Digital media is key to a company’s success – and social media plays a major role. While many people believe social media works best for B2C, research shows that social media makes an impact when it comes to B2B. It’s now easier than ever to leverage social media tools and tricks to boost engagement and use analytics to understand what’s working and what’s not for your B2B social media strategy. And while there are many helpful tools out there, we’re here to help you figure out where to start when building your social media empire.
Analyze Your Audience
The B2B sector is a giant, and each industry has its own needs. Finding where your audience lives and what content they prefer to engage with is crucial and functions as a solid base for a social media strategy.
Your target audience will not include everyone. Speaking to a specific audience is crucial to spiking engagement. The same approach you take on Twitter might not work for your audience on LinkedIn.
“It is essential to know your audience fully and have goals in place when it comes to developing an effective social strategy,” said Maria Nuzio Nodjoumi, Digital Marketing Manager. “You should also have a rock-solid understanding of your brand voice, as well as how your product or service can benefit them [your audience]; this will help shape your overall message.”
Start with asking yourself 4 key questions about your clientele and potential social media audience:
- What industry do they work in?
- What sites do they visit online?
- What challenges are they trying to overcome?
- What content do they historically engage with?
Once you know your audience and the type of content they’re likely to engage with, it’s time to start crafting a content strategy.
Establish a Content Cadence
How often should your business be posting on social media? Unfortunately, there’s no clear cut answer for everyone. To get an idea of how often you should be posting, follow the 70/30 rule:
“70% of your posts should be about interesting news/information that is taking place within your industry, and the remaining 30% of posts should be content that you have produced and is more focused on your business – use your social media reports to review and adjust the mix,” said Lindsay Doyle, Vice President of Integrated Marketing. “If you’re always trying to sell to your audience, they will not value your content and begin to tune out.”
Once you understand your brand voice and figure out your posting schedule, it’s time to write. Avoid beating around the bush or using complicated language; instead, stick to straightforward sentences that can communicate your message clearly and concisely. Engage your audience quickly with a Call to Action (CTA) that includes direct, actionable suggestions and makes it easy for the viewer to take the next step.
Adding industry trends and added value content to your feed, such as interesting articles that relate back to both your business and your social media audience, is a great way to start a conversation on your pages.
“Curating content that is of interest to your target market reinforces that you are an expert in your field and that you value relationships with your partners/customers by sharing information with them that will help to grow their business,” said Doyle.
Multimedia is Here to Help
Some social channels, like Twitter, have a character limit that must be taken into consideration when writing copy. Making use of multimedia solutions, such as photos and videos, can help break up text-heavy posts and establish a visual identity for your brand.
Images
A picture is worth a thousand words – tweets with images receive a 35% boost in retweets and Facebook posts with images have a 37% increase in engagement, according to Convince & Convert.
High-quality photos that highlight an employee, trade show, or products relevant to your current marketing mix are great places to start for posting images. But before you start going picture crazy, don’t forget to conduct an A/B test on your content to figure out which type of posts your audience prefers.
Social Cards
Branded social cards give companies an opportunity to emphasize their brand. For businesses that don’t typically focus on graphic branding or have a defined style, social cards are a great opportunity to create an organized template that pulls together a cleaner, brand-driven photo instead of simply a classic image.
“Social cards are also a great way to speak to an audience in a more personal tone than a press release, article, and sometimes even an advertisement,” said Anna Bacon, Graphic Design Associate. “They are quickly glanced at, so you have to keep your message short and sweet.”
Video
Video performs the best with most social media platforms, according to Later. Adam Halpern, our Graphic Design Specialist, suggests asking these questions before developing a video for your social channels:
- What is the overall message you are trying to convey to the viewer?
- How many views would you like your content to accumulate?
- What demographics are you trying to reach?
While videos are a great way to boost engagement and visibility, it’s important that your videos are high-quality and entertaining. “You can have a full proof mission statement, execute a seamless production, and put endless amounts of money into targeted ads on social platforms, but if the source material is not up to par, it will not perform as well as a start-to-finish, quality, engaging video,” said Halpern.
Again, conducting an A/B test is important for video – if your audience isn’t engaging with videos that are costly to make and take time to produce, it might be time to switch up your content strategy.
Overall, video is king when it comes to most platforms. This is the content that should be prioritized over most other posts while keeping in mind that it needs to look good and drive your audience to share, comment and like, too.
Putting it All Together
Social media shouldn’t be the beginning and end of your marketing strategy, though it is key to building authenticity on platforms that the majority of the public is using day-to-day.
Overall, understanding your audience at a granular level is the goal. Using social listening platforms to grasp what is working on your platforms and what isn’t is going to help you and your business truly reach and inspire customers to purchase your product or service in new, exciting ways.
If you still need help figuring out the best ways to showcase your brand, engage your audience and craft social content – Don’t wait, Contact Us! The A-Team is here to help.