This might come as no surprise but online activity has risen exponentially during lockdown, seeing a one-year growth in the space of just three months. Of course, social distancing has caused some businesses to take a hard hit, but it has also created an exciting opportunity.
To put it plainly, there have never been this many eyeballs on social media. Aside from providing an addictive pastime, social networks allow people in isolation to feel connected to the outside world and access information with a simple tap of their thumb. For example, Twitter has become a one-stop-shop for real-time news, resulting in an 8% increase in registered users.
And it’s not just a consumer phenomenon: LinkedIn reported a three-fold surge in traffic to its learning platform, and B2B tech companies posting marketing material are enjoying higher engagement.
This peak in scrolling, liking and sharing means your prospects are more receptive to social media content than ever before. You now have an unprecedented advantage to target them via these channels – but, if you don’t do this right, you risk missing out. Now is the time to analyse and finetune your digital marketing activities.
Read on to find out the critical B2B social media insights you should unearth with a social media audit to optimise your digital marketing strategy:
Want to audit your B2B social media channels and unlock digital marketing success? Send us an email.
Who are your followers?
You spend hours drafting, designing, planning and posting, but who is listening? You may have hundreds or thousands of followers, but that’s not worth much if they’re not the right ones. For instance, engaging your own employees on social media is great for company culture, but it’s not going to lay the groundwork for winning sales interactions.
You also need to make sure the professionals scrolling through your feed have the right job roles: your followers may work for prospect companies but might not be the ones who need your services or solutions – or could be too junior to make the call.
Discover who your followers really are. Once you know this, you can find out who’s missing and how to get your content in front of them.
Where are your followers based?
Social media transcends geographic boundaries and propels people’s ideas from one side of the world to the other in seconds. However, location can be important.
If your audience is made up of users from just one region, other territories you want to target might slip through the net. You may have sales reps across many countries and continents, but they’ll have a hard time kick-starting conversations or closing deals in places where your organisation and products aren’t known.
Equally, if your follower base is international but your content only resonates with part of it, you risk losing engagement with professionals who speak a different language, celebrate different occasions or care about different events.
That’s why you should analyse where your followers are based and verify that your content is driving brand awareness in all your regions of interest.
Request a B2B social media audit to win at digital marketing.
Which B2B influencers should you follow and engage with?
Sharing and viewing content online is a mutual affair. It’s not just about who follows you, but also who you follow and engage with. Whatever your industry is, thought leaders, journalists and experts alike influence your prospects with their social media content. This means you have to keep up with their news and interact with them whenever possible.
Measure the authority of the accounts you follow, identify the key influencers in your space and make sure you’re on their radar. How? Share their posts, “tag” them when highlighting their work and maximise your exposure to users that matter.
What are your competitors doing and is it working?
You may think you have digital marketing strategy all figured out, but there’s always space for improvement. And who better to teach you a thing or two than other players in your sector who are doing social media right, agree?
Keep your followers close and your competitors closer by monitoring what they post, how often and what kind of response they get. Bear in mind, depending on their market share, operations and other factors, what works for them might not exactly work for you. But remember: knowledge is power. So, be aware of their social media tactics, what they’re doing well and establish how you can learn from them.
As more professionals than ever before shift their focus online, companies have an unexpected opportunity to reach and engage them. Auditing your social media channels, key users and competitor profiles will unlock invaluable insights, empowering you to perfect your social media strategy and make the most of this momentum. You may not get another chance.
We can help you uncover crucial B2B social media insights. Email us to start your journey to digital marketing success.
By Claudia A.
