B2B Monday Myth: More Is More on Social Media
by Emily Swet
The Myth: More Is More in Your B2B Social Media Strategy
The Truth: Scale Back on Quantity, Scale Up on Quality
Social media is growing up. At this point, the hustle to fill space is over. Audiences have set the pace of what they want to see, and when. It’s true that, as marketers, our goal is to move that needle – albeit with a deft hand. There is value in restraint: unbridled social calendars can have a detrimental impact on your goals. Take a moment to audit your current B2B social media strategy, and see if anything sounds familiar.
- What Are You Posting? Take a closer look at your content. Is there value to it? Or are you merely posting to meet your daily quotas? Think critically on this. While you do need to stay active throughout the week, posting your FAQs page just for the sake of having a post isn’t the path to engagement. Content that isn’t valuable to your audience won’t be valuable to your sales funnel either.
- Abandon the Spray & Pray Method. How many times and across how many platforms are you posting? There’s a good chance a large portion of your followers is the same across the social landscape. If you are blowing up their feed throughout the day, especially with invaluable posts (see above), you risk the chance of pushing them to hit the unfollow button.
- Who Actually Are Your Followers? For B2B businesses, this is especially important – it’s not about how many people are following you, it’s about whether they matter to you. Buying followers or hooking in demographics that aren’t in your customer base is a waste of time and budget. A focus on smaller, yet appropriate audiences will yield more valuable engagement for your brand (read: more shares, more click-throughs). If you haven’t already, creating customer personas will help you find your focus.
Since so much can be done on social media for free, it seems like a smorgasbord for strapped B2B marketing departments. Find your strength in reserve: refine your B2B social media strategy to the most helpful or interesting content, and you’ll see both your content longevity and customer engagement increase.
Continue ReadingThe 3 Most Important Factors of Any Social Media Campaign
by MGB2B
Social media is no longer something only younger generations participate in. Now more than ever, it’s important that your manufacturing company utilizes it to reach a wider audience. In doing so, you’ll get your products and services in front of people who might not have initially seen it. Building a social campaign can be a complicated process, but when done correctly, the payoff is sizable. The most important thing to remember is that campaigns are “living” pieces of your company. They need to be monitored throughout their lifetime to ensure they are running smoothly. And if not? Here are a few things to keep in mind…
Organic vs. Paid
You’ve surely heard the terms “organic” and “paid” when it comes to social traffic. Organic traffic is the traffic you get on your social account without having to pay. So, if someone finds your profile, likes a photo, shares a post, or leaves a comment, without any prompting, that’s organic traffic. Paid traffic, on the other hand, happens when you pay to have your posts boosted, ensuring they get in front of your desired audience. The likes, shares, comments, and follows that result directly from these paid campaigns are paid traffic.
So you’ve built your campaign, now what?
To ensure your campaign performs to the best of its ability, there are a few things to focus on:
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Your Audience
Who you are trying to reach with your message? There are a lot of great metrics tools out there that can help you determine the audience you are already reaching, which you can eventually build off of. Twitter, for example, has an entire section in their user interface that breaks down your audience. From your audience’s interests, to their buying style, wireless carrier, and demographics, you have an incredibly detailed picture. If your campaign not performing as well as you had hoped, analyze this picture. You have time to reconfigure and adjust your audience throughout the lifetime of your campaign, as long as your monitoring it.
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Your Message
This facet is closely tied to your audience, and varies from each one. Consider speaking to a 28 year old engineer differs versus a 50 year old executive. The interests, abilities, and knowledge of these two people vary greatly. Your message should be tailored to each. Since social media has the ability to speak directly to your audience as individuals (and they’ve come to expect it), make sure you do just that.
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Your Platform
Social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn all have a purpose, and they’re not necessarily the same. Instagram is strictly for photos or easily-digestible videos. Facebook is a melee of articles, photos, thought-pieces, and more. Hopefully, before you’ve created a campaign, you’ve chosen which platform works best for you, your message, and your audience. It’s easy to default to Facebook but if you notice your campaign taking a hit, take a step back. Review the pros and cons of each social site (and believe me, they all have pros and cons.) If the platform you’ve chosen doesn’t check most or all of your boxes, halt your campaign. Move the budget over to a platform better-suited for your needs. It’ll make a big difference in your ROI.
As with anything, there are more than just three factors that could affect your social media campaign performance – these are just the tip of the iceberg. If you want to get in front of the right people, with the right message, at the right time, you have to do your homework.
Continue ReadingB2B Monday Myth: Emails Should Always Be Responsive
by MGB2B
The Myth: Emails Should Always Be Responsive
Truth: Not All Email Programs Are Ready for Responsive Design
More and more people are using mobile devices to access Internet content. When you look at the time adults in America spend online, you won’t be surprised to find that mobile usage is higher than desktop. So, it’s no longer a question of whether mobile marketing is important. It’s now all about mobile users’ habits and which content format (as well as the content itself) is most effective.
So what about responsive emails for B2B brands? Of course, a mobile-friendly website is essential, and in this case, responsive design is your best bet. (It has been for a few years now.) Responsive web design refers to a site’s ability to adapt its layout to different screen sizes and devices. You don’t want your prospects to be pinching and zooming on their phones to try to find what’s on your site. You might think that your marketing emails should be responsive too. It would allow users to engage more easily with your content, right?
Not necessarily.
Responsive emails are certainly ideal for some email programs. There is an issue, however: responsive design is not supported by all email clients. For example, some Android and Windows phone users will find their device doesn’t fully support media queries. This means responsive emails don’t show up on their phones, at least not formatted the way they should be. This can be incredibly harmful to your email campaign – an entire community of users is now unable to see your content as intended.
And when your prospects can’t read your emails, they are more likely to delete them.
The takeaway for you? Be careful about how you create your emails. You can craft and target your message perfectly, but the way it looks when it reaches your audience on their mobile device plays a huge role in whether they actually read it. A custom design created in a one-column format is usually the most effective route. Your prospects don’t all open email in the same programs, so make sure your designers are using the lowest common denominator to ensure that 100% of your audience is seeing your email correctly.
One day – and we anxiously await this day – all email programs will be able to handle responsive design. But until then, it’s best to play it safe.
Questions about email design or marketing strategy? Drop us a line.
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