Killer Social Media Strategies for 2024

Joe: Hello and welcome to this Lead Forensics webinar. am your host Joe Ducarreaux from Lead Forensics and I am joined once again today by returning guest Christina Garnett, Principal Marketing Manager at HubSpot. Christina, it’s wonderful to chat to you again.

How are you doing?

Christina: I’m doing very well. Thanks for having me.

Joe: It’s an absolute pleasure. It’s always a pleasure to chat to you, Christina. And yeah, we’re going to talk about something we have talked about previously. So, I know that you’re extremely knowledgeable on this subject, so I’m looking forward to picking your brains for to see what social media The strategies have installed for us in 2024.

So, with that in mind, my opening question to you, what are those key factors that in the B2B social media landscape that businesses should be aware of in the forthcoming year?

Christina: You have to be aware of the fact that we are constantly determining which platforms we need to be on. We’re seeing this with X and advertisers deciding whether or not they want to put paid there.

We’re seeing a lot of people shifting back to LinkedIn as like their safe platform of choice. But then we’re also, video still wins, like video is still capturing people’s attention, and so as always, you got to stay on your toes and you got to be really thoughtful about what do you engage with? What makes you stop scrolling?

What is your audience like doing? A B testing in your social things like that.

Joe: So just let’s touch on the X or the platform formerly known as Twitter. There’s obviously been a massive down swing in users and part of that is going to be companies and that sort of thing. Do you think is there a possibility that by the end of this year?

X will have changed in such a way that will it have accrued a huge new audience? Or do you think it will stay roughly the same? Do you think it will lose users? What do you suspect is going to happen with it? Obviously like we can talk about this in wider terms, but then. Talking about B2B users, what do you think?

Christina: I think that unless there are specific changes in leadership, you will see the continued downward spiral. And at the end of the day, you’re walking into an economy where people are trying to make cuts, and paid is a really easy place to cut, and X or Twitter, whatever you want to call them, are making it really easy to cut that budget.

And it’s not even just whether or not it’s safe there, it’s, there’s been reports of ad placement beside of anti-semitic remarks, or hate speech, or other things. it’s just really, it’s really difficult to make a case for why advertisers should be there, when it’s basically a minefield. And brand safety is huge.

And if I could spend my money there, Or I could spend my money somewhere else. Brand safety is a huge contributor into how I make that decision and where I put my money. And I think you’ll see a lot of B2B places, a lot of B2B companies maybe experimenting with organic more on Twitter and X. To see if it’s viable there at all.

But then again, like organic slipping there too. You have to almost say something incendiary in order to get reach. And so, I would see, I think you’re going to see a lot more pivoting towards threads. Threads is starting to add a lot more features. They’ve added the ability to do keyword search. So now you can do like very basic social listening on threads, which is huge.

And so, I think you’ll see a lot of people pivoting to threads to see, does this scratch the itch organically? And if it scratches the itch organically, then we can look at paid. And then it being able to, they know what advertising is like with Zuckerberg. They know for better or for worse what that, what they’re jumping into if they decide to pivot there.

But I think you’re also going to see a lot more advertising put in LinkedIn, on Instagram. People are looking for the brand safe spots. And that’s where they’re more likely to put money. And just, like, you’re just providing variables that don’t need to be there. And brand safety is going to be on the top, on a lot of leaders’ minds.

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. Particularly when, it’s, I had a thing once and, the cheapest hour, the cheapest emotion to sell is outrage. So, you tell your point about saying something incendiary. Yeah, so moving back to the,

Christina: If you look at, sorry, if you look on Twitter and you look at the people who are in the advertising program to get a share of it and you look at the people who make the most money, most of them are firebrands.

Most of them are saying things that literally pissed like a whole subsection of the internet off. And so, when they talk about like that outrage, you’ve monetized outrage, and then you don’t know why people are choosing to spend their money elsewhere. It’s not good. And then the way Elon reacted to Bob Iger, which is a very public CEO to call out, and he recently even called for him to be fired.

It’s just, there are consequences. Yeah.

Joe: Let’s move away from the, the potentially volatile subject of X in that case, then. Yes. If we’re looking at, threads, LinkedIn, Facebook, that sort of thing. How much does your con, how much would you say your content varies for the platform or does it not necessarily so much?

Christina: I think it depends on what you’re trying to do. What do you want the content to do? For example. Even on LinkedIn, you’re seeing more memes and more entertainment content because no matter where you are, hopefully you want something to make your day a little bit brighter. So, for example, I woke up this morning and saw a TikTok about a service dog meeting one of the animal mascot things at Disney World.

And whether that was what I intended to see when I opened the app, It’s just warm and fuzzy. And so here I am talking about it hours later. If it’s something that’s going to entertain and it fits within that sub targeted audience, then that seems to be the most, that seems to be the safest content to distribute across.

And like I said, we’re even seeing that on LinkedIn where you’re seeing more meme accounts and it doesn’t always work, but depending on your brand, if that aligns, like if you’re a brand that is very upper crust, and tie is all the way knotted at the top, then memes are gonna be very weird. And you’re gonna wonder did your account get hacked?

But, if you’re more of a friendly B2B, more casual, more approachable, then having meme content makes a bit more sense. I think the thing is that you need to have your content pillars and figure out what that’s going to work for you. Because memes are great, but memes should not be the entire content strategy.

That almost makes your social team look like a joke. Because if that’s the only thing you’re going to rely on, then where’s the real strategy? How is that driving business? How is that making people want to work with you? And especially if you’re a B2B brand. If everything you say is a joke, then that doesn’t really endear me to want to work with you and then have a serious business relationship, so you need to really find your mix.

So, what’s the mix between entertainment and memes and here’s a tutorial of how to use our product or service or here’s something that would help you or here’s some updates that would make your job easier, whatever that looks like. So, between educate, inspire, entertain, what’s your content mix? And where are you distributing those?

And then just doing a lot of experimenting because the A B testing that you did three or four years ago is great. But that doesn’t mean that content would act and perform the exact same way if you did it tomorrow. So just constantly experimenting and constantly being like, all right that worked a couple years ago.

It literally just dropped out of the sky today. No one liked it. Noted. Yeah, personally adapt.

Joe: Particularly, in, in the realm of social media, things can change from day to day. Something that went out yesterday is going to be potentially out of date, 24 hours, sometimes less later.

Do you know what I mean? So, are there any just sticking with linked in for the minute? Is there any sort of secret unlocks? You think any key things that people need to include on their profile to completely optimize their profile tool.

Christina: I think you need to be very clear about. What you can bring to the table.

So, what do you want to be known for? A lot of people right now, because the economy is not the greatest. And a lot of people have been laid off. They’re working on their personal brands on LinkedIn, which is what they should be doing in my opinion. But just having your title is not indicative of who you are.

Cause you could be a director, but not doing director level work. You could be a manager and doing director level work. No one knows unless you tell them. So really think about what are the three to five things that you want to be known for that you bring to the table, the skillset that you have, what do you do and have that be a part of your profile description when it comes to your title?

Because just saying who you are and where you went, where you work is not enough. You usually can only really rely on that if it’s a really big name brand. And your clout comes from just being able to get in the door. A lot of people don’t have that. You have to really make that storytelling work for you.

The other thing is, they need to be in creator mode. So, if you like your standard profile is not gonna be in creator mode and it’s gonna have, it’s gonna cut you off at like when you look at it, it’ll say 500 plus connections and that’s it. If you join, if you make it creator mode, you don’t have to pay anything, but it’s going to allow, it’s going to make it easier for people to follow you, not just connect.

And then. That’s going to be how you grow your personal brand. People can see how many followers you have. It’s going to give you hashtags that you can associate with your profile. So, people know, Oh, okay. Christina is going to talk about social listening. She’s going to talk about customer experience.

Great. So, people are now more and more likely to follow you. I like these hashtags. I want to, I talk about this or this is important to my job. So, I’m going to follow this person. The other thing too, is they have these collaborative articles. Which is if you search like LinkedIn Pulse Topics, it’ll show up if you’re in creator mode.

And they’re basically just AI questions that you are then able to put in your information. And they’re pushing this a lot because it’s a content driver for them. But in doing so, that’s going to get your name shown to people who would have never found you otherwise to help grow your account. And then if you get enough engagement on any of your answers, you then get like a top community voices badge that then is marked on your profile.

So, it’s okay, this person, I don’t, I wouldn’t say like this person’s an expert, but I would take it as this person is engaged. They’re doing more than the average bear here. And so it’s a really great way to differentiate yourself and grow your personal brand that way. But it’s really all about fostering.

And then I don’t see the need for hashtags in post. I know that we all went through that whole year and a half of everyone on LinkedIn using hashtags, but when everyone uses a hashtag, it loses its power, in my opinion. And I would go back to just writing your piece but tagging people.

But tagging people in copy. Based off of like them being a part of it, like thanking them or so and so was a part of this or whatever but making it more conversational. Otherwise, it looks like a recipe.

Joe: So while hashtags might not necessarily be all that useful on LinkedIn, does that follow for the rest of, social media platforms or do they still hold some traction on things like Threads or Instagram?

Christina: Threads, they probably do now that you can do keyword searches.

So, you could actually search for specific keyword and hashtags to be able to look for that. So, I’d say that’s still good there. Instagram, yes, but it needs to not look like keyword stuffing. I Think the majority of it is, I think really good keyword usage is, if you know there’s a lot of content.

Or it’s trending and you want to be a part of that conversation; I think hashtags are still very viable. We saw this last year with the Video Game Awards. They had everyone that was at the Video Game Awards or was commenting on it, they had the little award hash flag. You press the and it turns into the shape of the trophy.

And those kinds of conversations where everyone’s talking about something at the same time, hashtags are incredibly important there because it jumbles you into that overall conversation. So, you’re going to get more likes, you’re going to get more engagement, you’re going to get more people to find you.

But when it’s just like hashtag this, hashtag that, that’s not how people talk. And err on the side of like, how do people actually speak? And then if you need to tactically be a part of conversations, then using hashtags. Instagram, same thing I would actually really this might get me in hot water, but for a while it was highly recommended to do use all 30.

Just do a whole comment that’s hashtags.  Now it’s like 3 to 8. And I actually really like that, because it means that when I look at your captions, it’s not this zoo of hashtags. It actually you’re more likely to actually go into the captions and write something that’s thoughtful or explain yourself or whatever that looks like.

And they still very much have a purpose. But we all know what hashtags are, like we, as consumers and as marketers, we all know what they are. They, we all know what they do. And the consumers are catching up. They see what’s happening. They’re like, I know exactly what this is and exactly why I’m seeing this.

And so, you have to be prepared to like, what’s the workaround for that? Or how can I make the content so good that they know that it’s a hashtag campaign and they still want to be a part of it.

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. Are there any sort of going into this new year as we are there any new metrics or indicators?

Is there anything new that we should be measuring this year that perhaps we weren’t necessarily concentrating so much on last year at all?

Christina: I think what’s really interesting, it’s not so much like focusing on new KPIs, but focusing more on diving into the KPIs we currently have using AI.

Joe: So that was gonna be my next question! So, I’m glad that you managed to, connect the two. So yeah, continue.

Christina: I think AI is the unlock for really tapping into deeper insights. And so, you have these like full on social listening reports. You have all of these things. We have, there’s tons of tools that will mark sentiment, but like you look in there and like actually 90 percent of it’s neutral.

And it’s not that it’s neutral. It’s that the tool can’t tell. I think AI is going to transform how we look at brand sentiment because it’s actually going to be able to pick up more nuance than just a regular tool. That’s looking for specific words like hate or love. Like before, those tools are not really good at picking up on sarcasm.

So, if you’re being, like, if you’re being a bit cheeky in your comments The, the tools in the past probably would be like neutral or they’d get it wrong because they would read it as like this is they’re doing it like straight faced. And so, I think AI is going to absolutely transform that. I also think that AI is going to transform how we look at accessibility.

Last year there was a demo of Gemini. And in the video, you see this person like sliding what looks like a post it note deck. In front of the camera, they see that and then they start drawing, and in real time they’re telling you what they’re drawing. That is a game changer for alt text. That’s a game changer for social media accessibility.

So, I think that the excuses of we’re not as accessible as we could be, I think the, one of the KPIs you can add is, how much of our content is truly accessible to people? And then how can we dive deeper into like brand sentiment by using AI as a synthesizer for neutral or is this person being sarcastic or are there like if I pull in this whole into this whole report, can you synthesize the main findings?

What are the recommendations based off of what is there a pattern in negative comments versus positive comments versus neutral? I think that’s going to be a huge game changer. I think AI is going to be the social media assistant for 2024.

Joe: Yeah, 100%. If last year was the, the conversation was the mass implication of AI then. Then this year is definitely going to be following that route, continuing that, that sort of natural progression for it, which is an interesting phrase, actually, when you’re talking about artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural progression. It’s a very strange phrase, but, here we are.

Christina: I think it came out on the scene. We’d all, we’ve all been reading our sci fi books and watching our movies. So, we know the implications, like I’ve watched Terminator. I’ve, I understand where this is going. But what you see too, is you have this understanding that Pandora’s box is open.

So, we need to adapt. And so as use cases are showing up, you’re going through this like overarching, arching dread of where is this all headed in the long run? But individually but I still have to implement it into my work in order to survive. As we’re seeing those use cases, we then have an implementation cycle and then an optimization cycle as we’re basically training it to be us.

And in order for it to do a good job, it has to become us.

Joe: More human than human?

Christina: Yeah! It’s wild, but there is a there is very much this parallel to when computers came out. And how the people who actively rejected it and were the most fearful of being replaced by it, were replaced by it.

Meanwhile, the people who adapted, we have new careers, we have new work that did not exist. Before computers, we have new capabilities and new use cases. And so, it’s one of those things that you have to understand all of the negative implications while also adapting and utilizing it at the exact same time. So, it’s very interesting.

Joe: A hundred percent. Yeah. Christina, it occurs to me that something you’ve mentioned a couple of times. Just in this conversation, you’ve mentioned social listening. Do you mind just explaining very quickly to audience what the idea of social listening is? And how could their B2B business implemented?

Christina: Yeah. So there, what most people think of as social listening is actually social monitoring, which is you have your social accounts and you’re waiting for people to tag you or mention you. And then you take on that stuff and you fix it. Think of social monitoring is more of a customer success, customer service role where people are reacting to you, you’re responding accordingly.

Social listening is a lot more proactive. So, we’re not only looking for the people who are mentioning us and talking about us, but we’re looking at the general subset of our personas. What are they talking about even when they aren’t talking about us? What hobbies, what things do they pay attention to?

What’s important to them when they talk about our area for a small business? Are there conversations being had about our local area that would implicate whether or not they have a signal towards buying us or buying from a competitor? Are they talking about a competitor? Are they talking about our industry as a whole?

And it’s a lot of really great research where you essentially have like a bird’s eye view of what people are talking about, how they talk, without putting them in a room and offering them a gift card. Like you don’t have the biases that you would deal with if you were running like a focus group where that person’s coming in and sure, you can have an hour if you give me like a $50 gift card and lunch, but that doesn’t mean that they’re going to talk to you that the way that they would talk to you if you were in the room.

And so having that information is incredible audience intelligence and you can learn more about them. You can see what’s important to them, what’s what they’re facing. Maybe a really great example is use cases for partnerships. So, you could find that a whole subsection of your target audience loves a specific brand.

Maybe that’s a brand that you should be partnering with. Maybe you do a collaboration with them because maybe they’ve heard of you, but they don’t know much about you, or they don’t really care either way. But you do a partnership with this specific brand and there’s going to be this like cohesive blend of if they’re working with them, they must be good.

And if I’m a fan of one, then I’ll probably be a fan of the other. Really great use case for this is last year. Lego and Fortnite did a game. So, there’s like a whole Lego level for Fortnite and it makes so much sense And it really breathes fresh life into Fortnite But there’s also a lot of kids who’ve been playing with Lego who are probably into that beginning gamer phase who were like I love Lego, but now I should probably play Fortnite because they’re working together.

And but you don’t know, it’s all based on assumptions if you don’t have that information. But I’m a huge fan of social listening. I think it’s underutilized across segments. It’s absolutely priceless.

Joe: 100%. And I suppose the just to carry on with your sort of Lego/Fortnite example, I suppose that was, you can see that as a direct sort of competition to Minecraft, because that is effective.

Yeah. Absolutely. No, that makes complete sense. Thank you very much, Christine. I’m going to start to wrap up our conversation. I’m afraid, Christina, we are running out of time once again. It’s gone like that, hasn’t it? And by the way, you can check out mine and Christina’s previous conversations at leadforensics.com/webinars or leadforensics.com/podcasts. And there’s several conversations up there for you to go and enjoy.

Christine, I’m going to come back to you for one final question. If there was one thing to take away for everybody watching this to get right about their social media strategy going into this new year, what is that one key bit of advice that you would give to them?

Christina: Know your brand and don’t follow trends just to follow trends. It has to make sense for your brand. That’s where I see a lot of brands trip up is they want to be the cool kid.  And it fails.

Joe: It’s a shame that, hopefully, I wish there were a day we could see a Lead Forensics and HubSpot game coming out as well in the same way. That’d be awesome!

Christina: I love that! I love that!

Joe: But Christina, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us again today. Do remember to keep an eye on Lead Forensics Socials for news of our upcoming webinars, and I’m sure we will see you again very soon. Christina, thank you so much for joining me again.

Christina: It was a pleasure.

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