How to Create a B2B Social Media Strategy

• February 17, 2023

The use of social media channels varies greatly between business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) brands. While B2C brands use social channels primarily to reach consumers and drive sales, B2B brands use social media to build brand awareness, create relationships with other businesses, decision-makers, and industry influencers, with the ultimate hope of landing sales agreements further down the line.

However, it’s not just enough for B2B brands to be present on social media platforms. A well-thought-out strategy is required to ensure social media efforts are reaching the right people with the right content. Laura Weidner, communications manager at HR tech firm Personio, provides her top tips for creating a successful B2B social media strategy.

One of the first steps is to outline your business goals for social media and how they align with your broader business goals. This could involve increasing brand and business visibility, establishing thought leadership or building and strengthening relationships with customers and partners. Having clear aims will help you create relevant and helpful content for your audience.

Another important step is to clearly define your target audience. It’s essential to know who they are, what they want to see, and how they like to engage with content. Additionally, identifying the social media platform that best reaches your target audience is crucial. In most cases, your target audience on social media will match your business’s target audience and buyer persona. Therefore, analyzing current customer data can help to identify who your social media target group might be.

To further pinpoint the social target group, research industry-specific hashtags, keywords, topics, accounts, key influencers, articles, and media directly on social platforms via the search function. Most social networks offer insights into your current followers and their demographics, industry, company size, job function, etc.

Selecting the most suitable social media channels for your brand is also crucial. LinkedIn, for example, is popular with professionals and businesses, making it an excellent choice for B2B brands. You can create a comprehensive company page, share content with your audience, and connect with other businesses and industry experts. Meanwhile, Instagram may not be used as heavily by B2B brands, but it can be used for more behind-the-scenes content, less polished posts, and to engage with a wider audience.

Once you have outlined your business goals, defined your target audience, and selected the most suitable social media channels, it’s time to find your content angle. This involves conducting social listening via tools such as Hootsuite to track keywords, hashtags, and mentions about your brand and its specific products. This will help you identify what your audience talks about, what type of topics they are interested in, what their pain points are, and what content resonates with them.

Incorporating industry trends into your content is also vital. For example, if you’re in the HR space, you could create posts related to HR trends on onboarding, employee benefits, and hiring. When creating content, it’s essential to think more “conversation” and less “broadcast.” Making content more intimate and telling a story can help to engage your audience. You could showcase a product feature through a video of one of your customers using it and show the value it brings them.

In addition to tracking social media analytics to identify which types of posts are getting the most engagement and which might need some adaptation, it’s also important to get employees involved in content creation. By showcasing employee stories, you can give potential candidates an insight into your company culture.

Overall, a well-executed social media strategy can help B2B brands build brand awareness, create relationships with businesses, decision-makers, and industry influencers, and ultimately lead to sales agreements.