When we see brands doing a clean sweep on social media, we immediately assume these brands to be B2C. It’s not very often we see or hear B2B companies going viral in the social media space. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any B2B companies making the most of social media, just not too many.
According to research conducted by HubSpot, 92% of all marketers indicated that their social media efforts generated more exposure for their businesses. With that said, social media is definitely among the better tools to increase exposure and traffic, develop brand loyalty, gain leads and marketplace intelligence, and improve sales.
How B2B companies can use social media
B2B companies have a larger price point than B2C companies, along with a longer sales cycle. B2B customers need a lot more convincing than B2C customers for that very reason. So, these customers rely on websites, blogs, and social media to gain access to more information about the product they’re considering to purchase, which means, a B2B sales needs encouragement, nurturing, and support.
This is where social media comes in.
Brand awareness
Give your potential customers a reason to feel excited to visit and follow your social page! Create fresh, branded, quality content that speaks for itself. The idea is to simplify content, so it creates an interest for your brand and its products, without having to try too much. Make sure to measure the work you put into creating brand awareness by tracking likes, clicks, shares, comments, reach, impressions, followers, and mentions.
You can offer promo codes and special discounts to keep things more interesting for your customers to boost traffic and conversions.
Link building and SEO
The content you publish on your social page can make strides with your website’s search engine ranking and give targeted traffic a massive upgrade because both Google and Bing algorithms pool social signals into their search results. This also helps bring more visibility on the internet as your social profiles also appear in search results, sometimes superseding your official website if they rank better.
Another reason why you should have an active social profile is that people actually look up news related to the topic of their interest, on social media. Think of social media as a search engine. You’d want your content to be visible to people when they search for news of information.
Lead generation
Social media works best to connect and engage with your pool of potential clients, and craft everlasting relationships with them. The key is to find the right social media platform for you, depending on where your potential customers are most active. Build a strong network on your page by optimizing it with a great bio, CTA link, and catchy posts. Bring more traffic to your official website by marketing your content on social platforms.
The first step
One reason why most B2B companies don’t actively put social media to use is that they think the industry they work in is not as interesting as most B2C industries. The first step is to get this thought out of the way because you simply cannot rule out the possibility of even a few hundreds of people being interested. So where do these people usually hangout? That’s for you to figure out.
Here’s an example of a really good post.
Slack tweeted a GIF on April 24, giving an update of their product. This tweet received much love in the form of likes and retweets.
Here’s why.
- The tweet is a GIF, which is a very popular form of content on social media
- The tweet is not any random GIF but is associated with the brand, incorporating the colors of the brand as well
- The message the GIF delivers is crisp and to the point
- The form of content is informative and engaging
Mission accomplished.
Get started with your B2B social media marketing strategy
(If you haven’t, already)
Find out what platforms work best for you. There are many social media platforms out there. Some of the best ones that work well for B2B are
LinkedIn – for product updates and blog posts, to reach stakeholders, decision makers, and potential hires easily, to build a professional network, to strengthen relationships
Twitter – to increase engagement and get noticed, for viral marketing (retweets), for content generation, to directly contact an organization and a decision maker, for customer support
Facebook – to bring more traffic to your website, for targeted group engagement, for better interaction with customers, both existing and potential, to effectively channelize cost-effective paid marketing
Instagram – To add a human touch to your brand, to reach a younger audience, for better post targeting through hashtags, for cost-effective, paid advertising, for unique, creative content
YouTube – for how-to guides, for collaborations, to engage customers with long-form video content
SlideShare – to reach many professionals, for interactive content in the form of slides, to give your SEO a pickup
These are our top picks, but that shouldn’t stop you from experimenting with Pinterest, and more.
B2B social media strategies
Some tried, tested, and proven strategies for better engagement are
Employee advocacy
Employees are the most trusted source of information because adding a human touch matters much more than anything today. And, this form of advocacy helps boost brand visibility to a new (bigger, possibly) umbrella of people. You’ll also observe a surge in traffic and engagement since your content is being exposed to new audiences.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing has become a go-to trend for most marketers because it’s the simplest way to achieve an increased reach of content, brand awareness, blazing engagement, consistent traffic, and higher retention.
[ Recommended reading: Influencer Marketing: The Simplest Way to Make Your Business Go Viral ]
Collaborations
People love it when two brands work together to produce a great product or a piece of content, even. This is also a great way to showcase your partners and gain leads at the same time. You can do so by posting content on your social profile and tagging the brand you collaborated with, and the key people involved in the collaboration. If you’re only trying to showcase your partners, you can retweet your partner content and commenting on their posts to gain more engagement.
The essence
Social media has immense potential to make your business extremely visible online, and it would be wasteful if you didn’t make the most of it. In simple words, understand why social media works best, choose your platforms, and get going!
