Social Media has become thoroughly entrenched into every part of our lives. That means this should be an indispensable tool for business, right? Yet many business leaders still shy away from it for one reason or another. We developed these top 10 B2B social media best practices to help you navigate the waters and integrate social media into a regular part of your overall business strategy.
Essential B2B Social Media Best Practices
Consider this, 83% of B2B marketers use social media as part of their marketing content tactics. Of this same group surveyed, 40% felt it was their most essential content tool. In fact, they valued LinkedIn as their second most important tool to distribute their content behind email. [source] What does this mean? B2B social media has become vital to business growth.
Here’s how you can use social media to your advantage.
1. Be Selective
It has gotten to the point that simply trying to get a total number of available B2B social media platforms today is nearly impossible. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of social sites that allow you to connect, share, and track your audience. Even within the major players, there at least 10 strong B2B social media platforms vying for your attention – and that’s even before you begin to use one or more to gain the attention of your audience.
Obviously, you can’t use them all – nor should you. The amount of time required to manage an arsenal of B2B social media platforms to any level of effectiveness is pretty low. The best advice? Pick what works for you and your audience.
Where are your customers spending their time? Where do they get their information? What social media platforms do they engage with the most? Go there.
You will need to do some homework first to fully understand your buyers, but once you know how they like to consume content and engage in conversation you will have a pretty clear indication what platforms will be best for your business.
Check out this video on how Facebook can be leveraged.
2. Be Consistent
Once you’ve determined where you should spend your time and energy, our next social media best practice is to develop a posting frequency that you can maintain. It is nearly impossible to create any sort of traction for your B2B social media sites if you share content with a feast or famine approach.
While there are no hard and fast rules for how often your followers should hear from you, it should be frequent enough to generate a constant and fairly expected flow of content. Which social media platforms you are on will also dictate the pace of publishing. Facebook and LinkedIn may allow for a schedule as low as less than once a day, with a target of 3-5 times per week. Twitter requires more activity with the sweet spot for B2B brands at about 3-5 times a day or 15-20 posts a week. Google+ and Instagram both fall somewhere in the middle with various recommendations about 1-2 times daily, 5-10 times per week.
Regardless of the platform or frequency you employ, finding a cadence that you can consistently adhere to with quality content is the best advice for your B2B social media strategy.
3. Be Inclusive
B2B social media is not something you can do alone. It is called “social” for a reason. So get your team involved! Your employees not only have different people they connect with, but also a different set of contacts than your company. Encourage them to follow your pages, share content, and comment on posts where possible.
Your employees should be your biggest brand ambassadors. Invite them to participate with you on social media. Now, while you can’t require their engagement, if you are active on a few B2B social media platforms there is likely to be one or more your team will want to engage with. Taking this step can help you expand your social media reach by getting your content in front of new contacts from sources that already know and love your brand.
4. Be Visual
As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. If you want your B2B social media to work it’s magic then a definite best practice is to include an image with your posts.
Meghan Monaghan at Smart Bird Social wrote a great article, 5 Proven Reasons to Use Visual Content in Social Media. In it she shared that posts with images produce 650% more engagement than posts with text only. What’s more, visual posts are 40 times more likely to be shared.
Why? Our brains comprehend visual information much faster than text. Not only are we able to take in more and understand better with an image than text alone, we also remember what was shared much longer. If you are investing time in developing great content, make sure your B2B social media gets all the attention it deserves by including an image.
5. Be Flexible
William Cowper said, “Variety’s the very spice of life, that gives it all it’s flavor.” Sadly, we get bored quickly when things are always the same. Just look at your family’s reaction when you serve chicken the same way for the fourth time in one month. We crave variety.
This doesn’t mean you need to reinvent the wheel with each social post you create. However, your posts don’t always need to follow the same format – change it up!
Even when the majority of your posts is sharing your own content, how you share it can vary.
- Develop the highlights of a blog post into an infographic
- Share a video
- Distill your information in a helpful list
- Create an image that includes a quote from your blog
- Learn more about your audience with a quick survey
- Include an impactful statistic
- Post a chart or graphic that explains your main point
Look at other popular B2B social media sites to learn from their best practices. Then try it out and see what garners the most attention from your audience.
6. Be Informative
If coming up with fresh content a few times each week is making you a bit nervous, don’t be. Not all your posts have to be your original content. Share relevant and useful content from other reliable sources that your audience may be interested in.
Your blog is where you develop fresh, original content that you will share the majority of the time and develop your prowess as subject matter experts. Your social media platforms however, allow for space for you share what else is going on in your industry. Curate content from a variety of sources in addition to your own with a few social media best practices in mind.
- Read the sourced content carefully. Make sure it fits with your brand strategy and company culture, and is from a reliable source.
- Add value by including your own thoughts with the link.
- Keep it to a minimum. You still want the largest portion of your B2B social media posts to be your own content.
7. Be Curious
Unlike a QVC kitchen product, B2B social media is not a “set it and forget it” activity. Regularly review past posts to gain a better understanding of what your audience is interested in and engaging with.
You should not only be looking at what content subjects are being liked and shared most frequently, but also when. Does your audience tend to respond better to mid-week posts or those on Friday’s? Do posts scheduled for mornings perform better than those in the afternoon?
What about the differences in your platforms – does your LinkedIn audience comment more, but your Twitter audience leads in shares? Using a tool like HubSpot to manage your social media not only assists with creating a consistent schedule of activity (see tip #2) but also provides you with valuable insight like engagement levels, leads gained, and platform growth.
Of course the point of this B2B social media best practice tip is to not only be curious about how your social activity is performing, but to learn, adapt, and grow your social presence over time.
8. Be Engaging
How often do we as parents get frustrated with our kids when they zone out and ignore a question we ask? Now think about how your social media audience feels when you do the same to them. Ouch!
This best practice tip isn’t meant to chastise, but to simply bring home the point that not responding to comments or new follows actually is responding. The stark reality is that it’s a negative response that tells your audience your B2B social media platforms are a one-way communication channel only. That’s not the intent at all.
Pay attention to the comments, shares, and follows your social platforms are getting and respond. If you get a new follower on Twitter, thank them. When someone comments on your LinkedIn post, reply back. Yes, it takes a little time but sourcing new leads from scratch takes even longer.
Our social media best practices tip #1 was to be selective and to participate in the platforms where your customers are. This means that when they engage with your social posts – especially when they take the time to comment – they are doing so with conscience intent. Participate in the conversation and take those initial steps to develop that relationship.
9. Be Inviting
This tip is a big point to remember, and at times hard to naturally avoid. Social media is a place to share, connect, and network not push your contacts into making a sale. Invite your audience into your world, don’t be too quick to step into theirs.
B2B social media is just one piece of your entire sales process. Keep your posts to relevant, helpful information they can use to better understand your industry, company, and services – not a platform to make your sales pitch. This comes later in the process when a contact has willingly converted to a lead.
We posted an article a while back on using social media to grow your business. In it we shared this fact: buyers typically make 60% of a purchasing decision before even talking to a company’s salesperson. You can read the full article here.
Use your social media tool as an avenue to connect and develop a relationship with your audience that allows them time to get to know you and why you deserve their business over the competition.
10. Be personal
This last social media best practice may be the most important. Be personal. Your followers and connections appreciate what is going on with you – meaning your business – beyond the industry insight and best practices. Be human.
Here’s some ideas.
- Share what your doing. If you are holding a sales training on the latest technology in your field, share a picture or two and explain how your team is actively working to stay at the top of your industry.
- Include your audience. Are you involved in a community event? Let your audience know, along with ways they can get involved too.
- Brag (a little) about your growth. Share information about new hires to your company. This lets your audience know your company is growing and not standing still.
- Keep them informed. If you are going to be participating a trade show, co-chairing a panel discussion, or even being interviewed on a podcast, share it.
B2B social media isn’t hard, but it does require your attention – as much as any marketing strategy you develop. The key to every best practice tip we have given is to think of your target audience. Without understanding who they are and what they need from you any marketing effort will be difficult.
For help on expanding your use of LinkedIn. Download this guide, LinkedIn for Business Development.
