9 Facts You Should Know About Using Social Media For B2B Marketing

Marketers need facts to make the right decisions—especially when taking advantage of less-charted tools such as social media. But I’ve found that while lots of research is available about social media, it’s often not organized in a way that tells a story that’s useful for B2B marketers.

I’ve sorted through a number of recent research reports and pulled out conclusions that are particularly relevant to B2B marketers.

1. The vast majority of B2B marketers take advantage of social media

• 80% of business executives said social is “important” or “somewhat important” in marketing and branding (e-Strategy Trends).

2. The most popular social media platforms among B2B Marketers are Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn

• The top three social networks used by B2B marketers are LinkedIn (91%); Twitter (85%); and Facebook (81%) (Content Marketing Institute).

3. But YouTube, Google+, and Slideshare are becoming forces to be reckoned with

• 73% of B2B Marketers employ YouTube; 55% use GooglePlus, and 40% take advantage of SlideShare. (Content Marketing Institute).

4. B2B Marketers are still struggling to make social media work for them

Just 62% of marketers say that LinkedIn is effective, while 50% say the same for Twitter, and only 30% of B2B marketers view Facebook as effective (Content Marketing Institute).

5. Different social media platforms address different audience and interests

• 72% of respondents said that different platforms are better suited to different interests. And 60% of these respondents connect with different types of people, media, and brands on different social platforms (140 Proof and IPG Media Lab).

6. Customers expect to talk about different areas of their lives on different social media

• When the talk turns to business and industry, 40 % of users engage with others using LinkedIn; 30% using Facebook/Twitter.


• In the technology field, 35% of platform users engage with Facebook/Twitter, 18% with LinkedIn (140 Proof and IPG Media Lab).

7. Some platforms excel at engaging customers

• YouTube was found to be the best platform for engaging users, according to a recent study by Shareholic that looked at average bounce rates, visit duration, and pages per visit as a measure of engagement. YouTube was the top performer across all three metrics.


• The Shareholic study found that Google+ and LinkedIn drive the fewest social referrals, but did a good job of engaging visitors. Google+ users spend more than 3 minutes consuming content shared by their connections and visit 2.45 pages during each visit. LinkedIn users spend 2 minutes and 13 seconds on each link they click and view 2.23 pages with each visit.


• Twitter and Facebook are tied in fourth place in terms of engagement (Shareholic).

8. Social media drives a small, but not insubstantial amount of traffic and leads

• For small to medium-sized businesses, social media drives 1.9% of B2B commercial website traffic and 4.8% of leads. This means that the quality of the traffic from social media is high. In contrast, organic traffic accounted for 40% of site traffic but delivered a smaller comparative share of leads: 26.5% of the total. Another 40% of traffic came direct to the site (eMarketer).

9. Social media can deliver bottom-line results

• 50% of technology companies have acquired a customer through Twitter (Hubspot).


• 60% of B2B companies got customers through a lead from LinkedIn; 40% through Facebook; and 30% through Twitter (Hubspot).


• A majority of enterprises surveyed were satisfied (79%) with the business value achieved by social-marketing tactics on one or more major public social network (Spredfast).

9 Facts You Should Know About Using Social Media For B2B Marketing