Sam Olmsted
I know that the countdown clock here is recording, but I just wanted to kind of, before this is all official, just introduce ourselves and who we are and what we’re doing. I know you’ve spoken to Flynn a good amount now. I’m Sam Olmsted. I’m the New Orleans Managing Director here in our New Orleans office. Yeah.

Meara McNitt
And I’m Meara. I’m the social media director. I’m also based out of our New Orleans office, but the commute has become treacherous, so I’m trying podcasting from home.

Josh Krakauer
Yeah, aren’t we all, or the rest of us are anyway.

Meara McNitt
Yeah.

Sam Olmsted
You’re back. Good Josh. Are you from home right now? Thanks. Okay.

Josh Krakauer
Yeah, I’m at the home office. I was just working on this. I needed to, um, need to kind of line myself up in Riverside right now. So let me see here. I’m just trying to get the right view. Actually, sometimes it’s better. Actually, if I just don’t look at myself, that’s like, do you know what I mean? Like in zoom, I turn that option off. I just say, no, I don’t want to see my own face. Cause then I just stare at my own face.

Sam Olmsted
Yeah. I take it day by day how I’m feeling, how I’m looking. But yeah, I totally. You sound pretty good. Yeah, you sound good. Let me chat with our producers real quick. Can you guys hear everything?

Josh Krakauer
I know.

Meara McNitt
I’m abs… I’m always having conversations with myself. It’s just me, myself, and I, and other people are listening.

Josh Krakauer
Yeah, exactly. Hey, how do I sound?

Meara McNitt
You sound great.

Josh Krakauer
Okay.

Sam Olmsted
Okay. All right. We’re feeling good. Yeah, everyone sounds good over here. Okay. So just to back up. Oh, we have a little bit of a lag, I think, Josh. So that happens to us sometimes. And I think that when we ask you questions, we’re going to just take a

Josh Krakauer
Did you say good?

Josh Krakauer
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Olmsted
and feel free to do the same so that we don’t accidentally talk over each other. And we’ll try and make it as smooth as possible. We can always cut it and stitch it together and stuff once it’s all done. I don’t know how many podcasts you’ve done before, but essentially we’ll just jump right into the questions, and then we’ll do the intros and outtours after you hop off so that we can have all of our outtakes and missteps and everything. But thank you for…

holding those questions that you wanted to talk about and providing your bio and everything like that was really helpful.

Josh Krakauer
Yeah, we can free form this too. Y’all. I mean, I’m, I should just bolded a couple of things that came out of nowhere. I have no agenda on these things and I’m, I’m happy to just jam on whatever is going to be interesting and get you the best content after. So just so I know you do the full length. Podcast that goes, you know, minor edits, maybe for the structure as you’re saying, but then that gets played out in full. And then.

You’ll do cut downs for like specific clips. So that’s why we have the talking head. I’m just, just so I know like where to look to, you know, if my eyes are wandering over here, because I’m filming on an iPhone and I’m like looking over here and I’ve screens in different places. I want to make sure if I’m going to say something useful, I’ll look at the camera. So I’ll try to aim to do that.

Sam Olmsted
Yeah, absolutely. Perfect yeah our podcast we shoot for around 20 minutes or so, and sometimes it goes over, but we don’t do we’re not doing like an hour or three hour podcast it’s just 20 minutes.

And then we usually break it up into 30 to 60 second cuts for key insights and anything that’s really shareable. And yeah, we don’t really have a strict agenda either. Obviously we’re both in the marketing field, so we just figured we’d talk about B2B marketing, and I know that’s something that you’re familiar with and talented at. So yeah, essentially what’s gonna happen is we’re gonna start at the end of our intro. So Meara’s gonna say, how are you?

And then, you know, you’re welcome to kind of say I’m good. And and feel free to, you know, kind of just hop right into the questions. And we only bolded we only pick three to five questions so that we can veer off into whatever tangents these questions lead us down. So, again, if you if you’ve there’s something interesting that comes about or a case study or a client or something that you want to talk about a platform, anything like that, feel free to just kind of dive into that.

But yeah, that’s essentially it. So we can get started. And do you have any questions for us? All right, cool. Definitely a bit of. Yeah.

Josh Krakauer
Slugs, rock and roll.

Meara McNitt
Cool. OK. I’m going to go in with our.

Meara McNitt
You said definitely a bit of a lag.

Okay, yeah, I could see that lag happening.

Josh Krakauer
Got it.

Josh Krakauer
Got it. I’m now just intentionally pausing a little bit so that could contribute to the lag, but just

Meara McNitt
No, intentional pause is good. All right, so let’s get started. All right, thanks for joining us, Josh. How are you?

Josh Krakauer
Hey, it’s wonderful to be here. Thanks for dragging me on here. Finally. Glad we did this.

Meara McNitt
I’m just too finally glad to have you here. So today we’re going to be talking about B2B marketing. Specifically I want to ask about the social media side. So what do you find are some misconceptions about B2B social media marketing?

Sam Olmsted
the

Josh Krakauer
Man, where do we start? Yeah, I’m curious. Maybe I’ll answer it this way. What are a few things that you think are the misconceptions of B2B social media?

Meara McNitt
My biggest thought is that people market to other businesses like they’re robots, like they are a stiff business when it’s like, nope, that’s still a person on the other side making the decision it is still a consumer.

Josh Krakauer
Oh man, totally the human, the man, if I see another quote post, that’s like, remember it’s human to human marketing. I for sure believe that comes up so often because people, uh, for sure get that wrong time and time again. So a hundred percent. Yeah. I would say that’s a big one. I have been in social for a decade, a little bit more than a decade and have generally seen trends.

come and go B2B social is not immune to anything. I think people probably put too high of a bar for what B2B social versus B2C social is like if they were to, uh, look at them as completely separate playbooks. They are for a couple of reasons, but people generally either throw out everything that works in, you know, sort of pure play social media, best practice strategy.

Uh, or they try to do things that are, are way, uh, too similar and kind of miss the fact that it is yes, a human on either side, but it’s also not just one human, but a whole group of buyers on the B2B side. So generally what you see is first of all, B2B is a huge broad category and it encompasses everything from the tool that we’re using right now to record this podcast.

to the enterprise fully custom ERP that runs through a 20,000 employee company and controls their supply chain. That’s a huge difference in how people make decisions to buy those things. And the kinds of marketing that you have to do to really make sure both your brand is in the conversation when it comes to buying, but also that you’re.

Brand is has a positive association in your category and putting them all in one bucket as B2B social media is going to be one of the first mistakes we see people do is try to market as if there’s one type of B2B social media marketing philosophy, uh, B2B social could break down from the

Josh Krakauer
ABM or account based marketing type approaches where you’re really just marketing to a sec group of companies and people at those companies all the way to the broader bottom up type social media that a Slack or a Canva or a Zoom would do where you’re trying to build broad awareness and favorability and resonate with

Meara McNitt
about good awareness and capability and resonate with why could we lose when we come to that take effect with that drive to drive to drive? So I bring that up just because misconception is that we need to be so close to home to home, I believe, as we try to work with tactics and strategies. When I look at it as it’s no different than any other world.

Josh Krakauer
a wide group of users who are going to then take that tool with them job to job to job. So I bring that up just because misconception is that B2B social it’s talked about, I believe as one category of tactics and strategies where I look at it as it’s no different than any other social media strategy where you start with

who the audience is and then work backwards from there. And if your audience is, let’s say a group of decision makers and buyers and influencers that are going to make a considered purchase once every five years for something, the types of things that we’re going to be talking about are going to be hugely different from the other case, the tool that you can pick up and more or less subscribe to for free and then pay for later.

Meara McNitt
What, or let me think of how to say this. How do you decide which platforms you’re going to be doing that marketing on? Because one thing that I like to think about is, you know, when someone’s scrolling on Instagram, they’re probably doing it recreationally and not because business is on their mind.

Josh Krakauer
Yeah, totally. I think the idea though, is that people aren’t really in one mode when they’re on social media. They’re if any mode, it’s just boredom, right? They’re trying to cure boredom or they’re trying to avoid something, or they’re trying to, uh, buy time before they do something else. And a lot of times when they’re on social media, they’re at work, right? I mean, how many people listening today have

are maybe at work right now and are, you know, making, I don’t know, coffee or lunch and are trying to do something while they do something else. I think a lot of people use Instagram that way, including. CEOs of large companies and it decision makers and all those B2B audiences. So I wouldn’t necessarily group channels, uh, based on who is it exactly there. Um, all of the time.

Because technically you could find your audience on just about anywhere, but that is, it is a good point that the context of what you use that platform for is different, so it is not, uh, the, the totally opposite of that. I would generally say that more people are accustomed to buying an impulse, buying fashion and certain category things shot, uh, that are

You know, more associated with Instagram and that are more commonly found there. Whereas, you know, you’re, you’re probably not shopping for a new tool for your tech stack on Instagram. Um, that’s where just getting to the primary channels, what you’ll see every single B2B company do, if you’re a marketer, a social media leader inside of those companies is let’s say.

90% of the time, this is not a real stat, so don’t hold me to it, but 90% of the time I would say LinkedIn is the primary channel and it is because. The most common behavior there is to be in work mode when scrolling. And so you’re at least thinking about work, your career, uh, about learning, about connecting with people to advance your business or to look for a new job. So.

Josh Krakauer
Work is on your mind and therefore work related products are certainly going to fit in there, but there are other channels where you do think about work. I mean, in fact, I would say if you’re a marketer, you probably do follow work related accounts on Instagram quite often. And if you’re a B2B company marketing to other marketers, you probably want to pay close attention to Instagram as a channel to target your audience because.

They’re there to cure boredom. Yes. And laugh. Yes. But also, uh, coming into that platform as someone trying to. Grow their career and connect with other people like them. And so they could be attracted to that kind of content. So what we are now seeing is certain pockets of B2B audiences. So you’ll, you’ll kind of have to do that research to answer your question about how do you figure that out? You start with.

Specific personas or ideal client profiles. You start with real customers. Ideally, I like to just ask people what they use and why and why not. But then you could also use data and look at, you know, tools that help you understand what the makeup of those platforms are and who are influencers there. But all in all, what you’re trying to do is just figure out, uh, on these channels or which of these channels do our audience talk about?

Meara McNitt
is just important. All these channels, each of these channels to work with it to find out what’s going on.

Josh Krakauer
work most often or follow influential accounts most often and for what purpose. So on YouTube, it’s probably not as much lifestyle stuff. It’s probably there to answer really specific questions, um, or to learn something while they’re, you know, in kind of work mode versus on. Tick tock, they’re probably bored and scrolling swiping in that case. And. It could be intrigued by.

a thing that’s going to teach them something new, but are less likely to, I think for certain roles be in work mode on those channels more often.

Sam Olmsted
I think that’s a good point and I think that, oh sorry, I was just going to say I think that people aren’t necessarily fully in one mode or the other and if you can reach them where they’re at then they’re going to absorb that information in some way.

Meara McNitt
I want to circle back.

Sam Olmsted
But Meara, go ahead and ask your question and I’ll hop in.

Meara McNitt
Yeah, I wanted to circle back to, you know, you talked about reaching different like, like workplace influencers, different people, they can bring the stuff with them throughout. And I feel like a lot of people come to us and they’re like, I want to reach CEOs, I want to reach C-suite, I want to reach decision makers. But one thing is, LinkedIn is the majority of users on LinkedIn, which you think of for this kind of thing are under 35. Like it’s job seekers, not job makers.

basically the CEO is a C-suite. Who do you think is the best, most like influential person in the workplace structure when it comes to marketing to them to make B2B decisions?

Josh Krakauer
Well, you generally see two approaches. You have the, find the influencer within an organization and. Market to them to be there when it comes to making the decision. But at the same time, it does help to have reached a decision maker so that they’re familiar with you. Maybe not downloaded every single piece of content and consumed all your videos, but they’re familiar with you when it comes to making a decision. So you generally see both approaches work. And.

To your point, maybe more likely to reach the users or influencers or advocates on some of these channels, because by nature of their work, they’re more active, they have more time to explore and to be curious and to follow these accounts, but there’s a, there’s a wide variation of approaches here. And I think one of the things we were just talking about to put a finer point on it is the difference between.

paid social and organic social, because we talk about B2B social as one thing, but really, as we know, you know, certainly how I look at it is there’s. Not social media, there’s social and media, and they’re completely different sets of approaches, channels, tactics. They obviously flow together, but the media side of social media is thinking about how, if I have a message that’s meant for the C-suite, I’m not going to waste my time trying to build an audience that

Hopefully organically is nurturing, you know, the C-suite. I’ll probably start by building content and then targeting it really specifically to people with that exact title that work at the specific companies that I know they need to work at to be a good fit. So the paid side is really, really important. It’s one of the, you know, the best.

Josh Krakauer
or the advantages, let’s say of being a social media marketer in the year 2022 compared to the year 2012, because our ability to reach a really specific person and reach them at different stages and at different in different platforms, but with high levels of. Of, of precision is unmatched compared to what we used to have available to us.

Meara McNitt
is fully matched to what we used to have in the old days and the new mechanic piece is really tricky because mechanics kind of a strategy and it’s one of two things that you can create a content that reaches people based on it’s what you’re talking about, it’s a spreadsheet of how an audience will feel, how their audience will feel and that kind of

Josh Krakauer
And then the organic piece is always really tricky because organic is kind of that pole strategy. I mean, it’s one of two things. It’s either you’re creating content that you hope reaches people based on it’s on what you’re talking about, you know, get spread and shared among that audience or found by that audience organically and that kind of organic. Earned reach just doesn’t really exist on every channel. So generally speaking, your organic audiences, whoever already follows you.

And that means you can’t really be sure that it’s, if you have a piece of content or resource article or whatever for the CEO, are they the ones actually following you and seeing every single post, you know, maybe not. And so it is important to in your strategy for all your B2B audience that’s listening to really be thinking about what things are really, really important that we are reaching.

Sam Olmsted
So,

Josh Krakauer
Anyone in the right kind of organization should be interested in this. Therefore, you know, it belongs in organic and it’s going to be interesting to a broader set of people versus. If this is meant for a really specific person, you probably want to be thinking about how to use your paid capabilities and make content really specific to the audience and target them and make a, an approach around that.

Sam Olmsted
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And I think that actually goes back to the first question about common misconceptions. Because when you talk about advertising and putting out media that doesn’t feel human to human, it’s probably because there’s a disconnect between what person you’re trying to reach, whether it’s the C-suite decision maker or it’s the lower level person who may be the first contact.

If you’re sending the same messages to both of those people, you’re going to try and do a broad messaging that doesn’t really hit either of them. So I think kind of what you’re saying is that it needs to be more specific and more catered to that specific audience that you’re trying to reach.

Josh Krakauer
Yeah, I think that’s totally true. And it is an interesting thought coming back to human to human because I think where people latch on to that idea, because it is the right advice. But a human that is, I mean, I’ve seen some of the people on Twitter that, you know, their version of what they’re interested in, that would be human to them.

is very, very different than the way a certain professional in a very specific niche talks and is interested in on social media. And people tend to take that advice and then go really far towards the playful witty and I would say like sarcastic Twitter type voice.

Meara McNitt
and I think we can be sure to do this. I’m just interested in that. That’s what I’m trying to do. And I think we’ll tend to take that advice in the coming weeks.

Sam Olmsted
Sarcastic.

Meara McNitt
and that’s important. Certainly, I think it’s important to hear and take those things that does work. It definitely does work.

Josh Krakauer
The things that does, it definitely does work for a particular set of audiences and for certain channels and contexts using no capital letters and, you know, be shifting your voice towards that realm can really show a personality. So it does make it feel more human. However, it’s not necessarily going to be the kinds of content that

Every type of human that makes, you know, important decisions around a specific technology, like in our client base, we’re working with companies that are selling infrastructure type technology and big considered purchases that are, you know, it’s not that humor doesn’t work. In fact, humor is really effective for all types of audiences, but that kind of lighthearted.

Uh, relatable content is only one format and not the whole strategy. And I think people tend to double down on making that the whole strategy by. Leaning into it a little bit too far.

Meara McNitt
Yeah, when we hire for our specialists, which are interns, one of our questions is, you know, like, what’s a social media campaign that’s stood out to you this year? And too often we see Wendy’s Twitter or now Duolingo TikTok. I feel like everyone kind of wants to have like that kind of like attitude when it comes to an account. And I’m like, well, it depends on who you’re reaching. I think that if I took that to a CEO,

Maybe not ours, but if I took that to one, they might be like, yeah, we’re not working with them.

Josh Krakauer
That’s so true. That’s so funny too. I think that’s such a great filter for an interview question is get an extra point. If they don’t say one of the two most, uh, you know, unfortunately obvious answers because they’ve done an incredible job at being leaders among that approach, right, their approach. And when someone innovates, other people copy and they’ve clearly done a great job at

You becoming a standard or becoming a benchmark, um, and clearly an inspiration. And I do hear CEOs all the time reference those same accounts as someone that. You know, can we shift a little bit more towards that or, you know, how do we be a little bit like that? I hear it less often than I used to, but for something like tick tock, you know, if you say brand on tick tock, who do you think of, right? They’ve reached that top of mind. And it’s, it is, uh,

something you shouldn’t, you should pull inspiration from, cause there are some insights and lessons to your point, but not, you know, make that your strategy for every use case. And if that’s your only, you know, frame of reference for what good brand social media is, you might not hit the mark.

Meara McNitt
Exactly. I always tell people Wendy’s Twitter already exists. They did it. Let’s be someone else.

Meara McNitt
All right, we can move on to the next question. Oh, okay, I was gonna say.

Sam Olmsted
I’m still here by the way. I don’t know if you can hear or see me, but I’m still here. But Meara, maybe you just take it from here and ask maybe one or two more questions and then we can kind of wrap it up.

Meara McNitt
Yeah, that sounds good. Thanks, Sam. OK, if you don’t have an answer to this, just let me know. But I want to go a little bit off script. Ha ha. Here. And thank you. Do you have any, like, hot takes about B2B marketing that you’re like, oh, I just. I don’t know if people agree with it, but this is what I’ve got to say.

Josh Krakauer
We miss you, Sam.

Josh Krakauer
Nice.

Josh Krakauer
I think I do. I think part of it is what we were just chatting about. And I think that’s a, it’s a real, um, let’s let me try to think of a spicier take though. I think, um,

Josh Krakauer
I think most spicy takes would be basically that the exact opposite of whatever everyone else believes is true. So if you think about what other people believe, um, it’s that. For instance, you need a large audience in order to.

Josh Krakauer
then nurture that audience and sell to them. So a lot of people use their social media goal setting exercise to set audience growth goals because they look at audience growth alone. Let’s say followers on a channel as the success indicator and as a proxy for their brand.

Uh, being more popular and their ability to sell into that audience more effective. I generally think 99% of social media goals are a waste of time, or at least are off from the beginning. And in fact, at worst could set you on a path to wasting tons of money and tons of resources because you’re focused on something that you

Absolutely will not need to hit in order to be successful. And those goals are often set by the highest level of leadership inside of a organization or marketing organization. And most people know that goal doesn’t matter and still tremendous resources go into hitting it. I see a ton of time. I’m probably softening the language around it too, to be kind.

Meara McNitt
Thank you.

Josh Krakauer
But the truth is I would say most of the time, a follower growth goal is a waste of time, especially if it’s your primary goal. And at worst, it’s going to set you off course into making the kinds of content that is good at

Meara McNitt
Thanks.

Josh Krakauer
generating reach or the types of tactics that are great at, let’s say, generating net new followers. Um, but when you actually unpack most of the time, how big companies have grown their followers, it often let’s say for a channel like LinkedIn often has nothing to do with the on LinkedIn company page tactics that they did.

And more so how popular was the company in that moment in time? How much PR was written about them? How much ad spend did they spend outside of that platform? How many jobs were they hiring at the time? All of those things, you know, how popular is their executive or things that blew up on social media that had nothing to do with them shifting their content from graphics to videos or from.

images to carousels or the types of things that we focus on. So growth, audience growth goals and engagement goals. They’re absolutely strong and important things to measure as indicators of if your content or approach is resonating more effectively and generally good to measure overall, but are in my opinion, very poor North star goals to set.

Meara McNitt
and screen things to measure as indicators of weight.

Josh Krakauer
and could send the company in a direction of wasting a lot of money and time.

Meara McNitt
In an account that is not e-commerce, what do you think the North Star goal should be?

Cause I know for a lot of people that are like, oh sales, sales. But if you’re not like, maybe you’re like trying to generate leads or it’s just more of a brand awareness kind of thing. What should people be looking to?

Josh Krakauer
think in a best case scenario, all of marketing or the organization that social media kind of is a part of should have one goal related to pushing the brand forward and pushing maybe the sales or revenue forward in the company, you might call it pipeline in that case. So like sales that is

in the form of opportunities that will close. And

social media should contribute to those things and be measured according to, you know, its contribution or its own indicators. But the whole marketing goal should not be focused on a follower target and people should not be incentivized to hit it is sort of the point. So social media goals for the sake of setting social media goals is sort of the dangerous exercise to set.

I think it’s not, I think it’s.

okay to project out where we could be and to see how we’re progressing against that.

Josh Krakauer
But marketing’s job is to make it easier to buy and you make it easier to buy by making more people know who you are and make more people who know who you are, who are considering a purchase to begin that purchase process by becoming a opportunity, someone that’s raised their hand and talked to sales or committed.

to that sales process somewhere in the, you know, in the way that you can measure revenue that will be generated from them. And organizations that are structured around that, look at the sum total of all of their work together. And of course, look at social media, where more specifically certain channels as how they’re contributing, but they don’t look necessarily as

that how many followers as the main goal or primary goal of social media because, or engagement overall, because it’s loosely connected to revenue, if anything. And it is an indicator that things are working better, but not that your business is growing.

Meara McNitt
100%. I remember the days when you just ran page like ads on Facebook and that’s how people considered it successful and you’re watching and you’re like, well, this is doing nothing, but I can buy the likes.

Josh Krakauer
Yeah, that’s the point is for instance, if your goal is follower growth, then the game is how cheap can we get the cost per follower? And it is a game that you might win. And if you win that game, it might be very costly because if you get your cost per follower down from $5 to $1.

You know, it seems like a huge success because you can 5x your growth. But for what?

So I think this is a battle that all social media marketers have fought forever. I am totally in favor of measuring these things, but just because you can measure it doesn’t mean it needs to be the primary goal. Every marketing organization is going to have a slightly different primary goal. And in fact, B2B social media is a lot about a lot more than marketing. It’s also about talent attraction. Most of the time, you know, it’s about,

Meara McNitt
Right?

Josh Krakauer
customer support in some cases. And a lot of those things, uh, have some relationships and followers and not always.

Meara McNitt
Awesome. Well, I think that sounds like a good place for us to wrap up today. Thanks so much for hopping on and chatting with us, me about B2B, particularly the social realm of it. Oh, yeah, we can. Hey, Sam.

Sam Olmsted
I think I’m still here. Can you hear me? I heard the whole thing. You did great. Thanks, y’all. I’m back. Exactly. But yeah, thank you very much, Josh. It was a great conversation. And we will edit it to.

Josh Krakauer
Yeah, we can hear you.

Josh Krakauer
Yeah

Sam’s back. I feel like I’m talking into the void.

Meara McNitt
Right?

Sam Olmsted
make it less weird that I disappeared. But otherwise it’s great. Oh yeah.

Meara McNitt
I need to do one last piece. So Josh, if people want to find you or Sculpt anywhere on socials, where should they look and reach out?

Josh Krakauer
I hope they don’t have to look too hard to find us where we are sculpt.com and where we are sculpt just about everywhere. And I’m Josh crack hour.

Meara McNitt
Great, thanks so much. All right, Jordan should end the recording. And then if you could just hop on.