Social media marketing offers considerable challenges for the B2B community because of the perception that B2B businesses are generally uninteresting. No doubt you've thought this over and perhaps held off on social media marketing because you assume you need extreme humor or other exciting content to get noticed. For B2B buyers, they don't necessarily expect to see something flashy on social media. What they really want is information and proof of your expertise.
You can blend the above with entertaining content, though it's not always effective for the CEO to do it alone. Even though you're the leader of your small B2B company, it's sometimes not enough to create an interesting personality based on what you do and speaking for the entire business.
If you want to prove your business's overall expertise, it's better to get your employees involved in the marketing process. This is known as employee advocacy, which allows your employees to do some of the marketing for you on social media.
While some businesses avoid letting employees have posting freedom on social media, it's worth the effort for your B2B company to prove your worth, to develop trust and credibility and to develop your company as a thought leader.
Let's take a look at what your employees could do on social media that would let them demonstrate how much of a leader you are above your competitors.
Showing What They Do Behind the Scenes
As part of your social media content, a perfect introduction for your employees is posting individual videos about who they are and what they do. Short biographical videos place a human face behind everything and how your products get produced. I continue to believe people do business with people and not with businesses. Your prospects will become customers only after they've developed some sort of relationship with a human being within your organization.
This may require being selective on which employees get profiled since not everyone has a winning personality in front of a camera. Don't force any employee who doesn't feel comfortable, because any bad presentation on video is noticeable by a viewer. You don't want your buyers to think of you as forced and unprofessional.
The employees you do choose for videos should give personal tours of the departments where they work so it proves you don't obsessively run the entire operation.
As an example, look at what General Electric did with the use of video on social media to help them look more human to their buyers.
Demonstrating How a Product Gets Made
We've written posts before about the advantages of showing how your products get made on video. Posting these videos on social media is a perfect piece of evidence of consolidating information for buyers without having to read lengthy whitepapers. Allowing your employees to demonstrate what they do in creating your products lets buyers see the materials you use and the exact features you provide.
Conversations on Social Media
Starting conversations with potential buyers on social media is another area that needs improvement for B2B companies. Conversing with potential buyers on social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn creates a bigger responsibility for you if you've been doing it all yourself. Why not let your employees take over on certain days and start conversations themselves?
When you let them do this, they have opportunity for branding themselves, which is important in many B2B-buyer relationships. Regardless, your employees have to understand the difference between conversations and hard-sells. They shouldn't post links to your products during a conversation or they run the risk of being unfollowed and deemed a spammer.
Pick the employees you know you can trust on social media and let them take turns playing their part as employee advocates. They can do this through their own social media accounts on behalf of your company so it leaves you more time to focus on your own work.
Contact us here at The Friedman Group, LLC so we can help you find fresh ideas for your B2B social media marketing efforts this year.
