4 Tips for Your B2B Social Media Strategy in 2020
As we move into 2020, B2B digital marketers are beginning to execute their social media strategies for the new year. In addition to basing your new strategies on past performance and competitors, it is important to incorporate new industry and platform trends.
There are a few key trends to consider for your B2B social media strategy in 2020. In this post, we are sharing 4 crucial tips for your social media strategy, so that you can continue to refine your tactics and see optimal results.
Let’s dive in.
1. Use Social Media Stories
Stories provide a way for B2B brands to further engage their audience by asking questions, sharing key insights, and becoming an important source for their target audience.
In 2017 alone, Instagram stories specifically grew at a rate 15X the rate of feeds. As the years have progressed, stories have become even more prevalent across Instagram and Facebook alike. B2B digital marketers have an opportunity to directly engage with their audience through these channels. Stories can be used both organically and as a component of social media advertising.
Case in point: Stories made up 45 percent of the paid ad spend on Instagram in 2019.
In the B2B space, there are several creative ways to share content via Instagram or Facebook stories. Try giving a behind the scenes look at office culture and employee engagement, or sharing different insights for your industry in the form of tips or snippets from blog posts.
While diving into the world of social media stories can be daunting, make sure to incorporate stories into your normal editorial calendar. This way, you’ll have a clear vision for your strategy and won’t be left creating content on the fly.
Here’s an example:
We use this blog post to create a graphic outlining the 4 tips for your social media strategy this year. Those images are easily digestible and attention-grabbing so we can post to our Instagram or Facebook story, encouraging our audience to engage with us or visit the full blog post for more.
2. Incorporate Influencer Marketing for Social Media
Influencer marketing isn’t going away in 2020. While over the years influencer marketing meant looking to large accounts or celebrities, as we move into 2020 nano influencers will take a more critical role in influencer marketing on social media.
Smaller influencers are generally closer to their audience, and therefore better able to influence because their followers trust and engage with them.
There are a couple ways to find the right influencers for your industry and audience. In Search Engine Journal’s post around important 2020 social media trends, I explained that B2B companies can expand their influencer network by looking into speakers from industry events or encouraging your company or clients’ employees to become brand ambassadors. Ultimately, engaging with these influencers offers new opportunities for you to spread your message with your target audience.
Outside of engaging with these influencers on social media platforms, create comprehensive blog posts or content assets using their valuable insights.
In 2019 we created a blog post outlining upcoming 2020 trends in the broadcast industry. We reached out to relevant influencers and were able to compile a post which detailed different thought leaders’ insights into the state of the industry moving forward. This not only became a top performing blog post for the year in terms of traffic, but also led to increased engagement on social media platforms.
3. Customize Your Social Media Advertising
Organic reach, specifically on Facebook, was only 6.4 percent of a page’s total “likes” as of 2019, meaning paid advertising is critical to further your reach. This isn’t all bad news however, because those companies willing to invest in paid social media advertising saw better performance than expected in 2019, according to a report from eMarketer. This report also predicts that social spending will only continue to rise over the next year and into 2021.
Here are two key pieces to keep in mind when building out your paid strategy this year:
- Audience Segmentation
As you build out your paid social media strategy for 2020, hone in on customization. This includes segmenting audiences into different categories based on demographics, seniority, industry, job title, and more.
From there, deliver personalized messages and creatives to these audiences to drive higher click through rates, increase engagements, and ultimately get yourself closer to target audiences.
- Messenger Ads and Chatbots
To take your paid social media strategy even further, take advantage of chatbots or Facebook messenger ads. This tactic offers a more personalized, customer service-centric approach than traditional social advertising. According to Social Media Today, in 2020 we will see continued growth in chatbot intelligence.
Additionally, it is projected that 80 percent of businesses will look to have a chatbot implemented this year. That being said, the competition is lower in this form of social advertising, at least for now.
4. Enhance Your Creative with Video
Video continues to trend on social media both for organic and paid efforts. In fact, it is projected that by 2022 videos will account for 82 percent of online traffic.
I broke down social media video marketing strategies in a recent blog post. This probably won’t come as a shock: Many B2B executives prefer to watch a video than read text. Here are some video ideas B2B companies can take advantage of:
- Product demos / explainer videos
Product-related videos can be anything from a product tutorial to a full demo of your service or product. Explainer videos are generally short, animated videos that tell your story or service in a succinct way.
- Live video
Live videos are great to connect with your audience in real-time. They offer an authentic, personalized experience for your audience. We’ve found using live video for event coverage particularly successful. As a B2B marketer, if you or your client is in attendance at an industry event, try posting live videos of your booth, speaker sessions, and showcasing your client or company’s presence at the event.
- Interviews with experts
Video interviews generally consist of expert insights in the form of live video or pre-produced video content. They can showcase either company employees, or industry experts / influencers, and will help to bring valuable insights to your audience.
Final Thoughts
As the year progresses, remember to check-in and assess your social media strategy. For B2B digital marketers, the use of stories, influencer marketing and engagement, chatbots, customized social media advertising, and enhanced creatives will help you to create a more integrated social media strategy capable of producing results.
In addition, listening to your audience and diligently tracking the performance of your tactics will help you to adjust quickly and efficiently for optimal results in 2020. Pay attention to what’s working and what’s not in terms of post timing, format, creative, and content, and pivot accordingly.
As you evolve your social media strategy throughout the year, we’d love to hear from you around the strategies you’re implementing! Tweet us at @KoMarketing to get the conversation going.