When you think about SMM, which companies come to mind? For me, most of the companies that come to mind are B2C companies. You see influencers promoting clothes, foods etc., but rarely anything B2B related. And to be honest, you rarely see or feel the presences of B2B companies on social media. This should not be the case, as there are plenty of advantages with SMM (
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/08/11/the-top-10-benefits-of-social-media-marketing/#1eff6d471f80 )
This raises a question: How should B2B companies use social media? In my opinion, the main thing is to create meaningful content (surprise!). In order to make meaningful content, a target audience should be chosen. This helps social media marketers to create meaningful content. For example, Airbus uses social media to showcase themselves (
https://shortyawards.com/6th/flying-high-with-airbus ). This article tells, that Airbus has made Vines so that their customers can see how their new planes work, and they’ve had live videos on Youtube and Facebook from test-flights (Shorty Awards 2019). This shows that Airbus has targeted their audience, and in that way created meaningful content through social media for their customers. No wonder they were nominated as one of the best B2B companies on social media (Shorty Awards 2019).
Another important aspect that B2B companies should use in their SMM is a personality (
https://sproutsocial.com/insights/b2b-social-media-strategy/ ). This includes using humour, responding to posts on social media and being more informal (per Dominique Jackson from the aforementioned article). It’s easy to see why this is a good strategy. You build a more personalised and unique look about your company, thus differentiating yourselves from competitors. Even though B2B companies don’t directly interact individual customers, they still interact with human beings in other organisations, therefore highlighting the importance of the human aspect on social media accounts.
Which other social media strategies are important for B2B companies in your opinion?
Jere’s digital marketing journey 
A very insightful article. With B2B relationships both online and offline, the nature of the sales process and ongoing client relationship is largely value based. In other words, a business usually purchases from supplier to obtain a direct solution to their problem. Social media can be a powerful to deliver after-sales service and important aspects of deliverables such as technical support, a digital knowledge base (such as a wiki) or fast-response style communication. Many IT companies are active on live-chat platforms such as Messenger and are also active on LinkedIn, helping them gain new clients as they usually provide services as an urgent fix. Perhaps these are less humour based however they do offer a direct way to communicate with existing and new clients.
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Thanks, those are really good points. You are absolutely correct, services offered through e.g. Messenger and LinkedIn are more based on direct communication. What I could have added on my text is that informality in the aforementioned platforms is in my opinion valuable, as company’s in that way can get away from the stiff ”dear receiver” style of writing, and instead be personal and have more of a ”normal” converstation with customers. This of course depends on the nature of the conversation, but using social media for more informal discussions and platforms is definitely something useful even for B2B companies.
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As B2B are simply the hub for where people can trade services, I think their social media should reflect that. This means that I think they should re-post other peoples created content as it keeps inline with the direction their company operates within.
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True, this would also increase the incentives for people to post about them, as they’re posts would be exposed to more people.
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