A recent study from the Content Marketing Institute found that 86% of B2B businesses use at least one form of content marketing, with social media being the most used method. It also found that the top three problems B2B marketers face are related to content.
My company Blurbi (i’m guest blogging here. Hi mom!) wanted to dig deeper into these content problems to figure out how you, as the person in charge of marketing at a B2B company, could optimize your content posting. To do so, we conducted a study of 400 B2Bs across 50 different markets and five countries. In this article you’ll find a recap of our most important results, tied together with results from other industry leaders, and the key takeaways these results reveal for your social media content marketing strategy.
How often you should post to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
There’s no one better positioned to answer this than Buffer, who has throngs of data on optimum posting times. What do they suggest? Well Buffer itself posts twice per day to Facebook. Posting any more than twice day will likely annoy your followers. On the other end of the spectrum, a study by Social Bakers found that posting to Facebook any less than once a week is akin to not posting at all.
Blurbi found that of the companies who posted to Facebook ‘Often’ (defined as more than twice a week) few posted more than twice a day. Only 25% of companies posted ‘Often’, while the remaining 75% of the companies we looked at were split evenly between posting ‘Sometimes’ (at least 4 times per month) and ‘Never’ (less than 4 times per month).
Takeaway: Post to Facebook at least twice per week – you’ll receive more exposure than 75% of other B2B companies – but no more than twice a day or you’ll lose followers.
LinkedIn itself has the best advice on this. They suggest posting 20 times per month (once per work day), which will reach 60% of your audience.
https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/c/14/1/sophisticated-guide-for-marketing
Blurbi found that only 18% of B2B companies post more than even twice a week to LinkedIn, much less than suggested, which is surprising considering that 40% of B2B buyers say that LinkedIn is most important when researching technologies and services to purchase – only 19% said the same for Twitter (Social Media Today).
Takeaway: Post once a weekday to LinkedIn. You’ll be exposed to 60% of your potential customers, much higher than your competition, 82% of which aren’t even posting to LinkedIn more than once a week.
84% of B2B content marketers say brand awareness is their number one goal. Blurbi found that B2B Businesses tweet 2.29 times per day. Is this enough to increase brand awareness on Twitter?
Social bakers discovered that the optimal posting rate to Twitter is three times per day- optimal meaning that you get the most engagement for the least amount of tweets, or as we like to call it: the most toot for your tweet.
But if awareness is the goal with social then three a day isn’t enough. TrackSocial (now defunct) looked at a different metric (Responses per day) and found that the optimum engagements per day came from 21-30 tweets per day. This probably isn’t doable for your B2B company, or most companies for that matter.
Takeaway: Post at least twice a day to Twitter, weekends included, but try to post thrice. Post more often if Twitter is your only social channel.
What kind of content you should be posting
Tweeting 21-30 times per day is too much for most B2B companies, but it bears mentioning because the more you post the more brand exposure you receive (on Twitter). There’s absolutely no way a company has enough inbound content (blogs, whitepapers, company news) to use for more than a few posts per day.
This is why many B2B companies mix their inbound content with content from industry related 3rd parties. Blurbi found that 76% of companies post a mix of owned and 3rd party content to Twitter. This drops to 33% of companies on Facebook, where companies tend to focus on posting their own content (51%). LinkedIn is much the same with 39% mixed and 52% owned.
Takeaway: Follow the 80/20 rule when posting content to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. 80% industry related 3rd party content and 20% of your own inbound content. Even on Facebook and LinkedIn, it’s important to share content from other sources. Just make sure to give credit.
http://www.slideshare.net/TylerHandley/2014-social-media-content-marketing-industry-report-b2-b-software-companies
Tyler is a former digital marketing coordinator, now a co-founder of Blurbi, a platform that offers brands and businesses customized social media content from its network of marketing professionals. He digs content marketing, startups, growth hacking, the science behind human communication, and keeping up with his favourite sports teams.
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Hey Tyler I wonder if you have any thoughts re: Pinterest? Curious if there’s any research or if Blurbi has discovered anything there