You know that social media is an essential component for connecting with buyers, but are you really leveraging your social network to its full potential? It’s time for you to embrace social selling. Social selling is leveraging social media to cultivate new connections, target the right leads, nurture prospects, build relationships, and position your company as an industry expert. Businesses across all industries need to be more active where their buyers are, on social media, if they want to out-market their competition. Want to know the most valuable social media platform for many B2B marketers? We have that information for you, too.
How B2Bs Can Use Social Media to Out Market Your Competition
What is The Most Valuable Social Media Platform for B2B?
This answer likely won’t shock you; the most valuable social media platform for many B2B marketers is LinkedIn. In 2016, LinkedIn reported 467 million users. By the end of 2018, that number climbed to 590 million. That’s an increase of 123 million users in 2 years. For comparison, during that same two-year period, Twitter gained 9 million users to end up at 326 million users.
When it comes to B2B companies, 80-percent of social leads come from LinkedIn. It’s no wonder that LinkedIn is known as the primary social media platform for professionals. It should be a keystone of any B2B social media marketing strategy. LinkedIn reports that 94 percent of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content.
Since LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft, it has expanded the functionality of company pages, improved hashtagging, post authoring, and more. Of course, a good marketing strategy should never put all of its eggs in one basket. Twitter, Instagram, Quora, and Facebook are successful platforms for many B2B marketers.
Live Video is Working
Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn all offer some form of live video option. Live videos present businesses with the potential of connecting directly with new customers in real-time through their video content. Live videos also offer tremendous engagement with followers. You might host a live Q&A, teach a class, or demonstrate a product. As a broadcaster, you can choose to stream from either a webcam or on mobile.
We already mentioned that LinkedIn has shown itself to be the most effective social media channel for B2B. However, LinkedIn live video streaming is still in beta testing. For those who are using it, they are reporting highly engaged results. While currently, only a select group of members and Pages have access, you can apply to become a live video broadcaster. As of now, streaming on LinkedIn is possible only with third-party broadcast tools. Individuals and Pages will be responsible for choosing the tool that best fits their budget and supports their broadcasting needs.
One of the greatest advantages of live video on LinkedIn is the ability to measure the impact of your streams. After a live video, take the time to parse out the data and see which companies are viewing your streams more than others, and follow up with likes and comments.
Social Media Promotion
Most social media platforms have a range of options for setting up your social media promotions. One advantage LinkedIn holds is allowing you to choose the industry in which your audience works. This option is particularly beneficial for B2B marketers who might want to specifically target an audience in healthcare, finance, or higher education. Narrow the scope of your audience to make sure you’re pinpointing the right demographic for your promotion.
Find The Right Content
Do you know the kind of content your audience prefers? A recent update to LinkedIn Pages helps companies both know and grow their audiences by sharing the right content. B2B marketers will now see a “content suggestions” section where they can discover and re-share public LinkedIn posts by their employees. Make sure you are joining the right conversations to position your company as an expert and industry leader.
Don’t discount the power of storytelling in your content sharing. By adding a narrative to your content, it helps your business tell a story to buyers about how you can help them and creates more engagement with your audience.
Another important element for boosting engagement is sharing different types of content. Consider varying the topics of your posts from promoting blogs, sharing industry-related news, or even adding in some entertaining infographics.
Build Relationships
Social media is a tool that B2B marketers should be using to build quality relationships. Facebook and LinkedIn are both platforms that have shown to be successful for B2B businesses. Facebook aids in building brand recognition, particularly through Facebook groups where brands can generate relationships, partnerships, and referrals. LinkedIn is ideally poised to help your business approach the exact member of a business that you are targeting.
Provide Answers
Demonstrate your expertise by providing answers on social media platforms like Quora. The best way for B2B marketers to use this platform is to find the most popular questions being asked in your industry to use for content ideas and answering questions with custom-tailored answers. Make sure your answers are detailed and include a link to a relevant blog post where readers can get even more information or resources. Not only will your audience appreciate that you are providing helpful answers, but you are also driving website traffic for yourself and building backlinks.
How Can We Help
Do you need help out-marketing your competition? We offer strategic planning, persona development, and content marketing services that can help. If you are ready to develop a story building trust and motivation, then sign up for a complimentary initial consultation/discovery meeting. Schedule yours today, and let’s see if we can help.
Key Takeaways
- LinkedIn is the most valuable social platform for B2B
- Live video is working.
- Find the right content for your audience.
