7 Ways B2B Companies Can Leverage Social Media
If you have been avoiding or neglecting your social media presence because you’re a B2B company, it’s time to rethink your marketing strategy. Social media does more than bring in leads and traffic. It expands your reach and brand in ways that word of mouth can’t accomplish. It doesn’t matter what type of business you run, social media should be a key factor in your marketing strategy. To help you ease into and become more professional with your social media presence we’ve compiled some of the best tips B2B companies can use to kickstart social awareness.
Social Media for B2B Companies
1. Make Your Post About Your Audience
Many B2B companies fail to see the power in social media because they look at their business and do not think they can have interesting and captivating content to engage their audience. When you start to think more about who your audience is you can begin to create content that caters specifically to them. Consider the Insurance company that specializes in providing health care for families. Thinking of your audience you have a wide range of family-focused issues that you can create content around such as family exercise programs, healthy snacks, infant screenings, and young childhood disease prevention. Other companies that are fully embracing social media include pharmaceutical companies, law firms, even some of the most obscure niched down businesses, for example, those that provide equipment to zoos to maintain natural habitats, are finding excellent ways to attract audiences and boost their businesses.
The goal is to create share-worthy content and this can be done by thinking outside the box. Think about your audience and you will find exactly what they want to be reading or learning more about. Even if the content is precisely about your company, you will be able to customize content that your audience is interested in.
2. Show the Faces of Your Company
Highlight your employees. Introduce your employees to your audiences. Let them see the people behind the scenes and who they may have the pleasure of working with. Shout out to your teams or departments. Did an employee get a ravings review? Did one of your departments exceed expectations? Show that you recognize the hard work of the people that work at your company and you will show your audience that you respect them and encourage a team culture.
While you are at it don’t forget to highlight the customers who are leaving your feedback or sharing how they are using your products or services. Show customers using your products or who have benefited from your services.
This approach gives your employees and customers more incentive to share content on their own social platforms. Encourage employees to share content on their personal profiles and their friends will be more likely to read your content.
3. Strengthen Your Brand’s Voice
Two companies that come to mind that aren’t afraid to let their brand’s voice shine on social media are Wendy’s and McDonald’s. You will see these two companies comment and have witty replies to each other’s posts. While you may not want to go down the same brutal path as these two companies they have a clear voice that is associated with this brand. They are witty, sassy, and make their presence known.
You want to comment and interact with your audience, but you want the tone and language you use to be consistent across all your social media platforms. It should also give customers an idea of your brand’s personality and reflect a similar tone and language you would hear in the office.
This also helps you strengthen your overall brand identity. Having a strong brand identity will make your B2B company stand out on social media.
4. Learn When to Post and What to Post
Knowing when to post is just as important as knowing what to post. Once you have been consistent with getting content out on a daily basis you will want to put your focus into seeing when are the best times to post and which types of posts get more attention in those times. You will want to experiment with posting different types of content at the same time for a few days to see which gets more attention. You might narrow the time frame down for when you should post but will often find that certain continent (videos over written content) does better in the afternoon, while polls or infographics might do better in the early morning.
5. Hire the Right Person
Hiring someone more knowledgeable about social media marketing can fast track your efforts. The mistake that most B2B companies make when putting someone in charge of their social media accounts is they often assign the task to someone already working with them. While this can work for some businesses what often happens is a few employees agree to the task but they have no interest in keeping up with it. Though they are more informed about how the business is run and the overall industry, they aren’t consistent with posting, they don’t engage with your audience, and you are any further ahead than before.
Hiring someone who is passionate about social media marketing is your best option. Even if they don’t have much experience with your specific industry, they will take the time to learn because they are excited about the marketing aspect and creating the right content for your business.
6. Utilize Different Type of Content
More often than not, people go on social media for entertainment or to pass some time. Content should appeal to these two factors. This can be done by incorporating different types of content on your social media.
Written content is ideal for telling stories that go along with an image. Photography Content is great for increasing engagement. Infographics take the boredom out of information. These can be used to show statistics, benefits, or to provide lesser-known information that your audience might find useful. Video content This content captures the viewer’s attention and can be used for storytelling, informing, and engagement.
It is best to have a social plan that includes all these types of content but they should be carefully crafted to appeal to specific individuals in your audience. Content should be created to increase brand awareness first, not just to generate leads.
7. Consider Every Aspect of the Buyer’s Journey
Many companies are crushing in with social media because they are giving their audience exactly what they are looking for every step of the way. Think about how your audience first begins to take an interest in what you are offering. If you sell kitchen appliances people are probably searching first for what is wrong with the appliance they have currently, then how to fix it, then energy-saving appliances, special features of appliances, which eventually leads them to look for what you are selling. In every step, you can create content to help your audience and when they get to the buying stage they will already have you in mind.
What if you don’t sell items that typical buyers would ever buy? No problem! You can create content that is linked to a cause they might donate to or volunteer for, you can create content about the state of the art technology, Or maybe you speak to the audience that they themselves may not be interested in but they know someone else that might be.
