It’s been long enough that we really shouldn’t have to spend much time talking about whether social is right for your B2B business. It is. Full stop. Of course, that’s assuming that your business is dedicating the time and resources necessary to grow your social following (with an eye to follower quality, not just quantity), that you’re engaging your online communities and that your content is helping—not just selling—to your social network.

Buyers never stay still for very long, and the strategies to reach them are constantly changing. Even if you’re doing a bang-up job on social media, your digital strategies still might not be ready for the new, modern way B2B marketers are reaching their audiences.

With more and more B2B marketers moving to Account-Based Marketing (ABM), your social media strategy needs to follow suit. The good news is that if you’re already serious about social, you’re probably not too far off from being ready to integrate social marketing and selling into your ABM plans. That said, if you’ve just been throwing up some paid posts once in a while and more or less ignoring your company’s organic social accounts, you may have your work cut out for you.

ABM is all about honing down your audience to a select few key accounts—or even a single account—selected after thoughtful analysis and assessment. With paid social’s capability for hyper-targeting (including matched audiences on several social platforms), it’s a perfect fit to help target specific contacts at specific accounts.

But the real value of social media within ABM strategies is not on the paid side of the equation. While paid offers options that can further drive home key messages to your specific audience, the real conversations often take place on the organic side, especially if you’ve been creating those conversations and connections already.

Have you been tagging influencers and jumping in on important conversations with your company’s social channels? Have you been supporting and encouraging your employees to do the same, especially the sales team? Are you even following the social accounts of the key accounts you’re targeting with your ABM strategy? Depending on your answers to these questions, you probably have a pretty good idea about how ready your social strategy is for ABM.

Social Engagement

Social media can be a great way to help determine which accounts you should target with ABM, but that’s a conversation for a different day. What do you do with social once you have the list of key accounts you’re going to be targeting? It’s not so different than any other social strategy where you begin to craft messaging tailored to this audience. The added benefit of social is that you can tag and mention these accounts, specifically ensuring your message gets seen. That’s the beginning of creating a conversation with key accounts around your offering.

Sales Team Support

Your company’s social accounts are not the only ones that should be jumping into ABM strategy and execution. Enabling your sales team members to be active on social media is a key part of getting a conversation going. LinkedIn’s messaging system and the InMail feature on pro accounts are essential here. Sales team members reaching out directly to start a conversation is an invaluable asset, particularly if they are reaching out to people with whom they have previous relationships.

And as we’ve discussed before, aligning your marketing with your sales efforts is a key part of successful ABM strategies.

“Remarketing”

While paid social platforms have a number of remarketing options (which you should absolutely be using for ABM campaigns), there is real value in your social and sales teams following up the conversations they have within organic social. Keep conversations in mind even if they don’t pay off, and revisit those who were interested but not yet ready. Send them a message on LinkedIn or Twitter in a couple months. It’s the most common sales tactic that gets forgotten about when it comes to social selling.

Social media can offer massive value to your ABM strategy. Implementing a social strategy that has your social and sales teams already working to be part of conversations with key accounts can help take your ABM game to the next level.