Choosing the Right Channels for Your B2B Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social media marketing is all about putting the right content in front of the right people at the right time, serving as an integral part of any organization’s digital marketing efforts. For this reason, your B2B organization’s social media strategy should focus on increasing impressions and engagement on the platforms your audience regularly visits.

However, deciding which platforms you should spend your time and resources on can be challenging—especially as the social media landscape changes from year to year and even from month to month.

In this article, we’ll outline a few of the most common platforms B2B organizations use to connect with their audiences online. Note, however, that your social media strategy should primarily focus on providing valuable, timely information to your customers, and other stakeholders.

Often, publishing a smaller number of strategically planned posts is better than blasting content across the web. For this reason, you should always define the “why” of your B2B social media marketing plan before posting anything to your organization’s social media platforms.

Key Takeaways

• LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram are the most effective platforms for B2B social media engagement, with LinkedIn being the best for traffic and lead generation.
• Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are valuable for reaching younger audiences and enhancing brand engagement through visual and video content.
• Brands should be careful on X / Twitter and TikTok due to continued volatility in the broader market and concerns about brand placement on the platforms.
• Match strategies to each platform’s unique audience and content style for maximum engagement and effectiveness.

Why You Should Add Social Media To Your B2B Marketing Toolkit

Social media provides B2B companies the ability to engage with industry leaders, prospective clients, and strategic partners in real time. Firms can showcase their expertise, participate in relevant conversations, and respond to questions and comments—extending their reach to a larger community through each social platform.

Brand awareness is a major benefit of having a presence on key social media platforms. B2B marketers increasingly turn to social media to achieve top-of-funnel goals, with WPromote’s research showing that half of B2B marketers prioritize social media over other channels like email (43%) and in-person events (34%).

Companies that regularly post thought leadership content and case studies reinforce their expertise and credibility. This visibility attracts new clients while simultaneously strengthening brand loyalty among their existing client bases.

The advertisement opportunities across social platforms further help firms expand their reach beyond direct connections. In fact, 73% of B2B marketers report using social media advertising and promoted posts in their marketing strategy, making it the top paid digital marketing channel for 2025.

When implemented effectively, social media marketing can be a powerful lead-generation tool­—helping companies reach their target audience at the right time. Driving this connection through social media marketing can also lead to high conversion rates that in turn drive business growth.

Major Social Media Platforms to Consider

eMarketer reports that 60% of US B2B marketers consider social media to be the most effective B2B channel for driving revenue. And according to Statista, LinkedIn was selected by 85% of B2B content marketers as the social media platform that delivers the most value, followed by Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Over the past year, YouTube has increased in popularity, overcoming Instagram as a top platform for B2B marketers. A major reason for this shift is that videos are now considered the most effective content type.

For these reasons, it’s almost expected that any modern B2B firm will include social media in their digital marketing efforts and be active on each of the core platforms.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the social media platform where business takes place. As of 2025, LinkedIn has more than one billion members in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide, representing more than 69 million registered companies and 139,000 schools.

Reports from companies such as Hubspot have found that LinkedIn is 277% more effective at generating leads than Facebook or Twitter. With more than 238 million members in North America alone, it’s easy to see why LinkedIn for B2B marketing is the primary driver of high-value social media leads for B2B organizations.

Strategically, LinkedIn should act as the primary social channel for your organization’s thought leadership. Due to its inherent formal nature, educational content, and thought leadership tend to excel on this platform. LinkedIn also acts as an effective platform for promoting open positions, upcoming events, and other official communications from your organization.

Facebook

Despite waning interest in the United States over recent years, Facebook remains the largest social media platform by a significant margin. In fact, despite several tough years, Facebook has recently shown strong growth in users, with recent investor reports showing that the platform currently has 3.065 billion monthly active users, accounting for around 38% of the world’s population.

Recent industry trends among B2B marketers have shifted Facebook from its former central position in social media marketing as businesses increasingly focus on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram as primary lead drivers.

However, Facebook still holds a strong position in B2B marketing due to its ubiquitous nature and broad reach.

For this reason, many organizations use Facebook for its more communal and team-focused nature—taking a more “social” approach to social media by posting content about the employee or customer experience and avoiding hard sales tactics entirely.

YouTube

While not overtly a social media platform, YouTube shares many of the common attributes associated with these other sites (posting original content, comments, likes, follows, etc.). Further, with approximately 2.5 billion monthly active users as of 2024, YouTube ranks as the second-largest social media platform (after Facebook) and second-largest search engine (after Google) worldwide.

Because of its large audience and the relative ease of posting long-form video content, YouTube has taken on a supporting role in many B2B organization’s social media marketing strategies.

Specifically, many organizations will post long-form video content, guides, client and employee interviews, and more on YouTube and then link to this content on other social media platforms, in their articles, and even in their training, marketing, and customer support materials.

Instagram

Instagram takes a more visual approach to social media marketing. It largely combines many features from Facebook with the shorter and faster-paced tempo of a platform such as Twitter. With around 2 billion active monthly users, Instagram’s reach lands it as one of the most visited websites in the world.

B2B marketers have largely taken notice of Instagram due to its diverse content formats that support discovery and delight across the buyer’s journey, which can increase your brand’s favorability and stickiness.

Remember, B2B buyers are on Instagram as well—they’re just not visiting the platform with the intention of fully engaging with the business world. By matching your content with the user intent of discovery (“look at this cool thing we did or made”) and delight (posting entertaining content that nurtures the human connection), you can create a cross-platform experience that nurtures leads more holistically.

Platforms to Expand Your Organization’s Reach

X / Twitter

With an audience of over 500 million monthly active users, X / Twitter has a total reach closer to Snapchat than its larger social media cousins.

Historically, content marketing professionals ranked Twitter as second only behind LinkedIn when it comes to the effectiveness of content distribution channels. However, Elon Musk’s purchase and rebranding of the platform in April of 2022, alongside changes in X’s policies and business practices, has led to less certainty industry-wide in the utility of Twitter as a marketing platform for professional service firms.

Specifically, businesses are increasingly concerned about the advertisements and content that appear next to their brands on the platform. For example, numerous cases of hate speech being promoted on the platform in late 2023 led businesses such as Apple, IBM, Disney, and Comcast to remove ads and other assets from X entirely due to concerns that the platform was harming their reputations.

However, demographic data still shows that X excels at spreading news and other informational content to highly targeted and niche verticals.

For this reason, many businesses see X as the preferred social media network for news articles, current events, and other topical content an organization may want to speak to. However, the volatility of the platform and the loss of brand protection guardrails over the last several years mean that firms should be cautious about what they post to the platform and how they engage with their broader audience.

TikTok

The changing landscape of social media marketing often presents opportunities for B2B marketers to get ahead of the curve and build an audience on new platforms before their competition has time to react. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the explosion of TikTok onto the social media scene over the past few years.

Since its launch in 2016, TikTok has become the fastest-growing social media platform in history, reaching more than 1.04 billion monthly active users as of 2024 and only growing more popular since. The app was the second most downloaded in the U.S. in 2024. Importantly, TikTok sits at the forefront of the short-form video boom that has overtaken other platforms such as Facebook (Facebook Reels), YouTube (YouTube Shorts), and more.

This emphasis on short-form videos presents a golden opportunity for brands to establish awareness and drive engagement in their products and services. Highlighting company culture, providing educational content, poking fun at your industry, and taking part in recent trends are all common approaches to posting engaging B2B content on the platform.

However, the concern about TikTok’s ties to foreign interests prompted lawmakers to draft legislation that could either ban TikTok entirely in the United States or force its sale to a domestic company. As of February 2025, President Donald Trump delayed the ban, allowing TikTok to continue operations in the U.S. temporarily with the potential for further extending beyond his initial 75-day deadline.

The conversations around TikTok’s future in the U.S. are ongoing and remain uncertain, especially in the context of B2B social media marketing. The popularity of TikTok is undeniable and, therefore, essential to continue to keep an eye on in the months to come.

How to Select the Right Platforms for Your B2B Social Media Marketing Strategy

When evaluating each of these platforms for your own B2B social media strategy, consider the following additional factors to ensure success:

• Have a Clear Goal in Mind: Start with an understanding of what success looks like and what you hope to achieve by having a presence on one or multiple platforms. For example, are you looking to build your thought leadership or generate leads?
• Perform a Competitive Review: Evaluate where your competitors are engaged and where they don’t have a presence. These insights show you where your target audience is spending their time and where there may be untapped opportunities for your organization to have a presence.
• Develop a Strategy: Consider which platforms best align with your content strategy. For example, LinkedIn is ideal for longer-form articles and professional thought leadership, while Instagram and TikTok are more visual platforms. YouTube supports in-depth video tutorials, while Twitter is effective for concise updates and industry news. Include the platform mix that will best support your overall goals.
• Understand Your Content Creation Capacity: Each of these platforms requires different content types. Do you have the resources available to create the assets you’ll need? Let your strategy be your guide and bring on external resources to support you in creating the assets you’ll need for your content goals.
• Use Performance and Analytics Tools: Consider the targeting and performance tools available for setting up campaigns and tracking success in each platform. LinkedIn Ads offers targeting by several different criteria such as job titles, industries, and company sizes, making it effective for B2B lead generation while Facebook and Instagram provide audience segmentation and retargeting options for structuring your campaign. Using analytics tools like LinkedIn Insights, Facebook Business Suite, and Google Analytics also helps to track engagement, refine strategies, and optimize content performance. Consider consolidating these tools into a singular reporting tool or working with a partner with the proper reporting structures to measure effectiveness.

FAQs about Choosing the Right Platforms for Your B2B Social Media Strategy

Choosing the right platforms for your B2B social media strategy can be challenging—this FAQ guide will help you make informed decisions to maximize your reach and engagement.

1. How do I determine which social media platforms my target audience uses? Look at your existing customer base and compare them to the user demographics of the platforms you’re considering. You can also research where your competitors have a presence and use this as a starting point.
2. Is it necessary to have a presence on all major social media platforms? You don’t need to have a presence everywhere. In fact, it is more effective to focus on the platforms that best align with your business goals and where your audience spends most of their time. If you’re just getting started, focus on 1-2 platforms and evaluate whether you need a presence on other platforms over time.
3. How can I measure the success of my B2B social media strategy? Use social media KPIs such as engagement rates, website traffic generated specifically from social platforms, and return on investment (ROI) from the time spent on your efforts that resulted in leads acquired.
4. What type of content works best for B2B marketing on social media? The content types used should vary by platform however the most used types by B2B marketers are short articles and posts followed by videos, case studies or customer stories, then long articles and posts. Ultimately, you should focus on creating valuable content for your audience.
5. How often should I post on B2B social media platforms? Best practices will show different frequencies for each platform. For example, 1-2 times a day for LinkedIn and Facebook and 3-5 times a week for Instagram. These numbers vary when looking at industry and other factors as well. What’s most important, however, is consistency. Choose a frequency that works best for your organization and stick to that. Consider developing a content calendar and scheduling posts ahead of time to streamline posting and make things easier for you and your team.

Match Your Platforms to Your Audience

As noted by marketer Jay Baer, “content is fire, and social media is gasoline.”

Social media plays a central role in any content or digital marketing strategy, but it also requires a keen focus on the what, who, and where. You need to match the “what” (your content) to the “who” (your audience) by finding “where” they’re most likely to engage (the platform).

Choosing the right platforms, then, is central to your overall social media marketing campaign’s effectiveness. For B2B organizations, this means investing heavily in LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube with a secondary focus on platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and up-and-comers such as TikTok.

No matter which specific strategy or platforms you choose, however, you should keep in mind that social media is not a soapbox. Everything you post—from educational articles to job openings and customer appreciation events—should be solely intended to entertain, persuade, inspire, or educate your target audience.

For this reason, you should clearly define the explicit purpose of each arm of your social media strategy. “LinkedIn for thought leadership and employment opportunities, Facebook for community posts, and Twitter for news and customer support.”

Mindlessly posting the same content to each platform will only alienate the audiences of each platform. Instead, you should post with a purpose—to provide value to your followers and network.