Social media usage is one of the most popular online activities. In fact, in 2020, an estimated 3.6 billion people were using social media worldwide, according to Statista. That’s almost 50 percent of the entire world’s population, and that number is projected to increase even further to almost 4.4 billion in 2025.
Despite these staggering numbers, there’s a common belief that social media marketing is only for business-to-consumer (B2C) companies and not business-to-business (B2B). That’s simply not true, and in this blog The Brit Agency will explain why.
What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing is the process of creating content (whether it be text, images or video) to engage your desired audience and buyer personas across social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Snapchat and Pinterest.
A successful social media marketing program, which involves unique and valuable content that helps or interests readers, will help you engage your audience, increase sales and drive website traffic.
Social media marketing is all about creating content that’s not only valuable to your target audience, but that also works well on each individual platform you post on.
There’s way more to social media marketing than just creating content. Social listening helps you to monitor conversations and respond to specific comments, social media analytics helps you to measure reach, engagement and sales, while social media advertising helps you to target a specific audience.
What are the benefits of social media marketing?
Despite the prevalent belief that social media marketing is only for B2C companies, it’s actually also a crucial component for any B2B organization’s Inbound Marketing strategy. That’s because a successful social media marketing program can help your organization:
- Increase brand awareness.
- Generate leads and boost conversions.
- Increase website traffic.
- Build stronger relationships with your customers.
- Learn from competitors.
- Improve customer satisfaction.
- Develop more brand authority.
How to create your own social media marketing strategy
Now you know exactly what social media marketing is and how your B2B organization will benefit from a well-thought-out strategy, it’s time to learn how to build a successful social media marketing program. To help you do just that, we have listed four simple steps to follow.
#1 - Research your buyer personas
Buyer personas, as we discussed in our blog ‘Why Buyer Personas are Important for Your B2B Marketing Strategy’, are an essential aspect of any Inbound Marketing program - and they should also be used for your organization’s social media marketing.
Before creating a social media marketing program, it’s first important that you have your buyer personas in place. This will allow you to create targeted content for the audience that you actually want to attract to (and follow) your social media page.
#2 - Determine which social platforms you can reach your audience on
Your buyer persona will also be a crucial aspect in choosing which social media platforms will be the most effective places to publish content on. This will depend on the personalities of your target audience, what their needs are and where they tend to spend their spare time.
Learning more about the age, personality and demographics of the average person on each social media platform, and comparing this to your buyer personas, will help your decision here. There’s no right answer, it might take some testing to find the right platform for your brand.
#3 - Create and schedule your posts
Now you know who you want to target and where you want to target them, it’s time to start creating unique and engaging content. You’ll want to stand out from your competitors and provide a reason for your audience to press that “follow” button. Use a mixture of engaging content, live video and current customers/influencers to promote your brand.
When you have a series of posts lined up, schedule your posts in advance using a tool such as HubSpot or Hootsuite. By scheduling your social posts on a monthly basis you can focus on current campaigns that are relevant and timely to your buyer personas.
#4 - Measure your social performance
The most important aspect of any social media marketing strategy is measuring your program’s performance through insightful analytics. This will give you data into audience engagement, likes, follows, shares and all other forms of interactions.
We won’t go into great detail about which metrics you need to analyze in your social media marketing program, as this is a more detailed topic for another blog, but engagement, reach, followers, impressions, profile visits, mentions, tags and shares are all important metrics you should be looking out for.
Strong performance in these metrics is a good sign that your social media marketing program is increasing traffic, generating leads and driving conversions for your organization.
Do you have any further questions about the importance of social media marketing for your B2B marketing strategy, or simply want to know how to build your own social media program? Contact the Brit Agency today. Our team of Inbound Marketing experts would love to help.
