How to Optimize Your Social Media Campaign
B2B marketers are scrambling to deploy social media campaigns in order to establish a foothold in this burgeoning channel. In fact, according to a recent Forrester Research study, 85% of business decision-makers believe having at least one social media channel is important when making tech purchase decisions. Here are 12 ways to make your SM campaign effective and optimize your social media campaign:
Be consistent. B2B marketers must post regularly and connect with their audiences frequently in order to be effective through SM channels.
Use images within your content. Whenever possible embed an image in your SM posts. Use images that are relevant to your business such as product images, users, employees, etc. Visual media is typically shared more often than copy.
Join LinkedIn discussion groups. Professionals join LinkedIn Groups to learn, share, and discuss – this is a great spot to provide insight, answers, or even the occasional joke (in good taste!)
Become a Quora user. Show your interest in being helpful by providing answers to questions about your industry, etc. There will be opportunities to improve an existing answer or posting your own.
Use social bookmarking sites to share information. Reddit, Digg, Delicious, and other social bookmarking sites allow b-to-b marketers to provide resources for prospects. Become a respected knowledge authority by sharing content from a variety of sources.
Respond to any and all comments. Be diligent in providing responses or comments to those who have engaged with your posts. Readers want to feel as if you are connected to them.
Use your prospect’s language. Put some effort in learning common phrases, terms, etc. that are used by your prospects. Avoid using language that, although familiar to you, may be confusing to your audience.
Embed AddThis widgets on your site, blog, etc. Make it easy to share your web pages, blog posts, and other digital assets by inserting a SM widget on every page.
Automate your posting activity. Deploy social media automation platforms, such as HootSuite, that allow marketers to automate delivery and manage multiple SM profiles. Automating SM deployment provides lean organizations with a cost effective way to deploy social messaging using fewer resources.
Share content from multiple networks. It’s easy to connect your social posts across multiple platforms. Cross-network sharing is a good way to catch prospects that may miss your original post.
Share video. Watching product demonstration videos is an effective way to learn about a company’s solutions. If possible, create and share videos that depict how to use your solutions, how to troubleshoot issues, and other helpful information.
Use analytics. Find out which messages are generating responses, which posts are being viewed, and what messaging should be dropped. Adapt social messaging to meet your market’s demands by maintaining an agile marketing strategy through the use of SM analytics.
At the end of the day, a B2B social media campaign is only as effective as its messaging. When deploying SM, break out your processes using a 70/30 rule: 70% of the time should be devoted to message creation and 30% should be devoted to message delivery.
