which you are communicating with the audience.
Below is an example of the type of customization that you need to do in your content strategy for different social media networking channels.
Think From A Leaders Perspective
Twitter: Twitter is mostly used for on-the-spot breathing conversation. You can keep your tweets short, engaging, and fun. You can tap into the most relevant trends or use hashtags that are suitable for your post. We recommend tweeting with pictures as they have a 50% greater click-through rate than tweets with only text.
Facebook: On Facebook, you can show your personality more than you can do on any other social media channel. Usually, people use Facebook just to have fun and stay entertained. So, this isn’t the place for boring or serious content. You can use visuals while uploading content on Facebook after ensuring their proper size for the platform.
LinkedIn: As we were talking about serious content before, this is the platform where it should be. LinkedIn is essentially a platform for professionals and businesses. You can post in-depth content here on your company page or take part in LinkedIn group discussions. However, when posting to groups, it’s better to first listen to what others are offering and then come up with your ideas.
Analyze Your Performance
It’s good to measure the results of your efforts to analyze if you are doing good. That’s how you will know if your content and social media strategy is working as per your business goals or not.
How many visits are you getting from social media channels to your website?
How many leads are you generating from which social media channel?
Which of those leads converted as your customers?
Then, you need to also track the number of social media followers that you are gaining and how much is the improvement in your engagement rate.
Check how shareable your content is?
Which of the posts are getting more clicks?
Which posts are generating more conversations and discussions? Look at shares and comments mostly.
While the world of social media is vast and requires continuous innovation & creativity, these 5 practices can help you build an impactful strategy. It is inevitable to have a strategy before stepping into the world of social media, because while it helps in building brand reputation, if not used wisely, it can negatively affect your business. Hope this read was helpful. Stay tuned for more such insightful information on the digital world.
