Stori and I talk about everything from Pinterest for B2B marketers, how to get more interaction and networking done through LinkedIn, is Tik Tok a space that B2B marketers could ever start marketing on, and some more information on our newsletter, The Marketer's Basecamp.
Episode Show Notes
Stori and I talk about everything from Pinterest for B2B marketers, how to get more interaction and networking done through LinkedIn, is Tik Tok a space that B2B marketers could ever start marketing on, and some more information on our newsletter, The Marketer's Basecamp.
Alex Meade, Beacons Point, VP of Sales & Marketing
Alex is the VP of Sales & Marketing at Beacons Point, a leader of HubSpot User Groups, the host of the B2B Growth Marketer Podcast, and a collector of Kurt Vonnegut books and San Diego craft beer.
Stori Pemberton, Beacons Point, Marketing Manager
Stori is the Marketing Manager at Beacons Point. Social media, writing blogs, and SEO are some of her biggest marketing interests. When she's not working she loves to be outside with her dogs and fiance.
Connect with Stori on LinkedIn
Highlights
01:07 How long has Alex Meade been in the B2B marketing world?
03:42 How can a software or tech company use Pinterest?
05:41 Are captions important on Pinterest?
08:14 What are marketers going to Pinterest for?
09:58 How do you get started creating a Pinterest for your business?
10:56 How to get started on LinkedIn, and build a network
13:22 What kind of posts do well on Linkedin?
15:50 Make sure your profiles are fully optimized when creating social profiles
16:38 Can brands be successful on TikTok?
17:40 Scrub Daddy & Duolingo on TikTok
20:32 Is TikTok the new YouTube?
21:03 Which platform is the best for B2B marketers?
26:36 What's The Marketers Basecamp?
Transcript
Alex Meade 0:02
Welcome to The B2B Growth Marketer Podcast. My name is Alex and I am here with Stori Pemberton, our marketing manager here at beacons point Stori, say hello. Hey, Alex, everyone. Yeah, so we have a little bit of a different episode coming to you today is, we've been kind of, you know, we have internal discussions within our own team, we're talking with our clients on various topics. And we kind of wanted to shed some light on the conversations happening between, you know, our agency and marketing teams of companies and soft in software, technology, manufacturing, you know, kind of all the spectrum and bring some of those questions and themes out to you to have these kinds of discussions. And today, we're going to kind of focus a little bit on B2B social media. And so we have a couple of questions for each other we're going to do we have seen these. So hopefully, these don't sound too prepared. But we want to kind of share some of the insights that we've been we've been seeing, we've been exploring, and also from our clients and from ourselves. So story, why don't you kick it off? Why don't you kick it off first?
Stori Pemberton 1:07
Yeah, Alex, sorry. Sorry. I had one question just to get us started and get the ball rolling. So how long have you been in B2B marketing?
Alex Meade 1:15
How long have I been in B2B marketing? That's how many years seem like an easy question. But okay, so the beacons point officially, what kind of as an as a sole prop kind of an idea in 2010 2013, we incorporated but we were doing a little bit of B2B and b2c, like, I don't think in our early ages, we knew what we were going to be. So I would say, I've been doing B2B marketing, for probably six to six to eight years now. Six to seven years, maybe.
Stori Pemberton 1:54
Awesome. Alright, so yeah, that was kind of what led me into saying, like, if you've noticed any changes with social media trends, or just how it's incorporated in general?
Alex Meade 2:03
Yeah. I would say in like the early, early versions of the company, everybody assumed social media was free. So why do I need to hire someone for it, and it was kind of a lot of the posts that like were successful were, Hey, happy National Donut Day, go have a doughnut, it was kind of like those, hey, it's national, let's be relevant, or the kind of motivational, inspirational quotes. Some of these are still relevant. So I don't want to trash talk him too much. But it was very, it wasn't as deep is it is now like now, I think social is almost the content. Now. It's the medium. It used to be, Hey, everybody, we've got this new article, go read it, or we've got this event, come check it out. And now social, there's more content being posted to social event, you know, maybe would have been an article maybe would have been an email. But now, you know, with the different platforms and your different messages, like companies and people using Twitter threads, to say more than just the characters allowed in as many as they need to. They're doing that on LinkedIn on Instagram. So it's, I would say that's maybe been one of the bigger shifts that I've seen is social media has become the medium of content, not just a place to distribute other content you're trying to get out there.
Stori Pemberton 3:37
Yeah. That makes sense that day. Yeah, exactly.
Alex Meade 3:43
I mean, is it Donut Day? I mean, I'm all in for some of those days, because it makes it's an excuse to get a donut excuse to get national IPA Day National. Well, may the fourth with us the unofficial official international Star Wars Day. But, yeah, so okay, I have a question for you. And this isn't because, well, a lot of people Pinterest was like the peak when, you know, like, when people were collecting things, they wouldn't go back and have these boards. And I will also admit, whenever we have like a house project, or we're like thinking how like, what's our dream kitchen, if we're gonna, like, do some work or, like, I want to figure out how to do my plants in my backyard. That's been my use of Pinterest. But there's been a growing trend of businesses using Pinterest. How tell me like, how, how can I how can a like a software or tech company use Pinterest? Like what's the strategy or what can they think about?
Stori Pemberton 4:45
I was gonna say you and brides to be you're not alone, like a lot of people out there to get inspiration. And so I would say one of the biggest ways that B2B brands could start doing it is just going in and creating small videos. Those do really well and you can also have the ability to link them. It's like Pinterest shelflife. It never expires, unlike Pinterest where unlike Instagram, where you post something, and after a couple of days, it's going to cycle out unless it's a really big post and you don't quit talking about it. But for the most part, it's going to cycle out Pinterest comes by I've seen posts that I find relevant from like 2010. So it's just like, how did this stuff even like, keep coming back? Yeah, it's really cool. So I think that's like one of the biggest turn-ons about being like B2B using Pinterest is the shelf life. It never disappears. People are gonna gain inspiration from it. Five years down the road or more in?
Alex Meade 5:41
yeah, he's talking about the bride. We had one. And when she looked back, like either right before the wedding right after the wedding, and she's like, Oh, my gosh, there's like 500 people that started following her wedding thread. And it was just, she forgot like that it was public. And normally, you know, normally we're like, kinda like more on the private. We don't want people to see that stuff. But it just kind of, I guess shows, obviously, planning weddings, it's a great place for that. But I think for B2B content, it's that shelflife chucking about it's like, that doesn't cycle away, like Instagram, or LinkedIn or Twitter. And if you're posting, like, is it how important are the captions, like if you're posting, because it's the captions, what's polling and search, if you figure out, you know, something, so here's that where you put your keywords,
Stori Pemberton 6:31
the captions and the titles are, well, the titles are a tad more important. But the captions are important because you can also link so you want people to be able to click on what you're sending them to. And you can even like create ads on Pinterest, you can, it's just like every other social media platform, you can utilize all of those aspects of it. But just making sure that you have something that involves what you're trying to target, like if I type in social media inspiration, that post has to reference social media in one way or another. And so you have to be sure to be using those same, like Best Practices whenever you're posting on Pinterest as well. You can also use hashtags and all those other things.
Alex Meade 7:11
are, should people be posting? If you've got like a new article is like, is it a distribution channel where you can say, here's like a clip of my article, read everything here?
Stori Pemberton 7:25
Absolutely, yeah. I mean, there's Tik Toks and reels that are being redone and put on Pinterest. So those do really well. Even just like using yourself to talk about it really quick, or cute graphic, that's just people, it's an aesthetic platform, people want to see something pretty, they want to see something quick, basically all social media, but they want to see something that's just gonna, like grab their attention on like, what they want to use, what they want to use inspiration for how they can learn something more. I mean, I can't, I have so many pens saved from just like, I made a personal like B2B Marketing Board, like my own marketing board. And there's so many things saved on there that I reference back to. So and I haven't you check the dates on those. It's just making sure that you're linking to the content that you want them to go to, because they're going to go to it if they want to learn more.
Alex Meade 8:14
What you brought up, you brought up a good, like a second kind of question on this. So you are your marketing manager here it beacons point. So you're kind of always looking for, I'm assuming like new ideas, trends, how to make our content better. So let's put your put yourself in a in the shoes of another marketer. Or, you know, person is looking for a specific product or service. I mean, are people doing product research and creating boards to figure out like, how do I solve this problem? Are people going to pinches for that? Do you think?
Stori Pemberton 8:45
I don't know if people are going so much to Pinterest to figure out how to solve their issues. But I feel like it is a version of brand awareness that can intrigue them. So if they see something that's like, wow, they really know a lot about SEO, they know a lot about content marketing, about video marketing, that might trigger them to continue on to the website and view more on that. So I don't know if people so much are like they are for building a deck. Maybe like their dream deck board. I don't know if it's so much like that. But maybe they could take inspiration from something that we posted or other people posted about how to shape their business. And it's also B2B is a little different than b2c on Pinterest. Like as a consumer, you're looking for those shoes, you're looking for that purse, but whenever it's when it's B to C sometimes it's me to you looking at your post as a B2B marketer, like Oh, I like what Alex did. So it's like bouncing off each other. I feel like it wouldn't be the worst place I haven't done this but I don't feel like it'd be the worst place worse place like network is well like adding your social media handles everything like that. Just definitely like creating brand awareness.
Alex Meade 9:58
Yeah. Just saying, I would say, what would you tell? What would you tell a marketer out there who's listening and saying, Pinterest didn't think about that? How would they get started?
Stori Pemberton 10:11
Get on Canva and start creating your post, or whatever platform you use, but like still, like Canva is a great spot. They have amazing templates, you can make a really quick get on there and just post them, like just see how they go and just make sure that they're appealing, like and easy to use.
Alex Meade 10:28
And this is not a sponsored ad by Canva. It is. We just really like Canva. Yes, we do. Adobe is great. As quick. Yeah. Well, great, great answers on Pinterest. I think I think that's an untapped, untapped potential for for brands, they just got to figure out how to make it work for them. It's definitely Alright, what do you got for me?
Stori Pemberton 10:56
All right. So I was gonna ask you just like you do pretty well, on LinkedIn, you have a decent network that you're communicating with all the time, you get lots of comments, lots of shares. And I was just wondering, what made you stop made you get there? And then also like, do you have advice for other people? Like, my LinkedIn sucks, I think, how do I do? Like, how do I get people to talk to me? Do you do a pretty good job of networking on LinkedIn?
Alex Meade 11:21
Well, thank you. I mean, I think there's always room for growth. I think I have, I have, I have borrowed ideas for from some other great marketers and kind of people that have created their own brand out there. So I don't want to say that I've kind of created this all on my own. And it's kind of been a collection of, of ideas that kind of fit your personality. And I think I think that's where it starts is if you're talking about your personal LinkedIn, versus your brand, if you're talking about your personal, you got to figure out like, what is your voice? What's your style, what is what is it about you that people might find interesting, then you also need to figure out who you're trying to talk to. And this comes from Justin Walsh, if anybody follows him, he kind of made this pretty clear as your content should be targeted, very like just like buyer personas, when you're creating the article content for your content strategy is who you're talking to, and speak directly to them. Forget about the other 1000s of people that you might be following you. And just focus on the people you want and give them give those people information, you know, helpful content that would be good for them to learn. And so I think I've kind of tried to follow that. And also, just for me, being real and human, not trying to not trying to get more followers, but just trying to help the people just trying to start a conversation around the people that do follow me. And that kind of leads to more organic growth in my of people that you want. For brands. I might even turn this around to you because you handle our our kind of LinkedIn business account. And one post I think, in particular, that proves this theory is when you when you give helpful information, while also including others in the conversation, and there's one post that I think sticks out and I'll let you kind of share on that with our with the tools that we use.
Stori Pemberton 13:22
Yeah, so the post you're talking about is the one where we talk about like, these are all the tools that we like to use, we named a few like ones that everybody knows the few that people may not know. And I like Riverside, like what we're using right now and stuff like that. And I just thought that that was a good post because other people that may be starting out or might be looking for new tools might find it helpful. So I was the first intention was like to be helpful. And then the second one was, like create a conversation. And I did not intend for it to it wasn't a crazy, it was just like, but it was still like our biggest one and it was really cool to see something take off and it did probably help to tag those companies because they're most of them are engaged on social media as well. So I think that just like creating a conversation with like minded people about things that you use, and also things that like they want to use is really helpful. And that's I with you with your some of your posts. One of the best ones that like I've seen you do is where like you can hear your voice and I feel like with a brand you have to do that as well. Like hey, we're here to help you. This is our intention. And I don't know just not so much fluff. I feel like people get so overfed with like fluffy posts, and it's nice just to be straight up and just say hey, use these things. Do you like them? Good? Yeah, like it was just a very straightforward unintended good posts. intended to be like that.
Alex Meade 14:42
You touched on another thing that I think it's important for both brands and people is we post we have a post we tagged you know Canva, Asana, sem rush some others that we use, some of the tools we use in our stack, and they all commented engaged and that drove our results are our own engagement. And I think it's the same way for personal for brands is you need to engage in your, in the audience you're trying to target. And so, you know, one of the things I tried to do is spend, you know, some days, it's more, some days, it's less, but somewhere between like 15 and 30 minutes, engaging on other content, have my target audience of other marketers, other salespeople engage on their content, because that'll help your name, get out there. If it's good, thoughtful content, they'll kind of come back to you. And same thing with brands. And I think that kind of our posts, kind of also shed light on that kind of value of of doing that is it drove ours up, we got excited, I'm sure we're now commenting and posting on theirs as well, which drives theirs up.
Stori Pemberton 15:50
I guess, to add to that to something else, that'd be really helpful before you can start as a brand and as a person. Make sure that your profiles are curated to represent your brand. So if you are a digital marketing agency, make sure says beacons point digital marketing agency so when we're posting people know who you are, and like what you're about, like with you, you are Alex need beacons point, it's like it's best to have your profile fit the intention, because someone's just gonna see beacons. Like, what is that? Who cares? Yeah. And if they see digital marketing, she over and over again, like, wow, that's what they do. They're commenting there. I just think it's really good, like all social media platforms just to make sure. It also helps SEO a little bit to like, recognizing if someone types in digital ad, you know, something like that. It'll pop up. But that's just another good thing to do.
Alex Meade 16:38
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's good to note your profiles need to be on point. Yep. And I think there's different theories in in like philosophies of how you should do your own personal. But it just needs to represent, you know, who you are and who you're trying to help and how you help them. So it's almost like a cold outreach in a way for in a sales in sales world is, you still need to say who you're working. Who do you work for? Who do you work with? How do you help them? What are the challenges you solve? And then also something fun, fun about you? Okay, I'm getting I'm hitting you up with all the all the social media accounts that I maybe don't know anything about. So my next question for you. So, Tik Tok is known for viral dances, funny videos, and some other maybe other things. Everyone's probably got their own thing they follow on Tik Tok. But what like can brands can brands be successful? Can marketers be successful on Tik Tok?
Stori Pemberton 17:40
I think so, there's a few minds just strictly dogs. But I do have other stuff happens to creep into my timeline. But I've said there's a couple of ones I'll call out like Duolingo and scrub daddy, if they're hilarious. Like they're just like in these little costumes. And it's all about like, appealing to emotions. That's what tick talks about, you're not getting any concrete information. It's I don't know if there's some tangents on there. But the best stuff is funny and trending. So it's like I think, I think B2B could do well on Tik Tok only because on a B2B brands aren't doing Tik Tok videos or anything like that. But I think it definitely has to be a softer approach, you have to go into it knowing you might be a little silly knowing you might, it might not be as curated. So you have to discuss that beforehand. But it has to be a little silly. Those do the best is just something that like people like oh, that was nice and just go on, you know, I don't think it's anything serious, like reals can even be a tad more serious. But Tik Tok, that's not gonna fly on Tik Tok,
Alex Meade 18:46
it needs to like it really needs to be it needs to be funny with with, like, at least one point you're trying to make. Yes.
Stori Pemberton 18:53
You can be funny about that point. But it still has to just be like, I don't know, there can't be much seriousness,
Alex Meade 19:01
because I know I know some other marketers that say like, they've learned more about Excel of like how to use Excel from Tik Tok than they have from any course. Anything. They're just like, people that give 30 seconds tips of how to use a formula or how to build a, you know, a pivot chart or like whatever they're trying to do. And so I think if you apply like that theory that yes, people are going there to look up, maybe just to spend five minutes away from whatever they're doing. You know, like I for some reason, see a lot of like, how to build things in your backyard. So maybe that's when I'm watching. I'm like, Yeah, I'm like learning every once in a while I'm learning something new. And so I think there is some value there for brands if they can find their voice. I also think they need they need a champion who feels good about it and is excited. If you asked me to start are beacons points Tik Tok account? It would be it would go terribly quick.
Stori Pemberton 20:05
Well, there's that new ad I saw recently from Tik Tok like I learned it onTik Tok is the hashtag. And it's just like, I don't know if you've seen it, but they're just like, there are small things that you can learn like small quick things. It's just like, how to twist the spice thing, right? And how to swaddle baby was like that whole commercial, like, Oh, my God, I didn't realize you could do that. And I think that that's a good spot to take off, especially if you're B2B. Just something quick and easy. Someone will remember.
Alex Meade 20:32
Is this, like the new YouTube where people go to like how tos,
Stori Pemberton 20:35
oh, people's attention spans have dropped? I would say for sure. I know. Mine probably has no everyone's are just like, we want that instant gratification. I think YouTube is great. But the whole time I'm just like, let's get to the point. Yeah. So yeah. I need the titles. So it's like Yeah, exactly. I think it could be a baby version of Tik Tok or of YouTube.
Alex Meade 21:01
All right, you got one more question for me.
Stori Pemberton 21:03
Yep. I have one last one. So I just think like, based off of your experience over the years, like, what platform do you think is best? And this I'm gonna say it from the perspective of a B2B marketer, not a business, like for you personally?
Alex Meade 21:17
Like a social media account? Or like...Stori Pemberton 21:21
Yeah, let's go social media.
Alex Meade 21:23
So for me, I understand the value of all of them, I just have never, I've never been good since college of like posting on a regular basis on Facebook, I go on Instagram, but I don't post that often. I think for me, I found LinkedIn to be the easiest one for me to engage on an ongoing basis, like on a daily basis, whether I'm just going through and reading other content, you know, engaging on other people's posts or posting myself I have found the most success with with LinkedIn. At least from my own perspective, I know people I know a lot of people have success in Twitter. But I think you I think from from my theory on all this on social media for like a personal brand, is pick one and be really good at it. Don't try to post everywhere, because you're like you're hearing all the Guru's and the marketing ninjas and mavens out there that she got to be on all these places. Sidenote, I'm happy, those are gone. I'm happy the titles of like, marketing, Maven, and marketing guru. I'm glad those. I'm glad those died and like the tents, okay. marketing guru is Alex and story talk social. Like I would turn off my own podcast if
Stori Pemberton 22:48
we started with two. Yeah. All right.
Alex Meade 22:51
So so off of that tangent, I would say for me, personally, my audience is on LinkedIn. And that's where I feel most comfortable and where I've kind of built the most biggest network.
Stori Pemberton 23:03
Yeah. I think that that's your get your sweet spot as well. I think that's a great one for you. Yeah.
Alex Meade 23:11
For for, for like social for like LinkedIn, something I've been bad at that I've always been trying to do better is is set more realistic goals of how much I want to post, how often I want to post, I never want to post just a post, I want to have something, something of value to add. And I've never really set like a meetings goal. As much as it's been. Let's post content, let's be helpful. And let's see if I can get my engagement followers up, I can get my new connections up and kind of build a system around that. But I've always been a little bad at that part of LinkedIn. Yeah. Okay, one last question for you. And I think this is an interesting question. And this is something we kind of like asking our buyer persona questions when we when we talk to clients and kind of a way. So you are five months into your first like B2B marketing role. And so I'm sure you have gone and Googled things a lot. But if you are so you're now marketing manager, you're working in B2B, even things that are outside of marketing, like what is your favorite way to learn something new, like what do you got? What do you what do you normally like attracted to when you're like, I need to learn this? I need to figure it out. This is what I do.
Stori Pemberton 24:41
Well, I'd say for starters, the HubSpot courses were super helpful because we use those and it's, you know, just something that you kind of need to have if you're going to do this. So I felt those were very helpful. I am in desperate need of podcast recommendations because I would love to find some good marketing podcasts and Also I think that just in general blogs, I like you said Google a lot. So I will find blogs. I'll follow subscribe their newsletter, I'll there's a few that I've genuinely just started to really like. And I find just as you do LinkedIn to be very helpful, like catching on to trends, just what people are using what people are talking about, I think those are really helpful platforms is and Twitter can be helpful as well. But you have to be following the right people. And yeah, I think that so far LinkedIn blogs, and the HubSpot courses have been incredibly helpful with the B2B journey.
Alex Meade 25:34
Yeah, the one problem with social LinkedIn and Twitter is you meant you said, you have to follow you have to make sure you're following the right people. Because there's a lot of people that are standing on soapboxes saying regurgitating, but like watered down versions of what the real people real leaders are saying. And so you got to be careful. There's not a messiah is out there trying to build their own audience, piggybacking on others. So you got to be careful. Not all of it's good information.
Stori Pemberton 36:01
I've seen that before people like Wait, you got this from here. And I'm like, oh, and then I go to that, like, alright, this is too, too muddy here. I feel the same way. Yeah, Twitter can be more like that than LinkedIn. But I've noticed that yeah, LinkedIn is definitely not a bad place to start networking and learning and just like listening to other people.
Alex Meade 26:19
Listening, that's a great way to describe that I think half of social is listening, and following bits and pieces to kind of form me formulate your own thoughts and ideas there. Okay, we are just about out of time. Sorry. Can you tell everybody about the marketers base camp.
Stori Pemberton 26:36
So the marketers base camp is our twice weekly, not newsletter that goes out or twice monthly, sorry, not newsletter that goes out. And we just talk about things that we've learned, new products that we've come into contact with that are really cool, or just something that's really helpful. It's a place where we just kind of share ideas, and we love to have more people join it, because it's a great space, like start a conversation, and just like start building our network with you. And I've really enjoyed crafting them, because I think of like-new ideas like every week, like what can I possibly teach people about and like, wow, these, they're fun, they're fun to create, and they're just ways to be able to teach other people like new marketing trends or discuss something that's going on right now. Yeah, I think it's a good little subscription.
Alex Meade 27:27
But not so sign up to the mark, the marketers base camp on our website at beacons point.com. And we really kind of built it to be a useful place for marketers, for marketers to go to. We talked about career development, marketing things, everything. So hope you enjoy that. Alright, we're out of time story. Thank you so much for joining me, for everybody else. Thanks for tuning in. And hopefully, we do these q&a sessions again.
