Why Quora and Reddit are better alternatives to B2B Facebook marketing
I’ve recently bumped into an article highlighting 30 stats about b2b social media usage, and it gave me some food for thought that I’d like to share with you. According to Content Marketing Institute, 76% of b2b marketers use Facebook (FB) to distribute content. Yet, less than 40% say FB is effective for lead generation and brand awareness. In comparison, 81% of tech marketers refer to LinkedIn as their top social media platform, and LinkedIn users are 4 times more likely to visit your brand’s website than FB users. But effective LinkedIn marketing is very expensive and time-consuming, so many small b2b brands and startups ditch it for the sake of…FB!
Having read this, I looked back at my own experience as a technology b2b marketer and couldn’t recall a single case we ever got a really worthy business lead from FB. We did get business leads and opportunities from LinkedIn and Twitter, but never from Facebook. And still, when I come across endless b2b social media strategy guides flooding the internet these days, I’m surprised to see that FB is still depicted as a number one platform for b2b content distribution and marketing.
I went further and spent some time browsing FB in search of b2b brand pages that don’t just share blog posts or funny gifs, but have the actual dialogue with the audience. And I found zero such pages! Most are just URL cemeteries, as I call them.
Even Deloitte that undoubtedly allocates sufficient marketing budgets looks pretty crummy and meager on FB:
Deloitte’s fan base on FB currently counts over 363K followers. As shown in the screenshot above, a single post’s reach is 2.7K, i.e. less than 1% of the audience. And the comments look “very meaningful”, don’t they?
Yes, there’re quite interesting and appealing b2c brand pages, but when it comes to b2b, many brands are still struggling to develop own unique brand voice and get their message across effectively. While some b2b brands do get quality leads through advertising, most don’t have sufficient budgets or in-house expertise to obtain real business value from these endeavors. But they still rush to have a presence on FB just because all those b2b social media strategy guides and “consultants” repeat year after year they should do so.
As a tech marketer, I’m deeply convinced that FB delivers little to no value to most of small to mid-sized b2b brands. There’re a few reasons including the following:
- No matter what many so-called b2b surveys say, there’s no substantial evidence that FB is a reliable and sustainable source of b2b leads nor is it a great source for generating word of mouth. If you’re on a shoestring budget — simply forget about FB as it won’t likely bring you any commercial or reputation value.
- To get noticed on FB, brands are pressured to invest in ad campaigns. Since small b2b brands don’t have sufficient budgets to outsource FB advertising to a professional agency, they try to complete this task with internal resources and often just burn out the budgets that are already pretty meager due to the lack of experience and knowledge of ad budget optimization hacks (that good agencies always possess).
- It’s difficult for b2b brands to find their own unique voice in social media in general and on FB in particular; most of today’s b2b content doesn’t resonate with FB audiences that mostly engage with video and visual content that, in its turn, is pretty expensive and resourceful to create and isn’t affordable for many small b2b brands.
Many social media teams continue running on a hamster wheel making the same mistakes and distributing a highly non-engaging content that just can’t survive the fierce and ruthless competition with highly engaging b2c content.
One of the issues with FB marketing is that in recent years the number of followers has become the main KPI and many inbound marketing teams are literally pressured by top management/stakeholders to increase that number by all means. Since organic and white hat practices normally take time to show results, digital marketers have no other choice but to use gray and black hat practices, which results in building “dead” audiences that will never be converted into prospects, leads, clients and brand advocates.
One of my former bosses was utterly obsessed with numbers and believed no one would trust a brand that doesn’t have thousands or even hundreds of thousands of followers on FB. As head of content and media, I made a tremendous effort trying to talk him out and explain that it’s unreasonable for a no-name brand that didn’t even exist 2 months ago to have social profiles with a massive follower base. It just doesn’t look natural, and our target audiences are smart enough to spot fake stuff, which could lead to significant reputation risks, and it was my direct duty to avoid and eliminate them. I spent long hours explaining that it takes time to build a stable and reliable brand and what really matters today is the brand’s ability to establish a long-term relationship with fans/customers, develop its unique tone of voice, identify genuine positioning that would be most relevant to the brand’s mission and vision, and entice and foster a real unvarnished conversation with the audience.
With that said, most of social media marketing efforts should be aimed to create a community around the brand; the community that would help turn more and more people into the brand advocates and evangelists down the road. That should be the paramount goal of any social media marketing today. Instead, many social media teams are still collecting likes and sending fake reports to senior leadership that contain beautiful numbers but no actual value proofs: your brand can have thousands of followers on FB alone, but it doesn’t mean at all you have a brand community that will back you up if something bad or unjust ever happens to your brand in the future.
I’m disappointed at how many b2b companies are actually doing the same things in social media. And doing them wrong. When I see a brand’s fan page with, say, 50K followers and I see no actual interaction between these followers and the brand content and messages, I understand clearly this is a fake audience comprised of purchased bots and engagements. I’m speaking about small to mid-sized companies here, as big and famous brands do have huge audiences, but they’re facing a different issue of how to retain them.
The boss I’d already mentioned above insisted that we buy bots to have impressive numbers next to our FB profile and we did so. We bought fake followers, fake likes, shares — everything was fake and cost us a fortune! The numbers rose, but we still had no goal conversions from FB. Instead of hiring more social media guys to enable conversational marketing and help us find our brand voice, explore new content distribution platforms and entice a meaningful dialogue with users, we were spending our resources on buying fake things here and there to make an impression that we’re an established brand with the ocean of followers. I bet 80% of b2b brands are doing the same on FB: they’re wasting money on building fake audiences that will never convert into real business.
While social media ads prove to be very effective for consumer-facing businesses, they normally fail to work well for small b2b brands and startups that are often on a shoestring budget and can’t afford to hire best marketing consultants. So, guerrilla content marketing is what such companies need to succeed.
Take a look at Quora and reddit. Both have large audiences (Quora — 663M, reddit — 1.5B, according to SimilarWeb), and both prove to be excellent sources of b2b lead gen.
“There’s something that Quora offers that makes it different and that helps it stand apart from the other platforms. Namely, it’s the ability to interact with prospects and customers in a place where they are asking the questions.” Neil Patel.
Honestly, have you ever been able to reach out directly to an opinion leader/influencer on FB and get their feedback or answers to your questions right away? I doubt it. On Quora, I personally had my Quora questions answered by micro influencers such as Maarten Ectors, former VP of IoT for Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, and former Head of Cloud and Big Data at Nokia Siemens Networks (the guy with almost 20K followers on LinkedIn alone):
The smarter and more interesting the question on Quora, the higher the chance you’ll get an answer from a thought leader, which will automatically increase your organic reach AND useful connections. I saw many opinion leaders including Guy Kawasaki, Gary Vaynerchuk and Justin Trudeau answer questions on Quora, so don’t miss an opportunity to initiate a conversation with them and leverage their expertise and popularity for the benefit of your brand.
So, why is Quora a better alternative to FB marketing?
- It’s filled with all possible audiences asking real questions and seeking professional advice from brands like yours (6K questions are asked on Quora daily), which shortens time to start a conversation with potential prospects and/or brand advocates;
- It’s a massive source of user-generated content you can leverage for your inbound/influencer marketing;
- You don’t need big budgets to distribute content or brand message within this platform. On FB, you should have a substantial budget to make sure target users can see your brand page and interact with your brand content;
- You’re free to contact other members (Quorans) without purchasing any advertising plans and can establish useful relationships right on the spot.
In my previous workplace, we were able to get Quora to become our #2 referral traffic source following FB that only ranked #1 because we fueled it with a lot of ad bucks. As such, Quora was our #1 free source of new traffic acquisition. Indeed.
Speaking about reddit, it is an eclectic blend of quirkiness and geekdom that, for the right kinds of b2b businesses, could make all the difference in getting your brand in front of engaged users who have something to say. Many b2b companies unfortunately dismiss reddit as being the red-headed stepchild of the social media world, but if you’re targeting certain niches such as gaming, technology, arts, science, food or fitness, aren’t afraid of criticism and want to reach trendsetters — I’m convincing you the results will just blow your mind!
“Reddit marketing is a complex thing to master, but it can eventually be done. And once you master it, you unlock a limitless world of being able to regularly promote your website.” David Zheng
Reddit users love humor, memes, inspiring photos, throwback/nostalgic images and posts, liberal news, games, celebrity posts, live Q&A’s, AMA (ask me anything) sessions and technology posts! However, brace yourself for criticism and better perceive it as constructive feedback :).
Bottom line: think outside the box, brainstorm how you can make a difference in social media without using platforms already used by your competitors and peers, as the chance is high they don’t convert or provide any business value at all. Instead, explore new platforms that are less famous but provide excellent data-centric or conversational marketing opportunities for lead gen and brand awareness. Don’t hire social media specialists to spend 80% of their workday routine putting together a picture spec for designer and then waiting a whole day for the delivery. Rather, use your social media talent and resources to answer your target audience’s most burning questions on Quora, reddit, and similar underused platforms.
A well-crafted answer by your company’s CTO on Quora can yield a much more “profitable” result than a few dozens of beautifully designed pictures on FB.
And what’s your take on this? As a b2b marketer, have you ever generated business value from any of the platforms mentioned in this post? Please share your experience in the comments and let’s discuss!
P.S. My next blog will be about how to create an effective Quora marketing strategy, please follow me not to miss it.
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