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B2B MARKETING ASSIGNMENT

IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN B2B MARKETING

Major reasons to use social media for B2B marketing

1. Lead Generation

Facebook and other social media networks represent a large source of

potential clients for businesses. Of course, the majority of these users cannot
be B2B clients, but still, no other online properties provide the same
opportunity.Networks like LinkedIn have even more benefits for B2B, because
they are business-oriented. There is absolutely no shortage of opportunity to
connect with potential partners and clients because of the popularity of these
networks.

For example, LinkedIn had 467 million active users in the third quarter of 2016,
according to Statista. For marketers, this means that it is a goldmine of
potential leads, and LinkedIn has already been ‘dug’ for years.

In 2011, marketers were able to generate 1.8 billion leads on LinkedIn. This
result actually dwarfed the performance of Facebook and Twitter, because it
was almost 300 percent more effective!

Social media users can be worth much more than website visitors, because
they are exposed to updates, promotional offers, and news from a business
every day. As the result, they get to know the company better.

2. Ideas for Strong Content

To acquire links, companies used to build manufactured backlinks at scale. This

was one of the most popular strategies in the past, but now it’s ineffective.

The hottest strategy in the game right now is content marketing, which
involves producing and publishing high-quality content online. The content
should be attractive to viewers so they would want to link their own content to
it, or maybe share it on social media naturally.

For B2B companies, social networks thus represent a source of ideas for future
marketing content. For example, they could analyze the Facebook newsfeed
and identify interests, trending topics, and other relevant information.

Twitter also plays a huge role in idea generation. The platform’s search bar is
where the brainstorming process begins. For example, you can generate a
range of related information to your topic by entering one of the following
queries into the searchbar:

 How to + Industry Keyword

 Question + Industry Keyword

 Why is + Industry Keyword

For example, a writing company could use the first option to determine

whether social media users look for assistance with writing by searching for
“how to get the best essay tips.”

The articles that have the most retweets are the ones to look for. Their
popularity is the deciding factor for marketing success if you decide to use the
topics they described.

Now, all that’s left is to produce great and helpful social media content using
these ideas. Why does it have to be great and helpful? An average American
person consumes 33 gigabytes of media per day. Other developed countries
have comparable figures as well.

In other words, if you don’t stand out, you’re not likely to get the attention you
need to make this work.

3. Link Building

For B2B, link building can often be more effective with social media rather than
pursued via more aggressive means. If implemented properly, it can provide
valuable traffic to B2B sites through social media.
The content shared on Facebook and Twitter can drive brand awareness and
therefore drive new visitors to a company’s official website. If the content gets
retweeted/shared, its popularity grows, which is perfect for providing visibility
before a larger audience on behalf of the company itself.

This audience may use the content for its own purpose. The most important
thing is that it contains a link back to the website of the company that created
the content.

So, the takeaway here is that the content needs to be shareable. This means
that sharing process should be simplified and the content itself should be
appealing.

Conclusion

Well, now we know that social media is equally important for B2B. It drives
traffic, helps with content generation, and generates leads. Clearly, not taking
advantage of this tremendous opportunity would be an unreasonable decision,
to say the least.