Social media has emerged as a top resource for marketing professionals and continues to be an effective way to generate B2B leads. No two networks are the same, so for a killer B2B social media strategy, it’s best to make a concrete plan of your goals (and tangible metrics for knowing when you’ve met them), and tailor your strategy to provide substantial content that engages with industry leaders and your followers.
Remember – you want people to keep coming back, so be sure to give them plenty of reasons to do so. Below, we share our 5-step process to creating an effective 2016 B2B social media strategy.
5-Step B2B Social Media Strategy
1. Streamline Your Presence
When each of your accounts has a different handle, and only half of your profiles are fully filled out, your potential customers might not stick around long enough to get your good info. Make sure that you have consistent names on each platform, and fill out everything – including the profile picture.
2. Define Your Objectives
As a marketing professional, you know that your efforts are useless unless you have clearly defined objectives to show the progress of a campaign. To best flesh out the structure of your social media presence, define:
- Your target audience: Who are you trying to reach and how big is your audience?
- Expectations for engagement: What kind of responses do you want? Do you want to generate leads and does your content motivate users to follow through with your call to action?
- Sharing/Viral likeliness: Does your campaign inspire followers to share your posts with their networks?
3. Create a Strategy for Each Network You’re Using
Your objectives will also help you decide how to tailor campaigns to each platform. Having a diverse presence across platforms can boost your company’s visibility, but you don’t want to deliver the same content everywhere. It’s best to recognize the strengths of each type of social media and adjust accordingly.
- LinkedIn:By far the most popular social media platform for B2B sales generation, LinkedIn is a platform designed around connecting professionals, which means that you won’t have to work as hard to sift through personal information on profiles to find your target market. Plus, LinkedIn continues to update with new tools to like outreach performance tracking, integrated sales pipelines, and of course, the blog publishing feature.
- Twitter:Use your Twitter account to engage directly with industry leaders (and other influencers) which can help boost your company’s image as a reputable resource, and directly connect with followers via surveys and questions.
- Instagram:Creatively tailor content to visual representations so followers can engage with behind-the-scenes or actual images of your company at work. Skip the boring graphics or blocks of text.
4. Content Matters
While your end goal may be generating sales, try and craft your social media presence as a consultant or industry expert rather than a salesperson. If you can regularly post informational content that is useful to potential customers, you’ll be poised as a thought leader rather than a salesman, and you’ll find it easier to engage with clients without them feeling the pressure of a sales call.
5. Remember to Engage
It can’t be said enough that simply posting info on social media outlets won’t give you the success you hoped for. One of the greatest features of these platforms is that they encourage engagement between users, and B2B companies can use this to their advantage when crafting outreach strategies. Share, like, and follow content from prospective clients, so when you introduce them to your product they will already be familiar with your name.
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