Why your B2B company needs a top-notch social media strategy

Explore the benefits and best practices for your business-to-business organization’s social media presence

Today’s business-to-business (B2B) buyers are more digitally oriented than ever before with 27% of their key buying activities being independent online research—compared to only 17% of time spent meeting with potential suppliers. [1]

In fact, 80% of interactions between suppliers and buyers in B2B sales are expected to occur in digital channels by 2025. [1]

Keep reading to learn how a strategy-driven social media presence can aid your organization in succeeding in the digital-first future of B2B sales. 

What are the benefits of social media for B2B organizations?

• Increase brand awareness

Successful B2B companies use social media to connect with their followers. Instead of solely sharing promotional posts, the content you share should encourage conversation and connection with your audience. This approach lets followers—your potential clients and customers—feel listened to and engaged with your brand.

• Create meaningful connections

The B2B buying journey is inherently complicated and time consuming with the average purchasing team for a complex B2B solution involving six to 10 decision makers, each armed with four or five pieces of information they’ve independently found to present to the group. [2] Building a rapport with potential customers via social media helps to develop a deeper connection and foster a sense of trust, meaning you’ll be top of mind when the time is right to research and buy.

• Boost your search engine optimization (SEO)

Sharing unique, engaging content is an effective way to improve your company’s visibility on search engines like Google which analyze your online presence to determine the quality of your website. Using social media to share content enables you to engage with a huge audience, thereby driving traffic to your website and increasing the likelihood of people linking to your content, both of which are major SEO ranking factors.

• Humanize your company

Showing your business’s personality on social media often helps your audience see you as more authentic and trustworthy. Plus, by sharing more about your business, you can also delve deeper into learning more about your audience by using social media as a valuable tool for market research. By understanding your followers, you can develop new products or services based on need and demand.

• Establish yourself as a leader

Social media is a great opportunity for B2B companies to position themselves as industry experts. Sharing content that is valuable to your audience, like blogs, case studies, and white papers, will increase your online presence and help establish you as an authority in your field.

What are the best practices for creating a strong B2B social media presence?

• Share photos of your real team.

When it comes to the type of photos your business shares on social media, it’s always best to share photos of your real team (instead of stock images), especially when you are talking about your company. If you’re discussing your values, mission, or other unique identifying information, show your followers the real people behind the brand. Photos of real people often have higher engagement rates than stock images. 

• Assess and adjust posts on a regular basis.

The only way to know if your social media strategy is effective is if you take the time to measure and analyze the performance of the content you’re sharing. Your internal or external social media marketing team should be regularly reviewing content performance metrics such as response time, engagement rate, and impressions to determine what’s working and what’s not. From there, they will be able to adjust the posts accordingly to ensure they are meeting or exceeding pre-defined goals. 

• Keep up with the trends and competition. 

Like most marketing efforts, social media is constantly changing, so it’s important to stay on top of trends and competitors to understand what your target audience is interested in. It will allow your organization to contribute to relevant industry conversations and stay modern in the digital age. It’s also a great opportunity to differentiate yourself from your competitors if they aren’t staying on top of trends. 

• Stay on brand both visually and verbally. 

Amid your competitors and the constant consumption of digital content that your audience is faced with, it can be tempting to follow out-of-the-box trends or try something new to grab people’s attention. But when it comes to B2B social media strategy, it’s essential to stay true to your brand voice and identity despite the noise surrounding you. If a trend fits your brand, go for it, but if not, stay true to who you are. Your ideal buyer will respond best to your company’s distinct perspective and unique selling propositions. 

• Distribute your original content.

Whether it’s blogs, case studies, or customer reviews, your organization should focus on sharing original content on social media rather than just curating content from industry professionals. In B2B marketing, social media isn’t about posting at a high-volume to increase the visibility of products like in B2C marketing. Instead, it’s about sharing original content that will add value to your followers and increase your trust with them for a potential purchase in the future. If your team doesn’t have enough valuable content to share everyday on every platform, consider scaling back to only posting on the most valuable B2B platforms a few days a week. Keep in mind: quality over quantity. 

• Get your team involved. 

With your employees having about 10 times the social reach of your business on its own on LinkedIn alone, it’s clear that embracing employee advocacy as a part of your organization’s social media strategy can substantially boost your marketing team’s efforts. [3] By encouraging your employees to repost, comment, and post about their own experiences at work on their personal pages, your content will be amplified and more accurately showcase your company culture. In fact, content shared by your employees can have two times the engagement rate of content shared on your company’s LinkedIn page. [3]  

• Focus on the right platforms.

As with any other sales and marketing efforts, it’s important to spend your time and money wisely when it comes to your social media strategy. Be sure that you are focusing on curating your organization’s presence on the social media platforms that are most popular and valuable for B2B companies and their buyers. The most recent research shows that LinkedIn is both the most used and most effective organic social media platform for B2B content marketers. [4] After LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube follow in sequential order as the most used organic platforms for B2B marketers in the past year. [4]

Mini case study: WeCare tlc’s LinkedIn success 

WeCare tlc, an industry leader in the implementation of employer-sponsored primary care health clinics, has $420+ million in claim cost savings and health centers across the country.

As WeCare tlc’s marketing team, we provide them with our ongoing agency support services, which includes social media management for their Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter accounts.

When company leadership expressed interest in growing their LinkedIn following, we came up with a plan to increase their follower count, post impression numbers, and reaction count. We began creating monthly content themes, increasing the amount of pictures featuring their executive and clinical teams, and engaging their team members in commenting and reposting on the company’s page.   

From January 2022 to January 2023, WeCare tlc’s LinkedIn followers increased 28%, reactions were elevated by 1,101.6%, page views were up by 827.3%, and unique visitors by 868.9% when compared to the prior year. 

Ready to level up your company’s social media presence?

It’s clear to see that there’s value in implementing a well-constructed social media strategy for your B2B organization, but if you’re not sure where to get started, our team at Different Perspective is here to help!

As a B2B marketing agency, we offer complete management of your company’s social media profiles from strategy and set-up to management and engagement tracking, we’ll create, publish, and monitor relevant, engaging content as well as paid social media marketing efforts as needed.

It’s time to reach your full business potential!
Schedule a meeting with one of our marketing strategists today.

Sources:

1: Gartner | Future of Sales 2025: Why B2B Sales Needs a Digital-First Approach

2: Gartner | The B2B Buying Journey

3: LinkedIn | The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn

4: Content Marketing Institute | 2023 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends