In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, thought leadership has become an essential element for CEOs in the B2B technology sector. By positioning themselves as industry experts and influencers, they can build credibility, trust, and visibility among their target audience. Social media serves as a powerful channel to cultivate executive thought leadership, enabling CEOs to connect with their audience and share valuable insights. In this blog post, we’ll explore how B2B tech CEOs can leverage social media platforms to establish themselves as executive thought leaders in their industry.
Identifying the Ideal Social Media Platforms
There are numerous social media platforms available, but not all of them may be suitable for B2B tech CEOs. LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube are the most popular platforms catering to different audiences and content formats. LinkedIn is a professional networking platform and is ideal for sharing industry news, thought leadership articles, and engaging with other professionals. Twitter, on the other hand, is perfect for sharing quick insights, news, and opinions. YouTube enables CEOs to showcase their expertise through video content, such as presentations, interviews, and webinars. Another platform worth considering is Instagram, which has the highest ROI and biggest growth opportunities for businesses. Although only a third of B2B marketing companies currently use Instagram, it presents an opportunity for growth and a chance to tap into a new audience.
To select the right platform(s), B2B tech CEOs should consider their target audience’s preferences and their own goals and expertise. Analyzing competitor activity and understanding where similar conversations are happening can also help in making an informed decision.
Building a Personal Brand on Social Media
Creating a strong personal brand on social media is crucial for B2B tech CEOs seeking to establish executive thought leadership on social media. This involves aligning their online presence with their professional goals and values. Here are some tips for building a captivating social media presence:
Use professional headshots: A high-quality, professional headshot helps create a positive first impression and reflects the CEO’s commitment to excellence.
Write a compelling bio: A persuasive bio should clearly outline the CEO’s expertise, accomplishments, and unique value proposition.
Showcase expertise: Share content that demonstrates the CEO’s knowledge and experience, such as articles, presentations, or case studies.
Crafting Compelling Social Media Content
Engaging content is the cornerstone of executive thought leadership on social media. Here are some ideas for creating content that resonates with the target audience:
Use visuals: Visual content, such as images, infographics, and videos, helps capture the audience’s attention and enhances information retention.
Leverage storytelling: Sharing personal experiences and anecdotes can make content more relatable and memorable.
Provide value: Focus on offering actionable insights and solutions to the audience’s pain points, rather than just promoting products or services.
Plan Ahead: To maintain a consistent posting schedule, consider creating a content calendar that outlines the topics and formats to be shared over a specific period.
Connecting with the Target Audience
Engagement is a critical component of thought leadership on social media. By actively participating in conversations, B2B tech CEOs can build relationships and establish their expertise. Here are some strategies for engaging with the target audience:
Respond to comments and messages: Show appreciation for the audience’s feedback by responding to their comments and messages promptly.
Participate in groups and chats: Join relevant social media groups and participate in industry discussions to expand your network and share your expertise.
Share relevant content: Curate and share insightful content from other thought leaders to demonstrate your commitment to staying informed and fostering industry growth.
Assessing the Impact of Social Media Efforts
Measuring the impact of social media initiatives is essential for understanding their effectiveness and optimizing future efforts. Key performance indicators may include social media metrics (likes, shares, comments), website traffic, and lead generation. By analyzing these data points, B2B tech CEOs can identify trends, areas for improvement, and opportunities for growth. Here are some tactics for optimizing social media efforts based on insights gained:
Monitor engagement metrics: Track likes, shares, and comments to identify which content types and topics resonate most with your audience. Adjust your content strategy accordingly to maximize engagement.
Analyze website traffic: Use tools like Google Analytics to understand how social media efforts are driving traffic to your website. Identify which platforms and content types generate the most visits and optimize your strategy to capitalize on these trends.
Evaluate lead generation: Assess the quality and quantity of leads generated through social media activities. If lead generation is a primary objective, consider incorporating targeted calls-to-action and lead magnets in your content to encourage conversions.
Establishing executive thought leadership as a B2B tech CEO requires leveraging the power of social media to connect with your target audience, share valuable insights, and demonstrate expertise. By identifying the ideal platforms, building a strong personal brand, crafting compelling content, engaging with the audience, and assessing the impact of your efforts, you can effectively position yourself as an industry expert and influencer. So, don’t hesitate – start harnessing the potential of social media to elevate your thought leadership and enhance your personal brand today.
Are you looking for new ways to expand your reach on LinkedIn that don’t involve a significant amount of time or financial resources?
LinkedIn Live, LinkedIn Events, and LinkedIn Newsletters are worthy features to consider for promoting the content you already have.
Creator Mode
LinkedIn allows you to make a simple change to your profile, enabling you to access new capabilities. Creator mode is a profile setting on your dashboard that can help you grow your reach and influence on LinkedIn. By turning on creator mode, you can access additional tools and features that help you create content and grow your audience base on LinkedIn. A massive benefit to Creator mode is the ability to utilize creator analytics which provides aggregate analytics to show how your content portfolio performs over time. Creator mode allows you to use previously unavailable tools, such as LinkedIn Newsletter and LinkedIn Live.
LinkedIn Events
LinkedIn Events helps organizations deepen relationships with target audiences by bringing their professional community together via a closed and invitation-driven event on LinkedIn. LinkedIn Events can be utilized to reach many different goals. Some top content ideas that see the most success include community and brand-building events, conferences, targeted-audience events, and talent branding. As home to the world’s largest professional community, LinkedIn offers the features and ecosystem to make any event a success.
LinkedIn Live
LinkedIn Live helps organizations drive unprecedented reach and brand awareness by bringing their professional community together via a public and discoverable event on LinkedIn. The first step to utilizing these powerful tools is to apply for access. LinkedIn Live turns the challenge of digital events into opportunities to reach and engage with your audience more widely than ever before.
LinkedIn Events vs. LinkedIn Live
LinkedIn Events are the best option if your goal is to build a community through sustained quality engagement. LinkedIn Events can be planned weeks or months in advance, with opportunities to engage your audience before, during, and after your event. Your event’s unique URL can be shared through multiple channels, making LinkedIn Events an excellent option for reaching targeted audiences you want to engage with more deeply. LinkedIn Events live streams are private to attendees, and your attendee list is viewable.
LinkedIn Live by itself is a good option when striving to achieve top-of-funnel goals like brand awareness and reach. Your live broadcast is available to anyone on LinkedIn and will be aired publicly. Since your Page followers are most likely to view it, each broadcast triggers a notification to a subset of your followers. It is a best practice to stick with content topics that you know will appeal to your existing LinkedIn audience. When using LinkedIn Live on its own, you can engage with attendees during the event but cannot view the attendee list.
You can host events in a trusted, end-to-end environment by combining both tools. LinkedIn Live Events offer a safe environment that is a one-stop-shop for attendees. You will now be capable of engaging your audience before, during, and after your event with a product created for a low-friction, high-attendee experience.
LinkedIn Newsletter
By leveraging LinkedIn Newsletter, you can regularly discuss professional topics you’re passionate about. Other LinkedIn members can then subscribe to your newsletter and are notified about newly published articles, allowing you to build and grow your regularly engaged audience.
By starting a newsletter on LinkedIn, you can engage your audience from the minute you publish. LinkedIn makes it easy to invite all your connections or followers to subscribe when you create a newsletter. Also, after publishing each newsletter article, push, in-app, and email notifications are sent to all your subscribers to help drive views. You’ll get real-time feedback and comments from your readers, and you can understand how your content is doing with analytics.
Conclusion
With tools like LinkedIn Live, LinkedIn Events, and LinkedIn Newsletters, you can expand your reach without adding a significant amount of new resources. Become a true LinkedIn Creator and share your content regularly within your professional community. Before you know it, you will be regarded as a business that can share expertise and ignite conversations about ideas and experiences.
These days, SEO is a frequent acronym used among marketing professionals as they develop and implement their marketing plans and campaigns. SEO has become an integral part of marketing strategies for any organization that wants to survive and strive in the digital era of the internet. But as a B2B marketer, you might be asking yourself how does SEO work for my business?
Defining SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of boosting your brand’s visibility on search engines, namely Google. Its goal is to increase your organic web traffic and lead qualified internet users to download your resources and fill out your web forms. SEO requires your team to optimize digital assets by:
Providing metadata
Developing code
Editing digital content
Writing new, SEO-friendly content
Technically, SEO is part of search engine marketing (SEM). SEM focuses on placing your brand’s digital assets at the top of search engine results. While there are other SEM strategies, SEO is the most effective for B2B businesses.
Defining SERP and Indexing
Two other terms are critical to SEO. A search engine results page (SERP) is what appears when you type a query into Google. A complex algorithm determines the order of SERPs, but SEO helps improve ranking. Your business wants to be on the first page. Page one results have a 71% CTR while pages two and three have a combined CTR of 6%. Indexing refers to adding web pages into Google search. Non-indexed sites won’t show up on SERPs. WordPress websites are automatically indexed. Google crawlers also follow links and discover websites to add to their index.
The Three Types of SEO
There are three types of SEO:
On-page SEO includes activities carried out on webpages that will be published (e.g., inserting keywords, links, or meta tags)
Off-page SEO includes activity performed on a webpage after it goes live (e.g., sharing, liking, or commenting on the post to build engagement)
Technical SEO includes behind-the-scenes website setup activities (e.g., creating SSL or XML sitemaps)
For the best results, your team should use each of these tactics.
The Process of Keyword Research
Your website should appear in search results when internet users type in relevant keywords. SEO empowers your brand to rank for keywords. For example, a digital marketing agency may want to rank for the keyword phrase “SEO strategy.” Your team must conduct keyword research to determine which keywords your business should rank for. Keyword research is in-depth research into keywords that receive ample search requests. Once your team identifies these keywords, they can begin including them in their content. As a result, your content will rank higher with search engines and additionally, appear higher on SERPs. When conducting keyword research, here is a recommended approach:
Consider Your Prospects’ Online Searches
Research search queries people are using to find your business, similar companies, and even competitors. These keywords can be found through Google Autocomplete, Google Search Console, Reddit, or even SEO tools like Ahrefs. Make sure to include every stage of the sales funnel. If it helps, replicate the buyer’s journey (awareness, consideration, decision) and designate topics or key phrases that prospects might be searching for. When creating keywords consider:
What are the problems that your personas face?
How could they be searching for ways to overcome these pain-points?
How are you the solution?
What are the main features of your product or service?
What are the keywords driving the highest amount of organic traffic for your competitors?
Use SEO Tools
Type these words and phrases into SEO tools like Ahrefs. These tools reveal volume, competition, keyword difficulty, and more. With this data, you’ll be able to distinguish and create a list of the best keywords to optimize your website and content for.
Optimizing B2B SEO for Businesses
SEO tactics are useful in any industry. However, there are a few B2B-specific SEO tactics every B2B marketing team should know.
Promote Thought Leader Content
B2B businesses make many sales through their thought leaders. Ask your brand’s top thought leaders to write blog posts and other content. Publish them on your website, and link to them on your professional networking sites.
Publish Original Research
Publishing proprietary data on your website will attract attention from bloggers and journalists in your niche. They will link to your website, boosting your SEO without extra effort on your team’s behalf. You’ll also further establish your business as a credible source.
Pick High-Value, Low-Volume Keywords
B2B businesses should focus on high-value, low-volume keywords. Long-tail keywords, which contain 3 or more words, are also preferable. They are more specific and may fit your brand better. This is especially important if your product solves a niche problem.
Use Keywords from Disrupted Industries
If your product is disrupting an industry (or two), include keywords from the industry you’re disrupting. They will probably be more popular than those for your new product, and you’ll be able to draw attention away from older solutions.
Create Keyword-Specific Landing Pages
There’s a good chance that your brand will have multiple top keywords. Create landing pages for each keyword. These landing pages should offer valuable content that centers on the relevant focus keywords, as well as support keywords.
Provide Value
Your content team may feel pressured to create a large quantity of content for the sole purpose of promoting your keywords. However, search engines are getting better and better at identifying keyword-stuffed content. Plus, customers won’t trust your brand if they come across content that’s less than the best. Ensure all of your content prioritizes value—while staying SEO-friendly.
Diversify Content Types
Most blog posts are about 500 words. Most of your website’s blog posts can be this length. However, include additional staple blog posts of 800+ words, eBooks, white papers, guides, and other critical content. Use these longer pieces to collect valuable customer data—and further analyze your audience.
How to Work with a B2B SEO Agency
B2B SEO agencies provide expert SEO advice and content that helps your brand increase web traffic and generate more leads. Working with them should be a collaborative, streamlined process. When you begin working with a B2B SEO agency, be sure to:
Assign a dedicated agency contact
Communicate your goals and business vision
Establish a clear brief review and feedback loop
At the end of the day, a B2B SEO agency will help you improve SEO—and fast. Working with them effectively will only help your team reach its goals faster.
The Bottom Line
SEO gives you the tools to provide the right audience with the right information at the right time. It helps establish your company as a credible source, generate leads, and, ultimately, boost sales.
Want help with your brand’s B2B SEO efforts? Let’s talk.
For most of us, social media has become an integral part of our everyday lives — whether you’re a marketer or not. With over 3 billion users worldwide, social media is now an essential channel for communicating and connecting with friends, colleagues, and, most importantly, target audiences. You may think only B2C companies are allowed to have social media creative fun — but wait! B2B companies can also find ways to build and spike their social media engagement too. The landscape of B2B social media has completely transformed in the past few years. B2B companies have begun to fully embrace their brand and social media content to engage, attract and inform their audiences. So how can your B2B company successfully use one of the influential marketing channels? Let’s take a look!
4 B2B Social Media Strategies For You to Try
Work on Your Brand Tone
If your audience can recognize your company based on its logo, they should be able to do the same with your brand voice. When posting on social media, your tone should be identifiable and your own. Having this unique voice will make your brand stand out among your competitors while additionally helping with your brand awareness. Don’t forget to use those brand colors to encourage brand association! Most importantly, this should reach beyond social and bleed into your other content as well (website, email, etc.) If you’re having trouble creating a brand voice, look back at blogs or landing pages and try to adapt the same tone to your social messaging.
Test Out Content and Posting
There’s only one way to see if alternate types of content will work — you have to test it out! Every audience is different, so it’s worth trying to experiment with what grabs their attention the most. While there are numerous social media experiments possible, here are a few to try on your channels:
Test out various hashtags for impressions
Adjust your posting schedule (more posts vs. fewer posts)
Place CTAs and links in different places in posts
Put a paid campaign behind alternate posts (image vs. text vs. video)
Test platform features to track views and clicks (polls, stories, etc.)
Change to smart content instead of everyday posts
Recognize Your Channels’ Audiences
Despite what social platforms you use, it’s important to realize that not every channel has the same audiences, which means you should be tailoring your content accordingly. The most important platform to note for B2B marketers is LinkedIn. As one of the world’s largest online professional networks, this channel is one of the best ways for B2B companies to reach targeted audiences and potential prospects. With LinkedIn being a more professional setting, users join to find resources, connections, and knowledge within their career path or industry. As a B2B company, it’s important to use your LinkedIn account to establish your expertise and be a trusted thought leader within your industry to attract engagement and leads. With this in mind, LinkedIn social posts should be meaningful and educational, using content like blogs, webinars, whitepapers, case studies, videos, infographics, etc.
Let the Numbers do the Talking
Now that you’ve posted your social content, it’s time to analyze the metrics. However, you shouldn’t be focusing your attention on vanity measurements like likes and comments. Instead, look at metrics such as clicks, engagement, views, impressions. These numbers give a more accurate picture of how your post resonated with your followers and audience. Using platforms like HubSpot, you can also track WHO is interacting with your social media post (website visits, landing page clicks, etc.) As a B2B company, this is super valuable as it enables you to follow more qualified leads. While these are only a few strategies, it just goes to show that B2B companies can get in on the “social media action” too. Just remember: The more you work on your B2B social media strategies, the more you’ll be on your way to figuring out best practices.
Looking to implement a B2B social media campaign? Let’s talk!
Picture this: You’re scrolling through social media and see an ad from one of your favorite brands. It’s amusing and witty and, honestly, makes you chuckle out loud. You’re captivated by the cleverness as a consumer, but as a B2B marketer, it makes you feel down. Why do B2C companies get to have all the creative fun? As a B2B marketer, you should be able to apply fun and fresh ideas to your B2B content marketing as well. Here’s the good news: you can! And more importantly, you should. The ways of B2B marketing are beginning to shift to allow more engagement with potential clients through content marketing. With new resources and technological developments available, marketers can now experiment and attempt new B2B content strategies to find ones that best fit their brand.
The Benefits of Mixing Up Your B2B Content Marketing
Your audience doesn’t get bored
Are you using the same content over and over again? As an audience member who gets unvarying content repeatedly, it can get stale and monotonous pretty quickly. Your largest missed opportunity results from being too cautious with your content. Being creative and bold with your B2B content marketing allows you to experiment with new avenues and find which content your audience connects with most.
Positions your company as innovative
As you explore more with new strategies, your content will begin to diversify. By not being basic or consistent, your audience will notice that. As a result, they will continue to look to you for more inventive ways to learn about your brand and products.
Makes content creation easy
If you are worried about not having enough substance to support your content, look no further than what you already have. By repurposing old content, you are still emphasizing any features or benefits about your company or products to your audience but just in new, exciting ways. That blog article you wrote? Make it a webinar. The social post you created? Convert it to paid media. Don’t give yourself more work than you have to.
Content to Try if You Haven’t Done So Already
Time to spice it up! Catch your audience’s attention with these different ideas:
Videos
According to Hubspot research, more than 50% of consumers want to see videos from brands more than any other type of content. This means if you aren’t already creating videos, you’re likely falling behind. Videos have become dominant in content strategy, especially when it comes to social media. Audiences look to video marketing as a new medium that provides information, entertainment, and education.
Podcast
As podcasts have significantly increased in popularity over the past few years (U.S. weekly podcast listeners averaged seven podcasts a week in 2019), this is another new medium that your brand can experiment with. Like blogs or whitepapers, podcasts can help your brand establish an influential presence in your industry, positioning your team as experts and thought leaders.
Paid Media
Paid media can be a whole other strategy of its own, but it’s important to incorporate it into B2B content strategies. In the 2019 Content Marketing Institute research overview, they found that 71% of the most successful B2B content marketers use paid methods to distribute content. If you currently aren’t using paid media, you could be missing out on opportunities to engage with targeted audiences that might be interested in your products.
Any Creative Owned Media
This can vary based on your resources, but trying new initiatives like interactive PDFs, new social media features, or infographics (the fourth most used type of content marketing according to Hubspot) are bound to capture audience engagement. If you’re STILL are running short on ideas to spice up your B2B content marketing, check out these examples done by other B2B companies.
The Power Behind Strategizing Your Content
Finally, produce content that your audience WANTS to see. Don’t create content just because you think your feed is a little dry. Creating an idea without any intentions or initiative is a waste of time and resources. Every piece of your B2B content marketing should be backed by strategy with an end goal, whether it’s capturing leads, ramping engagement, or establishing brand awareness. In this case, quality does come before quantity. As B2B content marketing is continuously evolving, that means your content strategy should be doing the same. Use these pointers to start assessing what improvements can be made to your strategy, and you’ll be on your way to having content that your audience can’t help but engage with.
Don’t fret over running out of content. Let us help! We’re here to generate the perfect B2B content marketing strategy that best fits your brand.
Webinars are one of the most efficient methods of content marketing out there. However, they’re really only effective when they’re engaging. Think about it— how many times have you tapped out ten minutes into a webinar because it was so… boring? Don’t worry, you can admit it here. We’ve all sat through videos that definitely didn’t have webinar best practices in mind. We’re here to teach you how to make sure your webinars aren’t the ones that have people clicking out ten minutes in.
Choose specific topics
Webinars are a great lead generation tools. But their main purpose is to serve your audience, not boost your email numbers. When a webinar holds a viewer’s attention, Adobe found that the average attendee stays onboard for 54 minutes. When considering whether you should invest the time and money it takes to produce a webinar, give some thought to what your topic is going to be. The best webinars are specific, thorough and address certain issues that are important to their audience.
Add value with thought leaders
Consider hosting a panel of thought leaders in your industry, doing a deep-dive on a niche topic, or hosting a detailed how-to video in the form of a webinar. If the ideas you’re considering have been done before, or are a thinly disguised sales pitch in the form of a webinar, hold off on execution until you have a more fleshed out topic to talk about. Wordstream gives this great piece of advice: “If you claim that your webinar is truly amazing, be sure you can live up to your own hype.
Don’t talk at the camera
I know, this seems like Webinars 101. But we all know there are plenty of webinars out there that don’t follow this very simple rule. Many people look at webinars as videos for people to watch, and technically they are. But this outlook can lead to some pretty dull videos unless you have the energy of a YouTuber. A better way to look at a webinar is to think of it as something that viewers are engaging with, so it’s your job to be engaging. Nobody likes being talked at, so talk to them as if they can respond directly to you. When the webinar begins, welcome your audience and give them a quick rundown of how the presentation is going to go. Let them know the topics you’ll be covering and in what order— this will allow viewers to know whether the webinar is relevant to their interests and if they should skip ahead or join later.
Use technology to your advantage
You’re obviously pretty technologically savvy if you’re hosting a webinar, but take it a little further. Rather than using screenshots of a website you’re discussing, do a screen share and walk your viewers through the process. Use markup capabilities or even a slide presentation to illustrate your points. However, I cannot stress enough, do not read slides. Do you enjoy having slides read to you that you are completely capable of reading yourself? No? Then don’t put your viewers through that! While it’s perfectly fine and even to use slides to enhance your presentation or give your viewers some visual examples of what you’re discussing, it’s the opposite of fine to use them as a crutch. Don’t read slides in webinars, presentations, meetings, or anywhere, really. A great way to avoid falling into the trap of robotically reading along with your slide presentation is to write a script. Whether you choose to rehearse and memorize the script or just create a list of talking points to make sure you reference, having that backup document with you will keep you from going off on tangents or losing your train of thought as well.
The more the merrier
Consider bringing another person on board. Or two people. Or a whole panel! While a one-person presentation is sufficient, having more people onscreen partaking in an organized discussion is a great way to keep a conversation lively enough to hold a viewer’s attention. Another way to engage your audience is to actually engage. If they’re viewing the webinar live, dedicate a portion to viewer questions that they can send in via a hashtag. There are even webinar platforms that allow you to insert polls and other interactive aspects into the presentation. Just because you’re not hosting the webinar in front of a live audience doesn’t mean you can’t act like you are!
OK, so people won’t be leaving your webinar with a cool gift bag, but there are other things your viewers can leave with:
Actionable advice
Contact information
Recommendations
Whitepaper
PowerPoint slides (Adobe also found that 50% of webinar attendees download presentation slides— so it’s worth the effort!)
Search Engine Journal also suggests making your takeaways only available during the webinar or from your webinar promotion. This makes the materials exclusive, and people are more apt to take advantage when there’s a time limit. Sure, these things aren’t as cool as a Soda Stream or whatever, but they’re valuable in other ways. Make sure these materials end up in your viewers’ inboxes no more than 24 hours after the webinar ends— you want to stay at the forefront of their minds!
The Benefits of Mixing Up Your B2B Content Marketing
