What is the first thing you do when you wake up?
Browse through your smartphone!
What do you do when you are traveling?
Browse the phone again!
Well, how about when you get back to bed?
Browse through your phone again!
Aren’t we gripped with our mobile phones a bit too much and hasn’t social media become an integral part of our lives?
A wise man once said, always open your shop where there are people, a place filled with potential leads and customers.
You need to take your business to people so that people get to know you and buy from you.
When people are hooked to their mobile phones lingering through their social media handles, find a way to pop up on their mobile screen and say, hi.
There are a lot of social media apps and websites today, we will discuss all of them one by one but let’s start with the sixth most popular social media channel with around 1 billion users- Instagram.
Instagram offers a lot of ways to grab a user’s attention. Be it going through interesting flawed stories or checking their feed full of interesting visuals. Instagram has become a platform to showcase oneself in the most beautiful, artistic, and engaging manner.
There is a reason why Instagram stories have 500 million daily active users!
A picture says a thousand words and great images with an easily accessible user interface is what makes Instagram addictive. An addiction influential than any form of sugar rush.
Now how do you leverage Instagram as a part of your B2B marketing strategy to reach your customers and potential leads?
Few Tips to help you Leverage Instagram for B2B Marketing
1. Be Unique – Advertise differently
Never post content just for the sake of posting content, have an in-depth analysis of your business and organization. Draft a long-term strategy on how you want to present yourself on Instagram. Your audience should get to know:-
- Why you exist?
- What do you do?
- How you do it?
When you answer these basic questions, you carve a unique identity and your audience will recognize you among a plethora of other business handles. Know your USP and highlight it before your audience.
2. Build trust
One of the foremost things a B2B business organization needs to focus on is gaining the trust of their audience.
Trust is something that cannot be built with just one week of organic posting. Neither can it be built through two nor three paid campaigns. To build trust, you must create an effective follower list who are genuine and understand the language of your business. Now how do you get genuine followers and better engagement? Post visually engaging content.
3. Engage your audience
There are 2 rules that you can rely on for better engagement and they are as follows
- Creating engaging content
- Ability to tickle human emotion
Create evergreen content. Content that can generate emotion in the user, draft your social media, content, design, and color guidelines. Research on the current trends, your competitors, and the kind of content your users consume. Think from the user’s perspective and build content accordingly. Check this meme posted by an IT company called Hyplap.
They leveraged a recent viral trend and created content around it which is not only engaging but conveys their message in a subtle but interesting manner.
The bottom line is to not restrict yourself to traditional B2B black and white marketing tactics rather blend your content with colors, humor, and viral trends to make your message as engaging as possible.
4. Defining the target audience
While strategizing your Instagram marketing plan, focus on the demographics of your audience. Such as:
What are people looking for?
How many people would see what you wish for them to see?
Are you aware of your competitor’s strategy and so on!
Leverage your Instagram analytics to understand,
The percentage of men and women among your audience?
Which day of the week they are most active?
What time of the day are they most active?
Use this data to define your target audience and create customized posts for them.
Some must do’s-
a) Goals – long term and short
Define your long term as well as short term goals. Get in touch with a digital marketing agency for professional assistance. It would help your business gain a sense of direction and reach out to its target goals faster.
b) Form a schedule for posting
Always have a schedule in place for posting content. Your posting should never be erratic rather it should be regular and disciplined. If you do not follow a schedule, you miss reaching out to your audience, and developing trust with them becomes difficult. You can eliminate the chances by investing in a good post scheduling post.
c) Revert comments
As a B2B firm, it is necessary that your followers know how serious you are about your business. Potential clients may reach out to you through comments or direct message you.
Handling everything right from a query, complaints to compliments is important to gain trust and establish healthy communication with your audience.
d) Repost
What if you could get a good amount of great content without having to go through the vigours of making one?
The feature of repost allows you to access and be tagged to, user content. Now, what happens when someone visits your company Insta handle and sees reposts from other clients. It not only establishes you as a brand but you come across as more lovable and approachable building a healthy brand image in the process.
e) Links and embedding
Embedding links to stories is a great way to drive traffic to your website. It is an easy access point where audiences can simply “swipe up” to view the story.
Adding website address credentials to the “bio” of the company’s Instagram profile helps in directing profile visitors to the website creating a better brand name gaining more traffic in the process.
What kind of content can go through your B2B handle?
Remember, your content should reflect the company and its motives. These are the types of content that can go through your Instagram B2B handle:-
▪ Announcements:
Be it the availability of new positions or a product and service launch; posting such information keeps the audience updated. Keeping them posted helps them know what you are up to and helps in building a trustworthy bridge of communication with them.
Here is an example of an announcement post for B2B handles:-
▪ Display your work culture:
Employer branding is the current buzz word and it isn’t just a buzz word. It would be a necessity in the coming days for every organization to hire great talent for their organization. And work culture is one of the most important aspects of employer branding.
As a B2B company, display your work culture to your audience with engaging visuals giving your audience a glimpse of your office and a peek into the lives of your employees.
Nothing attracts spectators more than a jovial display of work culture. When an enterprise knows how to flaunt it correctly, it gains immense reach.
▪ Push the perspective of employees:
If you take a look at the following example, you will be able to witness how effective showcasing thoughts can be.
Audiences love to see the human side of organizations. Create content that revolves around them and showcases their perspective. It can be in the form of employee testimonials, their thoughts on recent trends, and content that showcases their expertise in their niche. That way you are fulfilling two major objectives. You bring your employees to the spotlight as well as create compelling content worth engaging for the audience.
The above three are a few examples of the kind of content you can post on social media, apart from that you can post memes, videos, Gifs, and quotes on your Instagram handle. We will talk about them someday. Right now, just keep the long term picture in mind and go with the plan.
Now before posting content, certain Instagram etiquettes need to be followed:-
#IMAGE CLARITY
Whatever you plan to post, be it a creative, a video clip, or an image, the quality needs to be great. Graining images or images with poor pixels are a big letdown. When we are talking about Instagram marketing, the content should be pleasing to the visual sense of the audience.
Make sure you are using great quality images and graphics while posting on the feed. You can leverage flawed content posting them as stories and it can be a great way to keep your audience engaged.
Mind it: Stories stay visible for 24 hours. Also, there are certain features that you can add like a countdown, location, ‘mention’, hashtag, etc. to emphasize the content.
#CAPTIONS
What comes right after good images in a post?
Creating a catchy caption is a simple but delicate process.
Use a storytelling approach and grip your audience with great words.
But remember,
Too many words will spoil the message you wish to deliver!
Make sure you are not dragging and adding words just for the sake of it.
Keep it crisp and clear.
Brownie Tip: Make Hashtags your friends!
They help you gain traction and gather more views by helping the audience find your content infiltrating the Instagram algorithm.
What’s new on Instagram?
– Instagram TV
IGTV has opened up a lot of scope for B2B businesses in the field of video-marketing.
You can reach out to your audience making videos about your business that give precise insights about what you do before your audience.
– Creator accounts
Instagram has come up with an amazing feature for influencers across the world – A Creator Account!
Most influencers switch from a personal account to a business account to tap into Instagram analytics. They have another option now, a more personalized one, and that is to switch to a creator account.
It gives influencers customized tools to manage their accounts with precise analytics and filters for direct messages.
From a creator account, you can expect:
- Growth insights like detailed data on current follower count
- Labeling option to mark the preferred contacts
- Tools for Direct Messaging which further allows triggering relevance
It is still in its early stages with the version being released at a beta testing version.
As a B2B business, reaching out to your audience through Instagram is quite simple and easy. You need to be consistent with posting great content regularly. Keep yourself updated, follow trends, and the basics of content marketing. And you will be right on track to carve a unique brand image for yourself.
Special Note – Simply reading this blog won’t help, follow it, and execute it.
