As a business owner, you can no longer ignore the role social media plays in the survival of any business.
You may think that Business to Business has nothing to do with social media; you may be surprised how vital B2B social media is for your business’s success.
6 Steps to Get You Started with B2B Social Media Marketing
Step 1: Understand what you want B2B social media marketing to achieve for your business. Remember, with B2B social media marketing, it is a means to an end. This golden rule will help you measure your B2B social media marketing success. If, at any stage, you are unable to identify what you are trying to accomplish, you are wasting your time. Begin your B2B social media marketing by setting one or two clear goals and always have them in mind as your guide throughout your marketing efforts.
Step 2: Find your B2B social media audience. The main point of B2B social media marketing is to successfully reach your target audience. Find out where your customers spend their time online. Where are they most vocal? Identify the proper channels to address. Otherwise, you are just wasting your time.
Step 3: Develop the proper B2B social media content. Of course, everything eventually boils down to proper content. Why is content strategy essential in B2B social media marketing? What type of information is relevant and interesting to your target audience? It’s something they’re already talking about. It becomes a matter of creating content and then using the proper methods of distributing that content — which differs from audience to audience (that is, from industry to industry).
Step 4: Consider Search and SEO in B2B social media. Be search engine friendly as a matter of course throughout your B2B social media marketing. People Google their questions and do their research through search. Customers and clients go online to finalize their purchase decisions. Optimize everything. Leverage keywords so they find you when they’re ready to make a deal. This is where your B2B social media marketing feeds into your bottom line.
Step 5: Establish a digital footprint for your B2B social media. Leave a description of your business and an active link for users to click on, everywhere. Besides supporting your SEO efforts, active links are a direct line to your website so users can find it with minimal effort. At the very least, put a link to your site on all your landing pages, welcome pages, and profiles (where applicable) on all your B2B social media channels.
Step 6: Hold yourself accountable. Business requires trust and reliability. Be who you say you are. And establish a regular process for reporting, such as through analytics, so that you can measure your business’ progress at the end of each month.
Summary
One important thing to note through all this is that running a B2B Social Media marketing campaign requires a lot of hours. Keeping open communications with people you regularly do business with is one thing. But knowing when to outsource is a smart move. A good Internet marketing team can improve targeted traffic and:
- Create fresh content and push it out on a daily basis
- Keep an eye on analytics to measure your business’ reach — then interpret and act on the insights provided
- Manage accounts to make sure you’re not missing important communications with potential business partners and customers
- Optimize everything
Call us if you need help. We can do all of the above. With a smile.