Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is the art of attracting, engaging and inspiring communities on social networks to discover, consume, share and act on brand social content.

92% of companies today consider social media important for their business but keeping up with the latest best practices, social media platforms and changes in the industry can be a challenge for brand marketers. Recognized as a top social media blog by Social Media Examiner and many others, TopRank solves that challenge by sharing social media marketing best practices, industry news, interviews, book reviews and liveblogging of presentations at industry conferences.

Browse our social media marketing articles to find the answers to your most pressing social media questions.

How B2B Marketers Can Build Their Personal Brands on Social Media

Nick Nelson on Nov 4th, 2019
B2B Marketing, Social Media

For some marketers, it’s second nature. For others, it’s uncomfortable territory. But no matter your predisposition, there’s no denying that personal brand-building is an essential skill in today’s B2B marketing environment.

It’s also fun! Cultivating your social media brand offers an opportunity to tie your own interests, passions, and perspectives into your professional identity.

Let’s explore why this is such an important focus for modern marketing practitioners, how to get it right, and how business leaders can encourage it.

Why Your Personal Brand on Social Media Matters as a Marketer

The list could go on endlessly, but at a high level, the rationale for personal brand-building on social media boils down to three key factors.

How B2B Marketers Can Build Their Personal Brands on Social Media

5 Top B2B Brands Mastering Facebook Engagement

Lane Ellis on Oct 30th, 2019
B2B Marketing, Facebook

With more than 2.4 billion users worldwide, Facebook has long been a popular platform for brands both B2B and direct-to-consumer looking to creatively and effectively showcase their products and services.

Facebook has released scores of new features over the past several years that have not only helped it remain among the most-used social media platforms — despite facing well-publicized challenges over the past several years — but also increasingly to become a destination for professional business users, and users looking for a social experience markedly different from LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.

With Facebook having launched so many new tools for brands to maximize their engagement on the platform, let’s take a look at how five large primarily B2B companies are creatively connecting with audiences through pages, groups, communities, and several other methods Facebook provides.

5 Top B2B Brands Mastering Facebook Engagement

5 Top B2B Brands Delivering Exemplary Twitter Engagement

Lane Ellis
B2B Marketing, Twitter

With more than 139 million active daily users and available in over 40 languages, Twitter has increasingly grown as a platform for both B2B and direct-to-consumer brands looking to creatively and effectively showcase products and services.

Twitter has kept up a steady pace of new feature roll-outs over the past few years that have helped it make significant gains as a social media platform not just for consumers, but also for more professional business users than ever.

It’s also increasingly become a destination for all manner and size of brands, and the users who frequent Twitter expect an experience markedly different from that offered by LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. As the following chart from MarketingCharts shows, over the last year Twitter has seen increasing satisfaction among social media users.

5 Top B2B Brands Delivering Exemplary Twitter Engagement

5 Top B2B Brands Maximizing LinkedIn Engagement

Lane Ellis
B2B Marketing, LinkedIn

With more than 645 million users in over 200 countries, LinkedIn* has increasingly grown as a platform for both B2B and direct-to-consumer brands looking to creatively and effectively showcase products and services.

LinkedIn has released scores of new features over the past several years that have helped it remain the foremost social media platform for professional business users.

It’s also increasingly become a destination for all manner and size of brands, and users looking for an experience markedly different from that offered by Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Since LinkedIn has rolled out so many new tools for brands to maximize their engagement on the Microsoft-owned platform, let’s take a look at how five large primarily B2B companies are connecting with audiences through the myriad of page, group, and showcase page options LinkedIn now provides.

5 Top B2B Brands Maximizing LinkedIn Engagement

Margaret Shepard Shares How Mayo Clinic Built its Facebook Live Broadcast Strategy #DSMPLS

Debbie Friez
Digital Summit, Facebook, Influencer Marketing, Video

The Mayo Clinic, one of our nation’s most renowned hospitals, believes in being social. More than 100 years ago, the Mayo brothers got the social ball rolling by inviting other surgeons to come to its facility in Rochester, MN to talk and learn from one another.

Today, that sharing and learning principle continues through social media, particularly Facebook Live.

With the hopes of helping patients learn more about their health care options, Mayo Clinic knew that research showed that word-of-mouth and expert insight could make an impact. With that in mind, it began its foray into live video on social media with Periscope and eventually moved to Facebook Live.

The hook of the broadcast? Leveraging the expert insights of experienced physicians.

Margaret Shepard Shares How Mayo Clinic Built its Facebook Live Broadcast Strategy #DSMPLS

Social Media Secrets: 5 Under-the-Radar LinkedIn Features for Marketers

Nick Nelson
B2B Marketing, LinkedIn, Social Media

It’s plain to see that B2B marketers, at large, see the value in social media. The latest B2B benchmarking research from CMI and MarketingProfs found that nearly two out of three respondents (61%) increased their usage of social media for content marketing purposes in the previous year. Another new report shows that social content is atop the list of focal areas for B2B marketers in the coming year.

It’s also fair to say, based on various data points and conversations with folks in the biz, that most of us feel we could be doing better with social. The size of the audiences on these platforms make them essential to any digital strategy, but breaking through suppressive algorithms and showing clear ROI is a perpetual challenge for brands.

Social Media Secrets: 5 Under-the-Radar LinkedIn Features for Marketers

Spotlighting Organic Social Media Video Success: Your Guide to Metrics and Specs

Debbie Friez
Social Media, Video

Native social media video is a marketing darling, with emerging new formats and increasing availability across platforms. Mainstays like Facebook prioritize native video posts over other content types. But how can marketers showcase the impact of native video tactics to clients? With variable analytics available for the different platforms, setting a benchmark for reporting in advance is smart but complicated.

Today we’re giving you the ultimate native video guide to set you up for success. Let’s look at the primary social media channels, outline the specs for your video, and list the available metrics for measurement.

Spotlighting Organic Social Media Video Success: Your Guide to Metrics and Specs

80+ New Social Media Marketing Statistics for B2B Marketers

Lane Ellis
B2B Marketing, Social Media

Social media marketing’s near-universal popularity and the break-neck speed at which it changes sometimes makes it difficult to keep up with — for B2B and B2C marketers alike. However, if we use the latest statistical data, it’s possible to gain many helpful new insights.

Here are 83 of the latest relevant social media marketing statistics to trick out and inform your marketing efforts, with a particular focus on certain fascinating new B2B-specific data.

We’ll look at statistics taken from five recent reports and several additional sources, starting with general social media marketing overview figures. Then we’ll look individually at Facebook, LinkedIn*, Twitter, Instagram, and a group of other social platforms.

80+ New Social Media Marketing Statistics for B2B Marketers

B2B Social Media Shakeup: 4 Developments That Have Caught Our Eye

Caitlin Burgess
B2B Marketing, Social Media

Following scandal, criticism, and calls for more privacy and relevancy, social media giants are working hard to recapture their original allure as safe communities and conversation destinations.

And while platforms are ardently focused on heightening the everyday user’s experience, the movements we’ve seen so far in 2019 signals that B2B brands will still have some things to look forward to.

This is a teeny sampling of the social media headlines we saw in the first quarter of 2019 alone:

LinkedIn* launches its much-anticipated live video platform.
Twitter reveals its developing new tools to help publishers understand the type of content that’s resonating most with readers.
Facebook announces its testing a new feature that would allow Pages to archive and share stories.

B2B Social Media Shakeup: 4 Developments That Have Caught Our Eye

The Impact of Twitter’s Proposed Shakeup on Marketers and Influencers

Nick Nelson
B2B Marketing, Social Media, Twitter

Twitter needs to change. This truth is acknowledged by everyone affiliated with the social media network, including its co-founder and CEO.

Jack Dorsey sat with Chris Anderson and Whitney Pennington Rodgers of TED last month for a roundtable discussion about the state of his company, and the path ahead. Specifically, their chat centered on Twitter’s conversation health, and how to improve it.

During the talk, Dorsey laid out some interesting ideas. Today we’ll touch on several of them — including one proposed shift that could fundamentally alter the platform’s very fabric — with an eye on the potential impact for B2B marketers and influencers.

The Impact of Twitter’s Proposed Shakeup on Marketers and Influencers

Over 50 Top Social Media Marketing Blogs

Lee Odden
BIGLIST Marketing Blogs, Social Media

The world of Social Media is probably responsible for more innovation in digital marketing over the past 5 to 10 years than nearly any other discipline. From ephemeral story based content to live video to all the things being done with data for more personalized marketing, staying in top of what’s real vs. the hype in marketing is increasingly difficult.

Top help marketers find great sources of marketing advice, we’ve curated the BIGLIST of marketing blogs and more recently a marketing blogs from martech companies. Adding to that curation effort and our own solid social media marketing advice is today’s list of social media marketing blogs.

Over 50 Top Social Media Marketing Blogs