29 Sep Social Media Marketing for B2B Companies… Yes, your company really can benefit

Tweeting, pinning, posting, and sharing – these were not marketing terms 10 years ago. In the whirlwind of social media, how can anyone keep up with best practices?

Let’s start with your personal life. Maybe in your downtime you follow friends on Facebook to stay in touch, or perhaps you enjoy skimming Pinterest posts for inspiration. Although Facebook continues to lead the pack in popularity for our personal lives, does the same apply in the business world? It’s important to note that the same social media marketing efforts that are successful for Business-to-Consumer (B2C) might not be as successful in the world of Business-to-Business (B2B).

Think about your company for a moment and ask yourself these questions:

• Which social media platforms will best leverage your company’s brand?
• Is social media an effective way to attract new clients who need your specialized products or services?

Now that you have those questions answered, we’d like to help you out by shedding some light on a few tried-and-true B2B social media marketing best practices as well some takeaways for you to put into action.

Top picks: LinkedIn and Twitter

B2B marketers have increasingly recognized social media as a key platform–LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube being the top four – with no major increases or decreases in their use from the previous year. If your desire is to initiate relationships with new business accounts, LinkedIn is your “go to” platform. Utilizing LinkedIn is an easy and effective way to get articles or blog posts about your product and/or service in the hands of those companies that matter to you. You can also request contacts at desired companies to follow your company.

We found this graph included in research by Content Marketing Institute to be very informative:

Twitter is also an excellent platform to tout your product launch or industry news. The trick here is to post your article repeatedly (in the different time zones where your clients are, over a 1-2 week period, etc). As a best-practices example from our team (and for our clients), we suggest that you post to Twitter right after your initial posting to your website and/or LinkedIn Pulse. From there, you will want to retweet 2-3 days and a week after your initial tweet so as to catch the viewers who might have missed the initial postings.

Less is more, more is better.

We would recommend selecting a few social media platforms for your company’s efforts; however don’t make it a priority to be on all the platforms just for the sake of being on all of them.

It’s important to note that simply being present on social media isn’t always enough. You need to be consistently active in order to build brand awareness, showcase your expertise, and make contacts for you and/or your company on social media. Remember: quality, not quantity. For this, you need a “game plan”, or what call a Digital Marketing / Awareness Plan. You can #JustStartToday, by identifying the influencers in your industry: Follow them, read their social media posts, and share their content with your network. For Twitter, use the hashtags that are relevant for your industry. Make it a point to have someone on your team spend 15-20 minutes every day reviewing the list of resources you’ve developed to find relevant content to share. Then share content and engage with your followers. All of this will get you noticed by your network of influencers.

There is a lot you can do on your own; however, hiring a company such as McMahon Consulting to assist with a comprehensive plan is a great way to tie all of your marketing activities together and maximize the benefits of your marketing spend. For example, see our “Sample Package” below. These are some of the initial talking points we use as we work with a client to create a Digital Marketing Plan to meet their specific goals.

Live streaming for businesses is getting bigger, folks.

Facebook took the live video trend to new heights with Facebook Live, and the trend for live streaming continues to grow. In an effort to compete with Facebook and Twitter in the live video space, Google is quietly developing an app called YouTube Connect. Granted, percentages are quite low for marketers using live video, but it’s definitely something that they want to learn more about as the percentages are increasing.

We’d suggest starting to experiment with the existing platforms: Twitter has acquired a live streaming app called Periscope, or you can check out Facebook Live. Whether you’re sharing expertise on a topic that your clients need help with, giving a new product demo, or conducting an interview getting your feet wet in live video is the best place to start. Why not give it a try? #JustStartToday

About the author: Kim McMahon has performed sales and marketing for more years than she cares to count. She writes frequently on marketing, life, the world and how they sometimes all come together.