by Adam Basheer, on 04-Mar-2019 16:36:45
Many manufacturing companies, and indeed many B2B companies in general, have been very reluctant to embrace the usage of social media as part of their marketing strategies. In fact, of all the social media platforms, only LinkedIn scores higher than 50% on perceived effectiveness by those companies.
Much of the reluctance offered by manufacturing companies and B2B marketers is thought to stem from their lack of understanding of social media, and if that obstacle could be overcome, it seems likely that more companies would then make much greater use of the social media in their marketing strategies.
Social Media is a great way to generate business leads if it is part of an overall, strategic marketing plan. Often businesses are lead to social media as they think they will be left behind if they do not, but without a strategy, it can return a loss and potentially even damage your reputation.
Which channels are worthwhile
The channels which will be most worthwhile to your B2B business are those where your users and customers are the most active. After all, it doesn’t make much sense to invest heavily in using a social media platform when very few of your customers actually make use of that platform.
To start out, most manufacturing businesses and B2B’s should therefore establish a presence on the #1 business platform, LinkedIn. This social media venue was literally created for business people, and by creating engaging profiles with interesting content and valuable professional insights on your LinkedIn account, you can attract a great many customers.
Reddit is another platform which supplies great value to companies new to social media. On Reddit, you can post submissions about your business and encourage user feedback, and when you get more comfortable, you might even want to create a discrete user community. This community can become your own personal target audience, and a valuable information exchange can be carried out in this way.
Quora is a kind of question and answer site where a huge following can be built up in a short period of time by someone who is knowledgeable in a specific field. Used strategically, Quora can become a very powerful tool for inbound marketing, which generates a great deal of leads, connections, and other opportunities.
Value of using a blog
Blogs have always had strong value for companies wishing to present themselves as authorities within their market or their industries. The importance of this single fact can hardly be overstated, because when users come to trust a single source for information and for news which is relevant to them, they tend to go back to it again and again. As any marketer can tell you, that is exactly what the goal of most marketing efforts are – to have potential customers return to your site frequently for your latest updates.
Regular blogs also indicate to readers that your company has an active voice, and has a human element behind it. This is important because most people greatly prefer to deal with other humans, rather than to deal with an unfeeling, giant corporation. As long as useful information can be presented in your regular blogs, it will be consumed by your readers, and over time they will come to trust you as a source for their news, and for opinions you may express in your posts.
Which images and videos should be shared
Marketers everywhere are now aware that the most effective types of posts on the Internet these days, are those which include images and videos. Internet users are inherently lazy, and much prefer to have their content delivered in easy-to-digest pictures or videos, so they don’t have to make the effort to read the content.
However, this doesn’t mean that any photo you attach to your content will make it an automatic winner, and one that will generate umpteen leads for your company. When you’re trying to provide information that is of genuine interest to your viewers and readers, you need to give them something they really need. That makes how-to videos a prime candidate for the kind of content you should provide your followers with, because it offers them a legitimate service which is useful to their daily lives.
In the same way, providing quotes can be a very effective way of spicing up your content, because quotes from celebrities or from influencers in a field carry much more weight than quotes from ordinary people. The power of influential people is another high-impact strategy which you should use to advantage when reaching out to followers.
The best social media marketing strategy which a manufacturing company or a B2B company could use will ultimately be a part of an overall marketing plan and strategy. A social media strategy should be one which evolves over time, after having experimented with several tactics, and taking note of which ones worked best. For sure, start out using LinkedIn, and stick to successful strategies like using high-quality images and photos, and providing your users with information which is relevant to them, and useful in their daily lives.
To determine which strategy is right for your business, contact the experienced professionals at Fit 4 Market today.