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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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

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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