Should B2B companies create video accounts and live broadcasts?

“Should we also do video accounts and live broadcasts?”

This topic should be one of the three most troubling topics for B2B marketing directors this year.

The other two have remained unanswered in recent years: "Should we stop updating Weibo, WeChat and Douyin?" and "How can we recruit a new media operations editor?"

This has racked everyone's brains, but it seems like they can't not invest, since the mobile phone needs a voice port; however, once they invest manpower and material resources, it seems like the results are always hard to describe.

Can’t To B content be fun, interesting, and a little more To C?

It's really difficult.

Unlike the media, corporate self-media must have commercial intentions or purposes (promoting products, introducing companies, etc.), and readers will naturally be on guard or resist; and the content in the technology B2B industry is difficult to read, which makes it even more difficult.

After careful consideration, most companies finally gave up on Weibo and opened a Douyin account, barely updating their official accounts and syncing content to Toutiao, Zhihu, Baijiahao, Sohu, and CSDN; the number of fans and reading volume of Bilibili and Video Accounts were also quietly included in the KPI indicators of new media operations this year.

Not only do they need to understand the product/solution, write articles, design images, make short videos, and then publish them to various platforms, they will also be assessed on update frequency, fan growth, and even business opportunities.

By the way, why does such an all-round person need to work?

Looking at the content of most corporate WeChat public accounts, they are either the boss's speeches, the company's awards, contract information, etc.; or holiday greeting posters, company internal team building summaries; it is said that some companies force employees to forward as a work assessment or to express their loyalty to the company.

In fact, for customers, this kind of "self-entertainment" content has little value and will lose fans as soon as it is updated.

Not updating is not acceptable, and updating is even more unacceptable.

Is B2B corporate self-media a false proposition? Are video accounts and live broadcasts suitable for B2B? Let’s talk about them one by one.

1. Weibo, WeChat official accounts, Zhihu, etc.

Weibo has become a private domain for various official announcements and hot search hype from celebrities. You won’t miss anything if you don’t update it - stop updating.

It is recommended that WeChat public accounts should be updated, but not frequently. Updates should be made only when good content is available. The reason is that more and more people like to search for articles on WeChat, and the official account on mobile phones is a bit like the official website on computers. Therefore, the updated content will focus more on usage scenarios, new product releases, customer testimonials, etc.

It’s okay to have articles for internal company promotion, but not too many (it’s recommended that you find another place to publish content that’s self-boasting or self-entertaining).

It is unrealistic for companies to compete with professional media or self-media such as 36Kr, Huxiu, and Extra Large for readers' attention (but many bosses really expect editors to reach this level).

Wake up, don’t think about 100,000+. It’s difficult for corporate self-media to get 10,000+. Users’ attention is limited. If there is no good content, don’t force the editor to update it. It’s a waste of time. Very ordinary content or obviously junk content will only give customers a reason to unfollow.

High-quality content, even if it has a low readership, will attract people with the same interests as you. Over time, this will help you hit the pain points of your customers and generate sales leads.

Please note that although the official account does not need to be updated daily or weekly, you should log in to the backend frequently (for example, every day); more and more customers are accustomed to communicating with companies or providing feedback on issues on the official account, and messages must be replied to in a timely manner. The consequence of not logging in for a few days is that when you want to reply to inquiries, you will no longer be able to contact the customer (leaves on the official account cannot be replied to if they are not replied to within 48 hours).

Finally, you can think of the official account as the base for external publicity on mobile phones. Now media such as Toutiao support one-click simultaneous sending of official accounts, so the official account seems to be the most suitable content base at present.

By the way, why do media such as Zhihu, Toutiao, and Baijiahao need to be updated?

Everyone knows that B2B enterprise PC websites are very important, and users are accustomed to using Baidu to search for relevant technical information and news; and it just so happens that the content from the above channels has a high weight in Baidu's algorithm and is easier to be included, which is good for SEO.

If a company has many business units, it is not recommended to have too many WeChat public accounts; the content matrix has its pros and cons. For B2B companies, it is easier for customers to read the good content on the official WeChat account.

Customers have limited attention span, and over-indoctrinating them with content is a waste of time and public resources.

2. Short videos such as Tik Tok

In addition to text and picture information, many companies also try short videos, such as TikTok.

Larger foreign companies such as IBM and SAP; growing companies such as SalesEasy, Fanwei, Fenxiang, and Xiaoke all have their own Douyin accounts; Alibaba Cloud and Huawei have more than 200,000 fans on their official Douyin accounts.

However, if you have ever opened or seen the Douyin accounts of these companies, you will feel a little embarrassed and out of place.

I once read a comment from a netizen: "Opening a To B Blue V account is like opening a door from a disco to a senior activity center."

I want to refute, but I feel a little powerless.

Some videos are the company’s own promotional videos, the boss’s speeches at marketing events, edited versions of the company’s commercials, marketing activities or exhibition highlights; there are also some automatic playback of PPTs and playback of product pictures; except for internal employees, these contents are really not what customers want to see.

In addition, there is no good content and no professional team, so the update is very slow, very slow...

Are short videos represented by Douyin suitable for the B2B industry? Not very suitable.

1) Short videos are more entertaining, and target customers do not want to watch professional content such as TikTok. They are used to kill time, so they must be interesting. The characteristics of the B2B industry determine that our products and solutions are to help users save working time, which is destined to be brain-intensive and boring.

We watch Tik Tok when we are eating, taking a lunch break, or going to the bathroom. Wouldn’t it be nice to watch some funny jokes and listen to some magical laughter at this time? Do you want to learn about "power solutions" and "application scenarios of hybrid cloud and AI"?

In addition, short videos belong to the later generation. As the middle and front generation who make purchasing decisions, can you confirm that they have installed TikTok?

2) Promoting brands and generating business opportunities do not work. We do marketing for two purposes: promoting brands and generating business opportunities.

The brand image of most 2B companies is professional and reliable; but Douyin’s positioning is to be interesting and fun; how to be both serious and lively? This is a big problem.

In terms of business opportunities, short videos such as Tik Tok are only for attracting attention, and there is still a long way to go before they can produce conversion results.

3) The production cost is too high

To make a corporate video, you first need to plan the content, then write the script, and then find someone to shoot it; even for the most talented people, shooting short videos is more difficult than writing text.

Some people also say that isn’t it great for fans and employees to create together? However, it is difficult for editors in the ToB industry to create content themselves, so how can they expect clients and programmers to create content after working 996? too young too naive.

Sometimes a lucky company will recruit one or two particularly talented editors, but who can guarantee that he/she will have good ideas every day? It is difficult to understand the products of B2B companies, not to mention refining, sublimating and processing them.

So, if you just want to open a TikTok account for entertainment and to satisfy your leaders’ passion for creation, of course you can; but don’t take it too seriously, because if you take it too seriously, you will lose.

If you want to be effective, you need long-term updates; either you have a professional team, or you have a continuous content machine, or you just give up.

Many people will see this and say, yes, Douyin has given up long ago; we have put our attention on Video Account, the traffic of WeChat entrance is so large and the target audience is so precise, this opportunity cannot be missed.

3. Video Account

What WeChat has been promoting vigorously this year is the video account. In the beginning, even the test required an invitation, and the media also said that this was the official account of 2014 and 2015 (the dividends at that time created a large number of writers with annual incomes of over 10 million).

But is this really the spring of B2B content dissemination? Let’s first take a brief look at the differences between Video Account and Douyin.

1) The target audience and content are slightly different

Compared with the target audience of TikTok, the video account will be more accurate through social algorithm recommendations.

The video account is based on the WeChat ecosystem that everyone opens every day, so the traffic is needless to say; in addition, it can be connected with the company's official account and mini-programs, potentially forming a closed loop of business opportunities.

Tik Tok focuses more on entertainment content, while the current video account is more inclined towards knowledge and information content.

2) Video accounts are easier to share and spread. Video accounts can be directly spread again in the circle of friends, while Douyin accounts require the video to be downloaded before it can be spread in the circle of friends, and the sharing process is more cumbersome.

The logic of dissemination is roughly as follows: after registering a corporate video account with personal WeChat (authentication required), content is published, and employees, agents and other friends forward and like it in their circle of friends; their friends, former colleagues, relatives and friends will see it, and if they also like it, then their own circles will be able to see it.

Layer by layer, it spreads like water waves.

If few people view your circle of friends, and your friends also rarely view it, then naturally strangers will see it even less; if there is no wind in front, there will be no ripples behind.

This principle is easy to understand. This is the reason why many companies force their employees to like and repost their own video accounts. There are also companies that force each of their employees to create a video account, create work-related content, and create a company video account matrix (this is simply anti-human, you need to love the company and your work more).

Of course, the video account system will also make recommendations through algorithms, but what is the logic? Is it the content of the WeChat public accounts you usually follow, or the keywords you use in daily chats, or something else? At present, most people around me only look at the "Friends Liked" menu.

3) Linking to the official account creates the possibility of conversion

Video accounts can be accompanied by links to public accounts, and public accounts can also link to video accounts, directing traffic to each other; but from my observations, the number of readers of articles on the public accounts of several 2B companies has not increased significantly at all.

The reason is easy to understand. Although the content of the video account is more rational than that of the Douyin account, it is still entertainment-oriented after all. With a swipe of the finger, more interesting content is waiting for you. Even if you like the video content of a company, you will rarely think of clicking on it to study it carefully.

Whether it is Douyin or Video Account, it is difficult to explain the characteristics of the B2B industry clearly through short videos.

Of course, it’s fine to play around without any purpose, but you just need to always pay attention to whether it is consistent with the brand tone and personality that the company has worked hard to create.

4. Station B and Live Broadcast

At present, short videos such as Video Account and Douyin are not necessarily suitable for brand building and business opportunity conversion for most B2B companies; of course, there is a very large space for long videos because they can explain something clearly.

Compared with traditional corporate promotional videos, Bilibili's format is more relaxed and has better interaction with the audience. In addition, Bilibili's live broadcast function is also good. If you can attract fans through some videos before, it will be more reasonable to do live broadcasts to attract fans later.

However, long videos are much more difficult to produce than short videos.

Although content can be co-created with ecosystem partners, such as customer testimonials, product usage scenarios, MG animations, and other content in various forms, it is still a big project; especially for companies that want to produce high-quality content.

After all, just like short videos, the audience’s time is limited. Without good content, how can we attract users’ attention?

Live streaming is not unfamiliar to B2B companies. Previous online exhibitions were of this form; the only difference is that it was previously a targeted invitation, but now it is a platform traffic import.

I also happened to see B2B companies doing live streaming of flash sales like Li Jiaqi did. Although it was a rush to buy hardware products, I don’t know how effective it was. Anyway, I have never seen it live streamed for the second time. In general, it sounds too magical and unreal for a company to sell out a server, software, or solution in a live broadcast.

Therefore, if you have the energy, it is very necessary to make long videos. They are valuable whether they are posted on Bilibili or other platforms. It is also reasonable and in line with the times to do brand promotion on online technical forums.

Having said so much, in summary, for 2B enterprises, the output content is the most important.

Instead of seeking novelty and novelty, it is better to work harder on products, scenarios, customer cases, etc., visit more customers, and create some warm content that can touch the hearts of customers.

Whether it is Weibo and Douyin, or Weibo and Douyin - Bilibili - Video Account - live broadcast, the media is always a touch point and tool. With good content, it will shine everywhere.

Secondly, self-media is an important part of the implementation of a company’s brand strategy. Blindly following the trend exposes unclear positioning.

Who are the target customers? What are they paying attention to? How is the company’s content strategy planned?

Connecting with users is the most important function of corporate self-media. Brand is the sum of the perception of a company in the minds of users. If you cannot think from the user's perspective, then no matter how hard you try, it will be in vain.

Author: Time Notebook

Source: Time Notebook