Did you know that almost half the world’s population are on social media? That is a lot of potential clients in one place, so it is surprising that so many B2B brands still overlook social media when creating their marketing strategy.
There is a misconception that social media marketing only works for B2C brands, but that is simply not true. B2B brands, too, can harness the power of social media to increase brand awareness, show the world their amazing company culture, build connections and demonstrate thought leadership.
This blog post will provide you with three tips for building a successful B2B social media strategy.
1. Create a plan
Your social media plan must tie in with your overall digital strategy and business goals. You should start your plan by defining your goals, as that will be how you will measure and identify success. Setting and understanding your key performance indicators (KPIs) will help you make decisions regarding content, budgets and the necessary resources to achieve them. It is important that you revisit your plan regularly, because as your business goals change, so should your success indicators – and the success of your social media efforts could also prompt a revisit of your KPIs.
2. Define your audience
It is important that you define your target audience. After all, your audience will dictate your messaging. If you are unsure of who exactly your target audience is, there are several ways you can work it out: you can perform persona research, perform e-listening, or simply look at the engagement on your competitors’ social media pages. If you are targeting an international audience, be aware that they might not be on the social networks that you expect. For example, Xing is the leading professional social network in Germany, not LinkedIn.
3. Think about your messaging and visuals
Should you post the same content across all your social media platforms? Of course not! Each platform has its own strengths and set of rules. The same person could follow you across different platforms, and the content they will expect to see from you in each will be different. Therefore, it is important that you tailor your style and message to each platform. A good place to start is by auditing your posts across the different social platforms. Which type of post drew the most comments or shares? Do they differ from platform to platform? That will give you an early indication of what kind of content your followers want to see in each platform and give you a basis to focus on.
I hope this has given you a useful introduction to B2B social media strategy. For more in-depth information, read my free, full-length guide here. The guide covers:
- how to create an effective plan
- how to define your audience and find out which social media channels they are on
- how to craft your messaging and visuals, including how to do this from an international perspective
- how organic and paid social media fit together
- how to build a community and encourage engagement, including employee advocacy and social selling
César Gonçalves
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Yes, B2B can also harness the power of social media to increase brand awareness. It can be quite challenging to yield results quickly though. Defining your target audience is indeed very crucial as it can help you tailor your marketing campaign in such a way that it catches their attention and encourage them to take action. If you don’t define your audience, you’ll surely end up with a generic campaign that gets ignored by people you want to attract. Thank you for your tips.