Social media is a smart way to enhance your marketing campaigns by sharing your content and other things that would be of interest to your audience, as well as identify prospects and augment your sales efforts. Social media campaigns are often one of the first initiatives a new marketing manager wants to implement, but also are one of the first things to get cut due to performance issues.
So why do social media campaigns fail for B2B tech marketers? Read below to get our take.
You're not adding value
If you’re using social media as a B2B tech marketer you’re probably doing it as part of an inbound marketing campaign and not just to have a presence. If that is the case it’s extremely important to make sure that your content is valuable for your audience and helps them through the buyer’s journey.
Social media is an extremely valuable tool when implementing an inbound marketing campaign. One place that social media really shines is in attracting potential prospects.
Marketers can add value on social media by sharing content that is geared towards the awareness phase of the buyer’s journey and engaging in conversation on social. If you’re only promoting your company or sharing things that are not relevant to your audience’s interests, you will not see the results you’re hoping to see.
You’re too focused on selling
Social media is an awesome way to augment your sales activity, but isn’t something you should use only to promote your own product or service. If your feeds are nothing but self-promotion you’ll likely turn your followers off.
So how do you effectively use social media without being salesy? I like to recommend the 6/3/1 rule. The 6/3/1 rule is pretty simple. Basically, it means that for every ten posts (6+3+1=10) a marketer should break down the posts as follows:
Six posts should be curated content that you are sharing and commenting on. This could be an article you found that you want to share an add a comment to, or posting using a popular hashtag and “joining the conversation.”
Three posts should be sharing your own blog posts. When sharing your own content on social media you will want to be sure to write a unique social post as well as share a photo or graphic that is relevant to your post. That will help to grab someone’s attention.
One post can be a direct sales promotion or link to your own landing page or content offer. After all, you’ve shared so much valuable content with your audience you deserve to do some self-promotion!
You’re not spending time on it
As much as we’d all like for this to be the case, social media isn’t something that can be done without effort. You really need to dedicate time (and sometimes money) to a social media campaign for it to work for you!
A surefire way to a successful social media strategy is to plan for and dedicate time to it. Marketers that know the value of social media spend time on creating content calendars, engaging in social media, and actively using the platforms (rather than just passively sharing content on them).
So, before you say social media isn’t working for you, take a step back to determine why it’s not working. There’s a good chance that you might not be spending the time or putting in the effort that a successful social media campaign needs.
