Here you find the transcript regarding the Content Strategy Lausanne meetup with Alexandra Duncan about social content strategy.
Introduction by Isaline Muelhauser, host of Content Strategy Lausanne.
Talk by Alexandra Duncan, UX writer and data-driven content strategist for corporate communications.
Alexandra is a UX writer and data-driven content strategist for corporate communications based in Zurich. Initially working in marketing and communications, she naturally progressed into a role as a content strategist. She developed a specific interest in UX writing. Along the way, she developed a passion for sustainability and a drive to create social impact.
Follow Alexandra on Twitter: @alexsdesk
A big thank you to Alexandra. Preparing a presentation and being present to the meetup take a lot of time. Content Strategy Lausanne is nothing without speakers willing to share their knowledge. It was lovely to welcome Alexandra. You beautifully answered the questions.
Many thanks to all participants and community members for your support!
Full Webinar Recording with Alexandra Duncan about social content Strategy
The full recording is available to members of the community only. Please send me an email if you want to watch it isaline@pilea.ch
The social media landscape has changed dramatically over the past year. During COVID-19, all events and conferences went online. Most likely the first time someone connects with your brand, it will now be on a social media platform.
How does social fit into your overlying content strategy? Having a rethink about your social strategy lately? This talk is for you. Alexandra Duncan, UX writer and content strategist, will take you through the ins and outs of revamping your social accounts.
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Full transcript of the webinar with Alexandra Duncan
Transcript created with the help Ross John dela Rosa. Thanks Ross.
Isaline Muelhauser: I’m happy to see you here tonight. As you can see, we are in a meeting mode which means I think you are ready to… For the moment, turn off your microphone and then, after the chat, the presentation we can chat and ask questions and do all that. Can you first tell me if you can hear us well and see us well? And that everything- There are still a few people coming. They are joining us and we see the little thing. It means new people- Oh, I see! That’s so nice of you to say “Hello” in the chat. And I can see that you can hear us and see us. So, this is perfect. Also, if you want to… If anyone is new here with Zoom, if you want to send your message to us the panelists, I mean, Alexandra and me and everybody else you have to switch the little chat to everybody in the reunion so everybody can see your messages and it’s easier to discuss and talk together.
I am really happy to welcome you here tonight with Alexandra. Okay, thanks for the messages. I see that everybody can see and hear so this is perfect. So today we welcome Alexandra Duncan and she is based in Zürich. And she’s a Content Strategist and Content Writer. And she’s doing at the moment social strategies and she is sharing how we can think or maybe rethink our social strategy after everything that happened in the last year. Indeed, in the last year I turned, for instance, this webinar. Well, it was an in-person meeting. We used to meet with guest and then have a drink. And so now we’re live. So this is very different today. But still, it’s pretty cool because we get to invite people from all over the world. So today Alexandra and last time it was Lisiane from London. So I suppose there’s some good thing also in all of this covered situation.
Maybe a few words before we start. Content Strategy Lausanne is a local meetup designed to share everything about content strategy and UX writing and also a little bit of SEO. It’s mainly just to share knowledge and get to know each other. And this is one of the reasons I changed the format of the meeting today. It used to be a webinar which means you can see us but I can’t see you and we can’t really discuss. But I felt that after a year of COVID we’ve had so many webinars and I mean we want to meet people now, right? And ask question. So I thought it would be better to turn this webinar into a meeting.
Oh, maybe one thing before we start. So we are going to have the presentation for about 30-35 minutes and then, you can ask any questions and discuss. So you can ask the question through your favorite way. It’s either you ask it directly or if you prefer you can ask your question in the chat and I just ask them to Alexandra. So it’s really up to you. Do whatever you feel comfortable doing and I hope you’ll enjoy the presentation. So Alexandra, do you want to start?
Alexandra Duncan: I can speak, you can hear me now, right?
Isaline: Yes.
Alexandra: Okay. great! Thanks very much for the introduction and for bringing me on. For today, I don’t have any April fool’s jokes for everyone. It’s the 1st of April. But if you’re in Switzerland, thank you for joining me on such a sunny day right after work. And let’s get this started.
Oops, I seem to be having a… Isaline, do you have a… it seems to be stuck.
Isaline: Oh, you can’t go to the next slide?
Alexandra: I got it, okay.
Isaline: Okay. I don’t know what’s happened. Sorry about that.
Alexandra: Yeah, I’m not sure either. But I think I got it.
Isaline: Okay.
Alexandra: Okay, so thank you all for joining me. This is a little bit of an introduction of how you can design your social strategy for your brand. A lot of has happened in the past year. So, just sort of shake up with COVID and everything I wanted to kind of dissect to all the changes that have happened within the platforms and how you can kind of revisit your social strategy.
So during this talk, you can also live tweet if you like. You can add me on LinkedIn and also check out my website. If you’re ever in Zürich also happy to connect. It’s not so far from Lausanne. I don’t know how many people are actually located in Lausanne. But I’m happy to also hear where everyone is in the chat, where you’re coming from.
So today I’d like to focus on two different areas. One is Content Strategy and how that is based around sort of brand and content. And then, how that fits into a larger social media landscape. So we’ll also evaluate 2021 trends. I’ll give you a few tips. And then, also some resources where you’d like to get my information.
So starting with brand content and communication. Just a nice quote here from Gary V. I don’t know if anyone listens in. But he sort of here explains how quickly social media changed the landscape and also different technologies. So from radio to television, how Instagram was able to change in just in a year and a half. And revisit how we consume information and media.
So, why is social important? And what I’d like to sort of just explain here is that most of the time it’s the first touch point of your brand. So anytime someone’s looking for your particular brand out there they will be maybe doing first a search in Google. But one of the first things that could come up is also your social accounts. So if you have a Twitter account, a LinkedIn account and you name it they might be looking at you there first, actually before they even visit your website. Another thing is that it really carries a heavy weight in terms of your brand reputation, and also your brand awareness. So as an overall content strategy it might be only one piece of the puzzle. But it’s worth visiting because it has such prominence and visibility.
How does this fit into the larger social mix? What I would call and in terms of digital marketing so you have a many different types of marketing. social media marketing, email marketing, maybe you do things through text or an app, maybe you hire influencers to promote your material, or you have video ads or display ads, Google ads, et cetera. Social media is just one of the mix but where it should fit in with the rest of your content strategy is making sure that you align it with your business priorities and the rest of your objectives. And… also… You should make sure that whatever you post on social also is in line with your style and tone and book point of voice guidelines. So it shouldn’t have its own separate tone of voice. Maybe for different types of material you have a more serious tone. Maybe you could do something for branding. It might be a bit lighter. But it really is should be in line with the greater brand strategy. So you can see that you’ll also be consulting with different departments along the way. This might be that you need to influence your CMO, your chief marketing officer. It could also mean that you need to be in touch with the head of branding. So be always aware of how social media fits in with the whole scheme. If you’re working for a smaller organization this could look completely different. You don’t have huge heads of departments rather you might have one person that juggles a lot of different things and wears many hats. So I would say that make sure that you have everybody on board when you’re planning out your larger strategy.
And then, here in terms of the sales funnel so when you look at maybe how you would want to bring in new clients or think about conversions we’ll start here first, the stage of brand awareness and making sure someone’s aware. And then, once you’ve caught their interest maybe they started following your account, et cetera. Then you actually want to bring them in in terms of acquisition as a customer where they finally decide between you and your competitors. And then, take a final action. And that would be where you look at your conversions. So there are many different metrics that you can follow. We’ll go over a couple of them just now. But I encourage you to visit- I like Hootsuite. So you can see this little owl here at the bottom. There’s a lot of different metrics that are available on blogs. And I’ll show you which ones are the most too important to follow in terms of social media marketing and also how they are calculated. So, we’ll go through the calculations really quick right now.
Here’s just a couple. And I will here touch on awareness, so brand awareness metrics. One of them is your Audience Growth Rate. So how many new followers do you have versus your total amount of followers. And then, that’s how you get a growth rate percentage. That’s one thing that’s very high level in terms of metrics to follow.
Then going past, you have here Engagement. Well let’s actually move down to the awareness metrics. Social Share of Voice is also important. This is how many times your brand is actually mentioned on social media or in other media mentions if you have a large media outlet. Let’s say Bloomberg or The Guardian. They will also put on their social accounts and you will see that there will be a multiplier effect and amplify the message and also the amount of mentions that your brand gets.
Now if we move over to the top here on the right-hand side. We have the average engagement rate. So this is, some people call them vanity metrics. But I would say that they carry a lot more weight than that, so your likes, your comments, your shares. What you could include maybe an engagement metrics so are also conversational metrics. So if you’ve got a conversation going online and in general working with your community management team. So how you would also find that is by dividing it by your follower accounts.
And then, last but not least the Click-Through Rate. Now this tends to have a lower percentage than your engagement rate. Why? Because the platforms whether it be Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, what have you, they encourage you to stay on the platform itself. So they also, with their algorithms, favor types of posts that include staying on the platform longer. So you will see sometimes a 2% rate for a click-through rate. That’s quite normal. And that’s when you would actually drive traffic to a web page. But there are other types of engagement. And that would be video views, or like we said comments, likes, shares, et cetera.
So all these things are very, very important to keep in mind. There are many more metrics you can measure. These are just sort of a very high level. If there are any social media managers right there online then we can also discuss in the conversation afterwards what are some other ones that are important to cover.
Okay, so last year a lot of things changed. I just wanted to sort of give a brief introduction of reasons why someone would look on social media. In general, they’re there to stay up to date with current news and trends. They might stop on something funny. They want to spend some free time there and connect with their friends. They might want to purchase something. I would say also being a thought leader sharing their opinion. Maybe bringing their business online or within LinkedIn you can also have some thought leadership there. And then, you have general like celebrities, news, et cetera, daily life, and then, charities. These are sort of the general trends according to Hootsuite from this year. But I think COVID changed a lot because we all started going online to find out everything. Go to online events just like this one which maybe in the past would have been held in Lausanne.
So thinking about that, we’ll move to the next slide. So maybe just I don’t know if there’s anyone in the chat that just wants to answer this. Does anyone agree that it was COVID-19 that led the digital transformation of your company? Or was it the CEO? Or was it the CTO? I think a lot of people noticed that their companies had to radically make a lot of adjustments. Especially those that weren’t used to remote working and that they found out that now that the business model can actually change.
So what type of content are people looking at since COVID? We have here, this is from April 2020. So it’s just right after things were announced. You can see sort of the gender ratio. And then the different types of things that they would go. So it’s either a tutorial or it’s an ad. They want to check out one of their musicians, sports, live stream. You can see a lot of live streaming that’s also become more and more popular. And then sometimes it’s looking at a vlogger or something of the like.
Okay. Moving on. So social trends, what we’ve seen since last March 2020 and carrying on to this year that there’s been a huge rise in online events. And with that has come with heavy competition online. Everyone is always trying to win over your attention. And find out how they can grab you to go to this online event or to purchase this. And some people are feeling really inundated with a lot of information. And this has also been the case that there’s been a fall in engagement rates. So sometimes this is in for some good and bad. Sometimes people are passively consuming content. But social media marketers are now trying to find out how they can improve these once again in a new model.
So here’s some suggestions that I wanted to walk through with you in terms of how you can improve and optimize your profiles accordingly. So a lot of events previously that were live. What they were used for was a lot of customer engagement and that also that acquisition. So a lot of client-facing events were done in person. All the networking was done in person. This has changed. A lot of events are now going on a live stream. And they’re providing real-time feedback. They’re also introducing a lot of new types of content that are very interactive. So things that I played around with are polls, live, or leaving them open for a number of days. Also having a live chat function, putting out questionnaires and surveys that are also sometimes live if needed. I’ve also attended conferences online via conference apps that take place entirely. So it looks like you have a little avatar inside and you can meet and speak with people. You can attend also events or networking rooms and move from room to room. But all of it’s done digitally online. And then some of this is done in a virtual reality sense. So you can also wear a headset and walk into these conference rooms virtually.
Other things I’ve played with have been using gamification. So putting some kind of award or competition online in order to get more followers and do every all of that via social. So if you have a prize that you’re going to give you have to always say mention our account or use this hashtag and then there’s a reward for having that kind of traction on the internet.
And then also importantly but it’s not just about the online event that sometimes it’s stretching the event over a course of not just that one day. It would have taken place in real time and in real life and in person but rather that it’s extended time now so you can bring the expand the life of the event longer. And you can also do a lot of promotion post event and amplify everything that’s happening. So I’ve given an example here at the bottom from Chipotle where they’ve just like our meeting now that they’ve asked you to join Zoom for one of their events. So just as an example.
Okay, moving on. So competition like I said there’s a lot of high competition. And some companies are also experiencing budget cuts at the same time. I would actually try and encourage you to still speak with your CMO to invest more into marketing. Because if you stop now that means a lot of catch up later. So always think about the future not just the present. And think about how you can make the most of what you have. But also look at maybe even investing more in order to stay in the lead. Another one way of doing that is by proving your what you call your social ROI or Return on Investment. So that would be counting all of the money invested in your marketing efforts on social. Counting even the head count of people, the salaries, the money that you spend on software. And then looking at the return in terms of conversions. How much those conversions equate to revenue for the company? And then, showing that how much you prove the value behind that. Now if you’re short on budget, there’s a lot of things that you can do to work with what you have. I would say actually in some cases, many companies have seen a lot of success by reducing their published content. And that means that you only stick to what you know does best because there’s so much competition out there that you could use the highest performing posts. And then, also looking at using what you call UGC or User Generated Content. So content that is actually coming from the users or some of your followers. And then another thing you can do is recruit influencers. So also what I found is that some influencers are willing to strike a bargain more around COVID times right now.
Alexandra: Okay, so another thing that happens with COVID is a lot of technical issues while everyone’s at home. So we can pick back up. So engagement, what’s been also, I guess, high or low for depending on your company. But some people have expressed that they’ve had low is that you can also work at revisiting your customer journey. So looking at now you’re maybe in a total digital space and what you had was sort of a hybrid mix and was in-person and online and maybe you use some other element. So looking at how you can also bring things into a fully digital experience. I’m having issues again. Is it the same for you?
Alexandra: Okay so moving on from revisiting your customer journey. Also now is a great time to try out new formats, features and ad types. So what’s come that’s new in the past year has been LinkedIn stories. And what you would call tweets so Twitter stories. But they call them tweets. And also using carousel ads for Twitter. So using a whole different ad mix and new formats and features. What performs the best for most marketers is still video. So me I’m getting at least five times more engagement on videos. And I advise with all my internal stakeholders to use around videos under 60 seconds. So anything from 15 if it’s a short one that has images that move from one to the other like a GIF or just a short branded video that’s 45 seconds, 30 seconds, 60 seconds, something like that. And back on the subject of trying to make your customer journey a little bit more in touch with the digital realm. We have here Reebok on the right here. And they’re encouraging you to do your workouts at home. And they’re even saying they can customize your workout for you.
Okay, we can move to the next slide. So now is a great time to do general housekeeping. if you have some downtime, I would say I would encourage you to revisit yours.
Alexandra: So there is social media policies, governance policies, your employee participation policies, and also your community guidelines. Let’s say that you would want to look at those things you can look at revisiting and seeing if it’s up to date with what’s whatever is going on. I would also revisit your crisis communications process. Maybe there’s something in the funk or doesn’t work in a COVID situation How you can move that online dealing with everyone? Maybe you have meetings where you’d actually be in person. Think about how you would operate that in another environment. The next one- I know it’s all black but I can talk to it. Invest in more social marketing, as I mentioned. Try and get more ad spend larger budgets that sort of thing.
And then, the last one I’m trying to see if I can read it. Ah! I remember, Style Guide. So looking at updating your style guide. So there are always new hashtags, new emojis, or maybe a different voice and tone that you want to adapt to a new era. So I would say don’t keep that sitting for a number of years. Make sure you revisit it often. And that you keep adding to it, change it, and also make sure that you’re always in line with branding.
Alexandra: Yeah, well I can tell you off the bat where I go to for information. So there’s a lot of social media publishing platforms that have their own services. They, on top of that, provide a wealth of information in terms of blogs, in terms of podcasts, in terms of templates that you can use. And I’ll just list off a few and you can go over them later. So there’s Buffer, there’s Later, there’s Hootsuite, there’s, what else, Sprinkler. They all have different reasons you would use them. But I would say check out the resources there. In terms of podcasts, ones that I’ve liked in the past, one is held by Buffer and it’s, The Science of Social Media. Another one that’s quite good but it’s kind of a mix. It’s actually social media and politics. So it’s mixing what’s happening in the rest of the world and in the industry and then applying it to the platforms and how they work. And they interview academics, they interview people at think tanks, they interview people that work in the press. So it’s not just the industry and the people that are tactically approaching these sort of marketing trends.
Lastly, on the last slide I have a book that I’m reading. It’s called, “One Million Followers.” It’s the latest and by Brendan Kane. They did the recently updated version. And there I found that there’s really good advice if you’re looking to grow your following what works, how you make content go viral and the like.
So my very last slide is just to connect. Connect to me and if you want to reach out via LinkedIn or Twitter or what have you, I’m happy to have a conversation afterwards if you’re curious or if you’re in the Lausanne or Zürich area. So thanks a lot everyone for your patience for the technical difficulties. And hope to meet you sometime in person as well. Happy to open up now for questions. If any of you would like to either write in the chat or just go ahead and speak live and we can go over them.
Isaline: Yeah, so if you want to speak live you can just raise your hands and I’ll just moderate and give everyone place to speak or you can also just write the questions in the chat and we’ll answer them. Or you can also share with us your experience like in the past year. What did you do? What did you change? How can you relate to what Alexandra just said? So this is like open conversation.
Isaline: I was wondering… What you would recommend for like if there is a difference if your public is very local or if your public is more international?
Alexandra: Yeah. There’s a lot of things you can do. Local, I would say always do if you only want to be local, right? There’s a difference between being local and then having ambitions of going global. And then there’s ambitions of just keeping the conversation small. So I would say always geo-target all of your posts. And also make sure you can also put an identifier of where you’re posting from. So if you’re doing like a live conference, let’s say it’s in Zürich. Sometimes it’s good to post that it’s your base that it’s in Zürich so that you can be trending, let’s say on Twitter for example for all the hashtags that are coming up. Also I would say the language content is very important. So if you’re looking at a very local audience or international, let’s say you have a very large Chinese market then you would stick to the certain channels or platforms like WeChat or Weibo or something like that. You would also make sure that the content is in Chinese. It’s not in English. Let’s say you operate in Switzerland and then you realize that you want to reach all of Switzerland that means you need five different languages that you need to communicate to. So I would also think about making sure that you target the right audiences. And you can also do this by region even by city. So it doesn’t mean that you target just a country. It can be in a very, very specific scope.
Isaline: That’s very interesting. It means that already on the content level and the type of language you want to use, one has to think about the targeting not just targeting when posting but actually targeting already while you think about what you want to say. So, thank you for this answer.
Alexandra: Yes.
Isaline: I see that Kyara has a question. So Kyara, I invite you to turn your mic to… not–
Kyara: Hear us.
Isaline: Yes, exactly. So we can hear you. Perfect.
Kyara: Thank you so much. So first of all, congratulations for managing the technology because I know sometimes it’s nerve-wracking but I’m very impressed. So thank you very much for the content because this has been very engaging. I do have a question which is not around. How do you manage the, let me say, controversial responses? So all of this, so let me say, sharing and posting, et cetera. Also figure, sometimes the responses we don’t like to receive. How do you deal with that? What’s the best way?
Alexandra: So back to the housekeeping is making sure you have a very established crisis communications flow. And I would say that’s even in a very small organization that you should have that set up. You should have also sort of a board or an oversight a group of people that would be involved in a process. How they approach the actual situation at hand? Who they should communicate with? Because if you don’t have that in place when there’s a problem that comes up people just explode. And then they contact everyone and then you don’t have the proper workflow in place. So I would say, first make sure you have that set up. Now when you have that set up I would say also, what’s at hand? If it’s, let’s say an HR issue, maybe you need to give a whistleblower hotline or something. It could be a range of topics. Maybe it’s a critical voice about your particular product. Maybe it’s, so I would say, if there is a blanket answer or a very corporate answer or a very distinct answer that should come from your company. Always get it approved by your legal department before you post. And if it’s really in for sometimes it’s just informational sometimes someone just wants a question. So you just need to guide them to the right place. So either it’s on their website but a lot of times I found also that people are just interested in speaking to the expert on whatever it’s handling. So oftentimes if I see something that is either criticism or they’re needing more information or what have you I try and find the in-house expert and I connect them. Even online and have them write to them personally and say you can reach out to me if you have more questions about this or that. And then if it’s very serious then sometimes you have to flag it a notch higher. But that should be indicated in your crisis flow.
Kyara: Thank you.
Isaline: Well, that’s very interesting.
Isaline: It means that one has to have really… It’s about internal collaboration really because you are going to seek the HR or the project person or the right person who will get like the right answer. So thanks for the insights.
Alexandra: Sure.
Isaline: We have a question from Laura in the chat. And she’s asking, do you have a platform in mind to lay out your social media schedule for the whole year? What’s your favorite?
Alexandra: For the whole year, I mean there are different templates. Anyways if you go to Hubspot, if you go to Hootsuite, if you go to any of these that are mentioned in my presentation which you’ll get later, they all have design templates. So you can pick that out. Now there’s a difference between a template for your strategy for the whole year and what you would say also as like a publishing platform. And there you can also really organize things but it all depends on your needs. So I would say, I can’t say directly choose this or that. I would say analyze, write down, map out what you’ve done. Are you heavy on paid, organic? Do you have established paid owned earn strategy where you integrate everything? And do you have different stakeholders that are involved? Do you need, you know? So I would say really map everything out first and then shop around. But also just generally have a look and see what the industry provides already as a template because there’s no need for you to go invent your own.
Isaline: Oh, that’s good! I really like the idea of analyzing one’s needs before actually jumping into a solution and just thinking about what we need and what’s the scope. Really good, thanks. And I see that Ayanfe would like to jump in. You have to forgive me for my heavy French accent. So if I say your name wrong you can say it again right after me. So, Ayufe Adeboye I invite you to turn on your mic and ask your question.
Ayanfe: Thank you so much and you’re really close with my name. It’s pronounced Ayanfe.
Alexandra: Okay.
Ayanfe: You’re good. So I work for a public relations agency. And a lot of the clients that I work with need to disperse content in multiple languages. With some clients it’s upwards of foul languages. And I was curious like what’s the best way to conduct like a multilingual content strategy? Like for me I’ve always been a little reluctant to… They’re just like hesitant to release content in a variety of different languages just because I’m afraid it may confuse or frustrate our followers who primarily speak English. But I’d like to hear your thoughts.
Alexandra: So if you say that primarily your followers are English speaking I would look at a ranking firstly. So it’s okay to have a multilingual approach. But know also what languages, what countries, what regions are most important and then do your ranking that way and also your ad spend. So you can group countries if you’re doing, let’s say you do sponsor. If you’re only doing organic you can just do your target all of those posts directly. But if you’re doing ads you can cluster countries in terms of not even languages but in like importance of spending, right? So you can say… Yeah you can use the China and US. Let’s say, as big markets for your industry. And then put them in the same ad spend in terms of funneling. So I would say prioritization is probably key. But if you already know that you have an international audience you still need to be mindful of it not do everything in English because you will lose some of your followers. And also look at the type of platforms you’re using. So not- Around the world, people use different platforms. Some are even banned. So take a look at where the languages or the countries and what platforms they use the most. And what would be most effective in order to reach out to your audience. I think one resource I would direct you to is Hootsuite’s Digital Report They have one that they do annually and also quarterly. And they sort of do a map out of all the different channels and favored channels, and platforms where different countries are available. So, of course, if you look at the very top end most people are using Facebook, most people are using YouTube, right? But that’s not the case in some countries that you might still need to reach out to in terms of gaining the audience. I hope that helps. If it doesn’t, let me know, I can…
Ayanfe: It does. Thank you so much.
Alexandra: Okay. Yeah, you’re welcome.
Isaline: Thank you Alexandra. And now we have a question. Yolanda, would you like to jump in and turn on your mic and ask your question?
Yolanda: Yes, can you hear me?
Isaline: Yes, all fine.
Yolanda: Hi, Alex.
Alexandra: Hi there.
Yolanda: Alex and I used to work together so I’m super, super proud of you. This presentation was awesome and congrats on not getting frustrated.
Alexandra: Thank you.
Yolanda: I wanted to see if you could expand a little bit because this is when the slides started going a little wacky. On the topic of user-generated content,
Alexandra: Sure.
Yolanda: you were starting to talk through how that could potentially help. And I was just curious about that topic in general and what your recommendations were there.
Alexandra: Yeah, so depending on the industry, I can say. Some clever again- Okay, first I’ll start with B2C. So just a clever campaign, for example, was done by Coca-Cola. And they put, if you remember, they put names on the can. And they said, “Share a coke with-” and then they had the names of people. Nutella also did this. So people actually posted photos of themselves with the can because their name was on it, right? And sometimes it would say, “Share a coke with a friend,” et cetera. So that’s sort of a B2C example. If you’re looking at sometimes B2B it’s actually not as tricky as you think. There’s because, I say COVID right now, on all events online are happening and you can easily retweet a lot of things that people are taking a screenshot of or posting their own tweet, “I went to this,” et cetera. And then you can reuse that on your own profile. And sometimes it’s better than the content that someone feeds you inside of your organization because the person was actually there, right? So I would say that’s one easy way. And then also if you have very big influencers, they can also serve as huge endorsements. So if you have someone in the industry that’s really well-known if they post something like an article that features your company or something about your brand or something about the product then that can be a huge endorsement. So I would also encourage sharing that again on your profile and keeping that community management up.
Yolanda: Great, thank you.
Alexandra: Yeah, you’re welcome.
Yolanda: Awesome!
Isaline: We have now a question from another name that I will probably butcher again. But forgive me. So a question from Vikram. Alexandra, what would you recommend to increase social engagement for a mid-level technology B2B brand?
Alexandra: Ooh!
Isaline: Good question though.
Alexandra: Engagement for a B2B tech brand, I think it also- Can I know what kind of industry it is besides tech?
Isaline: Vikram, do you want to share more with us? What kind of industry? Is it a product?
Alexandra: It would help if I know products or services, too. Because then you know…
Isaline: Vikram wrote digital transformation consulting firm. So it’s service.
Alexandra: It’s services, okay. So good to know and what angle. Then I would say also that you should look at brand ambassadors. So anyone whom you’ve done partnership with, anyone that’s been a former client and using those client testimonials that’s been something that has worked really well for me in terms of B2B content. And making sure also, nowadays like that there’s fair representation so make sure that you’re always getting the different angles. Not that it’s always high-level C suite but that you also get someone that’s closer to the actual project. Endorsing it as well. That I think has been really powerful. And then, using employee advocacy. So I don’t know if you use any employee advocacy tools in your company. But if it’s on a smaller scale they don’t always exist. So you have to just kind of organize yourselves over email. But some of them that are out there on the market are like Hootsuite Amplify, or Smarp, or Sociabble where you have all your colleagues that are hooked up to the same platform. And then they just disperse content from that platform and you can already curate all the content. So you can have the messaging controlled and everything that they should actually post. And then you have this sort of amplifying effect of everything that they say. That is then put again online. And it’s not just coming from a corporate profile it’s also endorsements from your colleagues. And that you tend to also trust honestly a lot of things coming from someone you know rather than always a brand. So it has actually quite a very powerful effect for conversions as well.
Isaline: Oh, I think I need to have the different steps in a nutshell again because that was so interesting. So you said employee advocacy. You mentioned testimonials from clients. And there was a third one.
Alexandra: A third one, what did I say?
Isaline: I think you mentioned something else.
Alexandra: Client testimonials and… I’m not sure. I think someone in the chat might have got it.
Isaline: Yeah, so but they were the two. That’s two most important. So good, thanks–
Alexandra: Brand ambassadors I think was maybe that was the other one.
Isaline: Yeah, brand ambassadors.
Alexandra: Inside, I would say inside and also outside of the organization. So not just and not always the usual suspects because people don’t want to see always the same faces. They want to see new ones. So I would encourage also using like I say a broad spectrum.
Isaline: Yes that’s what you said being representative. Awesome! I saw a question from Maileys. Where would you start from in an organization that is mostly reactive with its social media content? How do you start being proactive? What would be the first step? How can you break the tasks into something that is not a huge hill but something that can be done?
Alexandra: Yeah, again it goes back to prioritizing what you have in mind. So again, you don’t want to be- yeah, you don’t want to do something just reactive you also want to ride the trends and surf what’s happening on the web. You don’t want to just… You know, only post just because you’ve seen it somewhere else. So I would say, revisit your business priorities and making sure that you have them in line with your value proposition, right? Your unique value. Your USP.
Isaline: Thanks a lot. Do we have any other question? Let me check if someone’s raising their hands. I don’t think so. So I think we’ve covered every questions. Yes! You will get the slide from the presentation.
Alexandra: Yeah, no worries.
Isaline: We are going to show that. We’ll discuss with Alexandra what’s the best way to share everything. And also usually I publish them. We’ll see if we publish the recording of the webinar, maybe only for the community. But I’ll send you a message through the meetup platform with all this kind of information, right? Great! So I think if we don’t have any more questions, well that’s a wrap. So honestly, we need to give you a huge congratulation Alexandra for keeping you cool in this situation. And just following the threads of your slides and your presentation because it takes lots of energy to be here tonight after work and before a long holiday even. And then just dealing with technical issues, well that’s complicated. So congratulations for keeping you cool. That’s awesome. So it’s very inspiring. Thank you.
Alexandra: Yes, you’re welcome.
Isaline: And also thank you for answering all of the questions. And thank you everyone for all of your questions. If you have any other follow-up questions honestly, just reach out on Twitter to Alexandra and me or LinkedIn or even send me a message through meetup and I’ll just send it to Alexandra. So we are here to help you with whatever challenge and maybe showing you great resources or articles or… Just don’t hesitate. Thanks a lot everybody!
Alexandra: Have a nice weekend everyone!
Isaline: Yeah, enjoy the four days break. I don’t know if everyone has four days. Happy Easter! Bye.
Alexandra: Bye.