Without a doubt, the 2020 pandemic will be seen as a historic dividing line. The world at large may be looking forward to eventually returning to something resembling “normal,” but it’s critical that business leaders get used to the idea that certain things will likely never be the same.

Our lives have changed, businesses have changed – sales and marketing much change with them.

One of those key changes has been the shift away from the centuries-old practice of physically meeting with a potential customer to begin the sales relationship. Instead, a new system of digital-first sales strategies is taking its place. Which puts a new focus on B2B social media marketing.

Let’s dive into a few critical B2B social media strategies that work for any industry in a post-pandemic world.

Create a B2B Social Media Marketing Strategy with SMART Goals

Just as with any marketing channel, any social media strategy should be based on specific goals if it has any chance of success. You’ll need to define specific and measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your business’s social media.

Whatever your goals, you’ll need to define them so you can measure your success against them farther down the line.

But what is success to your company? You might be trying to use social as an acquisition channel. Or perhaps you’re looking to increase your reach, drive more traffic to your company’s blog, or generate leads. Whatever your goals happen to be, they will dictate what metrics you should track.

B2B Social Media Marketing SMART Goal Example

Check out this example of a SMART goal set by a hypothetical B2B social media marketer whose business is just getting started on social media:

Goal: To build brand awareness on social media

Specific: I want to increase our brand’s awareness with regular posts on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

I will increase our posts to Twitter from once to three times per day, post every other day on Instagram, and increase weekly publishing on LinkedIn and Facebook from three to six times each week. Content creation will also increase, from two blog posts per week to four posts per week.

Measurable: Our goal is a 5% increase in engagement overall.

Attainable: Our average engagement rate increased by 3% last month when we increased our posting frequency and spent more time writing engaging with followers.

Relevant: By improving engagement, we will boost brand awareness, generate more leads, and give the sales team more opportunities.

Time-bound: By the end of the month.

SMART Goal: By the end of this month, our average engagement rate across our social media channels will see a 5% improvement with an increase of our social media post frequency and concentrating on thoughtful content and valuable follower interactions.

Show Thought Leadership by Sharing Original Content

This might seem obvious, but far too many businesses try to establish their social media presence by simply curating content from other sources.

In fact, your target audience is pretty savvy – they can tell the difference between original content, and something you just shared so you can say you are active on social media.

Your B2B social media marketing plan can’t just be to distribute other’s content. B2B marketers need to be content marketers in order to have a strong positive impact.

When you have high-quality and valuable original content to share, you’ll need to establish a schedule to post to your various platforms regularly.

For the Ultimate Social Media Success Experiment with Content & Posting Time

Once you’ve proven that you’re capable of maintaining a regular posting schedule and want to dive a bit deeper into audience insights, you’ll be ready to move on to this step.

There are countless articles out there explaining the various best practices for when and what you’re posting – but you’ll come to find that every audience is a little different. You’ll want to run some experiments to determine what will work best for your brand and audience.

There are countless options for experiments you can run on your channels. Check out these suggestions to get inspired:

• Switch between asking questions and providing statistics in your copy to see which your audience responds more to.
• Add emojis to see if engagement improves.
• Post more or less frequently.
• Segment your audience to test how different groups react to a post or ad.
• Spend more time replying to posts and interacting with your audience.

Are you looking for a little more insight into how you can improve your B2B business’s social media presence during the post-COVID recovery? Book your free, no obligation consultation with Asset Digital Communications’ founder, Mary-Jane Owen, today!