A strong social media presence has become imperative for B2B brands to grow in the long term. Having a well-thought-out social media strategy can generate leads, increase enquiries, and create demand for your brand.
How do B2B companies use social media?
- For Brand Awareness – getting in front of the target audience
- To provide interesting and valuable information – to drive engagement
- For Lead Nurturing – generating leads and cultivating them
- For Social Listening – understanding what customers are saying
- As a Customer Service channel – to answer any queries customers may have
- To drive traffic to online touchpoints – with the help of social media
If your B2B brand is posting regularly on social media and still not seeing a tangible impact, the issue might not be your content, but your social media engagement – or the lack of it. Higher engagement on social media allows you to reach a wider audience for a negligible cost.
Social media engagement is a yardstick used to measure how often users interact with your social media content. This engagement (dependent on the platform) includes interactions such as likes, shares, emoji responses, comments, mentions, reposts, clicks on links, video views, retweets and replies.
The most prevalent method of calculating engagement rate is by the post’s reach – a measurement of the percentage of users who see and interact with a post.
The Engagement Rate by Reach (ERR) is calculated as:
(Total Engagement per Post)/(Reach per Post) X 100
The engagement rate is much more than a vanity metric – it is critical for tracking the success of your social media strategy. Higher rates of engagement also increase your reach on social media because these platforms display posts with a lot of engagement to a larger audience.
Now that we have learnt how to measure social media engagement, let’s look at ways of increasing it.
Ways to increase B2B social media engagement:
- Understand the target audience to create pertinent content
Having a well-defined audience helps you craft content specific to their interests and issues. - Have an engaging and entertaining brand voice
The best B2B brands on social media have a well-defined brand voice. Use this voice to develop a rapport and build engagement with your audience. - Share interesting content
Simply advertising your brand is not very helpful. You need to create content that your customers will find useful – tips and tricks, tutorials, and infographics are great examples of engaging content. - Share your experiences
Senior stakeholders in B2B companies can share their life experiences and lessons with the audience. Posts inspired by practical experience tend to perform the best and generate the most engagement. - Try to be helpful to your audience
Help your audience with useful content even before they are your customers. They will appreciate your contribution and will be more likely to purchase your products or enlist your services. - Create engaging videos
Videos work wonders for engagement, even for B2B audiences. A useful tip is to include videos of people at your company because after all, people do business with other people. - Post at the right times
Utilise social media analytics to figure out the most effective times for posting to your target audience. - Share stories from the industry
Storytelling is a compelling communication method. Share your stories and observations on your social media platforms. Be sure to discuss the story of how your brand was created and developed – real stories are engaging and convincing. - Engage with others’ social media
The easiest way to get more engagement on your posts is to interact with others’ social media posts. - Start conversations
The effective way to stand out on social media and build connections is through genuine conversations. - Foster a community
Building and cultivating a community like groups or pages not only helps you increase engagement but also makes your audience feel a connection with your brand. - Write/reply honestly and clearly
Honesty is the basis of interesting content. Structure your insights and replies honestly and clearly to draw people into engaging with your content.
How can Interics IN-DIGITAL help?
Interics IN-DIGITAL unleashes the power of the social arena to help you connect with your target audience, drive engagement, imbibe feedback, inspire trust and build a strong following. We strive to understand and analyse all our clients’ audiences through the use of social media analytics and social media listening.
Many B2B companies do not engage much on social media as they don’t see the value in it. They tend to carry out half-hearted efforts on their social media, without any direction or plan. This could be because of a lack of qualified personnel to manage their social media initiatives, but is mainly due to a lack of understanding of its importance.
Brands that engage in social media communication without a systematic approach can end up doing more harm than good. With a detailed understanding of your brand’s objectives and audience, we develop a plan to achieve definite, tangible goals; and make use of the latest platforms, tools, strategies and methods to ensure your success in the everchanging social media scenario.
Conclusion
B2B brands should use social media in a friendly manner in order to showcase their human sides as that is the ideal way to win the audience’s interest and trust. Social Media is about connecting with people, so it is imperative for even B2B brands to show their human sides. Telling stories about the way you help other businesses, featuring employees and the company culture in your communication, sharing inspiring or funny anecdotes related to your industry and asking questions and encouraging followers to respond are great ways to boost social media engagement.
Keep in mind that your business has been built by humans, so it is important to sound like one on social media.
Why go with Interics IN-DIGITAL?
Interics IN-DIGITAL is the leading social media optimisation agency, SEO agency and lead generation agency. As a full-service digital marketing agency in India, Interics IN-DIGITAL has the expertise, team and resources to deliver potent strategies for brand reputation management and social media management.
Through a bespoke combination of Content Strategy, Social Media Strategy, Digital Advertising, Website Design and more, Interics IN-DIGITAL provides solutions for successful brand reputation management, captivating digital brand experience and tangible brand impact.
Visit www.intericsdigital.com to find out more about our Social Media Management services!
