The smart way to evolve your social media marketing in 2025
The use of social media to reach customers has cemented its place in marketing. Although social media has been a staple of marketing plans for nearly 20 years, the room hasn’t stopped spinning for marketers. The demands of organizational leadership place increased pressure on marketers to deliver results tied directly to media spend. Driven by the desire to be a part of the latest craze—or perhaps out of fear of missing out—leaders are also asking marketers to use more channels, expand their digital presence, and do more with less. These challenges are universal, clouding organizational judgment on how to strategically evolve social media use beyond Facebook and Instagram.
Companies aren’t wrong to consider more social channels. According to Gartner, people use 4–6 social platforms per day. HubSpot reports that an impressive 75% of B2B buyers use social media to make buying decisions. Social platforms have all grown their marketing value, leaving marketers with many more strong considerations to add to their environment.
Understanding which channels will work best for your brand isn’t just about choosing the most widely used platforms. Value is subjective. What makes sense for your brand doesn't necessarily make sense for another. Your brand’s strategy should be a driving indicator of the best channels to serve your objectives. All of this begs the question: How do you evolve your social media marketing strategically? Keep reading for insights and tips.
What has changed in social media marketing
Today, adding a new social media channel to your mix isn’t as straightforward as opening an account or repurposing existing content. Implementing an integrated omnichannel social media strategy represents a competitive imperative for B2B. Unlike disconnected multichannel approaches of the past, omnichannel synchronization provides customers with a seamless and unified customer journey across all touchpoints.
Omnichannel means reaching the customer consistently, feeling effortless and being proactive and relational. Digital channels utilized in an omnichannel manner enable brands to engage in the conversation in a unified way, not just deliver a message.
Additionally, marketers must reconsider how their teams, talent and strategies across paid and organic social can amplify the impact of each other. It has never been more important to link strategic paid social media marketing campaigns that expand content reach and visibility at scale with organic content that builds community and drives trust and engagement over time.
So is there value in diversifying channels? Absolutely.
The more meaningful touchpoints you can have in the market surrounding your customers, the better. The key here is meaningful. Approach expansion with a careful eye on scalability, keeping your options open and testing new channels.
How to approach social channel expansion
Begin with a strategic discussion. Could the channel help your brand achieve its goals? If the answer is yes, then carefully review these key considerations required to be successful:
- Customer Value: What does your organization believe you can achieve if you add a new channel to your mix? Often, organizations lead with FOMO, which is not a business reason to join a platform. Additionally, an inauthentic presence can upset your existing audience. Customers have expectations about their experiences within each channel. Understanding how your customers would benefit is imperative.
- Measurement: Understand how you will measure the impact of new social channels upfront. Often, organizations don’t fully grasp the nuanced KPIs of different platforms. This leads to disappointment if there isn’t a way to calculate the channel's contribution to attention, conversion or sales. For example, a 1:1 conversion is difficult in non-retail B2B. Instead, establish realistic KPIs for individual channels. Then, work to build marketing fluency around those KPIs. This is part education, part business and can create meaningful conversations in your organization where everyone leaves better informed and better understood.
- Operations: Like every marketing investment, expanding your social channels should start with a frank conversation about cost and time. Yes, platforms provide free tools and services for businesses, but off-the-shelf resources don’t complement an omnichannel strategy. Frequent shifts in paid media, content production and social media administration consume continuous time and money throughout a campaign. Determine if you have the budget to curate and sustain the channel as an integrated part of your marketing strategy. Or are you willing to divert the budget and allow the time to originate and nurture your customer community on a new channel? And finally, can you ensure your stakeholders will give new channels enough time to report meaningful results?
The commitment to operationalize a new social channel should be evaluated like launching a new brand. Great brands don’t come cheap—or fast.
Where to Begin?
We recommend scheduling an integrated team meeting to kick off the discussion. Here are a few tips:
- Set an agenda and share it in advance. This ensures that team members are prepared and ready to contribute.
- Encourage your team, internal and/or agency partners, to show up with their informed point of view about the channel(s) you are considering.
- If the encouragement to add social channels is coming from outside of marketing, talk to your stakeholders and understand the business reasons they would like to see expansion.
Based on the outcome of this pre-work and a structured team discussion, you can methodically determine how to move forward. An added benefit of these conversations is education within your organization. As you work to expand your brand’s touchpoints, you will be creating internal messengers with a strategic perspective.
Social channel expansion provides an opportunity to scale with purpose. The right conversations contribute to strategic cohesion across the team. Together, you can create a roadmap for expansion success that will benefit your B2B brand well into the future.
Need help organizing? Lean on an agency partner, like Rhea + Kaiser that values a strategic approach to social channels. Drop us a note to get the conversation started.