I might get roasted for this one.
I attended a very good B2B Marketing event this week. Spryng, hosted by Wynter, was not your typical event playbook. There were no exhibitor halls, keynotes, breakout rooms, or dry chicken served in mass. Instead, it was in a hybrid indoor-outdoor environment. There were 20-minute tactical speaking sessions, curated roundtable conversations, puppies, great food, plenty of breaks, and lots of smart marketers.
I loved it.
With the exception of one trend.
I didn’t mind how much of the conversation was dedicated to LinkedIn. Humans want to buy from humans, and LinkedIn is where everyone connects.
There was a lot of great advice:
- 44% of investors always check the executive team’s social presence when investing
- 65% of investors say it is a red flag if the executives aren’t posting
- A good construct for brainstorming social content: share what you’re seeing, thinking, doing
- Buyers are using two heuristics when buying: do I know and trust this brand? Do others know and trust this brand?
However, there were some tactics and advice that caused me some concern.
Yes, everyone is becoming increasingly active on LinkedIn, and yes, you should have a presence. What I was shocked to learn is how many people aren’t writing their own LinkedIn content.
There was a ton of advice and stories on hiring somebody or a business to write content for you or your executives. Others talked about how they have their CEO’s login information to make sure “he” or “she” is posting regularly.
Individuals defined themselves by the number of followers they have, the number of likes they get, and coaching each other on how to game the algorithm. Third parties were even recommended as people talked about their own profile in the third person, “somebody from my profile will reach out.”
It’s a dangerous game.
I can’t help but compare this to the rise of gated content and inbound marketing. The tactic and conversion become so important that we lose sight of the content. Everyone tries to game the algorithm similarly, and it becomes a sea of white noise. All businesses end up doing the same thing, so none of it is actually effective.
We’re all figuring it out, but I can assure you that nobody will write content that’s not mine under my profile. I will share helpful anecdotes, content, and data from our platform. I’m going to do it consistently.
What I won’t do is try to trick or deceive my audience. And I definitely won’t define myself by the number of followers I have or the engagement rate of my posts. That’s all I can do. And if that doesn’t work, then I’ll try something new. But it will be me. I promise you that.
I hope you find this valuable and can follow along.
Until next week.
Jonathan
Product Launch:
Content marketing is evolving. It’s time the analytics evolve with it. The Juice is excited to roll out content intelligence for all of our brand partners. They now have access to:
🔀 Distribution Analytics: Understand how far your content is being distributed, see engagements
👥 Audience Insights: Learn what topics your persona cares about and what formats they prefer
💰 Account Analytics: See how your content is creating and converting pipeline
Are you interested in receiving this data for your own content? Learn more here. Or talk to our team today!
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