4 Content Pillars For Social Media – And How They Link To B2B

Social media is a minefield… you may know you need to be on it, but where do you start? What content do you post? This blog will help you understand the 4 main content pillars of social media and how to relate to them in B2B.

Educational

The educational part of social media has a big role to play in B2B advertising. This includes educating on the industry, keeping up to date with news and educating on your product/service.

Top tips for educational content:

• Don’t go too technical. Keeping things simple on social media is a must- nobody wants to sieve through an excessive amount of text to get to the point they’re looking for.

• Link back to blogs. Whilst keeping social content short and sweet is a must, if you think the topic can be expanded on, create a blog. Make sure to put the blog link in your social media caption.

• Post industry news. A good habit to get into is to check your industry news daily. You can find this on the ‘news’ tab on Google after searching your topic.

Community

Having a sense of community on your social platforms creates a sense of personalisation and trust for your business. It is important to remember- people buy from people, even in the B2B setting. Building a sense of community can be anything from posting about events and team activities to testimonials and client meetings.

Top tips for the community content pillar:

• Make it shareable- tag the team and encourage them to engage with the post. The more engagement, the better.

• Make team events a genuinely fun experience. We know how hard it is to get the team involved in social media posts, especially for those that are pretty introverted. Make the experience fun, and where possible, get behind-the-scenes content.

• Broadcast client relationships and again, make it shareable! Tag them, and post things that are also in their interest, not always to advertise your business.

• Join relevant groups on Facebook and LinkedIn. Get involved in conversations around topics that interest you.

Entertainment

Entertaining your audience is key to a successful social media page… after all, what do people primarily use social media for? This could be either something funny, or relatable for your target audience.

Try to envision yourself as your target audience, and think of what may consider entertaining. A big downfall a lot of B2B companies make is presuming they should keep their social pages very professional, which leads them to believe no humour should be included.

This may be the case with some businesses if they have a very serious service, however most of the time you can create entertaining content whilst keeping a professional tone… you just need to know how!

Top tips for entertaining your social media audience:

• Try to envision yourself as your target audience and think about what they may consider entertaining.

• Relate industry news to humour where possible. This combines education with humour, and can therefore be a softer approach to entertainment.

• Introduce GIFs and memes where they could be considered appropriate.

• Use puns and play-on-words in the captions to create witty, fun content.

Promotional

The last, and probably most obvious content pillar, is promotional. This is when brands are advertising their product or services on their social media pages, the main aim being to drive traffic to their website to generate sales/enquiries.

Our main advice for this one would be to not get caught up too much in the sales side of social media. People use social media and want to see content they relate to, and not feel constantly sold to.

Top tips for promotional content:

• Emphasise the benefits of your product/service

• Advertise your USPs- what makes you better than your competitors?

• Offer a promotion (for example a one-time offer) or discount where possible

We hope this helped you in your social media journey!

Need more help with your social strategy? Contact us today or call 01924 367 105