Social Media emerged as a way to keep in touch for individuals, but as the time passed by it has switched to an important strategy for businesses. Social Media marketing seems to be simple for B2C, but for B2B, it certainly is a different ball game. We all know Social Media is here to stay, while the consumer marketers may have taken the lead, B2B companies are also not ready to let go of this opportunity. The question which always creates a problem for most of the marketers is “Which content to share and Which Social Media platform to be used?”
Marketers need to be smart while promoting the brand or product on social media. It is very important to create fresh piece of content every time they post something. It is not recommended for marketers to keep copying and pasting the same old thing again and again. A very important and well known rule for all the marketers is “Know your customers”. For social media marketers, we would like to add a bit in this rule i.e. “Know your platform”.
Each platform has its own techniques of promoting the content, marketers need to understand those techniques and then put it in use. But, before that (engaging in social media), it is very important to decide about the social identity that will be used and how the brand or product should be represented. The most preferred way of promoting your brand is to use a company account; it tends to be used for sharing corporate information, new features, functionality, and press releases or customer reviews. These accounts usually interact with partners, customers, and prospects etc. On the other hand private accounts do not have much influence on the B2B customers.
We are listing here some techniques which should be used to share content to B2B customers using popular social media platforms available:
Twitter:
It uses Microblogging, which is an ultra-brief version of blogging consisting of 140 characters or so. Twitter is the most famous microblogging platform today, but it’s not the only one, there are other platforms like Foursquare, Googlebuzz etc, which are using microblogging in a very effective manner. That being said, here are the things you need to consider while tweeting:
- Smart use of headlines of the tweet is a good way to start off. This can be treated as the first impression of your brand to the other users.
- Engage your followers by tweeting a few time a day.
- Focus on relevant content; users are not interested for what you had in your breakfast.
- If using a corporate account, make sure to Follow Back everyone who is following you. You do not want to upset customers, partners or potential customers by not following them.
- Schedule a few Tweets of your blog. There is a chance that someone might have missed out the first tweet you made.
Facebook:
No one is going to have any objection if we say that Facebook is the most widely used social network of them all. Here is a small list that can help business to leverage their product or brand on Facebook:
- Facebook Pages create loyalty, enthusiasm, awareness and strengthens inbound marketing.
- You need to make sure that you update your page with relevant content related to your business and not about your personal life.
- Interactions should be made frequently and responses should be made in a timely manner.
- Promote events using Facebook events and share with your fans or friends.
- Use of customized Facebook applications for catering more fan base and higher engagement.
Linkedin:
As one of the leading social networking site for professionals, Linkedin can be considered as the best for B2B organization interactions. It basically works as Facebook, but the focus is of Linkedin is more towards education, work history, professional interests etc. Here are some of the advantages of Linkedin for B2B companies:
- Use of “Shared Connections” to get in touch, with the companies you wants to work.
- Use of Group for company specialization and competencies.
- Finding groups similar to your core business model to reach more audience.
- Using Linkedin Answers as a tool to ask questions and provide answers that are unique and productive.
- Promotion of events over Linkedin.
CONCLUSION:
Like it or not, social media plays a huge role for businesses in today’s world. We have talked about just a few major social media networks available. There are many networks available which you can use to promote your brand or product, for example Pinterest, Youtube, Google+ etc. We would like to hear your opinions about the above mentioned social media promotion techniques, and also the social networks you use to promote your brand to make this list more comprehensive and useful for others.
