Unveiling the Untapped Potential of Social Media for Every Team

Social media has evolved dramatically to become a vital tool to drive business, source high-quality leads, and boost sales. 

Its transformative impact on modern business extends beyond mere communication and outreach, profoundly shaping the strategies and practices of numerous departments within organizations. From marketing to sales, customer support, human resources, and C-suite leadership, the evolution of social media has generated a range of benefits, enabling stakeholders to navigate an interconnected digital landscape and drive holistic organizational success. 

In this article, we explore the diverse ways in which social media publishing has become an indispensable tool for stakeholders across multiple departments, fostering amplified brand reach, meaningful relationship building, enhanced customer satisfaction, effective talent engagement, and insightful business navigation.

Jump to Section

• Marketers: Mastering Social Media to Amplify Brand Reach
• Sales Professionals: Harnessing Social Selling for Relationship Building
• Customer Support: Enhancing Customer Satisfaction Through Social Media
• Human Resources: Building Employer Brand and Engaging Talent
• C-Suite Executives: Navigating the Social Landscape for Business Success
• The Bottom Line

Marketers: Mastering Social Media to Amplify Brand Reach

Social media is a pinnacle building block for every company’s marketing efforts. With the right strategy – one that leverages all the different aspects of social media marketing, from community management to lead generation – brands can amplify reach far beyond their website, see more conversions, a higher share of voice, and a strengthened status within their industry. 

A strategy you don’t want to exclude from your efforts on social media is employee advocacy. Employee advocacy will allow your brand to make an impact among a wider array of audiences – many of which will represent high-scoring leads for your sales team. This is something Corel Corporation uncovered as they worked with Oktopost to bolster their employee advocacy strategy. With a focused, analytics-based approach to diversifying their online presence, Corel saw an engagement rate of more than 40% and broke their own records for boosting click-throughs. 

Effective B2B social media strategies rely on marketers’ readiness to swiftly adapt to evolving trends and insights. Equipped with real-time social listening tools, to discover audience interests and trends, marketers can promptly act on these insights, staying ahead of the competition by integrating them into their social media approach. Social listening also allows you to monitor online conversations about your brand, product, and competitors. This helps you join conversations online where your brand isn’t mentioned, helping you identify potential leads who are searching for a product like yours. 

Social engagement data empowers marketing teams with unparalleled insights into their target audience’s interests. By spotting trends in engagement with the help of social media analytics, marketers can tailor their social content based on engagement results and maximize their strategy with content that will perform well, raise brand awareness, and attract high-quality leads. Social media engagement insights will also reveal your lead’s topics of interest. You can use this information to segment your audience into nurturing streams based on their engagement interests. 

With the data collected from social listening, as well as social media engagement data, you can use these insights to score your leads with real-time accurate data. Social actions you can score include likes, comments, link clicks, and brand mentions.

Sales Professionals: Harnessing Social Selling for Relationship Building

Social selling refers to the practice of sales professionals leveraging their personal social media networks to reach a wider pool of prospects by sharing insights and engaging in meaningful conversations. In order to win B2B customers in today’s buyer journey, sales teams need to leverage social media to draw buyer attention while they search for solutions. The benefits of social selling are endless, notably building trust online with potential buyers through online conversations, resulting in boosting lead acquisition and increased conversion rates. In fact, statistics show that social selling leaders create 48% more sales opportunities and are 51% more likely to reach their sales goals.

To enrich their social selling efforts, sales teams should also harness social media intent data and use it to generate timely and meaningful conversations with prospects. Social intent data captures customer insights through their interactions, engagement, and online conversations about their preferences, needs, and topics of interest. Leveraging these social media insights assists sales teams in converting prospects into customers by guiding personalized conversations to effectively nurture leads, and expedite the process of closing more deals. 

Sales and marketing have historically kept themselves separate, despite the fact that they share a key interest: generating revenue. Instead, marketing and sales should collaborate on lead scoring, and ensure that valuable first-party social media intent data is included in their lead scoring models. The behaviors you should be scoring include follows, interactions, tags, mentions, and clicks. 

Salesforce recently found that the biggest hurdle sales representatives face when it comes to gathering social media insights is time. In fact, 77% of sales reps struggle to find the hours in the day to sort through this data. With the right social media tools, however, leveraging those insights doesn’t need to be time-consuming at all. If you’re working from a centralized social media management platform, accessing this information – whether you’re marketing or sales, or anywhere between – will be quick and simple, and far more efficient than running between channels, looking for actionable insights on your own. Utilizing social media insights for lead scoring enables the identification of leads’ buying intent and prioritizes the allocation of time to leads most likely to convert.

Customer Support: Enhancing Customer Satisfaction Through Social Media

Community management is a key part of social media management. According to LinkedIn, more than two-thirds of companies are competing on the strength of their customer experience, and social media plays a key role in connecting customers with your brand in a positive way.

These days, customers expect personalized responses and they expect them quickly. 

The challenge for customer support teams is that the scope of work it takes to make customers and leads happy through social media is often underestimated. Flipping between social channels, and constantly refreshing notifications for some sign of a customer in need is not an efficient means of getting the job done. Good community management begins with a solid social media management platform; a centralized suite where you can monitor those separate communities and respond in real-time.

Best practices for exceptional customer support on social media include:

• Prompt responses: between private instant messages, comments, and direct brand tags or mentions, customers contacting you via social media expect prompt responses and quick solutions.
• Personalization: implementing time-saving measures with pre-written generic responses will not resonate with your customers. Instead, you need to ensure your responses prove someone is listening and understanding to significantly enhance customer satisfaction. 
• Resolving issues: actively and positively resolving issues through customer comments and tags will improve your brand perception. For the issues that can’t be resolved on social media, consistently directing customers to relevant departments demonstrates your willingness and ability to address their concerns. 

Leveraging social listening: customers might express their frustrations on social media without directly tagging your brand. Utilizing real-time social listening is crucial to reach these customers and address their concerns promptly. Responding to indirect feedback with empathy and expertise can effectively transform negative sentiments into positive experiences, showcasing your commitment to customer care.

Human Resources: Building Employer Brand and Engaging Talent

When it comes to positioning yourself as a strong employer to prospective employees and future leaders, employee advocacy on social media is invaluable. For HR professionals, leveraging that potential for showcasing the company culture in its best light is powerful.

Research shows that 79% of job seekers will use social media as part of their search. A company’s brand’s social media profiles are the best way to gauge the company’s values, strengths, and competitiveness. High-quality candidates are inclined toward brands with a stronger presence in these spaces. 

So, with that in mind, here are a few ways human resources can use social media to showcase company culture:

• Employee takeovers: allow employees to temporarily “take over” your company’s social media account to give your audience a different perspective of your company and an insight into who your employees are.
• Behind-the-scenes content: share your company culture with your audience by sharing inside glimpses of daily life at the office, company events, and team bonding activities.
• Highlight employee achievements: regularly acknowledge and celebrate your employee achievements, milestones, and contributions to demonstrate your company values and appreciation for your employees.
• Showcase company benefits: highlight the unique perks and benefits that contribute to your company culture, such as flexible work arrangements, professional development opportunities, or wellness programs.

With the help of employee advocacy, you can utilize social media to help you attract the best talent to your company and demonstrate the positive and encouraging company culture your business has.

C-Suite Executives: Navigating the Social Landscape for Business Success

Thought leadership and industry influence shouldn’t just be restricted to your marketing team.  

When C-suite executives are involved, it lends a level of credibility to the business that can’t be replicated elsewhere. In the past, this credibility was obtained solely from networking events and summits where expertise and industry wisdom could be demonstrated to relevant audiences – but, now, that same audience is on social media. 

Executive thought leadership brings far more rewards than just extra followers. Cultivating a robust online presence as a trusted thought leader is essential to foster credibility, boost brand recognition, and broaden your audience. Statistics show that 56% of professionals stated that a business executive’s presence on social media influences their purchase decision. Ultimately, this effort results in attracting high-quality leads and converting a higher number of prospects.

The Bottom Line

Social media is a universal touchpoint – a dedicated space where different departments including marketing, sales, customer success, human resources, and C-suite executives can all maximize their results and boost their respective goals. 

These days, recognizing and harnessing the power of social media is key for businesses to amplify their brand reach, build relationships, enhance customer satisfaction, attract top talent, and drive overall business success. In today’s interconnected world, organizations that embrace social media as a strategic tool will thrive in the digital landscape and stay ahead of the competition.

To take this efficiency to the next level, businesses can benefit greatly from a social media publishing platform that centralizes and automates key insights. To learn more, contact us today.