3 Practical Steps to Better B2B Social Media Marketing

When it comes to B2B social media marketing, most people in the field of B2B sales are unlikely to give it any praise. If you were to ask most B2B companies what they thought social media and lead generation, they would laugh and say it’s non-existent. That social media doesn’t work for B2B companies. I’m going to take a wild bet here and say that their B2B social strategy sucks if they even have a social media strategy.

While everyone else gives their B2B social strategy the time off, you can do something better. Take the time to sit down and get hyper-focused with your approach to social media. If everyone else fails to adopt a B2B social media marketing strategy see it as an opportunity. There’s less clutter out there in the social media world to try and cut through. It’s a win-win situation for you.

First, we need to get an idea of what the mindset of someone tasked with creating a B2B social strategy is like. They’ve been told that B2B social marketing is successful when it becomes a viable lead generation tool. Social media has to bring in something more than followers and Likes to be useful. These B2B social media managers are often members of the sales team and only have a couple of hours per week to dedicate to social media marketing. With this mindset, the B2B marketer goes about promoting the company on social media. They focus on promoting the products that they offer with an added reminder of why they’re the best at it.

This style of B2B social media marketing strategy is destined to fail. A very slow and long-winded failure. All you need is to flip the switch on one or two aspects of your social strategy. The difference will be visible right away.

1. Choose Someone to Handle Your B2B Social Media

You should have someone assigned to work on the social strategy for your B2B business. Social media marketing is more than a simple update or share of a topic related to your business. It’s about communicating throughout the web, which is huge by the way, to connect with your audience in the hope that they become customers.

Having someone dedicated to your B2B social marketing strategy is critical. When your social marketing is handled by someone who has a whole host of other things on their plate it’s a recipe for disaster. It’s unlikely they will have the time to give social media marketing the focus and attention it deserves.

When choosing someone to handle your social media make sure the person already has some understanding of your company. Social media is a fast-paced environment. Your social media manager will be connecting with current customers and communicating with prospective customers. This audience will expect efficient and quick responses. There’s rarely enough time to go and ask around to figure out the right answer to a question.

2. Wrap in a Content Marketing Strategy

When starting out with your B2B social marketing run a keyword research report. Compile your findings of successful articles that rank well and see how you can add to their content. Working through these content marketing basics will ensure you have an understanding of the content out there. It will push you to create your own content strategy as you work on your social media.

As your social media picks up steam keep an eye on your reports. By taking time to check your metrics and research who your followers are you’ll be able to see what content they love and what doesn’t work so well. The end game here is to create exceptional educational content that helps and guides your audience. Become a thought leader in your industry’s social media space and you’ll get leads. People love to follow the best and smartest in their industry.

Content strategy takes a lot of trial and error but it helps if you start by looking at who the key influencers in your industry are. Watch their social media and see what they are working on or writing. And if you can get their input, do it!

A solid content strategy is all about knowing what’s coming up and having it in front of your audience in good time. Learn how to build hype, maintain the hype, and follow it up with something else by analyzing the data.

3. Give Your B2B Social Media Marketing Time

This is the most crucial aspect of any social marketing strategy. For many companies the seniors just want business and that means social media leads and sales are a numbers game. Managers know that if X calls are made today then the % chance of a lead coming in increases. Since social media is harder to track it begins to fall down the rankings for lead generation.

Given time, most decent social marketing and content strategies can and do work well. It’s a case of testing, learning, and iterating your social media messaging. With a little work and time to see the returns, you’ll find an effective and efficient social media strategy.

Most B2B marketing managers need to take a step back and give the social strategy time to see fruition. Otherwise, their lack of patience will turn the social strategy into another wasted opportunity. Social is a long-term investment so long as the investment is made into the right areas of social.

About the Author:

Marius Fermi is the Co-Founder of Red Giant Digital  a creative digital marketing shop. He’s crafted his art and gone from strength to strength when it comes to digital marketing with experience coming from B2B companies and some B2C projects.