Many questions need to be asked prior to creating a B2B Social Media Marketing Strategy. Who is your Target Audience? What are your businesses goals? Are you looking to increase brand awareness? Are you looking to generate leads for your business? Are you looking to use Social Media Marketing for customer service?
4 Rules for Creating an effective B2B Social Media Marketing Strategy
Rule #1: Identify your Target Audience. Know who your prospects are and try to understand their online behavior. By knowing your target audience, you can do keyword research to develop content for engaging with peers online.
Rule #2: Start a Blog. Do NOT host a blog with blogspot or WordPress. Rather, create a sub-directory or sub-domain on your business’s domain (ie. www.YourBusiness.com/Blog or Blog.YourBusiness.com). Think of your blog as your Social Media Hub. Use your blog to establish credibility and authority amongst your peers online.
Rule #3: Get Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin Accounts. Sign up for all three of these Social Media Networks and link back to your Blog (your social media hub). Create online profiles so your friends, colleagues and prospects know that you exist online. Search all three social networks using keywords that are relevant to you and your industry. Connect with industry peers. Be positive.
Rule #4: Commit, Optimize and Engage. Commit to a Social Media Strategy that makes sense for your business. The commitment should be in terms of time spent writing new blog posts each week, and engaging in social media networks. Commit to writing a minimum of 2 blog posts per week. Optimize those blog posts for search engines by using keywords relevant to you and your industry. Engage in the online conversation by reading other industry blogs, commenting on them and linking back to your blog.
Industry related conversations are happening online as I type. It is time for your business to create a social media marketing strategy and join the “never ending cocktail party online.”
Brian Carter, an Internet Marketing Expert and Director of Social Media, SEO, and PPC at Fuel Interactive put together an excellent presentation on “How to Create Business and Find New Business Opportunities with Social Media and Social Networking” below:
