B2B Social Media Do’s and Don’ts [VIDEO]//

Since the launch of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, social media usage has grown in popularity – so much so that nowadays for many companies it’s almost a business ‘must have’ rather than a ‘nice to have’.

Being ‘free’ to set up and use, it’s understandable why, in this day and age of stretched marketing budgets, this medium has great appeal. Lots of companies have taken to using social media channels to promote their business – some take to it like ducks to water, while some need a bit more of a helping hand.

So when it comes to social what should companies be doing? And more importantly what are the things they really should avoid doing – watch this video to find out, or read my top 10 below:

Don’t…

Bombard your followers with hundreds of posts on a daily basis. One sure-fire way of annoying your follower base is by overwhelming their ‘social’ newsfeeds with lots of unnecessary posts. It’s time consuming to produce and generally if you’re over posting it’s highly likely that the quality of your content will start to suffer.
Post for the sake of posting or post because the plan says you have to post x times a day on Twitter. If you don’t have something useful, interesting or entertaining to say; don’t say anything. Having a well thought out content plan or schedule in place should help avoid this happening.
Use exactly the same post across each social media platform – tailor your content to your audience and to the platform in question. Research who your audience is on each platform – don’t assume they are the same on each. This doesn’t mean that you can’t share the same content across different platforms, if appropriate; it just shouldn’t be done as a default.
Ride on the tail of a trending hashtag when it has absolutely nothing to do with your business / products / services or interests as an organisation. It’s easy to fall into the trap – just because #Wimbledon is trending don’t try to shoehorn your content into a tennis-related post. If the trending hashtag is something your company is genuinely interested in then great. But if you’re having to force a connection between your content and the hashtag, don’t do it.
Ignore or delete negative comments – however tempting it may be. Make sure you have a crisis management plan or process in place on how you will deal with these types of comments and make sure all your social media contributors are fully aware of what to do if the situation arises.

Do…

Set objectives and goals and use the correct KPIs to measure them. Understanding what your social media activity is trying to achieve gives the team a clear direction to aim for and a way of judging how well the activity is performing.
Use humour or inject a bit of personality into your posts where appropriate. Social media is a more relaxed environment compared to other mediums and the benefit is that it gives an ideal outlet to let your brands personality shine through.
Plan – maybe not all of your activity but if you follow the 60:30:10 ratio where 60% of your activity is pre-planned; 30% is topical content and 10% is up-to-the-minute posting, it’s a good base to start from.
Measure, evaluate, tweak, test and learn. The digital landscape doesn’t stand still and neither should you. By regularly evaluating where you are and how well your social activity is performing against your objectives (testing different elements – content formats, times of posting etc), you’ll constantly be learning about what makes your audience tick or more importantly ‘like/share/comment’
Look at alternative ways to display your content – can you make it more visual? Use of infographics/video/imagery and graphics can help make content more appealing and easy to consume.

The beauty of social is that there are no hard and fast rules on how you should use it. When done properly, it can add value by connecting you with your customers in the social space with the added bonus of allowing your true brand personality to shine.

At Factor 3 we love all things social and all things B2B. If you have a specific B2B social media issue you would like to discuss why not get in touch.