Marketing teams are busier and leaner than ever, and it’s difficult to juggle all of the elements needed to keep the B2B branding machine running.
Social media is one of the newest kids to sit at the marketing table, and it’s often one of the first disciplines to be neglected when things get hectic. Does posting really do anything for the business? Do you even need a social program? Social’s just a place for kids to do quirky Tik Tok dances and challenges, why should our team waste our time when we need to try and generate brand awareness and push people through the marketing funnel?
When we talk to our clients, we usually hear something along the lines of “Yeah, we know we need to pay more attention to social. It’s something we need to get back to, we just don’t have the time right now.”
B2B social media is still pretty misunderstood, but when your social program is running like a well-oiled machine, it can do wonders for your web traffic, brand awareness, company culture…the list goes on. Posts don’t have to be complicated—if you don’t have time to draft all original content, sharing thought leadership posts with clever captions and some hashtags is just as effective and takes a fraction of the effort.
Brands are guilty of “start-stopping” their social content. We’ve all seen it: A brand goes on a posting spree in 2015, then they ghost their own accounts for a year or two. Then something brings them back, trying to revive these accounts for another week before efforts again shift to another more pressing project.
Many companies look to posting best practices and try to follow those recommendations. It’s this pressure to post that often causes start-stop pattern. It’s important to remember, though, that you don’t have to follow the optimal recommended cadence if it isn’t sustainable. Better to post 2-3 times a week on your channels, than post five times in one week then disappear for two months.
If having enough content to feed those posts, don’t jump into social just yet. Your time is better spent taking the time to build up a reservoir of content so you aren’t always scrambling to pump out a last-minute blog or scrape together a thought-leadership article that may barely relate to your brand.
It’s OK to not be ready to turn on the lights when it comes to your social accounts, because when they do flicker on they need to stay that way.
We were able to help K2View establish a consistent organic social program that is sustainable and relevant.
We started by establishing which channels were the most important to them: LinkedIn and Twitter. Next, we evaluated their current posting cadence—just a few times a month—and determined we could increase that to three times a week with the goal of eventually featuring five posts per week before the end of 2020.
Once the cadence and platforms were established, we worked with the K2View team to determine topic pillars so we would have a stable foundation to pull content from. This consisted of thought leadership articles around DevOps and data privacy, product announcements, company culture features, and lines of business.
After spending just over a quarter on this new “social diet” their metrics improved significantly.
With consistency and dedication, any social program can see a significant improvement in performance. It’s not rocket science, but it does require time and commitment. If you need help with your social program, we’d love to connect.