B2B social selling trends in 2024

From shorter attention spans to the rise of the use of generative AI, B2B social selling continues to evolve in 2024. Naturally, this means that if you're apart of B2B sales team, marketing team or Founder who gets involved in social selling efforts – you'll need to stay on top of these trends. This way, you'll be able to stay ahead of the game to make sure you're up to date with all the best practices.

In this blog post, we take a look at what's changed in social selling, how it impacts your sales strategy and the top trends in B2B selling for 2024.

What does the B2B social selling strategy look like in 2024?

2024 is the year of authenticity, shorter attention spans and change in consumer behaviour. Founders are embracing an authentic tone of voice in their social selling campaigns, and a lot of B2B marketers and B2B sales teams are experimenting with video content to adapt to the modern sales process. Social selling is becoming a popular strategic method for sales reps and Founders in B2B companies.

However, sales and marketing teams need to pay attention to the way they leverage technology. B2B buyers are increasingly likely to be able to spot content created by generative AI.

LinkedIn suggests that:

• 78% of businesses that use social selling activities perform better than businesses who are still using the traditional selling method and don't leverage social media.
• 75% of B2B buyers use social media to make buying decisions – with 50% using LinkedIn as a trusted source.
• 89% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to generate their B2B leads.

What remains the same?

• Research suggests that B2B buyers still value meaningful relationships and valuable content such as thought leadership content.
• LinkedIn is still a popular social media platform choice, with LinkedIn Sales Navigator being a top social selling tool thanks to its social selling index.
• Social selling is still a long term strategy, but the stronger relationships it builds make it worth while.
• A strong personal brand still plays a big part of an effective social selling strategy whether you're sales professionals or a Founder.

5 trends in social selling B2B businesses need to know in 2024

Below are some trends you need to be able to boost your social sales efforts and be on your way to social selling success in 2024.

1. Community engagement

Genuine connections are at the heart of social selling. This is far from the traditional sales approach that moves a prospect through a sales funnel only to do a sales pitch. Active community engagement is about nurturing business relationships, creating space for interaction and getting a deeper understanding of your potential customers.

Here are a few ways that can get you started:

• Increase your social media interactions – block time to comment on relevant posts you find on LinkedIn.
• Share relevant content with your network.
• Host webinars with topics that your target audience might be interested in.
• Keep an eye on your analytics to understand what's doing well and what needs improving.

2. Short form content

With shorter attention spans, it's increasingly harder to get your potential clients attention. Especially in B2B. This means that the content that you share on each social platforms need to be engaging.

Best practices for short form content:

• Video content is a popular choice after podcasts – a lot of companies have started doing videos of their podcast to repurpose content.
• Repurpose your top performing content – the transcript of a podcast can turn into a blog post. You can then summarise that blog post as a LInkedIn post.
• Experiment with short-form video and make sure they have subtitles for readability.

3. Personalization

Cold emails aren't cutting it anymore. Potential prospects are far more likely to reply to direct messages that have been personalized. This plays a huge role in social selling strategies. One way to personalize your initial message is to use the insights you gather from social listening, such as through your interactions with potential customers.  

If you want to save time, use our new LinkedIn comment exporter to capture every lead that comes through your LinkedIn posts. Importing this into folk will allow you to use our AI feature 'Magic Field' to save time while adding that personal touch.

4. Technology

Leveraging technology such as social media marketing tools and AI can help you stay on top of your social selling program. However, there are a few social selling best practices that you need to be aware of.

• Avoid using generative AI to create content and pass it off as thought leadership. This will harm your brand awareness and people can spot it right away. Make sure you fact check anything it generates.
• Use technology to help you nurture business relationships. If you use a customer relationship management (CRM) tool, you don't need to manually add a person's contact details from every single social media channel. That is time consuming. Instead, you'll be able to use the automation tools it comes with to do the heavy lifting including capturing a job title and contact information. You will also be able to use a CRM platform to keep an eye on different sales activities including cold outreach (such as cold calls), lead generation and more.

5. Influencer marketing

If you thought that influencer marketing was something only for B2C companies, you might want to rethink that. Depending on what social media platforms you're on, influencer marketing is still relevant for a B2B marketing strategy.

It can be relevant for social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Youtube, and Twitch. Partnering with the right people can help you grow your social media presence and increase brand awareness.

Tools to automate your social selling work flow

Social selling takes up a lot of effort and capacity. So you'll want to invest in the right tools to optimize your team's workflow to get the best results.

1. Scheduling tools

Managing several social media channels can be challenging. Especially if you do this manually. A scheduling tool can help you automate your workflow and create consistency when it comes to content marketing. It can also useful for any Founders or sales professionals who have a lot of content already planned only for it to be forgotten.

A few scheduling tools for you to consider might be:

• LinkedIn's own scheduling tool: comes free with its basic plan.
• For multiple social networks including LinkedIn: Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Buffer, Later.

2. Customer relationship managers

Social selling is a collaborative team effort between marketing, sales and Founders. So you'll want to find a CRM that can support different business functions instead of investing in separate platforms. folk happens to be able to support these functions and more.

Conclusion

B2B social selling continues to evolve in 2024 to match the change in consumer behaviour. Embracing these trends will help you stay ahead of the competition and see the efforts of your social selling strategy pay off. Using the right social selling tools can help your team save time and capacity so that they can focus on building stronger relationships with your potential clients across all your social channels. If you're looking for a CRM that can support multiple business functions, try folk today free.

‍