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B2B Social Media Marketing Strategies that Work

If you believe that any company on earth is going to give you a competent social media marketing strategy that actually works well, then you are a carrot.  If it truly worked well then they would use it themselves and keep it a secret.  It’s like the adverts that promise you can make xx amount at home, I mean come-on, really?  If that were true then why are they not doing it and keeping the money to themselves?

I have researched through some of B2B social media marketing gurus and come up with some very, very good points that you should consider when you craft your social media marketing strategy.

B2B (Business to Business) marketers were asked about social networks being used in their companies. Respondents said, in order of importance, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, followed by YouTube and blogs.

In each network there is a use.  Different marketing professionals use different social media according to their different objectives such as: 

Ÿ  LinkedIn for lead generation and traffic 

Ÿ  Facebook for promotion and branding 

Ÿ  Twitter for promoting with short and concise text to create a "buzz"

Ÿ  Social networking to see who is talking about them 

Ÿ  YouTube for instructional videos and for demonstrations, technical support and training 

Ÿ  Blogs for SEO and corporate content writing  

Currently the favorite social media platform among B2B marketers when asked, is LinkedIn.  Others may respond with Facebook, blogs, Twitter and online communities.  It is interesting to read that Facebook is known by most B2B marketers as the channel to which most users pay attention.  This may be due to peoples’ nature of repeatedly checking it and peoples’ tendency to flip through Facebook on their phone when they have time to kill.  Blogs and online communities have been referred to as having the most commitment and customer feedback.  Many marketers perceive Twitter as a way to create traffic to their website, and make the promotion of products and events.

Reality being what it is, the use of social media in marketing has nothing to do with technology.  These marketers are people who interact and take time to produce content to reach markets and other businesses of like mind.

The greatest obstacles to the adoption of social media in marketing are:

Ÿ  Lack of good resources because some companies will not commit to the medium fully

Ÿ  Poor indices to measure success and performance indicators

Ÿ  Lack of genuine knowledge of social media

Ÿ  Resistance from the top (again some senior staff won’t commit to this “flash in the pan”)

Poor indices to measure success and performance indicators are a very important point.  Studies have shown that about seventy five percent of current B2B marketers do not keep any measure of social marketing ROI (Return on investment) of their strategies.  This indicates a reactive approach, and an ignorance of social media and more importantly, an ignorance of their audience/customer base.

Marketing through social media as a component of integrated marketing is part of an overall B2B marketing.  It is a very good way of having other companies come to you, instead of you cold calling them.  B2B marketers’ main obstacle is a lack of good resources to effectively execute marketing through social media.  Added to this is the poor indices to measure success and performance indicators, which indicates a lack of professional knowledge and integration of social media. 

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