What are common social media mistakes for B2B marketers?

specific in LinkedIn mistakes for B2B marketers 1- Incomplete or unoptimized profiles and pages. 2-Irrelevant or inconsistent content. 3-Neglecting LinkedIn analytics. 3- Spamming connections with sales pitches. 4- Ignoring engagement with comments and followers. 5- Underutilizing LinkedIn's publishing platform. 6- Neglecting SEO and keywords. 7- Overlooking sponsored content opportunities. 8- Failing to showcase company culture and values.

Not having a clear Social Media Strategy often also means that you have too many channels to deal with. Mainly focus on the 1-2 social media channels with the highest impact. learn to understand those channels via organic social media marketing and than scale your activities with ads.

Social Media and especially LinkedIn is one of the most underutilized channel by B2B marketers. Why? Because it's hard to do well and takes a lot effort. Investing the time in social media will pay off. With my own business, I have committed to post original content every day, engage with others, make connections and nurture relationships. This has been critical to our business's success in concert with content, SEO and partnerships. Have a goal if becoming a known authority and focus on publishing posts and other social content about this. You need to have a detailed DAILY calendar and make time for it. Stick at it. It works.

Forgetting that the people that represent the "B" are people, not businesses. Your content still needs to be high value to the PERSON consuming it. It needs to be entertaining or educational or useful or whatever emotion it's meant to elicit to an individual first and foremost if you ever hope to make an impact at their business' level.

Always start with your end goal in mind. So ask yourself what do want to achieve with your social media strategy? Is it… 1. Increase brand awareness 2. Have more engagement with you’re audience 3. Drive more targeted traffic to designated pages 4. Stay front of mind 5. Learn more about your target audience Just a few examples but you need these from the get go so you can shape and then track your social strategy against these goals/KPIs

Try to invest in a good content marketing strategy before investing in social media. What are the pains, hurdles and questions your prospect have along the customer journey? Answer those questions and distribute this content via social media. Don't hesitate you share all your knowdledge, insights and experiences.

We are all marketing to people. And people (in general) doesn't care about your product. We need to tap into their emotions. We need to be seen as relevant around their current pain points. Only then, we might show how our product can solve certain things.

In my experience, looking at social media as a lead generation channel is not very helpful. Organic lead generation via social media content often results in low quality leads, so it is important to have some checks and balances in place to ensure high conversion. Optimise for reach on social media, conversion will follow.

Treating your social media platforms - especially LinkedIn - as another promotion channel will lead audiences to tune out your efforts. Most audiences are browsing social media to discover and consume content. This content is mostly for entertainment and relationship building. LinkedIn users also use the platform to learn from other industry professionals. Keep promotional content around 5-10% and focus on delivering content that meets the user expectations. Entertainment, Education and Relationship Building

Social media channels and networks are there for us to be ‘Social’ so this needed to be reflected in the type of messages and touch points you are posting. Create content that has emotion, empathy and that entertains your audience. You are creating content for them so you can engage with them, build trust and offer value. So if you are planning on just pushing solely sales messages this will get lost in the noise. Use social listening tools as well as intent data to understand what your audience are interested in and serve them that but your version. Don’t be afraid to be human, so faces behind the brand, be thought leaders of key people within the business. Remember people buy people.

It's called "social" media for a reason. B2B brands that ignore the opportunity to respond are ignoring an opportunity to build connection.

Getting engagement and feedback is what you will want when it comes social media. If your audience are reaching out to you on social as they would with b2c brands then engage with them, show them you are human, that you can talk and that you are here to help. This will help you build trust and credibility as well as standing out from the crowd when it comes to other B2B brands. That engagement is an experience so give them a positive one so they come back for more and tell others.

In my experience, the playbook for B2B marketing is what works for your customers. People are often too invested on frameworks, or copying other successful SaaS companies, without accepting the feedback they getting from their social media audience in the form of engagement. Being attuned to your customers is the first step in a successful social media strategy for a B2B company.

Engaging with your B2B audience isn't just a minor factor; it's actually a catalyst that amplifies the effectiveness of your various digital marketing strategies. When you maintain a regular and high-quality level of interaction with your target audience, it has a noticeable positive effect on your digital marketing. Your ads don't just exist in a vacuum; they perform better when bolstered by an engaged audience. The real power comes from fostering strong brand engagement and earning social proof. When people comment, like, or share your content, it serves as an endorsement that can sway others to trust your brand. This, in turn, makes all your marketing efforts more potent.

Posting is only a small part of your overall social media strategy. This in particular relates to LinkedIn, which, because of the way it's constructed, is a very conversational platform. There should however be some "rules of engagement": be polite and respectful, do not engage in arguments (they help no-one) but restate your point of view if appropriate and be clear you are speaking from your place of expertise and experience, and acknowledge that other people's views may be different than yours. And while you should not promise things you are not in a position to deliver, you should graciously accept feedback and internally close the loop: pass it to the relevant people in the business who are best placed to act upon it if required.

Make sure to limit the measurements to the RIGHT key performance indicators. Impressions, views, reach or + followers might only be a vanity metric. what really matters is engagement, content consumption, contacts and number of touchpoints. And try to keep it simple - although you can measure anything in digital marketing, some numbers just dont make sense.

The biggest misstake is to gate your content (for eg demanding an email) when you would benefit greatly if your target audience read the content. If you want to email someone you can just buy the email somewhere else and start sending.

I think the main challenge here is going beyond the vanity metrics and trying to understand the impact of dark social specially within the B2B environment. If we only focus on the visible metrics such as impressions, clicks, shares, etc., we may be missing the bigger picture and underestimating the power of organic, peer-to-peer sharing.

Investing in the right tool is essential for gaining deeper insights into your social media strategy's performance. Simply posting content without analyzing reach, engagement, and metrics makes it challenging to understand your audience and create targeted strategies. ?? These tools provide invaluable insights like reach, engagement rates. audience growth, sales and conversions generated by your social media posts. This will help you refine your content strategy, posting schedule, and platform choice, ensuring your marketing efforts hit the mark. ?? Here are the top 10 social media analytics tools: 1. Sprout Social 2. HubSpot 3. IZEA 4. BuzzSumo 5. Google Analytics 6. Followerwonk 7. Rival IQ 8. Tailwind 9. Audiense 10. SparkToro

I think one of biggest mistakes is to not let go of channels that don't work. A lot of marketers think they just need to do some kind of social media activity 'just because' even if it is not generating any measurable impact for them. And it's not really about tools, it's about being smart and knowing when you should double down on something, and when you should pause all efforts and reallocate them elsewhere.

Why Changes is Crucial: The Restaurant Supply Company Example Consider "DineEquip," a B2B company selling restaurant equipment. For years, they thrived using traditional posts on a major social platform. However, when that platform introduced short video features and these became trendy, "DineEquip" stuck to their old ways, ignoring the new format. Competitors quickly jumped on the trend, showcasing their products through engaging videos, gaining wider reach and more interactions. Had "DineEquip" kept pace with this change, utilizing the new video feature to demo products, they could have maintained their edge. Staying updated and adapting ensures you don't fall behind in the fast-evolving world of social media.

You need to adapt to change in social media, but you also need to allow what you are doing time to "stick" - constantly succumbing to "shiny object syndrome" will not be successful, particularly in a B2B world where sales cycles are often long, and potential customers need time to get to know you. If you keep chopping and changing this will never happen. Be wary of "chasing algorithms" because you will never, ever, catch them, but be alert to fads than then turn into trends, because once a change has stabilised it will be more useful to you as input to your strategy. So, regularly review, iterate and improve, but don't keep leaping to change things, especially is they are working for your business!

Think of your social media as a living organism, not a static blueprint. I often tell people that it is on beta forever. So, actively listen to your audience through comments, mentions, and even sentiment analysis. Pay attention to what resonates, what sparks conversation, and what gets ignored. This feedback will help you adjust your content and social media strategies to stay relevant.

Not fully understanding the unique purpose and audience of each platform and consequently, not tailoring their channel mix accordingly. Social media platforms serve diverse functions, from professional networking on LinkedIn to visual storytelling on Instagram. Failing to recognize these distinctions can result in wasted efforts and resources.

Focusing more on creating content, doing more media and less engagement and get into the conversation. What if marketers will change their mindset and will think more social and less media?

I see that many organizations post the same content on other platforms. one video that is posted on TikTok as well as YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels. Every platform deserves its own content, but continue to experiment to see which content works on which platform.

Sporadic participation is also an issue - Posting consistency is critical, especially regarding frequency and timing of posting. I'd rather see a company post consistently 1x/a week than try to amp up one month and then go silent for a few weeks.

It's not enough to merely be on certain social media channels with B2B marketing. You need to know why your prospects are there. Are they there just to hangout and spend time, or are they there to do research? Determining which will help guide the sort of content you publish there, and what type of promotions you run. Also, lead-gen is often better done in the DMs than in timeline.