As a B2B marketer, you are expected to manage multiple tasks simultaneously. But one of the aspects that you should prioritize is, no doubt, building a solid B2B social media strategy.
Would you like to discover more about why social media is so critical for B2B and how to create a winning, custom strategy? Our guide below has all the answers.
If you think about social media marketing, you are probably picturing a more consumer-focused interaction. And while it’s true that individual users browse social media to discover and buy products, it’s also important to note that businesses behave in a similar way.
Over 31% of business users have stated that they use social media for business-related research. For example, a jaw-dropping 96% of content marketers are active on LinkedIn—where they engage with other brands and businesses, with over 80% of them taking advantage of this social media platform to generate leads and drive solid business decisions.
Therefore, putting a bulletproof B2B social media strategy in place should be a no-brainer for any business. Keep reading to discover more about the specific benefits that your business can expect from a social media strategy.
1. Enhancing Your Brand Awareness
One of the main objectives of most online businesses is to boost brand awareness. This is often the first step towards business growth, customer loyalty, and profits. One way to enhance your brand awareness and visibility is through social media.
By being present on social networks, you can get in front of a wide range of potential customers, communicate your values and messages, and interact with them in an authentic, meaningful way. The bottom line?
Your audience will begin to recognize your brand, get interested in your products, and, eventually, buy from you.
Get a social wall to enhance brand awareness
2. Engaging Your Audience
VoIP services (also called voice over Internet) can be a fantastic – and cost-efficient – way to boost customer service and engagement, but so can social media marketing. As we mentioned in our previous section, you can build a genuine, empathetic connection with your audience through social media.
This drives them to engage with your brand, participate in conversations around it, and advocate for your products or services. Make sure you interact with your followers/customers by replying to their comments and DMs. Also, involve them in fun events, challenges, and polls.
This can also be particularly helpful for those customers who are now working remotely which inherently puts them in a condition where empathy and connection become crucial.
3. Understanding Your Customers
Whether you run a virtual call center or any other type of business that is heavily customer-oriented, one thing is for sure: you need to always offer top-quality customer service. A strong social media strategy can help you with that, too.
Most social media platforms offer their business users automatic access to a professional dashboard with great features and analytics tools. These help you understand who your customers are, how they are interacting with your brand, and what conversations are currently trending.
Armed with these precious insights, you can now tailor your social media content and behavior to what your audience wants – and expects – to receive from you.
4. Telling Your Brand’s Story
Social media is a fantastic storytelling tool. From written content to images, pre-recorded short clips to long live videos, and even through voice over Internet protocol, the possibilities are limitless and will keep growing.
Inherently, telling your story helps you increase brand awareness, reinforce those all-important authentic connections with your audience, and present you as an approachable, relatable brand.
A social wall helps you tell your brand’s story
5. Boosting Your Website Traffic
Have you ever considered that social media marketing can also help direct more people to your site? Yes, because social media platforms accommodate a much more diverse stream of inbound traffic, helping you get higher rankings and more conversions.
One easy way to achieve this? Try to embed social media content on your website.
Below, we will take a look at how to build a great B2B social media strategy in just five easy steps.
1. Choose What to Track – and How to Track It
You might not think about this straight away, but determining what metrics to track should be the first step in your social media strategy. In fact, you can potentially uncover a limitless number of insights into lots of different topics through social media. Choosing which areas you want to monitor, analyze, and assess is fundamental. Think about this as establishing priorities: what do you want your business to achieve?
Are you looking to reach a specific number of followers? Are you focused on boosting your Shopify inventory management through social media? Are conversions from social media your main goal?
Once you have identified some specific KPIs, you will also need to work out exactly how you are going to track those metrics. Luckily, there are many tools that can help you with this, including Google Analytics, HubSpot Social, BuzzSumo, and CoSchedule.
Now, you’ll want to focus on which specific social media platform you are going to use. When it comes to B2B, the most suitable channels are LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. LinkedIn, in particular, accounts for more than half of all social media traffic for blogs and websites in the B2B space.
Twitter is also very popular in B2B, and 59% of marketers use YouTube to distribute B2B content. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are not as effective to offer you the best possible return, so you can skip these (for now).
3. Plan, Create and Schedule Your Content
Great content should be the core of a solid social media strategy. And as a B2B professional, you’ll want to tailor your content to all your different buying personas and the several stages of their buyer’s journey.
The content you produce to raise awareness of your brand will vary widely from the one you create to strengthen loyalty. Another crucial aspect that your content must capture is high engagement.
To achieve this, consider putting together different types of content – including written text, videos, images, graphics, and more – as well as creating interactive content. The latter, in particular, can work great at building authentic connections with your audience.
Some must-have types of content that your social media strategy should include are:
- Pre-recorded video clips (you can use a video editor to maximize their effects)
- Live videos
- Stories
- Reels
- Animated graphics
Have you got all your content worked out? Then, it’s time to schedule your posts. You can use tools such as Hootsuite, Buffer, HubSpot, and CoSchedule, which enable you to bulk-schedule your posts as well as find out when the best times to post are.
After posting your content, collect it all on a social wall and embed it on your website!
4. Keep an Eye on Your Competitors
Competitive analysis is fundamental if you want to win the social media marketing game. As you are thinking about what content to create, look at what your main rivals are doing.
What type of content are they sharing, and when are they sharing it? What conversations have they started, or are they participating in? Are they using social media for a referral program?
Once you have unearthed this information, you can build a solid social media competitive analysis report and share it with the rest of your team. Together, you will be able to establish priorities within your content, identify challenges and opportunities, and beat your competitors.
5. Monitor Your Progress – and Be Ready to Adjust Your Strategy
Do you remember those KPIs and metrics that you established at the beginning of your social media strategy? Well, it’s now time to go back to them and check how you have performed against them.
Like a student embracing e-learning practices, it’s important to stay on track. Ask yourself: Have you achieved the goals that you had set out for your brand? What worked, and what should you improve? Do you need to make any tweaks or drastic changes—even to your overall social media strategy?
By using the right monitoring tools, you will be able to answer all these questions and many more and continue to adjust your strategy according to tangible, up-to-date, and reliable results.
The Bottom Line
Social media marketing is not just for B2C – it can help B2B professionals in a number of ways, too. In this article, we delved into why social media marketing for B2B is so critical, what its benefits are, and how you can build your own social media strategy.
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