Not many businesses today would doubt the value of a good social media strategy to developing their customer base. Offering a great opportunity to engage with potential, as well as existing customers, social feeds should be integral to any B2B PR & marketing strategy.
Well populated social media feeds are highly valuable for publishing and targeting specific content, building brand awareness and driving traffic to your website.
To assist you stay on track, we have listed below some pointers which we hope you will find useful:-
- Firstly, identify who is your audience – who are you looking to speak to? Work with? Are they searching for advice? Or simply some relief from their heavy workload.
- Which social feeds will your target audience be following / regularly engaged with? Unless you are a major B2B brand, the opportunities to grow your Facebook following are particularly limited – despite its seniority in the social hierarchy Facebook is still viewed as largely a personal network. Twitter is maturing however is still growing its user numbers, a great tool for businesses, offering the opportunity to heighten brand awareness, boost your SEO, promote your content, and so forth. Looking at the value from a pure business network – LinkedIn, the main recruitment vehicle for the vast majority of recruiters, company page subscription is restricted, with person to person individual interaction taking by far the lions share of engagement – use this to your advantage, and encourage your motivated team members to engage, engage, engage!
- Focus on the major B2B social feeds for the biggest impact – Twitter and LinkedIn- and save Instagram, Pinterest, What’s App, etc for social use. Make the most out of LinkedIn Company Pages, and Twitter feeds and also enlist your workforce in sharing on their own feeds your good news, company insights, press coverage, surveys, industry comments, and include links back to your website where relevant.
- As you work hard to build up your follower bases, ensure your social content isn’t one way traffic or too promotional. No one likes being sold to, so gently does it. Mix up the content as much as your can whilst ensuring anything you post remains on message with your brand and taking care not to offend. Use images and infographs for added interest.
- Tag in and reference other brands / suppliers etc, to build your network, earning yourself as you go brownie points from other accounts with greater follower numbers – share and comment on their content and the likelihood is they will start to do the same for you. Being positive and supportive can develop for you a strong digital fanbase, who one day might need to contract or refer your services!
- Use social media as part of your competitor monitoring activity – who are they following and engaging with? Are they using their feeds to promote specific messages or promotional offers? This allows you at first hand to monitor their competitive strategy, and ensure you are ahead of the pack.
- Finally extend your media reach – published articles editorial features or news pieces on your business, are a great form of secondary endorsement, however in today’s increasingly hectic society, your target audience is not with the-best-will-in-the world going to be able to read every trade title or regional business title, so take time to share your press coverage as you go, generating excitement and again driving interest in your proposition and offering.
We manage for many B2B clients a proactive, hard working social strategy, designed to support their business objectives, and are more than happy to offer a free consultation to businesses looking to enhance their social media and content marketing strategy.