5 Ways B2B Companies Can Make The Most Out Of Social Media

B2B companies can harness the power of social media just as strongly as their B2C counterparts. The key is not to overcomplicate your efforts. This is especially true if you’re just starting out, have a small staff, or are still carving out your niche across platforms. Let’s break down five simple guidelines to making the most out of your B2B social media efforts.

Selecting The Appropriate Platform

YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, with so many platforms to choose form, how can you select which is most appropriate for your business? The answer is simple. Create a company profile where your followers, or target followers, are most active. Do not create profiles across ten different platforms and then splash the same content across them all! I can’t emphasize this enough. Each network serves a very specific function and, to some degree, each post you publish should be tailored appropriately.

At some point, you may find that your hard work has established your brand presence across several social media platforms. Before the panic of juggling all of these platforms overwhelms you, check out Hootsuite. This social media management tool can make your life a whole lot easier by enabling you to manage your profiles via one dashboard.   

Rally Your Employees

What better way to expand your reach than through those working closely with your business every day? Bring your employees into the loop on your social media goals. Trying to reach 1,000 followers in the first quarter? Get everyone on board and just as excited as you are about that goal! Include that goal at your meetings, on internal emails, and encourage department heads to remind their staff members to engage with your brand online. In an ideal world, your employees are proud to be members of your company and will be happy to like, share, or retweet company content.

Stay Active

How active, you ask? Very! Staying active is as critical in the early stages of your company profile as it is when you’ve developed a strong following. Appropriate post frequency across platforms will vary. The ‘sweet spot’ for your company may deviate from what research suggests and will take some time to identify. I would encourage you to track interaction over time and measure at which frequency your reach and engagement takes a dive.

According to the LinkedIn small business guide, just 20 posts per month will reach 60% of your audience on LinkedIn. I’ll be honest, this surprised me, but stats like these are a great place to start. If you find that your one post per business day is getting a ton of traction, perhaps two posts per day will too!

Establish Goals

Don’t select arbitrary benchmarks against which to measure your success. Doing so will either set you up for failure or limit your potential for growth. Establishing specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely (SMART) goals will get you kicked off on your social media journey with a bang.

SMART goals are critical to measuring, and adjusting, your expectations for success. Check out our blog post to discover what comprises SMART goals and how they can be weaved into your overall inbound marketing strategy.

Test, Measure, Test again!

How can you be sure your efforts are effective, or for that matter not effective, if you aren’t analyzing interactions? After you have your SMART goals defined, you need to have measurement tools in place to track and measure interaction. Now, if your preferred platform is Facebook, you’re fortunate in that the Facebook Audience Insights tool contains a wealth of data.

Try testing different times of day to identify what time generates the most interaction from your followers. Measure those interactions but don’t become complacent, test regularly. Remember, what may be true today may change entirely in a few months as your demographic changes.

Get To Work!

There’s no time like the present. Remember, your social media strategy should complement your overall marketing strategy.