Before you look it up: No, TikTok is simply not mentioned in this text or in the latest study on B2B social media, which was just presented by DMVÖ and Ansbach University of Applied Sciences in collaboration with WEKA Industrie Medien. Even though the Chinese project has more than one billion users worldwide, B2B companies will still be unable to achieve their goals there due to a lack of suitable audiences and content expectations.
What is threatening – and this is one of the main conclusions of the study – is a massive risk of dispersion: With more and more new social media channels and the simultaneous professionalisation and higher expectations of users, more and more resources have to be invested in the use of the channels. Companies are therefore advised to get involved in areas where the quality of the application and the target group can be matched and there is a good match. They are not to embark on more and more adventures in social media . The alleged coldness of a channel rarely translates into applicable KPIs.
For the first time – at least among German B2B companies – the use of social media channels fell from 95.7 to 92.9 percent. Austrian companies have now overtaken German ones: an impressive 95.1 percent of them used social media in 2019.
A question of resources
The fact that social media is moving from a mexico telegram data secondary channel and a mere distribution tool for existing content to becoming a real medium is also evident in the reasons why companies do not engage with social media: 56.6% said in the latest study that they had too few resources for social media. In 2018, the figure was 47.4%. In 2019, a whopping 58.8% thought it took too much time, compared to 42.1% in 2018.
At the same time, however, the number of those who believe that social media cannot contribute to a company's success is also decreasing: from 39.5% in 2018 to just 26.4%.
At least for Austrian companies, LinkedIn is in the process of replacing Facebook as the main platform: 71.8% of Austrian companies use the Microsoft platform, an increase of more than 12% compared to 2018. Facebook is used by 72.8%, a weak increase of 3.5%. However, in both Germany and Switzerland, LinkedIn has taken the lead among the channels.
Less everyday matters
Although agencies are becoming a partner for many companies when it comes to developing a social media strategy, companies tend to rely on their own expertise on a day-to-day basis: While over 41% of the companies surveyed still relied on agencies for the implementation of campaigns in 2018, only 28.6% did so in 2019. Agencies are also now much less involved in the design of guidelines. It is therefore quite possible that companies have now adequately staffed their marketing departments with appropriately trained staff and that outsourcing is no longer as necessary on a day-to-day basis.
It is increasingly allowed to publish more
At the same time, companies are increasingly relaxing previously rigid rules on who can post what: 26.2% of companies said they are in favour of all employees being able to post for the company, up from 21.7% the previous year. This suggests that many companies have launched corporate influencer programmes and that employees are valued as an asset for their own credibility. Platforms such as LinkedIn, whose importance is generally increasing, support this view: Personal accounts have a much greater reach than company pages.
What is somewhat alarming, however, is the persistence of fundamental misunderstandings about the function of social media platforms: for many companies, the possibility of publishing their own press releases remains an important reason for being active on the channels. In fact, followers, subscribers and friends are more likely to react with ignorance to the publication of first-person content without the possibility of interaction or dialogue .
