5 Ways to Drive Up Engagement on B2B Social Media

Business-to-business social media marketing. These industries tend not to be as… social, amirite? This is a challenging conundrum that I’ve been working on for years.

I could be cheeky and say that the best way to get interactions on your social is to include a typo. I wouldn’t be wrong, but I also wouldn’t be helpful, so I won’t say that.

And while it does vary by industry and content type, I have seen some common trends that I can share with you to give you ideas about boosting engagement on social media. 

1. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR AUDIENCE

The most important thing is to identify what your audience cares about and address it with your content. This could be pain points, trends, forecasts, insights, or hacks, but you have to have something that your audience wants and add it to your content rotation.  

How you attack this angle is kind of a moot point. It could be sharing a blog link, an infographic, or a curated content share. The point is to hit the info they need consistently.

2. GET YOUR CREW INVOLVED

Sometimes this is one of the hardest things for me to drive home (especially in industries where many of us don’t enjoy being the center of attention). But I’ll say it louder for the people in the back: posts that feature reasonable quality pics of actual humans will always, always, always outperform stock photos or generic industry info.

Beg, steal or buy, but get your clients’ teams in on the action.

3. ASK FOR ENGAGEMENT

This works exceptionally well for industries with intelligent markets and thought leadership: ask for opinions about relevant topics, throw out information, and ask if your audience agrees or what information would be helpful. This is how to invite your audience to request information they would be interested in while boosting your algorithm.

4. ENGAGE BACK

To receive, we must first give. So if you want users to engage with your clients’ social, it’s essential to incorporate a comprehensive engagement strategy. This means engaging with comments on your posts, following and engaging partner and corporate accounts (as much as you can with the business pages), and sharing partner and industry content as a gesture of goodwill.

5. POST ON PERSONAL ACCOUNTS

I almost always recommend posting to key stakeholders’ personal accounts in addition to corporate ones. This ensures you get in front of the full range of your clients’ prospective clients, takes the pressure off of leadership to consistently post on social, and we usually see a significant increase in engagement from the personal pages.

IF THIS SOUNDS LIKE A LOT, THAT’S OKAY

You’re not wrong. And just keeping up with the best practices, latest tactics, and newest data (let alone implementing it) is a full-time job. So if you think you have bandwidth for your clients, that’s cool. My team is champing at the bit to help you do all social things.