Sometimes, knowing what to do means knowing what not to do. For many startups, social media can be daunting, time consuming and their efforts can easily become lost in all the online “noise”. Aside from promoting your products or services, your various social media efforts should act as extensions to answer client questions/reviews, educate your potential prospects and build connections. If used correctly, social media should help you – not hurt you. Not all tips and tricks will apply to your B2B social accounts, but these are business to business social media mistakes we see all the time that you should try to avoid.
Over Extending Your Brand
One of the main challenges for your social media strategy is competing with the oversaturation of content. A common B2B social media mistake is assuming that if you post more often than your competitors, you will grab people’s attention. Posting too much can cause viewers to tune out. Flooding their timelines with soliciting or repetitive posts, all throughout the day, could actually annoy your followers. Think, quality over quantity.
Not Using Platforms Properly
In terms of B2B social media engagement, this all boils down to one question: what platform is your client using the most? Typically, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter will be your main outlets for exposure, but not all three may be relevant to your industry. Each are not the same and should be treated differently.
Having your social media schedule on auto-pilot could lead to this B2B social media mistake. If you are crafting the exact same post and simply sharing it on all active channels, you could be sending the wrong messages. As mentioned above, since not all platforms are the same, your tone, content and posts should not all be identical…all of the time. Try tweaking each post to suit the strength of each outlet. This is an opportunity to get creative and refine your posts so that what you’re sharing is eye-catching and relevant, not repetitive.
Check out our post on How “The Medium is the Message” with Social Media where we look into the 4 biggest social media platforms and how to use each appropriately.
With that being said, for most B2B organizations, LinkedIn is “a must”. This is because you can build relevant relationships and make connections with other business professionals in your industry (or target industry). LinkedIn is where you will grab the attention of other business owners who would potentially be an interested prospect for your products or services.
Ignoring Social Media for SEO
Your search engine optimization is not only based on your website: your business to business social media strategy should be integrated into your SEO as well! Put simply, posting on social media will lead to shares, shares will lead to boosting content and even get you some quality back links. This type of activity on social media is correlated to improving the search of landing pages, blog posts and ultimately your traffic!
Also, your social media profiles show up in search too. Not having your Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter profiles up to date is not great for SEO either. That’s because not only will your page show up in search, your social media accounts will as well. Digital Marketing Guru, Neil Patel provides a great example:
Source: Neilpatel.com
Don’t Hide Behind Your Brand & Be Social!
The thing is, social media is used to create dialogue. If you are not actually speaking to your audience, no one will listen. Sometimes one of the biggest B2B social media mistakes is hiding behind the company or brand to communicate. People want to know who is behind the products or services so that they can build trust. Use your social media accounts to actually talk to people. Seems obvious however we all know that social media feeds can tend to seem like a commercial that will never end. Don’t be afraid to get creative and through the use of a unique voice, imagery and helpful information, you will reach the right people.
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