Social media is leading the way for B2B businesses in their quest to become more ‘human’. From building brand awareness to forming stronger relationships with your audience, social media is full of opportunities for your business to grow and develop – but where should you begin?
Know your destination
In the words of Laurence J. Peter, “If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else”. In other words, everything you do in life should have a purpose with a clearly defined goal. If you don’t have a plan, the likelihood is your journey will fail – and if it does (by some miracle) succeed, it will take you a lot longer to get there.
Like with your other marketing channels, to maximise the success of your social media campaigns, you must start by defining your goals. Firstly, you need to think about what you want to achieve – are you trying to generate more traffic to your website? Wanting to increase your brand awareness? Whatever your goal is will determine your KPIs and influence which metrics you use to measure your success.
To provide more clarity to your journey and increase the effectiveness of your campaigns, you should consider using SMART goals. This means that each goal you set should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
Explore your market
Creating content without first understanding your audience is like jumping out of a plane without a parachute – you just shouldn’t do it. To maximise the success of your social media campaigns, you must know who your audience is, what they want to see and where they want to see it. It’s no good publishing an amazing piece of content to LinkedIn if your target audience only uses Instagram. Likewise, if your audience is in the wholesale or insurance industry, they are unlikely to be interested in viewing posts about the latest fashion trends. Remember, relevance is key.
It’s also important to research your competition and be aware of trends within your industry. Monitor what your competitors are doing well and take inspiration. Turn their weaknesses into opportunities for your business.
Silence is golden
Having the freedom to post whatever you want at the touch of a button can make oversharing all too easy. Instead of overwhelming your audience with low-quality content, try to hold back on posting unless you have something meaningful to share that offers value to your audience.
Just because you aren’t posting, doesn’t mean you aren’t working. In fact, you will find some of the biggest value in the work that your audience doesn’t see: as Bernard M. Baruch once said “most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking”. In social media marketing, this value can be found in the form of social listening. It gives you the opportunity to ‘listen in’ to conversations surrounding your business, allowing you to see customer feedback, address queries and offer solutions to any issues people may have with your business.
Creating your content
Every piece of content you create must be aligned with your goals – if it’s not going to get you results, what’s the point? When creating content, you should use your brand voice to inject personality into your posts. Show your audience you are human, too. Think about adopting a more conversational tone to encourage interaction with your posts, giving you more opportunities to build relationships with your audience. After all, social media is all about engagement.
With 75% of B2B buyers and 84% of C-Suite executives now using social media when making a purchase, it’s clear most of the industry is now on board, so don’t let your business sink.
