Does my B2B Business need a Social Media Presence?

Does my B2B Business need a Social Media Presence?

Katherine Brooks Katherine Brooks

What’s one of the best ways to grow your Business to Business (B2B) brand? Create an engaging social media campaign that meets your potential customers where they are. After all, 75% of B2B customers use social media to make their decisions about purchasing.

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A B2B social marketing campaign has the following broad benefits for your business:

  • Active social media = active business: Viewers equate activity on social media with business productivity. By having a social media presence, it shows you’re a company that’s engaged and moving forward. Alternatively, not having a presence sends the message that your business is inactive as well, and that’s “no bueno” for your B2B.
  • Stay ahead of the competition: Your competition likely has a social media presence, so you stay ahead of the curve by having one, too. Check out what they’re doing (we’ll talk about this more in a moment), and use it as fuel to go above and beyond for your B2B.
  • Low cost platform with big benefits: For relatively little-to-no cost, you have the ability to generate leads, drive conversions and increase brand awareness. This is a great asset for small businesses with small budgets.
  • Nurture Clients: Your social media platform allows you to be seen by your customers as a resource, and in turn connect and build relationships with potential leads.

Humanizing B2Bs through Social Media

Let’s drill into the connecting piece a bit.

One of the most important benefits of having a social media presence is that you’re highlighting the human experience. At the end of the day, your business is a living breathing entity made up of...people!

So show that!

A social media platform allows your B2B to connect on a more personal level with clients. It also has the following brand personality promoting benefits:

  • It’s a great way to nurture relationship-based sales.
  • As a B2B, you already have a strong idea of what makes your clients & customers “tick”, so use this wealth of knowledge to fuel both content and how you communicate.
  • Customers can interact with your brand on social media, ask questions, and further establish a trusted relationship.
  • Best of all, it’s a way to share your B2B culture, personality , mission, and goals, as well as the big and little moments that represent your brand. This kind of communication shows the customer that they’re working with “real” people on a mission. When you can illustrate the personality of a brand, people are more likely to become clients.

How do you Start a Social Media Plan?

Start by asking yourself these two questions:

  1. “What are my company’s business goals?”
  2. “How will social media help me achieve them?”

Now for a Little Recon:

  1. Check out the competition: You’re not spying, you’re being a smart competitor looking to stay ahead of the curve. For a thoughtful approach to this “competitive analysis recon:” use the SWOT approach. Ask yourself, what are the competitor’s:
  • Strengths?
  • Weaknesses?
  • Opportunities?
  • Threats?

2. Assess your target audience: Revisit who you’re trying to reach and how they should like to be communicated with. What are keywords, phrases, and words that are trending to fully grab the attention of your audience? What are their preferred products? When do they like to buy and how often? All of these habits and trends can be fuel for your strategy.

3. Meet your audience where they are. This is not a situation where you want to cast a wide net. When identifying where to share your B2B’s message, you want to park your message in the right parking lot, so to speak. For instance, you’re likely not going to want to share your message on Pinterest if you’re selling software!

How do you know where your audience is?

Take a closer look at social media demographics. Hootsuite has a fantastic breakdown of where your audience is spending their time. (Spoiler alert: Did you know humans are spending 15% of their lifetime on social media!?!)

Now for the Content:

So far you’ve analyzed why it’s important to have a social media presence, identified key goals, and done a bit of recon on the competition. Now it’s time to push out content.

As a B2B you likely have deep knowledge about your area of expertise, so content options and ideas will likely bubble up quickly.

We’ve talked about narrowing who you’re talking to, and as you drill down to that niche audience, you also should focus on how you talk to them. Use a conversational tone and think about the business as a real person you’re aiming to connect with.

Additionally, engage them by sharing:

  • Relevant, timely and trending content
  • Events, updates and initiatives
  • Answers to commonly asked questions

When done right, a social media campaign for your B2B can knock your brand out of the park generating leads, conversions and perhaps most importantly, a stronger connection with your customers.

We hope these ideas help build and shape your B2B social media strategy. Want to chat more with our team at ALINE about your digital marketing strategy?

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