Social media is a valuable and enriching tool for B2B businesses and should be an important part of a company’s PR strategy. According to Gartner, as many as 46% of B2B buyers turn to social media at the very beginning of their buying journeys, which means presence on these channels can make the difference between making the sale and not.
If you’re present on a variety of social channels, but still aren’t seeing the expected or desired levels of engagement, your issue could be consistency. Consistency is important for social media strategies because it creates constant visibility to audiences and demonstrates activity.
There are many simple ways you can easily achieve consistency in your social media posting, and we’ve laid out the key ones in the blog below.
Step 1: Make Time for Brainstorming
Creating a consistent social media strategy involves ensuring plenty of posts go out, which requires new and fresh ideas. To avoid ideas becoming stale, or posts not going out because there simply aren’t enough ideas, always set aside time for brainstorming. Think of topics, hashtags, themes and post styles that could create dynamic and different posts, and always add them to a spreadsheet or list that can be updated on-demand when an idea strikes.
Step 2: Create a Schedule in Advance
Marketing and PR are dynamic industries and there is always something new each day, which is exactly why you should avoid drafting social media posts at the last minute. By creating a monthly posting schedule in advance, you can get ideas fleshed out and signed off well in advance and avoid it dropping low in your priorities.
Step 3: Plan for the Unexpected
At the very last minute, press releases can be paused or partnerships delayed and you have to delay your social media post as a result. By creating a bank of go-to ‘extra’ posts, such as product benefits or industry highlights, that are signed off and ready to post, you can still consistently post despite the disruption.
Step 4: Share Out Information
Each post needs a purpose, but that doesn’t mean that every piece of information needs to be in just one post. By spreading information out, such as product features or research findings, you can create a higher number of posts while still ensuring each post still has purpose and provides the audience with value.
Step 5: Automate the Process
Automating the scheduling of social media posts is a simple way to take the manual pressure off, as well as save time. Scheduling tools offered by platforms such as HubSpot allow you to schedule one-off posts, as well as a bulk group of posts so you can easily execute a consistent social media strategy, even when you’re busy with other projects.
Step 6: Regularly Review Engagement
Diversifying your social media is a great way to keep posts dynamic, even when producing a high volume of content. However, it’s important to monitor which posts are successful with your audience. Most social media platforms provide in-house analytics which clearly highlight which formats and topics produce the most engagement. By using this information to adapt your drafts accordingly, you can best tailor them to your audience.
Creating and executing a consistent social media strategy provides an opportunity to grow your audience engagement and reach organically. If your audience is regularly reminded of your presence, when they’re choosing a service provider that you meet the requirements for, you’ll be front and centre in their mind.
At Ilex, we’re experts at curating an effective and formulated social media strategy that delivers your key messages to your audience and helps you to meet your objectives. To learn more, get in touch with us today.