Richard H. Levey from Chief Marketer wrote a great post about B2B Marketing on Facebook – not B2C, that’s overkill (even though a lot has still to be tested).
B2B and social networks seems talking too little these days, so we may learn a bit from some cool experience.
Chief Marketer recently talked with Zach Welch, vice president of client services at social media news feed consultancy BrandGlue, who shared some best practices for B2B marketers who want to make the most of their “friendships” on Facebook.
Remember that you’re talking to a high-level audience.
One difference between using Facebook to talk to a business, as opposed to a consumer, audience is how status updates are phrased.
Don’t be passive—get people involved.
“You don’t want a passive status update,” says Welch, referring to the site’s main sharing mechanism. “People push out a piece of content saying ‘look at this awesome article we just published.’
Don’t be afraid to have a little fun.
That said, there’s room for quirky content – which Welch calls “community builders” – provided followers respond well to it. In mid-October, marketing automation and demand generation firm Eloqua posted a photo of an employee’s puppy, along with a request for “Thumbs up if you like our newest employee”. That photo generated more than 90 likes on a fan base of what was then 4,000 people.
Post regularly, but pace yourself.
Consistency and pacing of posts on a B2B firm’s Facebook page similarly represents a fine line. “A lot of times in B2B people don’t have faith in social media’s value,” says Welch. “They don’t assign resources to social media, and if they do it is to people who have a lot on their plates. They may do one or two posts a week when they need to be constantly reaching their audience and posting once a day.”
Consider the timing of your posts.
Another difference in the way consumer and B2B marketers use Facebook concerns posts over weekends. For consumer-focused companies, this is a no-brainer: Weekends are when consumers have more time to both comparison shop and make purchases.
[Via Chief Marketer]
