Building a B2B Social Media Strategy That Supports SEO Objectives

Social media isn’t just essential for brand awareness and customer support; it can also be an extremely effective channel to support SEO strategies, including link building, content marketing, and more.

In my experience, some of the most successful B2B digital marketing campaigns can be traced back to the deep integration of SEO and social media strategies.

Let’s talk about some of the key ways that social media can be used to take your SEO to the next level.

Align with Link Building Initiatives

Social media can be especially useful to support link building efforts. By engaging with key contacts associated with link building opportunities, you can establish a relationship and build trust before actually reaching out directly. This could include everything from industry-related blogs to third-party publications, trade associations, and industry affiliations.

This way, when it comes time to reach out around a link building opportunity – whether that is a guest post contribution, mention of your brand, etc. – you’ve already created some sort of familiarity with your brand. They know what your company represents and are aware of your participation in the industry.

Start with identifying key contacts at the sites you’re targeting, then follow them on Twitter and engage with them on a regular basis. One of my favorite ways to do this is by creating public lists on Twitter. For example, a list like Top Influencers in Digital Marketing can serve as another way to grab their attention, while making it easy to monitor activity for potential engagement.

Reach & Engage Key Targets

Sophisticated targeting on social media will support your SEO campaigns and broader business objectives.

Obtain lists of key targets like existing clients, prospects, potential customers, partners, sponsors, media targets, influencers, thought leaders and more. Of course, leveraging CRM and website data can help with gathering of all of this information. From there, you can compile social media profiles and handles of your targets to reach both organically and/or through advertising on social.

Advanced targeting options on Facebook and Twitter let you target customer lists and upload audiences using your website traffic and customer’s email addresses or phone numbers. You can also create Tailored Audiences using Twitter usernames. LinkedIn also offers elite options for B2B businesses, and really any business aiming to reach professional audiences.

Distribute & Promote Content

Not only is the initial distribution of content extremely important when it comes to maximizing organic visibility, but it’s also essential to continue promoting these assets over time. You’ve worked hard at creating these resources – don’t let them be forgotten.

Here’s what I recommend for ideal methods of distribution and resharing, in order to achieve the most visibility.

Initial Content Distribution

You’ve hit the publish button. Now what? Consider this approach for distribution:

• Post to social media accounts
  • Schedule 5 – 10 updates on Twitter (spread throughout the day / week)
    • Note: Share at least once a week on Twitter over the next few months to increase reach.
  • Post 1 update to Facebook
  • Post 1 update to LinkedIn
• Notify your internal team & encourage shares
• Notify your email list & encourage shares
• Reach out to influencers mentioned in the article
• Reach out to influencers on the topic
• Answer questions on forums
• Set up a Google Alert for long-term promotion

Resharing Top Content

Resharing content beyond just the week it is published can help drive additional traffic, reach new followers and connect with an audience you may have missed the first time.

For these reasons, consider this resharing schedule:

• Schedule 2 Tweets the week after publishing
• Schedule 2 Tweets the two weeks after publishing
• Schedule 2 Tweets the month after
• Schedule 2 Tweets two months after
• Post 1 update to LinkedIn the week after publishing
• Post 1 update to LinkedIn two weeks after publishing
• Post 1 update to LinkedIn one month after

Oftentimes, the content that presents the most opportunity to reshare includes top performing blog content and evergreen posts that remain timely and relevant. Revisit some of these posts and resharing across social media channels following the resharing schedule noted above.

Monitor Conversations Closely

We know that social media is key for content distribution, but it can also be used as another tool to help guide your content marketing strategy.

There are a ton of marketing technology solutions out there to help understand your B2B audiences better through listening on social media, and you may already be using one. If you’re not, however, I highly recommend using a social listening tool to monitor important conversations, find and answer the questions people are asking, and help spike new content ideas based on the information people are most interested in or looking for.

In addition to the SEO benefits this will have, ongoing participation in important industry discussions will help further position you as a thought leader in the space.

Final Thoughts

While there are many reasons why social media should be a part of your SEO strategy, these are just a few to consider. Hopefully this post provided you with some simple ways to drive your SEO strategy forward with more sophisticated social media tactics.

Did I miss anything? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, or reach out to me directly via Twitter!