For businesses focused on marketing themselves to other businesses, social media marketing might feel unnecessary or out of scope. Or maybe, since it’s a bit outside your normal tactics, you worry that your team doesn’t have the expertise to execute a social media marketing strategy successfully.
Well, do we have good news for you.
Not only can social media have a big impact on B2B marketing, it’s probably not as hard or time-consuming as you think. Here are five tips to maximize your business-to-business social media marketing efforts and grow your online presence.
5 Steps to Making a Big Social Media Marketing Impact
- Pick the right platforms. Most B2B marketers have a very specific target audience—companies looking to upgrade their AV equipment, for example—and the people you are trying to reach are probably on specific social media platforms. So, instead of attacking every site, start with one or two platforms to focus on and really knock it out of the park. Finding out where your customers spend the majority of their time when they’re online can help inform your decision.
- Create a calendar. A social media calendar can save you from scrambling for content on the fly. Ideally you can outline the content you’ll be posting at least a month in advance. Your social media marketing calendar should capture the optimal number of times you should post to each platform every day or week, as well as the optimal times of day to post your content. To save even more time, once you have a calendar, you can schedule your content to publish automatically using a tool such as HootSuite, CoSchedule, or HubSpot.
- Build relationships. It might be tempting to send your content out into the social media void and leave it at that, but one benefit of social media is the opportunity to communicate directly with your audience. Take some time to engage with your followers—respond to their comments, create groups, and identify influencers or micro influencers who can help amplify your content. You are still communicating as a business, but the more casual, personalized nature of social media will let you hone a human voice that can attract new customers and create loyalty.
- Get visual. According to internal data from Twitter, users are three times more likely to engage with content that has a visual component. Photos, videos, charts, and infographics can all help catch the eye of your followers, especially on image-driven platforms like Instagram and Pinterest. Tools such as VSCO, Piktochart, and Canva can help you create eye-catching content. Have a small business that doesn’t create a lot of compelling imagery? Try stock photos.
- Focus on quality over quantity. According to a recent survey, 86 percent of consumers say authenticity matters when they decide what brands to follow and support. That means you are better off posting better content less often than spamming your followers. There are plenty of free social media analytics tools to help you determine what content is performing best so you can keep refining and improving the quality of your content over time.
Are you a B2B marketer ready to start developing a social media marketing plan? We’d love to help.
