In 2021 I ran a series of blog posts from guest contributors focused on maintaining our mental health. Following feedback in my Facebook group, I decided that my blog theme for this year’s guest contributors would be “taking our businesses to the next level”. This post is the first of this new series, and comes from the wonderful Sam Flynn of Planet Social Media.
Sam is a B2B Social Media Trainer, Consultant and Speaker, and she runs a membership called Planet Social Media which I highly recommend you check out. Sam has expertise in B2B social media training on all the main platforms, but with particular focus on LinkedIn and Instagram. She helps B2B businesses stand out, build relationships and generate business, and provides in-house training, online training and 1:1 training.
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It’s probably no secret to you that social media can be a great way to market your B2B business. You know you need to be visible, sharing content regularly, engaging with your audience and building relationships? You do don’t you?!
Well, if you’re ready to step it up a notch, here are 5 ways to grow your B2B business using social media.
1. Drive Traffic To Content
The more content you have on your site, that is useful, valuable and relevant to your audience, the more reason you have to send people there! Not only is web content great for SEO (search engine optimisation) purposes, but it also gives you a valid reason to send people to your website without telling them to ‘read more about us’.
If this content is evergreen (meaning it is as relevant today as it was in the past as it will be in the future!), then you can keep sending people back to the content on your site. Of course, once they are on your site, make sure you have lots of reasons to keep them on there, with internal links and pages for them to find out more.
2. Capture Leads
You don’t own your social media profile. In fact, your LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook or any other social media account could be swiped away from you tomorrow. This is why it’s really important to direct your followers somewhere that you do own, such as on to your email list.
The age old ‘sign up to my newsletter’ doesn’t work any more. Who wants yet another newsletter from a business they barely know in their inbox?! Instead, you need to give them an incentive to be on your email list. This is where your lead capture takes centre stage.
Your lead capture should be attractive enough to your audience that they want to part with their email address to receive it. This could be a free video workshop, a report, a cheat sheet, a whitepaper or any other form of digital collateral that your audience would see value in receiving.
Of course, you then need to make sure you have a solid email marketing strategy in place too!
3. Joint Venture/Referral Partners
Social media isn’t just for selling direct to our target market. It can also be a great place to build relationships with other businesses who could then refer business to us. Alternatively, you may find some worthwhile businesses to enter into joint ventures with.
Open your eyes to the relationships you can develop on social media beyond those you can sell to. This is especially true on LinkedIn for B2B businesses. For everyone you connect with on LinkedIn, all of their connections enter your network as 2nd connections and you become more visible to them.
With whom could you create joint ventures or referral partners?
4. Sell Via Social Media
B2B businesses are notorious for forgetting to sell to their social media followers. They worry about pushing followers away by being too ‘salesy’. The trouble is, if you never tell people what and how they can buy from you, how do you expect them to become customers?!
Your social media strategy should include how you will convert your followers to customers. This could be through your content (I recommend an 80/20 split with 80% of your content helping to build the relationship and 20% converting with the sell) or through sending messages directly to your potential customers (and by this, I don’t mean spamming them the minute they connect with you on LinkedIn!).
Remember, you’re doing your audience a disservice if your product or service could make a huge difference to their business and you don’t tell them about it!
5. Build Authority and Thought Leadership
With so much content on social media, if you share the same as everyone else, you’ll never stand out. This is why it’s important to share thoughts and opinions on industry matters, show yourself to be an authority and that you are thought leaders in the industry.
This will help raise discussion with your audience. And the more engagement, the more reach your content will achieve. It will also highlight your business as experts who are at the forefront of the industry and what is happening within it.
While sharing opinion can feel a little scary, so long as what you say isn’t discriminatory, it should simply raise healthy discussion.
Please do continue to be present on social media and engage with your audience. But if you really want to escalate your growth it’s time to take at least one of the above actions. What are you going to do to grow your B2B business on social media?
Sam Flynn
March 2022