Merged Marketing Podcast

192 – Unlocking the Secrets of Engaging B2B Social Media with Anthony Leung

Secrets of Engaging B2B Social Media

What are some of the Secrets of Engaging B2B Social Media ? Is your B2B social media sexy? In other words, do your customers find your B2B social media content appealing and compelling? Accordingly, we are discussing why your B2B social media doesn’t have to suck. Our subject matter expert today is Anthony Leung.

Anthony’s career background in B2B marketing: He moved from his home country Canada to the UK, where he started digital marketing in SEO copywriting and social media. While he initially handled B2C marketing, he transitioned to B2B brands. Anthony says he prefers the B2B medium because it lets you connect directly with your customers. He is drawn to content that focuses on the customer’s needs besides having entertainment value. Interestingly, Anthony argues that the way of doing B2B social media is not moving forward. The status quo of most B2B content on social media is that it receives likes from family and friends as opposed to potential customers or affiliates. (I love B2B because it is an honest and genuine medium; things that are overproduced are not celebrated as genuine).

How B2B can leverage social media to grow their business: Our subject matter expert says that B2B marketers should strive to create content for the customers instead of themselves. He decries that most B2B are fixated on growing the number of likes on their social media posts. Instead, Anthony argues that generating organic likes from the audience, prospects, or industry members is valuable. In this regard, B2B benefits by creating content that spells out customer problems and their product or service’s desired solution.

Opportunities on social media for B2B businesses: Anthony advises that B2B should re-contextualize its typical long-form content to suit short-form content for social media. While bulky content works well on websites, podcasts, and webinars, the same content will not gain traction on social media networks such as Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. As such, our subject matter expert recommends that the marketing people of a B2B should be flexible and re-contextualize the message into shorter, exciting versions so that it gains traction with the audience on social media.

Best channels for B2B social media marketing: Anthony expresses strong confidence in LinkedIn as the best platform for B2B social media marketing that doesn’t have to suck. He says LinkedIn offers great flexibility for creativity and greater organic reach with the audience. In addition, a B2B can gain visibility with an audience outside its network, unlike most other social media platforms. On its part, Facebook and Instagram are great channels for generating interest so they can follow you on LinkedIn and email. (LinkedIn is the last great social media platform because it does not corner you into a single form of creativity).

Leveraging LinkedIn for B2B social media marketing: Our subject matter expert today underscores the importance of consistency in producing and posting content on social media. In this regard, a B2B should create one great piece of content and assume they have arrived. Consistency on the feed helps to create trust and brand affinity. He argues that a B2B social media doesn’t have to sack due to fixation on one way of creating content. By figuring out the best content and the most appropriate social media platform for it, a B2B can capture the audience’s attention within the first two seconds. His LinkedIn Blog Activator converts B2B blog content into a month-long worth of quality content. (The battle is always won on the feed; you must create and post value content consistently).

Timecodes

(01:06) Introduction of today’s topic and guest expert

(01:36) Anthony’s career background in B2B marketing

(04:04) How B2B can leverage social media to grow their business

(06:05) Opportunities on social media for B2B businesses

(07:28) Best channels for B2B social media marketing

(11:19) Leveraging LinkedIn for B2B social media marketing

(19:22) Anthony’s contact information: LinkedIn

Transcription

[00:00:00.940] – Intro

You’re listening to the Merged Marketing podcast with me, Jason Hunt. The mission with this show is to discuss all things marketing, sales, and mindset. It’s my hope for entrepreneurs like you to get the most from your efforts so that you can focus on what you do best. Let’s go. You’re listening to Episode 192 of the Merged Marketing podcast. In this episode, we’re talking about unlocking the secrets of engaging B2B social media. My guest on today’s episode is Anthony Leung. In this episode, we really dive into the tactics that B2B businesses can deploy on social media. For a lot of B2B businesses, they might think this is super foreign, or they’ve given up on social media because they do not see any opportunities and their time is spent better in other places. However, in this episode, we’re going to debunk that. We’re going to talk about the areas, platforms, placements, and opportunities where you can get some visibility and potential traction and leads in the door. Without further ado, let’s kick them a chat.With Anthony Leung.

 

[00:01:04.370] – Jason Hunt

Anthony, welcome to the show.

 

[00:01:05.780] – Anthony Leung

Thanks for having me, Jay.

 

[00:01:06.740] – Jason Hunt

We’re going to dive into some awesome topics today around B2B marketing because I get the question all the time. Anytime I talk to a B2B lead, and for those that don’t know B2B, it’s business to business lead. They say that the content needs to be sexy, and it sometimes can be tough to create sexy content when you’re a B2B business. However, we’re going to debunk that myth today in this conversation, at least I hope so. But maybe we could start, Anthony, by you giving us a bit of background on your journey into B2B marketing.

 

[00:01:36.050] – Anthony Leung

Yeah. Actually, I moved from Canada to the UK. In Canada, I actually did print marketing, if you believe this or not. When I moved to the UK, when I was looking over job ads, it was all about digital marketing at the point. I got myself into it, started off with SEO copywriting, then got into social media. In that journey, I did mostly B2C brands, stuff like Just E at, which I think is called the Dishes in Canada, Prod Montgay, which doesn’t actually have exists in Canada. It does show up in New York, so you might know the brand. But there were more upscale Tim Horton’s, if you will, just as beloved of a brand. I also did B2B brands as well, but mostly B2C brands. I fell in love with the medium because you can connect directly to your customers or if you are a charity, your supporters through this medium. It’s an honest, authentic medium where things that are over produced are not celebrated as something that’s genuine. That’s why I love it. When I do work on Instagram or on Facebook, it was still a thing, but we looked for content that entertained and that really understood the emotions and how the customer looked at us.

 

[00:02:49.580] – Anthony Leung

When I started my own business, I reflected on the B2B brands, and it doesn’t seem to have the same perspective. It seems that we being B2B, I I have a status quo of putting out content the same way we’ve been doing it for 10 plus years. I say 10 years because my first B2B gig was 10 years ago, but nothing’s changed in those 10 years. The way that we think we are effectively talking to our customers is actually not effective at all. You can see it in how people engage with your brand’s LinkedIn content. You can see there’s pages with hundreds and thousands of likes or followers, sorry. And in the content, there’s maybe 50 likes. And in those 50 likes, 80 % of it is staff members. So it’s clearly not the people. Or family. Yeah, or family. Mom and dad accounts for 90 % of the content engagement. But if I was back in B2C, that’d be a red flag. My job might be on the line, but in B2B, it seems like a accepted status quo. And I feel like there’s such a missed opportunity. T hat’s where I’m putting my business now is to help B2B companies with that B2C experience I’ve got.

 

[00:04:04.470] – Jason Hunt

How can B2B business really effectively leverage social media as an outlet for them to actually potentially grow their business?

 

[00:04:13.720] – Anthony Leung

First, I think we need to recognize that this content isn’t for us. We’re not running to make ourselves feel better. We already know how hot we are. It’s cool. We don’t need to tell ourselves all the time. What we need to do is connect that hotness with the customer, with what they feel, what their needs are, how we’re going to solve their problems, and where they are emotionally, possibly, with the problems that they have. If you connect that through your content, you’re going to see a lot more engagement with it because now you’re talking about them and how their problems are being solved and how you can be there for them, rather than, Hey, look at me. I’m at trade show X. Come see me at X. Great. But how does that benefit me? I don’t know. I think the number one thing that B2B companies need to think about is how to flip that perspective in their content and how to create content for the audience rather than for themselves.

 

[00:05:05.950] – Jason Hunt

100 %. I think a lot of B2B businesses can’t be fixated on that vanity number of likes because it’s really not relevant at all. What’s relevant is a small pocket or subset of people that you can speak directly to and have your message resonate with them, which is essentially what we’re talking about here, Anthony.

 

[00:05:26.750] – Anthony Leung

Absolutely. I feel like a lot of times I see a lot of WhatsApp messages, Hey guys, could you help me like this post? My boss really wants 100 likes. That’s great that you get 100 likes, but if it’s not genuine, that’s not true engagement. And all that effort that you put into that content is not reaching the people you need it to reach. So that number, it becomes vanity. It’s not vanity when that number comes organically from your audience and you start seeing comments from prospects and from people in your industry discussing things that are important from that post, that’s not vanity. That actually then becomes a signal that your content is resonating with them.

 

[00:06:05.270] – Jason Hunt

Let’s talk about the opportunities that B2B businesses have with social media. What are some of the low hanging fruit opportunities that you see that B2B businesses should be taking advantage of?

 

[00:06:17.110] – Anthony Leung

You know what B2B businesses are great at? Long content. We are amazing at that. We love white papers and blogs, podcasts, webinars. All these things are wonderful. And all these things bring so much value to your customers and your prospects because it was created by an expert that solves a problem. That’s great. But what’s missing is like a bridge between that knowledge that sits in your long form content and the way to story tell in a short form so that it becomes digestible on social media. We’re not talking about, Hey, let’s just this chunk of podcast, let’s just throw it onto the internet. We’re talking about recontextualizing that piece of content so that it becomes exciting to watch on LinkedIn or on TikTok or on Instagram. When we’re able to do that, I think the status quo will start breaking down because the status quo only exists because I think business don’t understand the impact that can have on their business. But once you see your prospects start commenting on your posts instead of just these regular staff members, I’ve often seen a lot of my clients just… It’s like a light bulb moment where they’re like, Oh, this is cool.

 

[00:07:27.560] – Anthony Leung

Let’s do more of this.

 

[00:07:29.710] – Jason Hunt

In terms of the platforms, are there certain platforms you prefer over others for posting your social media content to? Or where a B2B business owner or director or Marketing Manager should be devoting most of their time?

 

[00:07:41.670] – Anthony Leung

I think if there’s one channel that you want to absolutely nail, it’s LinkedIn. I think that there’s going to be a lot of talk about TikTok and Instagram. Those are still great channels, but I think that LinkedIn is the last great social media network of our platform because it doesn’t corner you into a single single form of creativity. It doesn’t corner you to a single medium. You don’t have to dance if you don’t want to. You don’t have to do videos if you don’t want to. If you express yourself better in text, great, do that. I think for a lot of businesses that are so naturally gravitating towards white papers and blogs, that’s a great place to extend your reach and distribute that content. We contextualize it so it becomes meaningful every single time you show up on people’s feeds. I think that aside from the flexibility of the creative that you can use, I also think that you’re still able to get more reach from LinkedIn than, let’s say, Facebook, let’s be honest, in terms of organic reach. But in terms of LinkedIn building, brand building organically, that’s a great place to do it because you’re still rewarding engaging content with further reach outside of your own network.

 

[00:08:54.060] – Jason Hunt

I would say that to touch on the point of Facebook organic being pretty much a cemetery. I I think that for the most part it is, especially you got to consider how busy that feed is now. Because what all the algorithm on Facebook or Meta is trying to do is put things in front of you that you care most about. Now you think about an organic post on social from a fan page or a business page, you’re now competing not just with friends of those people you’re trying to get in front of, you’re competing with the groups that are getting in front of those people you want to get in front of, but you’re also competing with the actual paid ads that people are paying for to get in front of those people that you want to get in front of. It’s a very busy place and not a lot of real estate available, which results in low organic reach. However, if we’re going to talk about Facebook for B2B just for a second, the big benefit is that it’s the biggest audience in the world. The biggest pool of people are on Facebook and Instagram.

 

[00:09:50.510] – Jason Hunt

But the mindset that they’re in might not be in the mindset of taking actions that are relevant or going to progress their business like they would be on LinkedIn. When you go on LinkedIn, you’re in business mode. You’re not in casual hanging out 11 o’clock line beside your wife or husband in bed mode. You know what I mean? It’s a different mindset that you’re in. When you’re on Facebook or Instagram, it’s almost like you want to use those platforms as a B2B to get people off of those platforms into a place like email or get them over to following you on LinkedIn from there. When they’re in that mindset of business, they can take those actions you want them to take.

 

[00:10:26.160] – Anthony Leung

I couldn’t agree with you more. I think it’s like going to movie cinema and you could be in the mood for comedy or you could be in the mood for documentary, but you got to be in the mood for.

 

[00:10:34.450] – Jason Hunt

The right thing. 100 %, definitely.

 

[00:10:35.930] – Commercial Break

Real quick, guys, are your messages on social media falling on deaf ears? Are you having trouble converting those leads from social media? Well, there’s a better way to do it, and that is by use of a lead magnet, something that provides immense value to your target audience that’s irresistible and they can’t say no. The goal here is to get that contact informationfrom your ideal clients off of social media so you can put them into a nurture sequence so they can know, like and trust you. If this sounds of interest to you, we’ve done dozens and dozens and dozens of these type of campaigns for our clients and we can help you out as well. Head on over to merged. Ca and book your discovery call today. Merged. Ca.

 

[00:11:19.340] – Jason Hunt

I mean, LinkedIn has done a lot recently in terms of evolving and offering certain placements where people can distribute content. Maybe explore that a little bit, Anthony, and tell us some of the areas on LinkedIn where you see more content being published.

 

[00:11:35.960] – Anthony Leung

That’s interesting. I think that here’s the thing, and this is coming from my experience from… I’ve been doing social media for 12 years now, 13, something like that. I think that, and this is from experience, again, from doing social media for all this time. And this happened on Twitter, this happened on Facebook, this happened on Instagram with all these products and stuff like that that they’ve released. The battle is always won on the feed, in my perspective. Effective. The way to build brand, it’s not to create one great piece of content and go, Ta da, we’re good. It’s to show up every time and regularly. Every time you show up, you have something to offer. When the battle is won on the feed, when they scroll and they see your brand and then you go, Huh, that’s pretty cool. Next day they come on again and they see your brand again. You got something else different to say but also interesting. That’s where you start building the trust. That’s where you start building your brand affinity. For me, the feed is the most important thing. Within the feed, there’s different ways to do creative. There’s videos, there’s carousels, which I heard that or saw that proper carousels are being killed off on LinkedIn, but that’s fine.

 

[00:12:47.420] – Anthony Leung

We still got the PDF ones, which is way better anyways. We can still do our carousels. We can still do image posts, and we can still link posts. Those are very different ways of creating content. I think that you shouldn’t feel like you need to fixate on a certain way of creating content. What you should fixate on is what your story is and what medium tells the story best. Because you’ve got two seconds at most to get people’s attention. That means that your first two lines of text on your caption needs to be spot on to let them know what the value is. That means the image in your first two seconds of your video needs to set up the context of what they’re about to see. That’s way more important than trying to think of, Oh, I need a thousand videos this month. Because there’s so many of us that I think fall into that trap where we read something somewhere and they say, Oh, we need to do videos. V ideos are wonderful. V ideos are great. But also at the same time, does your piece of content, is that the most natural form of creative so that it expresses the best?

 

[00:13:52.750] – Anthony Leung

Yeah. So you were talking about what I’m working on, which I call the LinkedIn blog activator because everything needs to be. But the service I’m providing now is that you give me all your blogs as a B2B business, and I’ll just turn that into a month’s worth of LinkedIn content for you. I think a lot of times we look at, as marketers, we look at blogs and we go, Oh, one blog equals one post. We just have to talk something about it and we have to push it and our job is done. But when I see blog posts, I see two, three posts that we can do that’s engaging. There’s little short stories within this big, long narrative that you got and you can highlight those to bring these interesting nuggets to get people’s attention to read the full story. Because, again, you’ve got about two seconds to get their attention. If you can use those two seconds to give them something that’s go, Huh, that was interesting. That’s going to be way more valuable than them skipping your post completely.

 

[00:14:49.900] – Jason Hunt

I think that’s an excellent point. Excellent idea and inspiration for anybody looking for additional pieces of LinkedIn content out there is grabbing an existing blog post and turning that into 5 to 10 pieces of content. An example would be five ways to properly sod a lawn for a landscape company. That blog is sitting there existing on the website. Those five ways are five different pieces of content for LinkedIn, right?

 

[00:15:14.090] – Anthony Leung

Absolutely.

 

[00:15:15.090] – Jason Hunt

Now, Anthony, through each of those five pieces of content, would you link back to the original article or blog through those pieces of content, or is it just those standalone pieces of content and no link back to a blog?

 

[00:15:26.790] – Anthony Leung

I think it depends. I think it depends. Jay, you know me, I like to joke, so I always look for the punchline. If the link ruins the punchline, then I skip the link. But it’s about intent because if every post that you do has a link back to a blog, people can smell that and go, Oh, okay, you just really want me to read the blog. But if there’s a short piece there that all you got to do is just drop, let’s say, a infographic that tells the story really well and that lands the sentiment really well, maybe you don’t need a link back. I think that, again, it depends on the narrative. It’s really hard to say, but I would say that don’t be shy to put the link back because ultimately that’s where a big chunk of that value also sits. If you think this is interesting, wait to see all that other stuff. That’s what we’re really trying to say. Linking it back from time is not a bad idea at all. But also don’t overdo it because then it starts becoming obvious that you’re not really interested in telling the story.

 

[00:16:23.580] – Anthony Leung

You’re actually more interested in just hitting the blog.

 

[00:16:26.770] – Jason Hunt

Let’s say those five posts that you’re creating from that blog article, are you connecting video, images to those pieces of content, hashtags? Explain how that.

 

[00:16:38.010] – Anthony Leung

Post looks. That’s interesting. Let’s go back to your lawn guy’s example. Immediately, I feel like there’s a few posts I can do. The first one I would do is possibly a launch post. Just go, Hey, we got this. We just wrote the five ways of sorting a lawn. You do a carousel so that it breaks down the five ways really quickly. Treat a carousel as a comic strip. How much text is a comic strip? Not that much. But the purpose of each panel is just to get you to the next panel, the narrative overall. Treat it as a comic strip. Do quick fire, like, this is what you’re going to get in the post and click here. Great. That’s wonderful. Then for the next post, take one of each of one of those five ways that is a meteor and create an image from that. Write two paragraphs on what that one of those ways are, link back to the post. Third, we could do a video. If there’s a video already in the blog post, use that possibly or re record the video so that it feels like a purposeful piece of video. What I do with webinar video is that I look for really interesting things that are said within the webinar, but then I take…

 

[00:17:45.930] – Anthony Leung

That interesting thing might have taken three minutes to articulate. I would chop that up so that it becomes something articulate within 30 seconds, and then I would script something for my client or myself to record so that I’m speaking directly to camera and I’m introducing the context of the piece of content you’re about to see. I don’t know how to sod lawns. Again, I don’t have a lawn. Maybe that’s why I moved here because I don’t have to bother with lawns or don’t have to mold the lawn, don’t have to shovel the snow.

 

[00:18:15.880] – Jason Hunt

Lawn maintenance can be overrated, I think. Thank you.

 

[00:18:19.140] – Anthony Leung

We see a lot of water. You heard it here first.

 

[00:18:21.650] – Jason Hunt

A lot of water, really.

 

[00:18:23.580] – Anthony Leung

Yeah, 100 %. You couldn’t need a better recontextualizer, that piece of content that would work really well on the blog to illustrate a certain point, but throwing it up there on there on its own might not get the same results. Think about that as well as you do that. That’s three pieces already. I think that’s off the top of my head without knowing how to spot a lot at all.

 

[00:18:44.460] – Jason Hunt

No, you nailed it. Crashed it. That was great. Anthony, if our audience has any questions for you or wants to learn more about the Blog Activator, what’s the best way for them to get in touch?

 

[00:18:54.830] – Anthony Leung

Just hit me up on LinkedIn where it’s going to appear here. I don’t know. It’s going to appear.

 

[00:19:00.060] – Jason Hunt

In the show notes for episode 192. So go on over to merge. Ca podcast 192, and you can get all the deets for Anthony.

 

[00:19:10.300] – Anthony Leung

Or you can just search for mean right hook, mean MEAN, right being W R I T E and hook being hook.

 

[00:19:16.790] – Jason Hunt

I see what you did there.

 

[00:19:18.470] – Anthony Leung

Nice. It’s from a love of George St. Pierre and a good pun.

 

[00:19:23.580] – Jason Hunt

Nice. Awesome. That might be the answer to our next question. We’ll see because this is the last question and the question we end every episode with. If you could choose one person, dead or alive, to represent mean, right hook, who would it be and why?

 

[00:19:38.670] – Anthony Leung

You just sprung that one on me, man.

 

[00:19:40.150] – Jason Hunt

You’re fault, brother.

 

[00:19:41.530] – Jason Hunt

Me on your toe.

 

[00:19:43.550] – Anthony Leung

I’ll tell you who I think would really represent well. Steve Carell. I love Steve Carell. He is funny, but he’s also thoughtful. He uses humor when he needs to, but when he doesn’t need to, he can bring it home with his drama. I appreciate him so much as an artist because of this. I feel like Meet R ight Hook offers the same thing where I love joking, I love making people laugh, but at the same time, what Meet R ight Hook brings to the table isn’t just the laughter, it’s actual results. It’s something that’s serious. This is our business. This is our livelihood. We need to work. We need to win. I think Steve Carell is a good choice.

 

[00:20:27.980] – Jason Hunt

You heard it here first, folks. Steve Steve Carell’s character from The Office would be the brand ambassador for Anthony’s company, Meet R ight Hook. Now, it’s funny. You went from George St. Pierre, which I thought you were going to go with George St. Pierre, to Steve Carell.

 

[00:20:41.010] – Anthony Leung

But I’ll go with that. I love it. I really should have picked the Canadian, but awesome. Rick the temp. I got to throw back for that one.

 

[00:20:49.210] – Jason Hunt

That’s.

 

[00:20:49.550] – Anthony Leung

It. Rick the temp. That’s awesome.

 

[00:20:51.640] – Jason Hunt

Anthony, thanks so much for your time. Appreciate you.

 

[00:20:54.320] – Anthony Leung

Jay, it’s amazing. Thank you.

 

[00:20:56.080] – Speaker 3

Real quick, guys. If you are active on Instagram or TikTok, I encourage you to go on over and give my personal profile a follow @jhunt official, J AY, HUNT, OFF, ICAAL. Over there on Instagram and TikTok, I’m posting my favorite highlights from the Merged Marketing podcast, along with some of the highlights from my speaking engagements overseas as well as locally. Ton of value. Go on over and check it out @jhontofficial. I’d like to thank you for listening to the Merged Marketing podcast and I invite you to subscribe so you never miss an episode of the Merged Marketing podcast. One of the best ways to do that is to add us to your Instagram @mergedmedia. M E D M E D IA. Go on over there, give Merged Media follow and subscribe and never miss an episode. Thank you so much for listening. We’ll talk to you soon.

 

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