Social media is particularly useful for businesses that want to expand their brand’s influence online. By interacting with users and showing the aesthetics of your brand, you can establish a noteworthy presence on social media. Here are a few things you should know beforehand:
Social media works in a B2B marketing context, too
Social media makes perfect sense in a B2B marketing context. All you have to do is build a following on Facebook and Twitter and you can interact with your target audience like never before.
When it comes to B2B marketing, however, the function of social media isn’t as intuitive. Consumers make up the majority of social media users, and they’re not exactly in your target audience.
Nevertheless, a recent Harvard Business Review article explains how some companies have had major success marketing to B2B audiences on social media. According to the article, these companies are able to generate relevant leads even though their industries aren’t particularly social:
“The experiences of Adobe, IBM, Maersk, and other marketing leaders shows that useful content distributed through digital channels can be as effective in provoking a dialogue as face-to-face selling. The quality of the content is key to sparking that dialogue. These companies also have embraced social media marketing and experimentation, even in industries not usually considered cool or social.”
The main takeaway here is that marketing to businesses isn’t a good reason to ignore social media. There’s plenty you can accomplish with a good marketing strategy.
Content is the path to engagement
If your social media marketing campaign were a car, then your content would be equivalent to gasoline. In other words, content fuels your marketing efforts, and you can’t run a campaign without it.
This is important for all businesses to understand. Your greatest asset in regard to your marketing campaign is your knowledge. The best way to capitalize on it is to create high-quality content that engages your target audience.
Your goal is to share your knowledge with users online. Teach them about the function, benefits, and role of your product in regard to their business operations. If you can do this without sounding promotional, then you’ll establish a following on social media.
Your target audience isn’t only on Facebook
And finally, you should note that social media isn’t synonymous with Facebook. Although we definitely recommend that you have a Facebook page, there are plenty of other avenues you can explore on social media. According to a recent Business 2 Community article, Facebook isn’t quite large enough to place all of your social media marketing bets on:
“Social media” is more than Facebook, plain and simple. Many businesses (large and small) mistakenly place all of their social media eggs in the Facebook basket. Facebook is one small piece to the larger social media puzzle.
Businesses should market on social sites where their target audience is active. LinkedIn Pulse is a great platform for publishing and sharing content with users who are interested in your industry. So while you might want to post light and conversational content on Facebook and Twitter, you can always post more in-depth and ambitious articles on LinkedIn, where the users are knowledgeable to a certain degree.
Just keep in mind that managing social media accounts is less time-consuming than content creation. If you’re already investing a lot of time and effort into your content, then you may as well take the extra step to give it more exposure.
Businesses can benefit from social media by increasing their brand awareness and establishing a community. To talk more about social media marketing, or anything else, contact us today.
