Your Guide to Building a B2B Social Media Strategy

Social media isn’t just for posting recipes and vacation photos – or for retail businesses and Ecommerce brands. If you’re a B2B brand that is not capitalizing on the reach and impact of social media to grow your business and connect with potential clients, what are you waiting for? It’s time to overhaul your B2B social media strategy.

Social Media is a great tool for building brand awareness, moving prospects through the buying journey, and connecting with brand advocates. If that all sounds like something your business needs, here’s a step-by-step guide to help you get started.

Identify Your Social Media Goals

The first step in building your B2B social media strategy is to identify your social media goals. What do you hope to achieve through social media? Do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or close more sales? Once you know what you’re trying to achieve, it will be easier to determine the right tactics for reaching your goals.

It’s also important to consider your overall business objectives. What are your overall marketing goals? How can social media help you reach them?

Defining your KPIs (key performance indicators) is another important step in setting social media goals. What metrics will you use to track whether or not you’re achieving your goals? Some common social media KPIs include 

  • Reach
  • Engagement
  • Lead generation 
  • Website traffic
  • Conversion rates.

Build Buyer Personas

The next step is to build buyer personas. A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. It includes demographic information like age, gender, and job title, as well as behavioral information like interests and pain points.

When you know who your ideal customer is, it’s much easier to create content and messaging that resonates with them. You can also use buyer personas to determine which social media platforms are the best fit for your business.

Find the Right Social Media Platforms

Not all social media platforms are created equal. Some platforms are better suited for B2B businesses than others. Here’s a breakdown of the most popular social media platforms and how they can be used to reach B2B buyers. Some of the most popular and impactful platforms to include in your B2B content strategy are

Facebook – Facebook is great for building brand awareness and connecting with potential customers. With 2.23 MAUs (monthly active users), it is one of the most popular platforms for users and businesses alike. 

LinkedIn – LinkedIn is the perfect platform for B2B lead generation. It’s known for thought leadership, idea sharing, and networking – all great tools for growing your B2B brand.

Twitter – Twitter is a great place to share your content and connect with potential customers. It’s short and snappy and there’s always a trending conversation you can weigh in on.  

Instagram – Instagram is a great platform for visual content. It’s a great option if you prefer to share photos and videos of your products or services and is awesome to help showcase company culture. 

YouTube – YouTube is the perfect place to share product demonstrations, case studies, and other types of video content that help build your brand story and educate your target customer. 

TikTok: While TikTok is one of the newer platforms it’s growing in popularity and is already boasting 1B MAUs, who spend, on average, more than 850 minutes per month on the app. 

Each of these platforms offers unique targeting options so you can reach an expanded audience through paid advertising. 

Need more insights? Learn how to be where your audience is

Craft Messaging That Resonates

Once you know who your ideal customer is and which social media platforms are the best fit for your business, it’s time to start crafting your messaging. Your core brand messaging should always be consistent but the way you present your message should be tailored to each platform.

For example, on LinkedIn, you’ll want to focus on sharing content that helps your potential customers in their job role. On Twitter, you can share short snippets of your content along with a call-to-action. And on Instagram, you can share eye-catching photos and videos of your products or services.

Create Strong Visuals

Visual content is more engaging than text-based content, and it’s a great way to stand out on social media. When creating visuals for your social media posts, keep these tips in mind:

  • Use high quality images or videos.
  • Keep your visuals simple and easy to understand.
  • Use typography to add interest and emphasize your message.
  • Create graphics that are on brand.

Types of Social Media Conversions

Not all conversions happen on your website. There are a number of different ways to track success via social media including

Engagement: Tracking how many interactions (likes, shares, comments, etc.) your posts receive can help you determine which topics are resonating with your audience and which content formats are working best. 

Engagement can offer you a “big picture” look at the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Website visits: Tracking how many people visit your website from your social media channels (referral traffic) gives you some insight into the effectiveness of your offers, calls to action, and potentially where certain customers are in their buying journey, depending on what they click.

Leads: Especially if you’re running paid campaigns, lead generation tracking can help you assess your ads strategy and the types of campaigns or campaign creative that are most effective in converting your ideal client into an engaged lead. 

Sales: Lastly, the ultimate conversion, sales is a major success indicator for your social media efforts. If you’re tracking sales, it might also be worthwhile to track the lifetime value of your leads, especially those generated through paid campaigns to see if leads from social channels turn into loyal, repeat customers or just cycle in and out as one-time buyers. 

How to Track Social Media Results

Tracking the results of your social media efforts can help you determine which channels are generating the most leads, website visits, or sales. It can also help you determine which content is resonating with your audience and what types of posts are driving the most valuable results for your business.

There are a number of different ways to track social media results, including

  • in-app metrics
  • third-party schedulers
  • And google analytics

Depending on your defined KPIs you might track results in a few different places so you have a wide range of data to help you optimize and improve your efforts

Optimizing Your B2B Social Media Strategy

As you’re posting and testing different content formats, calls to action, and conversion targets, track the KPIs and use them to optimize your strategy. 

Here are a few tips for optimizing your social media strategy:

Optimizing Content Format:

Identify the top 2 or 3 content formats that generated the most views and engagement from your audience and replicate those formats in future content.
Formats to test can be: 

  • Still images
  • Product Videos
  • Tutorial/Eplainer Style Videos
  • Feed Graphics
  • Carousel Images
  • Reels/Short Format video

Testing Your Social Media Captions and Messaging: 

Identify the style of caption that works best for getting your ideal client to take action and follow the CTA. 

Do they need more information or less? 

Is the CTA lost in a long wall of text? 

Does link placement within the caption affect clickthrough rates? 

Are your hashtags effective? 

Optimizing Your Post Time:

Look for trends in posting and try to share content when most of your audience is active and online (for B2B brands this is usually during working hours). 

Identify What resonates

Take an inventory of the specific topics that resonated most with your ideal audience and generate engagement from the types of clients you’re hoping to do business with.  

Were they the thought leadership pieces? 

Are they primarily interested in detailed product demonstrations? 

Do they prioritize client testimonials? 

Which of these content types help the most prospects move to the next phase of the buying journey?

Optimization is all about trying, tweaking and trying again. Your social media strategy should always be evolving as trends, needs, and platforms change. 

Moniker is your B2B Social Media Guide

In 2022, social media marketing offers businesses a unique opportunity to target and connect with customers in a way that was once impossible. With the advent of new platforms and technologies, businesses can now create more personalized experiences for their customers, fostering long-term relationships that result in increased sales and ROI. 

Need help with the heavy lifting? Our team of social media experts has your back! We can help with B2B social media strategy planning, content creation, design, tracking, and cross-channel integrations. Get in touch with one of our experts and take the stress of social media off your plate.

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