Business-to-business companies often struggle with social media. I hear clients and prospects worry about what to post, the tone of voice to use and why their social media campaigns don’t seem to generate results. There must be a better way for B2B companies to approach social media!
Recently I had the opportunity to talk to Emeric Ernoult, co-founder of Agorapulse on the Marketing B2B Technology podcast. I’ll let you into a little secret: the reason I do the podcast because it gives me the opportunity to talk to amazing people who I’d probably not meet if I didn’t interview them. I’ve said to a couple of people that the interview with Emeric was one of those where I took notes during our discussion. I know they think it’s hyperbole, so I thought I should write up those notes in a blog post.
Why is B2B Social Media so Hard?
Today, social is not the primary marketing channel for most B2B companies, but it’s hard. Emeric said that “social media is probably the most chaotic channel in the whole marketing world”. Most other channels are pretty constrained in terms of what you do. Social is not.
There are so many potential platforms to use for social. Even picking the ones to use can be complex. Then you need to understand how each of them works: they are all different, and you’ll only get the best results if you create different content. You’ve also got the challenge of measurement, the problem of a long time horizon to generate results and the need for some sort of tool to manage comments and messages on the incompatible platforms, particularly if you have deployed a team for social and they need to cooperate.
Platform Strategy
Fairly obviously Emeric suggests choosing a platform based on audience location: if your audience is active on a particular platform, that’s probably the best place to go. He said, “if you’re not laser focused on where you believe you can get the most value … it can be quite risky to go too broad and spread yourself too thin”. So, you need to focus so that you can excel on the most important platform(s).
Interestingly B2B audiences are not always most active on LinkedIn: Emeric said that because his audience of social media managers tends to be very active on Facebook, that’s where Agorapulse puts their focus. For most B2B companies, however, LinkedIn is likely to be the first port of call.
However, Emeric also said, “And maybe Meta could be good for retargeting, but that’s a paid play.” Meta (Facebook, Instagram) is generally cheaper for retargeting than LinkedIn, something that’s always worth remembering.
Content format
Emeric believes that video is the most power format, saying “…useful, practical advice through video and probably short form videos.”
Emeric even recommended a simple four-step process (we like four-step processes at Napier!) for creating content easily:
- Start a podcast
- Use the video of the podcast to create short form videos
- Focus on YouTube.
- Try other channels (TikTok, LinkedIn, etc)
Entertain, Educate, or Add Value
Emeric’s recipe is simple. You should focus on educating and entertaining. He said, “…be the entertainer, be the educator on social, be all these things that are of interest to the audience, 75% of the time…”
Yes! Most of your posts on social media shouldn’t be trying to sell.
But for 25% of the time, you can do a bit of selling. Emeric put it this way: you should say, “hey, you’ve loved everything I’ve shared with you for the past two weeks. We are organizing this webinar. Go ahead, go on my website, and make sure you register, because we’re going to share so much more there. And it’s one hour. It’s a full thing. It’s exactly what you need”.
But then Emeric returned to what was a theme of the interview: it’s really hard to make great content. The only good thing is everyone finds it hard – he said, “in order to convince yourself that it’s really, really hard, be honest and look at the last time you watched a B2B company entertain you on anything … When is the last time that person blew your mind? and made you feel like, wow, that’s great. I want to follow them.”
Of course, the reality is that marketing is hard. Full stop. Emeric pointed out, “But let’s not lie to ourselves. It’s also really hard to do in email. It’s also really hard to do in paid. I mean, paid is going to give you the mirage of it’s easy. But it’s not easy. What’s easy is to waste your money. What is not easy is to make it work for you. Being good at any kind of marketing channel is always a huge, humongous challenge.” I guess B2B marketers have just been practicing paid and email more than social.
You don’t have to be funny. You can educate rather than entertain. Emeric put it this way, “I think you have to think about what can I deliver to an audience that’s unique to me and that nobody else can really deliver as good as I will.” I particularly liked his optimistic view that although it’s hard, we can all deliver entertaining and engaging comments. He summarised it simply: “If it’s fun for you, it’s going to be fun for them.”
Towards the end of the interview, when I asked Emeric about the best marketing advice that had been given to him, he talked about understanding how to connect the customers’ pain to your solution. He suggested thinking in terms of a triangle:
- Know the pain deeply
- Understand all available solutions
- Embed your product as one of those solutions
Measurement of Social Media
I was particularly keen to ask Emeric about measurement of social media – measuring RoI is one of the key features of Agorapulse. So, I was more than a little surprised when he said, “And if you’re a B2B … You’re not going to measure revenue. We can measure revenue generated from social media if you’re selling a $15, 15 euro, 15 pound pop, small thing that people can buy in, you know, in a snap … But if you’re buying a 500 a month or 800 or 1000 a month piece of B2B service or B2B software, there’s no way you’re going to generate a ton of revenue from Snapchat. It’s not going to happen.”
Wow social isn’t going to drive large amounts of revenue. So why are we doing it. Here’s where Emeric delivered my favourite quote from the interview: “It’s going to be a lever of influence for the eventual purchase.”
So intuitively true. But how do you measure levers of influence? Of course he had an answer. Firstly, he highlighted the challenges: “that’s why your analytics framework needs to be really, really nailed.” Then he explained what to do, saying, “So that way you can measure precisely: we got that many webinar subscriptions, we got that many e-book downloads, we got that many blog posts read, that many YouTube video of you or podcast downloads and so on and so forth. And that’s how you’re going to track business impact in a B2B environment, not through revenue.”
My Next Actions
Emeric’s interview can be summarised very simply: entertain and educate 75% of the time, sell 25% of the time. I’m going to try to do just that. I’m cutting down on the number of posts I do that have links or sales messages. And I’m going to have more fun on LinkedIn. Hopefully Emeric was right when he said that if I have fun, the audience will also enjoy the content.
Will it work? Obviously, I’m going to say follow me on LinkedIn to find out!
You can listen to our full chat here: Navigating Social Media Chaos – Podcast with Agorapulse
