Social Media Expert Evan Kirstel on Promoting Enterprise Brands

foreign speaks we're talking about social media for the Enterprise social media for business and how businesses can best use social media to boost their profile to discuss that I'm joined by a very special guest with me is Evan christelle quite possibly the top social media influencer in the highly competitive Enterprise B2B sector Evan absolutely thrilled to have you with us today well I'm delighted to be here I've been a big fan and reader for over a decade great you know obviously social media is not new and and businesses in theory have a pretty good idea of that they need to use social media but are are they are they doing a good job of it and in a larger sense what trends do you see driving Enterprise use of social media these days there's there's a big gap between the Haves and the have-nots on social media when it comes to B2B Brands there are a few companies who are doing really well and put out really interesting and educational creative content and then there's everyone else and sadly uh most fall into that category of not getting noticed getting engagement getting reach shares Impressions likes and Views and all the stuff that you know B2B marketers are looking for so you know it's hard if you're not a Microsoft you know if you're not a Google uh who has that tremendous reach and visibility to get noticed and that's sort of what I do as an independent social media marketing Guru content creator Tech influencer is a tag team with that brand because it is a real challenge getting their fair share of voice no pun intended on social media isn't this social media's been around for years and years and it's in many ways uh a good deal financially you need to hire and pay the staff to run it but the platforms themselves are free so it's a form of free media you can you can put anything out there you want you can shape your message any way you want for an audience why have some of the larger companies been so slow to really get on board well they they spend a tremendous amount of money on paid social So Paid promotion gives them the rocket fuel that they need uh to get noticed and and to get reach unfortunately not everyone can throw money at social media so and then you talk about organic social and there there's a whole Myriad of reasons one you might not be that good at it uh you you might not be that interesting you know you might not be leveraging the Platforms in the way that they could be leveraged with things like live video video streaming and and you may not frankly be that interesting and brands have a fundamental disadvantage versus individuals versus people when it comes to social media in general because people like engaging with people right and right just look at Elon Musk and his engagement followers reach versus you know Tesla or SpaceX you know who might get you know a 20th of his engagement so it just uh the fundamental challenges is that human to human style engagement and interaction that that Brands Miss what a couple of of classic typical weaknesses that you see companies have with their social media strategies well they tend to sort of you know hire you know the 20-something social media manager and think okay I have it covered what they don't think about is how do I activate my employees how do I activate my you know my business leaders and and Tech you know leaders Executives technologists to be social creatures and how do I you know use best practices and tips and tricks when it's really kind of a side you know side activity for most brands who are still stuck on frankly things like white papers and events and kind of the old school marketing that we know so well in B2B so it's partly a mine shaft a mindset shift is needed and partly it's leveraging the Platforms in a way that you know the consumer style marketing people already know and do every day white white papers now that's a really exciting idea don't you love reading a good 30 page white paper I mean that is really a fun Friday night so it is I get Tick Tock you know I want to curl up on a Friday night with a white paper all right so we we see the problems and and we know how important it is to address those problems because there's a large audience out there that's willing to willing to engage how do you recommend that they address these these shortcomings well they should hire me right away all right I guess you know that's it's funny and yet maybe the joke it makes a point we need to promote ourselves I mean that's the reality in a cluttered World in an attention-star world we have to promote ourselves it's not going to happen for us yeah and and you have to you know frankly there's a lot of lack of information education about the platforms and how to use them how to do video and how to edit and create content and distribute it and all of that can be learned I mean you only have to go to YouTube to figure out how to do anything these days um so there's a higher degree of Education self-education that's needed and there's just a lot of experimentation you know trying what works what doesn't work you know people give up after their 10th podcast or their 20th Tick Tock or their second live stream they don't see an immediate Roi or impact and they just sort of move on when in fact you know uh I look back I've done hundreds of podcasts and live streams I look back in my first you know 20 videos and think oh that's awful but you know you you put in your 10 000 hours and you get pretty good at something so you know building a competency and takes time you know you can't just Outsource it to your agency or your marketing company or treat it like as advertising that that's very polished and produced it requires a big personal uh stake that that is the problem and of course you mentioned that the 10 000 hour figure that Malcolm Gladwell says we need ten thousand hours to become an expert ten thousand hours or a million Tweets in my case over 15 years so have you know which is yeah you've tweeted a million tweets sadly very sadly yes over uh 15 years that that's partly automation part partly retweets my own tweets right but um yeah it's a total Obsession I wouldn't advise that by the way if you're listening and think right away but there is the idea of of being active and engaged and you know daily if not hourly tuned in right what's happening on LinkedIn and Twitter and other networks and not you know going on LinkedIn once a week and and checking in if there's you know these are media sites now I need to be treated as much right right the world actually exists 24 7 and I guess we're going to get the best engagement we need to actually engage with them 24 7. we're just we're just daunting certainly for individuals and even for companies you think the companies would have been paid staff where it wouldn't be quite as daunting but um all right well let's let's drill down a bit to your services uh what sets you apart as a service provider in the social media sector well I think it comes down to one having an audience uh you know I have almost 600k followers on these networks so having a built-in sort of cultivated audience over a long period of time that's you know sort of suitable for the content that I'm curating and sharing and and co-creating with clients is important uh understanding best practices like these platforms including Twitter are changing gosh daily if not not weekly and there's always new new applications new platforms new destinations new communities that are worth tapping into so you really you can't you have to be a bit of a practitioner you know you can't read a headline or a lofty Journal article on on social and think you understand how to play in this game so you know okay yeah it's not that easy and um you know you don't have time I mean you need to drive you know metrics you need to drive people to your event you need to get your content consumed and you know you don't have 10 years to build an audience and so that's why through Partnerships people like myself but also many analysts and third parties have great communities that you can partner with and tap into and you know the big brands are doing it but I love working with early stage companies because you know they're fun they're Dynamic and exciting and they're willing to do things on an experimental basis to put to to create really interesting out of box you know content that's creative and funny and um you know to do that in you know cross-platforms really helps get noticed all right so you're working with Brands and and you have a large amount of followers do you ever find that uh a company resists your message like like Evan we we hear you we know you do this but we don't want to do that so they drag their feet as you work with them oh that's barf of course being a client service kind of organization um you know clients need to really discover themselves the power of Social and digital and content on these platforms you can lead a horse to waters you know that can't make them drink but once they see the power of the platforms and the the engagement and the reach they can get through using more you know modern and interesting channels um they there's really no going back and and so this is the way business is done these days including what we're doing right now with this video chat right do you think there's a sense that um companies want to get straight to a marketing message but in reality sometimes they're they're better off providing information and doing a soft sell and there is is there friction between those two approaches or is one necessarily better or worse well people have become immune to sales messages so definitely selling or marketing or traditional messaging is falling flat I don't look at advertisements I don't watch videos on YouTube anymore you know I premium and um it's just not that interesting and so you can a better approach is to educate to entertain to inform to you know interview customers to to talk about the marketplace to talk about the business or the journey if you're an entrepreneur that's the kind of content that people are really hungry for right I I think true words were never spoken I wish some of the brands didn't realize that because it's the audience doesn't want to be sold to you can you can reach them by educating them and entertaining them and enchanting them more than you can say hey we've got this 9.99 you know subscription is like it's uh there's no click to buy I mean unless I were selling you know beauty products or makeup maybe which of course uh wouldn't be a good fit but you know that there's a click to buy there but in Enterprise software storage networking Cloud you know it's not about selling it's not about clicking to buy it's about uh awareness and top of the funnel building attention right right so all right your sense of a couple of best practices if you want to do this what's what what's a what what are a couple of key best practices well I'd say up up your game when it comes to your social profiles a lot of people's Twitter handles or LinkedIn profiles LinkedIn Pages kind of looks like something they put together 12 years ago and they're not using the modern features of the platform that incorporates video and allows the multimedia presentations and and it really is these are modern content platforms you can highlight you know content in really interesting ways so there's a real refresh required of individual and brand social presence two you know when it comes to written word things like LinkedIn articles these are the de facto publishing platforms now and Twitter is going to allow long-form content and of course YouTube is is the biggest search engine behind Google right so if you're not you know putting content out for all to see it you're not going to get the SEO benefits uh that YouTube and Google offer so you know using the modern features of the platforms is key and I I think this this discussion emphasizes the need to do video you know whether it's short form video whether it's long form whether it's live stream video uh whether it's you know for tick tock or reels or or Twitter or LinkedIn live there is just a tremendous appetite to consume video content and the platforms all preference video live in particular over other kinds of platforms you have to think not about yourself or your but how the platforms the algorithms the AI present and preference uh content to to its users and that's that these days it's all about video interesting yeah I believe that uh in fact I see it in action is here's a question you can't answer but I'll ask it anyways uh is there an ideal link through a video and I think the situ the answer must be depends on the platform but is even even if the answer is depends on the platform is there an ideal links for a video right English for a B2B audience that is not necessarily tick tock yeah I think I think there is um but you have to be at all of the ideal video links what I mean is you do a long form hour session you can break that up into 20-minute videos you can then break that up into three minute videos you can then break that up into 30 second Snippets and so there is an interest in appetite in all forms of of video content and reuse is key I mean with one video you can go out in different formats and different lengths which might be more appropriate for like one platform like LinkedIn different from an Instagram or Facebook and so it's just about experimentation with what works for your audience all right the big question I think is is the future of Enterprise social media um a lot of dollars at stake in the answer to this what trends do you see in the years ahead and how can company be preparing for it now I think you know two Trends are employee activation that's really key giving your employees the training the tools and the you know incentives to to be social not just for the marketing types but the sellers for social selling the executives The Business Leaders I mean look how much attention like a satyana delegate from Microsoft when prize personally out there talking on a subject versus just a Microsoft expert so you know it's the employee the engagement the employee experience on social is key and I think the other one is community you know it's fine having a big audience you know if you're like myself or you're a big brand you have an audience but do you really are you are you turning that into a community are you are you nurturing a community both privately and and publicly of your your your your fans your not just your followers and I think those Trends are pretty foremost in my mind these days you know that's the word isn't it that's that's the Met if we sift through all of this I'm gonna I put I put an emphasis on that one word Community as the magic word Community suggests we're connected Community suggest a back and forth relationship as opposed to a one-to-many you know broadcast scenario like good old-fashioned television so I guess the question then is what does it mean to nurture a community I guess it means you're giving to them they're giving back to you everyone's giving to each other but how do how does one party nurture that environment well it's it's almost um you know a kind of uh reward structure for participating in the community and gamifying it you know being a community manager means making it fun and interactive and uh two-way you're not just asking but you're giving um and look at eweek I mean I'm I'm a big fan I imagine there are other huge e-week readers and fans who would gladly you know exchange you know comments and and likes and and notes on our articles or chat about it on Twitter spaces or Clubhouse and and so you know nurturing that sort of core group of super fans is not just important for the brand but it can be monetized you can charge five bucks a month to participate in a community that's delivering value and so you know I think that's the the shift that I'm seeing Aaron you said it I mean it's a big topic we could talk quite a long a long while about this one but I appreciate your comments uh very much very much thank you for sharing your expertise today thanks for what you do good to see you

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