Every social network has a personality. Twitter is fast paced, short, sweet and straight to the point, LinkedIn is the professional network and the hot favourite for B2B marketers, Facebook is the personable network, perfect for a chatty tone of voice and visual posts, commonly connected to the B2C industry.
B2B marketers get so hung up on what to say, how to act and how to portray their business on social media, that they forget something very important. The person you are marketing to is also a person, B2B is still P2P.
If you haven't seen any results from your Facebook account so far, and are starting to think that it's just a big waste of time, we can help.
We've put together five top tips to help you revamp your Facebook presence and start generating engagement and leads.
No matter what industry you're in, keeping on top of the latest industry news is key to a successful social media marketing strategy.
Becoming an expert in your industry allows you to be a leader and a point of resource. First, write about this news on your blog and include industry relevant tips and tricks in any premium content you're creating. Then keep an eye on industry blogs and news websites, you can then start to build a Facebook page full of your own content and useful external content, and turn your company page into the go-to place for insights and information within your industry.
Out of the top social media platforms, Facebook is certainly the most social, and encourages the most interaction from it's users.
This is a fantastic opportunity for B2B brands on Facebook, not only to create engagement between potential leads and your brand, but to create conversation across your industry.
Never before has there been a time where your customers are easily able to interact and share information about your products. Now Facebook allows you to do this with ease, keeping your buyer persona at the heart of all of your marketing efforts.
Ask industry relevant questions, ask for opinions on a certain story within your industry or encourage fellow professionals to share their own tips and tricks when you share your own how-to blog. Creating conversation on your page is a key way to find out more about not only what your target audience want, but the type of people they are.
The click-through rate of Facebook posts containing photos is 128% higher than a post that contains a video or a link and photos on Facebook generate 53% more likes than the average post!
It can be difficult to gauge the type of reactions our audience will give to posts on Facebook, but there's one thing that the above statistic proves, and that's to make your posts image based instead of just tweeting links or plain status updates. This will increase your engagement and chances of click through ten fold.
So if one things for sure, to conquer the world of Facebook, one must be determined to share industry relevant pictures!
Keep your tone of voice on Facebook as light as possible, after all the majority of people who are on there are using the network recreationally to engage and have fun with friends.
We understand, the B2B industry can play host to some of the more 'dull' products out there, and you may think it can be impossible to make it light hearted and interesting.
But you can! Wherever you can, inject humour and levity into your posts. HubSpot got this completely right when they created their 'Bad Marketing Kittens'...combining industry relevant situations with possible the most popular thing on the internet? GENIUS!
Make sure your posts stay industry relevant and that they are completely suitable for work.
Facebook is where you can really give your business a personality and a face, introduce a #throwbackthursday every week, and embarrass your colleagues with old photos you've dug out from various events. Post some behind-the-scenes photographs, allow your followers to have a real insight into your brand's persona.
This may seem completely against everything we stand for, paying for advertising? Well 92% of social marketeers are now using the Facebook advertising tool in some way or another.
Facebook advertising is one of the most targeted and un-invasive forms of advertising you can do for your brand. Not only can you segment your audience by gender and age, you can also delve into their interests, education and even their relationship status. This means that the people who will see your advertisements are already interested in what you've got to say.
Marketers who use this method statistically encounter a 35% lower cost per conversion, and 70% of marketers witnessed a 3x greater return on ad spend than any other advertising platform.
Facebook advertising is definitely worth a go.