Social media is the most common content marketing strategy for 95% of B2B marketers. Similarly, B2B buyers also turn to social media when researching what to purchase. Another study found that 47% use it to learn about products. Additionally, 38% use it to get recommendations and suggestions, while 36% use it to connect with vendors. Image Source: Demand Gen Report
Having a social media strategy gives B2B vendors an opportunity to guide their buyers through their sales funnel. Using social media content, you can guide your audience from the discovery stage to the purchase stage.
The following are effective B2B social media strategies your small business can use:
1. Define Your Social Media Marketing Goals
Having SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely) goals for your social media strategy can help you track your progress. This is because you can set measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) based on these goals and follow them.
Start by determining what success means for your business. Do you want to generate more traffic to your website, increase leads, or boost your reach? Defining these metrics helps you determine the path you need to take to reach your goals.
For example, let’s say you want to increase the reach of your B2B business on social media. You should then track and analyze metrics like follower count, impressions, organic/paid reach, and engagement.
Defining your goals helps you make your social media marketing profitable. It will also help you determine your ROI and whether your marketing goals lead to the company’s overall growth.
2. Perform a B2B Market Analysis
A B2B market analysis can help your business understand factors that can affect your bottom-line. It looks at factors like market size, trends, growth rate, and competitors.
B2B customer research is slightly different from that of B2C companies. B2C businesses build buyer personas based on factors like gender, income, and location. On the other hand, B2B businesses have to find companies that need their services or goods and can afford them.
It’s thus important to know the problem that you want to solve and your target audience as well. You will need to dig into potential business customers’ financial and corporate earnings reports. Research the companies, their investors, market share, key products, etc. to determine if they’re a part of your audience.
You also need to conduct competitor research. This will help you identify your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Using these insights, you can decide on issues such as resource allocation, promotions, and pricing.
3. Choose B2B Social Media Platforms
There are many social media platforms, but it can be difficult to maintain your presence on all of them. Business customers use social media but do not browse all platforms.
That’s why you must find the right social media platforms for your target audience. Which channel interests them? Where do they spend significant time? What channels will be the best to showcase the product or service you are offering?
Social Media Examiner found that most B2B marketers prefer Facebook (91%), LinkedIn (80%), and Twitter (67%). Image Source: Social Media Examiner
Be careful when choosing social media platforms for your business. Research current social media platforms you are currently using. Determine the average engagement rate and the kind of content your audience likes. These insights will help you find platforms on which you should concentrate your efforts and the kind of content you need to create.
4. Revamp Your Social Media Content Strategy
Your content strategy should align with your brand’s vision and marketing goals. It should focus on creating and distributing content your B2B audience will find relevant and valuable. Additionally, it should propel them to act depending on your social media objectives.
To succeed, you should have a well-documented content strategy that outlines the kind of content you produce and your distribution plan. Having a strategy will help you provide different types of content aimed at attracting the right audience, maintaining them, and driving profits.
Post content that does not bore your followers and don’t use social media platforms only for promoting your products. Keep your audience engaged with visuals, text, GIFs, infographics, etc.
Humanize your brand too by posting content that portrays your company culture. You could post company events, office photos, videos of employees hard at work, etc. Use humor, be conversational, share company stories, or stand up for a cause as well. This can help you connect better with your audience.
5. Use Videos and Events
Incorporate videos into your social media marketing efforts. Wyzowl discovered the following about videos:
- 97% of marketers said that it increased user understanding of their services and products
- 76% of them said that it increased their sales
- 47% of them stated that it reduced their support queries
- 80% of marketers said it increased the dwell time on their websites
- Lastly, 78% of them said that it improved their ROI
Hosting and attending events is yet another effective tactic to support your social media efforts. Create branded hashtags for the events that your audience can use in their content. When your audience uses these hashtags, it can help increase your brand’s reach and engagement on social media.
You should also engage your audience by providing answering their questions and showcasing your expertise. Share the event photos as well to show how active your team is and to give your engagement a boost.
6. Maintain Brand Voice
Maintain your brand voice across all social platforms so that people can recognize you everywhere. This can also help you give your audience a consistent experience across all the platforms where you’re active.
For example, SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer, shares videos and images of all space-related things to keep their audience engaged. Their content fetches many shares, and this boosts their reach and engagement. Image Source: Twitter
7. Engage Your Audience
Social media makes it easier for your business to converse with your audience, customers, and other businesses. You can also use it to figure out who’s talking about your brand. For this, you can use social listening tools.
Also, you must try to be proactive and engage with as many people as possible. Try not to ignore messages or comments from your audience. Remember, engaging with them helps you build rapport.
You should also actively try to stir up conversations on social media by sharing informational content. Reach out to leaders in your industry, listen to their ideas, and share their content. Focus on having authentic conversations that help your target audience determine if your product is a good fit for their companies.
Conclusion
These social media strategies will help your business directly communicate with your target audience. Through them, you can connect and engage better with your audience and grow your presence on social media.
Take time to craft a social media strategy and define your objectives. The objectives will help you track your efforts and determine if you’re doing things right.
Maintain your brand voice across all platforms and use videos and events to give a boost to your efforts. You should also revamp your content strategy for social media to help you get the most out of it.
Which other B2B social media strategies do you use? Let us know in the comments.
Author Bio
Gaurav Sharma is the Founder of Attrock, a digital marketing company. He works closely with top marketing influencers and has helped numerous brands, ecommerce firms, and SaaS companies grow.
He is also a certified Google Analytics and Google Adwords specialist and regularly contributes to reputable publications like HuffPost, TechCrunch, and many more.
