Interestingly I’m finding more and more with friends and family who are starting new business ventures, want to know all about how social media can benefit them. Fair enough I hear you say; yet it was only around 18 months or so that most people wouldn’t have even considered using the ‘social’ approach.
The question when this topic arises inevitably ends up being, which social media network is the best one… to which I never like to give the age old boring response of ‘they all have their own benefits’. That answer sucks! So let’s look at this a bit further and not follow the grain of what everyone else thinks.
Linked-In – Social Media
Ah yes, where would we be without Linked-In. Who hasn’t had a large network of recruitment agents selling you various new posts at one time or another? The fact is, Linked-In makes it a bit too easy to make business contacts without fully developing any kind of business relationship. Once you dive deeper into Linked-In, you begin to realise the potential of this greatly misunderstood social media platform.
The last count sat at around over 200 million users spanning across over 200 countries. Yes I know, we hear these stats but don’t really care that much. Although this creates an obvious large and broad target to get your commercial messages out there, but in more of an upmarket way. The clever thing about Linked-In, is that whilst Google have been spending far too much time on how to penalise site rankings, and Facebook on how they can exploit all of their long serving free customers… Linked-In have been focussing more on what their principles have always stood for. This in turn has allowed them to create a streamlined approach for businesses that want to market to other businesses.
If you choose to run a campaign through Linked-In, you can choose to target your ad by territory, company, sector, and a wide array of other business specific attributes. This can tie in nicely with the various extra features Linked-In offer that come as a premium, and rightly so. For anyone that’s ever tried to develop a CRM system, or even buy one will know this is very costly. With Linked-In you can actually build leads and organise profiles with the Profile Organizer tool.
Although don’t be fooled, you may have a network of 500+ contacts, but if you don’t regularly engage with them you’ll soon have a dead network. Also remember that your connections can engage with each other, so add wisely! Remember to take some of the online relationships you’ve built offline too.
Twitter – Social Media
The SMS of the internet, a tool which comes in handy for any budding entrepreneur, CEO, or anyone that enjoys pumping out meaningless shit like second rate footballers.
Twitter offers a very good simplistic B2B approach in that by just using a simple ‘@’ tag, your message hits that business page. Twitter social media users are a lot more likely to read these messages than they will with inbox messages. Even the most pushed for time professional can update Twitter on the fly.
Twitter users can engage with company lists, targeted media and pick up a wide array of articles via short links. Company news was never as interesting as it is now before Twitter was on the scene. Very much a quick fix social media tool for any business, and is highly enabled to integrate with other social platforms.
Let’s break it down a little…
At the end of the day the key to success with social media in a B2B environment is by driving ‘thought leadership’ along with the reputation of the business coupled around the market position the business desires. This will inevitably lead to the targeted engagement you crave.
Where so many businesses fall short in social media, is by drifting away from what their company stands for. With all B2B social media marketing it is imperative that the company values and principles are kept in mind at all times. The social space is as much a serious business space as it is a fun space at this time.
Google+ – Social Media
Next…
Okay, seriously now. Google+ is fast becoming a major figure in the social media world boasting no less than 350 million active users. I mean let’s face it, it was never going to be long before Google became a dominant force within Social Media.
Businesses can benefit greatly from Google+ due to the fact that any posts made publicly have the chance to rank higher in Google search. Feature rich content included in these posts fed in from channels such as YouTube also impact higher search rankings too. Remember the argument between Twitter and Google? Well a lot of it stemmed from tweets that would ordinarily rank top for certain searches, are now being pushed off their perch by Google+ posts. A very nifty feature is that companies that have Google+ pages will find that alongside their company keyword search, their Google+ page now comes up on the right hand side of the search results.
The latest Google Hangout feature offers an exciting new feature, even if at the moment it can be relatively unstable. This involves real-time video streaming allowing you to hold video conferences in a Skype-esque kind of way, involving the public or just invited connections from your circles.
Currently Google+ is not the best social choice for the majority, but with the future holding great promise for development, you can be sure it will be up there. There is a reason why they dominate the search market. For Google, this is just the start of Social evolution I’m sure.
YouTube – Social Media
The best way to watch half your day disappear via the many cross sell videos on site. One thing leads to another and BOOOM, there goes your day.
Well with YouTube, as long as the videos are created in a manner that reflects the companies brand and is appealing enough, this video sharing site can prove to be very effective. Since being purchased by Google it’s no coincidence that YouTube videos rank extremely well within Google search, even when not searching for video content you will still always be likely to see four or five videos pop up in around position 3 or so. This offers a perfect opportunity to generate genuine leads for your business. You also now have the added benefit of Monetizing your videos. Definitely one for the future as YouTube have introduced some very attractive advertising options. One of which being that you don’t pay for the video click if the video doesn’t stretch past 30 seconds. With the amount of views alone on some videos, it takes no stretch of the imagination to understand how large the entire audience on YouTube is.
YouTube is more a platform that you use to integrate with other networks to get the best out of your content strategy. For example a good addition to any social post is to drop in a link to a relevant video that you own to generate a video preview to compliment the article.
Facebook – Social Media
A social platform that needs no introduction, the book of face was always going to be a shoe in and a serious contender.
One thing that has to be the equivalent to lip gloss to an Essex girl is a Facebook page to a company. A definite must have for every company, especially as the search element of Facebook is growing day on day. Facebook pages tend to rank well in search too for both companies and sole traders given their feature rich content.
This is all backed up in a big way by the introduction of Facebook Ads. This is very accessible and the waiting times for ad approval are no where near the same as Google Adwords. After creating an advert, this is generally approved within a 24 hour period if not often sooner. The whole campaign setting couldn’t be easier, and the audience breakdown is really very simplistic.
You start by adding your keywords to appeal, so you can focus on specific business types. As you refine this, the audience figure comes down, which in this case is a good thing to ensure you are targeting the right areas.
Many will argue that Facebook does not quite rival Linked-In as Facebook is still more popular on a personal level. Although I would argue the quality of Facebook Ads stands up well to all social media on a B2B level. The only shortfall that Linked-In has are unstable updates and functionality that is often meaningless. This is an area that Facebook Ads exploit in that whilst you’re figuring out this quirky functionality, your Facebook Ads have been approved and running and generating quality leads.
And the winner is…
For me it’s a joint decision between Facebook and Linked-In. I feel Facebook is very close in the fight to be a top notch B2B social media marketing platform. With the stability that Facebook offers and the quality Ad network it rightfully deserves a mention here. Linked-In was never a doubt due to the focus on businesses and the addition of business associated groups.
Not to discount other platforms that are out there of course that are very useful and worth checking out. Social Media sites such as StackExchange, Quora and even Instagram to name a few.
Have fun with the social platforms and your business will too!
