4 Fail-Proof B2B Social Media Strategies

Nowadays, most businesses are aware that social media needs to be a piece of their overall digital marketing efforts to stay relevant and to attract talent. However, there is still plenty of hesitation around committing dollars to social media tactics.

Because of this hesitation, I’m sharing my favorite B2B social media strategies that can support your company’s business goals. 

First, let’s talk about the differences between strategies and tactics. Strategies are why we do something and the goals toward success, while tactics are what we do to serve those strategies. They’re the milestones towards a successful strategy. Strategies without tactics are just a plan without action and tactics without a strategy is what we like to call, whack-a-mole marketing: sometimes you hit the nail on the head, but most of the time you miss—and overall, it’s not a great way to ‘win.’ 

With that, let’s dive into the four B2B social media strategies that will make a great impact on your business. 

1. Goal-Based Social Media Campaigns

First and foremost, whatever your goal on social media is, don’t let it be ‘to increase followers to our channels.’ This is not a goal relevant to your business. It’s a strategy for the platforms themselves, trying to sell to you—their customer. 

When you create a goal-based social campaign, you should look at the goals of your company and then create social media tactics that support those goals.

For example, is your company looking to:

• Grow its customer base? 
• Penetrate its current customers at a deeper level?
• Create fans and evangelists to promote its products and services? 

Whether your marketing team has been tasked with one or all three of these goals, you can create social media tactics that support those goals. From there, you need to ensure you have a path to tie back your success and prove your contribution or assess your failure so you can adapt and improve.

Pro tip: Create all of your social posts in a marketing tool like HubSpot so you can evaluate granular metrics such as engagement and clicks, but also so you can tie back your tactics directly to contacts—whether those are new contacts/prospects or reengaged customers. This is where you can go to bat on ROI and validate your budget. 

2. Own Your Space With Original Content

Whatever you do on social media, make sure it starts with creating your own content and images. Social media is a crowded space, and people don’t want to spend time on a sterile page. 

Your content should have a personality and showcase your company: team members, customers, partners in the imagery and text. This is your opportunity to showcase the brainpower and personalities of the company, and social media is a great way to do that. Whether you’re B2B or B2C, we’re all H2H (human-to-human), and we want to know the humans we’re doing business with. 

Pro tip: Original content only matters if it speaks to your customers’ pain points or educational needs. Keep this in mind when you craft your content (tie back to the goals in #1) and you’re bound to be successful! Speak their language! 

3. Up the Ante With Dynamic Media

Sharing original content should be table stakes. If you’re going to go through the trouble of putting social plans together, it’s the least you can do to make it successful. It’s mandatory. The trend and truth of the matter is that the written word and non-stock imagery don’t cut it anymore. You have an opportunity to incorporate:

• Facebook Live
• Recorded videos
• Animated videos
• Animated gifs
• Slideshows
• Q&As

4. Test, Challenge & Repeat

Once you have your goals and your data, it’s crucial to optimize for success. There’s no faster way to fail than a stale social media account. So, you have to be brave and trust your team to test, challenge and occasionally fail. By constantly testing your content, you’ll reveal your own trends that your followers really care about and hit the needle on the head. 

You’ll also discover what doesn’t work for your brand, which is a short-term pain, but really a long-term blessing because it allows you to remove it from your arsenal in the future, making you work smarter. 

Take these strategies and roll them up into your next campaign plan, and you’ll see results that help you justify your time and dollar investments.