Here at Street we’re firm believers in a multichannel approach, which includes social media marketing, but we know that for many agencies creating and posting social content is often at the bottom of a very long list!
For June’s edition of The New World of New Biz Webinar, Katie was joined by an amazing panel of social media experts, Andy Lambert, Senior Manager of product Marketing at Adobe and Author of Social 3.0, Ed Knights, Head of New Business & Marketing at Born Social, Dan Knowlton, Co-Founder & CMO at Knowlton, who shared their invaluable insights on how you can step up your agency’s social media channels and attract new business leads.
Creating and executing a social media strategy can feel overwhelming, but here are just a few of our panel’s top tips to create winning social content without having to take up hours of your time! (We’ve also included a few of our favourite B2B social posts for you to take inspiration from.)
When you think of B2B social strategy, what images come to mind? Often, people think of rambling LinkedIn posts (which we can all agree are a bit cringe-worthy) or an instagram account that is posted to a few times a year. But it’s time to ditch the corporate content and shift towards content that is informative, entertaining or showcases the amazing work your agency can do.
The most popular content right now is mobile-first, video content like TikTok, that’s short and sweet! Your social media accounts offer you the perfect opportunity to humanise your brand and attract the clients that are the perfect fit for your agency.
Knowlton is the perfect example of how ditching traditional B2B marketing standards can win you new business opportunities. In May 2022, they published a video showing the ‘behind the scenes’ of a viral 2007 video featuring Knowlton founders Dan and Lloyd. This video alone generated £70k of new business opportunities in just one week! This was not only entertaining but also showed prospects that they are experts in creating engaging video content, which is exactly what brands come to Knowlton for.
Want to learn more about why this worked for Knowlton? Listen to this episode of Knowlton’s Business Anchors podcast.
Think that creating and publishing social content is going to take up too much time? You can use tech tools to make creating and posting content quick and easy, and for very little or no cost. We’ve actually written this blog post using copy platform Copy.ai, can you tell?! The platform allows you to create social copy and blog posts with the help of some clever automation with just a few key words.
By using a tool like Adobe Premier Rush, you can take advantage of their library of pre-recorded videos, add your own voiceover, make edits and then export your finished video in just minutes!
And don’t forget to add those subtitles because most social media users will watch content without the sound on! Zubtitle adds subtitles to your video content seamlessly by transcribing the spoken words from your video and adding the text as timed captions.
Making the most of tech tools and platforms means that you don’t need a dedicated social media manager to create engaging social content at the click of a button!
If you treat yourself like a client, your agency’s social media won’t be pushed to the bottom of the to-do list!
Dedicate hours specifically to planning, creating and posting content, just like you would for a content and means that your social channels won’t be left abandoned. An easy way to generate social ideas is to involve the wider team in your social strategy process through brainstorming sessions. And just like you would for a client, set yourself goals and objectives that will help drive forward growth and means you can constantly reflect on what is working on social.
New business calls are the perfect opportunity to gain a better understanding of the challenges that your target audience are facing right now. Take note of any trends you hear about what is keeping businesses from succeeding and listen to what language they are using. This will give you a good indication about how you structure your messaging within your content.
Don’t overcomplicate content and play to your strengths, this will not only create engaging content but will also help attract the right new business opportunities for your agency.
Rather than just creating content and hoping for the best, trial new content and review your analytics regularly. This will help you understand what topics and content types are resonating with your audience, just like you would do for your clients!
Create a schedule for reviewing analytics on a regular basis so that you can keep learning from what works in terms of messaging, creative concepts and content type. The more you learn about your content and each social platform, the easier it’ll be to create a winning social strategy.
And remember, you don’t need to be on every social media platform, and creating every type of content just because your competitors are, a jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.
Employees are your biggest asset and you’re probably already aware of the fact that they can be an amazing source of content and engagement, as well as humanising the agency.
In fact, according to a study by Weber Shandwick and KRC Research, 80% of people trust recommendations from friends and family over any other form of advertising. It doesn’t matter whether they’re giving feedback on LinkedIn or posting photos from their latest team outing on Instagram: if it’s positive content that reflects positively on the culture within your organisation, then go ahead and repost it!
Your social media channels are a showcase for your agency, giving you a chance to show what you can do, your culture and most importantly humanise your agency. It remains that people buy from people and with the rise of TikTok and short-form video content, it’s now more important than ever to ditch the corporate content in favour of content that is informative, creative and entertaining.
Need some help with your social media strategy? Contact Street to discover how we can help!