At this point you should already realize that social media isn’t just a place where friends and family connect, share photos and like posts.
Social has become a repository of knowledge, similar to the search engines, but more affinity driven by relationships and trusted sources.
If you want to know who to use for internet law, who can help you with an ESOP or what company is building quality apps, then social is a great place to get real feedback and reviews from people who have ACTUALLY used those services or know their work.
A B2B Social Media Strategy
Understanding how your target customers are using social media is key to gaining visibility, providing education to and engaging with these targets.
- Customers are asking their network for recommendations
- They are qualifying your company on social media
- These targets are educating themselves on your products & services
Has Anyone Heard of this Company?
A go to question asked by many business owners, executives, directors, buyers, managers, etc.
This is very powerful.
If an executive reaches out to their network asking for personal feedback on a company and one of their peers responds with good things to say, then you are on your way to landing new business.
While not every business will get a personal recommendation, if you have been marketing yourself well, then someone will at least know of you and respond with something like “I’ve seen this company and they look like they know what they are doing.”.
This is the next best thing, because you have built a small amount of social capital and trust with this target.
This stage of discovery is very important and completes the infinite loop of growth through marketing, which you can see clearly in our content marketing funnel (which is more of an hourglass), where past customers become salesmen for your business.
Who Are You Really?
Once a customer has been made aware of your business, whether it was from a referral on social media or they got nothing on social and asked the wise search engine Google, they will absolutely look your company up on social media.
Again this is a critical B2B Social Media step.
While the majority of B2B product & services companies are served well on LinkedIn, it is important to understand that these same customer targets have social profiles on many platforms and will look to find you where they are at in the moment (this could be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest in addition to LinkedIn).
Plus, you will have a more diverse result in the search engines with a cross-platform social media presence. More results, Knowledgegraph inclusions, image results, Twitter feed, etc.
These customers will look to see if you are a legitimate business and size you up to see if you are a good fit.
Questions like “Are they too big?”, “Are they too small?”, “Do they think like I think?”, and many more. This is where being clear on your own brand and business is important, because it will qualify buyers for you in a very efficient way, driving better leads into your sales funnel.
At this point two main things will happen.
A customer will contact you via phone, form submission or email (they will find this info on your social profiles, if you have built them out completely).
Or the customer will educate themselves more on a specific product or service.
How Will Your Product or Service Help Me?
This is what most businesses think of as soon as they hear B2B Social Media or Social Media Strategy.
And rightfully so, because it is so critical.
Customers need to understand:
- What problem you solve
- What you sell / solution you provide
- How it works
- Why it fits their needs
- Why you are better or different
- Your process
Social Media is a great place to get this clarifying, compelling and enlightening content in front of prospective buyers.
These customers are comparing you to your competitors and the more you can educate them, the better chance you have of winning that business.
While you will want this content to primarily live on your website, social is the channel you will distribute this educational material to ensure it gets seen and gets the buyer back to your site where you can convert them or reach back out and communicate in other ways.
Types of B2B Content for Social Media
- Blog Posts
- Whitepapers
- Ebooks
- One Sheeters
- Video
- Infographics
- Research Papers
- Webinars
- Case Studies
- Podcasts
Depending on your product or service the mix of B2B content types will differ and the tactical strategy for each channel can be tailored as well.
B2B Social Media Research & Tactics
As with any marketing you should conduct research to identify key information to that will guide the marketing efforts. B2B Social Media is no different.
Our recommendation is to take the research beyond social as well by using Google search query data (the keywords) and pair it with social media research on your target customers social platforms, including the less thought about forums and groups such as Quora and LinkedIn groups.
Creating an inventory of who your target prospects is very important and taking this even further by identifying the stakeholders in those companies and engaging with their personal accounts on social will drive massive results.
This leads us to a few specific tactics that we recommend for a superior B2B Social Media Strategy.
Following and engaging with the business accounts of your prospective customers, the individual accounts of the decision makers of those businesses and the same for your current customers will create much-needed visibility, awareness, affinity and trust with the organizations that you want to do business with.
- Like, Comment & Share Posts
- Favorite, Reply & Retweet
- Like & Comment using Video
This exposes you to the businesses you want to work with and gets your customers talking about you more, while at the same time you are indirectly getting in front of other potential customers who also engage with the same companies you are targeting.
This works like a charm and very few businesses are doing this!
You can learn more about our approach to social media here: https://acumenstudio.com/social-media-marketing-agency/
How Do I Know If It’s Working?
To be 100% Honest, this isn’t easy for most businesses.
Tracking, monitoring, analyzing, measuring and reporting to identify an ROI on your B2B marketing and social media efforts takes using platforms that can help you measure impact, attribution, and sales.
Most businesses are not equipped to do this (as are most marketers!).
You will either need to educate yourself on using platform specific social media analytics, social media tools such as Hootsuite, Buffer, SproutSocial, etc. or hire an agency to help you with this.
What we can tell you is that social media for B2B companies Pays Off BIG!
Download a Social Media Case Study Below to Learn More
Or, You can give us a call now at 866-357-7422 to talk.
