B2B SEO marketing has definitely evolved quite a bit in recent years, especially as social media websites like LinkedIn and Twitter have become more acceptable — and profitable — for B2B lead generation and usability testing analysis.

The trouble with B2B SEO marketing and social media lead generation strategies, as many B2B online marketing companies have already discovered, is the fact that it’s difficult to see social media in action; it’s hard to evaluate how effective it is for B2B lead generation because social media activity doesn’t really convert well into numbers, making it difficult to analyze the success of a campaign until after it’s all over.

So why exactly do B2B marketers still use social media? And — more importantly — how are they using it?

• The first important point to keep in mind is that social media marketing for B2B can be effective, but only when you carefully choose which sites to focus on and only if you’re willing to see a campaign through to the very end. Content marketing has become an important aspect of B2B SEO marketing, but you have to willing to accept that your lead generation campaigns on LinkedIn won’t look as solid as you would hope — but this doesn’t mean that your efforts are entirely in vain.
  

• Another important way that social media marketing can be worked into B2B SEO marketing is something that, contrary to the previous point, actually makes a lot of sense. When you’re working on a B2B lead generation strategy, you focus on marketing a business by appealing to what the buyers want and need; this is where you can easily work in content marketing because blog posts give you a chance to talk directly to buyers and explain why a vendor has exactly what they need. B2B internet marketing trends often fail because the vendor isn’t presenting pertinent information to audiences that are willing to listen, but social media marketing can help by operating as a sharing platform for all of that expert content.

Ultimately, social media marketing won’t be effective on its own and it won’t provide a quick-fix for a B2B marketing campaign — but if you’re willing to invest the time, it will definitely pay off.