The Best Social Channels to Use for B-to-B Marketing

Let's get down to business. Which social channels should you be using to generate the maximum number of leads? You have so many options to choose from: Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, SlideShare, Vimeo and the list goes on. Today I'm going to focus on three that I think are vitally important for B-to-B brands.

You could certainly add others to the mix, but I like to recommend focusing on building quality channels rather than quantity. If you have a large enough social media team that can handle executing a strategy for many different networks, go for it! If, however, you have a one person or two person social media team, focus on just doing one to three social networks really well. That's how you'll get the most out of your time. Here are my top recommendations:

SlideShare
When it comes to B-to-B lead generation, it's common practice to create downloadable whitepapers and e-books. You can easily put this type of content behind a form and ask interested visitors to submit their contact information in exchange for valuable tips and strategic advice. This is certainly a great way to generate leads and build your email list.

However, giving away content for free and then asking for contact information can help you accomplish the following:

• build very high-quality leads;
• reach more people with your content;
• create social shareable content; and
• create blog content.

Leads from "free content" are extra high quality because the person has already read your information and then proactively decided to raise their hand and ask for more. When you ask for contact information prior to the visitor receiving your content, you run the risk of them not liking what he or she reads but still ending up in your sales funnel. When this happens it can lead to low engagement, low email open rates or even potentially being viewed as spam. And, most unfortunately, it will drag down your conversion rates.

It's ideal to have a large lead and/or email list, but only when that list is converting at a high percentage. When it's not you're simply paying to reach people who don't care, and that's a waste of time and money.

One of the best ways to create and share free content is by building a presentation for SlideShare. You just need to create a PowerPoint presentation and upload it to the SlideShare network under your branded page.

Once uploaded, you can title and tag the presentation for search engine optimization purposes and even set up a lead-generation form to be added to SlideShare. You can add the lead-gen form in the following ways:

• the very last page of your presentation;
• a page anywhere in the middle of the presentation; or
• as a pop-up form that only shows up when someone clicks the "get in touch" button.
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In the HubSpot example above, it's placed its lead-gen form on the second-to-last page. This is a great spot because the viewer has taken the time to flip through almost the entire presentation, expressing a genuine interest in the information being presented.

If the viewer signs up for more information at this point, he or she is likely to be a very good lead — i.e., one who opens your emails, engages with your content and hopefully interacts with your sales team.

Starting a SlideShare account is free and easy. However, if you want to brand your channel and start capturing leads, you'll need to upgrade to a paid Pro account.

Facebook
Facebook has the largest number of active users of any social network (over 1.2 billion active monthly users) and also the highest engagement rate. That second part is what's really important.

People go to Facebook to interact with friends, consume news about topics they love (sports, technology, international, local, etc.) and engage with companies that they're interested in — including B-to-B companies.

Many B-to-C companies are seeing direct increases in revenue generated from Facebook by sharing coupons and promo codes with their community. How does Facebook benefit B-to-B companies? Lead generation.

Lead generation via Facebook can be accomplished in a variety of ways; here are three top tactics:

1. Give free content. Putting downloadable content behind a lead-gen form is one way to increase your leads from Facebook. When you publish a new whitepaper, e-book or case study, you can create an app on Facebook that allows users to download it directly from the social site while you receive their contact information.

I really like to use ShortStack for this, and of course it drinks its own kool-aid and conducts lead gen on its Facebook page. ShortStack uses its Facebook cover photo to immediately draw attention to the helpful resources it's making available for download.

In fact, it's featuring a new e-book called Beyond Contests that you can see spotlighted in the last app spot to the right of the Monthly Giveaway app.
When you click Beyond Contests you're taken to a Facebook landing page that allows you to download the e-book in exchange for your contact info. Once a visitor submits that form, he or she becomes a Facebook lead.

2. Promote your webinars. Another excellent way to generate leads from Facebook is by promoting your webinars and other online events. Here you can see B-to-B software company Unbounce promoting its upcoming webinar in its Facebook cover photo. Naturally, the sign-up page collects the registrant's contact information, thus making them a new lead.

3. Share opportunities to convert in posts. Facebook's cover photo and apps aren't the only places you should try to convert your Facebook community into leads. You can also do this through your daily postings.

For example, here you can see how B-to-B software company Marketo shares the link to its latest downloadable guide.

Once you click this link, you're taken to a landing page where you fill out your contact info to gain access to the content. Your landing pages can be hosted on a dedicated landing page off of your main website or on a Facebook landing page. It doesn't matter where visitors convert as long as they convert.

LinkedIn
Last but certainly not least, LinkedIn is a great social channel to use for B-to-B marketing. Research shows that it's highly effective as a customer acquisition source for all types of companies (second only to Facebook). But for B-to-B companies, LinkedIn is the top social media acquisition channel.

LinkedIn provides a handful of useful tools for B-to-B marketers, including the following:

• the ability to answer industry questions in Groups and be viewed as an expert;
• messaging capabilities to introduce yourself to decision makers outside of your network;
• low-cost ads that can be used for lead generation; and
• filling out your company page.

If you want to get started with making the right business connections on LinkedIn, join a few industry groups. Once in a group, you can seek engagement opportunities, answer any open questions and share content that may be helpful to the group. You can get people on your website by sharing the link to a blog post or landing page where other group members can download content.

If there are individual people that you want to connect with, you can do so using InMail. With InMail, you pay a small fee to reach people in their LinkedIn inbox without being one of their personal connections. The awesome part is that you only pay if they respond to you! This makes InMail a cost-effective, one-to-one social marketing tool.

You can also quickly and easily set up some low cost ads on LinkedIn, similar to the ads you can run on Facebook or Google. For example, A/B testing tool Optimizely is running ads to get me to sign up for a free trial of its software. When I click the ad it takes me to a very nice looking landing page, where I can try out "the hottest A/B testing tool on the planet."

LinkedIn's ads allow you to target based on someone's industry and experience level, which means you can be sure your ads are seen by the right professionals — i.e., those who have purchasing power.

Finally, just like on Facebook, you can set up a company page on LinkedIn. This is a great way to be found when people search for your company on the social network, and to present those people with helpful information. For example, you can set up a section where you share case studies, your blog, information about your products/services and more.

If you don't already have your company page set up, I suggest you spend a little time doing it today. When business professionals are searching for your company, make sure you present them with something compelling.

Don't Lose Your Focus
Using social media to market in the B-to-B world is essential. It can help you capture more leads and even bridge your offline and online marketing. It doesn't have to be complicated. As I mentioned previously, the best thing for most B-to-B companies to do is focus on one to three social networks and really build them out into high-quality, lead-generating channels.

When you try to focus on too many channels there's a high potential for quality to get lost, which will means losing out on leads instead of gaining them.

Dave Bascom is the CEO of Fit Marketing, an inbound marketing agency.