B2B Social Media Marketing Best Practices

B2B social media marketing best practices can work for any kind of business — if you know where to start.

Regardless of the industry, a social media presence is essential for every kind of business today. In this digitally-driven age, there are nearly 5 billion people on social media worldwide. From connection to commerce, from education to entertainment, people of all ages flock to social media sites en masse for many varying reasons, making it a fantastic place to establish a presence for your business if you’re trying to get noticed. That said, B2B social media best practices include being cautious with how (and how much) you try to market yourself online. The goal of B2B social presence is to establish a genuine relationship with existing and potential customers and partners. By providing education, connection, and the option for services, you’ll get the most out of your B2B social media marketing strategy.

What Is B2B Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing for B2B businesses (or the B2B side of your business) is the practice of utilizing social media sites/apps to connect with audiences in a modern, authentic way to gain brand recognition, build brand loyalty, educate your community on your products/services, and, ideally, gain new business and bolster existing business relationships. A big part of B2B social media is lead generation, which comes from the growth and nurturing of your online community.

How Do Social Media Marketing Best Practices Differ from B2C?

There are some similarities between B2B and B2C social media marketing strategies, but knowing how they differ and implementing the correct practices for your business is key when setting out to establish your social presence. One similarity? Most of the common or popular social media sites can be used for both B2B and B2C strategies, as each offers its own unique capabilities and audiences. It’s all about what kind of content you put out on each platform, though; being mindful of why audiences are on each site and what they’re looking for when they visit can help you launch your strategy in a way that will correctly target your specific audience. 

Of course, there are certain kinds of businesses that are both B2B and B2C that need to straddle those differences and make the varying platforms work for both sides of the business. Take a clothing brand, for instance; they not only aim to target individual consumers, they also aim to target department stores where they want to make wholesale orders and carry their products. So while they might post artistic, attractive ad campaigns geared towards consumers on Instagram and Facebook for the B2C side of things, they might also post comprehensive wholesale campaigns on LinkedIn to get noticed in the B2B arena. At the same time, they could target the B2C audience through professional platforms like LinkedIn by posting ads about their workwear options. 

For a B2B social media presence, specifically, the main things to keep in mind are your long-term goals. These should be clearly defined before you set out to launch a social presence and revisited on a regular basis. Some goal examples for B2B social media strategies include establishing credibility and trust amongst your audience, creating brand awareness, generating leads, and increasing website traffic. 

The Basics of Posting On Social Media

The following was written by Bianca Williamson | Fishnet

There are dozens of different platforms out there, and each has its own unique audience type based on age, preference, post style, imagery/video, and other factors. When deciding what to post on each platform, it’s important to remember that your model should not reflect a one-size-fits-all approach. Each platform has a unique structure and an ever-changing algorithm customized to how users behave when interacting on said platform. People are humans before they are users — this is important to remember before you even begin to tailor your business’ social media strategy; you have to give a little thought and understanding to basic behaviors. 

Timing Is Everything 

Posting an exceptional blog that performed well on LinkedIn doesn’t mean the same results will occur when posting that same blog on Instagram. People simply do not use all platforms the same way, and they aren’t meant to, either. For instance, according to Post Planner, 75% of Facebook post potential is reachable within two hours of posting; however, that doesn’t automatically mean that 75% of our audience will see or interact with your post. Facebook’s algorithm will do much of the post-boosting legwork for us, but it’s contingent upon how well the post organically performs based on the few people who have seen it first. If it falls flat, then Facebook will not boost it. The best way to maximize audience reach and engagement is to not only strategically plan the content but also to strategically plan when to post.

Follow the Numbers

Now, that’s just a general rule of thumb to follow. The wormhole goes even deeper. If you really want to leverage social media platforms to best suit your needs as a business (and even more importantly, your customers/client’s needs), you should start following your business’ analytics on each platform. This step alone is very telling as to what actions you need to take in order to fill those lackluster gaps of engagement on social media. Each business and its customer/client base is unique. Therefore, you want to treat your strategy as such to directly reflect when your audience is most active and what they are reacting to and engaging with, as well as various details about demographics. 

Different Platforms, Different Strategies

Social media is a maddening balancing act. It’s not necessarily what you post but how you post that can help you successfully share your message without it being overlooked. Just because one platform is best suited for XYZ content doesn’t always mean it can’t be shared on other platforms, as well. Let’s revisit our LinkedIn vs. Instagram blog post example. Yes, LinkedIn is the more appropriate place to post a blog post. However, if you wanted to create a fun Instagram post for your audience to view as a teaser for that blog, there is no reason why you can’t create that additional content — you just have to get creative with it. Make an engaging infographic carousel that showcases a small snippet of the blog content. This can be fun and highly engaging as long as you are not asking your audience to do too much work. Remember that Instagram is a platform meant for quick hits of information. Most people are not using Instagram as a place to research various topics, but rather mostly as a place to get a glimpse of your business’ environment, culture, and personality.

Posting On Different Social Media Platforms 

Facebook (Also known as Meta)

Facebook is a place where mostly Millennials and Generation X go for community building, but it’s also become a very successful B2B platform. We find that Facebook is a great place to share User-Generated Content (UGC), blogs, and posts about your products and services (this also overlaps with what we see working well on LinkedIn). However, in a sea of blogs and posts advertising products and services all clamoring to reach the highest peak of interest and engagement about this quarter’s latest buzzword or trend, how do you stand out? 

Regardless of the platform, the best-performing bits of content prove to be video-based or animated — get creative with how you showcase an animated infographic from a blog or a reel about your service’s latest feature. We also recommend using Facebook as a place to show off your company’s culture and environment now and then; going a step further than sharing only blog images and insights should be an integral part of your social media strategy. Give people a glimpse into what it’s like to work at or with your company and show the human side of things.

Finally, here are some best practice size recommendations that we have been following recently to best leverage our appearance on Facebook with always up to date social media sizes:

Profiles

Posts

Pages/Ads/Sponsored Content

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a place predominantly occupied by Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials. LinkedIn is one of the few platforms that has a finite definition of the audience’s wants and needs. As most of you are aware, this is where you go to network and grow business opportunities, making it the perfect place for B2B connections. Similar to Facebook, we see blogs, UGC, and company culture and environment posts performing well on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has some features that can help boost your engagement analytic scores that we highly recommend utilizing, such as creating polls, posting interactive PDFs, carousels for expanded messaging, and creating events. This is also a fantastic place to give props to your greatest asset: your team! Have fun with it by scheduling team spotlight posts, milestone announcements, and community involvement. 

We also recommend using imagery whenever possible. It’s important to remember that visuals make content memorable, and since LinkedIn is the most popular place for blogs and insights to live, adding more visuals to your post or blog has been proven to boost shares by 2.3x. The headline gets the user’s initial attention, but consistent inline imagery is what holds their focus.

Here are some best practice size recommendations that we have been following recently to best leverage our appearance on LinkedIn with social sizes: 

Profiles

Posts

Ads/Sponsored Content

Instagram

Typically used by Millennials (and the older end of Generation Z), Instagram is best known for sharing visually pleasing and stimulating content. Over the last few years, Instagram has made a name for itself as a successful e-commerce tool in addition to its general content sharing capabilities. Like Facebook and LinkedIn, UGC, culture and environment content, and video-based content work very well on this platform. However, unlike Facebook and LinkedIn, if you are looking to boost your blog analytics, this is not the place to go typically. Just posting a corresponding thumbnail of your article as a feed post is a surefire way to lose the interest of your audience. As mentioned above, Instagram is known for quick-hit static posts and short reels (03-90 second videos). The average person on Instagram is not spending a lot of time on one post. The ideal caption length is between 138 and 150 characters. This is a great platform for B2C connections, but you need to be strategic with how you go about trying to make those connections. 

So, if you have a business that sells a tangible product, this platform should be your best friend. This is a great opportunity to show off your quality of production. Businesses that offer a service can also do very well on Instagram, but you might want to lean even heavier on UGC and imagery that showcases the experience of what it’s like to work with you and the outcome. We’ve found that the key to pleasing audience members on Instagram is being as authentic as possible. This means a lot to millennials and Generation Z. Try to avoid making your posts look like blatant ads. UGC and influencer marketing perform exceptionally well on Instagram and TikTok because they’re  made to feel more authentic and transparent. As we mentioned above, “people are humans before they are users,” so treat them as such. Be relatable.

Here are some best practice size recommendations that we have been following recently to best leverage our appearance on Instagram with social sizes:

Posts

*Instagram recommends leaving roughly “14% (250 pixels) of the top and bottom of the image free from text and logos” to prevent them from being covered.

Ads/Sponsored Content

*Supported aspect ratios: Anywhere between 1.91:1 and 4:5

If you’re searching for help with B2B social media marketing best practices at your business, contact us today!