Social media amplification in the B2B world
So your company has bought into social media and you’re tweeting, posting, pinning, and/or blogging your heart out. You spend a lot of time managing content and various platforms, so it”s important that your hard work gets the distribution and attention it deserves. This is where the idea of social media amplification comes in; people who love and support your brand share, comment on, and Like the excellent posts you create, which then gets your message in front of a whole new network you didn’t originally have in your audience.
For a consumer goods/services business, social media amplification means check-ins, reviews, pictures, videos, and a whole lot of readily obvious actions. Take for example the last brand post that I shared to my own Facebook wall which is an example of me amplifying Somersby’s efforts:
Social media amplification in the B2B world is not as simple. You need to prompt the people who interact with your business to help spread the word for you. Let’s look at some ways that you can get some social media amplification going for your B2B business.
Hold Lunch ‘n Learn Sessions
A meeting with your employees is a great way to get the ball rolling with social media. You can bring the company”s social media policies and some tips or training to the table so that employees can learn not only what they can say, but also how to do it. Also use it as an opportunity to ask them what kind of content they would be willing to share with their own networks, so that you can expand and refine your content creation/curation strategies.
Send Out Email Digests
Not all of your customers, partners, or employees are going to have the time to constantly check and repost the content coming from your corporate social media profiles. Give them a friendly reminder in the format of an email digest – a summary of the great content you”ve found or created over the last while (bi-weekly, monthly, or bi-monthly depending on your content schedule). Include simple sharing buttons for each piece of content, like this example from a recent MarketingProfs email:
If you want to really get fancy, segment your email list based on industry or partner vs. customer and serve up some tailored content for higher engagement.
Reward Your Brand Ambassadors
Whether it”s through a clever gamification plan, giveaways, or even just a personal thank-you email, it is very important to recognize these people for helping you spread the word. Retweet something that they”ve posted to give them more visibility in the industry, or have a “LinkedIn Superstar of the Month” feature post on your blog.
Simplify the Process with a Social Media Amplification Application
If you have the budget and a large enough group to motivate, an application can provide a lot of assistance when it comes to managing an amplification campaign. Think of them as Hootsuite but with the extra benefits of amplification. Although there are, one we really like is GaggleAMP.
GaggleAMP provides scheduling for social media managers, as well as analytic tools that their reporting manager will want to see. The secret sauce is how stakeholders can opt into your group (known as a Gaggle) and will receive email notifications when a post goes out on the corporate social media profiles. Right in the email, the stakeholder can choose whether or not they wish to share this on their personal network.
But the magic doesn’t end there; GaggleAMP lets the manager of the account set a plan for gamifying the process. Reposting can grant a stakeholder a predetermined amount of points, which can then be easily used to reward them for their loyalty. No worry about keeping track of it, because the application does it all for you in its nice browser-based cloud platform.
You’re a great company with great content and social media presence – there are certainly others who agree with this. Don’t just rely on your champions to spread the word without prompts or incentives; formalize a plan for social media amplification today.
