Businesses are continuously realizing the power of social media platforms in marketing their business.
A 2017 study has shown that 83% of marketers are using social media for content marketing. Considering that social media is just less than two decades old, that’s a huge number that indicates how effective it can be.
Gone are the days when organizations are on the fence about whether or not using social media to market their business is beneficial for their growth. Today, businesses are more concerned with which social media to focus on for the best results and what benefits it brings.
In this guide, I focused on four of the biggest social media platforms for B2B advertising today to see what it does and how it helps businesses. Hopefully, you’ll be able to compare each social media platform and see its relevance for your business.
Due to its sheer size (it currently has about 2.4 billion monthly active users as of June 2019), Facebook simply cannot be ignored.
However, it’s worth noting that it’s best to look at your target audience. If your business is a global brand, then Facebook is an obvious choice. Otherwise, check whether there is a high percentage of the population using Facebook in your region.
Its presence is almost nonexistent in China and Russia, while there are varying reports of user base decline in certain age groups in Western countries.
Cost-effective
Marketing B2B on Facebook could be very cost-effective for businesses, especially when a Facebook Ads company manages it masterfully.
Aside from LinkedIn, Facebook is a favorite among startups due to its effectiveness in interacting with potential customers. With just a free Facebook page, you can start providing updates to your customers, as well as a customer care platform within Messenger.
Highly interactive
With the ability to post a wide range of content types (from photos, videos, GIFs, notes, and articles) and the functionality to create groups and communities, Facebook has proven to be a very interactive tool for businesses.
You can even sustain a full-functioning customer support chat through Facebook alone. This can enable you to resolve customer complaints almost in real-time, which is very crucial in reputation building and strengthening business relationships.
Hyper-targeted
Another strong selling point of Facebook as a B2B marketing platform is its robust advertising ecosystem. Of all the social media platforms available on the internet today, Facebook is definitely the strongest and most sophisticated.
Throughout the years, Facebook has been capitalizing on its users’ data in order to allow advertisers to deliver personalized advertisements based on the audience’s interests, location, as well as their current life moment, among other things.
With this, every company can filter their audience and only deliver advertisements to people who are most likely to respond.
LinkedIn has always been positioned as a social media platform for businesses and professionals. Currently, it has more than 600 million members with more than half of those considered active monthly users.
It supports business connections
While LinkedIn has continuously improved since its launching in late 2002, its core functionality has always remained the same – that is, to connect professionals with other professionals within their respective industries.
Besides being a place to build relationships with other professionals, LinkedIn also allows companies to post job openings, as well as create groups for like-minded individuals. This makes LinkedIn a perfect marketplace for businesses that operate in a B2B framework.
Drives website traffic
The people using LinkedIn are, to say the least, literate enough to read on quality content. People on LinkedIn are not simply looking for jobs or are looking to make new connections. They’re also there to stay updated and read up on industry news and trends.
As long as you provide quality content related to your niche, people are going to visit your website. And because there are about 90 million senior-level and 63 million decision-makers on the platform, you’ll most likely come across a person that will be interested in what you have to offer.
Generates leads
LinkedIn could by far be the best social media platform to gather leads from. Aside from usual techniques that can be applied to other social media platforms, such as promoting whitepapers that customers can download in exchange for their contact information, LinkedIn also offers marketing tools and sales platforms to help identify and gather potential leads.
LinkedIn has a rather powerful Sales Tool for Prospecting and Insights that allows companies to establish their group of sales professionals within the platform, making it easier to manage a team.
Acquired by Facebook in 2012, Instagram has maintained its core functionality as a “visual” social media platform where users can easily share photos that they can also edit within the app.
However, even before they were acquired by Facebook, Instagram has already been an undeniably effective platform for individuals and businesses alike. Because posts can be segregated by hashtags, marketers and businesses can easily target people who are uploading images that are related to a certain niche.
This rich ecosystem even led to the rise in prominence of “influencers” or people who are paid by businesses to amplify and promote their brand to the influencer’s audience.
Conveys creativity and innovativeness
Because Instagram is centered on photos and videos, it showcases your company’s creativity and innovativeness.
As long as the photos you share on the platform are able to capture the intended message and is paired with solid photo captions, Instagram could even become your businesses’ stand-alone social media platform to reach other businesses and decision-makers.
Showcases your corporate culture
Instagram is also a great platform to tell stories. Literally named Instagram Stories, this relatively new functionality allows users to share real-time snapshots and snippets of their lives. Because Stories usually expire within 24 hours, this ultimately changed social media by creating a sense of urgency to connect online.
Show your corporate culture by meticulously sharing interesting snippets of employees on-the-job. You can even host exclusive events for your intended audiences, which you can later share online.
Twitter sets itself apart from the rest of other social media sites for being a short-format and real-time blogging social media site. Companies and businesses around the world have continuously used Twitter to announce updates and interact with customers, among other things.
Reach multiple global markets
One of the key advantages of Twitter is its ability to show what topics are being talked about worldwide and in any area of the world at any given time. This makes it easy for businesses to tap markets wherever it is in the world.
Connect in real-time
Due to its short-format and (semi) unfiltered news feed, users love Twitter because it displays content in their feed as they happen. This function should be leveraged by businesses to address customer concerns in real-time, minimizing reputational risk and improving customer experience.
Conclusion
Finding the right and effective social media platform to establish B2B relations can be tricky. However, as long as you know the type of audience you’re looking for and that you’re confident with your product, you’ll eventually succeed and make it big in social media and in the real world.