Let’s be honest. B2B companies aren’t always the most exciting when it comes to social media. While a huge number of people can whittle hours away watching videos on TikTok of people dancing, or browsing through the dreamy lives of influencers on Instagram, somehow we don’t quite have that level of interest when it comes to the products and services of B2B brands.
But while this may be the case for some companies, it’s absolutely not for others. There are a huge number of B2B brands doing incredible things on social media, broadcasting their message far and wide and using their platforms to engage and excite their audience.
In fact, 70% of B2B marketers who’ve been using social media for the last 12 months reported that it’s helped to improve their sales.
If you’re looking for ways to boost your social media presence in 2023, we’ve got some great tips to get you started.
Focus your messages around the ways that you help people and businesses, building the interest of your audience and helping them to understand more about who you are as a company and what your values are. Taking the message away from the features of your products or services helps the reader to position themselves as a customer, rather than feel bombarded with sales messages that will probably just switch them off.
Whenever you’re working on a social media strategy, it’s absolutely vital that you include goals. Whether that’s the number of followers you want, engagement rates or sales, you need to understand what you’re aiming for and how you plan to get there. SMART goals are particularly helpful for social media marketing.
Specific: Be as specific as possible with your goal to avoid confusion or ambiguity.
Measurable: Quantify your goal and make sure that you can measure success over time.
Attainable: Be realistic when setting goals. Don’t give yourself a task that you can’t achieve.
Relevant: Think about the bigger picture - what do you want from your social media presence and how does this help the company?
Time-bound: Give yourself a deadline to achieve your goals, with regular check-ins to keep yourself on track.
Take a look at what your competitors are doing with their social media; what are they posting about? How often? What kinds of followers do they have? Are they getting much traction? It’s important to use this research to build your own strategy, using their influence to decide what will work and what won’t for your particular audience.
No matter which platform(s) you decide to use for your brand, make sure you take advantage of all the different features that they offer you. Use images, video, polls - whatever you can to keep generating unique and original content for your audience that will help to set you apart from the competition and keep them coming back for more.
One thing you should always remember about social media is that it’s a two-way thing. You don’t want to just be shouting messages into an empty room – you want to have a discussion with your customers and potential customers, finding out as much about them as possible and using that information to improve your business. Ask questions of your audience, encourage them to share their thoughts and always respond to comments and messages. This will help to build a community around your brand and create a loyal following.
With so many different platforms to choose from, it can be tempting to spread yourself across all of them. While this could be seen as a way to get your message out to more people, in reality you’re actually just watering it down. Carry out as much research as you can to understand where your ideal audience spends their time and focus your efforts there in the first instance. If you choose to spread out into other platforms over time, be sure that you’re not just duplicating messages and take the time to understand how people behave differently on different social media networks.
Some of the most successful B2B brands on social media are doing things that are completely unexpected in their industry. Instead of repetitive and boring content that talks about their company and what they do, they prioritise sharing information that inspires, informs and excites. For example, IBM has built a whole load of content around products that they’ve created over the past 100 years, solidifying their position as leaders and experts within the industry. They also mix it up with interviews with their staff, animations and their links to popular events, such as The Wimbledon Championships. Certainly not quite what you’d expect from a technology corporation.
Love them or hate them, there’s no doubt that hashtags can have a huge impact on the reach that your social media posts get. Within the B2B space, it’s worth focusing on some of the more niche hashtags that are appropriate within your industry and are a bit more specific to what you do - the more targeted, the better. For example, if you’re in the FinTech space, use hashtags such as #Fintech #Fintechbusiness #Finance #Fintechnews.
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