Expert Marketing Advisors:
Hello! We’re just going to give a few minutes for people to join us.

Expert Marketing Advisors:
Alright. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Depending on where you are in the world today we have eMa’s webinar with Swipe Right for Innovation: B2B Social Media that Sticks.

Expert Marketing Advisors:
I have our very own Stephen Banbury to get us started. Thank you.

Stephen Banbury:
Yeah, thanks so much, BreAnne. Super excited about today’s webinar and joining us today to tackle the stereotypes that have been somewhat historically limited, B2B marketing on social platforms is the super talented Media Strategist from Sprout Social, Greg Brokisky. So welcome, Greg, it’s great to have you here today. Super excited. Perhaps you could just take a couple of minutes to introduce yourself to everyone that’s on the webinar.

Greg Rokisky:
Thank you, Stephen, and welcome everyone. I’m super excited to be here. So my name is Greg Rokisky. I use he/him pronouns, and I’m a Senior Social Strategist at Sprout, as Stephen said I’m super excited. So I have come from a lot of different backgrounds and industries to land me in a position at Sprout into the B2B space. And so I’m so excited because I think there’s a lot of stereotypes and just muscles that for those who have been in space for a while have grown, but I think to be social first to come with a way of reaching individuals in a more empathy, driven and human centric way. I’m just excited to be here and unpack that and see how we can maybe change some things going forward. And hopefully, you have at least one or 2 actionable steps that you could take after today.

Stephen Banbury:
Yeah, that’s awesome, Greg, and just for everyone that is on the webinar today, we are gonna have the chat open. So please feel free to put any questions you have there. If we can answer some of them as we go through. Great, if not, we will definitely get to them in as much time we have in the QA.

Stephen Banbury:
So let me kick it off by just like that at Expert Marketing Advisors, Greg, we manage social media on behalf of a bunch of clients. And on this slide, even though we say past strategies, I would say that many of these bullets are actually domain and true. Today, when I look at how B2B companies are approaching and interacting on social media. The tone is predominantly formal, is focused on maybe just a couple of channels, sometimes just LinkedIn, sometimes Facebook, but not really broader than that, and often content seems to be there for content’s sake. And it’s not always very engaging and interactive. So this seems in stark contrast to how I see brands showing up in the B2C space.

Stephen Banbury:
So perhaps you can touch on what really is current, what you’re seeing, and what companies should be thinking about in terms of adopting or leaning into.

Greg Rokisky:
I love this and I love this topic, and you’re absolutely right. And I think to do social media, like first social moves at the speed of social, which is exponentially quick, but because of what works in the B2C space. I think a lot of those playbooks, or even strategies and tactics individually can still be very relevant. And we actually have seen that be successful at sprawl.

Greg Rokisky:
But I wanna back up. And I mentioned my values and past experience. So I think the values and superpowers I kind of bring with me from agency, nonprofit, and association, where I spent a good portion of my past roles, national advocacy, entertainment, social all of those I’ve kind of learned what works across those.

Greg Rokisky:
And then my real love where I soar is around, I consider myself like a puzzle maker. Right? I see all of these opportunities bring them together that fosters community and engagement across social as well as pointing people in the right space, if social doesn’t make sense. And so I think if you’re looking for how to stay ahead, it comes down to speaking with not at your audiences, and then personalizing your approach through your social channels and taking more of a channel by channel and social first approach.

Greg Rokisky:
So I just wanna back up there. So my question to you all in the chat to reflect on: Do you know who your like personas are that you’re trying to reach on social media. And are some of your posts directly talking to those personas? Are you having a post that’s trying to address the pain, points, worries, concerns about everyone of those personas in one post. And so it’s probably what we do. We have a lane of content, and these can be all on one platform.

Greg Rokisky:
So let’s just take LinkedIn, for example, we’ll be drafting content. That is specifically meant to speak and resonate with decision makers. Similarly, we’ll also have content. That is meant to speak and resonate with practitioners in the social space.

Greg Rokisky:
And then what we’re doing is reflecting. After those a week, a month a quarter, looking back at how we spoke to those personas actually foster engagement from them. And so some of the best brands that I see doing and making absolute magic right now are actually in the comment section and learning. So if you think about TikTok, if you spend personal time there, LinkedIn, on some of your more popular posts?

Greg Rokisky:
Or if you’re opening questions and asking those thoughts, provoking opportunities to encourage dialogue in those spaces? Are you entering as your brand and building on those and creating those relationships with personas or brands, especially in the B2B space. I think there’s an underrated opportunity there.

Greg Rokisky:
And additionally, they’re finding unexpected ways to leverage cultural moments from Taylor Swift to the Met Gala, or even like one of Beyonce’s new album drops and making it fit their brand in a very social first manner. So those are some of the things I see in the present landscape that can actually really unlock that relevance and engagement for B2B’s.

Stephen Banbury:
Yeah. Social. Yes, super I read a Stat recently, Greg on E-Marketa, that not only are adults spending more time on TikTok every day than Youtube and Facebook. I think they’re spending nearly an hour a day, but a quarter of them are between the ages of 25 and 34. I don’t know why they say 34, but that’s the age group.

Stephen Banbury:
But that really means that you have some highly engaged potential B2B decision makers on that platform. So you know, definitely we will talk about TikTok, and we’ll get on the next time. And the cultural moment that is Travis and Taylor. So when I think of memes or culture moments like this example, you know touched upon. I suspect, one of the first and one of my reactions when I first saw this, was as a B2B Market, how is this relevant to me and B2B marketing? So maybe you can tell me why I should be really paying attention to leveraging this type of moment.

Greg Rokisky:
Yeah, absolutely. So this actually is like just seeing this meme, it opens up so many ideas just looking at this. And so I’ll tackle it first from a tactical side that could be employed as a B2B brand, right? So you, as your brand, could tap into a viral meme and tweak it to fit a narrative that suits your brand, your product, or your audience.

Greg Rokisky:
And so just an example here that if I was taking this meme. So say, it’s made its viral rounds across X threads. Maybe even linkedIn or elsewhere. If I’m thinking about okay, how could Sprout Social tap into this? Maybe a caption could be the social team whispering to leadership about the power of social data and ROI to the entire business. Maybe that’s not the strongest example. And I would collab with the social team. But that’s just an opportunity where they see this.

Greg Rokisky:
You’re posting it as your brand, and it’s not just tapping into the trend without any tie to your product. It’s actually making it and fitting it and capitalizing on that moment of something that’s making the rounds on social, because, you know, others are engaging with that. And even if you’re not talking about this on your brand, like I’m in my group chats, or I’m seeing friends of mine share memes like this and tap into that social commentary. So additionally, what I look at this type of means showcases how our culture manifests itself across social and the Internet.

Greg Rokisky:
Now, and so, being a part of social means, you’re balancing, understanding the values and the space your brand wants to show up, as well as choosing the right moments to create content around. That balance is hard and so it takes a little bit of nuance. But when you find that like cross section, it really does make some magic for your brand.

Stephen Banbury:
I think you termed the phrase, or at least I’ll attribute it to you, Greg of mammalogy, or mammalogy.

Greg Rokisky:
Yes, I don’t know if I may. Let’s make mammalogy happen. Folks.

Stephen Banbury:
Okay, right? And I know you. You mentioned to me about the Met Gala that you touched on, so perhaps you could tell us more about how you and the team are Sprout Social engage with that particular event?

Greg Rokisky:
Yeah, absolutely. So I thought this would be a really great example, because it just happened earlier this month. And so the Sprout team, our social team, we knew the Met Gala is a very social media heavy event from the commentary to the outfits to who does, does not make an appearance, an example, Rihanna, this year, because she had the flu.

Greg Rokisky:
And then, as a relatively smaller social team. So at Sprout we still only have 3 strategists and a director. And so we just got our third strategist last fall and one of them shifted from a social strategist to a social strategist that focuses on insights and analysis. So we leaned on the power of broader, like staff within Sprout Social via some of our slack channels to brainstorm, and in that thread. So we’re like, we want to tap into the Met Gala. Do you have an opportunity for us?

Greg Rokisky:
Someone suggested, to do a roundup of top outfits and slabs, but make them sprout features. And so, as you’re seeing this scroll through, we acted quickly, but also gave us a little bit time to plan through that proactivity. We superimpose some of the ui of Sprout features on different outfits, and you see through some of these comments that they appreciated just the wittiness there, but also optimal send time.

Greg Rokisky:
And so really trying to make it fit the moment, but also true to Sprout as a product. And we not only publish what you see on screen, but we also did a carousel on our Instagram page as well as a complimentary video on our TikTok, and it paid off. I’m pretty sure this Linkedin Carousel, because of the functionality of the post. So we made it a document post to be able to scroll through. We’re still sitting at about a 60% engagement rate on this post. And I think around 12,000 plus impressions. So it definitely paid off. And this is just one of many examples where you could take something happening out in the world and cater it to your brand or product.

Stephen Banbury:
Yeah, I was gonna touch on. And I think we get to this in the next slide is just sort of on that engagement, and that you know things don’t. Oh, sorry. That just came up. It’s a build just so it doesn’t have to be super polished, and in fact, I think sometimes you know B2B, and like, I don’t wanna say corporate particularly in a bad way, but they get their hands on it, and it wants to be super polished. They want great production value. And I think from what you’ve seen, Greg in this example, that that’s not actually not the case, being kind of a little more rough and ready is sometimes the way to go.

Greg Rokisky:
Yeah. So I would call this a very good example of being lofi and social first. And so what you’re actually looking at, and I’ll talk through it in just a moment. This was actually our top post across every single channel that Sprout owns last year. And so this was around our new AI assist suggestions feature. And so the message we actually delivered isn’t different because it relates to a product release. We’re still talking about the same feature, and what it unlocks for our customers.

Greg Rokisky:
However, what we really did here was made the content to deliver that message
feel like it was meant and made for Instagram reels. And so, whether we can thank TikTok reels, or just because of the sheer speed at which social moves it allows us to move quicker. And so we’ll sometimes even repurpose some of these videos on LinkedIn. And so we find, like where we’re meeting the people where they’re at. And then the other thing you’ll see here is that Jane Machina that was a trending sound both on TikTok and reels. And so we associated that with the posts, so there’s no voice over. There’s nothing here other than the visual of the product as well as tying into that trending sound, and people were so grateful. So this is only a portion of the comments on this post.

Stephen Banbury:
Hmm. Oh, great. Okay. So I didn’t miss a build. So you know, having kind of the fit for purpose, content for the right channel seems super important, and it seems that a mind shift is really needed. A mindset shift in terms of how you show up and get in that Creator mode, and I think some companies when I think of like Monday.com and Work Day have kind of embraced that Creator mindset and don’t hop on about the Super Bowl too much. But they were running Super Bowl ads on TikTok that were pretty well received. So how should teams, how should people on the webinar today be embracing and thinking about this Creator mindset?

Greg Rokisky:
I love that I think it is really important. And so, as it pertains to content directly for your brand accounts, I think it’s critical to be able to always be listening and understanding how your audience behaves and engages with content. Are you keeping up with the best features that are optimizing across channels?

Greg Rokisky:
Right now, I could tell you that if you’re really trying to get both engagement and awareness, LinkedIn polls are working right now again, if you’re trying to get more engagement. Those LinkedIn carousels are really great because you’re tapping into not only your audience and what they’re thinking about and the content they’re engaging with, but also leveraging the platforms themselves.

Greg Rokisky:
You also wanna have a strong understanding of what each platform really is optimized for. So what are the best ones? If you’re in for a quick hit, like we how TikTok is likely not going to be the best conversion for LinkedIn bio but in terms of awareness. If we’re trying to drum up a Pov or something timely in the space, either on our channels or with influencers and most importantly like, and I’ll hit on this again. You don’t wanna only be talking to your audience, but you wanna be engaging and chatting with them. And even more importantly, if you’re working with creators and influencers, giving them the space to create content that is true to them and their audiences and giving them freedom that might feel a little bit uncomfortable or unexpected, but that’s where you’ll see success. And I’m seeing this.

Greg Rokisky:
We could talk about any industry, any space. And so I really love that there’s opportunity here, and even if there’s more levers or hoops that you have to jump through, I still think this would be applicable.

Stephen Banbury:
Hmm. Yeah, it’s that mindset is super important, and I think it goes back to embracing that sort of B2C kind of mindset where you can be creative. And that engagement in that community is absolutely key. You mentioned that as part of brand building, there’s social listening is super important.

Stephen Banbury:
So let’s touch on that a bit because that’s obviously super important for a brand in. I mean, it shows up in many ways. I’m very passionate about what companies are thinking about. They’re in cost, the customer experience in totality. So talk a little bit of this Greg.

Greg Rokisky:
Yeah, absolutely. So I’ll talk through this example. And I’ll talk through like ways you could do this even if you aren’t using a social listening tool. But it’s been super powerful with us. So what you’re seeing is Met Gala, listening data from Sprout from May sixth and seventh of this year, so wanted to keep with our earlier Met Gala example but like what the power of proactive social listening could do, and so from this year’s event alone.

Greg Rokisky:
You’ll see the Met Gala Cross Social Garden has more than 14.2 million messages, 123 million engagements, and then 61.6 billion. Yes, with a B, potential impressions. And it has a largely favorable sentiment at 73% positive. And so just imagine what you could do next year. Knowing this information, I think we have a test and proof of concept for Sprout.

Greg Rokisky:
So maybe starting small with something like what we did. And then, if it is something that you want to enter, and in the social space, how could you scale it and start planning for next year. So if you have tighter approvals, or if you have to run it through more teams.

Greg Rokisky:
And so not only that social listening is something that can be incredibly powerful in understanding, like moments to tap into, but additionally share a voice. So where are you placing with other groups or organizations across topics or categories? But you can also be a great use and leverage, listening to be a great tool to understand where your brand stacks up on social compared to your competitors.

Greg Rokisky:
And here’s where I back up and zoom out just a little bit. If you don’t have something like this, you can also again, what we’re doing is looking at the content that goes out understanding. Who is it intended for, and then doing monthly, quarterly, or whatever timeline makes sense to you. What? Who is it actually being engaged with and what insights can we learn that inform future content strategy for our social channels? So that’s a really gritty, proactive, and reactive way to listen just through the content that you’re publishing directly on your channels.

Stephen Banbury:
Yeah, what one of them just to add to those great points? I think of social listening in the context of like customer experience and AI. Like every touch point with your brand, has a bearing about how a customer feels about your brand.

Stephen Banbury:
If you take the example of like a medical center, real time listening. You know, you have all this unstructured data that shows up in something like X twitter. You know that the patient experience at a medical center isn’t just about meeting the doctor. It’s the ease of making appointments. It’s parking. It’s checking in. It’s the waiting room experience. It’s a bathroom facilities. Then it’s seeing the doctor then getting out and post follow up. And you know, in my experience, we had a customer in a healthcare services business and one of their bathrooms was in a bit of a state, and people were actually posting on social, but because they were listening, they were able to respond in real time very quickly and resolve that issue.

Stephen Banbury:
So the competitive pits are super interesting. But also, if you think about it, from a brand point of view, you actually have the ability to to listen, hear what’s being said, and then take action on that.

Greg Rokisky:
100%. And like that’s so helpful because, like social data is real time data. So like building a bridge of how your social team can deliver those insights to your customer, care, support your on site staff in terms of foundations for your facilities and properties to product development like that. Just the social data piece is a really great way. If you can harness a pathway to move that data to help fuel those changes and structural opportunities within your organization. It’s truly unmatched.

Stephen Banbury:
Yeah, yeah.

Stephen Banbury:
I know that recently Sprout Social published its 2024 influence. But it’s a bit of a mouthful, Greg, you need to get a shorter title next time, but so the Influencer Marketing Benchmarks Report for 2024. And this statistic I know it’s consumer, but it really stood out to me. So what should the takeaway be for B2B marketers when you think about influences, or perhaps trusted advisors.

Greg Rokisky:
Yeah, I mean, like, this is like one thing like, I still think that tells us the behavior of the people we’re still trying to reach on social right, like people that work in the organizations that we’re trying to reach as B2B brands like they’re still behaving in these ways, and it has impact. So this is the first type of Stat that I would feel empowered and quickly take to leadership to make the case for building out like some sort of influencer and creator program. We have one.

Greg Rokisky:
I drive it at Sprout Social in the B2B space and like not only this, there’s another stat in the reports that says that 86% of those that make a purchase within a year. So 49% once a month, but at least 86% of people make an influenced driven purchase every year. And so that’s an even more powerful stat on top of that. And so, just to give you a picture of how we’re leveraging the power of influencers and creators.

Greg Rokisky:
Our program to date is tracking toward driving an additional, I think 1 million impressions through our influencer Creator. Content 1,200 leads. And so that’s to say, organic, social, and paid an influencer Creator can like. They’re very much levers that you can pull at any stage of the funnel. And then through these activations we see an increase in our share of voice by tapping into the audiences of these various influencers and creators that are potential customers or current customers to us, and so think of not only influencers and creators as those who fit the mold but think of your staff through employee advocacy programs as well as current or prospective customers as influencers as well.

Stephen Banbury:
Yeah, more than a million impressions for your programs is a pretty impressive number, as are the 1,200 leads. So like tailoring your social strategy and plan to the business outcomes that you’re trying to drive to is obviously important.

Stephen Banbury:
And so if you want to leverage organic social to drive leads. You certainly can do that. But I think it’s fair to say, Greg, that you need to do that with an understanding of the dynamics around social media. And paying attention to kind of the right way that we’re showing up. So what are the metrics and obviously dependent on the program you’re running. But what are the metrics? We should really be thinking about it? When it comes to social media.

Greg Rokisky:
Absolutely. And I definitely want to say, organic social can be very powerful as a lead driver. But it has to have the caveat that you just said, Stephen, that it has to still feel true to social. You can’t be pushing out 90% of posts of links to gated assets, asking them to do or sign up for something. So you still have to have some that drive more awareness or engagement.

Greg Rokisky:
So how we tackle metrics on the Sprout Social team.? We’re looking at metrics that are more discovery or driving awareness and reaching new audiences so the very top of the funnel as well as resonance throughout the funnel and resonance test is fostering engagement. So driving conversations, getting reactions. And how is that sticking with certain personas that we’re trying to reach? But additionally, I want to talk about just a couple of underrated metrics that would be like we’re looking at and actually have more value to me than comments, shares, or or the like, and that saves also adds to playlists on Youtube or whatnot, because what that shows to me is that that piece of content is valuable enough for an individual that we’re reaching to save it and tuck it away, or add it to a playlist for later, and even if they don’t necessarily go back to that. It was meaningful enough to them. And so, making sure that you have a tool that tracks those more underrated metrics, I think, is important.

Greg Rokisky:
Additionally, like we talked about a little bit earlier, but shared voice. So leveraging, listening, and hashtag adoption and other credit conversation drivers. If you’re heavy with events. How are you tracking social presence at those types of events? And then final one is like, earned me, India value or emb. And this would particularly be helpful to an employee advocacy program. We have one at Sprout.

Greg Rokisky:
So we have tracking for all of this, and we know that this program drove more than 21 million impressions outside of our brand channels last year, and then our emb or media value was just over 867,000 through those efforts. So those are just very powerful numbers that I can bring to leadership to show the treating your staff and having a mechanism to easily empower them, to share content on their social works, especially if it ties to key messages for your organization.

Stephen Banbury:
Yeah, I think about impressions and engagement all the time. So hearing about a couple of others like saves adding to the playlist is great information, Greg. So I know we’re gonna get to QA. Shortly. But you know, when I’ve gone into meetings before I’ve always been. You know. What are the 3 nuggets? What’s the one nugget that you know? You can write down and take out and bring it back every day.

Stephen Banbury:
So you know, when you think about and we’ve covered a lot of content quite quickly today. So what is that one nugget that you would sort of put out there for people to embrace and take on board.

Greg Rokisky:
Yeah, I think the biggest thing is finding the small ways to move your social strategy toward not just a bulletin board of content, but actually activating ways to engage and empower your audiences, to have a conversation with you. And then leaning into the discomfort of flexing new muscles. And I’m always looking to see what a retail beauty Brand do? And how can I translate that in a way that makes sense for our audiences? So I think, how can you start to move towards that way like map out 3 small things that you could start to do, or conversations you could have with your leadership, your direct manager, or if you’re overseeing a social team, what are some things that you can like? Empowering them to do so, even if there are still guardrails there, I think, is so important.

Stephen Banbury:
Yeah, that’s awesome, and I know we’ll share a link with people afterwards to like the insights and the blog on Sprout Social for more. So I know we’ve been coming up for a little bit of time. But I did have this question come in from Ann, which is what is a creative way that brands can engage with creators and influencers?

Greg Rokisky:
Yeah. I think one of the ones that we did that worked really well. So we obviously sponsor some events that we go to but those are limited right? And there are other events that we don’t have resourcing or bandwidth to send people to. One of the examples. This year was add week social media event. So you can imagine that’s a very ripe event with audiences that Sprout would want to get in front of including Sprout customers.

Greg Rokisky:
So Sprout actually sent no one to this event from Sprout except an influencer and creator that was already speaking and we gave her the keys to our Instagram and Instagram stories for the 3 days she was there, so she took over. She did some tiny mic interviews. We gave her the space to create. And so we got engagements from Nash, the VP Of Social National Geographic. We had an interview with Phonz, who is the CEO of the Spill Social Media App and engagements from fashion designers. And so what that did is we actually got some Cheddar to the social team from sales.

Greg Rokisky:
It was a salesperson who said, Oh, I just got this email from a customer. Sprout has a really great presence here. And so if you think about where I started with that is like Sprout had no actual staff at this event. But we’re able to create that buzz partnering with the right influencer and creator, and we got incredible content. Posted on. We actually posted one of her tiny mic interviews on our TikTok just last week, and it’s now our top performing TikTok ever on that channel with more than 12,000 views.

Greg Rokisky:
So we didn’t do anything. Fancy it was her just sitting down with the head of social from sweet green and tapping into that. So we essentially gave them a sage, lifted them up. And let them do it. What they do best is create content.

Stephen Banbury:
Yeah, we’ve got a one in the chat from Angie. And her question is really around, if you are representing a formal, more formal brand, like a financial institution or banking, or it will be legal, for example. What are some of the approaches that would be applicable. Do you think?

Greg Rokisky:
Yeah, I love that. So I actually work on a lot of verticalized content where we work with either. I think healthcare would be another one. I see a lot of like parallels between healthcare and financial services. And so while there’s definitely more regulations there, Dr. Mike is one of my favorite medical influencers and creators, and if you’re not following him on Instagram, he talks about how to do what we’re doing in B2B, but for healthcare or there’s a financial influencer and creator that partners with so far, and she does a lot of content around like if you’re in a regulated industry like those I would also recommend.

Greg Rokisky:
I recommend and shamelessly plug a lot of Sprouts resources. We have a whole online community called the arboretum. We’re doing peer industry groups for those in regulated industries. And so I would say that while I’m not the full on expert on hipaa using and making sure that you use the right tools that unlock and pass whatever regulations you need to do and protect that data is one of the paramount things and doing your research there. But there’s definitely a way to create content, use and leverage like the voices of your audiences into that. And so Sprout our insights blog, we release a lot of verticalized content. And we’re actually pushing out on Sprouts channels every once in a while to be able to talk to those individuals.

Greg Rokisky:
So another one here, like the nonprofit public sector like government agencies. One of my best friends who I live with. She works for the State, and so I understand that there are limitations there. But there’s so much opportunity to be had still on social. And so I would say, don’t give up, reach out to me. I think my email will be provided for folks. So if you have direct questions, I’d be happy to have one off time with you, connect you with some of the other experts within Sprout who work in those verticalized industries. And would love to help and connect you.

Stephen Banbury:
Yeah, that’s great. I know we’re at the top of the time. And Rena was asking, Is this all organic, or is there some paid as well through social in order to drive this.

Greg Rokisky:
Yeah, we definitely have a paid team. But I would say, like what we’re tracking everything I’ve talked to influencers and creators like. Obviously, those are commissions. But we’re not boosting or adding any fuel to the activations that I’ve laid out today. And so we have our paid team who is on Youtube or LinkedIn at various points throughout the year, but honestly, like a lot of what we do on my team directly. It’s all organic or with influencers and creators.

Stephen Banbury:
Yeah, I think having a blend is always good. But yeah, like, you say, this is all organic influencer and commission. So I know we’re a little over time, Greg. Thanks.

Greg Rokisky:
Yeah.

Stephen Banbury:
So much for your time today. It’s been super insightful for me, hopefully for everyone on the webinar, and look forward to any follow ups and any questions please. People reach out to myself or and obviously, Greg, so many thanks really appreciate the time. Greg.

Greg Rokisky:
Absolutely it was so great. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in.