Facebook can be a confusing place for B2B marketers. People don’t generally go on Facebook to think about business, so how are we supposed to market to our audience here?
The answer lies in the question: Don’t focus on posting about your business on Facebook.
Provide the content your audience is there to see, otherwise you’ll be avoided like a cat avoids bathwater.
Since people are there to see what their friends and family are up to, or to be entertained for a few minutes while waiting in line at the grocery store, you’ll want to show your entertaining, human side.
Still not sure what that means? Here are some examples from our own B2B Facebook efforts, as well as some inspirational examples from around the web to help jumpstart your B2B Facebook marketing tactics.
Person to Person, Not Business to Business
What’s interesting on Facebook is who you are outside of what you sell.
What type of culture do you have? This is where you can showcase all of the silly antics that happen between tweets and standups.
When your CEO brings a goat to the office, that makes for a perfect B2B Facebook post.
When your marketing team gets together for happy hour after a long week, to play Jumbling Towers, make sure to take a photo for posting purposes.
When your training team has a furry friend they consider part of their team, feel free to share that with your Facebook community.
Go Behind the Scenes
Share with your social media audience what it takes to do what you do.
Here’s a shot of our team during a mimosa content meeting. Sometimes it takes a morning cocktail to efficiently edit content for the week.
Sometimes, you just have to break out of your box and work on becoming comfortable outside of your comfort zone. Our team uses improv classes to help us with our communication and marketing skills.
Have a cool workspace? Offer a virtual tour. Here Cisco shows its fans around their new Tokyo office with a short video.
If you have the resources like IBM, giving your audience a 360 degree experience of your data bunker room can help them to feel even more a part of the analyzing action.
Not a Heartless Corporation
Community involvement is a great thing to share on Facebook. It shows that you are not just focused on your business goals, that you care about the community, and you may help to raise awareness for a particular organization.
Bike to work day is a huge deal in Boulder, Colorado. It’s fun to be involved in, and it also makes for some great photos to share.
Salesforce attended the 2015 Indianapolis Pride Parade as a team and shared how much fun they had in their celebration.
If there are any non-profit organizations your company gets involved with, help to spread awareness about your support via your Facebook posts. This can be groups that you support on an official level, as well as causes that your employees support on their own time.
The Human Side of Business
By highlighting your employees, you are helping your Facebook community to get to know your business on an individual level. It also helps your employees to feel appreciated.
For example Microsoft recently highlighted one of their employees, Vidya Srinivasan, in an article and on their Facebook page.
Salesforce likes to share employee vacations in their Facebook posts, which helps establish authentic connections to their staff and foster longer term relationships with their customers.
Salesforce also did a great job with highlighting an employee while tying it into the big picture of breaking gender norms in the tech industry.
Similarly, Cisco lets you inside the life of one of their IT engineers with this post.
It’s Not Just About You
Facebook is a great opportunity to give your B2B customers an opportunity to have the spotlight for a while. Ask them questions. Help them share a little about themselves, which will hopefully include how they’re using your product(s).
You can see a great example of this when Intuit asked their customers how they celebrate financial freedom in this short video.
People are on Facebook looking to create and expand their connections, and this could include their connection to your brand. Give them an authentic space to share their story, and be respectful of the conversations they create.
Facebook and Current Events
You’ll want to stay on top of upcoming holidays and current events so that you can provide content that will be of most interest to your community (one of our most successful tweets ever was about National Cheeseburger Day).
Of course if you can tie business conversations to current events, that’s a much better way to present your blog content on Facebook.
Salesforce jumped off the heavy coverage that the Oscars get each year to create a timely blog post, which felt at home in the personal realm of Facebook:
On May the fourth, Salesforce was at it again. They even managed to pull this popular Star Wars-themed day into their brand story by adding “May the (Sales)Force be with you” to their image. The content is purely for entertainment, with just a touch of branding, which makes it fit nicely on this platform.
If your company is directly involved with analyzing US Open scoring, like IBM, then absolutely post about the US Open for the sports fans in your customer base.
On special occasions, it’s a great idea to create content just to wish your community a happy holiday. Consider international audiences too, and make sure you’re being respectful to the variety of customers likely to see your Facebook content.
Tap Into Customer Interests
Facebook provides mountains of data about its users, so you might as well take advantage of it to create content that people will get excited about.
If your company is providing services to say, Jimmy Kimmel, and you can provide a behind the scenes video, you’ll be likely to get some good engagement. The focus is on entertainment, and you’ve got a touch of your product thrown in there. It’s a win-win!
Sharing some of your blog content is okay, as long as you know the subject matter fits with your Facebook audience. You will want to make this type of content occasional, since people don’t generally want to think about work while on Facebook.
Microsoft gives you some Monday motivation here by sharing a cartoon version of the Microsoft Logo with a motivational quote.
Intuit appeals to dog owners in this post, while still keeping the subject matter within the tech field.
Use Guidelines, But Make it Your Own
These posting ideas are really just guidelines for you. There are endless ways you can provide interesting content to your community. You might even want to try competitions or quizzes. Just make sure that however you decide to present your content, that it’s visual.
Focus on images or video. Make sure that your video is kept as short as possible or you’ll lose people. We all have short attention spans these days, so whatever you post needs to get straight to the point.
Give your community the type of content they are on Facebook to see, and you’ll be flooded with engagement.