There is new research out this week that will shake up old notions about how business-to-business brands should be using social media.

A report by intelligence platform TrackMaven shows LinkedIn isn’t the most effective platform to drive engagement — but you might be surprised to learn which platform actually performs best.

TrackMaven’s report analysed 12 months of content from 316 leading B2B brands on five key social networks: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. In this week’s Brand Newsroom James, Sarah and Nic take a look at the findings.

Here are some key take-outs:

•  Overall B2B brands have the largest audience on LinkedIn — 36 times the number of followers they have on Instagram
• Yet B2B brands get 20-times more engagement on Instagram than LinkedIn. LinkedIn actually leads to minimal engagement

“Everybody’s on LinkedIn but that’s not where they’re getting the most influence from… the big news is that where people are getting the most effective use of their networks is on Instagram. What was really disappointing to me was to see how ineffective Twitter is.” — Sarah

•  Instagram works because people like to have a conversation around a picture or a video — they pay attention to it. Also, its users really engage with hashtags and use them to find images they’re interested in and accounts they want to follow
• B2B brands fall flat on Twitter, with an engagement ratio of less than two interactions per 1000 followers

 “I’m only using three of those platforms for business myself. We have a Pinterest account but it’s dormant. I think a lot of businesses out there will be feeling they’ve been pushed into these areas but they don’t necessarily use them or use them effectively. — Nic

•  Biotech brands are by far the best at engaging audiences. That’s probably because they’re willing to adopt new technology and try new things. Financial services come a distance second
• Across the B2B landscape, brands in the machinery sector see the highest social media audience growth, with an average follower growth of almost 130 per cent for 2015. TrackMaven says “engaging content is a correlated factor” in that success

“People listening to this will say ‘well our attention normally would be on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook’. And when it comes to the top five, they’re the bottom three.” — James

Here are the links you might need

• Get your hands on TrackMaven’s report here. 

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Hear what marketing guru Jeff Bullas had to say about social media and blogging when he caught up with the Brand Newsroom team at Content Marketing World Sydney…

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