How To Boost The Benefits Of B2B SEO With The Right Social Media Strategy

We live in the times of integrated digital marketing. It’s not feasible any longer to manage your marketing efforts in silos. Now is the time to fuse your B2B SEO and social media success together to achieve success before your competitors do.

Why is B2B Social Media Marketing Different from B2C Social Media Marketing?

A B2B sales funnel is complicated to manage. Businesses take longer to make, and they require a longer engagement time to actually convert. This means that B2B specific social media campaigns need to be constructed differently than that of B2C. Here, marketers need to consider the impact of social media on organic search visibility, apart from treating social media as a tool to enable lead nurturing.

The Business Case for Creating a Symbiotic Social Media and SEO Strategy for SEO

Reports suggest that a huge percentage (93%) of B2B marketers use social media, but only a few (32%) have a documented strategy. Moreover, a negligible percentage of B2B marketers look to blend together their SEO and social media campaigns for mutual benefit. This means that you have a competitive edge out there when you create a symbiotic SEO and social media strategy. Read more to find out how you can do this.

Link Building on Social Media

Natural backlinks are the backbone of any B2B SEO. With social media, you can put your link building in top gear. Backlinks can be acquired on social media by publicizing shared content and targeted social profiles. Because Google’s search algorithms value social validation, this activity is worth every dime and minute you invest.

Here are some smart practices:

Identify the top 3 or top 5 social media platforms you’ll need to target; LinkedIn would be an obvious choice, considering the B2B appeal of your business.
Influencer marketing works like a charm for B2B brands, just like it does for B2C. Use influencer marketing tools to shortlist influencers on the basis of their country, age, follower counts on different platforms, previous collaborations, gender, and other parameters.
Segment and monitor your social media targets to understand where you can get the most traction.
Look to create value with your social media posts; curated lists, infographics, groundbreaking stats, action-guides – these are getting increased traction in terms of likes, tweets, and shares, so focus here.
Use social media monitoring and listening tools to identify conversations where you can pitch in with your links, and initiate the process of getting backlinks.
Use Rapportive to get social media contact details for your email lists; this helps you identify potential backlink sources from your B2B network.

Also, social media profile links give you your best chance to feature more branded links in SERPs. That’s because, for most B2B brands, their Facebook and LinkedIn profiles are likely to make it to top 10 results.

Ideation for SEO Success-Worthy Content

There’s a great deal of convergence happening in the way social media search and search engine algorithms work. The focus is always on identifying how humans like to search for and engage with digital content, and include these factors in ranking URLs. In fact, there’s a school of thought that regard social media as the ‘search’ engine for the future.

To this effect, social media becomes a crucial research platform for B2B marketers to understand the kind of content driving engagement among users. Social media content analysis tools help you analyze successful social media content so that you can pinpoint the elements you can include in your website content for better appeal. Identify successful content formats for your niche on social media, and look to create website posts using these formats. Consider investing in Market Motive’s social media marketing course to get better at this art. These guys have perfected the art of using social media effectively within your digital marketing campaign.

Social Media to Drive Off Page SEO For B2B Websites

Social media continues to be a key platform for off page SEO for B2B websites. Here are some recommendations.

Optimize your social media posts with your primary keywords.
This Bitcatcha post helps you match the correct B2B social media platform with the corresponding SEO objective.
Build your social media followership and get content shares to boost off page SEO.
Use a bookmarking tool to post your links on important social bookmarking websites and motivate your social media followers to do the same.
Create comprehensive and thoughtful social media profile pages, with links to your most important web pages, making sure you use your top keywords in descriptions and page title.
Organize social media contests to develop user-generated content and to drive traffic back to your website.

Final Words

Social media is an entirely different ball game for B2B marketers, as compared to how B2C marketers look at it. However, what’s common is that it can unlock the secret to great SEO success for your B2B brand. Start with your efforts to do the same today.