Build a social media strategy for your brand
Successful social media marketing for B2B companies takes practice and planning out your perfect strategy. You may think that social posts are reserved for B2C companies announcing sales and new products or personal accounts sharing vacation pictures, but your audience is out there as well. In fact, Gartner says that as much as 46% of B2B buyers turn to social media at the very beginning of their buying journeys
If you are wondering where to start, read on for All Around Creative’s simple tips to help you round out a robust B2B social media strategy:
Share Engaging Content
The most important thing to remember when planning your social media calendar is that you should never follow a “cookie cutter” strategy. The evolving landscape of social media means your approach should be flexible and adapted for your industry. What works now may not work in six months so keep an eye on trends and always refer to platform analytics for more information.
What is considered engaging content varies depending on your industry, but there are a few constants that work for many B2B calendars:
- Promoting lead generation content
- News and tips revolving around your industry
- Company success stories or updates
- Brand awareness and client testimonials
- Short form videos
Here are a few important tips from AAC for constructing your social calendar:
Share original content: Don’t share content for the sake of checking off your daily posting routine. Your audience will interact more with something that is true to your brand and showcases content they haven’t seen before. It is okay to repost and share, but keep your brand at the forefront of your social posting as often as possible.
Use multimedia: Posts with some type of visual aid perform better than plain text. According to this HubSpot blog, your audience will likely only remember 10% of content three days after posting unless a relevant image was included. With the image, retention rates go up to 65%.
Highlight employees: People love to see behind the scenes, and that includes seeing the staff that makes your company go round. When you put faces to names, it allows your audience to easily engage with your company and, as a plus, it acts as brand awareness. It also encourages employees by showing them you appreciate all their hard work.
Engage in conversation: What is a brand without their audience? Take the time to interact with your audience in comments, polls, or a post that sparks a discussion.
Analyze Insights
In order to optimize your social strategy, your analytics can offer deeper insights into what works and what doesn’t. Most social posting sites offer their own analytics, but users posting through or with social accounts connected to HubSpot can see a large variety of reports. HubSpot collects post information on impressions, likes, reactions, replies, retweets, and shares.
HubSpot takes this information and generates robust reports with information including:
- Audience: Shows your current number of followers and compares them to the number you had in the previous time period
- Interactions: Shows the number of likes, reactions, and comments on your social posts
- New Contacts: Shows the number of new contacts created in HubSpot as a result of website sessions driven by social media
- Top Posts: Shows a list of your top ten performing posts. You can see an overview of each post’s interactions, clicks, shares, and impressions
These reports can also be utilized for creating your social calendar for the next month. Take note of your top ten posts and lowest performing posts (the ones with the least interaction). Think about what could change to improve the low interaction posts. Was the post not engaging enough, does it need to be tweaked, or was it something your audience does not want to see? Communicate with your team and try the same post with adjustments such as copy choice, posting time, or a different image to see if it performs better the next month.
Best Practices
There are many things to consider when thinking about best practices revolving around B2B social media. Focus on the basics, and think about why you want to post. Content Marketing Institute says B2B marketers report content marketing and social media help create brand awareness, build credibility and trust, and educate their audience. You can achieve all of these with a perfectly planned social strategy. But how?
- Set a goal for each post: Knowing your objective for posting is the first step to a successful post. Are you looking to increase brand awareness, create more site traffic, boost lead generation, encourage job applicants, or something else? Nail down your goal before working on a post.
- Rely on analytics: Learn about your audience and craft your message in a way that resonates with them. LinkedIn analytics provide details about attributes of the people interacting with your content. This can inform your messaging and audience insight in unique ways.
- Check on your competitors: 92% of companies use social media. If your audience follows you and all of your competitors, that’s a lot of information to digest. Make sure your content doesn’t mirror theirs or your audience will lump you and them together.
- Ensure you choose the right platform: While it may seem counterintuitive, you should not post in as many places as possible. That could hurt your brand image and you still might not be reaching your goal audience. The right platform will meet your audience in the right context and present you as a trusted source of information.
The Channels
As stated before, it is important to find the right platform for your social posts based on audience, message, and goal. You should look into each platform and take note of what fits your brand best. Here is a short breakdown of current platforms and their numbers*:
Facebook has 2.04 billion daily active users: 91% of people aged 59-77 use the platform on a regular basis. People aged 41-56 come in with a smaller 83% and people aged 25-40 boast 88% usage.
Instagram has 500 million daily active users: The largest demographic on the platform is males between 18-24 with males between 25-34 following closely behind. Most female users are between 18-34.
Twitter has 238 million daily active users: The base demographic is largely men with only 43.6% of users identifying as female.
TikTok has 1.06 billion daily active users: This platform is primarily used by people aged 9-24, but has a large following of all ages. Users are twice as likely to recommend something they found on the platform.
LinkedIn has 141 million daily active users: 31% of LinkedIn users are between the ages of 30-39, 23% are between the ages of 40-49, and 17% are between the ages of 18-29.
*Social media numbers fluctuate. These numbers are based on different sources that reported on varying times in 2023.
B2B social media marketing has many dos and don’ts, but it is an easy to follow road once you understand your audience, messaging, and goals. Do you need help with your social strategy? Don’t worry, AAC is here for all your posting needs. Contact us today to talk more about your perfect strategy.
Adrian Serna
Marketing Content Manager