Establishing and maintaining a social media presence is just as important for B2B marketing as it is for B2C — company executives and IT buyers have social media accounts just like the rest of it! In fact, 84% of C- and VP-level executives use social media to help in decision-making.

That said, B2B marketing via social media is a much different beast than that for B2C. Rather than using a Facebook post to immediately lead to a purchase decision, B2B marketers instead use social media to drive interest, engagement and generate leads with distributed or promoted content. With that in mind, here are 5 platforms to help improve your own B2B social media marketing, and get those leads coming in.

1. Facebook

Facebook remains the largest social media site in the world. With 2.41 billion monthly active users as of Q2-2019, it’s the best social tool to market to the biggest audience. Even more important for B2B marketers is the statistic that business decision makers (BDMs) spend 74% more time on Facebook than other users:

For business decision makers, the median amount of time spent on Facebook per day is 74% higher than other people on the platform. They use it more weeks a month, more days a week, and more minutes per day than the average person.

In addition, BDMs specifically within the IT industry are 2.1X more likely to be active on Facebook within the last 7 days, and the average IT BDM spends 23% of their time accessing Facebook via their desktop, which may mean they are using it while at work. These stats are important as they show B2B marketers that they have the ability to reach their target audience (BDMs) throughout the day, and should be optimizing their advertising content for cross-device – mobile and desktop – viewing, in order to reach people where they already are.

Make use of Facebook’s variety of posting options, like posting video content snippets and linking it back to downloadable content via your website. Use Facebook Live to livestream Q&A events or trade show and conference tours. You can even use the Stories feature to post fun, unedited content, such as staff events or office tours.

2. YouTube

As discussed in previous posts, YouTube is now the second most popular search engine behind Google and video has become an integral part of the B2B buying experience.

Use YouTube as a platform to host your video library, which can include content like brand storytelling, regularly posted video blogs, product demos, trade show tours, webinar content, etc. We’ve put together a detailed post on some best practices you should follow in setting up your YouTube account in order for your videos to be returned higher in search results and to optimize lead generation.

3. Instagram

Being a highly-visual program, Instagram is a useful tool for posting cultural, product or conference and event related content. User-generated content can enable brands to have a more authentic and personal way to connect with their consumers – whether B2C or B2B.

Instagram is also a great tool to help fast-growing B2B companies build their talent base. By posting company events and news, or details about your employees, it can show your company’s cultural elements, helping to attract new talent, and also showing customers the human side of your business as well.

4. Twitter

Twitter is a great B2B marketing tool, especially when also used as a platform for customer service. There is so much opportunity for interaction, as it’s very easy for your posts and content to be shared across Twitter. However, with increased engagement comes increased responsibility to nurture that engagement. When a current or potential customer interacts with you via Twitter, respond to that engagement as soon as possible – not only is it the best customer service, but there is a massive audience one-click away who will be able to track your response.

Interact with your customers, answer their inquiries, promptly respond to feedback or issues, and you’ll see your audience and brand loyalty grow.

5. LinkedIn

B2B marketers can tend to find the most success through LinkedIn, since it is a tool specifically for business networking and contains all professional content (while the other platforms will contain a mix of both, making it easier for your content to get lost in the noise). In fact, 93% of B2B marketers think that LinkedIn is the best tool to generate leads.

LinkedIn is the best place to really display business insights through thought leadership and product or company updates. All BDMs are on LinkedIn, and are looking for informational, valuable content to make purchase decisions

To stand out from a lot of the text content posted on the platform, be creative and make use of visual content such as infographics, charts, graphs, or videos, which then link back to your site to be downloaded.

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No matter which platform you use for your B2B marketing (or even if you use all five), the key to a successful strategy is setting specific goals and creating killer content to help generate leads. To learn more about running inbound campaigns for your B2B marketing strategy, check out our step by step guide.

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