Therefore, for B2B businesses, developing a strong advocacy system on social media could be a powerful way to build brand and drive sales. When you enable your sales team to build powerful social profiles, they can help you manage customer relations and represent your brand by dealing with prospects on social media. By developing relationships with experts who are also social influencers, you can make a powerful impact on your brand image and sales via social media. How some social media management tools are marketed is a good example of B2B influencer marketing. Most top social media tools, such as Hootsuite and Buffer, have strong relationships with social media marketing influencers. Happy clients may want to recommend your business; unless you provide them with an easy means to do so, however, they are not likely to do it. You can co-create content and promote one another's business on social media. Brand Advocacy Tools To organize and streamline your brand advocacy effort, you'll need to use advocacy, content, and project management tools. DrumUp employee advocacy platform DrumUp lets you invite employees and other advocates to share content, curated by you, on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Featuring research and discovery tools, it helps you identify the right influencers.
Among the top challenges that B2B marketers face are building brand awareness, managing customer relations, and making do with limited marketing resources (human and otherwise); 21% B2B marketers also say they have an insufficient audience size on social media.
Using social advocacy could be a powerful way to tackle those challenges.
Fully 70% of B2B buyers use social media for pre-purchase research. Furthermore, social users trust recommendations from friends and family above all other sources, according to Edelman’s Trust Barometer. Therefore, for B2B businesses, developing a strong advocacy system on social media could be a powerful way to build brand and drive sales.
So which of your social media connections are potential advocates, and how do you build an advocacy system around them?
1. Employees
Leads generated by social employee advocacy convert seven times more often than other leads. That fact should be particularly pertinent for B2B businesses that have socially active sales teams. When you enable your sales team to build powerful social profiles, they can help you manage customer relations and represent your brand by dealing with prospects on social media.
Moreover, by distributing your marketing communications to your entire workforce and encouraging them to share online, you can increase your reach by as much as hundred-fold (depending on your company size and employees’ social influence). There are other benefits of a well-implemented employee advocacy program, as well.
When global software giant Adobe implemented its employee advocacy program, it benefited by an increase in revenue. In fact, one employee went on to generate more revenue for Adobe Photoshop than the company’s official Twitter account. (IBM is another great example of successful employee advocacy.)
2. Industry experts and social influencers
About 4 in 5 B2B decision-makers refer to vendor-independent communities at least once a month for business purposes, and use online communities and blogs for purchasing decisions. And for every piece of your content that a decision-maker reads, he or she reads an additional three pieces of content not created by you.
To influence their decisions, it is essential to have clout on external sites and to be recognized by experts in the industry. By developing relationships with experts who are also social influencers, you can make a powerful impact on your brand image and sales via social media. Seek feedback from them on a regular basis; to use Ted Rubin’s term, focus on earning a “return on your relationships.” Alternatively, some companies also initiate paid contracts with influential experts to be featured on their social media channels.
How some social media management tools are marketed is a good example of B2B influencer marketing. Most top social media tools, such…
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