July 17, 2017
How can you make the most of your social media efforts when you don’t have a dedicated resource or budget? In B2B organizations, the role of social media owner or community manager is often simply added to someone’s existing responsibilities, not carved out as a separate function. And often, there is little to no budget assigned to support such activities. So what can B2B marketers do to advance their social media efforts when they have competing priorities and a modest investment to work with? Surprisingly, a lot.
I recently came across this infographic on How to Build a Sustainable Social Marketing Strategy by Bob Hutchins on the topic. The blog post has some really useful and enlightening data to help B2B marketers optimize the scarce social media resources they may have. While I’d encourage you to check out the full post for yourself, here are a few highlights I think every B2B marketer should consider:
1. Think 6 for 60
Devoting just 6 hours per week to managing your social media programs can yield a 66% increase in lead generation and a 61% improvement in search engine rankings. Those are pretty impressive statistics for less than a full day of work! To make that more manageable, think about asking a member of your team to dedicate a little over an hour each day to social media efforts. (It doesn’t sound as onerous if you break it up over the week, right?) If that time leads to 60%+ improvements in leads and rankings for your company, my guess is you’ll be willing to invest even more time down the road.
2. Involve your graphic designer
Whether you use an in-house resource or your agency partner, get your graphic designers moving on social media visuals and infographics! Some compelling statistics:
- Visual content is shared 40 times more than text alone
- Infographics are shared three times more oftenon social than any other B2B content
- Articles with an image every 75 to 100 words get twice as many social shares as those with fewer images
3. Remember that video killed the traditional star
With apologies to The Buggles (and at the risk of showing my age), video has disrupted more traditional media outlets since the dawn of MTV, and today’s B2B marketing landscape is no exception. Integrating video will become an increasingly more important part of your marketing mix. Don’t be afraid to try some non-traditional video options for your B2B brand, particularly if you are seeking to position your brand as leading-edge – such as live-streaming from a conference or trade show, or using virtual reality (VR) to augment your company’s instructional or product videos. Some newer camera technologies can make VR more affordable than you think!
As I mentioned, there are many more snippets about building a sustainable social marketing strategy in the full post linked above, so I’d encourage you to check it out. If you’d like to learn more about how D&E can help your B2B brand harness the power of social media, check out more posts like this one here or drop me a note and let’s get the conversation started…
