Does that mean that B2B businesses can’t find success on social media? If you’ve been publishing regularly to your company blog on a specific topic then you’ve done 80% of the work already. If you’re one of the thousands of businesses that create and produce a podcast, social media is great way to get your audience involved in it. This way they can attract clients and leads that are interested in marketing to the oh-so-coveted Generation Z. Social media profiles, like your Facebook business page, should be completed fully to make sure that third-party traffic has easy access to your website. This means publishing content that is already on your blog to get access to a different network of people. This could mean sticking to the channels that return the most traffic or the one that produced the most leads. They makes sure to brand each piece they create so that it can be traced back to their channel when shared. With the reach and audience social media has it can be a useful tool for marketing open positions at your company. A branded cover image and a pinned post is an easy win for businesses and will focus more attention on to important content.
When people think about social media marketing they typically think B2C. After all, social media is where a majority of consumers spend their time.
B2C businesses create social media content for their target audience to enjoy, a relationship is developed, and eventually the consumer makes a purchase.
Does that mean that B2B businesses can’t find success on social media?
Emphatic NO.
But you do have to think a bit different…
Where B2C businesses use social primarily for generating brand awareness for their product or service, B2B companies should be focusing getting their audience off of social media and to their website where they can be converted into leads.
This article will give you 33 B2B social media marketing strategies, ideas, and examples.
1. Ebook
When it comes to generating valuable leads for a B2B company, ebooks are the bread and butter for most.
- They’re low cost and don’t require much resources to create.
- They’re high value and packed with information.
One easy way to create your very own ebook is to start with your company blog. If you’ve been publishing regularly to your company blog on a specific topic then you’ve done 80% of the work already.
Collect the blog posts around one topic that have been well received by your audience and combine them into one single pdf file. Get a designer to whip up a front and back cover, add some styling, and you’ll have your very first ebook.
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions advertises The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn. It’s an ebook full of the same content that they’ve been producing for years; organized into one neat package.
2. Infographics
Ask any marketer, infographics always perform well especially on social media. B2B businesses that are privy to industry specific data are at an advantage when it comes to content. Sure this information can be presented in a boring ol’ white paper like every other competitor OR it can be turned into a bright and fun infographic.
A snippet of the info graphic can be shared on social media and shared amongst the industry. But for the full version, visitors must come to your website and download it in exchange for lead information.
Infographics, like in the WordStream example below, will always be in demand because they visualize complex information. The key here is to create a valuable infographic that organizes and makes life easier for the reader. The reader simplifies their life and you get a valuable lead.
3. Webinars
Social media is a key channel for promoting your next webinar. Leading up to the webinar you’ll be able to get the face of the event in front of multiple groups spread across a variety of audiences.
Social media can act in a way similar to email reminders. 3 weeks out, 1 week out, 3 days before, and 1 day before, you audience can be reminded of the upcoming webinar and make sure to register.
Jay Baer of Convince&Convert is a regular webinar speaker and host. He teamed up with Insightpool to speak about finding influencers to help your business. By leveraging all of his social media channels, Convince&Convert’s and Insightpool’s channels he can guarantee that every spot is filled.
Jay uses his strong reputation as an industry influencer to make his webinar promotion go further. He has spent the time and effort to build his audience on all of his social channels which makes them one of his many powerful communication tools.
4. Podcasts
On demand audio content is the future. If you’re one of the thousands of businesses that create and produce a podcast, social media is great way to get your audience involved in it.
What’s great about podcasts, besides the flexibility, is that they can be played anytime anywhere. On a social network like Facebook, podcasts can be played right onto your Facebook feed via a player like SoundCloud.
Buffer’s new podcast is starting to pick up steam amongst social media lovers worldwide. Buffer makes sure to promote their podcast on all of their social channels to reach all of their audience.
5. Social media contest
Generating leads through social media can be a tricky task to pull off. Tricky but not impossible.
One of the most effective ways of using social media to generate leads is by doing a social media contest or giveaway. An awesome prize and the correct setup can generate hundreds or even thousands of leads for a business.
Here are the steps you’ll need to perform to pull off an excellent social media giveaway:
- Pick a theme
- Decide on the rules of the giveaway
- Choose a deadline
- Choose a prize
- Promote your giveaway
Cisco’s Innovation Grand Challenge does double duty by pulling in thousands of entries (leads) and collects innovative ideas for their development team. And for Cisco being a large global technology company, they get to engage with an audience of enthusiasts and creators. It brings personality to the brand and helps it stay relevant amongst the community.
6. Industry reports
Private industry insights and data can be transformed into comprehensive industry reports. This can then be used as a lead magnet to attract prospective industry leads.
Unique data and insights create immediate valuable because the information wouldn’t be available anywhere else.
Vision Critical uses their customer intelligence platform to aggregate information about ‘Generation Z’ in their industry report below. This way they can attract clients and leads that are interested in marketing to the oh-so-coveted Generation Z. Vision Critical uses both organic and paid advertisements on Facebook and LinkedIn to funnel leads onto a landing page for their industry reports.
7. Free trials
For businesses that offer free trials for their product or service, Facebook allows custom pages to be created right on your business Facebook page. It’s another way to collect traffic and conversions via a third party audience.
Moz has their custom tab setup to offer a free 30-day trial for their platform. This way they’re able to reach a large audience on Facebook that they wouldn’t have had otherwise. Like we said before, the goal here to is move the traffic from your Facebook, or any social channel, back to your website where they can be converted. Making use of every method to do so is the best way to set yourself up for success.
8. Free consultations
Like the previous example, free consultations can be a valuable lead magnet to promote on social media. Influencers specifically will use the offer of free consultation time to collect leads.
Shopify uses their network of incredible influencers and business leaders to offer mentorship as an incentive for their build a business challenge. They leverage the names and reach of these mentors and promote it repeatedly all over social media.
9. Referral bonuses
This strategy uses sharing as an incentive for social media contests. If participants share the contest with their networks they receive bonus entries for more chances to win.
Yovada used this exact strategy on their recent social media contest. If participants shared the contest on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest they would receive a bonus entry and a better chance of winning.
10. Collect testimonials from social media
Interactions on social media don’t have to stay within the social media ecosystem. Your interactions can be used in different areas of your business.
Positive interactions on social media can be used on your website as testimonials. These positive interacts work to add trust and credibility to your business and what you offer. Knowing that similar business have used and found success with your business is powerful.
Picatic knows this and uses real tweets from other big business players to add credibility on their homepages and landing pages. These aren’t like the typical random testimonials with a cheesy photo you’ll see on the web. These are real tweets from legitimate users that you can verify.
11. Showcase partnerships
Showing that you play nice with other B2B businesses is an important part of growing and reaching new audiences.
Partnerships allow you to share audiences with other companies and connect with those with like-minded missions.
Cisco uses several opportunities to highlight the partnerships they’ve made with other brands/companies on social media to show off their involvement in diverse communities. A partnership with Live Nation shows how they care about live music and fun, and more importantly, how their technology makes things like multimedia concerts possible.
12. Direct links back to your website
At a bare minimum social media channels should be well optimized to send traffic back to your website. This means links in every bio and complete profile information.
Social media profiles, like your Facebook business page, should be completed fully to make sure that third-party traffic has easy access to your website. In some situations interested parties will land on your Facebook business page first, so make it easy for them to find more information.
Aside from their stunning social content, Mailchimp makes sure to link all of their social media channels back to their website. In…
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