Setting a solid social strategy and making a written plan can help your B2B thrive. Follow these steps to get you going in the right direction.

Set goals

It’s always best to decide where and what your organization needs to improve on. Do you need to increase your engagement, likes and shares? Or do you simply want to increase your followers and reach? These goals will be the building blocks for success when you set your strategy into motion.

Find your target audience

Who do you want to reach? What a silly question, right? Duh, you already know who you want to reach. It’s not that easy when it comes to social media. The people you’d usually target might not be the same people you’ll be able to reach on social media sites.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Who from your ideal customer is on social in a work capacity?
• What social media sites are they utilizing?
• Can they make decisions? If not, can they influence who can?

Answering these questions is vital when you’re figuring out where and how to share your content.

Decide what message you want to send

This is not the point where I ask you what kind of content you want to post (Don’t worry that’s coming). This is where you decide how you want your organization to be perceived.  What kind of personality do you want the world to see? Some organizations choose to be very modest and to the point, some organizations love to put a more human twist on their messages, and some are down-right hilarious. None of these personalities is bad or wrong, however the outward personality you choose should align with your target audience.

Deciding what to share

As a general rule of thumb you should not only share your organization’s content. This may sound counter intuitive since you obviously want more exposure for your business and not others, however it’s a proven strategy. Think of it like a cocktail party! When you mingle, the conversation isn’t always about you, and if it is people tend to stop listening. Only about 20% of what you share should be your own content. The rest can be industry related or just fun stuff like sharing local events, fun photos, or even some #MotivationalMondays. Another general rule of thumb is to pull related content from everywhere. Using only a handful of other sites or blogs will likely decrease interest.

Track your results

This is a no brainer.! Is what you’re doing working? Track your traffic changes and see what’s been working for you. Social media is ever changing so your strategy will evolve as you go. Take note of what content is getting the best reaction and reconsider content that isn’t getting favorable results. Post more of what works and really get your followers engaged and interested in what you have to say. These metrics will help you start back at the top of the list to continually improve your social strategy.

With these simple steps you can get a strong B2B marketing strategy in place and being seeing leads from this channel very quickly!