Conflicting data has come out as to which social media platform B2B marketers prefer. A StrongMail survey suggests that B2B marketers are leaning to Facebook and will ignore the mobile channel next year.

A separate study by Pardot finds that B2B marketers are using Twitter more often to generate leads compared to other platforms—by some 91%.  However, when it came to creating worthwhile leads, Twitter only had a 15% success rate for this group.

Still Lagging

For years, B2B social media marketing has lagged behind–far behind–its B2C counterpart. That is beginning to change as more firms begin to explore the value a social B2B outreach can provide, especially as more tools come to market for this constituency and more research studies capture best practices. Read more about these differences between B2B and B2C marketing here.

Meanwhile, though, these first wave of attempts appear–as the Pardot figures show at least–to be only partly successful.

Redoubling Efforts on Content

One tip for these companies is to redouble efforts to create engaging content—something that has not traditionally been a B2B marketer’s bailiwick. '

41% of B2B marketers say that producing the kind of content that engages prospects and customers is their biggest content marketing challenge, representing a 14% increase from 36% of respondents in 2010, according to a study by MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute.

It found that respondents are also grappling with two challenges that go hand in hand: producing enough content (20%), and having the budget to produce enough content (18%). A lack of buy-in from higher-ups in the company (12%), producing a variety of content (7%), and having the budget to license content (1%) are primary challenges to relatively fewer B2B marketers.