In 2020, the B2B social media economy will become more relevant than ever. Here are a few ways you can improve your approach to take advantage of this dynamic playing field.
Social media channels are constantly flooded with B2C marketing for everything from fried chicken sandwiches to oddball products from Wish. It seems B2C marketing is all too easy on social media, but B2B social media marketing can often seem less straightforward. Longer sales cycles mean that it might prove difficult to find a clear road towards a successful B2B social media strategy.
B2B organizations commonly find themselves struggling with how to use their social media channels. You’ve probably seen it from some of your LinkedIn connections: aimless, random posts that serve little to no purpose with flat content that doesn’t say much. If you feel that is what your organization is doing, here are a few tricks to get out of bad habits immediately:
1. Use paid social media to flaunt your branding
It doesn’t make much sense to pay for social media ads if you’re not going to make it eye-catching. Make sure that your organic posts and your paid posts are aligned with your branding style guide. This guarantees branding has exposure and also increases the chances for brand association and your organic posts getting attention from people who have already been exposed to your ads.
2. Insert your customers into your narrative
If you aren’t using case studies as part of your content marketing strategy, then please start doing so right now. Case studies, success stories, and testimonials add immediate value to your brand and give other potential customers the chance to identify with similar challenges to those highlighted. B2B companies rely on trust, reputation, and recommendations to secure business relationships; inserting your customers into your social marketing narrative strengthens these relationships.
However, you may not want to come off as trying to haggle some kudos from your clients, so give back by sharing their content and success stories on your social media channels as well. Being a “good neighbor” goes a long way in digital B2B marketing. Boast your successes, but highlight your client and showcase them as the hero in your story. This will make it easier to get testimonials from them or permissions to feature their actual brand in a case study instead of having to white label them.
3. Feed your social media strategy with pillar content
It takes quite a bit of effort to create a piece of content such as a blog, an article, a case study, or a calendar of monthly posts. Since you’re putting all that effort into it, why not make the most of it?
First, start with creating a valuable piece of content that has plenty of substance. Let’s say an article; this one for example. “5 Ways to Boost your B2B Social Media Marketing”. This article is posted on the blog on our website, but we’re going to use snippets from this article to use in social media. We’re also going to derive ideas from this article to post additional tips throughout the month and use those to tie-in to our other services such as content development and PPC. Also, if you created a video, you can use snippets from the video to feed your social media channels over several weeks while also promoting the video itself.
4. Humanize your messaging on social media
Traditional advertising doesn’t sound all that human. They use hyperbole and often try to hard to get your attention. We use social media to interact with other humans, so we tend to expect social media to sound more human than a TV or radio ad. Brands nowadays are always looking for that “emotional connection” with their customers; social media gives you a great platform to do that.
There are several ways to humanize your brand’s voice on social media. Inserting a certain amount of humor can go a long way, but be careful to not try too hard or you can risk sounding disingenuous. A great way to show how human you are is to show who your humans are; showcase staff and leadership members alike and share their stories. You can also have your CEO personally write out a message to the public each month and post it.
Your organization can also adhere to a cause and make sure that cause gets plenty of attention across social media channels. Aside from the reward that standing up for a good cause already brings in itself, your audience will see that your company does more than just try to make money. Industry research shows that globally, over 60% of consumers prefer to consume products and services from companies they know are doing something good for the world and reflect their own values.
Here at CXGS, we aim to create social media strategies that create value for our clients. It goes beyond keeping your channels busy, there needs to be a purpose and a direction for B2B social media marketing that will lead to a closer connection with your audiences. Learn more about how we can help!
