“Social media marketing is about creating content that brings your audience together as a community and inspires authentic conversations while increasing your brand’s awareness.” – Krystal Wu, Social Community Marketing Manager, HubSpot
Social media fuels your sales and keeps the profits flowing.
So, if you have an effective social media marketing plan in place that can enhance your digital presence, what better than that?
However, there is fierce competition for the consumers’ attention span on social media.
Therefore, you need to be pragmatic about your social media marketing strategy. This blog post talks about the best ways in which you can solidify your marketing plans on social media.
So, let’s get started!
What Are the Top 5 Ways to Boost Your Social Media Marketing Strategy?
Align Actions to Business Goals
Generally used by B2B companies as a top-of-the-funnel marketing channel, social media contains the potential to drive many small actions leading to sales.
But to improve business visibility and exposure on social media, you need to put together a plan on the basis of your company’s goals.
Social media marketing is considered effective by 59% of marketers to improve lead generation. Hence, helping you achieve yet another business goal along the way i.e. nurturing your leads.
Determine KPIs and Track Them
Once you have your business objectives sorted and aligned plan, you will be well on your way to setting key performance indicators (KPIs).
Different campaigns running on multiple social media channels can have their own KPIs.
Once you know about what KPIs you want to achieve, you can frame an action plan, accordingly.
For tracking the KPIs, you can use the following tools:
a. Google Analytics: It tells you which social media channels are bringing you the maximum number of visitors and conversions.
b. CoSchedule: It helps you track engagements on the posts, sends the detailed performance reports, and recommends the best content piece to post at a suitable time.
c. BuzzSumo: It gives you a list of the links you’ve shared the most on social media, is incredibly helpful with social listening, and helps you discover the top influencers in your field.
d. HubSpot Social: It monitors your social mentions and engagement, and allows you to do a comparison of your performance on different platforms and campaigns.
Leverage User-Generated Content
There are three key reasons why leveraging user-generated content (UGC) should be a part of your B2B social media marketing strategy:
1. Saves time for content production
2. Acts as a trustworthy social proof
3. Expands your audience
Buffer is pretty consistent with its practice of curating images from its ‘Buffer Community’ showcasing the way people work, play, and live. This also boosts engagement from their followers.
In another instance, IBM, which keeps using UGC as part of their social media marketing, once reposted a video of the tennis player, Serena Williams wherein she was shown teaching Watson, IBM’s AI computing system how to take a proper selfie. The post recorded massive engagements, likes, and comments.
Take Advantage of Employee Advocacy
The Trust Edelman barometer, reports that 54% of people trust a regular employee more than a CEO.
B2B businesses need strong employee advocacy as it helps them:
a. Build a high degree of trust
b. Attract more sales via social selling
c. Boost brand reach to new prospects
d. Hire new employees and talent
Electronic Arts (EA), a video game publisher, started an employee advocacy program called ‘EA Insiders’. Within a short period of time, it gained momentum and was appreciated by the employees.
Employees enjoyed posting about the benefits of working at EA and the fun they had during the program. This took Electronic Arts to receiving a whopping 6,600 social engagements per month that were generated by its employees.
Identify a Suitable Social Media Channel
B2B business owners should use their time wisely while promoting assets on social media.
83% of the marketers use social media advertising for their B2B business promotions.
The following social media platforms are apt for B2B advertising:
a. LinkedIn: 96% of marketers use LinkedIn for organic content distribution while 83% use it for paid promotions, hence making it the most popular social media platform in B2B.
b. Twitter: It is the prime channel for spotting trends and initiating conversations with customers and business influencers.
c. YouTube: A perfect social media channel for posting business presentations and advertisements.
d. Instagram/Facebook: While Instagram can be used for posting visually detailed content in the form of infographics, Facebook can be used for posting B2B ads.
Wrapping Up
As Jay Baer once said, “Focus on how to be social, not on how to do social.”
Thus, no business today can resist being on social media because of the power it holds. It’s about strengthening your social presence every step of the way.
Following such best practices can help you nurture your target audience regularly and make you look trustworthy in their eyes.
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