Social media isn’t just for sharing photos from your last holiday or keeping track of birthdays anymore. Social profiles have come a long way since the days of Myspace and Facebook. Today, social media is just as important as telemarketing and billboards when marketing your business. And you don’t have to be a retail store to benefit.
I am very passionate about social media strategy. As a digital and content specialist at RAW Marketing, we quite often assist with social media activity for our clients, usually focusing on LinkedIn. Why? Information Technology and Services is the largest industry on LinkedIn and studies show that 80% of B2B leads come from this channel. When it comes to B2B businesses, particularly IT, LinkedIn has a lot going for it.
For many of our clients, while they do have a social presence, it isn’t utilised to its full potential. Many set up a LinkedIn profile but do not complete it and only post sporadically or do not post effective, engaging content. We help improve this digital presence from the ground up.
Building a solid foundation
Your Company Page
Before you start any social activity, you need to look at your social profiles. This is one of the most crucial areas for your business in the digital sphere. Employees add it their profiles, clients follow it, prospective clients will search for it. Ensuring this page is appropriately set up and used efficiently is essential.
We will go into more detail about exactly what to post and when in a future article, but the basic components of a successful page include:
- A profile photo that showcases the company logo, ideally in a 1:1 ratio.
- Relevant cover photo with no text.
- About us filled out – a few sentences are sufficient. You may be able to use your website ‘about’ page to help flesh this out.
- Completed company details.
Personal Profiles & Employee Advocacy
Individual profiles can be just as powerful for endorsing your message as your company page, if not more. Consistent, complete profiles reflect well both on the person and the company they are working for, making it crucial to ensure all are updated. It can help to have a document that gives step-by-step instructions for staff to follow to update their profiles when they join the team. This should cover having a professional profile photo, relevant and completed profile and the current role with correct company information.
Once a good foundation is created, the next step is encouraging engagement. This means enabling your staff with the tools to share their opinion and the voice and personality of your brand. Sharing, commenting and liking can all boost the message and spread its reach. Guidance and assistance will not only give your staff confidence but also grow your business and increase its reach in the digital sphere.
You can more about employee advocacy in the article ‘The Dos & Don’ts of Employee Advocacy on LinkedIn’.
Other Channels
LinkedIn isn’t the only beneficial channel for B2B organisations but it is important to choose your channels wisely. Instagram is typically not a focus for B2B but does have its place for larger enterprises – HPE is a great example of how this works for IT companies. Twitter is perfect for organisations who go to a lot of events as this is a great source for attendees (and can be tagged in their own tweets). CiscoLive, the event channel for Cisco, is a good example of this. Facebook is perhaps the most commonly used social channel for B2B companies after LinkedIn, offering a similar purpose, but with recent algorithm changes, it can be difficult to gain traction. We often don’t work with this channel as it is remains mostly a B2C environment and it is more difficult to reach working professionals via the channel.
These points provide a good foundation for your future social activities. From here, your social media activity has something solid to build from.
The use of social media can be a powerful tool for B2B organisations, especially those in the IT sector. You can reach more people with little outlay making it one of the easiest ways to market your business. But the world of social can also be a bit daunting. We help streamline the process for our clients every day, so get in touch to find out how we can help.
Sources:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-industry-rankings-see-which-tops-list-joshua-waldman/
