11 Creative Social Media Ideas For B2B Businesses

11 Creative Social Media Ideas For B2B Businesses

What is one creative social media idea that a B2B company can actually pull off (and for which platform?)

To help small businesses with creative social media ideas, we asked business leaders and marketing professionals this question for their best ideas. From digital detoxes to hosting a webinar, there are several ideas that may help your business with its social media.

Here are eleven creative social media ideas that a B2B company can pull off: 

  • Use Your Social In Email
  • Reddit Forums
  • Create an eBook or Ultimate Guide 
  • Make Youtube Videos
  • Employee Social Media Profiles
  • Get All Your Partners Involved
  • Write Articles on LinkedIn
  • Giveaways On Twitter
  • Host a Webinar
  • Highlight Your Behind-The-Scenes Moments
  • Start a Podcast

Use Your Social Posts In Your Next Email 

One of the smartest things you can do as a business is repurpose content from your social media in your email campaigns. You could take one of your Instagram posts and make that into an entire email, using the photo and caption. Or your last 5 tweets could be a fun email — “Look what we’ve been up to on Twitter…” Your social media is full of great posts which equals great content that would work well in emails. No need to always create new email content — pull from your other platforms. 

Emily Ryan, Westfield Creative

Reddit Forums

Find your target market on Reddit and engage in the community! Reddit is untapped territory for B2B, but if done right, can be very effective for inexpensive acquisition. Forums can get very niche and specific, so if you can find one that pertains to your business, you will likely be able to start valuable conversations with potential customers. Just make sure you aren’t trying to sell directly, moderators will kick you right out. Be genuine, ask questions, respond to others, and establish yourself as a trusted member of the community. 

Zack McCarty, Qwick

Create an eBook or Ultimate Guide 

Because they are low cost and are great for generating qualified leads, a great social media tactic would be to create an eBook or Ultimate Guide around a niche topic for B2B and share it on LinkedIn! You could always recycle old blog content into an eBook to create an easier path to executing this social media marketing strategy.

Kayla Centeno, Markitors 

Make Youtube Videos

Our Seattle criminal defense firm Will & Will has an extensive library of YouTube videos we’ve created over the years. While YouTube isn’t the first platform a B2B company thinks of for “social media,” we’ve found that YouTube videos have helped effectively brand our firm. Videos can personalize a firm, and communicate why a client should consider doing business with a company. I’d recommend to any business owner to consider shooting a video about the company, or about a core service offering.

Court Will, Will & Will

Employee Social Media Profiles

B2B companies should be very cognizant of the image employees have on sites like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. The reason? Prospective customers buy from people, and many sales activities include checks on social media profiles. For example, a cold email may result in a check of a LinkedIn profile. Or, an introduction to a new Client Services representative may be followed by a check of an Instagram profile. The single most important thing a B2B company can do when it comes to social media is to have a polished uniform presence online. Educate employees about how customers may be looking at their LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media profiles to make decisions about your business.

Ben Walker, Transcription Outsourcing

Get All Your Partners Involved

An easy social media idea that we do to encourage referrals from the people we work with is by simply tagging other trades on social media platforms, like Instagram to grow exposure. Let’s say we finish designing a beautiful, luxury kitchen, we make sure to tag the cabinet company that followed our plans and installed the cabinets into the kitchen, we tag the lighting company that sold the builder the pendants we picked out over the island, and we tag the granite company we worked with to make the design come together. By taking an extra minute to tag all the people that made the design happen and having them share it on their own pages, we get triple the exposure! Tag the companies you work with and encourage them to share your content.

Alisha Taylor, Alisha Taylor Interiors

Write Articles on LinkedIn

LinkedIn has become the place to network now that person-to-person, live networking events have been quashed by COVID. First, be sure your personal profile is up to date with a nice, professional-looking headshot, and all the sections are complete as well as skills using relevant keywords. Next, make sure your company profile page is complete and well-branded like an extension of your website. Make sure all links, including the ones in your contact info section are working properly. Now, you write an article–300 words or more. Hopefully, you’re blogging on your website at least once a week. All you do is copy a blog from your site into LinkedIn’s blogging feature. At the bottom, put, “This article first appeared on…”, then link it to the original article on your site. Share it on your personal feed and company page, Facebook and Twitter. This helps with exposure, building trust and credibility and helps with SEO.

Giselle Aguiar, AZ Social Media Wiz

Giveaways On Twitter

Twitter is an incredibly powerful social media channel. Unfortunately, as usual, building up an audience is a slow and time-consuming process. Twitter Ads are a good option to give yourself a boost. But there is an organic alternative to PPC: You can speed up the process with a giveaway. Identify a product that your audience is interested in. This can be a generic mainstream product such as a MacBook or a product from your own business. Next, identify the value offered and divide it by the average cost of your PPC campaign as a reference. When this value falls below the realistically achievable number of engagements you are in the positives. Make sure to give the campaign an initial boost by tagging some people from your audience. Here you can also fall back to Twitter’s PPC offerings: a small campaign can kick start your organic giveaway and trigger an avalanche.

Peter Thaleikis, Bring Your Own Ideas Ltd.

Host a Webinar

Hosting a small webinar with a guest book author is a great creative social media idea that a B2B company can pull off. For example, invite an author of a sales or marketing book you enjoy to a webinar and invite 10 people from your LinkedIn to join a special Q&A session. From idea to execution, you could run this campaign in a month and deepen relationships with a set of key prospects.

Bruce Harpham, Technology Marketing Consultant

Highlight Your Behind-The-Scenes Moments

If you ever spent any time watching your favorite TV show’s bloopers reel you know – watching behind-the-scenes real moments is a lot of fun. There is something about those moments when actors stop being actors for a second and screw up, laugh, and make fun of each other in touching, purely human moments. Somehow we connect with them more during those times. We can replicate similar emotions and connections when we share behind-the-scenes moments with our customers. As B2B entities companies often get stuck in the professional space, limiting their personal, human connections with their customers. Sharing engaging, entertaining, and real behind-the-scenes moments can facilitate these connections. While that can be done on any platform, the best fit for behind-the-scenes content is Instagram. Using stories, posts, and other interactive tools of that platform can be of great help.

Natalya Bucuy, LiveHelpNow

Start a Podcast

While that idea might sound daunting to some, it doesn\’t have to be. Your podcast episodes could be as short as five minutes every week. Just talk about industry trends, news topics, and what’s happening in your business. It doesn\’t have to be perfect and sites like Anchor allow you to record, edit and publish all in one place. Once your show is live then you have some great content to share on social media. You can share new episodes on your social channels while repurposing episodes into PDF slides, audio snippets, and blog posts that can all be shared too.

Liam Quinn, Reach interactive

12 Creative Ways To Market Your Business

12 Creative Ways To Market Your Business

What is one creative way you plan to market your business in 2021? What do you have planned?

We asked marketing professionals and business owners about what they have in store for the year ahead. 

Here are twelve creative ways to market your business.

  • Instagram Reels
  • Prioritize Video Content
  • Plain Text Emails
  • Optimized Blog Content 
  • Join Online Communities
  • TikTok
  • Exterior Branding
  • Get Personal
  • Hit It Old School
  • Highlight Success Stories
  • Establish Yourself as Experts
  • Live Shopping on Apps

Instagram Reels

Everything is virtual these days and one of the most creative things you can do is capitalize on this. I am a big fan of Instagram’s “Reels” feature which is similar to TikTok. I’ve seen a lot of business owners using Reels to teach their followers something short and fun. You could do a simple “3 Tips for…” and set it to music. It makes for fun content and it gets a lot more exposure than a traditional Instagram post. Make sure to include hashtags in your caption!

Emily Ryan, Westfield Creative

Prioritize Video Content

Video creation is one of the most creative ways to market your business in 2021. Studies show that video content performs better on social media and also increases the average time on page for web users, and it is a powerful tactic that not many people use due to the labor-intensive nature of video production. We are excited to do more in this space come 2021!

Noah Downs, American Pipeline Solutions 

Plain Text Emails

Sending personalized, plain text email messages to existing and prospective customers is a simple, but underutilized marketing tactic. We receive so many emails every day, but if you can insert your business into an inbox in an unobtrusive way, then you are able to deepen customer relationships and be there when customers need you. 

Carey Wilbur, Charter Capital

Optimized Blog Content 

Going into 2021, we plan to create high-quality, optimized content to be featured on our blog.  Our goal is to be the most trusted experts in our industry.  This helps us organically rank on search engines and be the featured page when people are looking for durable device cases. We have gotten really creative with keywords and topics to appeal to potential customers and just rolled out a 3-month content strategy to aid in our marketing efforts. Content will be king in 2021. 

Peter Babichenko, Sahara Case 

Join Online Communities

One creative way you can market your business in 2021 is to join different online communities! I personally attend online webinars and meetups for female entrepreneurs and creatives to build my network and promote my company to potential clients. In addition to the reach these communities provide for my company, they also give me the opportunity to meet other prominent professionals in my vertical who help me get even better at my craft.

Nikitha Lokareddy, Markitors 

TikTok

A tactic we have been utilizing in 2020 and will use well into 2021 is TikTok. With over 800 million monthly active users, Tik Tok is officially the hottest new social media platform. While TikTok is thought to just be for teens, we have found that a lot of our target market is active on TikTok and looking for content geared toward them. We created an account and have been making our own videos and publishing them for the world to see. With no monetary investment, we just use our free time and creativity to spread the word about our brand. 

Stephanie Schull, Kegelbell 

Exterior Branding

We equip all of our vehicles with visually appealing exterior graphics to help capture what it’s like to “Cruise America.” We often hear positive comments from customers and prospective customers about these graphics. With more than 4,500 vehicles on the road, the more our vehicles are in use, the more marketing benefit our company receives. 

Randall Smalley, Cruise America

Get Personal

Not in a creepy way, but in a true authentic way. We are all exhausted from being online 24/7. Can you send a handwritten card just because? Can you organize a pickup/drop off spot for a joint activity or craft project? Can you organize a safe winter wonderland activity? I believe the secret sauce behind effective marketing in 2021 is going beyond the digital screen.

Audrey Hutnick, Smallwave Marketing

Hit It Old School

We’re hitting it old-school with some of our approaches this coming year to activate our wholesale network. Our plan is to resurrect the idea of “scratcher postcards,” but with actually great rewards under those silver flecks. Digital ads are becoming more expensive and are vying for subprime attention, while print advertising is seeing a resurgence in both affordability and the stronger eyes it gets.

Hana Ruzsa Alanis, Graphic Designer & Marketing Specialist

Highlight Success Stories

In 2021 we are aiming for the strategy of storytelling. We’re focusing on telling our clients’ stories. We believe storytelling, be it brand-led or customer-led, connects with audiences. We’re combining the two to show how our brand helps our customers through their success stories. It will take us some time to find the right stories, shape them for our audiences, and tell them in a way that showcases our clients’ hard work and success. Any good story has a setting, a character, character flaws, conflict, resolution, and lesson. Brand storytelling is not an exception. We plan on incorporating all those elements into our stories.

Natalya Bucuy, LiveHelpNow

Establish Yourself As Experts

When we look at 2021, it’s important to understand that we still have uncertain times ahead. Therefore, we need to not only have a Plan B, but we need to work our way a little further down the alphabet. We plan to stay innovative and ready to make a pivot whenever traditional marketing efforts aren’t paying off. So, we have targeted strategies for outreach, guest posting, and providing beneficial quotes for articles on high-traffic sites. By establishing ourselves as experts in our niche, we plan to exude trustworthiness and professionalism.

Sally Rong, Rellery

Live Shopping on Apps

In order to successfully market your business next year, the answer lies in adopting a combination of new social tools vs. tapping into just one. We’re anticipating that the next phase of retail will heavily focus on ‘Live Shopping.’ For example, our partners at Facebook and TikTok are rolling out new features that will make it extremely quick and easy for consumers to make purchases directly from interactive content—without ever leaving their respective app or site. In 2021, brands will be able to sell seamlessly through Instagram’s ‘Checkout’ feature and take advantage of TikTok’s first-ever commerce partnership with Shopify. This provides a great opportunity to work with influencers across platforms and explore new channel capabilities.

Greg Gillman, MuteSix

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8 B2B Instagram Marketing Tips & Best Practices

B2B Instagram Marketing Tips

Instagram has always been a place for brands to shine–interacting with customers and creating a feed akin to an art show. But what about B2B businesses looking to enter the game?

How should a B2B business use Instagram? 

We asked eight B2B leaders, “What Instagram tip would you have to offer other B2B businesses?”

Here’s what they had to say:

It’s All About Insights

For us, Instagram is a place to share insights and wisdom. Our work is about people and we want to put people first through the content we share. As a result, much of our content is motivational and inspirational. Connect your business, whatever you offer, to something personal and that will offer something valuable to your audience. 

Jenn Christie, Y Scouts

Share Your Brand Personality

We use Instagram as a way to share our brand’s personality beyond our site while still promoting our business. Instagram allows us to connect to our audience in a way that’s more personable. We share our sales and products, of course, but we also engage with our followers by asking questions and including them in the content. Create a brand personality and use that to guide your content.

Vanessa Molica, The Lash Professional

Network

We have a podcast (CEOpodcasts.com) so we use it very much as a way to connect with podcast guests and generate content. The reality is that most businesses are looking for visibility so we try to provide that opportunity with our platform. By doing that, it opens up the opportunity to develop, nurture, and cultivate relationships. Simply by sending a direct message to a potential podcast guest can open up a tremendous amount of opportunities.

Gresham Harkless, Blue 16 Media

Promote Brand Identity and Culture

We use Instagram for culture posts. Our audience doesn’t consume content or convert on Instagram so we’ve switched from trying to promote on there to showcasing a more human side of us and highlighting our great brand!

Janelle Amos, Revenue Marketing Manager

Be Consistent

We use Instagram to promote our mission, programs, and fundraisers. The best practice we strive for is consistency. What I have learned about social media engagement is it is all about consistency. It is also important that you create polished and eye-catching content for social media since it is driven by picture content.

Lloyd Hopkins, Million Dollar Teacher Project

Start Your Narrative

You are not the hero of the story. This comes from Storybrand by Donald Miller and it is more applicable than ever. To be effective on Instagram, start your narrative where the user is and not what you want them to see. Provide value by helping them navigate the problem they are currently having.

Lukas Ruebbelke, BrieBug

It’s OK if it Isn’t Right For You

First, determine what business objective(s) you want to achieve from Instagram (and social media as a whole). Instagram isn’t for everyone, and if your efforts on the platform aren’t organic or authentic, it could actually damage your brand reputation with your followers. If you do create a presence on Instagram, commit to conceptualizing the type of visual content that will tell your brand’s story in a compelling way.

Rennie Leon, Director of Marketing and Communications

Feature Behind the Scenes

Instagram is our favorite tool for letting our brilliant team shine. Since we’re a digital marketing company for small businesses, it’s important for us to have a medium where our clients can learn more about the awesome people they’re working with. Through our efforts, we aim to show that we connect small businesses with customers and have a great time doing it. Since Instagram is a casual social media platform, I recommend using this channel to feature the people working behind the scenes. Show people what your business is all about, but don’t forget to highlight those who make things happen! 

Grecia Olachea, Markitors

Why the name “Westfield Creative”?

In 2016, I had just relocated from NYC to Lake Tahoe and was trying to find a way to work from home, so that I could be around my then 6-month-old little boy. I have never been an office person and never will be. I had to find a way. In early 2016, after a call with my friend, Val Geisler (now an email marketing guru/expert), I started my virtual assistant business, “Emily Ryan Works,” which was helping entrepreneurs and small business owners with really anything they needed. From WordPress website help, to Mailchimp email newsletters, to graphics, to social media and much more.  They thought of something, we did it. It was really my dream at the time…just to be working from home.

 

Elizabeth Bogh and Emily RyanThen, this little business grew very quickly. And maybe too quickly. I kept taking on more and more clients and in 2017, my sister, Elizabeth, came on to help me manage it all. We grew to a full-time digital marketing agency, specializing in Mailchimp, social media and WordPress. As our business grew, we desperately wanted a new name. I hated the name “Emily Ryan Works.” It was a name that I quickly chose because www.emilyryan.com was NOT available on that day in 2016 and this was the only domain name I could find. And over time, as my sister took on 50% of our workload, I hated standing behind just my name. She never minded and actually preferred it that way (she always says that I should be the “face” of the business, but it feel right). So we began the search for a new biz name.

 

And it took FOREVER to come up with something that made sense for our business, for both of us and where the domain was actually available (harder than you think!). I think we went through 100 names. It had to be special for us. It had to be cool.

 

And then one day, we landed on a name that made so much sense to us both — Westfield Creative. Westfield (Road) being the street that we grew up on together in Charlotte, NC.  Liz and I lived at 3000 Westfield Road for 18 years (14 of those together) and it was truly a magical home to grow up in.

 

We grew up in an old, big blue house, covered in ivy. We could both tell you every corner of that house. We had a pool and a trampoline and our yard was a giant playground of awesomeness. We also had computers in several rooms of our house (which in the 80’s was pretty techie). Elizabeth actually went to a magnet school for science and technology (she was the real techie in our family) and I went to a performing arts school (I was the crazy, artsy theatre kid).

 

Westfield was our home and now with our new business name, it can be forever.