There is a misconception that in the world of B2B marketing, social media is the most ineffective strategy for building trust with your leads. While a social media strategy won’t necessarily convert to revenue, there’s no denying that having a robust social media presence is an important touchpoint for leads to get to know any company. But in the B2B space, it can often be tricky to nurture your leads when your services are extensive or technical. That’s why we put together 9 tips to help you master your B2B social media strategy!
Here they are:
1. Align your business goals with your social media strategy
Like with any campaign, your social media strategy should keep your business’s goals in mind. There are so many ways you can use social media, but here are the top ways:
- Building brand awareness
- Educating your audience
- Building trust
Your B2B social media strategy should be tailored according to what your business’s pain points are. If you need more people to know about you, your posts should focus on brand awareness. If a lot of people already know about you but still don’t know why they need you, you’ll need to educate them. Or, if people already know you and know why you’re valuable, maybe you just need to prove that you’re a reputable company that is better than the competition! Your company’s business goals should come across in the social media strategy.
2. Let people know who you are and what you do
Regardless of your strategy, you’ll need to make sure your social media posts have a good mix. It’s essential that you inform your top of funnel prospects about who you are and what you do so that in the event someone completely new who knows nothing about you stumbles on your social media page, they know what your brand is about.
With brand awareness types of posts, you’ll want to outline 1. Who you are 2. What you do 3. What you value as a company and 4. What makes you better than your competitors.
3. Educate your audience
Making a big purchase decision requires more than just knowledge of what your company is about. Your prospects will want to know that your company is credible. You can do this by educating your audience on problems specific to the industry you serve. Some of the best ways to educate your audience include blog posts, article shares, PDF downloads, white papers, videos, infographics, and more. Whatever your company can leverage as educational is what you should share on social media. You want your prospects to know you’re the real deal!
4. Build trust
When you want to buy a product or service— what types of things let you know that a product or service is worth its salt? Usually reviews, awards, or special recognition.
Make sure to leverage any social proof or institutional recognition your brand has for the work it does on social media! It’s a critical way to show your leads that you’re worth trusting.
5. Don’t be dry; be human
You’ll often notice big B2C brands are adopting a more casual, inviting, and informal tone with their brand messaging in things like emails, websites, posts, and more. B2B companies should do the same!
We’ve entered the age of personalized content. People want to feel spoken to, not sold to. Remember, even though your company sells services to other businesses, you’re still trying to reach individual people or decision-makers that have thoughts, feelings, and pain points. Make sure to utilize an engaging and personable tone in your social media messaging, and your B2B social media strategy is sure to turn heads.
6. Track your KPIs
It’s often said that you can’t track a return on social media posts.
We challenge this assertion!
Though you may not be able to count your return on investment in dollars with social media, you can track the number of other equally important results like page visitors, clicks, likes, comments, follower count, and more that will allow you to optimize your social media strategy. See what’s working and what isn’t.
7. Make social media-friendly content
Remember, your social media accounts are not your websites. You’ll want to make bite-sized content for your followers that is engaging! Here are some great ways to optimize your content for social media:
- Experiment with fun captions
- Try different kinds of posts (pictures, carousels, videos, audiograms, gifs, etc)
- Make infographics
- Gamify your content
- Create company-specific hashtags
And more! The best social media strategy is a creative one where you test, test, test.
8. Post relevant content
There’s something new trending on Twitter every day! Make sure to keep your B2B social media strategy topical. If everyone is talking about the same event in the news or something big has happened in your industry, don’t skip a beat and miss an opportunity to make social media content that caters to what people are already talking about!
8. Post relevant content
Research shows us that B2B marketers spend most of their time on LinkedIn! This makes sense since this is where most key decision-makers spend their time. When building a winning social media strategy, make sure to cater your content type to the channel its being posted on. Here are our recommendations:
- LinkedIn & Facebook: thought leadership content, employee engagement, brand awareness
- Twitter: interactive content
- Instagram: visual content
- Youtube: how-tos, interviews, presentations, webinars, and more
All in all, the worst B2B social media strategy is one that doesn’t exist. If your B2B company doesn’t leverage social media or make any effort in building brand awareness, educating, or building trust with your audience, then you are behind the eight-ball! The good news is, it’s not hard to get started and there are many simple, but effective ways your B2B company can create a touchpoint for your prospects on social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, or more. Try our tips and you’re on your way!
If your business is looking for marketing support or any insights about how to grow your business, schedule a free strategy session with us!
