0:00
Alina Dallal
Hi everyone and welcome to today's webinar 2026 in Focus B2B Social Trends, Strategy and what's next. I'm Alina Delis, I'm your Content Marketing Manager at Oktopost and I will be your host today. Before we dive in, I do have a couple of quick things so we'd love to hear from you throughout the session. So drop your questions in the Q and A box as we go and we'll get to them at the end. And don't worry, all of you will get a copy of the recording after the webinar. We have a couple of treats for you today, so if you look over to the Resources bar, you'll find a free copy of our latest guide featuring our B2B socials. Rising 30 stars and today's guests includes over 150 real practical lessons and tips from your award winning marketers. Feel free to download it straight from the Resources section before the webinar ends. You'll also find Chloe's podcast episode on personal branding as well as the link to nominate your team for an award, but I'll go into that in more detail straight shortly. Plus, you'll also find Chloe and Kassandra's LinkedIn profiles in case you want to get connected with them in the speaker tab. So with that, let's kick things off. We are joined today by two award winning social media marketers, Chloe McGuire and Kassandra Quinn. You nominated them and you made it official. You made them award winning. They're here for a tactical, honest look at how they're approaching 2026. So you're going to hear everything, what they're prioritizing, what they're leaving behind, the real lessons they've learned from a year of testing, adapting and leading standout social strategies. So this is a very open conversation. So I hope you grabbed your coffee, I hope you're comfortable, you've got your notes ready, settle in and join us. And please feel free to introduce yourself in the chat to each other, share what you guys are working on, what's been working for your brand this year, and maybe any challenges you've been facing. I think you'll quickly see that we're all in the same boat and it's a great place to swap ideas and bond over the joys of working in B2B social. And also feel free to drop your LinkedIn profiles too and connect with each other. This really is a space where all of us can share what we're up to and learn from each other. So before we jump into our session, I Do want to introduce something exciting that we're up to Oktopost. So we're sponsoring the 2025 B2B Marketing Innovation Awards. They're built to celebrate and honor the most inspiring, creative and innovative B2B marketing campaigns of the year. We have an incredible panel of judges, including marketing leaders. VPs and CMOs will be selecting our winners, including a judge from LinkedIn also. So if you want to get your marketing campaign in front of LinkedIn, this is your chance. So to get your brand and hard work seen by LinkedIn in our panel and to get the spotlight you deserve, go ahead and nominate your campaign by December 18th. There is a link to the to the nominations page in the resources section. So with that, we're going to kick off our session. I really, really brought in two of the best and I am so excited to host them today. So without further ado, I'm going to hand over to our panel panelists to introduce themselves. Chloe, Kassandra, could you please give us a brief intro into who you are, where you work, what you do, and your favorite part of working in B2B social. Chloe, I'm going to start with you.
3:03
Chloe Maguire
Yes. Hello everyone. I cannot believe how much the chart is exploding. I'm trying my best not to get too distracted by it at the moment, but hello, I am Chloe. I am from Ireland, based in Berlin. I saw a few Berliners in the chat there as well. So hello. I have been in socials for, gosh, over 10 years now with the last four years spent in B2B. Right now I am the brand and social media lead at Leapsum. We are a HR software company, obviously in B2B and I take care of everything from socials to community to our brand as well. My favorite part of working in B2B, I'm gonna cheat and give you two favorites. The first one being that I think it's a real challenge compared to B2C. I think B to C people will hate me for this, but I think it's a lot easier to market the things are a lot easier to sell. Whereas how you come online and make a HR platform sexy and fun and entertaining. So I really love that side of it. And the second thing that I have to mention is I love the community in B2B that Alina, I think you have done a very big job of helping to build out. It's the most uplifting and supportive and positive place to be. And yeah, it's definitely one of my favorite things about B2B.
4:19
Kassandra Quinn
Thank you.
4:20
Alina Dallal
That's so sweet. Community is Also my favorite part. That's why I set out to do it. I love it so much. And thank you for joining us, Kassandra, I'm going to pass over to you.
4:28
Kassandra Quinn
Sure. Hi, I'm Kassandra Quinn. On the community aspect, I see so many familiar names popping up in the chat, so I love that. Hi, friends. But I run organic social media at Mod Squad as their social media strategist. Most of my work is centered around LinkedIn and helping us connect with our audience there. My favorite part of B2B social, very similar to Chloe's, is that I came from the B2C world. And coming into B2B here, I kind of don't cancel me for this, but was like, this is boring. And I actually then found myself actually really enjoying the challenge of taking what could be dry and finding a way to make it something that people want to engage with and are actually interested in. And I think that's something that I genuinely enjoyed.
5:14
Alina Dallal
Amazing. I love how that's turned into your favorite part of being in B2B. And I'm just like you. I don't believe there's space anymore for B2B to be boring. So I know that we're going to basically prove that all wrong in this webinar. So I'm going to move on to our first question. Kassandra, I'm going to stick with you. The role of a B2B social media manager has changed a lot since it first started, way beyond just running brand accounts. So what does your world look like today? And what does owning social mean to you now?
5:44
Kassandra Quinn
Sure. So I love this question because I think social media itself has changed so much over the years, but B2B in particular in the last couple of years has changed so much. It used to be kind of pretty straightforward. You'd write content for your page, you check your analytics, you'd speak to your audience. And it was a rinse, repeat type of thing. But now there's so much more in what I like to call, like, the bigger social ecosystem. You've got everything from executive thought leadership to employee advocacy to community management. And all of those things can really be one role in itself. But you've often got teams of one or really small social teams working on all of these things. And so I think owning social today really means understanding each of those pieces and how they work together and also understanding which of those is going to move your business forward, because you can't do all of them. And so the Skill set in B2B is just at such an interesting time right now. You've got so much opportunity and excitement to learn. So I think it's a really cool time to be in B2B. For sure.
6:50
Alina Dallal
Absolutely. I love the concept of a social ecosystem because we're all wearing multiple hats. I'm sure everybody here can relate to and balancing all different things and it is much bigger than just solely managing brand accounts and managing with these different things. So thank you for sharing that. The next question I have for both of you, as we know, 2026 is just around the corner. I actually can't believe we're almost in 2026, but how are you guys approaching content planning for the new year? Do you map out a full calendar and only room to pivot? And what does your planning process look like? And what do you always make? Chloe, I'm going to start with you.
7:27
Chloe Maguire
Yes. So I am a big planner, both professionally and personally, so I love this question. So I am a big believer in what I like to call structured flexibility. So I always map the year out at a very high level. My cues out in detail and then I like to map my months out more in execution mode. And what I mean by that is I'll always plan like my big bets, my webinars, my events, my themes. But when it comes to BAU content, I don't plan that out so much. And I know this can be a bit controversial to some, but I don't even map out BAU content a month in advance. I think in this industry, we're moving so fast all the time, what's working this week won't work next week. What's trending this week won't be there next week. So I like to meet my audience where they're at, keep a pulse on them, stay on top of it and plan it out that way. One thing I do think all social media managers should have, and so this, this is also a bit of a controversial topic at the moment is a content calendar. Should we have them, should we not? Should we lock them in? Should we not? I would recommend everyone to have them because I do think it helps instill structure to the people outside of socials and it helps them respect that socials isn't just this thing where we can just throw up whatever we want. I think we've all been asked to just post this very quickly on socials or throw this here. And I think having a calendar to point to helps you avoid situations like that. Another thing that really changed stuff for me was attached to my calendar is a form. So I started seeing, I was like how come graphic designers aren't treated like this? How come like everybody respects them and sends in stuff to them? So I made my own form and now if anybody wants something to whip on Socials, they have to fill out that form. They have to tell me exactly what they expect, when they expect it, the copy they would like, I will make edits and that has to come in at least two weeks in advance or it's not going up on socials. So that is how I'm approaching it to next year. And I'm already excited to hear how Kassandra's doing it because I love hearing how different we all approach these things.
9:38
Alina Dallal
Yeah, I honestly also I think the form is a great thing to share with everyone listening because it's interesting to hear other people are doing it. Someone also Ashley posted in the chat post, this quickly haunts me 247 so I think we all can relate. But Kassandra, I'd love to hear if things are similar for you, maybe slightly different.
9:54
Kassandra Quinn
So yeah, yeah, I'm immediately stealing that form idea. Going to make it literally when we get off this call. No, but I very similar to Chloe like to plan with a structure, but it's very flexible. I mean, I think we all know social is one of those things that is always moving and if you plan with too much rigidness, you're just never gonna. It's never gonna be the same week over week. Like many of the people in the chat like that, that content, I'm planning that like two weeks in advance max. But of course, at the start of the year, I map out our KPIs, I map out our core targets and I map out the strategy for each platform because at the end of the day those don't really change as much. But I do think that one of the big things that I try to do is map out the goals of my social to map and change with the goals of the company overall. Because then if I'm moving that all the way forward, it's all at the end of the day gonna get where we wanna go.
10:48
Alina Dallal
Absolutely. It's so important to time to business goals because then you can also prove the impact that social has had on the overall arching goals of the I know we're going to get to soon. So thank you both for sharing your answers. Every. The chat is blowing up. Everybody agrees with you guys. We've got like, like loads of people in here. The next question I want to ask Kassandra, I'm going to stick with you again. I know that the algorithm's constantly changing and There has been a lot of talk lately, especially on my feed, about a notable dip in company impressions on LinkedIn. And there's constant algorithm shifts and it feels like the rules keep changing. So how are you approaching this? What have you tried? And how do you stay flexible when the platform keeps evolving?
11:29
Kassandra Quinn
Sure. So, I mean, I think all of us can say that impressions have dipped this year. I think we've all seen that. And I think that's kind of nice to hear that from other people, because sometimes you do feel a little bit on an island. But I think one of the most important things when you think about that, and the algorithms in general, is to just try not to chase the algorithms, because they are always changing. And if you build to appease that algorithm, you're not necessarily building to appease your audience, and you end up losing sight of what actually works. And I think so many people fall into that trap of, okay, I need to switch my strategy because the algorithm has changed. And for me, the way that I like to do it is I like to kind of zoom out and look at, okay, what's the way to approach the basics of who am I trying to reach, what do I want them to do, and how can I share content that I find that they find engaging and exciting? And lastly, create real opportunities for conversation, because at the end of the day, social is social. It's there in the name. And that part doesn't change even when the algorithm does. I think, sure, we're all testing formats and timing and things like video, which I know we're going to talk about later. But the biggest thing is really prioritizing your audience over that algorithm, because the platforms are always going to evolve and you want your strategy to be able to evolve with them instead of react.
12:51
Alina Dallal
Yeah, absolutely. It's so important to post for your audience and not, not just the algorithm. Obviously, there's ways that it comes into play. But if you have your strategy already in line with what your audience was, the rest can follow. And I know that a lot of us can find this overwhelming time. So it's really helpful advice. The next question I want to ask you guys, it leans into social media trends for 2026. Before I ask both, both Chloe and Kassandra what they're seeing, I'm going to leave this up on the screen because this is a few that I've seen spoken to a lot of our B2B social media community about as well as our customers. So this is what we're seeing buzz over recently. But what else would you guys throw in the mix. Drop it in the comments below. And as you guys do that, I'm going to turn to our guests and ask them what they're paying attention to. So as we head into the new year, what trends, Kassandra, Chloe, are you paying the most attention to and what's getting the most focus in your strategy? Kassandra, I'm going to start with you.
13:44
Chloe Maguire
Sure.
13:45
Kassandra Quinn
I think the big things that I'm really paying attention to this year are employee advocacy and executive thought leadership, especially in B2B. Those are the things that are really bringing that human element and just feel more personal. And I think that's something we're all looking to see across social. Both in B2C and B2B, we call it business to business, but at the end of the day, you're still selling to another person on the other side of the screen. And it just builds so much more trust and authenticity when it's a person over a brand logo. And then I guess on the other side of that same coin is something that I'm really watching. Is that B2B influencer space. I think it's such an exciting time to watch that because we're seeing so much growth in it and I think that we haven't even really scratched the surface of what that can do. So I think that's a really cool space to watch.
14:31
Alina Dallal
I agree. B2B influence marketing is just constantly growing and as well with having your employees, advocates, people listen to people, people trust peer recommendations, they trust what they have to say. So it's so important, I feel, to include that into your strategy. Chloe, how about you?
14:47
Chloe Maguire
So for me, I think the biggest thing I'm going to pay attention to is I do think we're seeing a shift for what it is to be a social media manager. What I mean by that is it used to be the brand page was the most important thing and it was a content led strategy and content was king. And not to say content isn't important, but I think we're seeing specific V in B2B and on LinkedIn that people are becoming very disillusioned by brand pages. That's not where they're going to connect. There's not that trust that there used to be. And I think we need to meet our audience where they are rather than hoping they come and find us. So for me, I'm gonna really focus on a community led strategy and with that comes like comment strategies. So I've actually worked on a whole comment strategy for next year where we will be curating, I think A lot of people actually don't realize you can do this, but you can curate your own business page feed where you can have people that you follow as a business in a feed, much like your own personal feed. So we've curated that with all the thought leaders, our audience, our community, the companies we want to engage with and being in the conversations. Inserting ourselves into these conversations are going to be like primary for us next year. Employee advocacy is going to be huge for us. And also creator led marketing in that is influencer marketing. But I do really believe in creator led community based marketing in the sense of you don't have to have 50000 followers to be an influential voice in your community. And I think tapping into these micro creators, micro influencers, whatever you want to call them, is going to be key to getting through the noise because people connect with people and we see that more and more and then that can still come into your content on your branded page. But I do think we need to have this show shift of is content still king or is community? Well, let's call it a queen, let's be inclusive, but it's community now. The queen of socials, which I believe it will be and even More so on LinkedIn next year.
16:50
Alina Dallal
Yeah, I have to say I agree with you. Those both of you are great answers. Thank you so much for sharing. I think it's so nice for us to hear what other brands are taking in to next year and you've given us quite a lot that we can run and kickstart the year with. So the next question, Chloe, I'm gonna stick with you this time. There are so many ways to have fun and be bold and B2B, you just have to find your brand lane in doing so. So I know you're up to a lot of fun things at leaps on. So what are the fun out of the box things that you've been doing that humanize your brand? And how do you find the line between standing out and staying on brand?
17:24
Chloe Maguire
I love this question because much like Kassandra, a big fear of mine coming into B2B was oh my God, is it boring? But at the end of the day, as Kassandra said, we're still marketing to humans. It is not B2B, it's still people. So one thing I really love to do that I do think a lot of B2B brands shy away from is pain point marketing. And I think we shy away from it because it does kind of highlight the flaws in your industry, the flaws in the world of work and people are afraid to do that. For me, it's worked really well. I try to approach it very lightheartedly, very satirical. We even make fun of ourselves at time and people really enjoy it. So I love Pain Point marketing. I also love creating a universe around our brand and what I mean by that is like so for Leaps and that's the Leapsum universe and I introduce characters all the time so that people can connect with the people of Leapsum and not just the brand of Loopsome. And that's like doing behind the scenes. It's days in the life. I love doing the 75 questions with Vogue style videos as well. I find them refund. Another thing I'd love to do this year is finding trends on TikTok and figuring out how to bring them to LinkedIn and apply them to the world of work in my niche. That has worked really, really well for us and it's really helped us. I know we'll touch on this a little bit later, but like it's helped us in situations where say it's been difficult to market the product because people aren't that interested. But then we find a trend and we make it funny and then people go crazy for it. And another one that seems small and I'll be super quick with this one, but it seems small, but it is quite big. Is like lean into writing like a human. Like enough with these polished over perfected posts. If there's a typo in my post, I don't care. It's not getting edited. If there is a typo in my graphic, I don't care. It's staying up. I think the more human you are the better. And to start writing how you speak. I think as social media managers we can get so tunnel visioned and we're so used to being so visible that we think oh my God, everything has to be perfect. It doesn't because life is not perfect and people are sick of these polished perfect. We're delighted to announce style posts that everyone is over. So yeah, there's some of the things I've been focusing on.
19:37
Alina Dallal
Amazing. Thank you for sharing because I also when I say spelling mistake, I get so nervous. So it's nice to hear how other people focus. I feel like we all have that as social media managers and if anybody wants to check out what both of them are up to, head to Leap Sons and Mod Squads pages. They're both killing it. And you can also I'm gonna hunt down that 75 Vogue style question video because that sounds so fun. So the next question I want to ask. I'm going to turn to both of you. I feel like as social media managers, there's a lot of things that we're testing all the time. We're trying all different things. So when you look back at this year, what's something you tested that didn't go as planned and what's something that worked really well that you want to carry forward into 2026? Kassandra, I'm going to start with you.
20:15
Kassandra Quinn
Sure. I'd love to hear if other people in the chat had this similar experience, but I experimented so much with video this year, both for the brand and for my own personal page. I did a couple different tests on my page. I tried to do 30 days of video, failed halfway through. I'll explain more if anyone's interested, but I really just wanted to see what the formats were that actually worked. And I think, yes, some of the tests performed, some of those videos did actually get really good impressions and things like that. But when I ended up kind of factoring the time, the resources and editing, it wasn't necessarily the best trade off. I think someone in the chat said something along the lines of, I would love to do that, but I don't necessarily have all that bandwidth when I have to do X, Y and Z. And I think every social media manager has that same struggle. There are so many things we all want to do, we all want to try. And I think a valuable part of the job and the learning is to know what not to choose and when to stop and when to continue something. And then on the other half of that, something that did work for me this year that I found so interesting was digging really a lot deeper into our analytics and our social data, specifically things like attribution and seeing where social ended up in the customer journey and looking more about how what I did on organic social influenced the demand gen of the company. And I think that that has just been something really interesting for me to learn how to speak differently in different parts of the funnel and those types of things. And it's made me, I think, a better marketer. So it's been cool, amazing.
21:53
Alina Dallal
I love hearing that and I love how you broke down both sides, especially with data. I think for us it can be quite daunting to look at data, but actually that will help you reveal what's working, what's not, and help you better your strategy. And also with things like attribution and proving impact on the business, which I know we're going to go into later, but before we do, Chloe, I'D love to hear from you your answer to this question.
22:16
Chloe Maguire
Yeah, so actually similar to Kassandra, we were reading everywhere. I think we all are like videos. Amazing. LinkedIn's pushing video. It's the only thing that matters. I was not seeing that unless it was, as I mentioned, just funny videos. People just didn't care. So we had discovered that, you know, LinkedIn used to be the space where people came to be educated and informed. And I think this year we've really seen a switch from that. So I found this year that our informative, more education based content was actually not performing as well as we thought it would. And I think it brings up a very good point of just because it's working for a lot of other people doesn't mean it works for your audience. So that was like a big learning for me when I was reading that these types of videos work and you have to do it and then I put all this effort into it and then I got like 15 likes and I was like, cool. So that one really tanked for me, but I got a lot of learning from it and something that worked really, really well for us. And this proves my point of sometimes it works for us and others. Because I saw someone put in the chat that influencer marketing did not lead to what they hoped, whereas Leapsum, we saw the opposite. It was actually our biggest driver this year. It was huge for us and it worked really well then it's something we're really going to focus on next year. But what I would say is we approached influencer marketing not from a here's Leapsum's product, please go buy it. It was more of a, like, I work alongside Leapsum because I believe in their mission and here's what they believe in and here's how we do it. So we went very community focused with influencer marketing rather than product focused.
23:52
Alina Dallal
Interesting. Thank you for sharing that. Because I think also with influence marketing, people in B2B are trying to find their way to make it work. Because in B2C you just see somebody hold up shoes or a product and it's easier. But in B2B, it's finding that community aspect and the storytelling aspect as well, which I'm sure I reckon we'll go into more in the Q A as well as if anybody in the chat wants to hear more about influence marketing before we do the next question I have I mentioned before, B2B social media managers wear a lot of hats, but they're not always visible internally. So, Chloe, I want to ask you, because I Know this is something you're very passionate about. How do you advocate for yourself and your work and make sure that social gets the seat it really does deserve at the table?
24:31
Chloe Maguire
I'm gonna try hold myself to a time limit on this because I could talk about this all day. But first and foremost, I would say be loud and proud. Advocate for yourself. I think I spent so many years in my career waiting to be seen, waiting for someone to give me that pat on the back and say, yeah, you're contributing. And then I learned that I didn't have to wait. And I can actually advocate for myself and insert myself and let everyone know just how much I'm actually doing. So I proactively share my strategy. I proactively share my wins. I got very comfortable with bigging myself up, which was hard. As an Irish person, that was difficult. We don't do that. So first and foremost that on a more kind of tangible, concrete way, I think we as social media managers need to hold ourselves responsible for how we view socials and how we talk about it. I think when you're constantly reading these posts of socials isn't taken seriously, you can internalize that belief and then project that out. So I think we need to start social is a business function and we need to treat it like one and speak about it like one. And what I mean by that is speak in business outcomes, not in platform language. I think so many of us are like, here's how many impressions we got and here's our engagement rate. But C suite don't really know what that means. So I like to explain it like I'm five to people and really tie it to those business goals. Instead of saying, oh, we grew X amount of followers, I'm like, we grew X amount of followers and X percent is from our ICP and our content is resonating with them. And here's the pain points from that. So brings me to my next point. I always bring the insights upstream. I do not wait to be asked. I bring. I think a big responsibility for social media managers is that we are the voice of our audience back into the company and the very real voice. And I do not wait to be asked for those insights. I bring them. I also pre wire stakeholders. And this comes back to my first point of like, I will insert myself into almost everything. I don't wait to be asked anymore. I just insert myself and I make the narrative that whatever we're doing, socials needs to be involved. If socials, it's kind of like, you know, that Cliche of like if you didn't post about it, did it even happen? I apply that to business. You need to involve me from the start and if you don't, we won't get the great content that we should have for what we're trying to do. And I show off the work I do. We do bi weekly and leapsum. I know a lot of places do it monthly or quarterly or we do bi weekly reports where we talk about what we did, why it matters, what we learned from it and what we'll be doing next based on those outcomes. And yeah, I'm going to stop myself because I could keep going. But in general, yes, that was a great.
27:16
Alina Dallal
I literally can't add to that. That was an amazing answer. I feel like you hit loads of things. It's so important, especially speaking business language. As you say, we can get stuck in platform language, but speaking to our stakeholders and management in terms that they understand and tying it to their language is so important. But like I said, everything you amazing. So I can't really add anything to that answer. But the next question I want to move on to is talking about measuring success. So I want to turn to both of you. When you set goals for social, what do you focus on and how do you communicate the impact in a way that resonates with the C suite? Kassandra, I'm going to start with you.
27:50
Kassandra Quinn
Sure. I love that someone in the the chat called your approach the Kool Aid man approach. That's perfect. And honestly amazing. So when I am setting my goals, I always kind of try to start with the basics. I mean again, I feel like I'm a broken record. I keep saying that but I mean at the end of the day you got to go back to the basics. So it's who am I trying to reach and what do I want them to do? And then once I know those things and I've concrete got them down and match them to the company goals, then I can kind of narrow down those actual metrics and what matters. And it's not necessarily like Chloe was saying, it's not necessarily oh I want reach. It's what's the quality of that reach? Is it reaching the people who matter? It's not just engagement, it's is it engagement then the leader shows intent and where social showing up in the customer journey. So is it reaching the people when they're most likely to actually do something? So that takes what I think a lot of people often call vanity numbers and makes them into something that actually matters. And again, that's how you take it to C Suite. You package it into those stories of, okay, I know what you're trying to do, and here's how I am contributing to that at the end of the day. Because again, leaders care about the audience quality, they care about the demand that you're generating, and they care about the trust. And so if you speak about it that way, then you're going to show what you're bringing to the table as opposed to being like, here's my metrics. Like, this is the, this is the report. You want to actually take that and tell the story.
29:26
Alina Dallal
Absolutely. Is another incredible answer. I'm so glad I brought you guys on for this topic. This is literally your guys's like, peak of expertise. Chloe, how about you? Is similar or anything different?
29:39
Chloe Maguire
Yes, I would say a big plus one to everything Kassandra just said. Also, I think it's really important to. I sat down with Rev Ops. I mean, I think at the end of the day it's, we have to understand our metrics, but it's also okay if we don't know how to get those metrics, especially in the sense of organic, social and attribution and the customer journey and how do we attribute that? That is difficult and that is something I really lean heavily into RevOps for. And I think we should be comfortable with saying, hey, you know what? Actually, I don't know where on the customer journey, I think we all know, we all have this gut feeling of, I know social helps, I know organic does it. I just don't know how to treat. Track it. So I lean heavily into RevOps and I ask them, I tell them exactly what I want and then they build me these beautiful reports that I'm then able to bring C Suite. So I would also really recommend to do that and to also always tie back again, as Kassandra said, like, why does it matter? Because I think we can report on really great numbers and people are happy with the numbers. But I cannot tell you how often our co founders have turned around to me and said, okay, it's really great that we've got like an above average engagement rate. But like, what does that actually mean for us? And in terms of like communicating that to them, it's like, well, when I always get very technical about it and I'm like, well, when your engagement rate is like this, then it will push your content. And then when that content's pushed, the algorithm will learn and then it will push it even more. And then. But it's this trickle effect. So I like to take them on the journey, where our content goes when I'm reporting to suite as well. And why that matters because I think brand awareness, which is essentially what socials is doing, it's this kind of big overarching thing that no one really knows how to report on. And I think it's very important to be okay with that kind of lack of knowledge, but to learn how to talk about it and not just go. I think we touched on this before in a previous conversation where it's like you can't really go to C suite with a like trust me bro mentality. You can't be like, oh, it works. Oh, how does it work? I don't know, it just does us. So I do think leaning into rev ops and I think at least I can only speak for myself and for teammates that I've worked with in socials and my acquaintances and socials that I think we often think we're not important enough to lean into rev ops and get these reports and we think, oh, they're busy, what are their things? But actually we are important enough because actually when you dig into it, we're having a huge influence. We just don't know how to communicate it. So again, I feel like I'm talking so much on like believe in yourself and advocate and you are important. But I do think it is so true and we have to start treating ourselves just as seriously as paid ads, for example.
32:21
Alina Dallal
Yes, but I agree with everything both of you are saying. And it's also as I was saying, you have to advocate for yourself. If you have a win, tell people about it, tell your managers about it, tell your leaders about it. Really got to advocate for yourself. So thank you both of you for both, both the answers because I think it's really useful to hear how you guys are doing it. So obviously if I was going to bring 2B 2B Social Rising 30 stars on a webinar, I obviously had to ask them how they got there. So you are Both award winning B2B social media marketers and you've built standout personal brands on LinkedIn. If anybody is not connected with Chloe or Kassandra yet or does not follow them, head to LinkedIn and you'll understand why immediately that they became award winning. This is something so many social media managers are thinking about in terms of building a personal brand, whether they've started it or not. So I want to ask both of you, while we're all here, how did you guys find your voice online and what helped you grow such a strong personal brand? I know you guys have a little bit of a different background coming into this. So, Chloe, I'm going to start with you first, and then we'll move on to Kassandra.
33:18
Chloe Maguire
Yes. So a bit of context from my side is a lot of what I do is helping C suite people and HR consultants and things like that build out their personal brands. I give workshops. I dedicate a lot of time to it. And I just kind of had this moment where I was like, okay, I am putting all this effort for the last 10 years of my life, 40 hours a week, into building other people's brands and other people's companies and other people's personal pages. And I've never once put that effort into myself. And I just one day was like, if I can give companies 40 hours a week, I can give myself an hour a week and just try. So that was only half of it, because then I also had to get over the absolute fear of posting into the abyss and hoping that people might engage with it. But at the end of the day, I think it does. Like, we all just have to get over ourselves and do it, and you just have to try. And the thing of it is, you are going to find your people. Social media is so big. Your people are there and they will find you. Your content's going to land with someone. And in my opinion, if it helps, I remember when I first started posting, I didn't get many likes, but I got so many, many dms from people saying they related or it was so nice to see, or that it's just so nice to see someone be honest on LinkedIn. And that just meant a lot to me and that was really nice. And another thing I would say is, again, I'm touching on it again, I'm sorry to be a broken record as well, but, like, believing in yourself, I. I had such imposter syndrome. And then I was like, wait a minute, I literally do this for a living. Of course I can post about it. I'm like, I am being ridiculous. And then Oktopost came into my life, and that's really when I started posting, because all it took was one person to acknowledge me and say, you're doing great. And suddenly I was like, yeah, I am great, actually. And then it just took off. And to be honest, the biggest tip I can give for building a personal brand is, write what you know. Stop trying to be an expert. Like, you are an expert. I'm not saying you're not, but stop trying to be perfect. Stop trying to write what you know. Did you have an Annoying day where someone told you to put a link in an Instagram caption, talk about it. Hundreds of people are going to relate to it. I always say write your lived experience and my biggest thing is that you already have a personal brand whether you're posting or not, and it's just whether you're controlling it and controlling the narrative of your brand or not. So I would say go for it, especially in the B2B world where I can tell you there is a huge community waiting to support you and give you all the likes and all the comments.
35:54
Alina Dallal
So yeah, it's an amazing growth story. Thank you so much for sharing it with us and I'm so glad Oktopost added a little touch and could help you along this journey. This is all you. You're incredible at what you do. So if anyone doesn't follow Chloe, please go and follow her. Kassandra, I know you also have a great growth story as well. I know you come from a different angle, but we'd love to hear it too.
36:16
Kassandra Quinn
Yeah, I honestly didn't set out to build a personal brand. I am a social media manager, like team of one and in the past I had been with other other social media managers and past jobs and I was like, I miss that aspect of it. And I kind of just started posting and started mostly started interacting on LinkedIn with other people. I spent a lot of time in the comments really just being like, hey, there's so many people here who literally have the same struggles as me. And then one day I kind of just posted my own story and it people were like, yeah, me too. And I found that so reaffirming and I found such a beautiful community on LinkedIn of people who are going through the exact same things I am. And it's something where we can learn from each other, we can talk to each other and just, just kind of cheer. Like Chloe said, cheer each other on. There are people in the comments saying coffee chat for the win. And I've had so many amazing coffee chats with people over the last like year or so that have been just so amazing. But in terms of my own voice, I just started kind of showing up as me. Like I said, like I just kind of wrote about what I knew. So I wrote about those things I was struggling with that day. I wrote about questions that I just didn't understand or was like, hey, like I said earlier, like is, did anyone else struggle with video? Like I was putting up posts like that being like, am I the only one? But I think the more that I just Showed up like authentically as me and just started talking as myself. The more people kind of connected with it. And then a lot of those coffee chats that I have with people, I have a lot of people saying, like, I don't have anything to say or I'm still kind of new in the industry and I don't know what I would want to say. And I think a lot of times people forget that where you are now, the you of three or four years ago wants wanted to be there. And so you have advice to help people who are at that spot and like, just, just write, just go ahead and start it. Because I think that there's someone out there that's going to resonate with what you have to say.
38:25
Alina Dallal
Yeah, it's an amazing growth story and I love how you started because I feel like a lot of people, a lot of people probably on this webinar also are a team of one. And you started to find community and to find people to relate to and learn from and look at where it's taken you. So it's also an amazing story. And if anybody hasn't connected or followed Kassandra yet, please go and follow her. So I want to move over to the last question. I will say I'm a little bit conscious because I want to be able to leave time for questions and the Q A section. But the last question to wrap up with, you guys have left so much advice. I don't know what possibly more you could give, but I know that you guys are literally experts in B2B social. So to wrap up, what's the one piece of social media advice that you have for our audience that you want them to take away today? Kassandra, I'm going to start with you.
39:08
Kassandra Quinn
I'm going to cheat a little. I'm going to give two, but you can give the first one kind of came to me in some of what I've heard in the chat. Someone said they don't have anyone at Rev Ops they can talk to. And I think one of the best, best things I've ever done for my careers in the first couple weeks of joining a new company, I immediately go out and try to find my pals in different, in different parts of the company. Someone I can talk to in sales, someone I can talk to in hr, someone who will be able to give me the information that I might be able to use for social content. So I think going out and finding your, I like to call them champions in other parts of the company is super helpful. And then the second piece of Advice is that it's very similar to something Chloe said already is creating great social content is just half the job. The other half is learning about how to talk about your work and just how to show your impact, how to advocate for social and how to make the value visible because sometimes that gets lost when you are in it every day and you just live and breathe this. And so I think taking the time to learn how to work loudly and share your wins and highlight what's resonating with the customer is so, so important. Because when people understand what you're doing and you connect the dots for everyone in the business, you get more buy in, you get more budget, you get your co workers to be in your TikToks and everything. You just honestly get more joy out of your job. So I think that's important.
40:42
Alina Dallal
Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing. And Chloe, I'm going to pass over to you too.
40:47
Chloe Maguire
Yes, the bane of my life is getting my co workers to be in TikToks. People run when they see me coming. So I will also cheat, but I will cheat very quickly and give to the first one, which seems very obvious, but I just really want to reinstate it. Believe in yourself. Advocate for yourself. Social media is a business function that has real impact and I do think it's changing, but that we are responsible for how it's viewed just as much as how we think other people shape how it's viewed. So believe in yourself, advocate for yourself. And as Kassandra said, be loud. My second piece of advice is to not get tunnel visioned and meet your audience where they are. And what I mean by that is you can think you know your audience because you're in your own comment sections, but find the communities that they're also in. Fine. I cannot tell you how many HR communities I'm in. I cannot tell you how many people I follow in hr. They're literally begging to be heard. You just have to be willing to listen. So definitely meet your audience where they are and never assume that you know enough about your audience. Constantly learn about them, constantly iterate and constantly be interested in what they're trying to tell you.
42:00
Alina Dallal
Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing. That was incredible advice from both of you to leave off as we are going to move now into the Q A, but before we do, I know their links are in the resources section, but if you'd like to connect with any of us, especially Chloe and Kassandra, their QR codes are up here and then we will move on to the Q A section now. So I see we had loads of messages pulled through. So if there's any questions that you have, if you want to resend it in the Q and A box and the chat, just make sure we get to them and we'll get to as many as we can. If we don't get your question, we will reach out to you afterwards with an answer. But before we jump into the Q and A section, I just want to remind you guys that nominations for the 2025 B2B Marketing Innovation Awards close on December 18th. So remember to get your nomination in and get the spotlight all of you guys deserve. And if you would like to continue the conversation with Oktopost, feel free to scan this QR code and you can chat with one of our B2B social media experts. So I'm going to leave that up there and I'm going to open the questions. I think we got one from Claire before I'm gonna find the question. It was. They saw that. Let's see. LinkedIn are gonna penalize inauthentic engagement by cracking down on engagement pods. What are your thoughts on this, Kassandra? I saw that you also saw this one. Would you like to take the answer to this question?
43:29
Chloe Maguire
Yeah.
43:29
Kassandra Quinn
I think that this is one of those things that we see time and time again, and I'm not surprised that it has kind of cyclically made its way on LinkedIn. We see this happen. Engagement pods are like a tale as old as time. They were huge on Instagram. They even had our moments on Facebook. Manufactured engagement is never good. It's never good for the company. It's never good for your social strategy, because at the end of the day, what you're going to do is you're just getting your content in front of the wrong people. Because we know the way the algorithm works is if people are interacting on that content, it's going to show up in their feed and their followers feeds and people who are interested in them. But if you're manufacturing it with the wrong people, then your content's not going to show up in front of the people who you actually want it to show up on. So, really, that's not a bad thing. It sounds a little scary when you're seeing that kind of information come through from the LinkedIn VP. But at the end of the day, it is something that that is probably best because it's not something you really want to be doing.
44:30
Alina Dallal
Thank you for sharing your answer. I'm going to move on to another question Gil asked. What is the ROI of your B2B social activity. And how do you measure it? Shameless Plug. Before I pass this over to Chloe and Kassandra, you can use Oktopost to measure your ROI of your B2B social activity. You can use it to see how your social strategy is impacting the funnel as well. Would either of you like to take this question?
44:56
Chloe Maguire
I'm happy to touch on it. So, yeah, that is obviously, I think, one of the bigger questions for social teams and I think it is the more difficult one to answer. What I can say is that we had started using Hockey Stack in leapsum, which has been a great attribution model for us, particularly selfishly for my function, because it's really helped us show just how many people that their first point of contact with leapson was organic socials. So did they immediately go to the website and convert? No, they didn't. But that was where they first found us. And I think that is very important for us to have for our live socials. Another thing I would recommend that, honestly, I'm sure most people in this room do, but I'm surprised how many people I meet that don't. I UTM track everything. I mean, I am not linking to a thing without a UTM link attached to it because it just. It makes your life so much easier. And be in your data. I think it's so easy to get carried away with the creative side of socials and create your content and just enjoy that and hope that it leads to fun engagement. But be heavily in your data, Be invested in your data, understand the data and understand what it means. Where I think we can all report and say, oh, and their first Twitch point was this. But what does that mean? That means that we had brand recall. That means that or something I always like to report on is I think socials has a huge impact on webinar signups. I am sure it had an impact on today's signups. And that's where I think UTM tracking is just so important. I can see someone asking, how do we track our UTM performance? From my side, I track it in HubSpot and HubSpot will show everything from people that clicked to how long they stayed on the page where they went after. Yeah, you can also use Bitly. It depends how you want to set it up. Bitly is a little bit limited, I would say, in that sense, but I would get very comfortable with creating UTMs and using them and understanding them, because I do think that is for some reason a blind spot in socials, particularly organic. And that, yeah, we have to get comfortable with it because again, that is how we advocate for ourselves and show that we're a serious function.
47:07
Alina Dallal
Absolutely. We got another question in. So I'm going to power through them just because we have loads and I'll get to as many we can. It's from Maggie. She asked how have you transitioned your content strategy into in person engagements such as events, dinners, coffees and those kind of things. Kassandra, I'm going to turn to you for this one. Yes.
47:23
Kassandra Quinn
So this is something I do a lot with our sales team. I think a lot of how I take their presence at these types of conferences and events is I work with them. I think someone also in the chat said something about how video does work well on like advocate pages and I do see that a lot with our sales guys when they're at these events, they make these videos talking about what they're doing, talking about what they're learning and basically just being part of the event and sharing on social. And a lot of that time that translates into someone being like, hey, I'm here at the event and DMing them and trying to, to set up a time to meet. And so it's being very active on the channel. So a lot of those conferences will have their own like groups on LinkedIn or some of them have their own apps. Just making sure that they're utilizing all the tools on social that they can to be part of the conversation that's happening around that event and just being very active and vocal and that translates oftentimes into to those types of conversations that lead to business conversations.
48:28
Alina Dallal
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for sharing. We also got a question from Mary. I thought influencer marketing would come up again and it has. She said, I would love to hear about influencers. What type of campaigns have you used them for? And for your brands, who are the influencers that you're using?
48:46
Chloe Maguire
I'm happy to tackle this one because I've done a lot of influencer marketing this year. So as I said, we went with a very community led influencer program. And what I mean by that is we weren't doing like product placements or trying to sell leapsum as a platform. We were oppositely trying to connect with our audience, connect with our icp, work with these influencers, establish trust and credibility. So I did a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of research into who are the trusted voices in hr. I also did not focus on their follower size. I focused on the quality of their content and the engagement that they generate. So for me it wasn't like, okay, they need to have X amount of followers. It was who's engaging with them? Is there good conversations happening in their comments? Are people generally interested in what they're posting in terms of the campaigns? We did so we did it very big. Like we had them speak at webinars, we had had them take over our LinkedIn, we had them contribute to reports. So basically what we wanted it to be is that people associated our brand with this trusted thought leader who they were. So I can give some examples. We worked with. I'm not sure if people on the call will know them because it is hr, but we worked with Steve Brown who is like our best performing influencer. He is just incredible and by no means the biggest but the most impactful, which I think is very telling. We worked with Jennifer McClure, we worked with William Tinker, we worked with Mina Malik. She's amazing. And so we really went holistic with it because I think influencer marketing in the sense of product placement and asking people to buy stuff is dying. People are, it's harder and harder now because people just, they know it's fake. There's been so many exposes of people that or they don't even use that product. So we, and I would really recommend to approach it from a more holistic trust building, credibility building and relationship building within your niche.
50:48
Alina Dallal
Yeah, thank you for sharing it. Also, I think a lot of the times people will find that not necessarily influencers with the biggest following like you're saying will have the biggest impact for you. Normally it's the ones with niche smaller followings where their audience are the people that you want to target and especially the way that they speak and if they match the tone of your brand. That's something that I've noticed through doing influence marketing. We have another question and I've just lost it.
51:15
Chloe Maguire
Hold on.
51:16
Alina Dallal
Jennifer asked how do you know more about your audience when you don't have a lot of comments? I can also answer this one unless either of you want to answer it
51:25
Chloe Maguire
also I can very quickly jump in because I love this question. So for me, and this is anytime I go into a new role, the first thing I'm doing is finding out where my audience is. Believe me, when I joined Leafsome, we did not have many people in our comment section. So for me I was researching what communities are they in? Where are their communities? Are they in Facebook groups? Are they in LinkedIn groups? Are they in slack groups? I found many of HR communities were actually in slack groups. I inserted myself into them. I went and found Meetups. I live in Berlin, so I looked for Berlin based meetups and I just, and I was very honest. I didn't go in covert being like, yeah, I'm a hair HR manager. I was like, I'm trying to learn as much as I can about HR and I would love to talk to you about it. So I don't think it's actually in your comment section where you'll learn the most about your audience. I think it's in communities where they feel safe and they feel safe enough to share. Like for example, at leapsone, we actually created our own and it's called People Over Perks. And that's where we give a safe space to HR people to talk about the industry, their pain points, what they're going through. So that's how I've always approached it. Reddit as well is a great, great source for that. I love the human resources thread there. And basically every time I go into a new company with a new audience, I just try to learn. It's almost like I'm trying to become a professional in that industry so I can start relating to them a bit more. So, yeah, that'd be where I would delve into. I'm curious, Alina, how you do it.
52:59
Alina Dallal
So I, I'm going to quickly answer things I'm going to pass over to you because I saw that you also might have something to say. I love jumping on customer calls and just hearing what people are saying and hearing what our customers are talking about and meeting our customers. I'm lucky because my customers are B2B marketers, so it's also really fun. But I learned something from every conversation I have, every single time. Even this conversation with both of you. I'm learning from you guys. So I love doing that. While I love to jump on sales calls, sometimes I don't so. Or mainly I don't. So I also ask to see recordings, to hear what people are saying, to hear what the pain points are that our audience is having. So those are two things that I love to do. But Kassandra, I want to pass over to you because I think maybe you were nodding and agreeing with me about customer calls. I'd love to hear what you have to say.
53:42
Kassandra Quinn
I was going to say, yeah, get yourself on the customer calls, have those conversations and listen. And then another one is very similar to what you were saying with the sales calls, like listening to the recordings. This is one of those things again where you find your people in those different organizations, like find who in the sales team is able to tell you, those, those customer insights, who's able to tell you what the customers are struggling with, what they're happy about, what they're looking for in the next year. And I find that they're a wealth of information.
54:09
Alina Dallal
Yeah, there's so much in there. And also, if you just speak to a salesperson, ask them the three things they learned from their, their sales calls that week, it will help you so much. And I'll help you make creative, create relatable content. We are close to wrapping up, but I want to ask another question that Amy sent in. She said, chloe, please elaborate on the audience thing. She sent us about 10 minutes ago. I don't know if you remember exactly what it was. Can you give an example of an experience when you thought you knew your audience but discovered something new?
54:38
Chloe Maguire
Yes. Gosh, I would have so many. So I do think some a trap that social media managers can fall into is we're like, we like something and we think it will work, but actually does this relate to our audience? So I guess I'm trying to think of a concrete example from my current position. So say we thought they were really into employee engagement, for example, and this did happen and we were pummeling out all this employee engagement stuff because we thought that mattered. And then I was in a community and I just, just put it out there. They had an anonymous bot. So I was like, hey, who's focused on employee engagement this year? And I was inundated with replies of being like, how do I have time for this when I'm dealing with trying to get the co founders to blah, blah, blah. And I was like, oh, it turns out actually employee engagement isn't important to them at all and they are way more focused on getting executive buy in. Or another example happened where we thought they really, really cared about AI and we leaned very heavily into AI only to discover I sent a poll out in another community asking people how they're approaching AI. And everyone was like, I'm not interested in AI. And I was like, oh, okay. So it's happened a few times. And I think that's where we have to humble ourselves as social media managers and be like, okay, maybe I don't know what's best and I need to go learn a bit more about what's best.
55:56
Alina Dallal
Thank you for sharing. We are coming up to time. I saw that somebody asked your favorite B2B people to follow for inspo. I saw Kassandra also answered. But I also have to agree. Take a Look at this B2B Socials Rising 30 list There are 30 incredible B2B marketers, including Chloe and Kassandra, that you can go ahead and follow today and learn so much from them. So I want to thank everyone for joining us. I also want to remind you guys that in the resources section, you do have your free copy of the B2B Socials rising 30 guides with over 150 tips to learn from as well. Again, I'm going to plug them Again, Kassandra and Chloe's LinkedIn profiles for you to connect with them. So thank you everybody for joining. If we didn't get to your answer, we can feel free to reach out to any of us on LinkedIn and we'll also reach out to you. So thank you everybody, so much. This has been so much fun. I've never seen the chat this excited. So thank you guys.
56:49
Kassandra Quinn
Thank you. This is awesome. Thank you, everybody.
56:52
Chloe Maguire
Thank you, everyone.
