Our latest webinar looked at how to creative an effective B2B social media strategy.
Below is an edited transcript from the live Q&A section of the webinar or you can watch the full chapterised version of the webinar on the video here.
How many hashtags do you use for a GIF piece of content?
GIPHY allows a maximum of 20. And my recommendation for GIFs, is to use as many as you can.
Like any other hashtags, you're going to compete with other people. Try and get at least two or three that are very niche, even if it's just the name of your company or something very recognizable so the GIFs can be found easily.
Then use a collection of keywords that will help your GIF to be found.
Example: Type 'marketing science' into GIPHY on Teams or WhatsApp and this example below will appear.
In the engineering field, it's hard to turn complex content into short and fun videos. Any insights on this?
Don't get discouraged because there is a TikTok for anything. Whatever you can think of, there's a Tok for it.
Try adding some visuals, drawings or even animations. If you are talking over something that is interesting and appealing, then you have the basis for an engaging piece of content.
TikTok now gives you the possibility to create a series so, you can divide your main points into a small series of easy to watch videos.
I think the key here is experimenting. Try 10 things and then double down on the two or three things that really do kick off. You can't be afraid to try something.
And if your audience isn't on TikTok then a lot of the other social platforms are developing similar features, like Reels on Instagram.
If your audience is there, you can use the same concept with the video, but just distribute it on Instagram instead.
What program did you use to make your reels / TikTok style video like the one below?
We use Adobe Premiere Pro . You can also use VEED , which is an online app that does a great job. It's very user friendly and can help get the job done quickly.
How do we encourage other people in the organisation to post content?
If you're a marketing manager who is struggling to encourage your sales team to be more active on LinkedIn, you're definitely not alone.
I was speaking to Hal at IGD about this recently on the Marketing Science Podcast.
Countless marketing managers see the benefits of LinkedIn. But I think you've got to make it easy for others in your organisation because they're busy. They've got to hit targets and quotas, etc.
If social media becomes too hard, then it's the first thing to fall off the desk. So, how do you make it easier for others in your organisation? I think you arm them with the bullets that they can fire on social media.
You can even go as far as to creating the narrative for them, because they'll definitely have the networks and they'll definitely have the connections, but trying to get them to post maybe top of funnel content (like a webinar or eBook), as opposed to anything that's not directly product focused can be hard.
It's that constant battle for resources between long-termism and short-termism.
So highlight the benefits and make the process as easy as possible to do.
Getting all the alt tags and video captions in place can take time. Do you know of a good workflow to consistently do this?
You can streamline the process by using apps like VEED. Auto-caption software can save you a lot of time too.
Sending the audio to Rev is another option. This will give you an SRT file that you can upload with your social post or to Premiere Pro so the captions are embeded into the video.
What process you use will often depend on your turnaround time. But tying everything together with project management software like Trello helps you to stay on top of things.
With any marketing half the battle is just making sure that everybody's on the same page, on the same workflow and people know where stuff is because you've got so many projects going on concurrently. It can be so easy to get overwhelmed with all the different parts and constituent bits to each project.
You can see some examples of social media videos we've created for clients and our internal marketing below.
VIDEO
If you're trying to get people to register for an event or a webinar, is it okay to use links in a post?
What we tend to do is post news about our events to our company page. Include a link to register in the comments and pin that post to the top of the page.
We then distribute pre-event content through our personal channels. This includes snippets of practice sessions, info about the speakers, etc.
In all these posts we tag the company page in our call to action and look to drive people to that page to register.
Is it appropriate to use links in the comments of a social media post?
LinkedIn wants to keep users on site so if you can avoid links then your posts will likely perform better.
We do post links in comments for webinar registration, eBook downloads etc. and occasionally share a blog article as well.
If you need to include a link then currently posting it in the comments seems to work better than in your post.
But they are all making changes constantly. You think you've cracked it and then it only takes their engineering team a few tweaks to make and then they've changed the rules again. You got to figure it out quite quickly.
Can you create profile videos for your company page?
At the moment this feature is only available for personal pages. See this example below.
We think that if it proves popular then LinkedIn may introduce it for company pages as well. We shall keep on eye on this and report back with any changes.
If you pull a 2-minute clip from a podcast, how would you drive further engagement without including a link?
Using links in the comments or tagging your company page and driving people there are a couple of options.
But it might also require a change of mindset. Do you need to always drive people to the full podcast episode with each post? Is posting excellent content consistently enough to get and keep your company top of mind with your target audience?
Most people scrolling through LinkedIn, don't have half an hour to spare to then go listen to the podcast there and then. The short snippets can help you play it as a more long-term brand awareness play.
How would you recommend dividing the content between posting on the company page and your personal page?
You get far more response from personal individuals accounts.
LinkedIn can charge money to companies for advertising. But they have to generate engagement organically from people so that there are enough people using the platform to make advertising worthwhile for companies.
The way we see it is our individual personal brands generate far more engagement than the company, but then equally it can be more effective to reach the individual niche target markets through advertising.
If you have distinctive sectors or areas of business, do you recommend having a targeted social presence, eg. all the brands or is it better to build on a single brand?
Go niche.
It means your creative can be really niche too.
We've run a campaign recently to life science marketing managers. We were able to be really specific with showcasing our audience.
We've got a fantastic life science audience within our CRM and it meant that we were able to create adverts that really did hone in on that pain point.
I'd say the targeting capabilities are there so use them. We do it for matched audiences. We actually do a lot of the targeting in our CRM first. Categorizing and bucketing clients into specific sectors.
How do you target your matched audience on LinkedIn so you get the most relevant audience?
Using the different levels of LinkedIn targeting will help you to match your audience better. Here is an example.
Start with a company list to create a matched audience
Add ICP attributes like: Job function or title
Include or exclude company attributes that don't fit your ICP such as: size of company, location etc.
Exclude your own company
Review demographics and optimise continuously
>>>READ MORE: Using LinkedIn ads to reach your prospects<<<
How do you communicate to non-marketing individuals that content which serves a general audience is useful too and does not lessen the brand or make them sound less intelligent?
There's always time for different types of content.
'What is viscosity? ' was one that did really well for one of our clients and it generated tens of thousands of page views a day.
But equally, 'how to measure viscosity in Non-Newtonian liquids? ' is a much more niche search which gets fewer pageviews but a higher quality of engagement from an audience that is far more likely to be interested in purchasing a viscometer in the next stage of the funnel.
Different stages of the funnel have different content objectives, whether that's to generate awareness at the top or to drive a purchasing decision at the bottom
You're ultimately looking to find the more qualified people by taking them on a content journey. You've got to cast your net quite far and wide and ultimately try and lead them on a content journey to something that can help them.
Each stage is important and it's hard to have the bottom without the top or middle. Highlight the benefits of the strategy to them. You can even share the link to this webinar with them.
For holiday posts specific to when the holiday runs on the weekend, do you recommend posting prior to the weekend for maximum exposure or keeping it to the day of the holiday?
If you only have time for one post then do it on the actual day, even if that day falls on the weekend. Schedule the post beforehand with a social media tool, like Hootsuite .
If the day is part of a wider campaign then you can create a series of posts and distribute them on days leading up to the holiday for more reach and impact.
Any thoughts on employees who are reluctant to do too much company posting because LinkedIn is their personal platform?
Make building a personal brand part of their KPIs and people will be less reluctant to share company content on their personal pages.
If the company is doing well, then usually that means they are doing well too. Win, win!
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