5 Tips for your B2B Social Strategy  

1. Streamline your Social Media Platforms

2. Plan your Content Campaigns

3. Analyse and Optimise your Social Media Efforts

4. Great Visuals

5. Extend your Social Reach

By Helen Weedon, Managing Director, Radical Moves

An engaging social media presence, should be a core part of any digital marketing strategy. Planning a well thought out social calendar, will facilitate lead generation by; driving customers to your website, improving your SEO and consolidating your brand identity. However, to ensure your strategy succeeds, there are some key factors to consider – particularly where B2B social accounts are concerned.

Let’s look at 5 tips to maximise your B2B social media efforts:

How to Streamline your Social Media Platforms

Social channels are owned platforms, so the benefit of posting organically is that companies have complete control over their content and can post as often as they like. However, there is a temptation to ramp up the effort, posting as much as possible to as many channels as possible.

While social media may offer an easily accessible way of getting a message out, that has also become its downfall. Firstly, good quality social posts take time and effort to produce. It’s important to focus on creating original content, that is worthy of your chosen audience’s attention. Pick social media accounts that align with your business objectives and your target customer to help concentrate your efforts.

How to Plan your Content Campaigns

Once you’ve selected your chosen platforms, think about what type of content will make an impression and drive traffic to your website. Don’t use social media as a personal soapbox, but do grow your audience with thought leadership content that addresses the challenges your potential customers are facing. It is also essential to remember that social media should be a two-way conversation. You should follow others in the industry and spend time engaging with their content  to build your network.

Once you’ve thought about your message, it’s time to plan, so that you can maintain a regular posting schedule. There should be a good balance of posts that drive traffic to long-form content, as well as announcements and updates on industry news. Regular posting should feed into your overall marketing strategy. You want to grow your brand awareness and build trust with your target audience, so linking to some great thought leadership pieces or creating your own, helps to cement your reputation as an expert in the industry.

Create a strategy and outline:

• Your tone of voice.
• How you would like your brand to be perceived.
• The topics your content will focus on.

Remember to be flexible. If you haven’t got anything to say, then don’t post for the sake of it. Equally if you’ve just launched sliced bread 2.0, then plan a series of posts worthy of such an important announcement. Your ultimate goal is to engage your audience and drive traffic to your website – not to create a noisy newsfeed.

How to Analyse and Optimise your Social Media Efforts

This is one of the most overlooked, yet important steps. If something doesn’t work, you don’t want to repeat it. It’s crucial to look back at your efforts and analyse your metrics. If you goal is to drive traffic to your website, then tools like Google analytics can tell you how visitors arrived at your site. You can also note the points when your traffic increased, to further analyse the success of your content plan.

When it comes to B2B social media, the metrics you should focus on are not the same as B2C social accounts. In a consumer context, reactions and comments are a good indicator of how well a post is performing but with B2B posts you need to look deeper – often it’s impressions and click-throughs which are more revealing. It’s not just what you post, it’s also when you post, so try to look for patterns to determine the best posting schedule. Don’t be afraid to try something new, but equally you should make adjustments to your plan if it’s not working.

How Great Visuals can give your Post a Boost

As well as taking up a larger portion of the screen, which draws more attention to your message. Images are a much faster way to convey information to your audience. Neuroscientists from MIT found that the human brain can process images, seen by the eye for just 13 milliseconds. The Visual Communication Agency also noted that “compared to text alone, text paired with images improves comprehension by up to 89%”. This is particularly important when trying to convey complex technical information in a busy newsfeed.

Using quality images can also help to convey a mood or strengthen your brand identity. There are a wealth of stock images available online and these can be visually appealing. However, if you want to improve your SEO, original images or diagrams will give you a much higher SEO ranking.

How to Extend your Social Reach

Never underestimate the human factor when it comes to social media. Remember the company you’re trying to engage with has individuals looking at your posts. By getting your own staff to interact with your social media content, you can add a personal touch to your campaign. Ensure that your staff understand your social strategy, along with your company vision, and they can share your message consistently to help increase your engagement.

Some social media algorithms also respond well to personal interaction. The LinkedIn algorithm priorities content shared by contacts, so while it’s great to have a lot of activity on your company page you need to make sure your team are sharing those posts individually.  Your team can also engage with your target audience’s posts, to create a network of interactivity and build genuine connections.

Radical Moves can help you plan a social strategy and even post to social media on your behalf, why not get in touch to see how we can help?