By Arianna Crawford

The B2B marketing and communications industry is in the midst of a cultural shift in how we use social media.

Our emphasis on the “old guard” platforms, like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter no longer applies the way it might have in the “build it and they will come” days of social media strategy. People are leaving certain platforms in droves and spending all their time on ones that are home to (and promote content about) their specific interests. These users have feeds overwhelmed by tailored content and no longer follow brands that they’re only mildly interested in – you have to earn their attention.

In this climate, building a profile on every single platform doesn’t make sense – even if your boss asks “what about ____” every time a new one pops up. Nor should we allow ourselves to get stuck in the cycle of our tried and true platforms for the sake of “how it’s always been done”.

If we’re going to up-level our work, we need to reconsider the social media landscape and the role the B2B audience is playing on these various platforms. Questions to consider as market conditions, the audience and the wider media world continue to evolve:

• Are the energy and resources required to produce brand content on pillar B2B social media platforms delivering the same value an impact?
• As we now face up to six generations in the workplace, who is the audience today? Who will they be tomorrow?
• In today’s definition of B2B social media success actually successful? Is it time for social media to also consider how it aligns with other parts of the marketing mix to drive new manifestations of what counts as success?

At Big Valley Marketing, our Digital + Social Marketing team has led many B2B tech brands through revitalizations of their mainstay platforms and guided them through their decisions to expand or minimize based on their audience, the platform’s reputation, and the resources their team has on hand. These efforts have produced valuable insights and we’re planning to share them with you. In a series following this post, we’ll provide some points of view on evaluating pillar B2B social media platforms and practical ideas on how to continue to squeeze success out of these channels. We hope you find the series valuable and are always here to help if you’d like a digital and social marketing partner.