Although the majority of channel partners disappoint brands they represent by taking a pass on many of the marketing support programs offered to them, participation in social media amplification appears to be on the rise.

Progressive B2B brands are taking a note from the B2C playbook and meeting buyers on their preferred platforms, such as on podcasts, through videos and on social media. In fact, the number of buyers using social media to research potential solutions has grown from 20% in 2012 to 54% in 2018, according to the B2B Buyers Survey. Yet, research from the Content Marketing Institute shows that while 80% of B2B marketers have a social media strategy in place, only 32% have documented it.

A winning social media strategy must be documented and expansive. B2B companies should leverage a variety of social media platforms to not only promote their products, but also share relevant content, engage with customers, build brand awareness and more. Here are five B2B brands with a stellar social media presence we can all learn from:

MailChimp Mixes Eye-Catching Visuals & Humor On Instagram

MailChimp is an email marketing platform, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it by looking at their Instagram. The company’s Instagram page is a beautiful blend of bright colors, entertaining videos and a dash of humor — a winning combination that has landed MailChimp over 83,000 Instagram followers. Visit the page for yourself and see if you can resist hitting the follow button.

Slack Drives Customer Engagement, Service Via Twitter

Slack leverages Twitter as a two-way communication platform to engage with current and prospective customers. On most days, the Slack Twitter is awash with relevant videos, articles and more, and the Slack team is constantly responding to comments from other Twitter users. But on days where Slack is down, the company uses Twitter as an active platform to send out status updates and field individual questions and feedback from users. With Twitter, Slack can provide real-time customer support in an easily accessible and scalable way.

HubSpot Continues Post-Event Conversations Over Facebook 

The best brands don’t just have social media pages for their companies, but also their events. HubSpot is a shining example of Facebook use at its finest.

The company has created a separate Facebook page solely for its annual INBOUND event. Although the event takes place in early September, the company is dedicated to building a year-long, sustainable community around it. To do so, HubSpot created an INBOUND Studio page, where it posts video interviews, “dear attendee” tips, quotes and more on a regular basis. The posts help drive engagement long after the event has ended, as well as build excitement around the following year’s event.  

Oracle Humanizes B2B Marketing On LinkedIn

LinkedIn is repeatedly named the top social media platform to reach B2B buyers, and Oracle is a prime example of how to best leverage the site. The company is ranked 9^th on LinkedIn’s top companies list and has amassed more than three million LinkedIn followers. Beyond just sharing content and relevant news, Oracle makes a point to connect with its followers and showcase the people behind the brand.

Earlier this month, the company opened up about losing 11 employees on 9/11. Then, in the wake of Hurricane Florence, Oracle posted a video of two employees who are delivering supplies and providing aid to those affected by the storm and urged its followers to join them in giving back. In doing so, Oracle humanizes its brand and creates a company image that people will want to support.

Adobe Fuels Instagram Feed With Customer Content

Instagram is quickly growing in popularity and is considered the number one platform for engagement. Nevertheless, you’ll be hard-pressed to find many B2B brands using the platform, let alone posting content on a regular basis.

Adobe, which recently acquired Marketo, has a notable Instagram presence on par with MailChimp. The Adobe Instagram feed looks like something straight out of Pinterest, with breathtaking travel photos, inspirational quotes and quirky designs. But don’t be fooled by the professional-looking photos, as they are often created by Adobe users themselves. By crowdsourcing user photos, Adobe always has a steady stream of content available and can showcase the power of its products over social media.

Radius, a B2B data and intelligence company, unveiled new integrations across data management providers (DMPs), Facebook, Google AdWords and Twitter. The integrations are designed to enable users to connect existing email, direct mail, telesales and other existing channels to identify and target audiences in a comprehensive, omnichannel environment.

Twitter is looking to enhance its video content capabilities with two recent moves: The company acquired Magic Pony, a machine learning and visual processing technology, and has partnered with video marketing platform Innovid to provide data analytics and tools to advertisers.

Twitter is considering upping its character limit from 140 to 10,000, a move that has sparked a heated debate. Some think it will ruin the social media platform, while others think the change is long overdue.

PeopleLinx, a social sales enablement solution provider, has unveiled new Twitter listening capabilities in recently released updates to its social selling platform. The tool aims to automate the Twitter engagement process by identifying when key prospects are using the social network — while also providing suggestions on how to relevantly engage with them.

Marketing software company Volacci has integrated Facebook and Twitter into its Automatr marketing automation platform. Added as part of the software’s Socialize update, this feature enables users to post directly into Facebook and Twitter through the application.

“Socialize is just the latest in a series of marketing automation integrations unveiled by Volacci this year,” said Ben Finklea, CEO of Volacci. “We launched with several integrations like Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, GoToMeeting and UnBounce. We’ve since added integration with Drupal, which puts marketing automation tools right inside the admin interface of the content management system.”

Users of HubSpot’s Social Inbox can now publish and promote content directly to LinkedIn Company Pages from the marketing automation platform.

Prior to adding LinkedIn Company Pages, Social Inbox enabled marketers to publish and share content across Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn Groups from within HubSpot.

Mike Volpe, CMO of Hubspot, said that the marketing automation vendor’s data identified LinkedIn as the highest generator of visitor-to-lead conversion out of all other social marketing channels.

When B2B marketers send out a typical paid tweet, they have to direct leads to a landing page with a form for their name, company, email and any other pertinent bits of data they want to capture. As any marketer knows, when prospects have to go to another site and fill out a form it increases the likelihood that they will just abandon the task.

That is all about to change with Twitter’s new Lead Generation Cards, which are being called revolutionary by some industry observers and could have an impact on how other social media outlets address the needs of B2B marketers going forward.