Social Media And B2B Marketing: The Complete Guide

Social media has evolved dramatically over the last decade. 

It’s gone from being a brand-new way for kids to connect with their friends to becoming a multi-billion dollar industry that businesses around the world are using to sell products, convert leads into customers and build their brands. 

The average American spends nearly two hours on social media sites every day. That represents an enormous opportunity for businesses in all industries, especially those selling B2B products and services. 

Because there are so many opportunities when it comes to social media marketing these days, you need a plan of attack if you want to use it effectively. 

That’s why we decided to take everything we’ve learned as a full-service digital marketing agency and put together this definitive guide on social media marketing for B2B companies:

Key Takeaways
– Social media is a crucial tool for B2B marketing strategies.
– Building a strong online presence fosters B2B brand credibility.
– Leveraging LinkedIn can connect businesses with industry leaders.
– Engaging content tailored to the B2B audience enhances visibility.
– Analytics are essential for tracking the effectiveness of campaigns.
– Consistency and authenticity are key for successful B2B social media.
– Thought leadership can be established through insightful content.
– B2B social media marketing requires a strategic and long-term approach.

Understand Your Buyer Personas

Buyer personas are a tool for understanding your customers and what they want, need, and expect. They’re the most important element of B2B marketing because if you don’t know who your target audience is then there’s no way to reach them!

Buyer personas are also used in other parts of the sales funnel such as lead generation and content marketing. 

They help marketers understand how to write copy that resonates with their target buyer personas so they get more leads or conversions from their content marketing efforts.

There are many different types of buyers in every business:

• The decision-maker – someone who has authority over making purchasing decisions (but not necessarily making them)
• The influencer – someone who can influence others within an organization but isn’t necessarily involved in decisions themselves (e.g., thought leaders)
• The user/customer – this type includes anyone who uses or purchases products or services from a company

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Create Social Media Accounts For Each Of Your Buyer Personas

To start, you need to create social media accounts for each of your buyer personas. In other words, create a different account for each type of buyer you’re trying to reach.

For example, if you have a B2B marketing business and want to target Marketing Directors at large companies (your primary audience), then one of your buyers would be “Joe Marketing Director,” and another would be “Jane Marketing Director.” 

You could use these names as the name of their accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter (or any other platform).

Each account should also have its avatar a profile picture that represents that persona online and a background photo (the photo that appears behind the profile picture). 

These should match the style and tone of voice associated with each persona so they appear consistent across all platforms where they’re active.

Build An Engaging And Consistent Brand Voice On Social Media

Your brand voice is the personality you give your company on social media. It’s how you speak to people, and it’s a core part of what makes them want to work or do business with you. 

A strong brand voice helps define the type of company or organization you are, so any communication from your business including social media posts must sound like something your target audience would expect from your brand.

For example, if you’re selling luxury yachts, then fun photos of people enjoying time on the water aren’t going to make sense in comparison with posts about innovations or special offers for boat lovers. 

That doesn’t mean that all other types of content don’t belong on Instagram; 

It simply means that those images won’t fit within the context and tone established by your company’s overall image and mission statement (which should be determined before creating any parts of this guide).

While some companies may choose not to define their unique voices beyond general guidelines related directly back to their mission statements (or even just copying someone else’s).

Defining an authentic and consistent way in which yours will sound will help ensure more engagement across all platforms and ultimately lead him/her back down through conversion paths later on if he/she becomes interested enough the first time round!

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Optimize Your Profiles For Search Engines

Optimize Your Profiles for Search Engines

To rank well in search engine results pages, you’ll want to make sure your profile is optimized for search engines. This means using relevant keywords, hashtags, and descriptions. Here’s how:

Use a URL shortener. Create a unique link that redirects people who click on it back to your website or social media profile page on Facebook or Twitter (e.g., www.yourcompanyname.com/socialmedia).

Optimize your profile for search engines by adding relevant keywords and hashtags that relate directly with what you do as well as more general tags like “marketing” or “SEO” because these searches can bring new leads into the funnel over time too! 

You should also add descriptions above each picture so users get an idea of what they’re looking at before clicking through (you can see an example below).

Use Social Media Ads To Grow Your Followers

How to Set Up Social Media Ads

Setting up ads is a simple process that you can do in just a few minutes, but it’s important to think through your message and how you want to target your audience.

Write an ad that describes what makes you different, but also doesn’t leave out key elements of the product or service. For example, if your company provides high-quality software for accountants, an ad might read: “Let’s help you prepare for tax season!” 

This gives a quick overview of what the company does while also giving potential customers an idea about how they could use the product or service.

Create multiple versions of the same ad with different images and text so that you can test which one performs best before making any additional changes or investing more money into advertising. 

These variations could include changing colors or fonts on similar images (like from blue to red), changing copy on images that show similar products/services (like adding “new update” versus “top-rated app”), and including different graphics and icons through out each version, etc. 

You can run these tests by creating separate ads within Facebook Ads Manager and then selecting “Show All” to compare all four options at once!

Once you’ve found which combination works best whether it’s just two versions or four you’re ready to start paying money toward getting those clicks!

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Publish Content That Educates And Informs

When it comes to content marketing, there are a few key things you need to remember. One of them is that content is king. I think we can say that content marketing is the new SEO.

Another thing worth noting is that providing value and building trust are two of the most important aspects of content marketing for B2B companies. 

If you want to be successful at this strategy, then be sure your company creates helpful and educational pieces of information for potential customers, not just sales pitches disguised as informative articles!

Lastly, you should try being a thought leader in your industry by creating innovative material that addresses problems or issues relevant to your target audience and not just those who already know about them (e.g., if people already know about whatever problem/issue exists).

Use Hashtags To Increase Visibility And Engagement

Hashtags are words or phrases preceded by the hash sign (#). They are used as tags on social platforms, such as Twitter and Instagram. 

Hashtags help you spread your content to a wider audience and increase engagement because they enable people to find your content through search queries. Here are some benefits of using hashtags:

They help you reach a wider audience by connecting with influencers, people in your industry, and geographical area. 

For example, if you post an article about influencer marketing on LinkedIn (which has over 500 million users), it’s likely that many people who don’t follow you will see it because they have read similar posts before or have been interested in similar topics.

If something is trending among users on Twitter or Instagram (like #halloween2018), then posting with this hashtag will help attract attention from those searching for related hashtags.

Crush The Competition By Researching Their Posts

Social media is a great way to stay up-to-date with your competitors, but it’s also an effective way to learn more about the market in general. You can find out what people are talking about, how they talk about it, and most importantly, who else is talking about it.

From this research, you can get an idea of what kind of content your audience likes or dislikes and also identify gaps in their knowledge that you could fill through your content marketing strategy.

The key points for this type of research are as follows:

Do a competitive analysis on all the social media accounts you’re interested in. 

This will give you an idea of what types of posts perform well for each competitor which means that if there is something missing from their account then maybe this could be something worth trying for yourself? 

You should also look at engagement rates as well as post frequency (how often they post) because these two factors will tell us whether customers like our business enough not only to visit regularly but also engage with our social media accounts too.

Both are important metrics when deciding whether we should expand into other areas e.g., video advertising, etc.

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Tag Influencers In Your Industry

When you tag influencers in your industry, it’s a way of showing that you’ve read their content and are interested in what they have to say. It’s also an opportunity to get more exposure by referring people to their blog posts, articles, and videos.

To tag an influencer in your industry:

Use their name. If someone is using their name as a brand on social media (for example, Chris Brogan or Guy Kawasaki), then tagging them with just the @ handle will work fine it’ll show up as @chrisbrogan or @GuyKawasaki.

Use their handle (for those who aren’t using their names). If someone chooses not to use her real name on social media but does have an account under some other name (for example, @SocialMediaLady), then feel free to tag her with that handle instead of @socialmediallady (and make sure you spell it right!)

Run A Twitter Chat

Running a Twitter chat is easy. Here’s how:

Choose a topic that your audience will be interested in talking about. You can run an entire series on one particular topic, or you can have different chats based on different topics each week or month. 

For example, if you’re a recruiting agency that specializes in finding jobs for IT professionals, you might choose to have a weekly chat where everyone posts their favorite tech jokes of the week (or month). 

Or maybe you’re an employer looking to find new employees with specific skill sets and want to host a monthly thread where job seekers post questions they’d like answered by hiring managers who are looking for these same skill sets.

Invite participants using either @ mentions or direct messages (DM). Make sure as many people as possible know about the event so there’s enough participation for it to be successful! 

If one person is introducing themselves and asking questions every so often instead of several people chime-in regularly throughout the hour-long discussion period then no one feels engaged enough and everything becomes boring quickly!

Host A Facebook Group Or Google+ Community Page

A Facebook group is a public forum where members can share posts, videos, and photos. If you’re looking for a place to host an ongoing discussion around your industry or niche, this is a good option.

A Google+ Community Page is similar to a Facebook Group in that it’s a place where people can connect and share content. Unlike groups, however, these pages are made private by default. 

You can choose who has access to the page (only people with whom you’re connected on Google+ or who have been invited) and adjust the settings so only selected members will see comments or posts that would otherwise be visible by default (like those from administrators).

Drive Web Traffic With Social Media Sharing Buttons

Social media sharing buttons are a great way to drive web traffic. For instance, if you’re trying to get people to visit your website, you can include social media sharing buttons that will post the link to your blog post directly from your website. 

If you have the right tools in place and know how they work, you can easily take advantage of social media sharing buttons.

When deciding what type of social media sharing buttons to use on each platform, think about where most people read their content (e.g., desktop vs mobile). Then identify which platforms are best suited for each type of audience member:

Site visitors who browse sites primarily via mobile devices may prefer LinkedIn or Twitter links because they tend not to spend much time browsing on desktop computers or laptops and don’t like entering personal information into forms unless necessary; 

Thus these users probably won’t need access through Facebook login pages so much as just being able to send out updates from those two channels directly onto their feeds without leaving the site itself first!

Connect Your Blog Posts To Your LinkedIn Profile

When you publish a blog post, there are several places you can link to it from.

Link to your LinkedIn profile in your blog posts. You can do this by sharing the URL of the particular page on LinkedIn that has been published as an update on its tab (see below).

Link to your LinkedIn profile in your LinkedIn profile. This is a great way for potential clients and partners who already know and trust you from working together before they become clients or partners again! 

They might not notice where they met before if they don’t look closely at all the information displayed there.

So make sure that this small detail stands out by using different colors or fonts than those used elsewhere on your page (for example) or even put links next to other things that would seem relevant but aren’t linked anywhere else online yet.

Like maybe something about how many times per week people need help with social media marketing because they don’t have enough time between work

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You Can Use Social Media Marketing To Grow Your Business

Social media marketing is a great way to promote your business and build brand awareness. It can also help you get more customers, build a community around your brand, connect with your customers, get more followers and improve SEO.

Social media marketing is an excellent way to market your business because it allows you to reach people who are not on traditional advertising platforms like TV or radio (which typically have higher costs). 

Social media also allows you to see how well each piece of content performs in terms of engagement and shares so that you know what works best for future marketing campaigns.

Conclusion

We hope this comprehensive guide has helped you learn more about what social media marketing is and how it can help your business. If you want to learn more about digital marketing, check out our Digital Marketing 101 post. 

And if you’re looking for a local agency that can help you create a social media presence and plan out your strategy, contact us! We’d love to show you what we can do.

Further Reading

Explore these additional resources to deepen your understanding of B2B social media marketing:

HubSpot’s Guide to Social Media Marketing: HubSpot provides valuable insights into crafting effective social media strategies to engage and grow your B2B audience.

Dos and Don’ts of B2B Social Media Marketing: Learn the best practices and pitfalls to avoid when implementing B2B social media campaigns in this comprehensive guide.

The Ultimate Guide to B2B Social Media Marketing: Zen Media presents a comprehensive guide that covers every aspect of B2B social media marketing, offering insights for successful implementation.

FAQs

How can B2B social media marketing benefit my business?

B2B social media marketing can greatly benefit your business by enhancing brand visibility, establishing thought leadership, nurturing relationships, and generating leads within a professional network.

What are some effective strategies for B2B social media engagement?

Engaging with industry-specific content, sharing valuable insights, participating in relevant discussions, and showcasing your expertise are some effective strategies to engage your B2B audience on social media platforms.

Is LinkedIn the best platform for B2B social media marketing?

LinkedIn is often considered a prime platform for B2B social media marketing due to its professional focus and networking opportunities, making it ideal for connecting with business professionals and decision-makers.

How can I measure the success of my B2B social media campaigns?

Measuring success in B2B social media marketing can be done through metrics like engagement rates, lead generation, website traffic, and conversions, which provide insights into the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Are there any common mistakes to avoid in B2B social media marketing?

Yes, some common mistakes include over-promotion, neglecting audience engagement, inconsistent branding, and not tailoring content to the specific needs and interests of the B2B audience.