There are more and more social media platforms popping up every week, but how do you know which one is truly the best for B2B marketing? Because time isn’t a luxury that public relations/marketing professionals often have, we wanted to save you time and provide you with a comparison chart which details the advantages (and disadvantages) of the leading platforms. Social media platforms, for B2B marketing purposes, should drive thought leadership and credibility, resulting in engagement of a company’s target audience(s). The chart below identifies platform strengths and weaknesses outlined in a recent article featured on Search Engine Watch and we thought it would be beneficial to add B2B marketing recommendations.
Enjoy and let us know what you think – what do you find to be the best B2B marketing platform and why?
- As of March 2013, Google+ had 350 million active users – that is more than on LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube
- Placing content on this platform can lead to higher SEO rankings because the content is fed into the personal search results of your Google+ circles
- Content that is feature-rich, like videos and images supported with text gains increased exposure
- People can follow your company page, creating opportunities for relationship building and engagement
- Goolge+ Hangout is a feature that can be used for video conferencing, and these Hangouts can be published through YouTube
- Negative is that this platform is more geared towards content delivery than professional networking
- SPR Recommendations
Place content on this platform for increased SEO rankings and for engagement/relationship building through your circles; encourage sharing of content through your posts
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- More than 225 million active users in more than 200 countries
- LinkedIn makes it easy to build relationships with prospects
- This platform is designed with networking in mind
- Good for personal branding (executives) and sales development
- Marketing opportunities via LinkedIn real-time lead gen advertising
- Provides businesses with opportunities to engage with followers on a personal level
- Groups allow for real networking and share of discussion
- Sales team can learn a lot professionally about a target prospect
- Through other connections, can find professional way to reach out instead of pestering with emails
- SPR Recommendations
Use daily to provide valuable support to your connections/groups; be an active participant within groups – not only will you exchange meaningful dialogue, but this is a great ‘virtual introduction’ for future work relationships
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- Over 1 billion estimated users of this platform each month
- As a B2B social media tool, Facebook delivers client services, online promotions and event announcements primarily
- Able to gain opt-ins for email marketing on your business page
- Creating direct B2B sales relationships from this platform is certainly done, but not at the level of LinkedIn or even Twitter
- SPR Recommendations
Comment in target and organizational groups/ pages, share photos of events and company activities and ‘like’ others’ posts to increase engagement and visibility on this platform
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- Twitter, a microblogging tool with an estimated 500 million users, provides a fast and easy way to get your message out to your followers, in 140 characters or less
- Useful platform for B2B marketers to engage with prospects
- Can be useful for online reputation management, thought leadership and online branding
- Great platform for breaking news and covering events happening live (conferences, tradeshows, rountable discussions, seminars etc.)
- Hashtags (#) make the platform easily searchable
- Easy to directly interact with media outlets, but does not guarantee a response
- Twitter best used as an ‘immediate’ platform, whereas LinkedIn is best utilized for long term networking and relationships
- Even if you use relevant hashtags and include mentions of others in your tweets, because of this platform’s immediacy, your tweet may be at the bottom of the newsfeed in a matter of seconds
- SPR Recommendations
Use this platform to increase engagement with your followers by participating in conversations and sharing (RTing) posts; encourage others to share/RT your posts because no matter how many times it ends up being shared by others, it will always state the original source, increasing your visibility
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If you’re in healthcare, insurance, technology or other professional services industries, and need help with a PR, marketing or social media campaign, contact Scott Public Relations.
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Einsight- Healthcare, Insurance, Technology Public Relations | Scott Public Relations Great read!