For some time now, most B2B companies have found themselves struggling to grasp social media marketing while others have chosen to ignore it altogether. B2C companies have, on the other hand, had their stories of success to tell with regard to social media strategy, which is precisely not the case with B2B companies.
B2B companies have chosen to rely on outdated tactics like cold calling and taking part in business networking breakfast sessions. Even though such tactics are still beneficial, they should not be used at the expense of social media.
If you are running a B2B business, then you may have to integrate the use of social media to achieve the desired results. If you have found yourself, for some reason getting reluctant to deploy the use of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, then chances are you are missing a huge opportunity.
The following steps are perfect and straightforward guidelines on how you can create an active social media strategy for your business.
Immediately after acknowledging that social media is indeed effective even with B2B companies, the next thing to do is to find an effective way how you can start.
It might look simple to you, and you even find the temptation of jumping right into posting on either Facebook or Instagram so hard to resist. However, it is essential to take every step keenly in planning a social media strategy.
According to RepGuardian, agencies must start focusing on newer avenues of social strategies like reputation management. This helps in building credibility, creates the impression that a business cares about engagement, and improves digital loyalty.
You need to determine what is likely to decide the success of your brand or business on social media. You need to be very sure whether you want to increase reach, generate more traffic to your company blog, or get more leads.
If you can find the right answers to the above questions, then you will be able to decide on the kind of metrics you wish to measure. Together with how likely they are to differ, depending on the sort of social media platform you intend to use.
For instance, if you intend to increase your reach, then you may need to concentrate your efforts on tracking the following. Organic reach, paid reach, impressions, follower count, and engagement.
If you intend to achieve leads, then you may also need to concentrate your efforts on metrics like clicks, conversions, and new leads from social media.
Immediately after knowing the kind of goals you have and how best to track them, you may now move to measure them. You may need to get a social media analytics platform to help you track everything. Don’t try to rely on spreadsheets and manual tracing.
After knowing what you intend to accomplish on social media and your preferred way of measuring success. The next thing you need to do after that is to try and how exactly you can get there. You can do this by laying out proper steps that will guide you to the accomplishment of your goals.
If your company does not have a written social media strategy, then it’s probably among many other companies out there. Documenting your B2B social media strategy plan is so essential since it helps you to set goals and evaluate the most convenient channels for reaching them.
The strategy you create should be able to answer essential questions. Who is your target audience, and the social platforms do you intend to use, among many other vital issues?
If you manage to document all this information, then you will be able to keep everyone on your page. This keeping will, in turn, help you adjust your strategy when you need to.
If you are looking for the easiest way to fail, then try out being dull on social media. Most B2B companies tend to regard social media as an afterthought, and as such, they deny it the human touch that a social media strategy deserves.
As a B2B company owner, you need to ensure you are too creative with your content while at the same time ensuring you are not too edgy and controversial. However, you need to note that brands vary; not every brand has the ability to pull a sassy tone on social media.
In trying to be human on social media, ensure you retain yourself to the right levels by avoiding being too entertaining, as that might, in some ways, offend your readers. All you need is to provide you with sound human and distinguish yourself from robots.
Always try to come up with a social media voice without necessarily being inappropriate or even making headlines for some wrong or unwanted reasons. In doing so, you can use the following tips.
Try and give your company its entity. For instance, you may make use of words like we and our when addressing your readers about your company.
The primary objective of social media is for conversations. Don’t be afraid of engaging your audience on various diverse matters. Use this conversation as an opportunity to advocate for your company with your users on social media.
It is important to note that social media was never created for business. It was designed for humans and more so a place where people can have fun. With this information in mind, use social media to share content and also converse with your audience.
You need to know that most people will get attracted to humorous social media platforms. With the increase in competition, you need to keep your platform as entertaining as possible to stay ahead of the pack.
However, it is also essential for you to note that too much humor on social media might take away the business sense from your platform. This state might even result in people not taking you seriously, and it is, therefore, essential to balance everything properly.
LinkedIn has managed to establish a reputation being the most used social media platform by B2B companies, and this makes sense to some extent.
According to a particular content marketing institute, a whopping 63 percent of marketing professionals rated LinkedIn as the most effective social media platform for B2B companies. This research has prompted most B2B companies to think that the only way to succeed is to be on LinkedIn.
Most companies that regard social media strictly for generating leads find LinkedIn as a more appealing option. However, when developing your social media strategy for your B2B Company, you will need to make branding your ultimate goal and not lead generation.
Sometimes, you may find your inner marketer trying to convince you that a social media platform is all about marketing only and entails selling products. Even though this might sound like it, you need to know that it may be very far from reality.
Most people who opt to get into social media do so to get entertained and maybe pass the time. In order to capture the attention of these people, your social media strategy should sound appealing to these users.
What this means is that you need not focus so much on posting so many videos on your social media strategy on why people should consider your products. Instead, you may need to follow in the sales force’s footsteps. Come up with content that appears to tell stories. Pick stories that are likely to draw emotions and also spark conversations.
By trying to put the right people in charge of your social media strategy, you may have to hire a social media manager. If not so, then select one of your employees to deal with the whole task of managing your social media strategy.
When selecting or hiring a social media manager, you need to ensure you look for someone with a known social media background. To, manage your whole social media activities.
Talented social media marketers may, over some time, be able to learn your company and industry’s ins and outs. This fact might force someone without social media marketing passion to struggle a little bit.
If you feel like you are not yet ready to get a full-time social media, then you may contemplate getting a social media freelancer to work for you.
There is a good chance you have about employee advocacy and, more particularly, social media strategy. With changes to the logarithm, most brands are trying to devise ways through which they can get more people on social media to look at their social media content.
This activity is precisely where the role of employee advocacy comes in. In a nutshell, employee advocacy means giving your employees the liberty to champion your brand in their various circles.
If your company, for instance, makes videos and long posts. You may have to make it easy for your employees to share the content of your B2B Company in their various profiles.
Most B2B companies tend to prefer sharing content from social media platforms belonging to the company. However, even though this might sound like a good idea, you need to know that it limits your outreach to just your audience alone.
However, there might be more benefits if a good number of your employees start sharing content. This increase in the number of people sharing not only positively impacts your reach but also leads to more engagement.
If you do your research, you will be able to establish that most people tend to read content from friends more compared to brands.
The only problem with employee advocacy is that sometimes. It is always hard to try to convince your employee to spread information about your social media strategy content to their friends. Most employees tend to consider employee advocacy as time-consuming and may shun it.
As earlier on, leads should not just be your main point focus when developing a social media strategy. However, it is essential to take the right steps toward ensuring that your social media delivers the intended results. Particularly for B2B companies.
Social selling means using social media to drive potential prospects to your company. In clarity, you may deploy the use of cold calling. However, this method might not be as effective as the use of social media.
The primary objective of social media is finding people you think might benefit from your products. And look for ways of establishing relationships with them. This relationship can be set by providing this person with helpful content and value as well.
User-generated content does not always involve people posting photos and images of the products they may be using. That’s not the reality. Even though the use of user-generated content is well suited for selling consumer products, B2B companies can also make use of the strategy for their success.
It is usual for people to try and use the name of your business immediately after it starts to progress. Such people may either use your business name or, in some cases, the name of your business.
These imposters may not only be harmful to your entire business but may also shift your clients and customers toward their side. You may have to find a way of tracking them and possibly reporting them to ensure action gets taken.
Apart from that, you may also need to find a way of letting your users know that they are dealing with you and not anybody else.
Well, the process does not just end there. There are certain other parameters that you should follow. Think of it as some additional aspects that you have to keep in mind.
Most businesses establish their presence with the help of content that they curate from other sources. However, the audience can figure out the difference between original content and content that has been taken from other sources.
To have a positive impact on your brand, you have to market your content as well. If you find it difficult to think of original content every day, you can scale back the operation. If you do not have the resources to personalize posts for different platforms, then spend most of the time on the platform where you have developed the most audience.
There is an obvious reason why social media marketers get excited when the platform launches some new feature. It is precisely because they get to experiment and play with the preferences of their audience.
Twitter polls, Instagram stories, along LinkedIn documents are all examples of utilizing multimedia formats that are unique for every channel. Creating content and publishing them on social media channels adds interest and is essential for grabbing the audience’s attention.
For instance, if X, formerly known as Twitter had just text-based posts, you would have been bored while scrolling through it. The reason why people love X is because it is different. In just 10 seconds of scrolling, you might come across a poll, a meme, a photo collage, a gif, and a video. That is how you have to market your brand’s feed.
There are various B2B companies that highlight their employees, give their brand a face, and personalize it. This is important no matter if you have a small company or a big one, as it is the people who make it all who make the company.
Moreover, when you highlight your employees, you have an amazing opportunity for employer branding. This way, you will have a greater opportunity of spreading word-of-mouth about your company.
Showcasing your employees can also increase engagement and reach. For example, instead of posting a photo of the product, post a picture of the people who created the product or a video of the people creating the product.
At this point, you may have almost all the information you need about social media marketing strategy and how to come up with one.
The only thing you need to do right now is to figure out how you are going to start a social media strategy, for your B2B Company if you don’t have one yet.
If you have one and still not getting the right result from your plan, then consider the above steps keenly. If you need the best social media strategy for your B2B brand, feel free to get in touch with us through [email protected].
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A self-proclaimed Swiftian, Instagram-holic, and blogger, Subhasree eats, breathes, and sleeps pop culture. When she is not imagining dates with Iron Man on Stark Tower (yes, she has the biggest crush on RDJ, which she won’t admit), she can be seen tweeting about the latest trends. Always the first one to break viral news, Subhasree is addicted to social media, and leaves out no opportunity of blogging about the same. She is our go-to source for the latest algorithm updates and our resident editor.
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