On November 3rd, together with Immediate Future, we hosted an in-person B2B Social Trailblazers Summit in London, to help B2B Marketers remain on the cutting edge of social media, and equip them with ideas for 2023 planning! The day was jam-packed with best practice presentations from IBM & Ericsson, panel discussions with influencers, B2B Marketers and influential Execs & SMEs, workshops on how to create engaging content as well as how to leverage Influencer Marketing.
So many great ideas where shared throughout the day and the attendees left fully prepared to make the most out of their Social Media Marketing in 2023! Did you miss the Summit? Here are the key takeaways that stood out from the day.
Social is an afterthought
Stop producing boring content
The exclusive survey results presentation revealed that LinkedIn is overcrowded, and Twitter is not too far behind. Feeds are full of individuals pushing their agendas and paid brand advertising that does not break the scroll. Why? Because everyone is producing boring content that does not capture the audience’s attention. Conversation around tables between industry experts proved fruitful as we discussed what it looks like to be exciting on socials. We had many attendees who are pioneering B2B podcasts, create video content and re-purpose it for maximum gain.
The workshops provided a great opportunity to break down their audiences and to consider what they want to hear and learn rather than what we as marketers want to say and publish. These sessions facilitated collaboration between influencers, brands, Immediate Future and Onalytica staff to broaden the scope of what we consider to be engaging marketing content.
Start with why & know your customer
Immediate Future’s Katy Howell & Colin Jacobs highlighted in their presentations that you cannot create content for the sake of simply having some content. Before you start creating anything, you must know WHO you are creating it for. Not only that, you must answer WHY that content would matter in the first place to your audience and customers. Why are you creating it? What challenge does it highlight and help solve? Understanding the industry and the pain points of your customers will enable you to create content that is much more relatable, insightful and cuts through all of the social noise, helping you break the scroll!
Tailor your content to each platform
To reach your buyers you need to tailor your content to each platform. With the sheer number of social channels out there, you need to understand where your buyers are, and what they want out of each platform. We surveyed 115 senior B2B social media practitioners to capture their challenges, insights and to provide a state of the industry view.
Unsurprisingly, 100% of companies surveyed are present on LinkedIn, and 85% are on Twitter – they’re pretty crowded! On top of this, only 1/3 of brands tailor their content by channel and this is a real missed opportunity to serve your audience content that they want to see on each channel. You must adapt content to specific platforms to stand out amongst of the noise and ensure you are relevant, your message resonates and that you are tapping into the audience psychographics.
People-led content
Start small, then scale
A wonderful presentation from IBM’s Nada Alkutbi & Ryan Bares detailed the brand’s Influencer Marketing journey over the years, and one main idea that really stood out from it was start small, then scale. They suggested that if you are only starting out with Influencer Marketing, you should run a smaller influencer pilot to prove the results & success to your executives as well as stakeholders, and then scale and integrate Influencer Marketing within your wider strategy to see long-term results, and build lasting relationships with influencers who might become your brand’s advocates.
Integrating SMEs, Thought Leaders & external Influencers is key
The power of thought leadership in influencing is clear, but to fully unlock the power, you must integrate SMEs and external content creators. Anita Veszeli detailed the work Ericsson have done with their Integrated approach to influence and shed light on some of the rationale behind it. Collaboration should occur between an internal ‘owner’ of a specific relationship and an external influencer who is relevant in a niche topic. Then begins the process of network slicing where you can build on existing campaigns or create new ones together!
Importance of community
There appears to be a consensus from attendees that being back together, in-person and after three years in the virtual world, was a key highlight of the event. It reignited a sense of community amongst everyone, as we shared expertise and learnt from one another.
Community is all about moving away from broadcasting and towards two-way conversations, where everyone speaks with everyone. This is where the real magic and influencing happens.
In order to keep these conversations going and maintain that sense of community, Onalytica have partnered with Guild to build out a community of B2B Trailblazers to share knowledge and connect with likeminded individuals.
