Your Complete Guide to Creating a B2B Social Media Strategy

Once upon a time, the streams of the freewheeling social media world and the seriousness of high-stakes B2B marketing didn’t cross.

It’s safe to say that those days are ancient history – and both social media and B2B marketing now co-exist.

The B2B buyer’s journey can be long and convoluted, and now it often ventures into the social media landscape.

LinkedIn alone?generates 80% of social media B2B leads these days.

75% of B2B buyers?research their purchases on social media.

The buyer’s journey has changed, and?it’s not just about pure lead generation and traffic any more. Social media has become the key to demand generation.

Many B2B companies know they have a product or service that can solve problems for lots of businesses.

The difficulty is that many businesses need to be educated about the nature of the problem before they’ll even begin to start considering purchases to help them solve it.

On social media, you can reach a wide range of potential buyers with attention-grabbing content that generates demand and ushers them into the top of your sales funnel.

Why You Need a B2B Social Media Strategy

If you’re using social media to generate demand and find B2B leads, what are the leads you want?

You’re looking for VPs and C-suite executives?at the companies who need your product – and those individuals are on social media for their own varied reasons.

The challenge for you is to get your content showing up on their screens.

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If you go in without a plan, your brilliant social media posts might accomplish nothing more than entertaining a bunch of people who will never end up buying from you.

When you know exactly what you’re trying to achieve by venturing into social media, you can?set specific goals for your campaign.

Then you can develop a strategy that ties your goals to the social media activity your leads are actually engaging with.

Without a documented, goal-focused B2B social media strategy, you can end up chasing meaningless metrics and putting out the wrong kind of content.

Many social media campaigns fall victim to common missteps like these:

·Using a social media “voice” that doesn’t fit with your brand

·Turning viewers off with content that looks and?feels like advertising

·Posting the same content everywhere, ignoring each platform’s unique qualities

·Generating lots of social media buzz without having in-depth content to?maintain engagement

·Going after a high follower count over fewer,?higher quality followers

Defining a strategy will help you avoid these errors.

How to Create Your B2B Social Media Strategy

It doesn’t take a bolt of inspiration from the heavens to come up with a successful B2B social media strategy. The best solution is to break it down into a step-by-step process.

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1.Set your goals. Are you going for demand generation? Lead generation? Increasing brand awareness? These objectives will shape the tone and content of your campaign.

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2.Define your target audience.?Creating a buyer persona?can help you decide how to tailor your messaging, where to advertise, and which social conversations to engage in.

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3.Select your social platforms. Many B2B companies use LinkedIn to attract new prospects. However,?LinkedIn leads generation?is super hard to execute but potent when done right.

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4.Determine what type of content to publish. What kind of content fits your campaign? Is it video? Infographics? Whitepapers? Employee advocacy? It all depends on your audience, your goals, and the platforms you’ve chosen.

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5.Choose the social media metrics you’ll use to measure your efforts. To know if you’re succeeding, the KPIs you’re measuring must directly relate to the goals you’ve established.

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6.Research your competition. What are competing brands doing on social media? Do they have a strong, established presence? Can you tell what is or isn’t working for them?

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7.Create and use a consistent brand voice. Develop a recognizable, consistent tone and personality in your posts. Don’t be bland, generic, and forgettable. Humour is fine, but know

your audience’s limits.

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8.Set up a social media calendar. When you get your audience hungry for content, you don’t want to lose them by running out of things to say. A calendar can keep you on track to deliver varied content on a consistent schedule.

9.Automate posting, monitoring, and reporting.?The right tools?can take a lot of the manual busywork out of social media management – saving you time, money, and stress.

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10.Engage your audience. Remember, your social media audience isn’t there to passively consume content. They want to talk back, ask and answer questions, and feel like they’re part of the conversation.

What Social Media Platforms Should You Choose?

Any time you talk about B2B and social media marketing,?LinkedIn?is going to dominate the conversation, and for good reason –?it’s where the leads are.

More than 9 out of 10 B2B marketers leverage LinkedIn over any other social media network.

79% of them consider LinkedIn to be an effective source for generating new leads.

That doesn’t mean you can focus on LinkedIn and ignore the other platforms.

They each have unique advantages and can be a?cost-effective way to reach audiences who are less likely to engage on LinkedIn. You may even be able to gain an advantage on platforms that?your competitors?are overlooking.

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·Facebook, still the biggest social network on the planet, offers powerful features for building and engaging a following with Facebook Groups.

·Twitter?can be great for tapping into timely conversations about world events and industry news.

·Instagram, centred on?visual content, can reach audiences in particular segments and industries that are far less likely to engage on other platforms.

·YouTube?is the platform of choice for hosting long-form or serialized video content.

Social media is a crucial element in B2B marketing today.

Like all valuable assets, it requires thoughtful and proper management. It begins with a comprehensive B2B social media strategy, ensuring that you're delivering the right messages on the right platforms and measuring the appropriate metrics with the best?social media management tools.