Over the years, more social media interactions have been happening in private channels. Why is this exactly? It could be that people have just had enough of the back and forth or politics that can come with public posting.

Earlier this year, Meta noticed this trend and quickly rolled out their ‘Channels’ feature on Instagram, which is essentially a public, one-to-many messaging tool for creators to directly engage with their followers at scale. So what can B2B brands learn from this trend? Perhaps for more intimate relationships with their target audience, brands should consider how to incorporate DMs, and direct messaging into their social strategies. 

Coming soon: LinkedIn DMs

After the March announcement of ‘Channels’ on Instagram, we predicted that other channels would follow suit quickly, amping up their DM strategies for brands. And we were correct. 

In June, LinkedIn announced a new feature that will allow Company pages to send and receive DMs. This is HUGE for B2B marketers. 

Source: Social Media Today

The positives of this feature are pretty obvious, more direct engagement with a brand’s audience, and we can only imagine how impactful this will be for talent recruitment. LinkedIn is already planning on AI-assisted elements within the inbox, which could be particularly helpful for lead nurturing. (For more insights on AI on the social media space, check out our recent blog, “Will AI Really Do My B2B Social Media Marketing for Me? ”)

However, the inbox feature has been slowly rolling out to select pages, so if you haven’t seen it yet, no need to be concerned! There is still time for your brand to consider how they might incorporate this tool into their upcoming social media strategies. 

Best practices for DMs 

Once this feature does roll out to LinkedIn (and, I’m sure we will see this trend happening across more platforms), it’s important to get on top of some of the best practices for company DMs. These tips could also be used for general customer service responses on social, too! These tips were provided directly from Meta . 

Respond quickly

People expect businesses to respond quickly and provide timely updates. Even if you’re still looking for an answer to their inquiry, acknowledging receipt is important. Just be sure to set an expectation of when they will receive your response.

Communicate clearly and succinctly

Ensure that you convey your main ideas concisely and upfront in your message. This meets people's expectations for messaging and enhances readability. Short and focused messages are also easily comprehensible in message previews.

Leverage features

On Meta, you can take advantage of in-app features. Some companies like to use message tags on Meta to send personal, timely, and important non-promotional messages. Or you could test the one-time notification feature that allows a page to request a user to send one follow-up message after the 24-hour messaging window has ended.

Conclusion

It’s a great time to ensure your social media team is up-to-date on these best practices for DMs, and ready for what’s to come in the next year. We need to stay ready for all the changes in how our B2B customers want to consume content, whether on the feed or in DMs, so that we can offer a way for them to reach us more easily. 

We hope these tips have been helpful to embrace the company DM trend. Let us know if you have any questions in the comments below!