Social Media Channels: Do I need to invest in more than one?
Time to read: 3 minutes
A persistent question for B2B companies is whether social media channels have real value. And, if so, which channels are worth the investment. Our social media expert, Simona Cotta Ramusino, shares her views on the best approach.
The outages that have impacted WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram in recent years provided an important lesson for social media managers: make sure you are on multiple platforms. However, another reason B2B firms should nurture multiple social media channels is that 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 one of the preferred social media channels for our B2B clients.
According to some recent stats, the platform drives 46% of social traffic to B2B sites and is considered the most credible content source. Other numbers supporting the business case for having a LinkedIn 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 also likely be on LinkedIn, 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 focus 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, LinkedIn supports two-way communication, allowing followers to comment on and share your updates. You can also gather their views through polls and posts.
- You can have a positive impact on employees and attract new hires. Understanding a company’s culture is key when deciding whether it will be the right fit for you. It is no longer a leap of faith or a ‘grass is always greener’ scenario: LinkedIn (and Facebook) can help you understand 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:
- LinkedIn Polls
- LinkedIn Live
- 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.
Is there life beyond LinkedIn for B2B firms?
Yes! Twitter/X is great if you attend virtual or live events and want to share 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. However, whether Twitter/X is still an environment in which you want to place your brand is a different question altogether. As content moderation has been all but removed, many brands are leaving the platform.
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 you may be engaged in. It also helps to create a strong feeling of community among employees and is 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 more engagingly, building trust and increasing traffic to your website. Although Instagram is often disregarded by B2B marketers and viewed mainly as a B2C channel, there are stats and business reasons that support the value of 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 upping your social media game or hiring someone to do it for you, establish what you want to achieve and who you want to reach. Equipped with this knowledge, selecting the right platform or platforms becomes much easier.
