Social media for B2B marketing is similar to its B2C counterpart in some ways. But in other ways, it’s very different. If you want to connect with the executives in your target market, here are the must-have components to your B2B social media plan.
- A platform for one-on-one interaction.For executives, the most popular social media network — by far — is LinkedIn, according to a report by CEO.com. Having a presence on LinkedIn, or a similar question aggregator such as Quora, is an effective way to get in front of decision-makers when they go digging around for info.
For LinkedIn, try becoming a regular contributor in a popular forum for your industry. Alternatively, a consider creating and moderating a unique group for your company.
- A home for well-rounded web content.Social media should steer you audience back to your website’s content, which should be:
- Well-written, with appropriate formatting.
- Sharable, containing contagious ideas or new and interesting information.
- Actionable, engaging the reader and moving them down the sales funnel.
- A way to generate backlinks from social media sources.SEO is increasingly based on social media mentions. Since executives don’t usually spend vast amounts of time on social media, you’ll need to focus on a secondary audience as well. Go for those in the same industry, but at a lower level.
- Sales-focused goals.A lot of social media managers tabulate the success of social campaigns on the number of “likes,” follows, or page views on a platform. The truth is, a bloated social following can be a poor indicator of value in a B2B marketing effort.
The effectiveness of a social campaign should tie back directly to sales and revenue. Hubspot can help you make this connection.
- A way to turn content into more content.LinkedIn answers can become blog posts. Blog posts can become white papers. White papers can become dozens of tweets, and so on. Playing social networks off each other has keeps content fresh and makes sure each network is working for the other.
Source ReputationCapital