How To Plan Your B2B Social Media Strategy: Top Tips

B2B social media strategy is essential to building any brand and gathering audiences. When you think about social media marketing, it is a common mistake to think only about B2C brands.

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A B2B social media marketing strategy is just as important, and businesses are already using it to connect with their target customer. Since the shift to online communication mediums, social media has enabled brands to get promising returns.

B2B strategy for social media has enabled brands to increase their brand reach and generate more leads, as:

● 7 in 10 B2B buyers watch videos or research online before buying any product or service

● 84% of these buyers look at the social media page of the brand or have interacted with the brand before being influenced into making a purchasing decision

● 95% of B2B marketers mention utilizing social media as a vital channel for lead generation

If you want to craft the ideal B2B social media strategy for your brand or customer, read on to know everything there is to ace the B2B social media marketing game in 2022.

How To Create a B2B Social Media Marketing Strategy

The abbreviation “B2B” means business-to-business. B2B social media marketing is about creating a social media presence that enables the brand to target its key customers effectively. Any B2B social media strategy’s objective is thus to increase awareness, generate new leads or convert and engage with existing customers.

Every business ventures into social media marketing with a similar goal, the end objective being driving sales and generating leads from the brand. But while the purpose of your marketing campaign is focused on leads and conversions, social media should have a lot more value than purely being sales driven.

To design a B2B social media strategy that succeeds, brands need to focus on critical aspects like

● The messaging: The key message for a brand is the value the brand’s products or services provide the audience. The messaging is crucial for any B2B social strategy since it will be the base for all the activities, posts, and engagement on social media.

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● Content type: Even on social media, there are multiple content types like posts, ads, videos, pictures, infographics, and blogs. Brands should focus on the right content type depending on the kind of audience and how they usually consume content.

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● Expected outcome: This is also referred to as the CTA (Call To Action) of your social media post or ad. The CTA should be focused on driving the right action and ensuring the ad or the post creates the expected outcome, i.e., to click on a link, fill up a form, or something else.

7 B2B Social Media Best Practices

Social media best practices are valid for all social media marketers consisting of B2B, B2C as well as non-business pages. Hence, posting consistently with a visual brand theme is not enough for the B2B arena. For best B2B social media practices, follow the below-mentioned tips:

1. Build your brand’s identity and voice

In such a competitive time, a brand identity that grabs the attraction of your target audience is essential. Your brand identity will help you stand out among all the other B2B companies. To build brand identity, you need to keep your company ethics and goals firm in your mind. Also, try to make all your social media communication reliable, relatable and unique.

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2. Define your target audience

Every marketer needs to understand who their target audience is. This helps them create a brand voice and social media posts that resonate with the audience. To define your audience, you can undertake surveys or use research materials to know who your persona is and what they need from your brand.

3. Focus on employer branding

In social media B2B marketing, employer branding is vital as all the buyers become more socially aware. However, if the brand voice or branding is not what the customer expects, there is a high chance of the customer opting for a competitor.

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Hence, B2B marketers should always focus on “employer branding” and offer their employees a “brand style guide” to detail the recommendations and rules for publishing and creating content that improves their brand.

4. Practice social listening

Social listening is vital to track different social media channels and know how they mention the brand and their competitors. Social listening tools are also essential to understanding the brand’s sentiments on social media. These tools are the only way to know how the audiences or customers see your brand and products.

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To analyze B2B social media campaign results, listening to these social media tools will give you a clear picture regarding the channel that produces actionable leads and the social media channel that wastes your time and money.

5. Add value to your audience.

More than half of content marketers use B2B social media marketing and start B2B social media campaigns to put themselves ahead, create an audience, and increase their customer base. However, by focusing only on sales or buyer-driven posts, brands create social media posts that can sound repetitive and off-putting.

Instead, brands should leverage their social media presence to speak with their customers and add value using this content. This could be via tips, recommendations, essential industry updates, or even how-to videos.

6. Choose the right social media platform.

Choose the right social media platform for your business. If you are unsure where your ideal customers are, you can start with social media demographics. 94% of marketers prefer LinkedIn for the best B2B social media campaigns. LinkedIn is a professional platform and ideal for B2B customers.

However, other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube are equally crucial for the brand. Each platform has a unique content type and customer base, which brands can leverage to help connect with their target audience.

7. Measure your efforts

It is crucial to measure your efforts for content performance. But how will you measure your performance? You must measure your performance with the correct KPIs and metrics. But what are the right metrics?

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Metrics depend on the business goal. For example, suppose your brand’s marketing objective is to generate new leads. In that case, the B2B social strategy should focus on metrics like engagement, click-through rate, or conversions on your landing pages.

In the End

On a concluding note, we can say that with the massive competition among all B2B companies, businesses must try hard to build trust and also prove that their business is a plus. Therefore, try to focus on a more powerful B2B social media strategy that grabs customers’ attention.

Content marketing is a great start if you want to stand out in this competitive space. Content marketing is not just a stand-alone activity but also enables the creation of the best B2B social media campaigns.

Relevant and value-driven content helps your audience and creates a long-term business relationship. B2B customers are more likely to trust brands that produce valuable content, as this showcases their experience and expertise in a particular domain. We hope this guide helps you do that and add value for your customers.

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