Most B2B brands post consistently across their social media platforms, but nothing seems to resonate. The hard truth? The algorithm isn’t the reason you’re getting no shares, comments, or reach.
It’s the content you’re posting.
Corporate-sounding content doesn’t stop a scroll or earn a comment. And it’s definitely not getting shared.
Your readers need a hook that’s strong enough to keep their interest, and no press release does that.
Why B2B Brands Don’t Perform on Social
Most B2B brands disappear on social media because their posts are written for the company, not the reader.
Social media content is inherently human. People use it to share opinions, experiences, and ideas with their peers. When corporate content makes its way into this setting, it sticks out—and not in a good way.
Since corporate writing tends to be vague and unspecific, it fails to resonate with anyone. No one uses phrases like “drive scalable outcomes” or “leveraging synergies” in everyday conversations.
The key to getting B2B posts to resonate is to sound like a human.
How to Humanize Your Posts
Social media posts that perform well don’t sound polished. They sound specific, take a point of view, and speak directly to the reader.
To be clear, sounding human doesn’t mean sounding unprofessional or overly casual. If you share an opinion, take your buyers’ perspective into account and write how speak in person. You’ll start to notice a difference.
Here are a few ways you can start humanizing your social media posts and building trust with your readers.
- Start posts with “I” and “you” more often. Don’t write from the brand’s point of view—write from the customer’s. Speaking directly to your audience grabs their attention immediately.
- Name the uncomfortable thing. Brands tend to avoid sharing content that’s uncomfortable, awkward, and frustrating. But that’s what people love to read about. If your product solves a pressing problem in an industry, name it. This helps build trust with your audience.
- Talk about failures, not just success. Sharing your wins is easy. But talking about where things went wrong? Not so much. Talking about brand campaigns that didn’t work and mistakes you made helps establish credibility.
- Ask questions you don’t answer right away. Corporate content states, or asks questions that immediately point to their product as the solution. Make the reader feel like you’re pondering the answer with them, rather than trying to make a sale.
- Write the way you talk in person. Before you publish a social media post, read it out loud. If a phrase sounds weird, rewrite it. Natural rhythm is more important than perfect grammar here.
Knowing how to use social media for your brand is one thing. But how can you pass your knowledge along to the rest of your team?
Establishing a realistic posting cadence is usually the best place to start.
Most teams don’t lose their voice because they don’t understand it. They lose it because of how content gets produced and how often it’s posted.
Building a Social Media Schedule That Works
To avoid reverting to corporate-sounding posts, don’t commit to a strict posting cadence. If you do, the human voice you’re trying to infuse into your posts gets planned out of it entirely.
If you work on a small marketing team, you probably don’t have a designated social media person. The schedule you set needs to work for the team you have. Choose a platform you’d like to focus on the most, and build from there.
When your team only has between two and five people, assign roles to each person. One writes, one edits, and one monitors comments—sometimes those roles will overlap or switch. This ensures the work is evenly distributed and keeps one person from burning out.
Plus, not all social media posts are made off the cuff. Dedicate a block of time every week to make batches of social media posts, scheduling them to go live throughout the week. Just make sure the posts don’t all sound identical because they were written on the same day.
New to batching social media posts? Pick a time when you’re in the right headspace to write, rather than squeezing it in between meetings. You can start with the recurring themes your brand covers, so you’re not starting from scratch. Leave room for spontaneity, as well. You never know when a major industry event will occur, and you’ll want to cover it. Lastly—make sure to schedule everything before you wrap up for the day.
And let’s be clear: the schedule will probably slip at some point. Accept this and identify a way to recover without completely abandoning the social media schedule. This could mean not posting as often or sharing more short videos than long-form articles.
Consistency matters. But if the content doesn’t feel human, you’re just going to get ignored more often.