In a recent poll, we found that 60% of respondents wanted to focus more on their B2B social media strategy this year. If you’ve tried to focus on social media but have struggled with keeping up with it, here are some tips to help you stick with your strategy.
Have specific goals
A critical aspect of a B2B social media strategy that can help you stay on track is identifying specific goals for your efforts. Having an objective gives meaning to what you are working toward. Focus in on specific goals for your social media marketing and regularly check in to see how you are tracking toward them.
Sample goals:
- Increase LinkedIn followers by 20% in three months
- Use LinkedIn to generate leads – track leads through Google Analytics
- Increase company mentions by engaging with loyal customers
A critical aspect of a social media strategy that can help you stay on track is identifying specific goals for your efforts. Having an objective gives meaning to Goals allow you to craft your social media messaging in a specific way. For instance, if you want to use LinkedIn to generate leads, craft messages that influence your audience to click the link to download your latest white paper. If you are trying to boost engagement, posts should influence your audience to comment and share the post.
Assign a social media manager
Depending on the size of your business and your marketing goals, social media management can be a full-time job. It’s best to assign the task of managing your company’s social media accounts to a single person. While multiple people can offer creative suggestions, having one person manage social accounts simplifies and streamlines the process. This person manages the content calendar, schedules posts, and replies to comments and messages. Consider someone who has a natural interest in organization, is proactive, and genuinely enjoys social media and sees its value. An effective social media manager will understand the voice of your brand and know which social media platforms and types of engagement will benefit your company.
Create a content calendar
One of the most challenging aspects of sticking to a social media strategy is creating consistent valuable content. While “in-the-moment” posts may pop up occasionally, you shouldn’t plan your strategy around posting content as it comes to mind.
Instead, what can be tremendously helpful in sticking with social media is planning content with a calendar. No matter how many times per week your company is posting updates, aim to plan your content at least a month in advance. Determining what content is being posted when will help you stick to a schedule and build a routine.
Use automation tools
There are many social media automation tools on the market that can help you reach your goals by saving time streamlining the process and managing tasks. Schedule your posts in advance, monitor metrics and easily identify well-performing posts by choosing an automation tool that best fits your needs.
One of the greatest benefits of utilizing automation software is having one place for all your social media accounts. Rather than having to work within each individual social media platform, choose an automation tool that integrates with your selected accounts. Within the automation tool, you can easily view and analyze all your metrics in one place.
Analyze and repurpose content
It’s a misconception that you always need to craft original content for your social media marketing. You should always aim to offer your audience valuable content, but that doesn’t mean you need to reinvent the wheel.
Whether you utilize a social media automation tool or not, review your analytics to identify what posts perform well. Use well-performing posts to craft future posts. This could be sharing the same concept in a new way, building off the original post and revealing something new or simply re-sharing the original content. This is acceptable to do every few months as you gain new followers. While it could be content your audience has seen before, remember that new followers will be seeing it for the first time, as they are unlikely to scroll back through your previous posts.
Having a plan doesn’t always mean you’re going to stick to it. Things change and you readjust. However, having certain processes in place and the right people can keep your social media strategy running and reaching goals. If you need help designing a social media strategy that works for you, contact us.