The Benefits of Social Media Marketing:
A Guide for B2B Businesses
Welcome to The Benefits of Social Media Marketing: A Guide for B2B Businesses. We’ve been expecting you. If you’re reading this, you probably already know the critical role that social media plays for modern businesses. You’re also probably aware of how challenging it is to utilize it effectively.
In the old days, getting your brand out there was heavily reliant on physical artifacts like trade publications. Those were more tangible, had a more direct process for determining ROI, and conversely also had an inherently limited audience of whoever the heck happened to be holding the physical copy of the publication (i.e. 13 people if you count your mom.) The world of B2B marketing continues to evolve and become more digital-centric. Social media has been center stage for the last decade and is not going away soon, so upskilling on this critical marketing space is paramount to business success.
Whether social media is already an integral part of your annual marketing plan or you’re just getting started, this guide will explain why social media needs to be a central component of your B2B marketing strategy. It should not be left to the intern or handled as an afterthought. For brands to remain relevant, social media is a critically valuable marketing channel. Verily, “doing social” is easy, but learning to strategically tap into its potential for your business has proven to be a much more difficult task. B2B strategies require different mindsets and nuances as simply mimicking B2C social media approaches often do not translate into this world and can even cause harm. Rest assured, whether you’re a social media pro or a novice, this guide is your roadmap for making social media work for your unique brand.
Here we provide information covering all aspects of social media marketing for your B2B marketing strategy. Heed these words: There’s no easy button. It’s a multifaceted, highly interactive method of reaching your target audience that requires research, hard work, and consistency. But like anything else, understanding the underlying principles and best practices is the way to match action with purpose.
Up for the task? Let’s dive in.
If you’re anything like the B2B clients we have the privilege to serve, you probably have some very specific reservations about whether social media is a viable channel for reaching your ideal clients. Let’s get that one out of the way first: “Business to business” is still effectively “person to person.”
The head office of that global account you’re striving to land is not scrolling Instagram. It’s a building. It has no fingers. But the people inside? They’re looking for solutions the same as anyone else. Your business may be the solution they’re looking for. Those are the people you’re trying to reach. Social media is a critical key to accessing everyone, from brand-new interns to top-level decision-makers in all verticals. Is everyone on social media? Nope. But before you fixate on the outliers, here are some un-ignorable stats:
- • Over 4.62 billion people across the world use social media
- • Nearly 75% of the world’s population aged 13+ uses social media
- • Worldwide, people spend an average of 2 hours and 27 minutes per day on social media
- • 90% of Instagram users follow a business
- • LinkedIn has members in 200 countries and regions worldwide
- • In the US alone, Twitter (X) has 69.3 million active users as of January 2021
- • LinkedIn has 810 million members
- • 66% of Facebook users visit a local business page at least once a week
In other words, your target audience is already spending countless hours on various platforms, from Facebook to LinkedIn. It’s time to tap into that market.
This guide is your blueprint for building a standout digital presence. We’ll arm you with tips for reaching your audience, starting with the basics of authentic brand building, community engagement, and online success.
To set the stage, let us consider an old story:
The battle was raging, and everyone was trying to get Ahab. Ahab was wearing a disguise so nobody could find him. They mistook Jehoshaphat for Ahab momentarily, based on the garb, but then they realized it wasn’t the right guy. Then, in a surprising twist, some soldier fired an arrow randomly into the sky and when it came back down, it struck the disguised Ahab and THAT IS A THING THAT ALMOST NEVER HAPPENS.
After you have your personas identified, but BEFORE you start, you should also spend some time with your team deciding your company’s primary motivation for existing on social media.
- • Are you looking to increase brand awareness?
- • Grow your followers?
- • Increase website traffic?
- • Find your next employee?
- • Increase new customers?
Behold a few relics from the past:
Powerful professional networking and content distribution platform for B2B businesses that allows them to establish thought leadership, connect with industry professionals, and generate leads through targeted engagement.
Provides a platform to build brand awareness, engage with peers, share industry insights, and leverage targeted advertising to reach potential clients and partners.
X (Twitter in X’s clothing)
Enables B2B businesses to establish thought leadership, connect with industry professionals, and engage in real-time conversations, fostering networking and brand visibility within a dynamic and fast-paced environment.
Threads (X in Zuckerberg’s clothing)
Same thing as Twitter, but without the predictable algorithm. Note: This is a relatively new extension of the Meta family and is subject to frequent change.
Instagram (Millenials pretending not to wear Facebook's clothing)
This platform serves as a visual storytelling platform for B2B businesses, enabling them to showcase company culture, highlight industry expertise, and engage with a professional audience through impactful visual content.
Youtube
An effective platform for B2B businesses to showcase expertise, share educational content, and engage with their audience through video marketing, fostering brand credibility and reaching a wider audience.
Tiktok
Primarily a platform for short-form content popular among younger audiences, TikTok can be leveraged by B2B businesses to share informative videos showcasing company culture and industry-related trends to connect with a broader audience. Note: The US government is trying to ban this platform unless they sell themselves to another company. Perhaps it will end with someone testifying before congress and blinking heavily. We just don’t know.
BONUS CONSIDERATION: Maybe you should take a gander at your website right now and see if you still have Google+ listed or if your X icon is still a bird.
How can I give the people what they want when I don’t know what they want?
When teams start down the path of content creation the two biggest issues quickly circle around the stress of figuring out WHAT to write about, and then HOW to get it written. As to the WHAT, the most important thing to remember is that you should be writing with your audience in mind. That means not letting Sammy over in client services insist on a topic she loves writing about if it is not deeply relevant to your most ideal client. As to the HOW, the most important thing to remember is that you don’t have to be a writer to be a great social media curator. Content for social media can be relatively conversational. Think more management less manifesto.
FOREWARNING: This is the longest section. Rest assured, there is no recipe at the bottom of the page. It’s more like an ingredient list for you to experiment with the ratios. Take it slow. It’s going to be okay.
A. The Rule of 15
Adherence to this formula helps establish your business as primarily helpful and considerate. But don’t forget to post that last one you so carefully earned – your chance to be direct about selling what you offer. We are not trying to hang out on social media and pretend we are not a business offering products and solutions. We simply want to get the etiquette right and do what we can to build trust before we offer our wares.
B. Social Media Scheduling Calendar (Foreshadowing)
We prefer to believe (and this is said without any judgment) that the people who solely post sales pitches aren’t intending to be obnoxious, they just don’t know any better. The fundamental knowledge of the Rule of 15 rectifies that, but doesn’t address the mechanics of HOW TO POST IN A SPECIFIC CADENCE.
If you’re like, “In order to adhere to the Rule of 15, I’ll have to remember how many of each type of post I’ve made every time.” No! Remembering things is for suckers. It is a rule of thumb to guide you in the right direction and keep the focus on creating content that is valuable to your most ideal client. Instead, use a social media scheduling calendar and free up that beautiful mental bandwidth – use it for creativity instead.
C. Important Distinctions: Social Copy (the Words) and Visual Medium (the Pictures)
D. Further Important Distinctions: Diversity of Platform, Social Copy, and Visual Medium
Platform Diversity
Revisit the brief list from Chapter 3 (LinkedIn, FB, etc.) There are a few businesses that pick one platform and just ride it out. That’s cool if it works, but more often, businesses exist on multiple platforms. Not only that, but most of the time, we see the same people following the same businesses across those different platforms! (i.e. If you’re interested in Patagonia’s Twitter feed, it’s pretty likely that you follow them on Instagram as well.)
As your business connects with other businesses, it’s a good idea to connect on as many relevant* platforms as possible to increase the chance of interaction with your ideal client. To do that, you’ll need to have profiles on more than one platform and post on each of them (no lurking allowed!)
*What do we mean by relevant? It is not merely a question if your ideal client buyer is ON a platform, but whether or not they are in the right mindstate to connect with you, consider you, learn from you or buy from you from that platform. For example, I’m on Instagram, but I am only there to follow my daughter’s art career and as a CEO I’m not in my CEO role when I’m scrolling through that feed. In that moment I’m focused on being a proud momma and actually would find someone trying to reach me with business messages incredibly annoying and even rude. That’s what we mean by “relevant”.
Social Copy Diversity
Quick question – Have you ever been driving on the highway and seen two identical billboards right next to each other? Didn’t you chuckle at the display of oblivion? When you schedule 3 identical posts on 3 different channels at the same exact time, you have become 2 identical billboards right next to each other. The people who follow you on both Twitter AND LinkedIn also chuckle at displays of oblivion.
Understanding your social cadence and using a scheduling platform will help with this, but it’s still fundamental to create multiple iterations of the copy used in your posts. Depending on how many times you intend to post and the density of those posts, you might need 3 versions or 6 or 8 to prevent yourself from looking like a weird, idea-less robot. In the very next section, we’ll cover some broad categories of post types. Not all of these will be posted frequently enough to necessitate 8 social copy variations. But some of them will.
The best news here? AI (with proper prompt structure) is superb at taking examples and making new iterations of them. Write one or two posts that accomplish your goal, feed them into ChatGPT or your current favorite AI platform of choice, and ask it to create 6 different variations of the post. Double-check for quality and brand voice, and breathe the clean air of the future.
Visual Medium Diversity
Polka dot shirt and striped pants? Certainly not. We’ll try to make this simple and work on the assumption that you have your visual branding under control.
There are three main things to consider:
- All of the different platforms have different specifications, image sizes, and accepted formats, and they change all the time. We tried writing a guide to it once, and by the time we exported the PDF it was outdated. Instagram posts are typically square. Facebook posts are typically rectangles. PNGs work best for images. Don’t ask why. It’s a compression issue. GIFs work on some platforms but not on others. Video is the same way. Once you have selected the platforms you’re using, do a quick Google search for “recommended image size for [platform.]” This is the way.
- We recommend doing a healthy mixture of still graphics (with and without words on them), GIFs (when appropriate), video, and carousel-style posts (multiple images or slides in a single post.) If a new option becomes available, try it out and see how it performs.
- As with “social copy diversity,” certain promotion requires a more condensed scheduling cadence. For these, it’s a good idea to make multiple visuals that can be paired with multiple copy iterations. It’s fresh. 6 sets of copy, 6 sets of graphics. That’s 36 unique combinations.
E. A Little Help with the Rule of 15, Please?
Let’s align those with the rule of 15 really quick, for fun.
Ten interesting posts would likely be social engagement content. We’ll get into what all kinds of content this can include later, but for now, let’s say you have 10 entertaining and relevant posts that focus on your team, your values, or interesting industry trends. They don’t ask for a sale; they exist for engagement and visibility.
Four helpful posts often align with thought leadership content. Most blogs and ebooks are not sales pitches. They show industry expertise, build thought leadership, and educate potential customers. They are explicitly helpful to your potential customers. Does the original content contain a CTA? Probably. But that’s not the focus of these social posts. The focus is the insights from the content itself.
One that asks for the sale is just that. It would include a call to action motivated toward acquiring a new customer. It could be connected to a specific thought leadership piece, or it could be a general contact-oriented CTA. It is straightforward, “People call us when they are concerned about XYZ.”
F. Content Generation
Here’s how we stand at this point:
We know about the Rule of 15 for a posting cadence.
We understand that developing a social media scheduling calendar will help us with strategic scheduling and allow for visual organization.
We know that social posts need a visual element and a copy element.
We acknowledge that those elements need to be varied so we aren’t boring or repetitive.
We understand that there are 2 broad categories that align perfectly with the Rule of 15.
Now, it’s a question of volume.
“The rule of 15 sounds great,” you say, “but won’t I need more than 15 posts?”
Yes, you will. And this begs the bigger (potentially more important) question you’re probably asking: “How often should I actually be posting?”
This should be one of the things you’re looking for when doing industry-specific research. But generally, posting something at least once a day (weekdays) is a good idea.
“But that’s like, 261 posts!” you shout, face flushed.
- 1. Social media feeds move fast. It’s been estimated that there are 2 million posts on LinkedIn every day. The average user has between 500-1000 connections. In addition to the actual posts, there are also shares and comments – a veritable avalanche of content. If you post every day, you have a chance of being seen in this. If you don’t, you don’t. The most powerful anchor to bring you back from the brink of thinking this is just too much is the important phrase, “Unseen is unsold.”
- 2. Algorithmically, accounts that post more frequently get greater exposure. The platforms want active daily users. It’s one of their metrics. They reward those active users by ensuring that their posts are visible.
Let’s go category-by-category
Thought Leadership Content – It’s the easiest to do if you already have great content, and you probably already do. I mean, we believe in you. Let’s consider the possibilities of some things you may have already created:
- • Blog (your own, or as a guest on someone else’s)
- • Podcast (your own, or as a guest on someone else’s)
- • Article
- • Case Study
- • E-book
- • White Paper
- • Infographic
- • Pillar Page
- • Explainer Video
The goal of posting about these pieces of existing content is to create a series of small, compelling snippets that direct people toward the original content. If that destination is your blog or website, all the better. One blog could theoretically generate the content for (approximately) 6 unique posts. An E-book could generate 12+/- unique posts. Multiply that by every good piece of existing content you have, and you are many steps closer to a baseline quantity of 261 posts. The better the quality of the social posts, the more likely they are to get views and clicks on the platform. The more visibility they get on the platform, the greater your chances of being seen by your ideal client persona. Multiply that by every point of contact on every platform. You get the picture.
And here are some corresponding social copy prompts:
How would you write a high-level overview of this content – can you describe its benefit in two sentences?
How about one sentence?
What question does the content answer for your ideal client?
Is there original or freshly aggregated research in the content that points to a new finding?
Are any widely-held beliefs challenged or reinforced?
Are there any good quotes or statistics that can be extracted?
Are there any compelling charts or graphics that could be showcased and explained?
Are there any current events that make this content more relevant NOW?
If you can create a few iterations using these prompts, you can feed them into an AI platform and ask for additional variations, resulting in multiple unique posts. Then, you can schedule them. Is the content timely? Condense the scheduling over the course of a month. Will the content hold relevance for a longer time? Extend the scheduling over the course of 6 months. Or a mixture – highly concentrated frequency at first (as announcement), and then tapering. Remember, in the ratio of the Rule of 15, these are the 4 helpful posts. For every 4 of these, you’ll want 10 for social engagement content.
Social Engagement Content – Unlike the thought leadership content, the primary goal of these posts is solely engagement on the platforms. That’s great, right? All you have to do is post things people like. And we have an advantage here. We already know what types of posts people like because they’re the ones we look at. They’re the trending videos. They’re the viral posts. Cute kids. People falling. Animals. We love those things. But they don’t really meet that aforementioned benchmark: Relevance.
Let’s roleplay – Your business is a market research software developer. Could you get a ton of likes and follows by posting daily videos of adorable cats? Absolutely. You could curate a devoted following eager to see your name in the feed. Will those followers (the cat lovers) be likely to need your services (market research software)? No. When you share your 4/10 ratio of helpful content that links to your blog (about market research software), they will have no idea what’s happening. That’s a disconnect. It’s a bad move.
The requirements, therefore, become a bit of a balancing act. We’re striving for authentic, engaging, relevant content. And tons of it. Engagement is important. The more likes, comments, shares, and saves your posts get— the more they will be shared across the platform (algorithmic performance rewards.) To this end, we have created a series of social engagement content “buckets” from which we may select and custom-tailor to meet the needs of our clients. Here are a few:
- • Team member spotlights
- • Upcoming events and speaking engagements
- • Holidays
- • Article shares
- • Industry statistics
- • Inspirational quotes
These are just six beautiful babies in a whole nursery of content possibility. The key is how they are customized to bridge the gap between entertainment and relevance. It’s very open-ended, and it’s crowdsource-able using your team. Let the roleplaying continue using 2 examples from the list:
Team member spotlights – You could certainly showcase birthdays, or hire dates, or anniversaries. But you’re a market research software developer. You could instead ask each employee something related to technology or market research. Like, “What was your first computer?” Now, you have generated the copy for one post for each member of your team. Your graphic could be a picture of the employee and the computer. Put their name on it. Put your logo in it. In the post, ask your followers what their first computer was.
Holidays – Should you post “Happy Holidays” to all your followers? Yeah, you could do that, and it would be fine because Christmas happens. But just remember that Christmas doesn’t necessarily happen for all of your audience. It might be important to you, but is it important to your most ideal client? Even if it is, you are one in many. Swimming in a sea of sameness is not the goal. The goal is to be interesting or helpful and actually SEEN.
Consider a different approach to the “holiday social media posting conundrum.” You know what else happens, in addition to “happy holidays”?
March 12 | World Wide Web Day: In 1989, Sir Tim Berners Lee proposed the idea of the World Wide Web, which revolutionized the way we do business and exist as a society.
August 14 | Birth of Ernest Dichter: Born in 1907, Ernest Dichter is known as the “father of motivational research.” This groundbreaking market research technique merged psychology with the study of consumer behavior to yield unprecedented insights.
It takes a pinch of creativity, and a bit of research, but by developing annual social engagement content in “buckets” or themes like several around holidays that mean something to your particular industry, you can strategically generate compelling content to last a full year. You can get this done ahead of time and not try to create the post for August 14 on the 13th.
G. Hashtags
We won’t get too in-depth with hashtags in this guide, but lucky for you, we have a free resource on creating your very own hashtag strategy. You can grab that here.
For the most part, you need to know that hashtags are searchable tags on social media platforms. Using the hashtag symbol is a great way to make a word clickable and find others using that word or term as well. Hashtags should be relevant to your business and your industry. You can also incorporate hashtags with your business name and encourage others to use your hashtag.
On certain platforms, you can use more hashtags than others. For example, on Instagram, you can use up to 30 hashtags in one post (seems like overkill, but I assure you it improves visibility!) On other platforms like X, LinkedIn, Facebook, and TikTok, it’s best to stick to around 5 or less.
H. Authenticity
One of the most important parts of building a brand is AUTHENTICITY! While you don’t want to put your entire personal life on the internet, and likely, neither do your employees, you are encouraged to share some authentic content. Think “day in the life of…” content, funny office pranks, or people organically interacting with your brand or product. There is a difference between being deeply (and perhaps inappropriately) personal and just showing that you are a human. Please consider the difference.
Build an Authentic Brand
Your company may already have a professional website, but social media is an avenue that can help you create brand awareness, tell your story and establish brand authority.
Social media is a platform where genuine connections with customers and prospects can thrive – a space where you can showcase the multitudes you contain. (It’s a Walt Whitman joint, but co-opted by Ed Yong, Bobby Dylan, and memes)
Everyone loves a good story. Tell your story through the written word, captivating visuals and entertaining videos on a social media platform. Your audience will discover your voice and will become more invested in your brand as you share more about workplace culture, behind-the-scenes testimonials, product development and even the client onboarding processes. You are human. It is okay to post in the manner of a human. The occasional dog post is going to be fine. Someone had a baby? That’s postable. Got a baker in the office? That’s culture. Sharing personal elements is vital to making your audience care about your brand – humanizing it in the best way possible.
I. Understanding Next Steps
With a strategy in place and an idea of what platforms are available, the next step is to determine how to publish and share your content. As with any brand communications, you’ll want to establish a consistent voice, post content that is relevant to your audience, balance the types of posts you publish and utilize a content calendar.
Implementing the “Rule of 15” will help you balance your overarching marketing messaging and social media content. Now, you’re ready to schedule your content!
Why schedule ahead on social media? So you can sleep better at night. There’s no reason for your social media content to be a daily stressor. Scheduling ahead keeps you from constantly worrying about what you are going to post. We give you official permission to take the stress out of social media.
Also, if you’re scheduling ahead, then you’re able to batch-create posts and distribute them across all of your brand’s social media pages at the click of a few buttons. It feels really, really good to sit down for a block of time and knock out a whole month’s worth of posting. If you take a peek behind the curtain at Little Bird Marketing’s social media scheduler of choice, Hubspot, you’ll see nearly one thousand posts scheduled in advance for the coming 12 months. It’s a part of our annual marketing plan to use our content management system to its full capacity. Take another page from the social media best practices playbook: Have a team. Set goals. Schedule posts.
What is a Content Management System?
A content management system, also called a CMS, is a web-based application that allows users to manage content which is stored in a database. It also gives a company, brand, or user the ability to allow multiple creators and contributors to create, edit, and publish. WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace are all content management systems, and so are social media schedulers like Hootsuite. Hootsuite allows users to manage their social media profiles (and a whole lot more!) and they have incredible integrations and plug-ins like a calendar app, a media library, as well as other collaborative tools.
What can you schedule?
When using a social media scheduler, you can schedule all kinds of social media posts, including videos, photos, and text-only posts. You can also write the caption, set your hashtags up, and tag other profiles.
Scheduling tweets is a great way to keep up with the fast pace of Twitter. Doing so ensures you have a sufficient amount of content planned to go out at peak times.
And while Stories on Instagram and Facebook are supposed to be these 24-hour ephemeral pieces of content, you can even schedule out your Instagram and Facebook stories ahead of time using certain scheduling platforms. You can even schedule your Instagram Reels!
| Platform | Pros | Cons | Best Used For | Unique Features |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hootsuite |
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Enterprise-level agencies |
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| Buffer |
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Small businesses looking to post up to 100 posts/month |
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| Hubspot |
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Large businesses or agencies looking for all-in-one marketing automation |
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| Later |
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Visual-first brands and content creators |
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| SproutSocial |
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Large businesses with a small social media team |
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| TweetDeck |
|
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Twitter-focused social scheduling |
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| SocialOomph |
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Twitter-focused small businesses |
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| Tailwind |
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Bloggers and small businesses |
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| CoSchedule |
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Agencies that value collaboration |
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Social Media Scheduling Tips
We covered the basics of the content calendar. We encourage you to use our social media content calendar and watch the magic unfold.
Want to go the extra mile? Consider using a content curation app for feed consistency.
Content curation means finding material relevant to your audience from multiple sources and then sharing it strategically across your platforms and channels. This adds incredible value to your audience. It also offsets your promotional pieces and helps to diversify the content you are sharing. And, best of all, it won’t take you all day. We have zero interest in wasting fifty hours of your week reading articles, bookmarking pages, and pulling quotes all for the sole purpose of social media. Yeah, no thanks.
Instead, use a content curation tool. You’re welcome. Some great options to consider are Flipboard, Pocket, Twitter Lists, Scoop.it, and Feedly. As an example, from Flipboard, you create mini-magazines with links to your favorite news stories, blog posts, and websites that you can share with your audience or your employees to pull things directly out of. Or how about Pocket, which allows you to save content and store it in one singular place while also categorizing it with tags and integrating it with over 500 apps? Try one. You’ll get hooked!
Audience Engagement
Fostering engagement with your audience on social media is essential to building a strong online community. Think of it as starting a conversation and sticking around to respond. Ignoring comments, shares, and messages can be a red flag to your followers, making them less likely to engage with your content in the future. Fun facts: Social network algorithms also recognize that behavior and can suppress your delightful content if they determine an unengaged poster. The purpose of scheduling is not to remove the humanity from the process. It’s to make the task easier.
Transform engagement into a new form of customer service by promptly responding to all feedback, positive or negative. This shows your followers and potential customers that you are attentive and care about their opinions.
Take your social media presence to the next level with “social listening.” Monitor what’s being said about your brand or industry on social media by following relevant hashtags and mentions. This is where the learning happens – listen to the conversation and stay ahead of the game. By implementing social listening, you can gain valuable insights and stay in the know about your industry and company.
Build An Engaged Community
By weaving social media strategy into your already developed, overarching B2B marketing plan, you’ll build an engaged digital community. Use your newfound virtual voice, paired with an effective hashtag strategy, to increase brand discussion, diversify event promotion, interact with your customers and gain a better understanding of your audience.
Imagine social media as a cocktail party for your business. You’ve invited potential and current customers to mingle, discuss, and ask questions about your brand. How awkward would it be if a client tapped you on the shoulder, started chatting, and you stood there saying absolutely nothing? [Crickets]. You wouldn’t do that in person, so you shouldn’t do it online either. Humans are social creatures. We crave interaction, and these platforms create an environment that facilitates discussion and sparks conversations both within and outside your industry.
Spark engagement with your community by promoting and hosting events within the platform. Give your followers a VIP experience with live video demonstrations, behind-the-scenes content, webinar access, Q&A sessions, and guest panels. Reward your followers with discount codes or sneak-peek content that isn’t available to the general public. Not only will you see a rise in engagement, but this also stokes brand loyalty into a blazing fire or ROI. Ask easy-to-answer questions with your content that elicits engagement. Invite your followers to the conversation, and make sure to respond to likes, shares, and comments. Keep in mind that engagement is a two-way street. Each action taken on your post provides you with a new chance to interact with customers or potential leads. Further brand loyalty by resharing what others are saying about your products or services. Not only is this good practice for building strong connections on social media, but it is also something that the algorithm (also called the algo) loves. The more comments, shares, re-shares, and likes, the better. The comments and likes you make on replies to your posts matter to the algorithm.
Follow your ideal client and spend some time “socially listening” to your audience based on their engagement. You’ll find that you have a better understanding of what they respond to, what they want more of, and what they need from your business. It’s a personal connection to your consumers that extends far beyond the point of sale.
Build an Employee Advocacy Plan
Employee advocacy is one of those phrases that loses some meaning every time it’s misused—and that’s a lot. The majority of employee advocacy programs start and end with “like and share whatever the company posts,” which is actually closer to “coerced obsequience.” Real employee advocacy goes beyond that. The truth is people want to hear from their connections, their friends and a trusted source. Effective employee activation results in increased brand awareness and amplification of voice.
When developing your employee advocacy program, you want to encourage your employees to take ownership and get creative. You’ll also want to empower them to have the technologies and tools on lock so that they can have agency. This may involve additional training, which is nothing but a good thing for your brand. A great program requires tapping into these three sections: generating brand exposure, recommending products and services, and embodying the company’s best interests.
More on employee advocacy on our blog linked here.
Employee Activation
While we touched on employee advocacy, get ready to level up with employee activation. What is employee activation?
Employee activation is a program that encourages employees of a business to organically and authentically create and share content about the topics that interest them. According to Gallup, companies with engaged employees outperform those without by up to 202%. When your employees are activated, there is inspired advocacy. They are in alignment with the brand’s shared vision. It’s not about incentivizing your employees to share your press releases or to comment on posts shared on social media; it’s about empowering them to create and share their own expertise and passion.
B2B Social influencers exist and they are a powerful part of a successful company’s go to market and revenue generation strategy. But people don’t intuitively know how to do this. It requires a mindset shift and then real upskilling along with mentoring and encouragement.
On board? How do you activate employees? There are lots of different ways. We recommend investing in your employees through skill-based training or private coaching. Developing an internal mentorship program is another brilliant way. As is holding regular one-on-ones to allow employees the opportunity to directly share what they need to do a better job. Say goodbye to those awkward employee surveys! Lastly, make sure to feature your employee’s stories, accomplishments, and projects directly on your brand’s channels. If you want real employee activation, there is definitely effort involved with the management and leaders of the organization. Trust us. It pays back in dividends.
A. Analytics & Iterations
Feelings. We all have them. Are they always aligned with reality? Negatory. Metrics are the crystal ball of your B2B marketing strategy. Analytics don’t lie. With social media analytics, you have the power to see into the future and determine the success of your marketing campaigns. It’s like playing the stock market, but instead of stocks, you’re tracking the growth of your audience and the impact of your content.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Before you start interpreting the numbers, you need to gather the data. Social media management tools like Hubspot and Hootsuite make it easier for you to do just that. They offer robust analytics features to help you track engagement rates, audience growth, awareness, and conversion rates.
- • Engagement Rates: the number of people that interact with your content through likes, shares, comments, or in other ways
- • Audience Growth: the new subscribers or leads generated from a piece of content
- • Awareness: Impressions (how many times a post shows up in someone’s timeline) and Reach (the potential unique viewers a post could have)
- • Conversion Rates: the percent of visitors that engage with a CTA
Still not convinced? You can always snag the analytics directly from the social media platform you’re using. Just make sure you have a “business” account, and you’ll have access to the full suite of analytics and tools. We’re happy to show you how HubSpot dashboards can work for you on this number!
Once you’ve got your hands on the data, it’s time to get curious. Track the trends, find out what works and what doesn’t, and make data-driven decisions for your marketing strategy. Whether you tweak the content or change direction altogether, the metrics will guide you in the right direction.
B. Metrics that Matter
The amazing thing about advertising on social media is that you can measure and track nearly every single detail. While there are thousands of possible things to track, and if you want to go ham on figuring out the ins and outs of social media metrics be our guest. We’d rather eat a ham sandwich and focus on the metrics that matter.
Metrics are measurements of performance that allow you to track key data on how an advertisement or an account itself is performing on a particular social media platform. While social media KPIs (key performance indicators) and social media metrics are often used interchangeably, they’re actually two distinct things.
Think of social media metrics as the umbrella that social media KPIs fall under. KPIs are focused and are more granular than metrics. They’re focused on results and are usually easier to understand than metrics. Metrics need interpretation and are broader in nature. They’re not limited by one type of result. If your scalp is starting to flake with all that head-scratching, then read more about KPIs and metrics here.
- • When to post for the most engagement
- • Your brand’s share of voice
- • How to adjust and optimize your marketing campaign
- • What types of ads or content are the most successful
First, let’s talk about the four categories of key metrics.
Awareness:
These metrics illuminate your current and potential audience.
Engagement:
These metrics show how audiences are interacting with your content.
Conversion:
These metrics demonstrate the effectiveness of your social engagement.
Consumer:
These metrics reflect how active customers think and feel about your brand.
C. The Buzz on Buzzwords
Listen up! The hive mind is speaking! We’re about to cover the buzzwords when it comes to social media metrics, and we’ll also be kind enough to fork over their definitions. We’re still thinking about that ham sandwich.
Volume: The number of people talking about your brand, content and/or industry on social media
Reach: The number of people who see your content on social media
Engagement: The number of people interacting with your content on social media
Influence: This is more impact-based than volume-based. Who is talking about your content, brand and/or industry, and how much influence do they have?
Share of Voice: This is a benchmark against your competitors. How many people are talking about your brand versus your competitors?
D. Social Media Metrics: Platform Breakdown
LinkedIn Metrics
Use the LinkedIn Analytics tab to access all your key metrics. LinkedIn Insights allows you to analyze the demographics of your audience, engagement level, page views, clicks and many other things. This allows you to cater your content to your audience better and analyze areas in which you need to improve. LinkedIn analytics is broken down into three sections: updates, followers, and visitors. Each section reports on a different aspect of your page. The update section will give you data on what your page is posting (posts, articles, polls, etc). You’ll be able to see impressions, video views, clicks, CTR, likes, comments, shares, follows, and your engagement rate. Your follower section will give you key metrics on, well, your followers— your total followers, organic followers, sponsored followers (acquired by paid ads), and information on your follower demographics and your follower trends. The follower trends are illustrated by an oh-so-easy-to-digest line chart. Lastly, the visitor section gives you key metrics on page views, unique visitors, visitor metrics, and visitor demographics. It’s important to note that visitor analytics give you data on who has visited your page but not any metrics on the content performance itself.
Facebook Metrics
Facebook Insights are constantly evolving. Insights can be found in the “Business Manager” section of your Facebook page. In Business Manager, the Creator Studio provides you with key performance metrics for your pages. You’re able to see demographics like age, gender, education, relationship status, household size, lifestyle, and job role. Location and language are obvious ones, right? What’s amazing is you’ll also be able to see your audience’s top page likes in different categories like sports or travel. You’ll also be able to dig into their past purchase behavior. Are they heavy buyers of men’s apparel, or do they buy more in-store or online?
Facebook also has this snazzy little thing called “Pages to Watch.” This is the way you can use Facebook to spy on your competition. More specifically, Pages to Watch is a feature that allows you to create a list of Facebook pages similar to yours and compare their performances to your page’s performance. You can find these key stat insights in the “Overview” tab of your Page Insights. Facebook also puts its algorithm to work for your benefit and includes suggested pages to watch if you’re fresh out of ideas.
X (Twitter) Metrics
Twitter analytics tracks your top tweet, top mention, top media Tweet, and even top follower. In the Twitter Dashboard, the Top Tweet by impressions over 28 days is identified on the home page. Additionally, it provides key performance metrics such as engagement rate, likes, retweets, replies, and clicks. There’s even a personalized Business Insights page that you can access from the Twitter for Business website. Top mentions are another key metric to pay attention to—these are the Tweets that mentioned you (and tagged your brand account) that received the most engagements. Since this Tweet increased your brand’s visibility, it’s important to note these Tweets!
Instagram Metrics
Instagram business pages have access to Instagram Insights. These can be found directly on your Instagram business page’s profile. Insights include reach, engagement, and changes in your follower count. There are actually nine key metrics you should keep your eyes on: follower growth rate, Instagram engagement per follower, Instagram story engagement, engagement rate by followers, engagement rate by reach, website traffic, link clicks per post, comments per post, and reach.
E. Third-party Apps for Social Media Analytics
All-in-one platforms such as Sprout Social, Buffer, HubSpot, and Hootsuite will report your social media performance in a one-stop shop. It can be exhausting toggling between different social media platforms, tracking all your metrics, and staring for hours at the data. Social media best practices include getting a kick-butt content management system. We are avid HubSpot users here at LBM. You will find key metrics such as engagement, clicks, and changes in follower and like counts. While third-party apps won’t have the same depth of specificity that each individual social media platform business, ads, or insight manager will have, they are still incredibly adept at tracking your general social media growth. If you have the time, energy, and team in place to dig even deeper, then high-fives all around! If you want one content management system to take your headache away, then shop around and see if Sprout Social, Buffer, HubSpot, or Hootsuite might be the right fit for you.
Google Analytics: You are able to track website traffic from your social media platforms through Google Analytics. This helps determine how well your social media presence is driving traffic to your website. If you’re not using Google Analytics yet consider this your YOU ARE LATE TO THE PARTY announcement.
F. Social Media Metrics Tips
- 1.
Start with Goals
Goals and strategy are vital to social media growth and success. Your social media marketing strategy needs to have clear goals and plans to reach those goals— and, of course, everything must be measurable. If you haven’t heard of SMART goals, or if you need a little extra brush-up. We’re happy to oblige.
- 2.
Regular Reporting
While it can feel like a chore to dig into your social media analytics, this isn’t something you want to put off until Q4 for a quick one-hour glance over. Set a time on your calendar and review your reports each month. Maybe it’s the 15th of each month or the last Friday of the month. Set a date and time-block a chunk of time to review the numbers.
Without regular reporting, you’re just throwing darts blindly at a world map and hoping that something lands near your ideal customer. You’re more likely to take out a lampshade.
The success of any social media marketing campaign depends on social media analytics, collecting the data, and paying attention to the key metrics. Why? Social media metrics help you understand user behavior, refine or change your strategy, discover which social media platform works for your business and which one(s) doesn’t, and find out the best days/times to post and analyze your competitors. And at the end of the day, this will keep you from wasting time and money.
We also want to give you another holy grail since we’re already bestowing so many gifts: Trello. If you and your team want to stay organized, on top of the ball, and extraordinary at regular reporting and sharing KPIs, key metrics, and data, may we humbly suggest the almighty Trello?
Again, you’re welcome.
- 3.
Adjust and Repeat
The secret sauce of metrics that matter is actually doing something with the metrics. While charts, graphs, and numbers aren’t everybody’s favorite thing in the world, they sure are how you drive success. After you’ve determined which metrics matter and you’ve tracked your post performance, reviewed website traffic, and studied your audience’s behavior, then guess what… it’s time to adjust and repeat. Let’s be clear. It’s not a rinse and repeat. We’re not peddling L’Oreal products. We want your social media accounts to succeed. We want you to be the King of Twitter or the Queen of Instagram. We’re cheering you on here! To really win at social media, you’re going to have to look at the metrics and make adjustments to define, refine, and reach your goals.
We’ve given you the tools and imparted upon you the wisdom. Almost everything we know is packed into this guide. Now, there’s only one thing left to do. Now, you’ve actually got to do it!
If you need a little help from your friends at Little Bird Marketing, we’re just a DM, email, or carrier pigeon away. If you want Priscilla to see the message right away, simply affix a note to a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and send it on over. For real, though, reach out to us!
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