#006 Should Our B2B Business Be Posting On Our Personal Accounts Or Business LinkedIn Accounts?

Everyone wants to connect with a person over a business. Beth Trejo, CEO of Chatterkick, shares the philosophy behind doubling down on your personal brand on LinkedIn. Don’t get it twisted, there’s still a major opportunity on leveraging your brand page on LinkedIn. We’re sharing a strategy that makes sense for B2B businesses.

Biggest Takeaways From This Episode

It’s part of our human nature to be more interested in the personal stories over a logo. We want to form real relationships with people.
Content posted on your personal LinkedIn profile have such a great organic reach and cool tools to tell your story!
38% of people are more likely to dig more into the product or service when a CEO posts about it.
Showcase your purpose and live your brand on your social platforms. If you believe in it, you will generate buy-in.
Don’t know what to post? Tell your story and why you believe in the brand.
Only 32% is more like to research your business if a celebrity posts about it vs 45% more likely to research your product if your employees post about your business.
What do I post about on my personal LinkedIn Page? Answer your organization FAQs from your perspective. The detailed questions, what can I expect if…
Focus on getting people to engage with you in a conversation instead of pushing your product or service will help you “win” LinkedIn.

Want your question to be answered on the generation social media podcast? Tell us what it is here!

Transcript

This text below is a straight up audio transcript of the episode. In our humble opinion, we think the audio podcast sounds much better in its original form. We have not edited the transcription below so there are indeed some grammar errors (some quite funny, in-fact).

On today's podcast, we're going to be answering a question that was submitted at an event that Beth spoke at. The question is, we're a B2B business. Should we be posting on our personal account or our business LinkedIn account? What's your gut answer? Go for it.

Personal, everybody wants to connect with a person more than a business. Now that being said, I think that there's definitely a place for both, but I mean, it's part of our human nature. If we have a picture of a logo and we have a picture of someone that we know, we're going to like be attracted to the person, like we want to form real relationships with people. That's why the advertising of, you know, the past just doesn't work the same as it did 20, 30 years ago. And I think that LinkedIn, the personal pages and just the newsfeed and the algorithm, I mean, I don't have inside information, but I do know that just comparatively, it still goes a long way.

If you post a post on LinkedIn or I love the articles that are now available and they've been for a while and don't forget about kind of refreshing your LinkedIn profile every once in a while. It doesn't have to be a resume. Please don't make it a resume. Nobody wants to see your resume. They want to see who you are. How can you help them? What are your passion [about]? Who are you?

So I think there's definitely benefits to both posting on the business account and personal accounts, but there are definitely some really strong statistics and metrics that go along with like, why I'm posting on your personal is so important. So the first one is 38% of people are more likely to research a product or service when the CEO posts about it. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Well, I think we see this across the board in all platforms, but even if you are a SAAS company or even if you sell, you know, products to consumers where you, you do not realize that the CEO's involvement and or appearance or just their general brand matters to your business. And I think that's where people get it wrong. So many times when you're searching for something, you want to find more information about that company. And we see this all the time with even consumer-based goods where people no longer just trust a product they buy on Amazon. Maybe they'll buy it there, but they're still going to do research. Is this company environmentally conscious? Do they have good leadership? Are they bad to their employees? Are they US based? There's so many things that people care about and different people care about that you want to give them a good representation of your company and the leadership of your company makes such an impact on what you do and how you do it.

That metric doesn't surprise me at all. And I think honestly there's so many people not posting with about their CEO or their CEOs are not involved in these platforms. So like if you just inch your way in there, you're going to have a leg up on probably a lot of your competitors.

One thing that I always look for when I'm looking at brands or or products or businesses, when I look at the CEO's accounts are like are they living their brand? Are they actually showing that purpose on an everyday basis or is this like a job they check out and they're actually making some other actions that are completely separate from the brand? Like do they really honestly believe in the brand? And most of the time they do. That's why they're in those roles and setting the purpose and vision for the company. But I think that's a really good indicator of whether or not they really believe is what their profiles look like and what they're talking about.

Yeah. You know, I'm a huge fan of buying weird food on Amazon. Highly influenced by always anybody try new things. And especially with food, like my biggest thing is I want to make sure it's like credible, safe, whatever I'm buying has some legitimacy to it because I'm going to be eating it because it doesn't look legitimate. When you bring it, it's always like, what is this? You guys should come see our snack bar in our office. These weird snacks just pile up and you're like, here's these cool snacks I bought. And everyone's like, eh, yo, wow. Fried artichokes and they're pickled. But I, but I do look at the brand's website. I want to see who it is.

And I'm always really interested cause a lot of these places are small boutique kind of shops. And I want to know what the founder's story is. Why did they care to make that specific thing and why did, why are they doing it differently than what you could just find in a bottle or on the shelf? And I mean if I'm doing that much research on my pasta, can you imagine what people are doing on large purchases that costs a lot of money, costs a lot of money. I mean, I'm talking about like a $7 purchase here, not a $7,000 purchase. But if you think about that you're, most people are probably doing the same thing. I do not think that I am maybe on the food side of things, but I am not that unique on the just people or research online and they want to know, they want to know so much more than just the ingredients or just the packaging.

Something that you said just now is like really interesting to me that you go and read the CEO or the founders story more so than the influencer that probably caught your attention in the first place. One of the statistics from this study was that so we kind of talked about 38% of people are more engaged if a CEO posts only 32% are more likely to purchase a product when a celebrity posts about it. So it's actually less so there's more power in the CEO posting about it. But the one that was the most influential, and we talk about this in another podcast about employee advocacy, but the most influential was 45% are more likely to research a product or service when employees post about it.

Yeah. I think that also kind of goes along the lines of I really do believe that the world of influencer marketing is, has changed the way that PR brands, small, medium, large, all sorts have thought about getting the message about their products and services out there. However, I do not think it's the magic pill. I'm just like social media is in the magic pill. Like it's not about can you just give somebody free product and tell them to, you know, post about it and you see this with celebrities all the time. How many things have some of these big celebrities posted that it's so inauthentic that you're like, great, I'm not going to buy that. I mean, I don't use that product. I don't but maybe I would if somebody would tell me a little bit that they didn't like about it or you know, I see them wearing it in a way that feels natural and sometimes that's just the skill of the influencer. But I think especially most small to medium sized businesses, those influencer programs can be a ton of work to manage. They're very difficult to measure ROI. And so why not start with just putting your CEO that is your biggest influencer and then secondarily your employees getting them out on LinkedIn, posting regularly, showing them how to do it, putting all of their pictures nice on their page, making sure that you know it's not a picture from 20 years ago and that people don't know you. And you know, I mean I think there's some big opportunities there.

So your answer to this question, we're B2B business. Should I be posting on my personal or business account? The answer was personal or a little bit of both, but personal. What kind of content should they be posting? I mean, if they're not doing this now, how do I like, what do I post about?

I think the best thing to post about is answer the questions. What questions do you get every single day from your customers FAQ, the FAQ, and if you don't know someone in your organization does, and it's not the basic questions, right? It's the detailed questions. It's literally when someone calls, they're not asking, in most cases, how much does it cost? They're asking, if I put this module on this device, then what can I expect? Like tell them the pricing variables tell really like the hacks kind of things. The little bit deeper, deeper than the FAQs. The FAQs is your usually listed on your website. So it's the one step deeper than that. Right? And it's, that's the beauty of LinkedIn. Like people are in a business mindset. It's not that they're not on the other platforms, but you have the opportunity with LinkedIn to just go a little more technical dive in deep.

I've seen LinkedIn just changed so much as a platform over the last couple of years. They've made it so easy for the B2B industry to really be posting and engaging on this platform. And the algorithm without getting like super nerdy is so different than the other platforms for a business to be posting on LinkedIn. Your organic reach and engagement on LinkedIn is by far reaching than any of the other platforms cause the other ones are so much noisier. But also because the content gets delivered in such a different way and even more so amplified if you're posting as a personal person, a person, whatever, a person on the platform. I just think it's super interesting how there's not a disconnect on this platform. You still need to take the same approach as you do telling your story on your personal accounts, on the other platforms as you do LinkedIn, the, the sales content is not going to go over that great. If you're just posting your products and saying, buy this, you really need to tell the story and in the value, yeah, 100%. It needs to be entertaining or it needs to add so much value to someone's life that they want to engage in a conversation rather than clicking on this link and buying the product. It's the same thing. But I feel like there's so much stigma that LinkedIn is B2B, so we should only be talking about business and sales and I think that that's such a travesty to what you could really build your brand on LinkedIn, especially if you're a B2B company.

Yeah. I think that people don't take a step back and ask themselves like, is this interesting to me? I mean, I'm in this world, right? Like do I, would I start a conversation with this? Like you said, I think the biggest mistake people make in LinkedIn is just shoving sales there. They're literally just saying, buy, buy, buy. This is why we're better. This is why. It's just, it's advertising on the platform and that's not what you want to do. You need to have that like balance of like interesting and a little bit. Maybe I'm entertaining in some ways and don't be afraid to showcase your personal side. I, that's the other thing I've, I've heard businesses, business owners and leaders say is, Oh, it's getting to be too much like Facebook. And I'm, I laugh at that because I'm like, Oh, you mean because people are showing a little bit of their personality?

I, I just, I mean, I don't know if I would post a picture of my like beach vacation on LinkedIn, but I mean, Hey, sometimes you gotta take a break from work. I know. But I do think that there is an opportunity there just to showcase who you are and it's okay if it's not in your business suit.

Totally. I definitely wanted to jump in because you said buy, buy, buy. And I wanted to make an N'Sync bye bye bye. By reference but now it's a little delayed so the stings a little gone. But I still did it anyways. So at the end of this episode, we're going to look at your phone. This is news to you, but Beth, you are a target. You are in the, an audience for someone who really B2B, right? You're a business owner. We are searching for partners, tools any source of support to help our business. So I want to see where you're spending your time. We also talked a lot about how you look at other people's platforms to decide whether or not to purchase. So we're going to look at your screen time today. Yes. Okay. Bring out that phone. This I think is just really interesting in general for anybody to look at. But if you go to your screen time on your phone, and this is on Apple and Android and you look at the amount of time that you spent on your phone and this is where we're getting our statistics on what people are doing. And then you click on your name and you look at the last seven days. So while you're getting ready, just some of the, I still spend the majority of my time on Facebook. I'm really not good at social media personally, but today's about you and not about me. So we're going to dive into where are you spending your time the most on your phone.

So I put the categories and then I'll tell you the actual platforms. So at the top is like by far social networking. Second is health and fitness, which you would think that that would be higher, but I've been trying to put a little bit more effort into that. Third productivity and forth, creativity, fifth entertainment. I think these are interesting as well because I use social networking for work and I mean that is 100% true, but I think that I'm not unique in that. I know that like my brother for example, he is in real estate. He is selling houses on Facebook messenger and that would come in as social networking. So you know, there's definitely kind of a mix bag there. My most used app from a social perspective is Instagram. It's my favorite. I use it as entertainment. I use it to search a ton. I use it on behalf of our businesses. You don't post as much though. I know, but I use it a lot. I'm constantly on that.

So that were you again, I see Beth every day. So she's coming in with like new sunglasses and new snacks. Is that where you're sourcing all of your crazy? Yeah. So, well, you know me, I'm not a, like I like to read, but if I'm going to read, I need like very undistracted time. Instagram allows me to visually see things and I use it a ton for search.

So I was searching the other day, like I think a recipe and all, I knew I had a product or I, you know, knew I was going to make something with chicken, let's say. So I just look at the hashtag like chicken recipes and then I just visually see all these ideas and I'm like, Oh perfect, I can do this, this and this and I'm going to make it. But you don't actually read the recipe, you know, these kind of things on it. So inspiration, yes, inspiration 100%. And then I use it for shopping and kind of I like to see.

What was the last thing that you purchased from an Instagram ad?

Oh, that's a good question. I get a lot of I think it was probably some sort of clothing or something, but I, I find it on Instagram and then I go to Amazon. Oh, so you, you don't end up purchasing? I actually don't and I know that it really hurts the influencers because they don't get credit if I don't, if I go through the Amazon app, but I do it because I already have my password, everything saved in the app. So it's kind of selfish of me, but it is what it is. So my second app is Facebook and I, I that and messages are about the next two Safari, which obviously is search in many cases. And then Pinterest. I use Pinterest a lot as well. I use it for a search engine. I use it for blog topics. If I'm looking for something for clients or updates. If I need to help somebody with a quick update, I'll use Pinterest because a lot of times just the images will have a headline in them and I'm like, perfect, I'll use something similar to that. Gives me good inspiration.

I still think, you know, we the whole point of the point of the podcast, but part of the value we're bringing on this podcast is talking about the generations of people who are on social, not on social and how really from a day to day conversations people are breaking those status quo of like nobody young is on Facebook anymore and I could still qualify you as young. And the fact that Facebook and Instagram, both owned by Facebook are still your top apps that you're spending the most time on out of everything on your phone. I think that still breaks the busts. The myth of younger people aren't on Facebook, right? I mean they might have a profile, but they're not using it. Clearly you have a profile and you're using it a lot.

Yeah, and I think the two other ones that, I mean, they're not as much time. So that's what we're looking at right now with their screen time. But I'm still on them every single day are Snapchat and I mean my podcasts, I listen to podcasts every day for sure. When I'm getting ready in the morning doing my hair, I'm listening to a podcast. When I'm in the car listening to a podcast, when I'm on a walk, I'm listening to a podcast and I may listen to some that are very like entertainment focus that really provide very little like tools, tactics, productivity hacks, and others that are very in depth or really technical. And so I'm definitely listening to those every single day. And then I'm on Snapchat every single day. I have a very small circle of friends that have Snapchat that I use Snapchat with. And I really enjoy just that, that platform. I also have I like reading the Snapchat news articles. I know that's very, like millennial of me, it's kind of my source of news at times. And they have really good like national geographic and Oh yeah, that's what you're reading. Do it a little bit of celebrity trash. But there are some that are really good. I had so many cooking magazines come through Snapchat.

Interesting though that I, this question right, was B2B - LinkedIn. Specifically, LinkedIn was not in your top five and you're a CEO, so I'm just gonna leave that there and we'll definitely talk about that on another episode. Oh yeah. I break the mold on that one.

Social MediaChatterkickOctober 8, 2019LinkedIn, B2B, strategy