I was recently discussing the changing tide in business to business (b2b) marketing with a colleague. We talked about the different forms of advertising, how print has been usurped by digital media and that many businesses are overlooking, or not quite sure how to use, content creation and social media effectively in their marketing strategy.
Social media is an extremely effective and viable form of marketing today. It’s a perfect extension of the sales process. Let’s face it sales is all about relationships. Business relationships are social interactions that enable people to get to know one another better, build trust, and ultimately do business together.
Why do we do business with some people and not others? Most people will say because I like that person, I trust them and they take good care of me. How did they get to that place? Through social interaction. It’s the same with social media. Social media expands relationship building to the internet. For business it isn’t about posting the latest movie you went to or what you’re eating. It’s about exchanging ideas, getting to know people or a company and trusting their ability to do what you need.
So how does it work? Social media works in the form of extending your reach through content creation. When a company creates content that helps their prospects do their job better, solve problems and exchange new ideas it builds brand awareness and a trusting relationship with your audience.
Here’s an overview of 5 of the top business social platforms you should consider in addition to a blog.
YouTube – The second largest search engine in the world – create your business page and start posting videos that will help your customers and prospects.
LinkedIn – Your direct line to the business community worldwide. Create a page for your business. If you don’t have one for yourself create one as well. Post original content and repost interesting content you come across. Google indexes content from Linkedin.
Google+ – A Google+ page for your business will help you rank higher in Google searches by using the business tools such as Hangouts, Communities, YouTube, Google Maps and others. Getting reviews on your Google + page will increase the importance of your page and rank you higher in local searches.
Facebook – Create a business page. Post content about your company, the industry, your people and items of interest to your prospects. Facebook also has powerful marketing tools that can help you specifically target your audience.
Instagram – Create a feed for your business. This visual social media platform focuses on photo and video posts. It is primarily mobile based so you can take photos or videos with your smart phone or tablet and write a short caption to post to your feed. It can also be integrated with Facebook enabling you to post to your business page on the fly.
The key to an effective social media strategy is to remember it’s social which gives you the opportunity to interact with your audience. Ideally you want to post items several times per week, this can be done in-house or with outside vendors.
Remember you’re building relationships, interaction and trust with your followers, improving your search rankings and ultimately driving new business to you.
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