Social media has undoubtedly become an integral part of our lives, as human beings, as consumers, and as businesses. Whether you own a B2B or B2C, you must focus on social media. It is not an option, but a requirement as your target audience is already on these platforms. You need to identify how to reach them.
Let us talk about how you can get this game right and make the most out of social media for your business. We discuss some of the most effective methods to use social media in your marketing strategies.
1. Embrace Social Publishing
With the growing popularity of content marketing, social media channels have started creating their publishing platforms. After the success of LinkedIn Pulse, many leading social media platforms have introduced publishing. Several social media as well as distribution channels, have emerged to help bloggers and businesses attract audiences.
These channels allow publishers to share an entire piece of content rather than just links. It is worth including social publishing in your content marketing strategy to see the difference.
2. Identify Your Market
To benefit from social media, you need not make a presence on all the platforms. This suggests that you can pick the venue where your target audience is present and devote all your time and resources on them rather than putting small efforts on several channels.
Analytics on these social media channels help you identify your target market. For example, LinkedIn is widely used by professionals, while the younger generation uses Instagram. Popular networks like Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter are ideal for driving traffic back to business websites, but YouTube and Google+ allow driving the most relevant traffic.
Start by analyzing where your market is and then pick the platform they use the most. Put your effort and money on these channels, and you can see results.
3. Consider Paid Advertising
If you believe that your audience can discover you naturally, you should give it a second thought. Sharing great content completes only half of the game. It is the way you distribute the content that makes the difference. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn offer dedicated advertisement channels, making it clear that social media promotion should be paid.
It is all about making the right choice for the best value for your money. Deciding whether you should use paid ads, sponsored posts, brand collaboration, or influencer payment is not easy. It would be best to come up with a strategic campaign to get a higher chance of distributing your content among the target audience cost-effectively.
4. Leverage the Power of Influencers
Today, influencer marketing is the next big thing for business promotion. The biggest brands today use social media influencers to introduce their products and trigger conversations about them. This applies to B2B as well as B2C marketing. Businesses can connect with influencers in the target niche and quickly hit a wider audience without much effort.
When using influencers, see that it is not essential to get many likes, but you should aim to get real engagement. An analysis shows that real action comes from people with less than 500 followers. Moreover, you should pay attention to the quality rather than just numbers. Instead of getting blinded by the number of followers, you should focus on the influencer’s credibility and their ability to create valuable content for the brand.
Your business marketing strategy should allocate resources to influencers because it is not only effective at getting you traffic and sales but also boosts brand recognition and organic ranking for long-term results.
5. Try Innovative Content Formats
Social media allows using a number of ways to attract the target audience. Based on the type of followers your social profile has and the business goals, you can experiment with different formats to make your content more appealing and effective.
Most marketers believe that written content is the best form on social media, while others stress the power of visual content. Yet, some others believe curating others’ content. Social media followers value reviews, pictures, and videos posted by brands while finding ebooks and white papers the least appealing. Posts that include visuals are thrice as attractive as explicit content.
It was easy to believe that videos are the most effective format for engagement on social media or that whitepapers worked the best for B2B. Today, we see that there is no single perfect way of using social media for business marketing.
Different methods suit different industries and buyer preferences. It would help if you tried to understand your target market, observe your competitors, and experiment with your resources to see what works the best for your business.
Conclusion
Looking at the present scenario, it is easy to say that more and more B2B markets will see success with social media in the coming years. With the above-discussed tips, you can get the social media game right and use it to achieve your business goals.
