When we think about social media marketing strategy, we naturally think about B2C businesses (Business-To-Consumer) who use it to communicate directly to the end consumer. However, it is becoming ever more important in the B2B space too, where more and more companies are using social media to share great content and grow their audience.
Social media strategy for B2B marketing is becoming more important, many are still struggling to get the hang of it, are putting limited efforts into it, or are simply ignoring it completely. These firms are still relying on traditional channels, such as ads, networking events, or cold calling, to pass on their message to their target audience. Although these channels are still important and relevant, they should be used in parallel with social media.
So if you still think that Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are not relevant for your B2B business and that you should not devote a significant amount of your marketing budget to it, you should think again. You may be missing out on a big opportunity to generate new leads and potentially convert them into new customers.
In this article, we will review how to use social media for B2B marketing and why it should be a must in every business’ marketing strategy. We will look into:
- how to get started
- the importance of social listening to your community
- creating relevant and compelling content
- engaging with your online community
How To Get Started With B2B Social Media Marketing
You do not have to have the most exciting product offering to be successful with your B2B social media marketing. In fact, you do not even need to promote your business or your service online. What matters most is to create engaging content that speaks to your customers and prospects, and that reflects what your business stands for.
Take for example Mailchimp Instagram account. This B2B marketing platform’s Instagram page looks more like an artistic venture that a marketing campaign. They share podcasts, short films, feature different personas, or just share some creative images.
Mailchimp Instagram account
The Adecco Group, a leading staffing and recruiting company, is using its Instagram to share interesting blog articles and white papers. They have also made the interesting choice to not share the URL to their website in their bio, but instead share a link to a selection of articles they mention in their posts.
Adecco Group Instagram account
How To Get Started With Social Media For B2B Marketing
Ok, so now you have been inspired by other B2B firms and you are convinced you should devote more time to social media marketing as well. However, before diving straight into posting on different social media platforms, it is important to create some sort of a strategy or a plan.
How do you measure success?
The first step would be to decide on what your goals are and what you will measure. Yes, we are talking about metrics. What will you measure? How often will you measure it? What constitutes success for you? How will you decide when your goal has been achieved?
Every goal should have its own related metrics. For example, if your goal is to have more conversions to your product or service, then your social media goal would be to measure the number of conversions coming from various social media posts. You want to be even more specific by defining what will be a successful outcome for you and over what time frame. For example, increase social media conversions by 15% in 3 months. Now, the final step would be to measure this, by looking into your website analytics and seeing the conversion rate coming from social posts.
Only by measuring can you define whether or not your campaign has been a success and whether or not you are getting the desired ROI (Return-On-Investment). You can look into various elements such as:
- impressions: refers to how often your post is shown in a person’s timeline. The higher the impressions, the higher the chance a person will view and engage with your post
- reach: very similar to impressions but it refers only to the unique viewers a post could have
- engagements: indicates how well the audience is interacting with the account via likes, shares, comments, tweets, mentions…
- links clicked: the number of times someone clicks on a link provided
Tracking these elements will give you a better understanding of how your social media engagements are doing and will give you a lot of information so that you can adjust your social strategy accordingly.
Once again, it is very important to define what your goal is. If your goal is conversions, then you will track these metrics in order to see how well you are doing with converting visitors from your social sites to customers. However, if your goal is to increase awareness of your brand, probably tracking the number of engagements will be the relevant metric for you. In any case, make sure you have a crystal clear understanding of what you aim to achieve and how you what will define success for you.
Document You Social Media Strategy
Finally, make sure you put this strategy in writing. Doing this exercise will ensure you have a clear real vision of what you want to achieve and how you will get there. and will make sure that everyone on your team is on the same page. This does not have to be a complex exercise. You can create a basic Word document in which you outline:
- the audience you would like to target
- social media platforms you will use
- type of content you will publish
- how often you will publish it
- what your goal is
- what metrics you will use to measure success
Do not forget to also have a look at what your competitors are doing and make your decisions accordingly.
Analyze Your Social Media ‘Performance’
Now that you have created your social media strategy, the next step would be to engage in social listening. What this means is that you have to be aware of:
- where people discuss your brand;
- what people are saying about your product or service,
and make sure you monitor these places regularly to understand what is the overall sentiment about your business.
Listen In
Usually, people would talk about it on Facebook pages, via hashtags on Twitter, in comments on Instagram.
You can monitor these channels simply by identifying them and then regularly reading through people’s comments. You can also raise awareness among your employees and ask them to share with the marketing team all mention (positive and negative) they find online about your brand, by sending an email to a dedicated email address, like socialmentions@company.com.
You can also find social media influencers (people with a large following on social media channels) and opinion leaders on a given topic. Make sure you identify all these people relevant to your business and monitor closely what they post and how people interact with them. You can listen to them by subscribing to their channels or creating Google alerts.
Go One Step Further
Alternatively, you can use dedicated social media monitoring tools to automate this process. The advantage of using a social media monitoring tool is not only the time saved but also the fact that they can identify other less obvious places where people are discussing your company, such as om personal blogs, review websites, Youtube channels, or comment sections on various websites. They can also streamline the development of reports and the analysis of data, which can be a very cumbersome manual process.
Review And Analyze
Now that you have everything in place to listen to the social conversations about your product or service, make sure you take time to analyze this information. Start off by grouping the content into meaningful categories, such as:
- positive vs. negative comments
- comment about your product/service
- comment about your customer support
- comment about your events
- …
Categorizing will allow you to get a better understanding of what people are saying about you. Make sure you review these categories and keep them flexible to account for any potential changes in your business structure, product offering, etc.
Finally, make sure you create reports that are meaningful and that can be shared with the rest of the organization so that the relevant stakeholders can act upon them. For example, you can report on qualitative and quantitative elements:
- qualitative: most active social media channels where your brand is mentioned, key pain points identified, the biggest strengths of the brand…
- quantitative: total mentions of your brand, total mentions per channel
- such as total mentions of your brand,
Do not forget to track the above over time, for example, “How much have the total mentions increased over the past 3 months?” “What are the channels with the highest mentions?” “What is the percentage growth of mentions per channel per quarter”? etc.
Create Compelling Content
You do not need to have a huge budget and a top-notch PR agency to create compelling B2B social media marketing content. Your social media accounts should be seen as another way to connect to your customers and prospects, share news, collect feedback, and establish your brand image.
As outlined above, it is really important to define your goal when starting a social media campaign. Is it to create brand awareness? Or is it more to generate more sales? The answer to these questions will shape up the shape and form of your campaign. So let’s have a look at some ways you can use your social accounts:
Raise Awareness About Your Business
Your social media account is a great way to show what your brand stands for. Use this account to connect with thought leaders in the industry, actively engage with influencers, create relevant content that people can share, offer special deals to subscribers, etc. The important thing here is to see your social media account not as a way to boost your revenue, but simply to show the world you exist.
A Look Behind The Scenes
Being a transparent and open company can reap lots of benefits for your brand in the long run. Use your social media accounts to:
- show people how your offices look like
- introduce some of the people behind the brand
- share thoughts and insights from the top management
- show how you produce your product or service
- create a ‘day in the life of’ series with employees from different departments
The audience will really appreciate this level of openness and honesty. The more you can share with them, the higher the chance they will feel more trust with your brand. A survey with more than 6000 B2B buyers has shown that trust is key to building strong B2B relationships. It is worth the try, isn’t it?
GE Instagram page shows behind the scenes on how they test their jet engines
Put Yourself In The Shoes Of Your B2B Audience
Do not forget that your social media posts will be accessible by everyone. You might be targetting a specific group, but your message will likely be seen by a larger audience. Therefore, make sure you do not make too many assumptions as to who will be reading your posts, Rather keep an open mind and be mindful that your message needs to be inclusive. For example, make sure you include people from different nationalities, age groups, backgrounds, to ensure your message resonates with a larger audience.
GE celebrates the first female wind technician on their Instagram
A Practical Tip
If you want to be able to analyze the results of your social media posts, collecting the right data is crucial. You should be able to quickly understand which posts had the most traction and why. This is why it is valuable to use UTM parameters. These are simply pieces of text that you add to all links in your social media posts. They allow you to track the campaign, provide information on where the traffic is coming from, and allow you to conduct A/B testing of different campaigns to identify the most impactful one.
Doing so will prove to be beneficial when you would like to prove the ROI of a given social campaign, or simply when you need to identify the result of a campaign.
Engage With The Community
Creating the right content is very important, but it is even more important to be able to then engage meaningfully with your followers. This is a great way to earn their trust and to show that your care about their opinion.
Be Active
Try to answer as many questions as possible that are being asked on your social media profiles. This will show that you are actively listening and that you care. If you see that a specific question is being asked to often, then make sure you create a dedicated page on your website with FAQ, and add a link to this page where relevant.
Do not forget to also answer feedback: yes, this also refers to positive feedback. Often times firms will respond to negative comments, which may sometimes seem like they are justifying themselves. DO not forget to also acknowledge the positive feedback you receive and express your gratitude.
You can also hire a dedicated agency or a coach to guide your team on how to best answer public posts, negative comments, etc. There is so much best-practice gathered over the years that sometimes it is better to learn from those who are most experienced that trying to reinvent the wheel yourself.
Invite Others
You can invite thought leaders as guest contributions to your platform. For example, they can take over your Instagram page for the day, and speak on a specific topic, demonstrate how they do things, etc. Be creative and think about who can add value to your community and share something relevant with passion and enthusiasm.
Avoid Being ‘Too Much’
It is important to be active, but being too active can also have the opposite effect you are looking to achieve. Aim to deliver meaningful and relevant content, but try to deliver this in a structured and organized manner. For example:
- create a posting schedule on Instagram (a new post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
- be concise and make sure your message is clear and easy to digest: concise communication is key on social media!
- make sure there is a link between the various posts: think of a storyline for the week or of a ‘topic of the month’
Conclusion
Having a successful social media strategy for B2B marketing is not straightforward, but does not have to be hard. Make sure you actively listen to your community, curate your content in a compelling way, and connect with your audience.