0:00
Alina Dallal
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our webinar, how to build a strong B2B brand presence on Social Media. I'm your host today. I'm Alina Delal, the content marketing manager here at Oktopost. We always love questions. You can go ahead and drop them in the chat and we'll get to them at the end. And don't worry, all of you will receive a copy of the recording after the webinar. Today we're going to be talking all about building a strong B2B brand presence on social media. And as marketers, we know that having a strong brand presence on social isn't just luck. There's a strategic social media manager working really, really hard behind the scene. And because it's not luck, it's a good thing. It means it's attainable for any of us. We just need the right strategy. So today I brought in the experts from HubSpot and Starburst to share with us their tips for building a strong brand presence. So let's start by introducing you all. I'm so excited to have you both joining me. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your role and your background? Reece, I'm going to start with you.
0:56
Reece Callaway
Yeah. My name is Rhys Calloway. I work at HubSpot as one of the social media marketers on the organic brand social team. Been with HubSpot for about a year and a half and I've been working with social in general for about three years. I live in Denver, Colorado and also, fun fact, I'm a huge Daniel Ricardo fan and Jacqueline.
1:16
Jacqueline Vail
Hi, everyone. I'm Jacqueline. I'm the brand content manager at Starburst. I am based out of Boston, Massachusetts and I've been at Starburst for about three years. One of my main responsibilities is owning our social media content calendar and management. This involves driving traffic to our page and engagement. And I've also worked in the communication side of the house, which really informed the importance of brand presence internally and externally.
1:42
Alina Dallal
Amazing. I'm so excited to have you both because you really are the experts on this topic and I know through conversations with you that you have so much to share with everyone who's joined us. So we're just going to start with High level, the very beginning. What is a strong brand presence to you and why is it important? Reece, I'm going to start with you first again.
2:01
Reece Callaway
Yeah, I think to me, having a strong brand presence is making sure that your brand's values and your brand's identity is showing up in the lives of your Audience, your target consumer, whoever your brand is focusing on, and showing up that in the channels and on the platforms that they want you. They want to see you on, showing up every day in their lives, you know, making sure that the content you're creating is resonating with them and making sure they're enjoying seeing you across their feeds. And I think the biggest reason that strong brand presence is important is because it creates a sense of familiarity with your brand and with your product. And when it comes time for that target consumer or that audience member to make a decision on what kind of software they're going to go to or what kind of product they're going to buy, if they already have a sense of familiarity with your brand, then that's going to make the decision process a lot easier for them.
2:48
Alina Dallal
Absolutely. And Jacqueline?
2:50
Jacqueline Vail
Yes. Similar to Reese, a strong brand presence is being able to be recognized by our ideal customers. So meeting them where they are, being involved in conversations that are of interest and topics that are really, like, meaningful in the space. And so this allows our sellers to have warm leads. People know who we are, makes it easier to kind of cross that threshold of the initial, like, who is Starburst? So very important, especially in the social world.
3:19
Alina Dallal
Absolutely. I agree with both of you. And as we know, like now, B2B marketing is all about social. And so having that strong brand presence is so important to help in general in all aspects of your company. So now that we understand what a strong brand presence is, the question we want to solve on this webinar is, how do we get that right? So my first question is, in order to build a strong brand presence on social media, what do you think a brand's tone of voice should sound like? Jacqueline, I want to start with you.
3:47
Jacqueline Vail
Yeah, I think it depends on who your brand is, what you're selling, who you're selling to. I remember we initially had conversations on how we wanted to appear, what we wanted our voice to be, what we wanted our graphics to look like, and then really integrate that into our social presence. So we are B2B. SaaS. Companies still want to be thought leaders in the space, but our ideal customer is the data engineer. And so we really like to play into that technical SASE aspect of the data engineering community, but it involved larger conversations on deciding who our brand is and what that tone of voice is. So depends on what your brand is selling, who you're selling to, and kind of what the leaders in your company view it as.
4:30
Alina Dallal
Reese, how about you? Is it similar? Is it different?
4:32
Reece Callaway
Yeah, I Mean, I think Jacqueline hit the nail on the head there. You know, really needs to be reflective of what your audience is going to want to see, come across their feeds. Your, your content that you're posting across your social media, so should blend seamlessly into the stuff that they're already seeing across their channels. So with HubSpot, you know, we try and focus a lot on, you know, making relatable content to our audience and making sure that we're tapping into the same conversations and pop culture moments that they're seeing across their feeds and then coming into those conversations in an organic and funny and relatable way, but also figuring out what the tie back to HubSpot is. And so what our brand of tone of voice is, is really just like a little bit of Gen Z, a little bit of edutainment, and then blending that all together into relatable and funny quirky. Whether it's a one liner on LinkedIn or a video on TikTok, making sure that it's reflective of what our audience is currently seeing across our channels.
5:27
Alina Dallal
Yeah, absolutely. And you can see it in both of your social strategies as well. So now that you understand who your audience is and how you want to sound on social, how do you then build out your social content strategy? Rhys, I'm going to start with you first.
5:41
Reece Callaway
I think for us, the biggest thing that we focused on was picking a priority channel and being a B2B company. LinkedIn was the obvious winner for us. And so we really prioritized figuring out what our audience wants to see on LinkedIn. And for us, it's quippy one liners, it's fun, exciting graphics that you would typically probably see on Instagram, but reposting them onto LinkedIn along with that, it also includes like tying in pop culture moments like I've mentioned. And so making sure that our social content strategy ties all of those factors in and then posting those on a consistent day to day basis has really been the bulk of our strategy. And making sure that we're showing up day to day in the lives of our audience members in that relatable way, in that really quirky. If you know, you know, whether it's sales, marketing, customer service, that's kind of how we've laid out our strategy.
6:35
Alina Dallal
Yeah, definitely. And also the end of the day, your content needs to speak to your audience rather than just what you want to put out. So jumping on the trends that they're also interested in will help them gravitate and keep coming back to your brand because they're enjoying your content and you're entertaining them. Jacqueline, is it similar for you or is it slightly different?
6:51
Jacqueline Vail
Yeah, I definitely agree. I think meeting your audience where they're at and in the conversations that they're already having is crucial. And so at Starburst, that involves a lot of cross collaboration with our, both our product marketing team and our developer relations team to learn what's top of mind for our ideal customer, what are the hot topics in the industry, and then kind of creating content based on that and putting it in the pipeline that way. We really want to make sure that we're remaining relevant, like Reece was saying, with what our customers are looking for. So a lot of cross collaboration with marketing and our engineers and starters too.
7:26
Alina Dallal
Yeah, it's really important. So with that, Rhys, I want to ask you, you've spoken and mentioned the importance reaching Gen Z on social media just now. So what strategies do you find most effective in engaging this demographic on social and why is it important to your marketing strategy at HubSpot?
7:43
Reece Callaway
I think really the, the most important thing when trying to reach Gen Z is showing up authentic in the channels. You know, I think this generation, the Gen Z generation, really has a good radar for determining when a brand is being authentic and when they're trying to force themselves into a conversation that they don't naturally fit into. And so I think it's really taking a look at those conversations that are being had in the Gen Z audience. You know, following the same people that they're following, you know, interacting with the brands that they're interacting with and determining what are the people, what are they saying on their channels and how are they saying it, what is, what's the slang that they're using, what are the memes that they're using, what are the pop cultural moments that are important to them. And it's really taking advantage of those and showing up on those channels, whether it's LinkedIn or TikTok, Instagram, showing up in a really authentic but also relatable and tying it back to your brand all in one, all in one post and doing it consistently across the channels. And I think it's really important to our channel because a lot of Gen Z people are on social Media Nowadays, like 60% of LinkedIn is Gen Z at the moment. And so targeting that audience is not only going to be important for now, but those people are also going to be the business decision makers down the line. And so if you can create that sense of familiarity now with Gen Z, by the time those people are in Those positions of power where they can make software buying decision processes, they'll already have that brand familiarity with you and it'll help the sales process down the line.
9:17
Alina Dallal
Absolutely. And they're also going to be the ones also using the tools. So to relate to them and for them to know that you're brand top of mind. I understand. Agree with you is really important. Jacqueline, I want to ask you because I know that you're big on employee advocacy and executive takeovers and this is contributing to your strategy to be bold on social and to reach more people. So I'm wondering what impact you've noticed from employee advocacy and these executive takeovers on building a strong brand presence for Starbursts.
9:44
Jacqueline Vail
Yeah, it's had a huge impact. I think the trick of social media is trying to reach an audience outside of the one you already have and tapping into our employees connections and follower bases is really great way to do that. So we've seen great success with giving our employees content to share on their own and driving traffic back to our channels and ultimately back to our website. The executive takeovers have also been performing really well. Not only do does Starburst want to be a thought leader in the space, but we want our leaders to also be thought leaders. And so creating a strong brand image of having smart people in the space and smart people who are leading our company is really crucial to establishing that thought leadership kind of brand presence.
10:29
Alina Dallal
Absolutely. And you say people trust people more than they trust the brands. Obviously having the brand presence is so important, but also your people are showing up and they're speaking and people want to hear what other people have to say. And your employees are genuinely your best brand advocates that you can find and their reach is far more than what your brand's corporate page can do. So I'm not surprised that it's having an amazing impact for you for building a strong brand presence. The next question I want to ask both of you is how do you foster and maintain active engagement within your community on social media and why is this so important? Rhys, I'm going to start with you.
11:07
Reece Callaway
Yeah. So one of the biggest things that we do to help foster and maintain active engagement is we try to scroll through our brand's feed just like we would, just like a regular person would day to day on their social channels. And we'll comment on different brands that we know our audience is following and we'll show up in the comments section kind of right next to them. And it makes HubSpot feel and look more human than brand. Being in comment sections of like, you know, beyond Me, on threads or on some famous influencer on Instagram, you know, showing up in those types of spaces with your audience members can help make the brand feel organic and feel authentic and less overly branded and less overly, you know, trying to shove product into the feeds and stuff. It makes it feel like a person is behind, is behind the brand. And I think this is super important because like I touched on earlier, Gen Z has such a radar and such a, you know, good understanding of what authentic means on social and what it looks like to come from a brand. And this is just such an easy way to, to tap into Gen Z and to tap into that authenticity.
12:12
Alina Dallal
Yeah, absolutely. As you said, it's so authentic. People want to know there's someone behind the brand that wants to also interact with them. And by commenting on or showing up in the feeds of where they're following your target audience, even if they're not following you, will also help you spread that brand awareness and presence across social. And Jacqueline, how about you?
12:30
Jacqueline Vail
Yeah, definitely a similar strategy. We try to really find the conversations that we can tap into organically. So not necessarily just our mentions or our comments, but meeting our customers and our audience where they are and hopefully providing some helpful information. Like Reese said, authenticity is a super important aspect of a brand presence and making sure that we're not only a thought leader in this space, but that we're also staying true to who we are and the data engineering community, which is our ideal customer base. So finding those conversations and putting actually useful information, not just promotional information, and then again, always, you know, resharing users, our tag dimensions, our employees content as well. And communicating with people that way, I think maintains authentic engagement.
13:19
Alina Dallal
Absolutely. As you said, it's, as both of you said, it's authentic and it's also building these meaningful conversations so people will feel more connected to your brand, which means they'll come back to your, your brand PA to see more. Moving on to the next question, I'm wondering what social media metrics you both focus on to measure your brand presence on social media and how you use these results to show your leadership that your social strategy is working. Reese, I'm going to start with you.
13:48
Reece Callaway
Yeah. So I think the two, the two biggest metrics that our team focuses on will be shares and saves. And the reason being is that for a user to share or to save one of our posts, that means it would have really resonated with that user or we've provided so much value in that post to that user that they feel the need to save it to come back to it later. And so that's a really big indicator for us that the content we're making is not only reaching the right people, but it's also resonating with the right people. And so we make sure that we're tracking those day to day and we're keeping track of those month over month and continuing to make content that grows in that aspect. And when we're talking to leadership about these types of metrics, you know, having such strong resonating content with our users at the end of the day is going to impact the brand as a whole overall. You know, whether that's, you know, with paid ads, with paid social, if we can have strong organic social content for free on our end, then their side of the, of the marketing and their side of the brand is going to end up being a lot easier and they're going to get a lot more bang for their buck. And because the people that they're reaching are already going to have some sort of familiarity. Odds, odds are with HubSpot's organic social and already have a good and positive familiarity with HubSpot just based on our organic social.
15:09
Alina Dallal
Definitely. And Jacqueline, is yours similar or do you measure different things?
15:13
Jacqueline Vail
A bit different, I would say. Right now we're really trying to focus on as many eyeballs as we can get. So impressions is a really crucial aspect to showing us how well a post is performing. In addition, clicks is also a great measurement of how much people are enjoying the content. Usually a lot of our content clicks or clicks back to some resource on our website. So if a user is interested enough to go read a blog or an infographic or download an ebook, that really shows us that the content we're creating on social is engaging and convincing them to check out our website as well. Luckily, with Oktopost, we also have this great ROI engagement board. So we can see if there are deals that our sellers are doing that are being influenced by social activities or prospects or customers are influenced on social as well. It's always hard to get a hard, hard number for social media metrics. So having that ROI influence opportunities board is really helpful as well.
16:17
Alina Dallal
Absolutely. And I think social has so much value. We know social has so much value. To be able to see that on the pipeline is so important. And I think it's really interesting that both of you have these amazing brand presences on social media and you're measuring different things and it really just shows that it's not one size fits all. It's very unique to the company. It's very unique to your goals within your teams at your company. So it's interesting to hear how it differs, but how it still is working for both of you to continue building your brand presence. So with that, my last question for both of you is, how do you know that you've reached a strong brand presence on social media? Reece, I'm going to start with you.
16:55
Reece Callaway
If you start getting comments in your comment section that say, give the social media manager a raise, I think you, I think you've nailed it. But really, I think it's like for us, like I said, shares and saves are our money metrics. And so I think when we start seeing those shares and saves going up and we start knowing that the content that we're making is resonating with our audience on a really deep level, that's really, you know, like a super key indicator for us on how we know that we're being present in the lives of our audience and we're really making sure that we're showing up consistently and deeply in the lives of our audience members. And so for us, it's shares and saves and making sure those numbers are consistently going up and putting out great content day over day.
17:39
Jacqueline Vail
Amazing.
17:40
Alina Dallal
And Jacqueline?
17:41
Jacqueline Vail
Yeah? I think once I've seen a lot recently, which is awesome, being involved in organic conversations, people tagging us and talking about us organically, I think a goal of, like many brands is to be a household name. Everyone wants to be the next Apple. And so I think once I have to stop prefacing Starburst by saying not the candy company, that would be really cool and really fun. But yeah, those organic conversations, seeing people tagging us, talking about the product without us having to do anything, that's a really great indicator of the strong brand presence.
18:20
Alina Dallal
Absolutely. So with that, first of all, I want to thank both of you for joining me and sharing with us all about your strategies because there is a lot to learn from you guys. You really are the experts. We're going to move over into the Q and A section, so if anybody who's listening and watching, if you have any questions, please put them in the chat now and we'll get to them. In the meantime, if you want to connect with any of us, you can scan the barcodes or go straight to our LinkedIn pages and we'd love to continue the conversation with you. So we're just going to move over. We did get a question come through. Jacqueline, this one's for you. It's from Lynn. She Says, how do you manage to get your executives on board to do these executive takeovers?
18:56
Jacqueline Vail
Yeah, I think we tend to have a board of people that we tap for these thought leadership posts and before we ask them to post, we kind of gauge the topics that they're interested in. And so we know, oh, John Smith is interested in data products and AI and so we'll know that if there's a conversation that needs to be tapped in, he can take over that. So I think doing a lot of the work beforehand and ghost writing posts to make it as easy as possible. Our executives are very busy people and so and social media tends to not be the number one priority, which is totally understandable. So ghost writing posts and making sure that it's a conversation that I know that they'll be interested in is kind of where I start for that really useful.
19:46
Alina Dallal
And I also think having them involved in the, in the process along the way and speaking to them about what topics they want to write about and if they're a little bit skeptical to let you just run with it, which is fine. It happens. Just involving them throughout all of it will also make it more comfortable for them to have it. But as you said before, it's so important, it's so helpful. We do have another question. Rhys, this is for you. Obviously you mentioned that you were focusing on Gen Z. How do you make sure all your audiences understand your content that you're catering to?
20:19
Reece Callaway
I think so. When we target our Gen Z audience, you know, we will make sure that the tone is Gen Z focused. But the bulk of the content that we put out honestly speaks to a larger audience. You know, it might be, it might sound and look and feel Gen Z, but the type of content that we're putting out and the stuff that we're talking about is stuff that all sales reps are gonna, are gonna know and understand or all marketers are gonna know and relate to. So even though it looks and feels Gen Z and it might not resident or resonate with maybe the, maybe an older generation audience that's used to a more professional tone across their feeds, it's still going to be something that they've related to in their sales career or in their marketing career. And so making sure that yes, the content does look, feel and sound Gen Z, but it does speak to a larger audience and a larger kind of relatable aspect of the audience that you're talking about.
21:14
Alina Dallal
Yeah, definitely. I've seen a few people raise their hand if you want to pop in a question in the webinar chat, we can get to it as well. And another question we have is how do you know when to optimize or stop a campaign on social? So we know that, like, sometimes they take a while to measure. Maybe sometimes it's six months, sometimes it's longer. It depends on the campaign you're doing. So how do you know when to move on? Jacqueline, I'll start with you.
21:37
Jacqueline Vail
Yeah, I think for Starburst and the kind of big data space, there's always a hot topic AI data mesh. It changes constantly, and I think we're trying to stay relevant that way. And so running social media campaigns with industry topics like that will kind of base it on the general conversations that we can see happening on social. So if AI suddenly stops becoming a hot topic in the space, we'll kind of reevaluate the topics that we're posting about and pivot that way. Again, like you said, it takes a long time to measure social metrics, so we kind of try to stay in tune with what's going on in the space.
22:17
Alina Dallal
Amazing. And Reece, how about you?
22:19
Reece Callaway
Kind of the same as Jacqueline. You know, we'll. We'll make sure we're having a good pulse on what our audience is talking about in the conversations that they're having with each other and with other members of our audience. And when we start to see a shift, like Jaclyn said, like if AI starts to shift out of the focus of. Of social and of the topics of conversation in tech, then we'll start to adjust what we're talking about in our certain campaigns and stuff. But, you know, like you said, it takes a long time for social metrics to come through and to see the work that you've put in, have the results that you're looking for. And so really making sure that it gives time, it gets time to breathe on these channels. You know, algorithms are changing constantly, and sometimes content that you posted 8, 10, 12 months ago can get picked up on an algorithm and get, you know, an extra 10,000 views. Maybe somebody talked about HubSpot on one of their posts, and then all of a sudden, now you have a huge influx of traffic. So I think it's. I think it comes down to making sure you keep a pulse on the conversations that are being had and then also giving the time and everything to breathe on the channels that they're on.
23:24
Alina Dallal
Definitely. I think it's really interesting. I think it's really important, as you mentioned, about when the algorithm is going to pick it up. I think also another thing is with employee advocacy and with your corporate brand. You just reminded me of if something's not performing straight away, don't take it down you. Unless you need to take it down. But like, if it's just because you think, oh, it didn't get enough likes, the algorithm could pick it up. Someone still might be resonating, but just not interacting with it. So just reminded me of something that was advice, what I got once and it stuck with me. We do have another question come in. It's how do you, how do you deal with questions about opening accounts on platforms that you know aren't suitable for your company? If this has happened to the two of you before, is this something that you, either of you have experienced or anything that you, you have an insight on?
24:08
Jacqueline Vail
Yeah, I think I've definitely had experience with this. With the constantly changing social platforms, whether it's TikTok or Threads or there's always something new, it seems it can be hard to kind of field those requests of, why aren't we on here? Like, we should join this right now, like, hurry up, make an account. But I tend to really think about who our ideal customer is and really think about this is the best use of our time. We're a social media team of just a few at Starburst, so making the most of our time and our content and I usually present that to whoever's asking and say, no, Threads isn't necessarily the right place for us to be. Our customer isn't on there. We're a B2B company. Could be fun, but not necessarily worth the resources.
24:56
Alina Dallal
Yeah, completely get that. Rhys, do you have anything to add?
25:00
Reece Callaway
Not really. Kind of in the same line, you know, making sure that you're presenting, you know, if you know your audience isn't going to be on there, then you can kind of the way I think of it is how much time and effort is it going to take to make posts to go on that channel and then what are you going to get out of that post from this channel? If you have to put in, you know, three hours of creative development into making a post to go out on this channel, but you're only going to get six likes, where if that three hours were spent on LinkedIn, for example, and you were to get 600 likes, you know, the ROI, I guess you could call it, for the three hours of work on LinkedIn versus Threads is going to be much higher. And so that effort just isn't worth being on that channel.
25:39
Alina Dallal
I think for social media managers and social media teams as well I'm going to chime in on this as well, but I think there's a pressure to feel like you have to be everywhere and on every single platform and posting out numerous amounts of content. But you just really need to be where your audience is, especially at the beginning. So for us and B2B, we know that it's LinkedIn and obviously we'll also be on X and on different platforms platforms. But for B2B, LinkedIn is primary and I think focusing on where your audience is and you know your audience is, if you don't have the resources to extend, is really important in to help your strategy overall because you can channel all the energy into that. So with that, we didn't get to any of your questions, we're going to get to them. We'll respond to you and reach out to you. But if, as I said, if you want to connect with any of us, feel free to scan the barcodes. Thank you so much, the both of you, for joining me today. I've loved hearing everything from you and I know everyone who's tuning in also also has. So thank you so much.
26:35
Jacqueline Vail
Thanks for having me.
26:37
Reece Callaway
Thank you.
