Ted Nitka, director social solutions at Spiceworks, offers tips to generate engagement from your audience on social
Social media continues to reshape the way B2B brands reach, engage with, and sell to prospects and existing customers. It has allowed brands to more effectively target potential customers and provide the information they need to make informed purchasing decisions. While many brands do an outstanding job fostering social conversations and cultivating influencers, we still see widespread examples of social media as a broadcast mechanism, a microphone for marketing messages and jargon that doesn’t move the needle.
Real, meaningful conversations can happen online, and they can yield tangible results for both the customer and the brand. Engaged audiences buy more and do so more often. They feel like their concerns are heard, questions are answered and there’s someone who cares about them at an otherwise faceless company. Everyone wins.
Creating real engagement and building social advocates can be tricky, but is eminently achievable if you follow a few basic tips:
1. Listen first
While broad, horizontal platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn garner most of the headlines, social media is actually becoming more focused. People are coming together in more niche networks to talk about everything from model aeroplanes to classroom lesson plans and medical records. Teachers, lawyers, doctors all find each other online to discuss the unique challenges and joys of work. As networks mature, they develop their own quirks and personalities. On Spiceworks for instance, IT professionals are fostering a community fascinated by bacon, zombies, gaming and other personal interests. Brands that listen and integrate these interests into their advertising and marketing campaigns have an opportunity to be part of the club in a way that humanises the brand and appeals to their customers’ passions.
2. Be human
You’re a human, act like one. Share your personal interests with community members, and ask them about theirs. Help answer their technical questions, even if they aren’t about your brand and occasionally, when the community calls for it, remind them how good your products or services are. Above all, don’t pretend to be the brand. Be you. Share photos of your amazing stamp collection, recount the winning of a local hotdog eating contest or the epic goal you scored on the pitch. People prefer to speak to a person, not a business, and you’re sure to build goodwill over time by just being yourself.
3. Educate
Don’t just sell. If an industry network has formed online, it’s probably being used as a support forum for members to help each other solve problems and educate themselves. If you’ve found where your audience is congregating, chances are they want to hear what you have to say. Brands have the opportunity to play a vital and direct role in the education process, but no one is going to listen if they feel like they’re always being sold to. Frankly, your prospects don’t want to hear a broken record of your brand messages over and over again. You’re an expert on your company’s products and probably some of the competition as well, and better yet, you’ve got great access to internal product experts who can help the community as a whole. Become a resource for the community to ask questions and get your experts involved. They’ll naturally start to educate the community and become the go-to resource members need to do their jobs more effectively.
4. Give it away
Profession-based networks are becoming the place where your prospects are connecting with their peers and consuming the vital information they need to get their work done. Brands can play a pivotal role in helping inform their prospects but only if the information is readily accessible and easy to find. For instance, marketers have an innate desire to gate everything. You know, the barrier that requires interested parties to provide personal details before getting access to information. Doing so helps drive leads. However, the unintended consequence is that prospects turn to another source for their information, a source that doesn’t require them to give up their emails and phone numbers. So give this a whirl. Remove the barriers and reap the benefits of your content becoming more social. You may be surprised where you see it emerge.
5. Go beyond online
Most networks your prospects are engaging in have annual conferences or regional events where members get together to talk shop and learn about the latest trends in their field. For example, Edmodo, a network and platform for teachers and students, holds EdmodoCon each year, Spiceworks holds SpiceWorld, and there are many others. The events become a physical manifestation of the network.
These events also give marketers an opportunity to meet community members they’ve been chatting with online. They provide a venue where brands can be seen, be heard and forge deeper personal relationships with prospects. Taking those relationships to the next level will move you from being just another face online to a living, breathing fountain of knowledge and entertainment the community will look forward to talking shop with.
These tips, when put into action, can help B2B brands become vital resources for their prospects and generate the level of engagement that turns social media participation into strategic, lead-generating programmes – with good fun thrown in along the way.
