Sharing the love on social media

Using social media to promote your brand is a no-brainer these days, our CRM Officer Lauren Pow discusses the problem with thinking that means every tweet or post needs to be about themselves.

We recommend the 80:20 principle as a cardinal rule for social media content marketing: 80% of what you post on your business accounts should be educational, entertaining and interesting to your audience. Only 20% should be directly promotional.

One of the content solutions we’d recommend adopting in your 80% would be sharing the success of your clients.

And while it might not seem obvious to promote someone else’s business above your own, it’s a great way to add credibility to your own content. Here’s why?

1. It shows you actually care about your clients.

Great customer service is more than just anticipating the needs of your clients in relation to what you can offer. It’s also important to acknowledge and celebrate those moments of success. Giving a shout out on LinkedIn to one client becoming carbon-neutral or retweeting a news article about another donating to charity shows that you are listening, you care about their efforts and you want to amplify their success.

2. If the content is relevant to their business, it is probably relevant to your networks.

Two-thirds of people say they are more likely to trust a brand that interacts positively on social media. Posting content that aligns with your clients’ interests is a good start. That being said, one of the top attributes of credible content is being brand agnostic, so don’t just boast about a client for the sake of it — make sure you are curating the best of your customer’s work and presenting it fairly.

3. Social B2B marketing is great for targeting new customers.

Caring about the wellbeing of those within your business networks creates a fantastic opportunity for collaborative relationships and value exchange. One of the benefits of strengthening corporate relationships through social media is that it can lead to businesses returning the favour further down the track, helping increase your own exposure to a much wider corporate audience.

LinkedIn used well can be responsible for more than 80% of a business’ social media leads and is a great platform for sharing your own (and others’) tales of success.

4. You will seem more authentic and credible if you share the love.

You’re good, but you’re not that good. The reality is your followers and clients likely already know you’re an expert in your field, or else they wouldn’t be following you.

Sharing the love and promoting what clients or other businesses are up to will make you seem more authentic, humble and credible.

This, in turn, will keep your audience engaged (as they probably won’t stick around for long if you only post about how great you are).