Social media is one of the most powerful channels for B2B marketers. The reason for this is the huge shift in the way that B2B buyers actually buy things today. But unfortunately, most B2B companies are going about social the wrong way, and we've got to get this right.
If we're going to get the attention of our buyer, when we do get this right, really good things happen, and buyers will remember the problem that we can solve for them. They're going to value our unique point of view. And ultimately they're going to believe that we are the right and best option for them when they're ready to move.
This is the promise that social media marketing done the right way can be for all of us, B2B marketers.
In fact, 84% of B2B buyers or decisionmakers are using social media at some point during the decisionmaking process. Now they're not using it like Google. It's not a buyerinitiated media like that, but they are going to social channels like LinkedIn to connect and engage with their peers and to stay informed about their industry.
And so it is a great channel for us to connect and engage with buyers as well. Now that's the good news. There, there are some challenges, some bad news here, and that is there are a lot of businesses out there in social media. In fact, according to LinkedIn, there are 58 million businesses out there on LinkedIn today, and they're all posting something.
Some of them are posting a lot. Some of them are posting a little, but the good news is that most of the stuff that companies are posting and social media today is really, really bad. And so this is the opportunity for us to connect and engage with our buyers in a way that's not as bad as what our competition might be doing.
I don't know about you, but when I go out on social media, like LinkedIn and I look at what specifically companies are sharing on social media, I'm not seeing stuff that gets me that way. You know, for example, I see a lot of stock photography and jargonfilled cliched posts that really have no value to the reader whatsoever.
This is our opportunity. If we're going to connect and engage and get the attention of buyers that matter to us. So instead of doing those things, the things that we need to think about doing are being more of a teacher than a seller. We want to educate and inform. We want to talk about the problems that our customers are having or prospects are having and what are the solutions to those problems.
We want to provide real business value in the channel, even if they're not ready to buy from us today. And then finally, we want to humanize our content and engage with our customers on these platforms. So when you think about social media and really what our goals should be, if we're going to connect and engage with buyers in a way that's going to get them excited and get their attention, we really need to think about how we get more of the right prospects to spend more time with our brand.
And that's really what this webcast will cover. We will walk you through a threestep process that begins with planning.
00:00 Introduction
0:08 Why You're Not Getting Buyer's Attention in Social and How to Fix It
5:28 Top B2B Social Hacks to Generate Demand
9:34 What is Dark Social and Dark Funnel?
11:04 How to Measure the Success of B2B Social
14:54 Do This if You Want B2B Buyers to Talk to You
22:48 How to Market to All of Your Prospects All of the Time
23:56 Building an Effective Content Strategy For B2B Social
28:07 The Only Way to Get More Buyers to Engage With Your Social Content
34:29 Running Effective Paid Campaigns in Social Media
36:08 Does Your Content Pass the Sniff Test?
43:58 How to Optimize Social Campaigns
50:37 Complimentary Social Media Analysis Just for You
53:01 What is the Difference Between Search and Social?
54:21 How to Stand Out Over Your Competitors in Social Media
55:16 How to Get Demand Gen and Social Media to Work Together
57:46 How to Reach Qualified B2B Buyers With Paid Social
59:18 Recap + Q&A