Quick and effective B2B social media strategy

I’m all about efficient and effective marketing. For my own business and B2B clients, there just isn’t the time to do it any other way.

Your market

There are dozens of social media choices, but the big 5 are:

1. Facebook

2. LinkedIn

3. Twitter

4. YouTube

5. Blogs

What the research says

A recent Hubspot report says that 5 p.m. is the most active time of day for Twitter users; noon and just after 7 p.m. are the most active times for Facebook users. The obvious implication is that people are not using Twitter and Facebook during business hours, which means that businesses are not using these tools for business. Of the Big 5, that leaves LinkedIn, YouTube and blogs.

The realities

Even if no one ever reads your social media posts and updates, the Google bots will. And with Google’s current focus on fresh content, this means that you still need to regularly contribute content to some social media outlets. So Twitter and Facebook are probably not going to drive sales, but they will contribute to online visibility. LinkedIn, YouTube, and blogs, on the other hand, have the potential to do both. So it just makes sense to focus on LinkedIn, your blog, and YouTube (in that order). Don’t waste time on Twitter and Facebook; just do what you need to do to keep the lights on.

Smart strategy for the small, growing B2B

You can create as many updates and posts as you want on LinkedIn—which is the channel that your market is using during business hours. You can also create as many posts as you want on your blog—which, if you have one, can be accessible through your website—another place your market will visit during business hours. The same is true for YouTube, but it’s impractical (creating videos is time-consuming).

Bear in mind that while the current Google algorithm rewards fresh content, it penalizes duplicate content. So don’t use the same material for your LinkedIn updates as you use for your blog posts.

With all this in mind, here is a smart strategy:

Create 2 paragraphs of content on a single topic each day. It doesn’t need to be earth-shattering, but it does need to be valuable in some way. Use one paragraph as a LinkedIn update and the other as a blog post.

Then cross link them; add the URL to your blog at the end of your LinkedIn update and a URL to your LinkedIn update at the end of your blog post. Note that you don’t need to add the URL to the specific blog post since your newest post will be at the top of your blog anyway.

Keep things simple: take care of LinkedIn first (since you already have the blog URL). Once you’ve submitted the LinkedIn update/post, copy the URL, add it to the blog post text, and post the entire paragraph to your blog.

Here’s an example:

LinkedIn update:

Google Analytics is a highly underutilized marketing tool mainly because many people find it overwhelming and can’t even begin to figure out where to start. Here are the 7 most important reports to review:

1. The Dashboard: a quick overview of traffic patterns

2. The Map Overlay: geographic origins of site visitors

3. Ecommerce Overview Report: used to measure anything that is tied to a goal

4. The Benchmarking Report: makes comparisons against industry standards

5. Goal and Funnel Reports: show how well the site is accomplishing goals and how well the sales funnel is working

6. The Traffic Sources Report: shows how visitors found the site

7. The Content Report: shows which site pages were the most popular.

Read more (URL to blog).

Blog post:

Google Analytics is experimenter-friendly and pretty much goof-proof. But the reports don’t tell users exactly what the data means, they just make it as easy as possible for them to figure it out for themselves (a little statistical analysis background is always helpful). One common mistake Google Analytics users make is interpreting the data too narrowly. For example, when they look at the keywords people are using to find their site, they assume that these are the keywords they should be focusing on. But what the keyword report doesn’t tell users is what keywords people are using to find the general product category—and maybe not finding the user’s site at all.

Read more (LinkedIn update URL)

For topics, think of passing along everything you learn as you learn it—especially aha moments. While you’re going about your day, a topic for the next day’s update and post may naturally occur to you. Write it down. Then expound on it before you leave and post it in the morning. This is going to take you or someone on your marketing team 30-45 minutes every day. Effective and efficient social media—there it is.