Making the presence of your B2B business on search engines is no longer sufficient. Today, you also need a strong social media presence. Because 42% of buyers now search brands on social media to learn more about their products, and services.
Creating a social media presence for your B2B brand is now more important than ever. Why? Because of increasing competition, a rise in the use of social media, personalization, and quick support.
Take a look at these stats:
- As of July 2022, there are 4.7 billion social media users worldwide – DataReportal
- 33% of consumers would contact customer service via social media rather than by phone – Invesp
- 65% of consumers feel more connected to brands that have a robust presence on social media – Sprout Social
- 98% of consumers plan to make a purchase on social media in 2022 – Sprout Social
These stats show that today’s consumers are tech-savvy and spend most of their time online. They use your social media presence to help them decide whether to buy from you.
Customers will likely switch to your competition if your B2B brand is nonexistent on social media. There has never been a better opportunity to take advantage of social media marketing for B2B brands, given the rise in the number of social media users since the pandemic.
Well, if you’re not sure where to begin, this blog highlights the social media strategy of one such B2B brand, which saw exponential growth in no time.
Yes, you guessed it right—SLACK!
Let’s Learn More About Slack
You likely already use Slack to communicate with teams inside and outside of your organization. If not, you have undoubtedly heard of it.
Unlike email, where your inbox is stuck in a cycle of refresh and reply, Slack is a platform for instant communication. It offers everything from group messaging to one-to-one conversations.
Slack decreases meetings by 27% and emails by 32% – EnterpriseAppsToday
Although many messaging apps are available today, Slack’s user experience and robust social media presence made it popular.
The Brand Persona Of Slack
The fact that Slack upholds its goal, vision, and brand values helps it stand out.
“Our culture, when it is inwardly focused, develops our product; when it is outwardly focused, it creates our brand. Our company’s identity and the things we stand for in the workplace are reflected in our brand.” – Slack
Slack essentially reflects the three traits that every brand ought to possess in terms of brand personality: sincerity, competence, and excitement.
- Slack is sincere because it focuses on facilitating work communication and makes it easy for employees to connect.
- Competent in a field means having a particular level of expertise. The content and brand messaging reveals how well Slack positions itself as an expert across different channels.
- The experience customers have with your product or service is what creates excitement. As a result, slack provides both a solution and a fun, engaging experience.
- Slack has a vibrant, engaging, and intriguing social media presence. It effectively conveys its message while keeping it entertaining.
Now that you have an in-depth understanding of Slack and its brand persona let’s look at its social media strategy.
Slack’s Social Media Strategy in Detail
When we talk about social media strategy, we will look at all the five key social media channels brands use, including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube, etc.
Each social media platform serves a different purpose; hence you need a different strategy to convey your brand voice. However, the end goal is to communicate with your target audience, develop B2B thought leadership, and inform them more about your product/service.
Let’s examine each social media platform Slack uses and the B2B social media strategies you can apply to your brand.
Slack on Instagram
With more than 600 million users, Instagram is a gold mine for any B2B business to connect with current and potential users.
Often B2B businesses struggle with their Instagram bio. What should they talk about, and what links to mention? But we appreciate how Slack kept it brief and to the point while emphasizing the brand’s mission.
Instagram stories may only be active for 24 hours, but highlights last forever. Slack uses this to their advantage very well; they have segmented each story for new users to learn more about their brand.
Looking at Slack’s Instagram account, you can see how everything blends so flawlessly with the color scheme and design of the B2B brand. The use of only brand colors increases brand recognition. You must use the same design strategy for your social media marketing efforts as well.
In 2020, Instagram introduced the Reel feature, quickly gaining much traction among users. Slack understands the importance of video content and how to grab users’ attention using 15-60-second videos. It is excellent how the firm leveraged Instagram Reels to promote its most recent features. The brand color is once again reflected in the cover photos.
Social Media is a great place to share your customer testimonials. It helps to capture attention and build trust and credibility among your audience. Slack did a great job at showcasing just that!
What you can learn
- Mix eye-catching visuals and humor to stand out on Instagram.
- Don’t stick to one content format. Use all the features, including Instagram Live, Highlights, Reels, and Stories.
- Repurpose your content. Turn customer testimonials into a post or convert highlights of the live session into a reel.
- Educate while having fun.
- Hop on to trends that match your B2B goals. Possibly a trending hashtag, audio, or a meme.
Slack on Twitter
Twitter should be an integral part of your B2B social media strategy. You can use the platform to help customers stay on top of information, share the latest updates, and provide instant support.
Let’s look at what Slack’s Twitter approach can teach us.
As previously stated, Twitter is a great platform for sharing the most recent information about your B2B business and providing support. Slack has a succinct and captivating bio that defines its mission. We like that they’ve asked customers to contact them for assistance. Excellent place to begin!
Cross-channel marketing is important for your B2B business. Why? Because it helps you stay on top of customers’ minds. Slack used a Twitter post to inform the audience about their Instagram Live. So they can leverage their Twitter audience to increase their visibility on Instagram as well. Geddit?
Growing organically on Twitter incorporates a variety of content. Twitter polls are a great way to interact with your audience, start conversations about your industry, or solicit feedback from them.
Slack is also very active on topical days to interact with its audience. Keeping up with trends that are relevant to your audience helps increase your engagement rate on social media.
Also, look at the post above and the hashtag. Using relevant hashtags can help you reach new audiences and communicate with your existing followers about what your brand cares about and celebrates.
Given that audiences like seeing short videos, Slack uses it to inform customers about new and updated features.
Slack is adept at using Twitter to build excitement for upcoming events among its audience. Even a link has been provided to help their audience sign up faster. Visual content is always more appealing than any other content form. Hence, Slack has created a 30-second video to offer further details on the event.
What you can learn
- Share product features and highlights on Twitter.
- Ask customers to tag you if they have questions so that you may offer prompt assistance.
- Use an engaging content format like videos and polls to increase Twitter engagement.
- Repurpose content on different platforms. You can share Instagram Reels on Twitter and tweak the caption to 280 words.
- Keep customers informed about the latest happenings in the company.
Slack on Facebook
When it comes to user base and time spent on the platform, Facebook continues to do better than all the other platforms. Use Facebook to promote your B2B brand, execute campaigns, increase traffic, and generate leads.
Let’s examine Slack’s Facebook marketing strategy in more detail.
Facebook provides an option for an “About” section in place of the bio and highlights. Slack has highlighted its mission statement, here again, making it clear how the brand is dedicated to solving a customer pain point.
As seen in the above image, customers have been advised by the company that, despite the lack of a Facebook help option, they may still visit the Help Center to get answers to their questions. Further optimizing the Facebook page by adding a link to the website is important to navigate the audience to your website and boost traffic. Slack has also updated its email address on their Facebook page to make it simpler for users to contact.
Slack’s Facebook posts are appealing thanks to its simple aesthetics and beautiful design. The work the brand puts into its design and aesthetics is evident. Their content is not very text-heavy even though it focuses more on testimonials. A good example of great social media copywriting.
Sharing blog posts on Facebook increases post reach and website traffic. Here, Slack has adopted the same strategy. The finest part is that they successfully attracted the audience’s attention with an eye-catching blog cover image.
Slack has used Facebook as well to update their users about their latest feature. Your customers might not be present on all the platforms. Hence, it’s important to promote the latest development across different platforms. Also, remember that the brand has not created new content but repurposed it for different platforms.
Slack has started a dialogue with its audience with this post. The audience doesn’t want to engage with robots. Thus, creating such posts brings the human side to the brand. Slack also makes it clear that you don’t always have to promote your product or service on social media. Occasionally, creating random posts where you seek a response from your target audience is a great engagement strategy. It also makes your B2B business on social media look less bot-y! 😉
Another important point is that Slack’s team engages with the audience in the comment section. It makes your audience feel valued and creates a lasting relationship with them.
What you can learn
- Adding email to your social media account makes it easy for customers to reach out.
- Your audience doesn’t engage much with promotional content. You can add a touch of humor to make it more engaging.
- Sharing blog links is a great way to drive traffic from your Facebook audience to your website.
- Creating enticing visuals is important to grab the audience’s attention.
Slack on YouTube
You might be surprised to learn that, after Google, YouTube is the most popular search engine in the world. We know that getting started with YouTube can be a little challenging. But having a presence on YouTube is important if you want your B2B company’s social media strategy to be successful.
Let’s take a look at some of Slack’s YouTube marketing tactics. You can draw some inspiration for your B2B business from it.
Well, each of us knows how important a cover picture is. Most B2B businesses write a statement or two about their brand here, but Slack decided to post a non-statement cover picture. The patterns and colors make it quite evident that it is Slack.
Slack has decided to highlight its history here rather than its mission. Here, the brand wants to give the audience additional information about Slack. A website link is provided so users can access and find more information.
We love this playlist section. It is dedicated to discussing the B2B business, utilizing it, and highlighting key features and activities.
Often B2B businesses create YouTube accounts but post content once in a while. With Slack, however, such is not the case. When it comes to posting videos on YouTube, Slack is rather active.
Their content is published two or three times a week. What makes it more exciting is that Slack has a proper content strategy for YouTube. Because if you look at the videos, the initial videos are dedicated to installing Slack, introducing features, etc.
We must say, this content approach is excellent. All the YouTube thumbnails are to the point and drive curiosity. Once more, the company has emphasized visual appeal, color coordination, and conveying more with fewer words. Everything appears flawless.
What you can learn
- It’s critical to have a concise description on YouTube to provide your viewers with more information about your company.
- You can use YouTube to educate people more about your B2B product or service,i.e, demo series, because it’s a great platform for long-form content.
- The best YouTube marketing strategy is to use a mix of both long and short form content.
- It’s crucial to segment your content on YouTube so that users can quickly locate what they’re looking for.
- Designs and aesthetics are crucial for keeping your brand image constant across all platforms.
Slack on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is used by about 66.8 million individuals making it an important platform for social media marketing for B2B brands. You can connect with everyone on the platform, including entry-level professionals, influencers, and key decision makers. LinkedIn ads enable you to build ads in a variety of forms, such as single-image, carousel, text, video, spotlight, message, or in-mail ads.
Here is a thorough analysis of Slack’s LinkedIn strategy:
Slack is a perfect example of writing a simple yet effective LinkedIn bio. The cover image is simple with brand colors and patterns followed by a mission statement and location. Link to the website is given to drive traffic and also for the audience to know more about their B2B business.
Slack has used the “About” section to share how it is transforming the workplace and what makes it a great place to work. Using words like “diverse and inclusive workplace,” “equal opportunity,” and “supportive place to work” show how the brand is committed to employee well-being.
Slack shares company blogs on LinkedIn to reach more people and increase website traffic. This is a great example of repurposing content.
Do keep in mind, though, that blogs posted by Slack on LinkedIn are not the same as those shared on Facebook and Twitter. The blogs on Facebook and Twitter are more fun, engagement driven, tailored to the audience on those platforms, whereas this blog on their LinkedIn page is more serious, professional and is uploaded so that it reaches more businesses on LinkedIn.
This is a nice example of how to tweak your content and message to fit the platform, as each platform serves a different purpose.
What it takes to work at Slack is outlined in detail on the “Life” page. This page’s main goal is to engage current employees and attract new talent for the company. Slack has used the page to show what it is like to work at Slack and how the brand emphasizes inclusivity and diversity.
Slack knows that its customer base is not restricted to a single platform. Especially the customer base of startup founders and the like are more likely to be hanging out on LinkedIn. Hence promoting this particular event on LinkedIn makes sense. Promoting such targeted events on LinkedIn helps you reach your attendees and audience. Additionally, it builds excitement for your event.
Slack has used LinkedIn polls to entice action and boost engagement – feature that you must explore for your B2B business. LinkedIn polls are used to interact with your audience, boost engagement, get to know them better, receive feedback and even qualify prospects that you can later contact and convert.
Employee and customer advocacy is the most effective strategy to promote your B2B business. Slack shows us how to convert client testimonials into social proof on LinkedIn.
Through such testimonials, you can create strong networks and collaborations in addition to earning trust and establishing yourself as an expert on the platform. Also, sharing customer testimonials on LinkedIn can help drive more business opportunities.
Slack’s LinkedIn advertisements are also intriguing and appealing. Slack has added videos, photos, and carousels with excellent design and content.
This ad by Slack is another example of excellent copywriting. The copy is so enticing that it makes the viewers go, “Tell me more!” which is why the click-through-rate is bound to increase.
Slack gives us, not just organic social media marketing goals, but also paid social media marketing goals!
What you can learn
- Create content in various formats, such as polls, videos, and carousels.
- Post-user-generated content on LinkedIn, such as customer testimonials.
- LinkedIn is a great place to boost your work culture and share behind the scenes with your audience. Hence, add more content that builds employer branding on the platform.
- Talk about the what, why, and whom of your brand in the About section to the fullest.
In a Nutshell: Slack’s Social Media Strategy
Repurpose your content
You are not required to make every video, create an infographic, or write posts. You can just tweak your message to fit the platform.
Majority of the data on the social media networks that Slack uses is the same. For instance, Slack’s video content is reused across almost all platforms.
Make your content engaging
Your B2B social media content doesn’t have to be boring. You can enrich it by adding videos, using multiple content formats, and using features like Reels, Stories, and Polls.
Every post doesn’t have to be about your brand
You don’t have to talk only about your product or service. It’s important to create content that interests your target audience.
For example, in polls, you can have a mix of generic questions and those centered around your B2B business. Your stories don’t have to be just about your brand and can cover other topics as well.
Design and aesthetics matter
All the posts by Slack are beautifully designed. Most posts have the same color and pattern to boost brand recognition.
Share user-generated content
If you look closely at Slack’s social media posts, you’ll see that the company has placed a lot of emphasis on user-generated content.
Whatever its form, user-generated content offers many benefits for your B2B businesses. It enables you to engage with your community more effectively, create content quickly, and develop thought leadership within the industry.
Conclusion
You are undoubtedly missing out on opportunities if your B2B business isn’t on social media because you believe it doesn’t relate to your industry.
We have examined Slack’s social media marketing strategy across all five key platforms, and it is clear that each platform serves a different purpose. Each platform has been used differently by the brand. We suggest you apply these lessons to your B2B brand.
However, there are millions of things happening in the social media landscape. It might be difficult to stay on top of these changes and incorporate them into your brand. All of your efforts would be for nothing if not done properly. As a result, it is essential to outsource social media marketing to a B2B social media marketing agency to free up your time and energy so that you can focus entirely on the key areas of your business.
Get in touch with the Contensify team and we’ll take care of your entire social media marketing strategy.