As a B2B organisation ourselves, we’ve learnt a little about social media over the years and how to use it to market ourselves in our industry. We have outlined our eight top tips for social media marketing below.
When creating social media accounts on the platforms you have chosen it goes without saying that you should create a profile that accurately reflects your business. Following industry leaders and competitors will give you an idea of what to benchmark your social media content against.
Our primary focus for social media is sharing our design knowledge with the industry, our clients and anyone that is interested. Our content is mostly made up of case studies and articles, but our social posts have lately become content in themselves, especially on Instagram and LinkedIn where there is less limitation in the character count.
Develop a brand personality
B2B companies often make the mistake of being boring. Since you’re targeting professionals and not the average consumer, you may feel that personality and style are inconsequential.
However, sharing bland, dry content on social media isn’t an effective way to get anyone’s attention, whether they’re a college student or a high-powered executive.
- Write in the first person
- Remain consistent on all the channels
- Create a brand style guide
Engage with your audience
Responding to comments and mentions is essential to engage customers or clients and ensure they feel valued. 80% of customers expect companies to respond to their social media posts within 24 hours. 50% of customers claim they would stop working with a company that fails to respond to a negative social media post.
- Know who you’re targeting (Conduct research on your audience)
- Create and share social media content that speaks to their interests and needs
Create engaging content
Use content to attract the attention of your target audience. Your content should be informative and educational or answer questions that your audience is likely to have.
Sharing relevant content from other trusted sources is a great way to become a place of interest for your audience when they are looking for industry information. Content can be white papers, webinars, case studies or, to a somewhat lesser extent, e-books, infographics, and blog posts.
- Create a content strategy
- Consider the audience when creating content – Will it interest them?
- Regularly update the content on website and social platforms to stay relevant
Create content that is unique to each channel
Use social media to get creative and adjust any messaging to suit the platform. Consider each channel’s benefits and adjust the content to mirror what users may expect or engage with. Reposting the same message across networks is bad practice.
Showcase your partners, your work, your people but consider the audience and the channel. Instagram may be better suited to pictures of company culture and LinkedIn may be better for advertising job listings. Always use social media to engage with past, present, and future employees and create that network.
- Tailor the content and language by channel
- Keep the company brand personality consistent (you can adjust the tone of voice)
- Tell a story with every post
- Consider recommendations for each platform on the character count of each post
Use Instagram
Instagram is valuable to the B2B industry. Research shows that B2B companies experience their largest engagement ratios on Instagram. Use Instagram to show off your work culture, humanise your business, and demonstrate the value of employees. Instagram can add depth and creativity to your marketing – and you can have fun with it.
- Create and post visual content
- Align with the brand personality
Optimise engagement by posting at the right time
For best practice, B2B companies should post content at the best time for each channel. This will maximise the reach and can encourage engagement. The best times to post, according to recent global engagement, are:
- Instagram is best for global engagement on Wednesday at 11am and Friday from 10am to 11am, but the most consistent engagement is Monday to Friday, 9am to 4pm
- LinkedIn’s best days to post are Wednesdays from 8am to 10am, Thursdays at 9am or between 1pm and 2pm, and Friday at 9am
- Facebook is most popular for global engagement between 11am and 2pm on Wednesday or consistent for engagement between 8am and 3pm on Tuesday
- Finally, Twitter has most global engagement on Wednesday and Friday at 9am, while the safest times for engagement are between 8am and 4pm from Monday to Friday
Always check for the latest research on engagement times as they change fairly often!
Leverage LinkedIn
Leveraging the power of LinkedIn for lead generation takes time and a strategy. It can be used to connect with anyone, not just the people you have met or know already. What is no longer acceptable on LinkedIn is long LinkedIn messages or asking people to join a call with you. Publishing content is crucial and it should ideally be split 50/50 between the brand and the sector. Instead of posting links to external content, consider creating LinkedIn based content, such as text-only posts, photos, videos and articles. Use LinkedIn to communicate your business offering, connect with past, present and future employees, make connections with relevant people and act as a thought leader in your industry. Showcase your partners, your work, your people and job listings.
- Create and post visual, informative content
- Align with the brand personality
Design social assets that are optimised for mobile
Always consider optimising assets for mobile. An essential part of the design, mobile optimisation of assets is reliant on the size specifications demanded by each platform. Using a layout that is best for digestion of information is also important. For example, avoiding the use of a font that is too big to fit all the content.
- Make sure that the loading time isn’t hindered by the size (compress your images)
- Optimise image and video sizes per platform specification
- Consider the copy in the caption, on the link and in the visual (if relevant)
- Design with minimalism in mind
- Reduce the caption content if needed; adhere to recommended character lengths
Graphic visuals:
- Arrange the text in the graphic visual to suit the reader view (L shape)
- You may need to use a smaller font in the visual so that the content is relative to the screen size
- Use up to 15 words on a graphic visual, ensuring that the copy is clear
- Research suggests that the text should take up no more than 20% of the image
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