For some time now, most B2B companies have found themselves struggling to grasp social media marketing while others have chosen to ignore it altogether. B2C companies have, on the other hand, had their stories of success to tell with regards to social media strategy, which is precisely not the case with B2B companies.
B2B companies have chosen to rely on outdated tactics like cold calling and taking part in business networking breakfast sessions. Even though such tactics are still beneficial, they should not get used at the expense of Social Media.
If you are running a B2B business, then you may have to integrate the use of Social media to achieve the desired results. If you have found yourself because of some reasons getting reluctant to deploy the use of twitter Facebook and Instagram, then chances are you are missing a huge opportunity.
The following steps are perfect and straightforward guidelines on how you can create an active Social Media Strategy for your business.
Plan a social media strategy for a B2B in 10 easy steps:
1. Get started with your social media strategy:
Immediately after acknowledging that social media is indeed effective even with B2B companies, the next thing to do is to find an effective way on how you can start.
It might look simple to you, and even find the temptation of jumping right into posting into either Facebook or Instagram so hard to resist. However, it is essential to take every step keenly in planning a social media strategy.
2. Choose on your goals and what to measure:
You need to determine what is likely to decide on the success of your brand or business on social media. You need to be very sure whether you want to increase reach or generate more traffic to your company blog or get more leads.
If you can find the right answers to the above questions, then you will be able to decide on the kind of metrics you wish to measure. Together with how likely they are to differ, depending on the sort of social media platform you intend to use.
For instance, if you intend to increase your reach, then you may need to concentrate your efforts in tracking the following. Organic reach paid reach, impressions follower count and engagement.
If you intend to achieve leads, then you may also need to concentrate your efforts on metrics like clicks, conversions and new leads from social media.
Immediately after knowing the kind of goals you have and how best to track them, you may now move to measure them. You may need to get a social media analytics platform to help you track everything. Don’t try to rely on spreadsheets and manual tracing.
3. Create a written social media strategy:
After knowing what you intend to accomplish on social media and your preferred way of measuring success. The next thing you need to do after that is to try and how exactly you can get there. You can do this by laying proper steps that will guide you to the accomplishment of your goals.
If your company does not have a written social media strategy, then it’s probably among many other companies out there. Documenting your B2B social media strategy plan is so essential since it helps you to set goals and evaluate the most convenient channels of reaching them.
The strategy you create should be able to answer essential questions. Like who are your target audience and the social platforms you intend to use among many other vital issues?
If you manage to document all this information, then you will be able to keep everyone on your page. This keeping will, in turn, help you adjust your strategy when you need to.
4. Create a personality:
If you are looking for the easiest way to fail, then try out being dull on social media. Most B2B companies tend to regard social media as an afterthought, and such they deny it the humanly touch that a social media strategy deserves.
As a B2B company owner, you need to ensure you are too creative with your content while at the same time providing you are not too edgy and controversial. However, you need to note that brands vary; not every brand has the ability to pull a sassy tone on social media.
In trying to be human on social media, ensure you retain yourself to the right levels by avoiding being too entertaining as that might in some ways offend your readers. All you need is to provide you with sound human and distinguish yourself from robots.
Always try to come up with a social media voice without necessarily being inappropriate or even making headlines for some wrong or unwanted reasons. In doing so, you can use the following tips.
Deploy a conversational tone:
Try and give your company its entity. For instance, you may make use of words like we and our when addressing your readers about your company.
Engage your clients:
The primary objective of social media is for conversations. Don’t be afraid of engaging your audience on various diverse matters. Use this conversation as opportunities to advocate for your company with your users on social media.
Deploy humor:
It is important to note that social media never got created for business. It was designed for humans and more so a place where people can have fun. With this information in mind, use social media to share content and also converse with your audience.
You need to know that most people will get attracted to humorous social media platforms. With the increase in competition, you need to keep your platform as entertaining as possible to stay ahead of the pack.
However, it is also essential for you to note that too much humor on social media might take away the business sense from your platform. This state might even result in people mot taking you seriously, and it is, therefore, essential to balance everything properly.
5. Don’t limit yourself to a LinkedIn in social media strategy:
LinkedIn has managed to establish a reputation being the most used social media platform by B2B companies, and this makes sense to some extent.
According to a particular content marketing institute, a whopping 63 percent of marketing professionals rated LinkedIn as the most effective social media platform for B2B companies. This research has prompted most B2B companies to think that the only way to succeed is to be on LinkedIn.
Most companies that regard social media strictly for generating leads find LinkedIn as a more appealing option. However, when developing your social media strategy for your B2B Company, you will need to make branding your ultimate goal and not leads generation.
Sometimes you may find your inner marketer trying to convince you that a social media platform is all about marketing only and entails selling products. Even though this might sound like it, you need to know that it may be very far from reality.
Most people who opt to get into social media do so to get entertained and maybe passing the time. In order to capture the attention of these people, your social media strategy should sound appealing to these users.
What this means is that you need not focus so much on posting so many videos on your social media strategy, on why people should consider your products. Instead, you may need to follow in the salesforce footsteps and come up with content that appears to tell stories and likely to draw emotions and also spark conversations.
6. Put the right people in charge of your social media strategy:
By trying to put the right people in charge of your social media strategy, you may have to hire a social media manager. If not so, then select one of your employees to deal with the whole task of managing your social media strategy.
When selecting or hiring a social media manager, you need to ensure you look for someone with a known social media background. To, manage your whole social media activities.
Talented social media marketers may, over some time, be able to learn your company and industries ins and outs. This fact might force someone without social media marketing passion for struggling a little bit.
If you feel like you are not yet ready to get a full-time social media, then you may contemplate getting a social media freelancer to work for you.
7. Employ advocacy for your social media strategy:
There is a good chance you have about employee advocacy and more particularly in social media strategy. With changes to the logarithm, most brands are trying to devise ways through which they can get more people on social media looking at their social media content.
This activity is precisely where the role of employee advocacy comes in. In a nutshell, employee advocacy means giving your employees the liberty to champion for your brand in their various circles.
If your company, for instance, makes videos and long posts. You may have to make it easy for your employees to share the content of your B2B Company in their various profiles.
Most B2B companies tend to prefer sharing content from social media platforms belonging to the company. However, even though this might sound like a good idea, you need to know that it limits your outreach to just your audience alone.
However, there might be more benefits if a good number of your employees started sharing content. This increase in the number of people sharing not only impacts positively on you reaches but also leads to more engagement.
If you do your research, you will be able to establish that most people tend to read content from friends more compared to brands.
The only problem with employee advocacy is that sometimes. It is always hard to try to convince your employee to spread information about your social media strategy content to their friends. Most employees tend to consider employee advocacy as time-consuming and may shun from it.
8. Learn the art of social selling as a social media strategy:
As earlier on established, leads should not just be your main point focus when developing a social media strategy. However, it is essential to make the right steps towards ensuring that your social media delivers the intended results and more particularly for the B2B companies.
Social selling means using social media to drive potential prospects to your company. In clarity, you may deploy the use of cold calling. However, this method might not be as effective as the use of social media.
The primary objective of social media is finding people you think might benefit from your products and looking for ways of establishing relationships with them. This relationship can get set by providing this person with helpful content and value as well.
9. Ensure to take advantage of user-generated content in social media strategy:
User-generated content does not always involve people posting photos and images of the products they may be using. That’s not the reality. Even though the use of user-generated content is well suited for selling consumer products, B2B companies can also make use of the strategy for their success.
10. Try to establish imposter accounts in your social media strategy:
It is usual for people to try and use the name of your business immediately it starts to progress. Such people may either use your business name or in some cases, the name of your business.
These imposters may not only be harmful to your entire business but may also shift your clients and customers towards their side. You may have to find a way of tracking them and possibly reporting them to ensure action gets taken.
Apart from that, you may also need to find a way of making your users know that they are dealing with you and not anybody else.
Conclusion:
At this point, you may have almost all the information you need about social media marketing strategy and how to come up with one.
The only thing you need to do right now is to figure out how you are going to start a social media strategy, for your B2B Company if you don’t have one yet.
If you have one and still not getting the right result from your plan, then consider the above steps keenly. If you need the best social media strategy for your B2B brand, feel free to get in touch with us through [email protected].
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The post Plan a Social Media Strategy for a B2B in 10 Easy Steps appeared first on Social Media Magazine.
