If your company is using social media as a marketing platform, then you need to be strategic in how you approach social channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram. It’s not enough just to generate content on an ad hoc basis – you need to be executing on a defined “social selling” strategy. What this means is that you’re using content on social media to nudge prospects along the B2B buyer’s journey.
The first step in any B2B social selling strategy is to identify the specific, focused group that you are trying to reach. In the old analog era, this was basically your “target demographic.” But in the digital era, you have access to so much more information about your potential buyer that you can include all kinds of “psychographic” data – such as products or services that they are “liking” on Facebook. With all of this data at your disposal, it’s possible to create some remarkably sophisticated buyer personas. That means that the specific, focused groups you are trying to reach are your buyer personas.
The next step in your B2B social selling strategy is to start generating the type of content this group wants to see. Most likely, they don’t really care about all of your latest promotions or sales incentives. What they do care about is the type of content that helps to explain why they should buy from you. That means exclusive survey data, or case studies, or even infographics (if they’re done right). This will help to structure what exactly you are posting on social media – the goal should be posting the type of content that will make people more likely to buy your products.
OK, that’s easier said than done, right? One way to get a handle on this quickly is to check out what your competition is doing. What kinds of messages are they using to attract leads? Which channels and platforms are they using to find leads. You can think of this as a brief social media competitor analysis. Figure out where they are, what kind of content they are creating, and how often they are sending out new content. Is it every few hours via Twitter, or is it just every few days via Facebook?
You now need some kind of social media dashboard to track your activity. The best dashboards are those that make it easy to both post content and monitor the types of conversations that customers are having about your products. You should be able to see which ideas, concepts and themes are resonating with prospects. In addition, you get an early warning tool, to find out when customers may be voicing questions or doubts about your product offerings.
With this dashboard monitoring system in place, you now have a very easy way to track the success of your B2B social selling strategy. You can put a few key performance indicators (KPIs) in place to fine tune this strategy along the way. The end result? A B2B social selling strategy that’s been optimized for attracting new leads and transforming them into potential new customers.
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Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.