A Social Media Blueprint with Ryan Mitchell @ Vertex Inc

employee advocacy is a huge area of opportunity that you can have your smmes representing from an ambassador perspective the organization but your sales team as well and to your point maybe somebody doesn't want to follow the corporate Channel because they don't want to just be bombarded with a bunch of content that's coming on a regular Cadence a couple times a week maybe they feel more comfortable following the individual that they actually spoke to and met at the booth [Music] hey everybody back again with quickfire marketing I'm your host etm got a great guest today his name's Ryan Mitchell social media manager at vertex Inc Ryan give us a little preview about yourself absolutely thanks a lot ET it's great to be here with you I've been doing social media marketing for the better part of 14 or 15 years now I think what was really exciting for me with social media was not to date myself but when I was getting into the whole Space wasn't really established think about where we are now where we've gone in the last 5 to 10 years the way that social media has evolved and become more of just uh nice to have into a necessity for your marketing and business functions it's been a cool Evolution and it's been a really exciting time to be a part of it so thanks for having me on yeah so almost 15 years right how have budgets grown I think earlier on in my career earlier on in Social media's Evolution it was more of a experimental you know how how can we utilize social media tactics as a part of our marketing plan as part of our external Communications as part of our business plans across a B2B or B Toc landscape I think now it's less of a it'd be nice to have if we had extra and more of a this is table Stakes we need to have this as a part of our go to market strategy traveling around the world seeing your customers seeing prospects it's not always the easiest thing to do being able to bridge that Gap with a digital vehicle like social media has has been a seamless transition for a lot of businesses no that makes perfect sense I met Ryan a little while back probably like a month and a half ago now right met through Linkedin and we started talking we had a great conversation around kind of social media and I did branch on how if I was going to create a budget today what is the percentage of spend of the marketing budget do you think should go to the the social media team or any teams that will impact that you might not love my answer here but you know the way that I look at it is I try to say okay from a Val perspective return on investment there was a really cool term that I heard recently return on objective I love that I love that idea of thinking from a performance a metric perspective I think folks look at marketing from a branding perspective from a performance metrics perspective in social media is kind of that crossroads right you are doing brand awareness top of funnel you're doing the demand gen mid bottom of funnel activities you're supporting the full marketing Suite how do I assign a budget the reason I say you might not like it is I try to look at how do we maximize our value without having to necessarily go crazy and I think there are a lot of great ways through Linkedin with the different paid campaign features that are there understanding who your target audience is where they are in the buyer cycle that is never going to be a silver bullet right because there's so many different nuances to it but really having your finger on the pulse of okay who's in my ICP where are they in the buyer cycle and then what kind of content can we provide them that's not just what we have ready but it's actually going to provide impacting value to them credibility authenticity and that's going to build that relationship I don't know if there's ever a sweet spot or exact measurement from a percent perspective it truly depends on like you said the demand gen functions the the events the conferences that you're investing in but really I look at okay from a marketing perspective from a sales perspective how can we provide the most value it really depends on where you also want to be spending your dollars okay so that covers kind of the inbound or like the willing participants sure what do you do about those that are maybe a little more guarded right I think this goes back to a conversation that we were having a little bit earlier about knowing your audience knowing your ICP and and knowing the different personas I would say if you're at a booth and you're having a conversation with somebody I would ask them so who do you follow who are the influencers that are meaningful to you who are the companies that are meaningful to you who who are the folks the the smmes that you follow for information what builds credibility to you what channels do you use what digital Publications do you read what shows do you watch what podcast you listen to well all of a sudden right there you can start to understand their entire perspective of how value and how content is delivered to them and how they prefer it and then all of a sudden you can say all right to that point here's how we provide value here are the different ways that we try to create a regular Cadence of content are those conversations you have with the sales team and the extended marketing team as a social media manager you're like hey can you ask this this be a good idea or even with like can I hop in some of your case studies or your clients like can I talk to them and just pick their brains yeah I think you have to have conversations with your sales team to say we're not trying to put out a post every hour or every day there's a balance right to not be spammy but there's also a balance between how do you get content to your sales folks employee advocacy is huge so we talked about the evolution of social channels let's talk about the evolution of how social media is used unilaterally across marketing employee advocacy is a huge area of opportunity that you can have your smmes representing from an ambassador perspective the organization but your sales team as well and to your point maybe somebody doesn't want to follow the corporate Channel because they don't want to just be bombarded with a bunch of content that's coming on a regular Cadence a couple times a week maybe they feel more comfortable following the individual that they actually spoke to and met at the booth oh that's perfect and then lastly because we deal with a lot of startups what are some ideas that you have to finding new watering holes in the social media landscape it's a great question I think the beginning point is understanding that nothing we do as marketers is in a vacuum and so what I mean by that is think about the work that we do as social media marketers you're not just working in Social you're working for a function of demand gen you're working for a function of brand awareness subject matter expertise elevating that digital presence for those folks there are a lot of different functionality purposes for social media these days and so understanding that and then saying okay how do we work with our product marketing team or our product team and understand what's our differentiator what's our narrative who's it going to resonate with how do we talk differently to different personas how do we drive value into the marketplace while we're not selling anything and what I mean by that is you're you're always selling but you're not pushing a post that says click here to fill out this form to become a prospect no you're trying to provide value how are you engaging and educating providing a Blog that has some great tips on how to optimize something that they're working there are different ways that you can look at it so not working in a vacuum you're working with your colleagues you're working with the product folks like I said you're working with sales to understand win loss what works what doesn't work well that's perfect thank you for joining us on the podcast took quite a bit of your day but it was the content you Shar sh which is valuable it's amazing I love it and especially the path I agree social media now encompasses everything it is your brand it is your story it's your content it's a lot of what we have to do with B2B marketing as a whole and it's not even the future it's already here so I can't wait to see how you use our experience and keep transforming in the future as well I appreciate your time today ET I think the only thing I would add there is it's it's not only it's here it's everywhere a brand new startup you want to come in you want to take out the Girl Scout cookies what are we doing we have to take them out I love Girl Scout cookies they're delicious um I we're going to replace them how do you incorporate what really works with the product of a Girl Scout cookie and what's a new product that you could you know integrate that into I don't want to say something as simple as like Girl Scout cook Girl Scout cookie ice cream but like hey why not I always pick on the Girl Scouts because they're one of the last remaining definitely brick-and mortar options that you have like they just find you everywhere they pop up their household names