Researchers at Princeton University recently released a study suggesting that Facebook is about to disintegrate and collapse within the next couple years due to a mass user exodus. To misquote Mark Twain, “rumors of Facebook’s death are greatly exaggerated.”
While Facebook may have lost many of its younger users, it still has over a billion users and it’s not going to die anytime soon, which is exactly why B2B marketers should be using the platform. Here are a few tips on how to turn your Facebook presence into a lead generating machine.
But wait, you thought Facebook was only for B2C brands? Not so! While the alleged “teenage flight” from Facebook may be an issue for the network, it’s certainly not an issue for B2B marketers. For starters, have you ever sold an enterprise solution to a teen? I didn’t think so. Secondly, one of the reasons that teens are leaving Facebook for the greener pastures of Instagram and Snapchat are because their parents are on Facebook. Parents of teenagers are a much better demographic for B2B marketers than teenagers.
That’s why B2B should be on Facebook, here’s how:
1, Don’t make a Facebook strategy. Make a content strategy. Create good content. Lots of good content. Then, go create some more. Have a content strategy that answers questions for potential customers and then repackage that content for Facebook. Your content must solve problems for your potential customers—if it doesn’t, then you’ll have nothing to interest your audience with. Blog posts, ebooks, infographics, and whitepapers are all great examples of content you can and should share on Facebook and are great for generating leads.
2, Don’t shill 24/7. Ever meet a guy at a party who does nothing but talk about himself and how great he is? Constantly posting lead-generating content is the social media marketing equivalent of that. Don’t be that guy—either on social media or in real life. The first word in “social media” is “social” and you need good social skills to succeed in social media. Remember, B2B is really P2P—that is, “person to person,” so post a variety of content to engage and entertain your audience. A good rule of thumb to follow is post at least one non-lead generating post for every lead generating post.
3, Invest in Facebook advertising. Unfortunately, Facebook is very much a “pay-to-play” world. You have to pay for your posts to appear in your fans’ newsfeeds as well as to reach people who haven’t liked your page.
Facebook’s sophisticated newsfeed algorithms actually suppress posts by business pages (as opposed to personal profiles). This means that even though people “opt in” to receive your posts in their newsfeeds by liking your page, most of the content you post will never make it into their newsfeeds. Posting great content is important, but by itself, great content isn’t enough. The only way to consistently crack your fans’ newsfeeds is to pay for promoted posts.
You’ll also want to advertise to reach beyond the people who already know and “like” you.
