#fail: How to Lose Friends & Influence Nobody with B2B Social Media

“Everyone” knows that social media is the key to #success. “Studies” have shown that harnessing the power of so-called social “influencers” can yield ROI that is like, literally, millions of times higher than other methods of outbound marketing.

We’re not sure what other forms of marketing these studies measure but the point is, when you consider the fact that the top nine or 10 influencers count 500 million people as followers, the open rate on your latest email campaign is not even worth talking about. So how do you get there?
Experts say it helps if you’re already famous:

“It helps to already be famous or to become famous to become a social media influencer…”

—  Digital Marketing Expert

Thanks, Digital University of the Obvious. But the point is, millions of people are using social media every second of every day to communicate their “brands” to millions of other people. Does that mean you should be doing the same thing for your B2B messaging even if your prospects are too busy to help you celebrate Talk Like Yoda Day? Of course it does. Yes, hmmm.

Are the results there to justify the time and effort, assuming you’re not selling makeup, lifestyle advice or a personal brand built around your six-pack abs? If by “results” you mean qualified B2B leads, the answer is probably no.

Do You Like Fruit? Do You Like Me? Please Follow Me.

But leaving “results” aside for the moment, there are still lots of ways you can use social media to, you know, be on social media. Here are just a few.

Go Casual: Post Casual Relatable Content (CRC). Do you like fruit? Here’s a video of me eating fruit.

Get Trendy: Intern-led social media campaigns show your clients that while you may not know what’s going on in their businesses, you are still relevant AF.

Share Political Opinions: The name of the game is “engagement” and nothing sparks a spirited conversation like politics.

Hot Tip: Everyone loves a rant.

Commemorate Quirky Holidays: Don’t give your B2B customers the impression that you didn’t know it was National Gumdrop Day. Because that would be #lame.

Traffic in Celebrity News: Coattail your way into whatever the celebrity buzz is. Just because your prospects are busy managing their businesses doesn’t mean they won’t appreciate you keeping up with the Kardashians.

Badger Your Followers: An unending stream of interactive content and questions is a (forced) conversation starter. Who agrees with me?!

Go Where All the Cool Kids Are: Keeping up with the latest platform is an investment of time you’ll never get back, but isn’t that the whole point of TikTok? Get your CEO out there and let’s dance.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: LinkedIn is a great place to practice the art of PR gone wild. Long, boring announcements that tout your latest groundbreaking/certification/award or “value-add” proposition are what makes this platform so riveting. The best part is the hostage-like show of appreciation from all of your employees.

The Bathroom Break: Post every three hours, updating your followers on everything from the weather to lunch to… bathroom breaks.

Hash it Out: For maximum impact, include #as #many #hashtags #as #possible. In fact, use a generator to push your posts into weirdly out-of-place conversations by mining the most popular (and most competitive) tags like these:

$pend the Marketing budget: Never pass up an opportunity to boost your posts with Facebook Ad Manager. Don’t set any criteria for the audience, just throw $bills$ at Zuckerberg.

Love Yourself Get the party started by liking your own posts!

Is Your B2B Social Media Not Working?

Don’t get us wrong, at Innovaxis we love those TikTok dances —troubling security risks be damned!— and we are always grateful for any excuse to talk like pirates or take pictures of our donuts. But if you’re spending a lot of time and effort on social media for B2B marketing and you’re not seeing results, we can tell you why, matey. You wouldn’t be the first to flush a lot of money down the social media toilet  – the seat was still warm when you got there. But B2B marketing is different.

We can help. Want to learn how to really drive more leads to your B2B business? Give us a call or click on the link below.