The B2B Social Series #2 - 5 Steps to Make B2B Social Work for Your Business
Our belief at STEAK is that there is a place for every business in the world of social media. The key to succeeding and making it work for you is understanding your limitations, working out what you can do and most importantly what you can do well. In the land of digital, a dormant, abandoned social space is an ugly site… don’t let it happen to you.
Below are the five ingredients you need to make your social media programme work with your agency… if you don’t fancy reading this post, check out the SlideShare presentation.
1. Understanding
You wouldn’t buy a house without checking out the area and the neighbours first, so why would you start your social presence without understanding as much as possible about what is going on around your business?
Undertake a thorough listening phase is our advice; it’ll save you a lot of hard work in the long run. A full break down of what social listening is and why it matters will be coming next week.
As a rough guide, here are some things you need to look at:
1. What are people saying about your brand or business?
2. Who is your target audience; how do they behave in the social space?
3. What are your competitors doing?
a. What works?
b. What doesn’t work?
4. What are other businesses in similar verticals doing that you could repurpose?
After you’ve completed this listening phase and presented it back to the rest of the company, you can then build a strategy based on hard numbers and market knowledge.
2. Buy-in
You need to have buy-in for the right reasons. Too many businesses enter the space tentatively with the attitude it won’t work or it’s a waste of money. If you head into social media with that type of attitude, it simply won’t succeed. This is why the listening phase should underpin everything you do. If everyone knows exactly why you’re entering the social space and what your goals are, it’s far more likely to succeed.
Too many businesses think it’s all about lead generation. Social media underpins your lead generation activities; it doesn’t take away the need to invest in more traditional ways of acquiring new prospects. Think of social media as a way to make thought leaders out of your staff, think of it as a reference point during the often long gestations periods through the buying cycle and think of it as a way to show your clients that you’re still ahead of the game.
3. Resource
This, friends, is absolutely key to making social media work for your business. There needs to be resource within the business dedicated to making social media work. If you don’t have a dedicated marketing department, don’t put someone too senior in charge of the project. They’ll always have bigger priorities and the social project will tend to find itself side-tracked.
In the same vein, don’t pick someone too junior. Social content needs the same thorough checks you’d put in place if you were sending out analysis to a client. It’s an extension of the metaphorical shop window.
When I say dedicated resource, I don’t mean someone who spends all their time managing social queries. I simply mean someone on hand to answer questions from the agency, help with great content ideas and someone qualified to sign off the amazing content.
4. Cooperation
Social media agencies can create content on behalf of their clients, they can seed it out and they can generally keep things ticking over nicely. That’s not good enough though. There’s no point being in the social space just existing. You want to give the people interacting with your content an experience. The only way you can do this is by sharing that wealth of knowledge you have about your product or service. Collaborative content creation always churns out the best results. We see it all the time with our clients. Why? Because no one can talk about your product or service with the same passion or intelligence as you can.
Not even STEAK…
5. Goals
You’ve got to have goals! If you don’t have targets, you don’t have direction. Set monthly goals and make sure you report what worked, what didn’t work and what you plan to do moving forward. It gives the business focus and it encourages people that their efforts are all worth it.
Don’t just make your goals around hard targets like followers or fans. Look for business social goals.
Example:
- Getting two people from outside the marketing team to contribute to blog content
- Live tweeting from an industry event
- Engaging in a LinkedIn discussion
Conclusion
B2B social media can be a hugely beneficial spoke in your marketing arsenal. Execute your plan with all the above ingredients in mind and you’ve just given yourself a far higher chance of success.
Any questions on the B2B series, speak to us @STEAKLondon
By Pete Wood, UK Social Media Director, STEAK