Any business that wants to succeed in the 21st century needs to have a strong social media presence. This is not only true for B2C businesses but also for the ones that operate in the B2B space.
But what kind of social media content should B2B companies be creating?
1. Educational Post
No one likes a selfish salesperson who keeps going on and on about themselves and their own services/products. B2B marketers should think from the point of view of their audience instead of their company. What are the needs and requirements of the audience? What are their pain points? How could they solve the problems? How can the company help them?
According to Content Marketing Institute, 88% of the top content marketing performers focus more on their audience’s needs than on sales and promotional messages. When you go through this exercise, you will start to bring value and insight to your social media content. We named this type of content “Educational Posts”.
To create educational posts, you’ll need to first research the knowledge gap of your audience. What do they currently know? What interest them? What could you add to their knowledge of your industry? By creating this value-added, helpful and insightful content for your audience, you will get to build a positive image for them and boost buying confidence.
2. Visually-pleasing Post
There is a misconception in the industry illustrating that B2B social content is more often bland and boring than B2C content. In fact, one survey shows that 48% of B2B customers are sick of the marketing content they’ve seen. Social media is supposed to be a free and easy place that prioritizes visuals and aesthetics. Hence, to attract the attention of your audience, you should really put your A-game on to “wow” and dazzle them.
Of course, you should adhere to your brand personality, voice, guidelines as well as your industry. For instance, if you are a design agency, you could turn a normal celebratory post into a kind of ‘project showcase’ post to present your graphic design artwork. Putting in your creativity, you could highlight your strengths at the same time relate closely to the main topic.
Video is another great way to catch the eyeballs of your audience and showcase your creative assets. Compared with static images, videos on social media are more exciting and could garner more engagement.
3. Social-related Post
For social-related posts, we categorized them into 3 main types:
I) Festivals
Whether you’re a global brand or a small company, you should prepare a calendar to keep track of all the traditional festivals, celebrations, international days and global holidays that are happening in the world. Social media users like brands or companies that are humanized and share their joys with them.
II) Pop culture
Another way to appeal to the general public is to incorporate pop culture into your social media content. Topics like movies, shows, or cultural identities can be a great way to bond and connect with your potential customers. You could also cleverly infuse some tips about your industry, products/services or your brand story into the posts.
III) Social events
You can never deny that brands and companies foster mutual benefits with society. It’s a help-help situation and both can’t exist without each other. This is why it is important for businesses to show concern and respond to the community and society. You should constantly update yourself on the current news and happenings around you as well as incorporate them into your social content.
Here is an example of 11.11 Shopping Day.
4. Company Culture
Companies with good working cultures and corporate branding could increase customers’ confidence in their services/products. This is why showcasing your company’s culture on social media platforms could help build up a humanized and personalized brand image. Some examples of Company Culture content are behind-the-scenes, employees’ perspectives and the company’s achievements.
In this way, you could show the other side of your brand to your customers and clients. It helps in building trust and bonds with them too because they get to see your company from different perspectives.
Moreover, social media can be especially useful when you want to broadcast important announcements such as recruitment.
5. Quotes
Sometimes social media posts don’t have to be complicated. Contents as simple as a quote can also be relatable and inspiring to the right audience. And it doesn’t only work with B2C brands, but B2B companies could incorporate this content into their strategy too. After all, we are all engaging with humans.
Likewise, it is possible to create inspirational quotes that are related to your industry. For instance, design and marketing agencies could post quotes that are related to their industry so that their ideal clients could relate to them.
6. Client’s Testimonial
Social media marketing is never a one-man show. Sometimes, inviting your clients to be featured on your social account can be a great way to instil confidence and loyalty in your audience. Not only will your company get the exposure, but we’re also sure that your client’s brand will get to reach a wider audience. In a way, it’s a win-win solution.
7. Project Showcase
Next and one of the most important social proof content you need to have on your social media marketing is showcasing your projects. What projects have you recently finished? What challenges have you overcome? What lessons have you learned? Your company social accounts can be an outlet for you to share your learnings, insights and journal with your customers and clients. This way, not only will the audience see your brand as a real human with feelings and emotions but they could also learn from your mistakes.
8. Blogs
Blogs play a remarkably important role in your company’s overall digital marketing strategy. Firstly, they are a great way to provide in-depth information, knowledge and insights to your audience. Secondly, they are more than often the reason web visitors stay on your web page because when they are interested to learn more, they would gladly spend their time reading the whole blog. Thirdly, they are also the reason how visitors found your website. When your blog answers the queries visitors type in the search engine, your blog page will rank on the first page.
Nonetheless, your job doesn’t end after you published the blogs on the site. You’ll have to share it on social media so that your audience knows you have posted. This would then leads them to your website. Sharing your blog links to social media also counts as a backlink and could potentially increase your company’s domain authority when users like and share it.
9. Engagement Post
Engagement Posts are posts that encourage users to react or interact with the posts. They could come in the form of games, “this or that”, polls, MCQ or anything that is opinionated.
Here are some examples from CUBEevo, a creative agency’s engagement posts.
10. Giveaways
Last but not least, implementing a giveaway is a great way to build brand awareness, increase engagement and give back to your loyal fans and community. If you want to know more about Giveaway ideas, take a read at our other blog, Top 7 Creatively Unique Giveaways for Social Media Campaigns.
In summary, social media content does play a major role in helping businesses in promoting their brand. Creating content for your brand can help you boost your online presence and enhance your corporate image as well. This does not only influence the way your clients view your company but also how your stakeholders and employees view your company culture. If you’re still having a headache managing your social accounts, have a chat with the professionals and see how they could be of help!
