Social media is big business. According to a recent study by the Content Marketing Institute, 93 percent of businesses who have a content marketing strategy use social media as a means of delivering content. That’s a lot of businesses to connect with. Yet the small and medium business sector in Australia is not capitalising on this huge market, as only around half – 48 percent of small businesses and 54 percent of medium businesses – currently have a social media presence.
The world of social media can seem overwhelming, but these days it’s essential if you want your B2B marketing to deliver the best results. Here we take a look at the top three social media channels you should be using to grow your small to mid-sized business.
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The best social media channels for B2B marketing
1. LinkedIn
- LinkedIn has over 400 million users in 200 different countries, the vast majority of whom are business professionals, as LinkedIn is a dedicated business platform. Users include most Fortune 500 CEOs and upper level management.
- LinkedIn is dedicated to connecting people in business so it offers an unrivalled opportunity for gaining information about, and easy introductions to, target prospects. It is the most popular social network amongst B2B marketers.
- LinkedIn allows you to search people by industry, job title, location and other demographics, and target your advertising accordingly to make sure your message is reaching the most receptive audience.
2. Twitter
- Twitter has over 500 million users worldwide and is the strongest platform for news, current affairs and events coverage. It offers an easy way of reaching out to business professionals and media contacts you don’t already know. Plenty of business content is posted on Twitter, usually as quick soundbites with a link to your more detailed information such as your website and blog.
- Tweeting regularly and using hashtags allows you to build audience engagement; you can also search for mentions of your company and reach out to those who have mentioned it.
- Twitter also allows you to make lists of groups of people such as target prospects. This allows you to concentrate just on content from those users, so you can open conversations with them easily.
3. Google+
- Content placed on Google+ is more likely to rank higher on Google as it is fed into the personal search results of all your Google+ circles. This works even better if you can link it to your YouTube channel.
- Having a business page on Google+ allows people to follow and engage with your business on a personal level, offering great opportunities to build relationships.
- Google+ Hangouts is a dedicated space for connecting with other business professionals via webcam, like an instant video conference bringing together practitioners within your field. Hangouts can be uploaded directly to YouTube, increasing your profile and search engine rankings.
Why You Need a Professional Digital Marketing Strategy
For a B2B strategy to be successful on social media, the most important thing is to know your audience and what types of content they are likely to be interested in. Combine this knowledge with an understanding of the purposes and tones of a wide variety of social networks in order to choose the most appropriate channels for your marketing efforts. Choosing too many can often be counter-productive as you can’t commit sufficient time to each, so your updates and responses won’t be regular enough to maintain interest. This is why it’s important that your content and digital marketing strategies should be professionally planned and implemented by experts in the field who have a thorough understanding of social media and its place in B2B marketing, to yield the best results.
How to Get Started.
Contact the digital marketing experts at GM Pereira (www.gmpereira.com). With extensive experience of all aspects of digital and content marketing, including social media strategies, they can put together a plan to yield results and grow your business.