Social media is time consuming enough, do I need to invest in more than one channel?
Time to read: 3 minutes
A persistent and key question for B2B companies is whether there is real value in social media and, if so, which channels are worth the investment of time and resources. Our social media expert, Simona Cotta Ramusino shares her views on the best approach.
The outage that simultaneously affected WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram last month highlighted an important lesson for social media managers: either take a day off, or ensure you are on multiple platforms. But aside from the outage there is another reason why a B2B firm should be nurturing multiple social media channels – they fulfil different purposes.
The way I see it LinkedIn is about describing who you are, Twitter is about doing what you are and Facebook is about showing who you are.
Let’s hear it for LinkedIn
LinkedIn remains our preferred social media platform when it comes to our B2B clients.
According to some recent stats, LI drives 46% of social traffic to B2B sites and is considered the most credible source of content. Other numbers supporting the business case for having a LI presence include:
- 4 out of 5 people on the platform “drive business decisions”
- there are 61 million “senior-level influencers”
- 33% of B2B decision makers use LinkedIn to research purchases
As a fully integrated communications agency we see LinkedIn management as a key piece of the comms plan.
4 reasons we love LinkedIn
- You can build your company’s profile within your sector. As your competitors will likely be on LI too, it is important to be seen and promote your latest company news, updates and wins.
- You can promote thought leadership and highlight your company’s experts. This helps put the accent on the individuals driving the business as well as your products and services.
- You can directly engage with peers, clients and prospects. As with many social media platforms, LI supports two-way communication, allowing for followers to comment on and share your updates. You can also gather their views through polls and posts – something that more traditional channels do not allow for.
- You can have a positive impact on employees and attracting new hires. Understanding the kind of culture a company has is key when deciding whether it is going to be a right fit – whether it is worth leaving your current company for. It is no longer a leap of faith or a ‘grass is always green’ scenario: LI (and Facebook) can help you acquire a view of what it is or would be like working for a certain company.
LinkedIn has also added some interesting new features over the last year to improve user experience and make engagement with followers more interesting:
- LI Polls
- LI Live
- Option to use Carousels for posts.
Also, not quite as new (but still worth noting) is the option to set an event under your company profile, share it with connections, and invite connections to follow your company page.
For B2B firms, is there life beyond LinkedIn?
YES! Twitter is great if you are attending virtual (or dare we say live now) events and for sharing snippets from presentations or keynotes. It also allows you to follow and engage with key influencers in your space with many analysts and journalists tweeting regularly.
Facebook is probably the best platform to showcase your culture, the people that make the company a great place to be and any CSR projects that you may be engaged in. As well as helping to create a strong community feeling among employees it is also a powerful means of attracting new, like-minded people.
If you are a business that relies more on visual marketing then Instagram is the place to be. The platform is optimised for videos and images so products and services can be brought to a target audience in a more compelling, memorable, and engaging way, both building trust and increasing traffic back to your website. Although Instagram is often disregarded by B2B marketers, viewed mainly as mainly a B2C channel, there are stats and business reasons that support the value in having a presence on the platform:
“B2B companies experience their largest engagement ratios on Instagram—meaning that of the major social sites, Instagram fosters the highest number of interactions per number of followers. Not only does Instagram promote engagement through commenting, but it hosts text, photos, and videos directly on the platform so your followers don’t have to click elsewhere to see the content.”
So if you are considering upping your social media game or hiring someone to do it for you, establish what it is you want to achieve and who exactly you want to reach. Equipped with this knowledge, selecting the right platform or platforms, becomes much easier.
