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Choosing the Right Social Network for Your B2B Brand

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Increasingly, we see businesses turning to social media as a means of pursuing prospects and engaging with potential customers. But which platform should you choose?

LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Twitter – what are the differences, and which one will benefit your business the most with outreach and lead generation?

You may feel like you have to be present on all platforms in order to be successful at marketing. But this is not the case. If you determine which platform your target audience is on you’ll be able to focus on making that network as engaging as possible.

It may be free to start your presence on a new social media site but managing that presence takes a lot of resources over time. Below we discuss the top social networks that B2B brands are using, the demographics of each, and how their attributes could help strengthen your marketing strategy.

LinkedIn Pros:

LinkedIn Cons:

Building a Following:
It is pretty difficult, as a brand, to build a following on LinkedIn without spending a considerable amount of money on LinkedIn’s exclusive advertising products. No self-serve ad products enable you to get to your target audience connected directly to your page (this differs from Twitter and Facebook).

LinkedIn brand pages are also relatively new and the user base is not yet used to following company pages. I expect LinkedIn to make some interesting changes to promote more individual to brand connections but it may be worth the wait before you invest heavily in a LinkedIn brand page.

Expensive Advertising
While LinkedIn Ads give you precise targeting, they are also pretty expensive. The minimum bid for a LinkedIn Ad is $2.00 per click on both display ads and sponsored stories. Depending on your conversion rates and the stages in your customer funnel this could cause your customer acquisition costs to become prohibitive.

Facebook Pros:

Everyone is on it:
In October of last year, Investopedia reported that 93% of adults in the U.S. are Facebook users.  Currently Facebook’s largest growing audience-age demographic is 45-54, closely followed by 35-44 year olds.

Due to the vast number of Facebook users, the likelihood of finding your target audience is huge, plus when people share your brand and content it is reaching a much larger audience.  This means that you’re able to create brand awareness as well as increase traffic to your website and Facebook page.

Cheap Advertising:
Advertising is cheaper on Facebook when compared to Google Adwords, LinkedIn or Twitter Ads. There is no minimum bid for most Facebook Ad products and it is pretty common to see a cost-per-click below $1.00.

Facebook has some really good ad products to drive new likes to your business page at a low cost. This is a great way to build a following and leverage the vast size of Facebook.

Smallbiz Technology also offers a great post comparing Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter advertising, and concludes that Facebook is the best network regarding affordability for successful advertising campaigns.

Facebook Cons:

News Feed Optimization:
There is no guarantee your audience will see your posts even after building a large following to your Facebook page. Facebook uses an algorithm (formerly known as EdgeRank) that selects which of your followers will see your posts.

That algorithm looks at the type of content you posted, when it was posted and how engaged a user has been with your page in the past.

This gives marketers an incentive to create great content but it also means you will normally need to promote a post through paid ads if you want it to be seen by the majority of your followers.

Professionalism, or Lack Thereof:
The conversational mindset on Facebook is the stark opposite of LinkedIn. Most people are in personal mode while on Facebook and are more apt to consume and share pictures of friends, cute cats and viral videos rather than B2B e-books and whitepapers.

Facebook is focused on the social graph of friends and family that you know in real life. Those individuals don’t normally work in the same industry as you or have the same career path so it can be tough to get people to share and engage with business related content.

What’s worse is that you can’t proactively engage with anyone on Facebook as a branded page. This means you have to wait for your audience to engage with you before being able to have a conversation.

Google+ Pros:

Search Engine Optimization:
Google+ is the newest social network on this list and many brands are still trying to figure out how it should be used. The biggest advantage to having a presence on Google+ is higher ranking for your content within Google Search.

According to Cyrus Shepard on Moz Blog, whether by plan or not, Google + was built for SEO. Every post you make on Google + is automatically indexed, which is unique to Google +. Facebook’s privacy settings and restriction make user data inaccessible to Google, whereas Google +’s data is immediately available to this search engine.

Google Authorship is also a critical tool Google + can provide you, as it protects your written work from being plagiarized. Google does this by tracking your posts so that theft is easily traceable. Also you’re ranked by your content and online persona, which directly feed into your SEO.

Haris Bacic (@HarisBacic) wrote a great article on how Google Authorship and Author Rank play a huge role in your SEO.

Google+ Cons:

Activity:
While there are 350 million users on Google +, those aren’t necessarily active ones. Google stated last December that 500 million people had created Google + accounts, but only about 135 million were actively posting on Google + pages.

However, Google + is gaining more recognition as a wise choice for B2B marketing due to their SEO and fantastic ranking system.

Twitter Pros:

Socedo that aid in helping you find leads using this social platform.

Leaders and influencers in your industry are having conversations they’re interested in, in the topic area that you’re also wanting to be a part of.  Twitter has an unmatched capability to engage in conversations with leading influentials in your industry, which also means your brand is being exposed to their audience (an audience I’m sure you want to tap into).

Twitter Cons:

Noise:
There’s a lot of noise since your home feed could be populated by thousands of Tweets by your followers a day. Sifting through this noise, as well as having your voice heard can be a challenge. If you want visibility, you have to Tweet a lot.

Content curation as well as scheduling Tweets using platforms like TweetDeck or Hootsuite will help you stay on top on the conversation.

Expensive Ads:
The ad platform for Twitter is expensive. It forces the purchaser to pay for any type of engagement even if they don’t click all the way through to your Landing Page. Business Insider has a great article about the truth about Twitter advertising.

That said, the openness of Twitter makes it easier to have a successful presence without needing to depend on paid ads.

We have only covered the top four platforms that could help your B2B marketing efforts. Read our new article that talks about using Pinterest, Vine, Tumblr and Instagram.

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Written by Aseem Badshah

Aseem Badshah is a successful entrepreneur, marketing expert, and writer. He was a contributor to Socedo.com, where he focused on social media automation, digital marketing, and business growth strategies. Socedo.com is a platform that provides social media optimization, automation, and audience-targeting services for businesses. In this role, Aseem helped companies expand their online presence, increase potential clients, and improve sales performance.

Before joining Socedo, Aseem founded a digital marketing and social media strategy company called Uptown Treehouse. As the CEO, he was responsible for developing marketing strategies, establishing social media platforms, and offering diverse digital marketing services to clients.

Aseem holds a Bachelor's degree in Marketing from the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington. His unique insights into digital marketing, social media, and business development have made him a prominent figure in the field.