Whether your company’s target customers are other businesses or general consumers, social media is a great way your business can grow its online community and generate new customers. In this blog post, we’ll go over what you can do to start growing your business’s social media presence organically and also what differences you should take into account whether your business is B2C or B2B.
Planning Your Social Media Success
Just like any marketing campaign or strategy, you first need a plan. It’s important to set reasonable goals for what you want your social media presence to achieve. Reasonable being the key word there, you can’t expect your business’s social media account to go viral a week after its creation. A great way to start is by doing research online or with competitors or similar companies in your industry. Find out what platforms they are using, what kinds of content they are posting, and what days/times they are posting. You don’t want to copy your competitors if you’re trying to stand out, but doing your research will help you generate some ideas for your own social media and how you differentiate.
Sadly, there isn’t one secret recipe for success for all businesses. At the start you will have to experiment posting different types of content at different times and days of the week to see what generates the best results. Creating a post calendar will help you map out your posts and also track their results. Always tracking your goals and the results of your posts will help you gain a better idea of what can be done better.
Basic Strategies
Now that you have a plan, let’s get you started on creating content. Knowing who your audience is and what things they’ll find valuable is the key to effective social media marketing. If you are posting content that you find boring or generic then odds are that your followers will be even more inclined to think so. Your content should be mainly focused on accomplishing two things:
Value:
Is your content useful or provide some kind of benefit to your audience? People who find your page need a reason to follow you. Whether it’s to learn, to get deals, or even for entertainment. No value usually leads to no follows.
Appearance:
Does it look good? Social media is full of visual content. If a picture is bad quality or words are misspelled then your content loses credibility.
With your new useful and beautiful content, remember it’s important to be active on social media. Some businesses benefit from posting every day, others just once or twice a week. As long as you’re delivering new and valuable content, more and more people will find a reason to follow your business. Posting is only part of your social media success though. Monitoring your posts and answering messages and comments will help your community know you’re there to help and answer questions.
Growth Strategies
Many people think that the more followers your page has, the more successful it will be. While having many followers is definitely great for awareness of your company, gaining the right kind of followers always leads to better success. Examples of this are people who are in your exact target market and influencers or businesses related to your industry. If your new quality content is able to convince them you’re worth following, then the chances of them becoming your customers or sharing your content are much higher. Below are a couple ways you can increase awareness of your company’s social media.
Share With Family and Friends:
When first starting out, don’t be afraid to invite those you know to follow your page and participate. It’s how many businesses get their start on social media and the word of mouth can help you gain more followers early on.
Share on Your Website:
Website visitors that like your products or services may be looking for ways to connect more with your company or be in the loop with updates. Having links to your social media pages on your website will make them more accessible.
Hashtags:
Using relevant hashtags can help social media users connect more easily with the right brands. By using relevant hashtags you can attract more users from your industry to your content. However, be aware that overuse of hashtags looks bad and also can attract the wrong audience.
Special Offers:
Offering discounts, free trials, giveaways, and other special offers are great ways to get your company’s name out. They offer extra incentive to follow and participate with your page.
Influencers:
Influencer marketing may work better for some industries than others, but it’s a great way to accomplish fast growth. Influencers are trusted by their followers to promote quality products and services. By utilizing the correct influencer for your brand you can directly reach your target audience and present your products or services through a source they know and trust.
Paid Advertising:
Social media ads are an amazing tool to attract your target audience since most social media channels allow for very specific targeting. The better you adjust the campaign to your target audience, the better quality of users you’ll attract. These campaigns can also be focused on many different objectives from lead generation to purely awareness campaigns to get your company’s name out.
B2C vs B2B
While marketing on social media for B2C and B2B companies can be the same in many ways, it is important to be aware of the differences since their target audiences are very different. Below are some key things to consider:
B2C
- Personality- Your social media personality or voice may be casual or fun, with the purpose of entertaining or connecting with the audience.
- Platforms- Most social media platforms are useful while marketing B2C. Some may be more effective depending on the company and industry.
- Visual content- Different types of multimedia content like pictures and especially videos are what gain the most attention for B2C companies on social media.
- Virality- The focus of social media marketing for B2C companies is to get as many users as possible (preferably from your target market) to follow or interact with your page. More awareness leads to more followers, which leads to an increase in sales.
B2B
- Personality- Oftentimes B2B companies will maintain a more professional personality in their social media accounts. However, just because your company has a more professional voice does not mean it’s fine posting boring or useless content.
- Platforms- LinkedIn is the ultimate B2B platform for connecting with other businesses. Since Facebook is such a widely used platform it’s very useful as well. YouTube is another great platform for video content like tutorials, interviews, etc.
- Content- B2B companies often maintain a heavy focus on educating through their social media channels. This doesn’t even have to include educational content about your company, but rather that which will be useful to your target audience. Semrush found that B2B companies that post educational content receive 52% more traffic.
- Lead Generation- The focus of B2B social media marketing is more to attract the right audiences and generate leads by driving traffic to your website or by fulfilling a desired action like contacting your business. In order to do this many B2B companies focus on showing what sets them apart from the competition and offering useful content on their social pages.
Putting it all together
We hope that this information and our advice will be a great starting point to help get your business’s social media off the ground. Like any marketing endeavor, the key to success is to continue to evaluate your success and progress towards goals and make changes accordingly. If you would like to learn more about social media marketing and how it can benefit your business specifically, we’d like to invite you to contact us here and one of our consultants will reach out to you.