People will reach out to you and they'll come to you with opportunity, some good, some not so good, but you'll start having conversations. And here's the other secret that I want to tell you. A lot of what's happening on social media on the outside that we see, that we might see on Twitter or or Instagram or LinkedIn, you are right if you're thinking it's all a bunch of, you know, inflated stuff, right? I don't wanna say the real word, but where it happens is in the private conversations, I tell people when I tell my clients, your DMs, your LinkedIn DMs, your messengers, that's where the real conversations happen. George, when you and I were trying to record we message on Facebook, I recorded my podcast this morning, I messaged my friend in the Netherlands on LinkedIn. The real conversations are happening where you are not seeing them between people.

I'm always surprised to hear like, this person knows this person. This like, was I the connector? I don't know if I'm the connector, but it doesn't matter because we're all sort of connected. So if you are scared, Facebook, definitely things are inflated and, and, and, and like ghosts from your past come out, I feel like on Facebook, people from literally when I was 10 years old and living somewhere in the Netherlands a long time ago are finding me right? Um, and I'm in my fifties, so that's kind of a really long time ago that people are finding me. And then on Instagram, I feel like, you know, that's kind of a display at me. Look at me, right? And so LinkedIn, I feel is, is still the platform or you if in in marketing, if you're running a business or a marketing department, I think that's a great place to dip your toes in. And the other part, if you don't wanna have a presence on social media, just go consume some content, read some logs, right? Go on your husband or wife or spouse's social media log, ask them to log in and go consume an hour of TikTok. You will be amazed. Just watch what other people are creating because it's really changed in the last few years.

George B. Thomas: Just watch what other people are creating. LinkedIn, you might be asking. Yes, it has changed so much in the past couple of years. Now, I love that Dorien talked about observation and commenting. Becoming a thought leader based on the conversations you purposefully inject yourself into is a real fact and a tactical strategy you can easily implement today without posting anything. Question for you right now on social media. Do you post more or comment more? Put the answer to that in the chat paint and let me know on Twitter using the hashtag #MPB2B, and of course, tag me. I'm at George B. Thomas. Now we'll get back to Dorien and her thoughts on how B2B marketers can use an organic social media strategy for success. But first I have to ask, are you part of the marketing profs community? Yet? If not, become part of the marketing profs community by heading over to mprofs.com/mp today.

That's mprofs.com/mp today. Now it's time for one of my favorite sections in the B2B news where we talk about breaking that's right, breaking B2B news, or really important tips we find on the Google News tab related to you and your B2B business this week. The title is How B2B Can Get More Out of Their Social Media Marketing Efforts by Michael Kuzmina. I hope I said that right by Michael. In today's ever changing social media ecosystem, business to business, B2B companies confront unique obstacles when trying to connect and communicate with their intended audience. The goals of B2B social media marketing campaigns range from customer involvement and brand exposure to lead creation. In this Forbes article, Michael uses his 15 plus years of agency work in helping brands with their social media strategy aims to provide B2B enterprises with a wide variety of social media marketing insights, ready for some great social media tips.

Then check the description below, click on that link and start learning more today. So let's return to Dore and her Marketing Smarts podcast episode. One of the biggest things I worry about when it comes to B2B marketers and them reaching the success they are trying to achieve with their organic social media strategy is the hurdles that will, without a doubt get in the way. So why not get them out into the open plan for them and then jump right over them like a B2B marketing pro? So I asked Dorien the simple but powerful question that was, what are some hurdles along the way when marketers try to start using an organic social media strategy that they might run into? And here's what she wanted you to know, content

Dorien Morin-van Dam: Approval. Um, it's, it's one of the biggest hurdles. It's not trusting the marketing team to be your brand voice, to get too many opinions in there and too many people wanting to get saying, well, we can do this, or we can't do that. Look, if you hire a talented marketing team and they understand the business and they get access to the sales team who's selling your product and get and understand what they're selling, why they're selling, you have access to the, um, team that the, um, financial team, so you know what's selling, what are the best sellers, what your financial status is, right, what your revenue is. You have, you have access to your C-suite and you understand what their goals are, then you're gonna need to let marketing test and try things. You know, the best viral tweets and the, the best viral content we've seen from big companies are from social media managers sitting behind a screen just like this, that have permission to fail.

Okay, let me say it again. They have permission to fail. The, the, one of the famous examples is when Pharrell had that happy song and he got an award and he wore, wore the big hat, and Arby tweeted, Pharrell, give us back our hat, that went crazy. If he had had to go to ask for permission from somebody or a marketing manager and didn't have permission to put that tweet out or put that on Instagram, none of that would've happened. You, if you're listening to this, you're a C-suite and you're in B2B, give your marketing team permission to fail. That also means giving them permission to try new things. I think that's one of the biggest hurdles, that content approval. You have to approve the concepts of what you're doing, and you have to, you know, have the content strategy plan in place. Like, we're gonna do some evergreen posts and some salesy posts, and we're gonna run a sales campaign and we're gonna highlight our members and we're gonna, you know, all of those things. But then once you have that framework, let them go and let them fail if they need to, because that's how they're gonna succeed.

George B. Thomas: Let them go and let them fail. Oh, my content approval. Not trusting your marketing team to be your brand voice. Do you live in this world? I'd love to know Dorien talked about teams and understanding that we give those teams the trust they need to do what they need to do, give marketing the same trust, but more importantly, give them the ability to succeed through possible failures along the way. So good, so, so good. Now we'll get back to Dorien in a few minutes, but first, it's time for some dope B2B learnings from the vault of marketing profs articles. That's right, it's time to dig into the treasure trove of valuable information and pull out two pieces of gold to help you be a better B2B marketer. Article number one this week is how to make sure your social media strategy succeeds. Take a cross-discipline Approach by Lawrence Minsky and Keith Quesenberry. Now, social media is now a mature practice, integral to the success of virtually every B2B organization. But although other key marketing communication disciplines have clear owners, advertising is responsible for paid public relations, for earned and marketing for own social media doesn't have one. The key responsibilities fall to one of those three, or to one of many other organizational functions in various departments, or performed by an outside firm, including corporate communications, sales, human resources, and customer service.

All of those departments have specific but strategically different reasons to be on social media. Of course, B2B customers do not see those differences, whether they're prospective customers looking for product information, current customers with a technical question, brand advocates sharing a positive experience or angry stakeholders causing a crisis all experience your brand through the same virtual door of social media. As a result, social media cannot be the job of just one department or outside agency. And accordingly, integration is key to success. But how to best achieve integration in your organization is the question of how cross-discipline social media teams are staffed and organized, and where they are located are important foundations to effective B2B social media strategy. But there's a simple way to figure out the answer, wanna know how? Make sure you check out the link after the live show ends, because that's what the rest of the article talks about.

Article number two this week is four powerful tips for a highly effective B2B social media strategy by ARD Khan. Now, most B2B companies are not great at social media marketing. Often they too, uh, they're too boring or too product focused to engage social media users and develop a loyal following. As a result, they fail to achieve long-term success, which leads management and decision makers. To conclude social media is a B2C marketing channel, not B2B, which is wrong of course, if you're a social media manager or marketer for a B2B company, you need to do things differently, creating awareness about social media and managing the expectations of your company. Leadership should be on your priority list, certainly, but you also need to make sure that the goals of your strategy include making a clear contribution to goals of your company. Your B2B social media marketing strategy should therefore focus on the following steps.

Wanna keep learning more about the steps or about making sure your social media succeeds? If so, check out the link in the description below after the live show to get access to both amazing marketing profs articles. That's right, all the right links in all the right places at just the right time. Okay, back to Dorien. Let's dive back into this conversation of how B2B marketers can use an organic social media strategy for success. Speaking of social media success, what the heck does that even look like? How do we know we have reached organic social media nirvana, if you will. Well, never fear. That's exactly what Dorien and I dug into when I asked the question, what does organic social media strategy success look like? And here is what she had to share.

Dorien Morin-van Dam: Well, it paints the, the picture that you need to have is that at the beginning of this, of the, the cycle, whether that's a quarter or a year, you have your goals. Why did you wanna be on social media? Right? And then you need to see improvement in those goals. And for some companies, when the budget is teeny tiny, the goal might be our traffic went up from a thousand people a month to 5,000 a month. Or for a big company might be our email list went from a thousand people to 30,000 people on the email list, depending on what your goal is, the biggest thing with organic, you have to see movement and you have to see growth. So the growth will depend on your resources, time, money, and how much, how much you put into it, right? If you post only twice a week on organic, and you have a teeny tiny budget and you send one email newsletter a month, your growth is gonna look and your success is gonna look very different than when you have a large marketing team.

You've got email, you know, a dedicated email marketer. You send out email sequences, you wanna grow your list, you're doing paid ad alongside with the organic, it's gonna look different. But the biggest thing is you need to have growth and conversations on social. If you're not building your audience, and now you are not listening to your audience, whether you're building an open community on these different platforms, or you have a dedicated community, say a Facebook group or a LinkedIn group or somewhere on social, you have to be building that community and you have to have conversations because the best content that you can create is content based on the feedback you get from people. That's how you improve your content, right? So you, you start with the content you think they want you test everything, then the things that work the best, you're gonna go evaluate that every month or every week. However, you know what, again, what your resources are, and you can make content that looks like the one that did really well and make it even better. So you have to build upon that. So success is growth, success is movement. Success is building a community, having conversations, and ultimately that will result in superfans, brand ambassadors, more sales, more people that wanna work for you, retention of customers, and all of those other things that you want.

George B. Thomas: Knowing your goals and seeing improvement is your goal. Traffic is your goal leads, what are your resources? Time and money are tied to what your success will look like. Ambassadors, all sorts of great things. And did you hear the seas? Again, building a community and having conversations. What a fabulous picture Dorien painted for us about B2B organic social media success. We're gonna get some words of wisdom from Dorien here in a few minutes, but right now it's time to turn the spotlight on you, the marketing profs community. Yep. Time for from the #MPB2B community, we far and wide in the #MPB2B universe to find amazing information and conversations to bring to you the masses. So first, make sure you're using the hashtag in second. Make sure you have fun and add value to the community along the way. Then we'll spotlight you or your crew on the show this week.

It's Allen Weiss on LinkedIn. His post went a little something like This. Is AI coming for your job? Last week's Washington Post article about chat and GT's impact has a lot of marketers worried. But Matt Bowman from INC 500 digital marketing agency led logical position says AI isn't ready to replace the human element in marketing and content creation. He argues that B2B marketers have different incentives than these Silicon Valley tools, which means your skills, insights, and motivations are not replaceable by Ai. C Bowen's Takeaways in no chat, g b T won't make your marketing and search irrelevant, at least not for now. #MPB2B #B2B #marketing #chatGPT #ai, my fellow B2B marketers, you need to check out the description and click that link to check out the post and learn more. Marketing smart viewers, I have to ask, are you going to be the next to get the spotlight? Remember, community, use the hashtag #MPB2B on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, and get the light shined on your awesomeness in the next episode or a future episode of The Marketing Smarts Live show Pro tip, it won't hurt if you tag me in the post as well. I'm at George B. Thomas on LinkedIn and Twitter. Mr. George B. Thomas, Facebook. Okay, let's kick it back to Doen and some words of wisdom around this topic of how B2B marketers can use an organic social media strategy for success. Here is what Dorien wanted to leave us with.

Dorien Morin-van Dam: Um, work with your teammates. Um, one, one brain and two brains equal don't equal. Two brains equals even better. When you put the power together of teams and of ideas, listen to all the voices on your team. Come up with content that works, go test it. So I think that is the essence of what I wanna tell you moving forward. You might have an idea and if you implement it by yourself, it's probably great because it's your idea when two or three people come up with an idea and five or eight people implement it because they get all excited about the plan and all excited about implementation, it's that dog pile, it's that pile on, right? So, uh, just because you're on a marketing team and you're at a video editor doesn't mean that your opinion doesn't count on what kind of video you have to create.

It's when everybody stays in their lane, nothing exciting happens, but when everybody works together as a team and, and all voices are heard on the team, whether it's a team of three or five of seven, that's when the magic happens. So, really treasure those, those teammates, your marketing team that you're on, sit around and have these sessions of brainstorming. This is the one thing that we wanna do. What do you think? What have you seen? Where have you been online? What are some examples of content that stop the scroll for you and build upon that? Because all those reigns together is just gonna be amazing.

George B. Thomas: Work with teammates. I mean, we could probably drop the mic there, but the power of teams and ideas, the power of brainstorming. I love this so much. Two brains, five brains, eight brains can be so much more powerful for your business and its B2B organic social media success. Have you enjoyed today's journey? Let us know. Use that hashtag #MPB2B on whatever platform you're joining us on. It's time, ladies and gentlemen. That's right. Time flies when you're having fun. Head to the description below. Click on the links to the Full Marketing Smarts Podcast with Dorien Morin-van Dam, and keep on learning more about how B2B marketers can use an organic social media strategy for success, as well as all the other amazing links. Remember, these were just a few clips of the original Marketing Sports podcast interview. If you got value from today's show, hit that like, and better yet, share it with a friend to keep learning more. Hit subscribe or watch Additional Marketing Pro videos on your favorite social channel. Or head over to our YouTube channel if you're not there yet. Or you can go tune in to the original Marketing Sports podcast episode on your favorite podcast app. Don't forget to become part of the Marketing profs community by heading over to mprofs.com/mp today. And as always, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble B2B marketing human. And we'll see you on the next episode of The Marketing Smarts Live Show next week.