When planning your marketing strategy for 2027, social media is a key channel to include for reach and visibility. But while social media may be easy to add to your marketing plan, it’s not always easy to execute.
Some B2B businesses may question whether or not they even truly need to use social media at all. I’m here to tell you they do! Even (or perhaps especially) in the B2B space, social media is excellent for establishing brand voice and developing trust.
While it’s great to post spontaneously when industry trends or impactful conversations occur, you should also plan out your content ahead of time each month to ensure a consistent, strategic presence.
For success on social media, you need to be strategic about your messaging. How are you engaging, how are you asking questions that encourage conversation, and what is your call to action (CTA)? By sharing your authentic brand voice, trying new things, and optimizing for interaction, your social media account can make a direct impact on future sales.
Before we get into how to be successful on social in 2027, let’s talk measurement. In July, Google made an update to Search Console that is game changing for social media marketing. With the newly introduced platform properties, you can track social and video post performance on Google Search and Discover.
After creating a platform property for Instagram, TikTok, X, or YouTube, you can access a variety of reports surrounding how your content gets discovered with search. With the performance report, you can see total clicks, impressions, and other additional metrics. In the insights report, you can access an overview of top-performing posts, recent trends in traffic, and how people discover your social media account through Google.
For marketers, this update helps directly track social media’s impact. These metrics can demonstrate to higher-ups the value of the channel. Social media is notoriously tricky to directly tie to sales, so demonstrating the interaction and awareness it creates is incredibly useful when analyzing its effectiveness.
It’s time to switch it up on social media in 2027. If you want the channel to be effective, you can’t just do what you’ve done before. Templated approaches are no longer working.
Social media is the ideal channel for experimentation. It’s a great way to test new ideas and see which messages land.
This is because social media is super-fast to market. Social posts can take less time to produce and be published instantly, and with ever-changing trends, you need to act fast if you want your posts to maintain relevancy.
Audience responses to social media also come in quicker. Based on likes, comments, and time spent engaging with your content, you can quickly see how the message is landing, create more similar content, or pivot if necessary.
Social media is an excellent place to showcase your brand’s capabilities by literally showing people what you can do; a simple behind-the-scenes video can have an outsize impact compared to other marketing efforts.
Social media is also lower cost than traditional advertising channels, meaning if experimental messaging falls short there are usually no long-term financial consequences. If an experimental campaign performs well on social media, you then know the message is worth investing in via higher-expense avenues like print.
When planning content for social media, it's important to establish a purpose for each post. The goal of every social media post should not be a sale.
One of the channel's most useful purposes is brand awareness. Even if a post doesn’t directly lead to a sale, it demonstrates who your brand is and why people should care about it.
Aside from painting a picture of your brand’s vision and values, social media posts keep you on the customer's mind. An impactful post helps people think about your brand and what it does, even in their downtime.
Social media can lead to conversions as well, but the post needs to be formulated with a specific, direct CTA. Not all kinds of posts allow you to add links, but where applicable add links and make sure the post copy and visuals give viewers a compelling reason to click.
Remember your audience as well. Do you want to create a trendy post that can reach a wide audience if it happens to go viral? Or do you want to target a niche audience of those who already know and love your brand and may be open to sharing it?
Social media is also a great way to get feedback and initiate conversation between your brand and potential customers.
Every comment interaction also helps boost the post. Posts with many comments can do better in the algorithm and reach more eyes.
A direct CTA can be used in post captions to elicit that conversation. In the caption, try asking viewers a question and encourage them to share their opinions. Responding to these comments and continuing conversation can help build a stronger bond between the customer and your brand.
You can also prove your industry expertise through social platforms. Posts can be fun, but they can also showcase products, offer insight on industry trends, and spur thought and engagement.
Social media is part of an overall interconnected conversation. Participating in industry trends and discussions shows your audience you are not only ready to evolve with the industry but can even lead change in areas where you are the expert.
You may be demonstrating your thought leadership, but posts don’t always need to be highly informative or strictly professional. On social media you can take a more casual tone to talk to your customers, person to person, establishing yourself as a trustworthy, authentic leader in your industry.
While Reddit has previously been more of a fringe social channel, it is now an incredibly important platform for B2B brands. It should be considered at the same level as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, and it may even be more relevant than Facebook depending on your audience.
Reddit is one of the top-cited platforms by AI answer engines. This means if you want to be cited by LLMs — like Google AI Overviews, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity — it helps to have accurate content on Reddit that can be surfaced.
Reddit is not like other social platforms, though; it is driven not by promotion but by community and conversation. Your brand is likely relevant across various subreddits, and each subreddit has its own norms. Many have strict rules, some against promotion of any kind.
Reddit is not the place to drop promotional copy with a link to a product. It’s a social channel to post useful information, interact with others, and establish your brand as a trustworthy, knowledgeable contributor to the industry community.
Correctly utilizing social media alongside other marketing channels is a great way to engage your target audience and make your brand stand out in 2027. For more advice on what channels to include in your marketing plan, watch Season 4 Episode 1 of Sidetrekked, What channels am I missing in my 2027 annual marketing plan?