One challenge of social media marketing is creating content that connects with your audience, aligns with your brand, and effectively brings in the right traffic and engagement from your social platforms. B2B companies have the added hurdle of reaching very specialized audiences—but I assure you, your audience and potential sales are out there! Below, I’ve listed 6 B2C-inspired B2B social media content ideas to try:
1. White Papers/Ebooks:
Create downloadable white papers and e-books based on educating your consumer about your industry or benefits your product/service. You can later pull facts and figures, quotes etc. to turn into visual images and promote your download on social media.
2. Infographics:
Infographics are an excellent tool for your B2B social media marketing campaign. They can be designed in many creative ways to support and promote any white paper, webinar, or video. Learn more about infographics and how to make them in this post: How to Use Infographics for Social Media Marketing
3. Webinars/Interview Videos:
This is one option that will require a little coordinating but reaps big rewards. Gather a panel of your industry experts, or simply have a resident company expert record a webinar based on your industry, product or service. As value added content webinars and interview videos can be set behind download gates to build your e-mail list. Additionally – visual content can be created by chopping longer videos into smaller snippets. Screen shots and quotes from videos can be used to create content and drive traffic to webinar or video.
4. Case Studies
Sometimes you need to toot your own horn! Case studies are a great way to showcase your work and results or present results you’ve set out to find. Case studies can be presented as Slideshare presentations, landing pages, infographics, etc.
5. Customer Appreciation Contest/Campaigns
Show your customers you love them! In my days at a B2B financial publication company, creating customer appreciation contests and campaigns were common. In one such campaign we used Valentine’s Day to offer a discount to entice current publication subscribers to renew and new customers with a discount. Small prizes (like special publication editions, other small branded items) were randomly given to users who used a dedcated campaign hashtag and retweeted specific tweets. We also used Starbucks Tweet a Coffee to random participants. The 2 week campaign generated:
- 326,306 total impressions with the campaign hashtag
- 425 total Bit.ly Link Clicks
- 1,938 landing page visits
- 109 lead generation customers
- The campaign also instantly generated a renewal order of an existing subscriber ($1,005). The month end sales reports generated an additional four orders with the exclusive savings code setup for the campaign generating an additional $2,900 back to the campaign.
6. Have Fun!
Lastly have a little fun! Remember that social media was meant to connect with others, show a little of your brand’s personality by showing behind the scenes at events, the office etc.
My 7+ years of experience across both B2C and B2B companies has shown me that social media marketing in the business to business world is just as fun and engaging as consumer facing brands. In fact given the niched nature of these social media audiences – campaigns and posts can at times convert at better rates than a B2C company may see.
As always direct any questions about this tip to the comments below.