5 B2B social media truths — and how to make them work for you

Let me start by saying I’m not one of VantagePoint’s in-house social media gurus. I’m an account manager witnessing the talents of our PR/content marketing team go to work for our clients. I’m involved in the front-end strategic discussions and content creation decision-making, but I’m a step back from the execution — giving me an interesting perspective as I observe the trends unfolding.

Over the last year, two of my clients have launched or re-launched content marketing/social media endeavors, and for the third, we’ve been testing various content types to continually boost engagement.

Here are 5 observations that have rung true for all three B2B brands:

1. Quick videos with on-screen text boost engagement.
   It’s become common knowledge that video content is good for social media. But when comparing types of video content, specifically on Facebook, we’ve seen a significant boost in engagement involving short videos (less than 90 seconds) with on-screen text, removing the need for audio. Facebook’s autoplay feature means these videos are often playing as soon as users encounter them, and without the commitment required to open the video and turn up the volume, viewers are more likely to watch them play out.
2. Posts with photos or graphics perform better.
   When scrolling through your social media feeds, which posts catch your eye? The ones with the photos, right? We have data that shows this is true for B2B as well, where posts with images perform better in terms of engagement — often significantly so — than those without.
3. Having a posting calendar cuts down on labor.
   It’s best practice to have a content calendar for your content marketing efforts, supported by a posting calendar to detail how this plays out across various social media channels. If you don’t put in the front-end effort to map this out, you’re likely wasting valuable hours searching for relevant content to share. (But when you do need to curate content, check out these best practices for how to do so effectively and efficiently.)
4. Getting personal works.
   People care about people. Posts such as photos of company events or dealer training sessions or blog posts from the perspectives of long-tenured employees tend to have higher-than-usual engagement. Tap into the people in your enterprise to help drive a better connection to those outside of it.
5. It’s pretty obvious which sales team members know how to leverage corporate social media efforts.
   There are typically a select few employees who regularly engage with the corporate accounts, and teams who have been trained tend to do a much better job. Be sure to train sales teams about where you’re active online and how they can use this to their advantage by sharing posts within each channel, sending direct links to content to prospects or encouraging social media follows among their customer base.