This post originally appeared on the Young Lions Blog

The social media landscape changes at a downright breakneck pace. It feels like only yesterday that Facebook and Twitter were just beginning to take the world by storm and social media was being used primarily for blasting personal messages. Now there is a proliferation of platforms, each with its own way of delivering customized ad campaigns tailored for highly specific target markets. (For help defining your target buyers, check out our buyer persona series)

One of the biggest headaches our clients face is choosing which platforms are most appropriate for their brands and then determining the right strategy for each. This is particularly challenging for smaller organizations with limited marketing teams because the social media space is highly nuanced and figuring out the right tone and content can be exhausting. 

This post will give you a brief rundown of each major social media platform and the key points to consider when choosing whether to incorporate each into your B2B startup lead generation strategy.

#1. Twitter - Definitely Yes.

In our humble opinion, every B2B organization should be on twitter. It’s the only platform that truly bridges the professional and personal. Plus, we guarantee that your competitors are definitely there, so you really should be too. Twitter is best known for its 140 character limit on content, but they’ve evolved to make the platform much more powerful for businesses. The trick now is to incorporate multiple forms of content, conversation and targeted ads to reach your prospects. The best part of the platform is your access not only to prospects, but also to key industry influencers. It’s an environment that allows you to directly engage with thought leaders in your industry, while also elevating your position as one yourself.

#2. LinkedIn - Yes

LinkedIn as a social network is somewhat of a necessary evil at this point. There are tons of complaints about the structure, the content and the features, many of which are valid. As far as sharing relevant articles or personal thoughts, it’s not the ideal environment. The feed is cluttered and crowded and many people don’t understand the professional purpose of the site, so there are far too many personal and non-business related posts. As a business, you simply need to have a company page and you should absolutely be sharing your team’s content and other relevant posts. When people hear about you, they’re going to look there and you need a fully developed profile.

Where LinkedIn adds the most value for your B2B startup lead generation is in its Pulse feature. Pulse allows individuals to post blogs they’ve written. Because this content is more likely to be seen by all of their connections, it gets more exposure than anything your company does. In Part 2 of this series, we’ll explain ways to maximize that exposure and use it to drive traffic to your website.

#3. Google+ - Sigh. Probably.

In case you haven’t heard, Google+ is a big ol’ flop. I don’t know anyone who reads it or pays attention to it in any susbtantive way. I’m not saying those people don’t exist, but I am saying I don’t know any of them and you probably don't know any of them either. That being said, putting your content on Google’s most disappointing endeavor is still worth your while.

Why? Because of SEO. This creates another layer of backlinks and references to your company. It’s not going to make a huge difference and my guess is that over the next couple of years you’re going to get an increasingly diminished rate of return, but posting there is easy to automate, so you might as well do it.

#4. Facebook - It depends.

While Facebook can certainly help with brand recognition, if you’re viewing this from the lens of B2B startup marketing, you probably aren’t going to get a ton of followers outside of your immediate circle and that of your co-founders and some of your employees. The vast majority of Facebook content is much more personal in nature, so a lot of B2B startup lead generation content feels out of place.

There is one big caveat though. If your target buyer is owner of a small business (less than 10 people), especially a sole-proprietor, then Facebook could be a goldmine for you. In this case, because the personal and professional identities of your target buyers are much more closely linked, Facebook becomes a much more attractive and logical platform to brand your business. Tone is going to be key here and we’ll talk about that in Part 2 of this series.

#5. Instagram - Probably not, unless…

I’m going to make a similar argument with Instagram as I did with Facebook. This platform is very personal in content and nature, so it’s rare that your B2B startup marketing plan is going to see a lot of benefit from its efforts here. That is unless your business is creative in nature or it aggressively targets creatives, artists, photographers, designers, etc. If you’re a creative agency, you might want to be on Instagram. If you sell a certain kind of photo editing software or design tools, you’ll want to showcase the exciting and creative ways customers use your offering.

But if you sell accounting software or IT services or data management consulting, just stay away. 

#6. Snapchat - Definitely not, unless…

And now I double down on this line of thought and say virtually the same about Snapchat except more emphatically. Unless you’ve got a highly creative business offering, Snapchat is still an inappropriate platform for B2B startup lead generation efforts. If you’ve got some creative people on your team who have a following, you can certainly give them some guidelines for showcasing your company and your product, but other than that, I’d just sit this one out.

Snapchat is rapidly evolving, so this may change over the next few years, but for now, you can rest easy that you don’t need anyone to be creating cool snaps about snacks in the break room on a daily basis. ::snooze:: 

Hopefully this guide helped you narrow down exactly which platforms matter for your business. Our best advice is to keep it simple and really master your messaging for just a few of the options available. You can always expand down the road, but trying to do too much too soon can water down your overall message.