How to Organically Build a Social Media Following as a B2B Company

Social media is a hugely helpful tool for businesses, especially those that function as providers for other companies. Using social media to promote your B2B operations helps you communicate directly with your target audience… provided your target audience actively follows you on your business profiles.

Let’s talk about ways you can organically build your business’ following (and, crucially, engagement) on social media.

Why Engagement is Critical for B2B Social Media Success

By measuring your social media success based on pure numbers, you are focusing on statistics that ultimately don’t matter. The much more important metric to determine is how engaged your audience is with what you post.

Fortunately, your engagement rate is relatively easy to calculate:

(Number of interactions/number of publications)/Number of followers X 100

By dividing your total interactions (likes, comments, shares, clickthrough, etc.) by the number of posts you shared, then dividing that number by your follower count and multiplying that result by 100, you can quantifiably see how much your audience participates with your social media activity.

Be warned: this number will look extremely small. It’s supposed to! Generally speaking, anything between one to three-and-a-half percent is seen as good engagement. A little more means you’re doing great, while anything less means you need to reexamine and readjust.

The Question Remains… What Can Be Done to Organically Boost Your Following?

Fortunately, there’s a lot you can do to encourage people to follow you. We frequently recommend the following:

Be helpful and valuable.
You’re likely to feel a little tempted to treat social media as another means of pushing your services, almost like free advertising. Resist this temptation.

The real value of a business’ social media presence is to demonstrate the value that a prospect could enjoy by subscribing to its services—not to bombard them with sales pitches. Offer up some free expertise, and prospects will start looking to you for answers… making them more likely to reach out to you when dealing with something big.

Identify your audience’s priorities.
On a related note, it also helps to understand what your followers care about and share content that reflects their concerns. It will do you no good to talk about Topic A if 95 percent of your followers are primarily concerned about Topic Q.

Time your posts strategically and consistently.
Take the time to identify the best time to post on social media based on your industry and when your audience is most likely to be online… and once you’ve found the right time, stick to it. Various tools and platforms make it much easier to manage a schedule, so consider using these to simplify managing your business' social media.

Invest in compelling, evergreen content.
While commenting on current events can be a promising part of a B2B social media strategy, it is equally crucial to have reliable, consistent information that doesn’t really change over time available to your followers. This can help you maintain your credibility with minimal effort with consistent social proof shared over time.

Repurpose content.
Different audience members will gravitate toward different content formats—some will like reading blogs and status updates, while others will prefer watching videos and looking over brochures. Reworking your content into multiple formats will give you more coverage as you communicate with your audience.

Promote your social media.
Your target market won’t ever follow you on social media if they don’t realize you have a presence there. Do your best to direct them there through your other marketing channels, and you’ll grow a more consistent audience for your social media efforts.

Track your social media performance.
Different metrics will help you identify ways to optimize your engagement levels by showing you what works and what doesn’t. With this information, you can track patterns and adjust your activities accordingly.

Interact with your audience.
Social media is not a billboard. It’s social media… social is right in the name. Take every opportunity to strike up a conversation with your audience members and bring them into the fold. Answer questions, ask for feedback, and encourage conversation… always remember to be straightforward and courteous.

Show off company culture.
What makes your company special, different than the other options your audience has to consider? How can you communicate this difference with those you want to work with?  Share posts about the people you have working at your company to show the human side of your business. People like working with people, so put the focus on the people.

In Short, If You Want Followers… Give Them a Reason to Follow You

There’s a lot of value you have to offer, and by sharing this value through your social media activity, you can more effectively get people to follow you and interact with your business… eventually moving them to your website and, ultimately, the services you offer.

We can help you do that. Give us a call at 888-546-4384 to find out how.