Any business can use social media marketing to drive engagement and when they further optimize their social media, it can help drive lead pipelines. Social media has quickly gone from a nice-to-have to a must-have in modern day marketing. In the B2C sector, most brands will allocate a decently high priority to a social media marketing plan.

In B2B, the need to be more focused and precise in every marketing approach also means that a B2B social media marketing plan has to be pursued with certain specifics and goals in mind while being executed with a different action plan.

Several leading tech and B2B companies including the likes of Google, IBM, HubSpot, Microsoft boast of a strong social media marketing tactic. Some of the key reasons that have led to these brands and others to have a good social media presence, large following and backing in what is often now considered a crowded marketplace is their ability to drive engagement using informative, original content that serves a variety of purposes. As a result, their social media marketing tactics have easily garnered a world presence over the years.

For B2B marketers to build out successful social media marketing plans that can not only drive engagement but also enable a healthy lead pipeline, optimizing the overall goals, social media content plans and prioritizing key networks and platforms become an essential part of the core strategy.

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A Few Things that can Help

Knowing what you want your Brand to be Known For

Most successful B2B tech brands hone in on a specific feature, product type or segment that they really want to known for and that becomes the pillar or core of their overall strategy. For example, you’ll find technology enablers who have sophisticated ABM platforms craft their entire blog strategy, social media strategy, marketing collaterals and even webcasts around ABM or ABX themes.

The core marketing team for any B2B brand needs to come to a consensus on what they’d like to be known most for and use that to drive their future social media presence and themes as well. Capitalizing on a hashtag for example can be a starting point, especially for those teams who are still in the stage of initiating their social media tactics and future plans.

Aligning Content Creation and Content Marketing Goals

A fair bit of any social media marketing plan needs to have original brand content (in the form of articles, short posts, videos, audios, etc) shared constantly. This is where the core marketing team and social media team need to align the quarters’ or years’ content development themes and plans so that it is easier to sport a unified messaging and end user experience.

A brand’s blog content, their podcasts, webcasts, webinars, all of this can be used to fuel a consistent social media presence and even drive the relevant downloads, engagement or sign-ups as the goal may be directly. A robust social media presence can influence a brand’s online presence and ranking and for smaller to mid-sized companies who might not often focus on building and creating strong social media marketing plans, this is one of the reasons they should.

A B2B Social Media Plan can Drive Customer Initiatives

A well thought out social media marketing plan can not only drive a brand’s overall digital marketing and social selling goals, it can help boost customer facing initiatives. Sales and marketing teams can align here to run shout-outs to new customers for instance or use their social channels to encourage users to ask questions and get instant solutions about their products and services.

Running live Q&As and Twitter chats can be planned to initiate these goals and ensure that actual end users understand that the brand is trying to build an always-on connectivity and brand relationship with them.

B2B Social Media Marketers Don’t need to be on Every Social Platform

In B2B marketing, there are fewer focus areas or impactful channels through which to track, nurture and win customers. B2B marketers don’t necessarily have to plan to have their social media run on multiple social networks, in fact, prioritizing channels based on where specific target audiences actually are can enable more focused social media content and posts that speak to their interest or doubts.

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A B2B Social Media Marketing Plan has to Constantly Evolve

B2C brands use social platforms like Instagram to boost instant purchases. B2B social media marketers can capitalize on few specific social networks to drive gated content downloads, boost online event and webinar registrations, to get users and readers to sign up for product plans or product trials…depending on what goals are aligned to the brand’s social media plan.

Marketers can use real-time data and analytics to assess the productivity of each of their social media campaigns and keep using this data to further evolve and tweak their plans to meet end results.

Not Convinced? Take a Cue from the Best.

In a crowded marketplace, social media can actually give marketers just what they need to creatively drive impact and engagement. Some of the world’s best B2B brands like Adobe, Google, Slack and many such others are known to sport solid social media marketing tactics throughout the year.

Adobe sports regular social media content by featuring product updates, insights and stories from staff and clients. Google’s Think With Google social media initiative acts as a great resource for marketers, Slack uses their social media channels to share customer stories and product know-hows and features.

Twitter’s  @TwitterMktg is another interesting reference into how brands use different tactics to drive B2B marketing goals with informative, interesting, engaging initiatives and posts.

Tools to the Rescue

Newer sophistications in martech and social media marketing platforms now allow users across both B2B and B2C segments the ability to choose robust platforms that can help enable and drive different types of social media goals and social priorities.

Platforms like Google Analytics can allow social media marketers enough insight into the different engagement coming in from various social media channels, tools like Hootsuite can help schedule posts in advance and be a handy tool for brands that want to use social media to post a lot of content or for those with lean teams who need to schedule posts in advance so they can focus on other goals later.

The Salesforce integration with Hootsuite allows users, especially sales teams to understand more about their prospect’s and customer’s social interests and profiles. Platforms like SparkCentral can help manage customer service end goals including live chats.

There is no dearth of social media tactics or social media platforms and tools to choose from today. It all boils down to what a brand wants to achieve through this medium; plans, platforms and tactics can be implemented accordingly to initiative and meet those results.

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