0:00
Colin Day
Yeah, let's not go on to the egg. Jokes over. Shani will be here all night, right?
0:04
Shanie Zimerman
That I can do. All right, so let's go ahead and get started. Hi, everyone. I'm Shani. I manage Oktopost Strategic Partners. For those of you who don't know me quite yet, thank you, everyone, for joining us on our ninth episode of our from the Expert series. So with me today are Colin Day, managing director of EMEA and APAC over here at Oktopost, and we have a very special guest. We have with us Megan Thudium. Megan is the senior consultant for content marketing and also the founder at mtc, the content agency. And this is exactly where I already mess up with the slides. I wanted this up on the screen first. Great start. Colin and Megan, thank you both so much for joining me today. Today we're going to be talking all about constructing that bridge between sales and marketing. And I'll already give everyone a little hint. It has a lot to do with content content. So stay tuned. We have a lot of information to share with you. I did just want to remind everyone that you are on mute. If you have any questions at all, you can feel free to drop them in the Q and A box or the chat box. Right on Zoom. And we'll have some time, just once we're done, to get around to those. And one more thing. Jen Gutman, our director of social strategy, is live tweeting during this webinar. So if you have anything you'd like to ask or share, tweet ustopost using the hashtag from the Expert. Now I'll go back. That's this hashtag here. So I want to even take this conversation from the beginning. Our world collectively, literally everyone on this call has been turned upside down since the start of the year. And now that we're actually living and breathing with this new reality, I would love to hear from the two of you what some of your tips are for our audience when it comes to really navigating business in a Covid world. Take the lead, Megan, I would love. Let's start with you.
2:01
Megan Thudium
Yeah. Well, welcome, everybody. Thank you so much for being here. It's great seeing all the participants jump into the webinar. We're gonna have a great conversation.
2:10
Shanie Zimerman
They're still trickling in.
2:13
Megan Thudium
16 and counting.
2:15
Shanie Zimerman
Yes.
2:15
Megan Thudium
So our world today has definitely changed. That is for sure. I think we've all been rocked as marketers, as business owners, even in our normal lives over the. I don't know, is it nine months now since COVID really took over everything. And yeah, it's really been a tough impact, I think, for marketers in general. Just the fact that we've had to adopt extremely quickly and as business in general, if we want to survive. So I'm sure we'll dive deeper into the ways that especially social selling and human centric marketing is going to come into that and help us kind of go forward and be more aggressive about it. And the fact that we're successful is probably a better word than aggressive. But yeah, great to be here.
3:03
Colin Day
We can be aggressive if we want.
3:04
Megan Thudium
Megan, as long as it's good. Aggressive.
3:06
Colin Day
Yeah, but it's content, right? So, you know, why are you going to get aggressive about content? Let's be nice about that content.
3:15
Shanie Zimerman
Colin, what about you? Any kind of, again, just to kind of set the tone for today when it comes to being able to navigate and continue the business as usual with in this Covid world. What are some tips or some takeaways that we can leave with the audience today?
3:31
Colin Day
Yeah, I mean, like, I'm just picking up on some of what's on the screen. Right. Shanice? Like, you know, we always talk about, you know, content being king, right. It's like, you know, look, content doesn't go away, right. It's like, you know, in order for us to be able to market as marketers or, you know, the sales team that I'm responsible for it here at Oktopost, we need content in order to start a conversation, in order to continue a conversation, and in order to finish a conversation. And whether that be top of funnel, whether that be middle of funnel, whether it be bottom of funnel stuff, and the content that we create for each of those conversations needs to be different. Right. I think the key takeaway for me or the key thing for me in, in the COVID world is I get a heck of a lot of content. Right. I mean, if you look at your inbox today. Yeah. You know we're not in the office, right. You can tell because I've got this lovely blue background, right. That no one can normally see slack and they just see my floating head. Because it was you that told me to wear a pink shirt today so that I stood out. Right. But you know, we're.
4:46
Shanie Zimerman
It blends in very well with the wall.
4:47
Colin Day
Yeah, I do, I do. But because of my lovely slack, you know, like, lack of hair. Right. At least part of my body sticks out. But if we look at that, we're not in the office, we haven't got our landlines that we're normally connected to in order to have those conversations. Sure, we've still got our mobile phones and some of our contacts know how to get us through those, but not everyone. So we rely heavily on email, we rely heavily on social media in order to have those email and social conversations. Right. It's content that is king, or as we say, Megan is queen, but content is king and that content needs to be personalized to the individual. And the reason behind that is we're all getting hit from many, many different angles with messages from brands and organizations, emails, text messages, et cetera. It's how do I stand out and how do I differentiate myself from the competition? And that's really where that human centricity and empathetic approach really kicks in. I always talk to my team and I know you and I have had the conversation as well. Right. We need to be 2% difference. There needs to be a 2% differential between us and anyone else that is competing with us in order for us to bubble to the top of that stack.
6:26
Megan Thudium
Yeah. Can I add something really quick, please?
6:30
Shanie Zimerman
Yeah.
6:30
Megan Thudium
So something that was said in the beginning when you started talking, Colin, is business as usual. And I think this is an important. Yeah, I think this is an important thing for us to quickly talk about because business is not usual. It's very different now. The way we have had to change over the last eight months or so has been crazy and we have to change and we have to adopt our messaging and this is really where content is. What I hope you will walk away with is how content can really help you in this transition of what's happening during COVID Things that people are demanding now more than ever because of COVID is a very more personable approach. Colin just touched on this. If you're not using just simple personalization, it's a no go hard.
7:21
Shanie Zimerman
Wait, I'm keeping up with you. I'm just moving to very relevant for this slide. Talking a little bit about the styling and the structure of the content to adapt with the times. Sorry.
7:32
Megan Thudium
Yeah, and we'll definitely get into that more. But I just think in general, if you're not doing this, you're going to get far behind. So it's also realizing that it's not the same marketing world in the context of COVID But this is not going to go away too. Like I have written some contents on in some other publications that really Covid was a huge transition for the B2B marketing world. If we want to minute to ourselves, the B2B marketing world has been very slow in adopting to this human centric digital atmosphere. We've been stuck in trade shows and person to person, which still is effective, but Covid really made us push us to the elements overnight. Right. We had to do something crazy the next day and transition all our marketing. So it's not business as usual. And the only way, I think, to stay relevant and to stay alive is to be more human centric in your marketing. So that's, I hope, the big key way. And now I guess we're going to talk more about how you can actually do that.
8:32
Shanie Zimerman
Yes. So that was actually a really great segue into just the content has to evolve with the resources that we have left available. So how can we now better structure and style that content for that more personalized and humanized experience?
8:47
Colin Day
Yeah. I think before we go there, though, Shani. Right. Like, you know, just picking up on what Megan said. Right. Like your content needs to evolve. Yeah. But the communication channel. Right. Or the channel or channels yet that we use. Right. Are changing. I'm not going to say evolving. Right. Because they've always been there. It's like. But we're using different channels and different medium. Right. To communicate through. Today, Megan mentioned trade shows. Right. As a sales leader, it's like historically my sales team would be out at a trade show, working a trade show floor, and that's how we would get somewhere between 40 to maybe 65% of the contacts, suspects, prospects, call them what you will, right. That would go ultimately into the top of our sales funnel and they would become marketing qualified leads because it was a marketing event that they originated at. I've got to find a different way to fill that void now. Right. I've got to find a different medium to do that and to start that conversation, it's no longer on the floor of some big international conference center somewhere in the world. It's now, you know, is it email? Is it, you know, LinkedIn? Is it, you know, Twitter? Is it, you know, is it somewhere else? Right. But I need to be able to fill that void. Otherwise, guess what? Like, you know, I've got. I've got problems, you know, from. From a sales perspective. Right. I've got a big gap that I need to fill.
10:28
Megan Thudium
Yeah, yeah. And to quickly add on to this even more of a void in the sense that most people, I would say, who come to trade shows and events, they're already kind of in the concept of mine, they're in the bottom of the funnel. Right. And this time in the journey where they're already thinking about possible solutions. Okay. How do you reach those people in a digital matter? I mean, we always struggle with this bottom of the funnel type of perspective in general with marketing. It was relatively simple in the fact that people that go to trade shows are already more, in fact, in this mindset. Now, how do we put this on digitally? How do we use different digital tactics that have always been there, but how do we leverage them now to fill the void of these trade shows?
11:12
Colin Day
Megan, did you know, right, that, look, I'm from the uk, right? You know that from the actual way. Yeah, absolutely. Hang on. Right. How many, how many citizens are there in. Or what's the, what's the total population of the UK? 66 million people, give or take. Right. What's the total population of people on. On LinkedIn?
11:37
Shanie Zimerman
20.
11:38
Colin Day
20 people? Yeah, yeah. Or 20 million. No, it's actually 630 million people. Right. So, you know, the, the number of people that are, you know, live and life. The number of people, you know, that are active on LinkedIn, right. Or have a LinkedIn account. Yeah. Is. Is almost 10 times the entire population of the United Kingdom. Yeah, there's. Yeah.
12:02
Megan Thudium
Is.
12:02
Colin Day
Look, I'm not saying that they're all like, you know, target prospects for me. Right. But, you know, if I'm getting someone to think about selling socially or trying to fill some of that void, Right. I'm naturally going to gravitate towards some of those networks because I've got watering holes of similar people that make up my ideal customer profile.
12:24
Megan Thudium
Yes. People will always want to be social. People always want to connect with their colleagues and to discover more information to do this process. It was happening in trade shows and conferences. Of course, we're not going to drop that. We desire this human connection elements. Okay. Now this is happening on LinkedIn. It's not just happening on LinkedIn too. I think it's one of the bigger networks. It's also happening in forums and chat channels. If you're in a very specific and niche industry, this is even more key for you in getting into these type of forums and areas where you can have conversations directly with these. So these conversations haven't disappeared because of COVID and because everything is digital, they're just in different areas. And so we have to put the creative hat on as marketers and almost think about, okay, where do we go and find these people and start having these conversations with them online.
13:15
Colin Day
The other thing there, though, Megan, as well, right, is when you go to a trade show or when you go to an event, Right. It's. It's normally Quite focused. Right. And yeah, you might get some international delegates attend, etc. Right. But when you're creating content that's going out over social channels And I know LinkedIn is a particular favorite of yours, for example. Right. Given like some of the conversations we've had historically, you know, it's going to be picked up or it's more likely that it's going to be picked up by, you know, by someone that you know maybe of a different culture, maybe of a different nationality. And therefore maybe the creative style that you use as a content writer may have to flex a little bit. Right. Have you got any thoughts on that?
14:15
Megan Thudium
So in the context of how to adapt.
14:19
Colin Day
Yes. Like the content. Right. Your written styles probably had to or your creative styles had to change over the last like six to nine months. Right. Because you know, the reader of the content may not be in the locale or the geo that you were writing it for.
14:41
Megan Thudium
Well, I think in general, social media content and how you actually change the voice and the structure of social media content is different. And I think that's going back to human centric marketing and conversational marketing. If we're producing more content on these forums and these social channels, adopting the content and the fact that is more specific to the human voice, I think is key. This is really widely Talked about by B2B marketers and I do agree with it. But I would say never at the extent of the tone of your company. So adopting the more of a conversational approach to your content on these channels, I would even go as far to say adopting this conversational tonality within blog posts, within, I mean these type of more traditional long form pieces of content. This is where our industry is going. I also think people are demanding it in the sense of now here in Covid, when you are more authentic in the way that you're producing content and more of this human centric approach and adopting your language to how you speak, you build more trust and authenticity with your audience. People trust you because they know they have a more closer idea and feeling of who they're talking to. I think in general because of COVID this is even more important because we have budget's being cut. It's harder to get people into the pipeline. People aren't buying. You can name all these different statistics across the board of how the selling cycles have changed since COVID So this approach to human centric in this conversational language, adopting this like what Colin is saying is almost mandatory when you're marketing at this or you can't, you can't get to the people, the small percentage because there is less people buying now because of COVID and everything happening in our economy. If you're not adopting this type of messaging and this conversational, you can't get there.
16:37
Shanie Zimerman
Yeah, definitely. I want to move into. And I think that this is also a big component of it. How can we take our organic strategy really to that next level to better align with COVID and with this world that we're living in, this Covid world that we're living in.
16:58
Megan Thudium
Yeah. You want to start, Colin, or.
17:00
Shanie Zimerman
Oh, sorry, whoever.
17:04
Colin Day
Go for it. I've got no problem. Megan, either way.
17:08
Shanie Zimerman
Yes. Megan, take the lead on this one.
17:11
Megan Thudium
When it comes to organic, just so you know, my opinion is biased because I love organic and I think it's. Yeah, because I think it's one of the best ways to be human centric, to be original and to build authenticity and trust with your audience. When I talk about organic, it's basically in my head. It's everything that's not paid. And yeah, we could argue that you could make human centric content in your paid advertising, but I'm not even going to touch that in this conversation. But when it comes to kind of boiling down into your organic content marketing strategy, we just talk about content. Here is it all starts with your audience. And I know this isn't a new message with marketers. You hear that? Oh, yes, we have to be creating our buyer Persona. We needed to be developing our customer journey. Yes, but that's all true. It's all relevant. But this is the framework. And I think as we move forward into 20, 21 and beyond, if you're not doing this most basic and beginning building block, your marketing has become unrelevant. You won't be able to do anything or reach the type of audience, make the type of sales and convert the customers that you want. Unless you're doing this most basic foundation and this, I'm putting emphasis on basic foundation because your buyer Persona and this research that we do in marketing is just the beginning. It has to transcend this for your organic content marketing strategy into like we see in this slide, talking to the, the sales team frequently and really going into those questions and that understanding of what people in your market, your customers are asking and how to produce content, like I tell my clients, is whatever content piece that we decide to write about and push out there somewhere, it's rooted to a pain, a challenge or a question that the customer had. There's no doubt about it. So this is really the Foundations of organic content marketing and just.
19:16
Colin Day
Yeah, just picking up on that. I mean, you know, the, the foundation is knowing the audience, right. It's like you could have the, the best content in the world, Right. It's like, you know, you could have the best product in the world. Yeah. But if you're, you know, to state the obvious. Right. If you're, if you're positioning it out to the wrong audience. Yes. Like what's the point of doing it in the first place? Right. So, so it all really slack starts with what's your target markets like from a type of organization perspective? Who are the Persona types within that organization that you want to get your message out to? What message do I then want to align? What content best aligns that message? And then where am I really targeting that content with? Inside the sales and marketing funnel? Is it top, is it middle, is it bottom? Right. I mean interestingly, if you look statistically from a B2B perspective of all of the content that was generated in 2019, I'll bet you find that half of that content was top of the funnel content. Right. Sometimes we miss or we forget about the other stages of the sales cycle.
20:36
Megan Thudium
Yeah. This is a very relevant point I think going forward and Covid is because sales are harder to make and there's just less people buying because of everything you're going to have to balance how do I reach the people who have the money to buy and who are relevant to buy my service product and then how at the same time do I remain relevant? Which is more of a brand awareness approach. And this is how balancing your awareness and your consideration content, top of the funnel, bottom of the funnel is going to be really relevant. But if I want to talk about specific marketing buzzwords, for example, leveraging user generated content, which has been the buzz for the last couple years in general, but I think is even more relevant this year because if you can bring your audience into and develop content around them where they are actually voicing your brand, we know this makes more trust and authenticity. And like I said in the beginning, trust, authenticity are even more important right now with everything that's going on. So user generated content and how to leverage out what are examples of that as simple as case studies, bottom of the funnel type of content testimonials if you want to be very creative about it, videos and how to leverage that actually getting the users to and it could be scrappy. This is something I tell my clients. I think as marketers get really caught up and content and marketing being perfect and polished the way that we are moving, I believe in social media is people are desiring more authentic content. That is, you know, you picking up your phone and recording a video. So I don't think it's completely unheard of for you to ask your users, your customers to record a quick snippet on their phone and then post it on LinkedIn or you can post it on them LinkedIn and then use that user generated content to create more sales and marketing exposure.
22:36
Colin Day
Megan, I just want to pick up on something that you said, right? It's like, how do I remain relevant, right? And it's like, look, you've got to have a content strategy in the first place, right? But it is amazing some of the conversations that I have with some of our clients and some of our prospects, right? And some of the organizations I've worked in and the teams I've worked with. I love statistics, as Shani will tell you, right. I love them, right. It's like it's unlived by them. But you know, statistically about 21% of B2B marketing, you know, teams, yeah. Don't have any form of content strategy, right. It is literally slack. And you may say, yeah, but that's because we need to be agile, right? It's because we need to live in the moment. Well, but that's a strategy, right? So if that's your strategy, then that's your strategy. But at least get it documented, at least get it put down. Is that what you see in your customer base, that about a fifth of them don't have any kind of marketing plan or marketing strategy or content strategy?
23:50
Megan Thudium
110%. Totally. I actually had a client that had to convince him as part of the package that I was offering that the strategy was actually an important part and we were going to offer that to him anyway because it was needed.
24:06
Shanie Zimerman
Yeah.
24:07
Megan Thudium
I believe that you cannot do effective marketing. You cannot reach the customers that you want to make the sales that you want in your company unless you have a framework and a strategy tactical plan out. Can it change from quarter to quarter, from month to month? Yes, absolutely. Your strategy document should be, for example, word document. That's always being referenced at least every quarter and that's always evolving. But if you don't have the structure and the framework, how do you know which way to point your feet and walk?
24:35
Colin Day
Shani, It's a shame we, it's a shame we can't run a poll and ask the audience, right? How many of them would stick their hand up to say, I don't Have a strategy at.
24:43
Shanie Zimerman
Wait, can we do that in zoom?
24:46
Colin Day
No, no, don't even try. You're going to break. You're going to break something.
24:48
Shanie Zimerman
I know, not right now, but maybe for the next one we'll include polls.
24:51
Colin Day
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
24:53
Shanie Zimerman
This actually answered one of the questions that came in regarding should I have a content strategy?
24:57
Megan Thudium
So 100%. Yeah, 100%. Yes, you should have a content strategy. And it could be, what are the goals? I mean, just do a quick Google search. This is why we love Google, right? How do you create a content strategy?
25:11
Shanie Zimerman
Right.
25:11
Megan Thudium
Go to my agency website. I tell you how to create a content strategy and content marketing content. How do you create it? You need the basic framework. Put it in a Google document. It all starts out with what are you trying to achieve and what are the goals and metrics that you're looking to do? How does that involve and kind of mold into the rest of the business? Goals and matrix too. That's a big component I think many people overlook is how do your content marketing goals and objectives basically contribute to the roi, the bottom line of the company, and then how to sell that to the rest of the leadership.
25:50
Shanie Zimerman
Megan, you with the segues today. Let's bring this full circle. Really understand how B2B marketers can bridge that gap between sales and marketing in this digital transformation. Colin or Megan, sorry, whoever wants to go.
26:12
Colin Day
I mean, look, Megan said it earlier on a little bit, right? In so much as if we look at what's been happening over the last six to seven months, we've seen more digital transformation happen in that time than we have done maybe in the prior six years. We've been accelerating at these things like lightning speed. Don't get me wrong, sometimes as organizations, as brands, we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong, right? But we learn a heck of a lot more from what we get wrong than maybe from what we do when we get it right. So it's okay to fail, just fail quickly, fail cheaply, and put the next strategy in place. But if we think about sales and marketing, I always say that selling is a team sport and an important part of that team is marketing. It really goes together like hand in glove, right? As it. As it says here. And one function can't succeed without the other. If we think of it from a sales perspective and the sales team that I'm responsible for here at Oktopost, for example, our marketing organization puts out a heck of a lot of content to support us at all stages in. In that sales process, right? So like you Know, if I were talking to Anna, one of our content marketers, and I was earlier on today, and she told me that on average it takes about four hours for her to write a blog post. Right. I mean, and the number of blog posts, a heck of a lot of investment. Yeah. The organizations are making yet in content. Yeah. And all I want to do is I want to make sure that the content that's being put out there is A, relevant and B, being utilized. Right. If it's not relevant and it's not being utilized, why are we doing it in the first place?
28:20
Megan Thudium
Yeah. And if I actually just dive off of what you just said, I think this is great. This is something that is starting to be talked about. Book View More is how to basically become allies with your sales team. And I think this, if I put all the pressure on marketing at this point, I won't talk to the sales team, put the pressure on them at this moment is there is this disconnection between what marketing and sales are focusing on. Right. Marketing usually focuses on the top of the funnel. The awareness sales is down there at the bottom trying to close the deals. Both of them are important. Both of them are relevant. Okay. So as a marketer, how can you almost sell your sales team on what you're doing in marketing and help them see how it all fits into the bigger picture and how it all comes together? I think this is key. It can come just as simple as being empathetic about how you approach the situation and be willing to explain. And for example, with my clients all the time, I have buzzwords that come up in my marketing speech, and they're like, what the heck are you talking about? Megan, having the patience to actually explain, explain that to them can really go far in building up these empathetic conversations, these connections with them. And it's going to help you too, as marketing, because when you have sales as your ally, you will get more relevant content. And when you get them to be excited about being involved in marketing, you'll even get more. They are the ones who are on the front lines, them and customer success. They are having the conversations with your team, with your customers, so they know exactly these pains, these questions, these things that people are struggling with. They understand this. So they are your best, besides going straight to your customers, your best resource and finding relevant information for your content marketing.
30:14
Colin Day
Shani, the other thing, just picking up on Megan there. Right. About that partnership. Yeah. The content that marketing's creating and the channels that we're using today to get that out there. Right. Be that LinkedIn or other social channels, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, whatever takes your fancy. From a B2B buyer's perspective, buyers are more willing to engage, I find, with sellers that are established. Establish thought leaders. Right. And you know, one of the ways that you establish yourself as a thought leader from a sales perspective is to, to put content out there. Right. That relevant, meaningful, you know, empathetic content that, you know, Megan's spoken so eloquently about. Yeah. So, you know, as, as a sales leader, like, you know, I'm, I'm always talking to my sales team about, you know, go talk to marketing. Right. Go take the content that they're providing to you. That may be corporate content. It may be corporate branded content about product or issue X, Y and Z, or it may be like third party curated content. Go take that. Go have a chat with marketing to understand what it is they've got. Tell them what you need. Yeah. Let them produce it. And then you put your voice and your spin on it and put it out to your own social channel.
31:52
Megan Thudium
Yeah, I like the structure. I think it's great because by putting content out as a salesperson, for example, out onto LinkedIn, it's going to do all the great things about content marketing. Build the authenticity and the trust. But it's also.
32:06
Colin Day
That's a tough word, isn't it, Megan? That's, that's a really tough word. I'm glad you said it twice and I haven't had to say it once,
32:13
Megan Thudium
but it's, it's really relevant, I think, even for salespeople because you are using content marketing. You're using all the basic principles of content Marketing in your LinkedIn marketing in your feed. You're getting people into your network as a salesperson, you're reaching out to them and then you're keeping talking to them. They might not buy from you tomorrow, they might buy you from you in two months from now. And it probably will be because they saw your content pop up in your sales feed or pop up in your feed on LinkedIn. Right. And I think this is where marketing can help sales get started in like what type of content works. Kind of like the mini tactical plan for sales. And yes, I like what Colin said, they can almost help you write it. But really where we need to also encourage sales is to add that human touch because any person can see a thousand miles away that it was written by a marketer. Right. I think the basic building blocks, the topics is fine, but then getting the salesperson to be enthusiastic about contributing their voice is really going to be the key into human centric and on LinkedIn specifically.
33:21
Colin Day
And Megan, like, just. Just going on that point, right. You can tell that it was written by a marketer. Anyone that knows me would be able to know whether it was written by me or not. Right. It's like, just probably because of my poor grammar, my pronunciation. But, you know, look, we're. We're from different, different nationalities right here. And, you know, my. My marketing team, you know, one of the. The young ladies that, you know, creates some of our content is American and I'm sure some of our audience are American, as are you two. Two ladies. Yeah. I'd use a word called whilst. Yeah. And Shani would. Would say wild. Right. So if Shani writes something, can I write something? You know, and it's got wild and whilst in it, you know who wrote it, Right? Yeah, yeah. If there's a Z or an S, you know, whether it was a Brit or an American that. That wrote it. Right. So, you know, there is some of that element of, you know, of grammar and pronunciation and spelling that. That comes into it as well. Right. So you can't just take lock, stock and barrel and cookie cutter copy and content. If it is to be seen as being authentic and realistic and coming from the individual, then the individual just needs to put their stylistic tone on it as well.
34:47
Megan Thudium
Yeah. So I'll do a quick peg. Sorry, of my friend based here in Berlin. She works for Uberall. She's been working on an employee advocacy program where they're doing all this great stuff with the sales team based here in Berlin at Uberall. She's done a fantastic job and this is one of the struggles that she had is how to get her team to create content and how to get them excited about it. And I think this is another thing, how marketers actually need to transcend the marketing hat and actually become more of, like a cheerleader. That's the word that she asked. So getting the sales team excited about LinkedIn, how it's this cool new platform and how it's going to bring them opportunities, you know, probably won't keep it up. You can keep going. We're talking about organic here. Right. It's not going to happen tomorrow.
35:35
Shanie Zimerman
And relationship building, because that's what the foundation of trust is on. So we can't really build that foundation and that level of trust overnight. It's something that you're building towards and you're developing it behind the scenes.
35:48
Megan Thudium
Yes. And as a marketer, you're going to have to be because you're going to have a lot of friction trying to get something like a LinkedIn marketing advocacy program up and going. We all know from a marketer's perspective, in sales, it's the thing that's evolving. For example, we have to become more human centric. The social styling is very important, especially for 2021 and beyond. But there's going to be friction in getting it going just because it's. As humans. It's unusual, right? We're not familiar with it, we're not confident. And it's also an act of putting yourself out there. I've noticed people actually come to me for my LinkedIn marketing and they say things like, megan, you were so vulnerable today in your LinkedIn content. I was like, well, yeah, because this is an extension of my voice and this is very important. Exactly. And this is very important for what we're talking about. That's important for human centric marketing to be vulnerable, but it takes people to get there, right? And this is where the leadership side, the cheerleader side of marketing can really help is get people excited about sharing their voice. It's going to make a difference for the bottom line, but it's also going to make a difference in your human centric marketing.
36:57
Colin Day
Megan, just thinking of that, right. And your friend Uberall, from a content perspective, right. That they're sharing out to advocates, right? And this isn't just for Uberall, but this is in general, right? So, you know, you talk about social selling. Social selling to me is really selling, right? It's like, you know, it's part of modern culture. We're all walking around with at least one of these things in our pockets, or Colin has four. Yeah, yeah. Tied to that screens, as we did beforehand. But, you know, if you think about the types of content that you as a brand need to share out or should be looking to share out over, you know, over any advocacy platform, right? It's like, you know, there's a tendency for people or marketers to think it's all about the brand, Right. It has to be. You know, it's, it's, it's all about company content that will turn the advocates and the sales teams off like, you know, quicker than anything, right? Like, you know, statistically good friend of mine like Dan Swift over at Empire Selling, when I was having a conversation with him recently, you know, put it really succinctly, right? He said, you know what, Colin? It's broken down into three statistics in, in my, in my view, right? 50, 25, 25, 50 of it. Should be that, you know, that, that corporate branded content and it's, you know, about the product, about the brand. 25% of it should be industry thought leadership material. Yeah. So you know, something from, from, from the industry itself in order to help position the advocate as that thought leader. And then 25% of it should just be general interest. Right. It should be what's of interest to the advocates and the employees themselves. And that's where some of that vulnerability that you talk about comes into it. Right. In so much as that's where they're able to express themselves greater than they can in those other two areas. Would you agree with that?
39:05
Megan Thudium
Yes, I do agree. And I also think to branch off this point, this is where marketing and sales become allies again is I think sales has a much stronger knowledge base of these pains and these questions that people are asking because they're on the, on the phone every day in emails, talking to them. So that's great content that is helpful content that is human centric, that is the type of content they should be encouraged to be writing for their LinkedIn. But where I see salespeople, for example, go wrong on LinkedIn is the marketing touch softening up the tone a little bit more, making it a little bit more conversational, human and then not going straight into the sale. That is one that you're going to have to probably argue back and forth with the sales team all day is putting that demo thing, you know, maybe just once a month, popping into the comment section or something. But keeping the content helpful and relevant and pain driven is going to be what you're going to have to sell to them as marketing.
40:05
Colin Day
Yeah. I mean, how quickly does it turn you off? Right. If you get a connection request on LinkedIn, it's like, hey, do you know what? Got this great things like I would love to connect with you. Saw your networks, like, you know, big you up, you connect and then the very next DM is, by the way, let me sell you this product. Right. That's an instance like rejection. Right.
40:26
Megan Thudium
And if it didn't work before, I don't know how it ever worked.
40:29
Shanie Zimerman
Right. It wouldn't.
40:30
Megan Thudium
Definitely doesn't work now during COVID I don't think it's going to work any differently as the trends that are going in content marketing in general and social selling. Yeah. We just have to be more human. And I think just like you wouldn't pop up in front of somebody and start selling to them at a coffee date, you first have to warm up the conversation with them and get to know them a little bit and then maybe one or two touch points later. That's when you introduce. I would even say in a soft way, especially on LinkedIn, hey, would you like to jump on a call and talk more about this?
41:04
Colin Day
Unless they ask you, right? If they come and ask you, it's always better. Different kettle of fish, right? But I'd actually say it's probably more set, like five to seven touch points than two or three, but.
41:20
Megan Thudium
Well, this is the power of LinkedIn, because this is why I love it as a content marketing tool, because you're writing content in your feed, you're nurturing your audience every day. The algorithm is so great right now. People are seeing your content. If you're consistent with it and you're relevant, people are enjoying your content. I have people reach out to me. I have multiple people who reach out to me a month saying, megan, I loved your content. Can we jump on a call and start talking about your agency and what you can offer us?
41:48
Colin Day
That's how we met, right? That's how we met.
41:52
Megan Thudium
It's very true.
41:52
Shanie Zimerman
Who reached out to who?
41:55
Colin Day
Megan. Megan engaged with some of one of my posts. I believe this is the way it went. Megan. You may want to correct me if I'm wrong, but Megan commented on one of my posts.
42:04
Shanie Zimerman
Yeah, I think Megan has something to say about that.
42:07
Colin Day
I then went back, right? And I connected with Megan and I got Megan to appear on a podcast episode with us, and the rest is history. Right? Megan?
42:16
Shanie Zimerman
Megan, what's the real story?
42:18
Megan Thudium
No, I know.
42:19
Colin Day
That is the story, right?
42:20
Megan Thudium
Megan. That is the story. It's just been a couple months. Sorry, Colin. I meet a lot of wonderful people on LinkedIn.
42:28
Shanie Zimerman
That's social selling done, right?
42:30
Colin Day
At least you class me as a wonderful person. Megan. I'll take that.
42:35
Shanie Zimerman
She's done two. She's done a podcast and now a webinar with you. So clearly you're up there in the rankings. Colin.
42:44
Colin Day
It's nothing to do with the pink shirt then, Shani, right?
42:46
Shanie Zimerman
No. No. So that was all super, super helpful. I had. We got a handful of really good questions that I want to make sure that we have time for before I kind of wrap up the webinar section and move into the Q and A. I didn't want to cut the two of you off. Was there anything else that you might want to add before I move on to the last and final slide?
43:13
Megan Thudium
I will add that again. It doesn't have to be perfect. And everything about the COVID world today, it's rocked us all. I mean, be empathetic to yourself too. Just try it and just start. So when it comes to LinkedIn marketing, just try it. When it comes to being more user centric in your content, just try it. And anything when trying to get your sales team into the picture, just go for it. I mean you will learn as you go. As Colin said at the beginning of the webinar,
43:45
Shanie Zimerman
definitely. So as I said, I got a handful of great questions. I'm going to put them out there. When I know who it's more relevant for, I'll direct it. But this one specifically. Megan, I think you would be really great to take the lead. Can we see? I can't show you, but we can maybe discuss it. Can we see some examples of conversational tonality?
44:11
Megan Thudium
Conversational tonality? Well, maybe I can. You want me to show examples now or just talk through it? I think maybe.
44:19
Shanie Zimerman
Do you have something to share to show. Sorry, I'm answering a panelist here, an attendee.
44:25
Megan Thudium
I don't at the moment, but I can.
44:27
Shanie Zimerman
So let's talk through it. And we're sending the recording so everyone can listen back to it.
44:33
Megan Thudium
Before I give examples, you should always first think about your company brand. I want to make this and make sure that whatever kind of conversational copy that you're going for is still in line with your brand. And I say that because, yeah, it might be your voice, which I think is great, but if it's not your company's voice, it all kind of, kind of comes together. So you don't want to taint your company brand make the wrong impression. So just simple conversational language is the way that the industry is evolving is using you, your and these pronouns in your language. So you're writing LinkedIn content, social media content, blog content, this type of content structure where you are using pronouns and you are making structure of content more digestible and you're taking, I don't like the word dumbing down your content. We're not dumb people, we're not reading dumb content. But making your content more engage worthy. Like people should be able to read that paragraph and take something away from it. Shouldn't get to the end of the paragraph be like what the heck did I just read?
45:42
Shanie Zimerman
Right? I understood all the fluff and none
45:45
Megan Thudium
of the important that happens so often in B2B. This is where as a marketer getting your content out of your own department, into the sales hands, into customer's hands and getting feedback is really going to be key. Did I answer the question?
46:02
Shanie Zimerman
I Believe you did. And if not, then I will ask you later via email. No, I think that was great on that one, though.
46:10
Colin Day
Right. On that one there is an assumption, right. You said up front about making sure that it's in line with the brand and styling, etc. That is assuming that there's some kind of brand guidelines and brands like Starling. Right. And again, it's like, you know, I'm amazed by the number of organizations that don't have not only a content strategy, they don't even have a set of branding guidelines as well.
46:41
Megan Thudium
Yep, yep. That's. That is an assumption that I had. I work with my clients a lot on this. Just, again, it doesn't have to be polished and perfect. Just a Google Word document about. Do you use. They are or do you use their. Well, what did you come up with? Colin the native or the American English versus the British Asian? Wow.
47:02
Shanie Zimerman
And.
47:03
Colin Day
Yeah, Wild. And whilst. Right.
47:05
Megan Thudium
See, I would never use that.
47:07
Shanie Zimerman
I could not even think in any world that I would use the word whilst.
47:12
Colin Day
So one of the companies that I used to work at. Yeah. And you can go and look at LinkedIn and find out who it was. I was there for 18 years. But one of those companies. Yeah. Lovely lady called. Actually, I'm not even going to mention her. No, that's wrong. I just stopped myself. Right. I just stopped myself. But she knows, if she's listening, she knows who. Who. Who she is. Right. Like, we used to have a fight, literally like every week whenever we were creating content and. And I was writing some blog posts. Yeah. She always used to come through with a black pen and like, scrub out whilst she's like, that's colloquial slang. I'm like, what? That's a word in the English language. Right. So you know it.
47:56
Megan Thudium
I like that. I always tell my clients, as long as it's consistent. If you're going to use Waltz, it should be that across all your communities. And that's where the tonality document comes in.
48:09
Colin Day
We do use the word while in the English language, but we do also use the word whilst.
48:16
Shanie Zimerman
Yeah. Because when you're saying like, for a while, you're not going to say for a while. For a while.
48:20
Colin Day
Yeah, it's whilst I was waiting. Yeah. And you'd say, while I was waiting. Right.
48:25
Shanie Zimerman
What about the movie? While we were sleeping. Huh?
48:29
Colin Day
Whilst we were sleeping. For me. But hey, do you know what? Look, I'm a. I'm a commoner from. From. From East London. It's like, what the hell do I know?
48:38
Shanie Zimerman
All right, sorry.
48:38
Colin Day
If there's anyone else from East London on the. On the call, I've just offended everyone.
48:44
Shanie Zimerman
Another great question that has to do with pronouns that we were speaking about in our change. New world pronouns are also a hot topic. How do we address the he, she, they and how people identify with gender pronouns as a brand? So not to offend anyone. Is there a standard?
48:59
Megan Thudium
So I don't think there is a standard. I think this is a deeper society question. Right?
49:04
Shanie Zimerman
Yeah. Maybe just being more aware and conscious.
49:07
Megan Thudium
I would say it's that just being more aware and conscious of the things that are happening. And if somebody, for example, points that out that your language in your marketing isn't, in their opinion, having that conversation with them, they probably won't be very nice about it. But just being receptive of that type of communication and then, I mean, this goes into a larger leadership question. Right. Getting the actual company leadership to have more of an idea and stance on inclusivity in general and then how inclusive language fits into all of that.
49:43
Shanie Zimerman
Yeah, definitely. Another question. What would you say? I think I know my answer for this, but what would you say is the best way to research new content styles?
49:54
Megan Thudium
Google content styles? What do you think they mean by content styles?
50:03
Colin Day
I don't know.
50:04
Shanie Zimerman
Let's decipher it. Colin, do you. What do you think?
50:07
Colin Day
Yeah, I'd agree with you, Shani. Right. Like, you know, Google. Google's everyone's best friend. Right. Like, you know, what I would read into that is, you know, style as in Slack, you know, as we've just been talking about, like, you know, how do we. How do we enunciate things as well as though probably what content resonates with,
50:33
Shanie Zimerman
like the resource itself.
50:35
Colin Day
Yeah. The actual material. Yeah, that's how I'd read it.
50:39
Shanie Zimerman
Yeah.
50:39
Colin Day
And I'd say Google. Right.
50:41
Megan Thudium
I'll just peg this in. Yeah. It's like finding what content using Google to see what resonates with you, but it's also about your customer and your audience.
50:50
Shanie Zimerman
Right.
50:50
Megan Thudium
It's like testing that copy and seeing how it resonates with them. Should be part of it. It's an extra step, but it's very important.
50:59
Colin Day
And I'd also bring technology into the conversation as well there. Right. Shani and Megan, in so much as there are various tools out there that allow you to go and look at content, whether that be hashtags and et cetera, that are resonating on social media at that point in time. Right. There's various listening capabilities. Oktopost has One like with the Oktopost social listening platform, I'm a salesperson. I couldn't help but get something in there, I guess. But there are tools and technology out there that helps you do that. Some of it's for free, such as Google. And then there are other platforms out there as well.
51:48
Megan Thudium
Always tools, always tools.
51:51
Colin Day
As marketers, we love tools, right? As salespeople, we love tools. It's how do we ensure we don't get stuck with shiny toy syndrome? It's like, oh, I got a new toy. Let me go and find the next one.
52:05
Megan Thudium
Exactly.
52:07
Shanie Zimerman
All right, guys, I think that we are going to wrap it up. This was amazing. I learned a ton. I've taken on some marketing roles at Oktopost. I've been doing the webinars and more recently I've been writing blogs. And having this information and being able to now apply it is going to be incredibly helpful for me. So on behalf of myself, thank you. But no, this was super informative and I just want to thank the two of you again for joining and participating in this webinar. I want to also thank the audience for joining again. This is our ninth episode and it's just because of you guys that keep joining and keep signing up. So really appreciate it. We have our next webinar next month. Stay tuned for an update there. If you have any questions at all about anything that we've discussed today, you can feel free to reach out to any one of the three of us or all three of us together. You don't need to memorize these emails. We're going to be sending the deck afterwards. In the meantime, I hope everyone, including these two lovely panelists with me, continue to stay healthy and stay happy and I hope everyone has a great rest of the day. Thank you, Colin. Thank you, Megan, so much. It was really great.
53:20
Colin Day
Thanks, Sinead. Thanks, Megan.
53:22
Megan Thudium
Bye.
53:22
Shanie Zimerman
Take care. Bye.
