0:02
Shanie Zimerman
Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining. We're going to go ahead and get started in just another minute, so bear with us and talk soon. All right, guys. Hi, I'm Shani and I manage Oktopost Strategic Partners. Joining me today are Julius Shapiro, our director of B2B sales, and Sebastian Glenn, our senior account executive, both Oktopost natives. All three of us are actually Oktopost vets and we're really happy to be here Today. We're going to be talking all about selling social in 2020, and we know what 2020 has been looking like these days. We want to cover what prospects are looking for, how this current situation has impacted marketing teams worldwide, global and in your respective regions and locations. And really the new requirements that people are looking for when they are looking to make a decision on their martech stack these days. Just a reminder, everyone is on mute. If you have any questions at all, there's a Q and a box. You can feel free to drop them in there and we'll make sure to get to them at the end of the webinar today. So, guys, Julia, Seb, you guys are on the front lines of trying to continue this business as usual. And I'm sure this last month, last couple of months at this point has caused a shift in your prospects priorities, specifically with budget reallocations, feature requirements, just to name a couple of things. Julia, would you be able to share with me what's important for your prospects these days after having these conversations when it comes to making a decision on a social media management platform?
1:51
Julia Shapiro
Yeah, sure. Hi everyone and Shinny, thanks for inviting me to speak. There's definitely no doubt that there's a lot of uncertainty right now and everyone feels it. And it's thrown a curveball to a lot of marketing teams that I speak with, but also in a positive way. So marketers right now more than ever have really had to get creative and go out of their comfort zone to accommodate our new norm. And and beyond focusing on corporate social strategy, there's been a huge increase in employee advocacy. And because most employees are working from home, marketers are finding a new way to kind of keep those employees engaged. And in addition, compliance and crisis management has been brought up on, I would say, almost every call. So for example, let's bring us back a few weeks. Coronavirus hits. All events are canceled. Well, every event requires a lot of promotion via social like weeks prior. So both your corporate channels, your executives, your employees, how do marketers go back to each network and delete every single post? And let's talk about the stress of making sure all upcoming posts aren't going out. So I'm really proud of our customer success managers and our product team for being prepared for a crisis and it's definitely saved a lot of our customers hours upon hours.
3:12
Shanie Zimerman
Yeah, for sure. So definitely seeing a lot more of the compliance criteria and requirements in place. I think it takes a crisis to know that you need something in place to manage a crisis and I think that that's what we're finding today. Seb, when it comes down to, I mean, being in sales, RFPs are probably something you go through every day, if not every other day. Have you seen a change in what prospects are now deeming as requirements versus those nice to haves since this crisis has unfolded?
3:45
Sebastian Glen
Yeah. Hi Shania, and thanks again for having me on the webinar today. It's a pleasure speaking with you. Yeah, it's a really interesting question. You know, obviously you know, when an organization is looking at their requirements and objectives, it's particularly in an RFP looking at with a long term view. And inevitably given the current circumstances, planning in the long term is becoming more and more difficult. So that's thrown in definitely an additional element of complexity when they're looking at these types of processes. And as Julia mentioned, we've definitely seen a renewed interest in employee advocacy and how that can be used to keep employees engaged and maybe that becoming of a core objective when they're looking at these types of applications and platforms. With that it comes more complexity as employee advocacy does tend to involve people across marketing, communications, hr and you do end up getting a lot of cooks in the kitchen, so to speak, which adds more fun to that process, but probably worth discussing in another webinar focused on employee advocacy. But yeah, on that topic, in terms of the knock on impact on the way these organizations are running RFPs, I mean if people are being furloughed, which we've seen in some organizations, there's potentially less stakeholders involved in that process. So that's having an impact. RFPs are typically guided by procurement professionals, which is helpful in some cases whereby they're keeping a lid on the timeline and making sure that people are following the processes that have been put in place that guide these types of evaluations. And in terms of requirements, I think the, the fundamentals from what I've seen have remained the same around having good systems in place for social governance, publishing, maintaining good reporting standards and maybe nice to have features which typically would have been not seen as critical are still nice to have and not necessarily guiding the decision making and then commercial discussions always come into play. And I think more than ever, companies are looking very closely at the dotted line. And having those difficult discussions around budgets and communication in that environment is obviously more important as well.
6:03
Shanie Zimerman
So, yeah, definitely. And that makes sense. I think again, taking a time like this, I think it helps everyone put some things into perspectives as to what do I need, what's effective for my company, what's going to bring us to the next level as opposed to, you know, that would be a nice to have. I think that's why we call them nice to haves. Can you talk to us, Julia? I want to hear a little bit from you about how prospects are evaluating social right now. I think there's a lot of people on the call right now who are listening and are maybe just starting their evaluation process for a social media management platform. Can you share with us a little. A little insight into your day to day and the how?
6:47
Julia Shapiro
Yeah, of course. I think that obviously it's only natural that there's some budget holds right now, but I also think there's a ton of urgency, especially from B2B marketers. And for many marketers, digital events and social is really the only option. And that's the only way that they can stay in touch with those customers, those partners, those employees. So a lot of the customers that we see, they're really doubling down on social. And since that's really, again, their only option because a lot of events are canceled or all events are canceled. So I'd really recommend asking some of the vendors that anyone is evaluating about their compliance feature, like I talked about earlier, just making sure that not if, but when there might be another emergency that they're prepared. Also, because social media is so broad, right? There's hundreds of social platforms, there's publishing, there's listening, employee advocacy. I think it's really important for customers who are just getting started in their evaluations to have these different types of conversations with vendors and create a plan together and really figure out what makes sense for their team and not just right now, and not just tomorrow, but six months from now, a year from now, and work with your rep to really develop that social strategy to get through this period and make sure that after all of this is over, that their social presence is really stronger than ever.
8:11
Shanie Zimerman
Yeah, for sure. And you mentioned that essentially social and digital, it's all we have right now. Effectively every conference has been moved to a virtual setting. All of the events that were planned in the beginning of the year have been canceled. This has made I Think pretty obvious impacts on a marketing budget. Seb, would you be able to share with us some kind of what's come up in conversation around budget reassignments and if people are maybe freezing budgets or just reallocating them to the digital space and, and just really what you're seeing?
8:46
Sebastian Glen
Yeah, yeah, great. You know, great question again. Yeah, I mean on the topic of budget, I think, you know, even in usual circumstances budgets say a tricky conversation and you know, I think we've all experienced a shift in the past few years in terms of the budgeting decisions of major of many B2B organizations as they move towards more data and evidence based decision making. So, you know, that's remained the same, but at the same time given again the current circumstances, I think the fundamentals around the way in which companies plan their spending and need evidence of tangible value from their spend, particularly in relation to marketing technology, hasn't changed. And I think more so than ever the need to prove roi, assign outcomes to spending and tie outcomes to that spend is critical. And as organizations move forward, they're looking to be even leaner and more intelligent about how they're spending. And so looking at the resources and which topics are and which resources are really critical for looking at things like optimization is as relevant as it always has been. And happy to talk about attribution, we love talking about attribution, but that still is a fundamental, that should be across all of their decision making. Ultimately looking at revenue attribution. But in terms of the discussions we've been having with organizations, as Julia mentioned, there's been a range of responses you could say around reallocation of events and field based marketing spend to focus on digital spending reviews in general in terms of top to bottom, looking at what they're spending, how they're spending it and where it's going. I think it's a good opportunity for CMOs and marketing leaders to reassess their strategy and focus even more on outcomes and value and ask the hard questions about whether or not their existing budget was actually being used in the most efficient way. You know, we've touched upon this already, but an interesting area of growth is employee advocacy. And it's again an area whereby there's opportunity for exploring more cross departmental collaboration, particularly around budgeting. You know, it's a multidisciplinary strategy and it can incorporate splitting budgets across communications, hr, sales, marketing. And this approach is really good because you get the same outcome and you have the opportunity actually to have a better outcome as you can pull resources and Benefit from some kind of economies of scale. So that's a positive which I think we're seeing happen more often as teams come together and they growing in awareness around the need to collaborate in terms of budgeting, using a business case. I think business cases are always an important part of that process. And again, without duplicating. Building a solid evidence based business case for certain technologies and ensuring you have the wider organizational buy in, particularly from the C level is still a really important thing to consider.
11:41
Shanie Zimerman
Absolutely. I think that was super helpful. I think it gave some really good ideas for these individuals. Again, listening to this conversation, just giving them an idea and pointing them into the right direction of making the best choice for them, for their organization, pooling in resources just for the betterment of the company and for the wider department. So really helpful.
12:01
Sebastian Glen
Absolutely no problem.
12:04
Shanie Zimerman
One of the last things that I wanted to cover with the two of you today and I think it's going to be relevant for everyone. Why is it now more than ever so important for the social media teams in these organizations to be proving their value?
12:19
Julia Shapiro
So I think right now it's the time for social teams to really shine. So for so long in many, many organizations, social media was kind of put
12:31
Shanie Zimerman
on the back burner.
12:32
Julia Shapiro
And you also have to remember that social media hasn't been around for decades. It might be new for a lot of organizations, but think about how far social has come in the last 10 years, even in the last five years. And right now we really have no other option except to move everything to digital. So I would challenge a lot of marketers to use that to their advantage and take the time right now to build up a killer social strategy. And it's absolutely crucial that businesses start to understand the value that social has. And it's really up to the marketing team to put the right tools in place to capture that business impact. So work with your rep, you know, build that case and we're always happy to help along the way.
13:15
Sebastian Glen
Yeah, I'm 100% in agreement with Julia on that and I think it's such a good opportunity to look at the, you know, long term, what things can we put in place now that we'll continue to use post this current environment and what we're seeing is a growing amount of time being spent on social media. That's a given. I think right now there's lots of statistics coming out around the amount of time people are spending on social media and it's really important for companies to ensure they have processes in place for continuous engagement. So they have a system in place that allows them to continually target those ideal prospects, their existing customers, and actually use it as a nurturing channel to keep them engaged. In particular, we're seeing a more permanent shift in the way many B2B organizations who had typically focused on traditional marketing, field based, event based marketing, moving to digital. And that's something that was happening anyway and that's now rapidly accelerated that process. And it's looking at how to navigate that in a way that means they'll continue, continue to provide value. And the flexible working as a topic, which is sometimes hard to do in some organizations, means that now employees have even more of a need to upskill digitally. So we're seeing lots of companies who are looking at how they can train their employees on the use of digital tools. Social media obviously becomes a part of that. And then again that means it can become even core part of your channel mix as opposed to an afterthought, which maybe it had been in some organizations and then marketing leaders in particular, if they're progressive and they're looking at how they can continue that process, can use this as a really good opportunity to drive long lasting, positive change and keep while maintaining the focus on value. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunity there for people who are aware of it and making sure they're using their resources as well as they can, 100%.
15:13
Shanie Zimerman
I think we've all been hearing about this digital transformation for years and years and I think we don't have a choice anymore. Right. And social is digital. And I think now everybody is realizing they need to be on board so that like Julia said, not if, but when something like this unfolds, they're prepared from the get go.
15:35
Sebastian Glen
Agreed.
15:37
Shanie Zimerman
We got a handful of questions. I would love to, to move over to that very quickly. Bear with me. I just want to open this up. All right, so. Oh, a really, really great question. I'm going to put it out there. You guys decide who takes it. How can social teams shine in between the clutter of digital now to ensure their brand comes to. I'll go.
16:09
Julia Shapiro
I think, like I said, you know, a little bit earlier because a lot of companies haven't had social as a part of their immediate strategy. Right. Maybe it's something that they're trying to sell the proof of concept or build that use case and really get that approval from leadership. And sometimes leadership doesn't know that a tool exists that you can really measure the revenue coming from social. So I think that really working with your rep and developing that business strategy and taking that over and not just presenting a social tool, but really showing, okay, well, how can this social tool provide an actual business impact for our team? I think that that's one way that marketing teams can shine, rather than just implementing a tool to measure, you know, vanity metrics or reach. I think that that's all important, but again, really taking those numbers back to your leadership team.
17:05
Sebastian Glen
Yeah, I think the question around noise at the moment, there's a lot of activity happening on social, and it's really a question of how to differentiate between where the value lies and where it is just noise. And I think particularly around the increased focus on digital, it's again, going back to employees and how they come into the picture. I think it's more important than ever that you have a system in place that allows employees to be as part of that process. And we talk about humanizing the corporate voice a lot, but I think that's something that can be more important than ever in ensuring you can develop an actual organic community on social that isn't just a passive receiver, but actually part of that discussion. And that's where employees can play a really big role 100%.
17:59
Shanie Zimerman
Another question that came in with the increase in the need to connect with customers, particularly through messaging channels like WhatsApp or what platforms can you recommend to help manage the governance, compliance, and potential fraud aspects of messaging? I think when we're speaking, I'll go ahead and I'll get this started, but I think that when we're speaking to connecting with our customers via the messaging, we're looking specifically on those social media. So we're looking at LinkedIn, which is a huge, huge network for B2B marketers to build these connections, to have these meaningful conversations to be helpful, and to humanize that brand a little bit further. Facebook certainly comes into play as well as Twitter. But I think a lot more of that governance and the messaging and the deliverability needs to be on LinkedIn, where the corporate, the employees are really aligned in what they're delivering for the brand itself. Do you guys have anything that you wanted to maybe add on top of that one? We have a lot more questions.
19:03
Sebastian Glen
It's a big topic around managing communications, messenger platforms. I think you're right in that LinkedIn obviously should take priority in those environments. But again, having a system in place that provides visibility and some kind of safety in a governance setting, such as having a system that provides audit trails or exportable user actions, so you know who responded and when and why, and you can keep track of that. And then that's does require a lot of organizational change and making sure that, you know, people are aware of their roles. And that's something that does take time. But yeah, I think there you're, I'm guessing a lot of, I'm assuming here a lot of companies are seeing an increase in those types of communications. You know, people are less likely to be visiting companies in person. There's less, you know, face to face interaction. And keeping on top of those channels can be really important to keep the customers happy.
19:57
Shanie Zimerman
Of course, 100%. And on top of that, what does good social media governance look like? I can jump start this one. Yeah, yeah. So good social media governance, it means training your employees about what they're posting on social media, representing the organization, making sure that you're all on the same page in terms of the context, the messaging that's coming out. Because at the end of the day they are still representing your brand. So there is still some level of training or guidance that's involved with that on the employee perspective or on the employee side. But then beyond that, implementing things like banned keywords within these banned keywords. What words? Beyond profanity, beyond the obvious things. Maybe we want to prevent our employees from speaking to competitors or mentioning competitors. It's just not a space that we want to get involved in. Add those to a banned keywords list and just make sure that as the organization, you're giving your employees all of the tools they need to represent your brand in the most positive light possible. And I think that that is something that's always going to be ongoing as part of an overall employee, a successful employee advocacy program. As networks change, as the times change, we need to make sure that our employees are comfortable with, with positioning us on social. If that's the, if you know, if that's the goal, if we want to implement employee advocacy.
21:25
Julia Shapiro
Yeah. And the other thing I'd add to that, along with banning the keywords, I think that that's really important for a lot of companies, especially some companies maybe in more of the financial services or fintech. Words like promise. Right. We don't want our employees to maybe use that. But at the same time, on the other hand, we also, I personally encourage my customers to allow some employees have a little bit of freedom on social because at the end of the day it's their personal Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, it's their voice, it's their audience. So you want kind of sound genuine, you want it to sound like them or else people are gonna Know that it's not them speaking, it's the marketing team. So take what you want with that. But I think that's kind of my two cents.
22:11
Shanie Zimerman
Totally. Is there a best time to post on social? There's a best time for your organization.
22:23
Sebastian Glen
I don't know. Who do you want to go? Shani?
22:25
Shanie Zimerman
Go ahead. Go ahead, Sid.
22:26
Sebastian Glen
Oh, I mean, it's a question we get asked very frequently. And the honest answer is that it's subjective and it depends on your organization and your audience. So there's guidelines and there's obvious recommendations around not posting odd times of the night. But you know, when you're looking at, when you're scheduling content and when to post it, you need to make decisions based on the data. And to do that, you need the data in the first place. So, you know, the advice we always recommend is that you schedule content. You look at what the data is telling you about when people are engaging, and then you adjust your. Your scheduling times to reflect that. And there is a little bit more complexity if you're a large organization, you know, looking at different time zones and different networks. And there are some nuances, but. Nuances. But again, it's a. You have to treat it on a case by case basis.
23:12
Julia Shapiro
I also think to add with that, it also depends. Are you posting on your corporate channels? Are you measuring your employee advocates? Because maybe your corporate channels might have a best posting time of the morning or maybe your employees get more success on Sunday nights. Right. And it's really, to Seb's point, important not to just measure things like engagement, but understanding what content's working and not just what content's working, but per profile. Because maybe a piece of content is working for your CEO, but it's not working for somebody on your sales team versus your corporate channel. So again, it's really important to pick a platform with those analytics to really make sure that you understand what's driving the business impact. And all of that plays with the best posting time. We could talk about this for hours.
23:59
Shanie Zimerman
For hours.
24:00
Sebastian Glen
Literally for hours.
24:01
Shanie Zimerman
Bottom line, make sure you have a tool in place that's telling you when is optimal for you to be posting. So you can go along with that. Just make sure you're consistent. I want to. I'll try to fit in two more, but let's start with. Well, we'll start with this one. What tips and tricks have you seen people use to encourage employees to share corporate content? I want to start this one because it's brand new. It's something brand new that we just started and I absolutely love it. For those of you that might have been on our previous webinar about employee advocacy during the time of a crisis, our colleague Jen Gutman, our director of social strategy, mentioned that more recently, given the crisis that we're in, a new incentive that we're introducing. Where previously the person with the most clicks, the employee that generated the most clicks, would get an Amazon gift card, we're now moving towards gift cards for small businesses of our choice. I love this incentive. I think that that alone I have personally seen an increase in our employee advocacy engagements. Our employees, excuse me, engaging in the advocacy program. I think we all, especially during this time, want to help however we can. And if that's by sharing a couple posts here and there and then giving back to the community, I think that that's beneficial in and of itself. So I think take what we're learning right now during these times and take what you've learned previously and adapt it to these current times. Instead of an Amazon gift Amazon or Thrive instead of Amazon Gift card, go to those small to medium businesses that might be struggling, those moms and pops shops, and support them as best as possible. I just really wanted to share that because I love that.
25:46
Julia Shapiro
I listened to that webinar last week and that was awesome. I think another thing that's really important is consistency. I see a lot of marketers coming to us and saying this isn't working. And then they get stressed out and then they kind of drop it and stop doing it. I think it's so important to keep this on top of your employees and constantly show a leaderboard and show who's in the lead and praise those people. They just want the recognition. Right. And really understand again what works for your employees. Some employees like the recognition. Some are kind of those silent killers where they are going to creep out of nowhere and get at the top of the leaderboard. So I think just always, always, always, even if it's weekly, if it's daily, whatever works for your team. But always make sure that your employees know the results from your advocacy program.
26:35
Sebastian Glen
Yeah, and I'll add the obvious, which is it should start with good content. And you know, this is something that we discuss a lot and you know, we're always banging on about. But if you're looking at an advocacy program, you know, the content needs to be of a quality that encourages employees to engage and it should be a mix of content. In an ideal scenario, you're not just pushing out lots of corporate content to your employees, but you're putting out genuine thought leadership pieces, industry related content, even content about your partners and your competitors in some examples. Because it's about fostering a community and actually having content that resonates with the audience you're hoping to engage and not it just being a marketing channel. And that's when you see employees actually engage with the content more often when it's relevant to their role, to their specialization and making it hyper relevant, that's really, really important. So always starts with good content basically.
27:34
Julia Shapiro
Yeah, I'll add real, real quick. Also allowing employees to suggest content, I think that's a really, really good way to get employees engaged and probably like what was mentioned in the last week's webinar. There's we always say there's three types of employees. There's those employees that are super engaged and really want to share anything and everything that you throw their way. And then we have those kind of middle people where you know, they'll post like once a week. And then we have what is famous in Oktopost, our social curmudgeons where it's like pulling teeth to get employees to share. And what we found, or at least what I found from a lot of the customers that I work with, is if you hold those employees accountable and have them maybe suggest some content and use some of the content they're suggesting, it really makes them feel like they're part of the advocacy platform and not just going in and sharing. So that's all.
28:24
Shanie Zimerman
I'll add 100%. Guys, we have several more questions that we just don't have the time to get to right this minute. Anybody that has questions that we haven't gotten around to answering, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. Shani at Oktopost, Juliet Oktopost and SebastianOctopusRose.com I want to take a second and thank you both Julian and Sebastian, so much for sharing these points and thank you to everyone else who was able to join us today. We're going to be continuing this from the Expert series over the next couple of months just to provide you guys with the necessary information and resources for your continued success in social media during these times. Like I said, any questions, please, please don't hesitate to reach out. We'll be more than happy to work with you and help you get those answered. And in the meantime, stay healthy and positive and I'll see you on our next episode of from the Experts. Bye guys.
29:18
Sebastian Glen
Thank you. Thank you everyone. Bye.
