Archive for category Social Media
Five Tips to Increase Engagement on B2B Social Media Sites
Posted by Rick Pranitis in Social Media on February 21, 2017
Even if your B2B company has been posting to social media sites for some time, it is always a good idea to review your activities to make sure you are getting maximum engagement from your followers. Below are five considerations that can help everyone from the beginner to the seasoned veteran.
- Post at the right time
Make sure you are posting to your social media profiles at a time when your customers and prospects frequent those sites. In most cases you might find that B2B buyers will show up on weekdays from ten in the morning to four in the afternoon, thus making this an optimal time for posting messages. Still, every B2B company has its own target time frame, so make sure you pay attention to when your audience is posting in response to your messages and when traffic increases.
- Add calls to action
You can add calls to action to your individual social media posts to encourage prospects to learn more about what you have to offer. Your posts should give B2B buyers the opportunity to raise their hands and express interest in your products or services. The best way to do that is to make a compelling offer that will drive them to a landing page on your website. Usually they will need to exchange their contact information for the offer. These offers can be a mix of things that generate awareness at the top of the funnel and things that help drive consideration. Sometimes it can also entail telling a prospect why a particular offer is more appealing than something else. In other cases it might involve telling a B2B buyer why the product or service in your offer is so important. Anything that can be used as a call to action will be worthwhile for your marketing plans.
- Keep from being overly personal
While you might have lots of friends that follow your B2B company on your social media profiles, you should treat your page as a business-first spot. You need to avoid posting too much personal information. Focus on posts that are relevant to what your business is doing right now and what it has to offer your customers.
- Take risks
Sometimes you’ve got to take a few risks in order to go places. You might want to take some small risks that will cause your B2B company to look more appealing. Don’t be afraid to post funny videos that are relevant to your customers and prospects. This could be your chance to break out of the “boring B2B” mold. The odds are people will see the human side of your business.
- Get special guests
Consider adopting the idea of the celebrity takeover on your social media profiles. Identify influencers from your industry, or even subject matter experts from within your B2B company. Customers and prospects are more likely to engage with these industry stars during the takeover. There is really no limit to who you can tap for this purpose, and it can even become a regular feature of your social media profiles.
If you follow these reminders for how to post and interact on your social media channels, you will create more engagement with your B2B prospects and customers, especially if you can drive them to your landing pages or website.
This Article was originally posted to the Social Media B2B Blog by Sameer Bhatia on May 12, 2015.
Five Mistakes Every B2B Company is Making on Facebook
Posted by Rick Pranitis in Social Media on February 9, 2017
While LinkedIn is often the preferred platform for B2B social media, Facebook can be the difference in the success of your marketing, if done right.
When it comes to B2B marketing, it’s crucial to find how your goals overlap with the functionality of the platform being used. In the case of Facebook, there are a range of opportunities to flip the traditionally B2C platform in your favor.
Keep reading to find out how to get B2B marketing right on Facebook.
- Not using the Custom Audience feature
You already have a list of contacts built up in your database. Why not put those email addresses to good use and try to find more followers and potential buyers through Facebook? Many B2B businesses miss out on advertising opportunities because they haven’t narrowed down their audience successfully. The Custom Audience feature will help you do this.
The Custom Audiences feature lets you upload your database directly to Facebook. Using Facebook Ads Manager, you can create targeted ads and then send them to your email contacts. Facebook will then match your emailing list against the user accounts currently open. Because so many people use their personal email addresses for social media accounts and shopping accounts, there’s a good chance that your contacts use the same address for Facebook.
You can also reach out to new customers by creating a similar audience to your already existing Custom Audience. This is a great way to find new customers who are demographically similar to your current customers. Remember, not everyone wants to be your customer, so do your best to avoid marketing to those who have no interest in your company.
- Letting posts get too sales-y
Getting people to like your page is one thing; getting them to stick around and interact with your posts is another. Some B2B marketers believe that posting on Facebook isn’t as important or necessary so long as you have those fans, but in reality, your posts say a lot about you as a company.
Your posts need to be engaging while providing industry-related information to your customers. This is how you show them that your company isn’t just about selling products and services. You care about your customers and you care about educating them. By showing them that you know your industry and will provide them with up-to-date information, you’re illustrating your company’s professionalism as well as its superior customer relations.
That’s not to say that you can never post any self-promotional material on Facebook, but remember the 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of your content should be useful blogs, articles, infographics, videos and other useful pages from third parties. The remaining 20 percent can be about your own promotions.
Remember this rule when your posting, and your customers will be more likely to interact with your posts. They’ll also appreciate not being bombarded with sales pitches.
- Forgetting to tag or mention people
When you post from your own Facebook account, do you tag people in your posts or mention places that you’ve recently visited? If so, then why aren’t you doing this with your B2B Facebook posts?
Social media is all about creating dialogues and connecting with customers. Tagging well-known industry experts brings them into the conversation and offers readers new perspectives. Tagging your own followers is a great way to interact with customers and make them feel appreciated by your brand. Doing so gives readers more of an incentive to comment on your posts if they think you might answer them back.
Facebook’s tag and mention options allow you to pull people into your conversation and make them feel included. This is a great way to involve your customers and get them talking with you.
For example, a higher education institution might tag a student who was recently nominated for an award in his or her field and offer a hearty congratulation. This gets followers talking and shares the good news with other who might not be aware.
- Focusing on selling rather than generating leads
One of the biggest misconceptions about Facebook marketing is that it’s all about selling, selling, selling. If you’re not generating sales from your Facebook marketing endeavors, then you’re doing something wrong.
The truth is Facebook just isn’t a good marketplace for selling your products and services. Facebook and other social media platforms are about building solid customer relationships and improving your brand. People come to Facebook to talk, not to shop, so if you’re focusing on getting people to buy your products on Facebook, then you may be wasting your time.
Facebook can be one of the most useful tools for generating great leads and nurturing them. By capturing email addresses, you build your database and expand your reach to new customers. Once you have them, you can begin marketing directly to them through Facebook.
As your leads become more invested, you can pass them on to your sales team and turn them from a lead to a valuable customer.
- Ignoring metrics data
Recently, Facebook updated its Ads Manager, giving it a whole new look that was a little overwhelming for some. The main page now gives you a plethora of data telling you how successful your ads are. If you’re ignoring this data, then your campaigns probably won’t improve, and you won’t know what works and what doesn’t.
To help you better manage your budget, Facebook now lists your total spent over the course of the week at the top of the Ads Manager page. Now you can keep better tallies on your expenses and make sure you don’t go over your budget.
There are a number of ways to break down your campaigns, ad sets and ads so you can better see their successes and weak points. Don’t be afraid to click around and pull up new reports. It may be hard to track your ROI through Facebook marketing, but looking at your metrics is a good place to start.
This article was originally posted to the SocialMedia B2B Blog by Michael Bird on December 1, 2015
Three Social Media Best Practices For Small Businesses
Posted by Rick Pranitis in Social Media on February 24, 2016
For small business owners, social media marketing is one of the most underutilized marketing tactics.
How can you say that?
Everyone has or should have a Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, Twitter account, and Google Business page. While it is true that most companies have dabbled with social media channels and set up their pages, most small companies pay little or no attention to these low cost and potentially high impact marketing opportunities. Most small company social media accounts are a barren waste land of blank avatars, little to no postings and small followings.
If you are a small business and are looking to kick start your social media efforts, here are 3 best practices to get you started and impact your bottom line this year.
Update Your Profile
Your social media profile is an extension of your business brand. For savvy customers particularly the growing in influence millennial generation, social media channels are one of their first stops in their decision-making process. If you have blank avatars on your Twitter or Facebook pages, or profiles that look like they belong to a different company, you’ve got a problem. When someone checks you out on Facebook, Twitter, Google, or LinkedIn, you want them to know that they are dealing with the same organization. Use the same colors, logos, and similar images as you do with your other marketing collateral, so that it is instantly recognizable.
Also make sure that you use a consistent tone or voice. If your brand is professional, maintain that vibe, changing it up to a youthful and snarky tone will only confuse and potentially alienate your ideal customers. While your business may serve different customers, your marketing should be aimed at your target audience.
Consistency is Key
Arriving at a Twitter account or Facebook page and seeing that the last post was two years ago says something about a business. Unfortunately for many of the small businesses that we come into contact, this is precisely what we encounter. Publishing once in a while is a step in the right direction, but it will not yield the primary results that you are looking for – building and audience and driving targeted traffic to your website.
Determine which social media channels will yield the best results for your business and then work with your team to establish a regular publishing schedule for each channel that you will be working with.
Our friends at Buffer (yes, we are clients) have a great social media posting guide that can help you determine the ideal frequency to post for each social media channel. Regularity, like brand consistency, helps establish a sense of reliability in your audience (a very important trait in a company you’re considering doing business with).
At a minimum if you are just getting started, consider the following schedule.
- Twitter: 3-5 original tweets a day (morning, afternoon, and evening)
- Facebook: 1 post a day (original content or shared, ideally mid-day or early evening)
- LinkedIn: 1-2 posts a week (original content or shared)
Once you have maintained some consistency, you can start to track the impact of your postings and determine the appropriate frequency and timeframes for your posts.
Speak With, Not at Your Audience
Whether its Google, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn the goal of your social media activities is not to close sales. While increased sales can be a by-product of an effectively operated social media strategy, its biggest opportunities lie in creating awareness for your product or service, or maintaining communication with your legions of satisfied customers. It is important for companies to dialogue with their audience and avoid engaging in a one-sided conversation.
Unfortunately, many small companies just starting out with social media make the mistake of making overly salesy posts, or just posting a few pieces of content and never engaging with their audience.
Active engagement is the key!
Participating in group discussions on LinkedIn, or hosting chats on Twitter are just a few of the opportunities to speak with your audience and not at them. What are your followers concerned with? What problems are they struggling with? Are there solutions that you can provide to these issues? Will some of the content that you created answer their questions?
Regardless of the channel, social media offers your brand or company the opportunity to connect with your ideal customers on a personal level. Don’t take it for granted!
This article was originally posted to the Business 2 Community Blog by David Cuevas on February 14, 2016.
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