Mark Raffan | Content Callout
LinkedIn has undergone a renaissance in the last several years and today is a central focus for many B2B companies’ marketing strategies. But what does it take to do LinkedIn right?
Mark Raffan of Content Callout is an expert at using LinkedIn for organic social marketing. In this episode, he explains why you should be putting twice as much effort into individual posts as you do company posts, along with advice on things like:
When to use branded versus non-branded content
How to create a strong hook
How to know what you shouldn’t post
Overcoming objections from subject matter experts who are reluctant to build their personal brands on LinkedIn
Why responding to comments on your posts is so important
How to structure your LinkedIn posts to get the most engagement
Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.
Resources from this episode:
Connect with Mark on LinkedIn
Follow Mark on Twitter
Visit the Content Callout website
Mark and Kathleen recording this episode
Kathleen (00:00):
Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And today my guest is Mark Raffin, who is the founder and CEO of Content Callout. Welcome to the podcast, Mark.
Mark (00:21):
Thank you so much for having me, Kathleen. It's a pleasure to be here.
Kathleen (00:25):
So you are an expert in authority and persuasion which are two words that, of course we always love to talk about when it comes to marketing. And so we're gonna have a conversation today about developing authority on LinkedIn. But before we begin that, could you take a minute and just tell my audience a little bit about yourself and your story and how you came to be doing what you're doing now and what Content Callout is
Mark (00:49):
You bet. Yeah, so it started about four and a half, almost five years ago. And as all good stories started, started in the pub over a few drinks and I was moaning to all of my friends about how there were no great negotiation podcasts out there. No great negotiation content. And as all good friends do, they said, well, don't know about it, do something about it. So I did after a few drinks, I decided that was an amazing idea. And I went onto Amazon and I bought way too much podcast equipment and all of the wrong stuff and started what we now call the Negotiations Ninja podcast, which has been running for just over four years, number one negotiation podcast in the world. And then just over two years ago, I thought, well, if we can develop an entire company based on content, which was the Negotiations Ninja company, which is a training and coaching company, what if we could do that for other people? And that's how Content Callout came to be. And so we went in with the thesis that we could develop content for other companies, help them to develop their authority and their awareness and their thought leadership. And it turns out it's true. And we, we were able to do that. And here we are today, two and a half years later with Content Callout.
Kathleen (02:07):
That's such an interesting story. And I feel like we could have probably two podcast interviews here because I'm fascinated by the negotiation stuff. <Laugh> but I think we're gonna have to table that for another time. So you, you kind of tested this all out on yourself and figured out a system, and now you're helping other companies, brands, people with the system that's right. Somebody comes to you and says, I'm interested in leveraging more thought leadership to build my brand. Where do you get started? Is it is the first question really around what, what is that brand that you're trying to promote?
Mark (02:51):
The first question is always, why, why are you doing this? Or why do you think you should do this? Because a lot of people read a ton about content marketing, which is fantastic and it's the buzz, right? And everyone's like, wow, that's great. And we should do this, but most people don't know why they should do it. And unfortunately, that's only an answer that really that customer can ask themselves and answer themselves and we can guide them through the process of why it's important to do it. But if you don't start off understanding how it fits into your overall marketing strategy and your overall marketing mix, it's probably a bad idea to start because otherwise you're gonna go in with the wrong objective and maybe the wrong goal posts. And you're gonna, you know, spend three, six months at it, putting in a ton of effort and then coming out after six months going, I don't know really what we've achieved and whether or not this was worth it.
Mark (03:56):
And what results do we kind of have to show for? And by the way, for those of you that are listening, I know that you're all marketers. So when I say three, six months, you're like, well, that's not nearly enough time for content marketing to take effect, but a lot of people don't know that. Right? And so when a lot of people start content marketing, they're like, oh, it's like PPC and I can expect results almost immediately. And the answer to that of course is no. So I would say the first thing that you should ask yourself whenever you're doing it is to think about why. And once you can answer that question, then it becomes a lot easier.
Kathleen (04:31):
So is there a right or wrong answer to the question? Why or is it really, it depends. <Laugh>
Mark (04:38):
That is a really good question. And the answer to that is no, there is no wrong answer to it. It's just important that you have an answer because that, that answer that you have defines how you use your content marketing, right? So if, if your, if your answer is, Hey, we really want to use this to help generate better quality of leads. Then most likely what we're gonna be doing is we're gonna be doing a lot of bottom of funnel content for your sales team, so that when they do their outbound strategy, they have the content to be able to support a lot of that outbound BDR work that goes with it. So that when those leads come in, they're already educated to, to do it. Or if you're saying, Hey, I wanna develop my brand into more of a thought leadership brand, where we're at the forefront of showing our expertise and all of that kind of stuff. We're gonna develop a lot of top of funnel and middle of funnel content for you. So it, it, it kind of depends on where we wait the content, but yeah, to your point, there is no right answer. It's just important that you have an answer.
Kathleen (05:48):
Got it. And you're helping with content creation and sounds like syndication almost as well across a variety of platforms. Is that right?
Mark (05:57):
That's right. Yeah. Mostly creation. We do a little bit of syndication work, but it's mostly creation work, which is where all the heavy lifting is. And where most people give up when it comes to content, because once you start it, it becomes like a, almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Either we start and do this really, really well, or we kind of peter out and never get great at it. And, and it's almost like a self-contained beast that if you, once you let it out of the bag, you you've gotta feed it on an ongoing basis because you start to realize how great it is. But once you start, it's not like it's like, everyone thinks that SEO and content is like, oh, we've created enough. Or we've done enough work for SEO. Not really right. That it it's a constant thing that you've gotta keep maintaining.
Kathleen (06:51):
So we, you know, our focus for this conversation is LinkedIn. And I'm curious where you think LinkedIn fits within this mix of channels and platforms for content creation.
Mark (07:03):
Yeah. So, I mean, if we think of content holistically, you can think of owned and non-owned content, right? Owned content is like anything that you have on your website. Well, that kind of stuff and non owned content is typically anything that's on other platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, whatever, right? Like things that you don't content that you don't own, that the social media websites actually own that content that you're writing on their platforms. So when we think of non owned, typically LinkedIn is the biggest for most B2B SaaS companies, most B2B companies in general, where they're gonna create their thought leadership online. And you can break that down into two additional segments. You can think of paid and organic. Most of the time when people think of social, they're thinking of organic, right? The posts that you digitally are making to create that thought leadership or your company is making on that particular platform in this case, LinkedIn and LinkedIn is the single most powerful B2B social platform on the planet. And if you're not playing on LinkedIn, which is where a lot of your customers are, what are you doing anyway, in, in terms of your social strategy? Now that's social media content, right? So that's how that fits into the overall content marketing mix. And a lot of people really struggle with content creation when it comes to social media, because they're thinking on a post by post basis, we can get into why that's insane and crazy. But it's, that's how it fits in.
Kathleen (08:51):
Okay. Now I wanna know why it's insane and crazy. <Laugh>
Mark (08:55):
Because it's so time consuming, right? If you're thinking on a post by post basis, you're generally building bottom up and, and you're thinking in terms of weeks and calendars and that overall strategy, and that's really, really, really difficult to come up with new, fresh, interesting ideas on a post by post basis. You're gonna have creative burnout almost immediately, if you go with that strategy. So we think of a, a bottom down strategy. So if you're, and that creates a really nice through line in terms of your content marketing. So if you're creating long form pillar pieces for your website, for example, 3,000 to 5,000 words, that creates the basis of pretty much all different types of content that you could create for any social media platform that you're on. You could spin that out into infographics. You could spin that out into blog posts. You could spin that out into social media posts and really plan your content that way. Now that for a lot of people is like, well, how does that fit into my overall campaign? We're very much a fan of like the always on strategy. So whatever your focus is for a specific quarter or for the half of the year for content, that then becomes the content that you also create on. So social, which creates a really beautiful through line on that content.
Kathleen (10:20):
So the question that I have as I listen to you talk about this is I mean, I'm a pretty prolific user of LinkedIn and, and I post a lot <laugh> I, but I may or may not have a, a good strategy versus being just posting day to day. So I have to rethink that a little bit. But my question is, you know, there, it's, it's one thing to talk about how, like I, as a person use LinkedIn, and then it's another to talk about how a company uses it. And there's a lot of discussion these days around, you know, building the company's brand and thought leadership versus building the brand and thought leadership of the subject matter experts with the, in the company. So when you think about tackling this challenge of, of thought leadership of content strategy, how do you think about that mix of what should be coming from the company versus what should be coming from the people within the company?
Mark (11:16):
The, I think give it as a two to one approach. So you're gonna have twice as much content, generally speaking, especially if you've got a content team internally, or you've got an agency working with you that agency can create, or should create twice as much content for the individuals than they do the company brand. And here's why, because organically on the LinkedIn, your personal profile on average of a, of a decent ish profile that has, you know, 1500, 3000 connections is gonna get four to five X on the low end to 20 X on the high end, in terms of reach than your company brand profile does. So it's sorta, and it, and it didn't used to be that way. Like if you had said, Hey, you know, five years ago, then sure, your company brand's gonna get a lot of play. But as with all social media platforms, LinkedIn is trying to monetize as much as it can.
Mark (12:20):
And so it wants to incent companies to spend ad dollars to drive traffic, which means that it's gonna try and reduce the organic reach of those companies. However, personal profile are still in play. So we get significantly more organic reach. And here's the second reason people trust people. They don't necessarily trust company brands. So, especially if you're a startup and no one has any idea who you are. So if someone's looking on their network and connecting with people in a particular industry or discipline, they're going to connect with the people that are producing the content, thus giving that them, that thought leadership halo, when they connect with them, making it easier for you to spread your message.
Kathleen (13:10):
So I wanna break this down and I wanna start with the company. So you were saying two to one people to company content. When it comes to content created for the company and we're talking specifically about LinkedIn what is the mix of content that companies should be sharing, posting, publishing on LinkedIn?
Mark (13:39):
By mix? Do you mean types of content or do you mean like the difference between memes and infographic? Like what do you mean?
Kathleen (13:46):
A little bit of all that. I mean, like what works on LinkedIn from a company?
Mark (13:50):
Oh yeah. Good. Really good question. So many companies take themselves too seriously. And they think that, you know, if a piece of content is not on brand quote unquote, that it's gonna be damaging for the company brand or reputation. And I disagree because if you're too serious all the time, then <affirmative> no one's gonna engage with your content. And the goal with any content on social media is not just to educate, but also to create engagement. The, the point of the content is to drive conversation, right? That's why we do it. That's why we should be doing it. And if we're driving that conversation through different types of content whether it's humor or whether it's educational or whether it's inspirational or even informational, then it becomes pretty challenging for someone to want to see the content. And so I would suggest to you that anything, I, we look at it through this lens.
Mark (15:03):
It has to be entertaining. It has to be educational and it has to be informational. And if you can think of it though, through those three lenses, then your content creation becomes much easier. And also think of the content in terms of simple copywriting strategy, right? Like if there isn't a good hook in the first couple, no, one's gonna see, you're trying to stop people scrolling. So the goal is to get someone to engage with that kind. Not to say that we want it to be click baity by any kind of means, but we do wanna be able to get people to engage with it. So if you're a company listening to this and you're thinking about the company brand specifically, I would say, don't get too hung up on something that's on brand. Now, if there are some things that I would say, sure, maybe you don't wanna post that.
Mark (15:57):
Right. Like anything that's too polarizing, right? Like anything to do with politics or anything to do with religion or anything like that, it becomes pretty challenging to, unless you're the kind of company that plays in that space, I would say, stay away from a lot of that stuff. And, or, you know, for example, if you're Nike and, and, and race studies are a big part of what you do, because you're trying to drive that conversation forward, cool. Play in that space and play in the small, because that's how you play. And that's how you do it. Most of us aren't good enough to be real, to play in that space. So just, I generally advise to stay away from it.
Kathleen (16:46):
Yeah. That makes sense. All right. So what about for individuals? Because I think, you know, there's, I've run into different kinds of people within companies, and I'm a big fan of, of the strategy you mentioned, which is leveraging the subject matter experts you have and getting them to increase their presence on different social platforms. You, you do find varying degrees of enthusiasm <laugh> for this. And I think and the reluctance can come, come in my experience from a couple of, of places, one, it could be a place of discomfort of, I don't feel like an expert or it could come from a place of, Hey, I like to keep my private life private and I don't wanna put myself out there. Or it could also come from a place of, you know, wanting to keep everything very businesslike, if you will. So I don't know. I mean, have, have you gotten pushback on that at all? Oh yeah. And what does that pushback looked like?
Mark (17:44):
Yeah, no, we've received significant pushback from a lot of different customers. And most of the time it's a result of those people who are giving pushback, not understanding the benefits that exist with creating a brand for themselves on LinkedIn. Because by the way, you get to take that with you, right? So when you're developing that brand, God forbid, you ever decide to the organization that you're currently working for. You get to take that brand with you. And as we know, our ability to leverage ourselves in today's market is probably the biggest single asset that we have to be able to market ourselves to get into that next level, that next position, that next payback at whatever it is you're doing. So a lot of people don't necessarily understand the benefit of why it's important to develop a brand on social media. If you can explain to them why it's important to develop that brand, a lot of the objections fall away because a lot of the objections that people have are overcome with the benefits that exist.
Mark (18:53):
However, there are some people that would say, Hey, I, I don't want to hear my personal information. I don't want to, like, I'd rather stay kind of private. And to that extent, you know, maybe you're not the right person to have that personal brand be represented on LinkedIn. Sure. And that may be the case, but if you have styled yourself internally within that organization to be a thought leader, if you are presenting at conferences, then I would suggest to you that you are not all of the channels, you can to be able to help yourself in that arena. However, if you're not, then we probably shouldn't be having this conversation anyway, because you're not speaking at conferences. You're not being sought after for industry events, all that fine, no problem. Some people just want to come in clock in and clock out, have no issues with that. But if you want to develop your career and become that thought leader and to be seen sort of as more influential within the industry, you have to market yourself. That's the reality of the situation. And if you can't come to terms with that, you're probably not gonna achieve, especially in today's day in age, you're probably not gonna achieve the, the level that you need to achieve in your career growth.
Kathleen (20:20):
Yeah. I mean, I would certainly agree with that. And that tracks with my personal experience very much. So when it comes to assuming you're able to get the buy-in from somebody to participate then it's like, okay, so how do we do it? Right. And right. I I've heard different approaches to this. And without tipping my hand, I'm curious to know how you tackle it. So do you, is it like teach a man to fish where you're training these experts and, and executives to post on LinkedIn? Are you posting things for them? What does that execution look like?
Mark (21:02):
It's both. So I would argue that it's very important to be able to have the team support, that thought leader with content that they can post or post on their behalf, even. So write the post, create the content and have it in queue for them to be able to take if they want to and post it and favorite and tailor it however they want to tailor it or post on their behalf. And I think it's also really, really important to teach that person how, when and where to post, because there are certain things that the content team that is supporting that thought leader is just not gonna be a able to capture personal experience. A really intimate moment with a customer, a, a lesson that they learned from their child, something like that, that personal experience type content is we're never gonna be able to create that for someone. So yes, we can create the entertaining, educational, informational posts about the industry, the discipline, why it's important to do a certain thing where they're gonna be over at a certain time, why someone would want to interact with them. All of that's great, but when it comes to like the personal interactive stuff that really gets people to want to follow you, that they have to do on their own
Kathleen (22:34):
Well. And I would think also commenting, right? Like it's one thing to post, but then you start to get comments and at least in my opinion, you need to respond, right. You can't just post and not respond to comments. And so are you training and expecting this a matter to, to and do that engagement as well?
Mark (22:55):
For a lot of the companies that we work with, we actually engage on their behalf and they've got certain things that they won't say and will say. And they've got certain things that they lean into and don't lean into. And we learn that with our customers over time, because for a lot of people it's really time consuming for them to be able to do that. So we'll, we'll set time up in their calendar for them to say, okay, you have to go and engage on social media two days outta the week and look at all of your alerts and actually engage on your comments. And if you're not able to do that, you just shoot us a slack message and say, Hey, I'm not able to, to do it this week. Can you handle it for me? But occasionally, and even a really good agency that has great industry expertise deep in that area. If they look at a post, they're gonna be like, I have no idea how to answer this question, right. Or how to respond to this comment, because it is so niche and so specific to the industry that we'll have to send that to the customer to say, Hey, look, we have no idea how to answer this, you know, question about developer X in this type of scenario doing this.
Kathleen (24:05):
Well, and you also don't know, like who's a close personal connection versus right. You know, just somebody who randomly connected on LinkedIn and is commenting. And that context I think is really important.
Mark (24:16):
Yeah. And look, especially if you're posting controversial things, right? Like there are some things and we encourage by the way, our customers to post controversial things within their industry. And I want to preface this and say, or maybe add a little bit more context to this, what I mean by controversial, isn't the you know, religion, all that kind of stuff, stuff that we were talking about earlier, but it's controversial within your industry. So for example, in negotiation which I was so about earlier, earlier, we, we carved out a position, a controversial position early that we knew, and we believed would get a lot of traction and it does. And it's the whole idea that win-win negotiations are nonsense. Now, when I say that everyone is like, what do you mean that that's insane? That's bananas. And that gets a lot of engagement, drives a lot of conversation.
Mark (25:11):
Now, fortunately enough, we can back up the conversation and have like a really good, well rounded debate about it. That's what I mean about a controversial opinion. And it may be something controversial in healthcare. Like, you know, we, we should have longer eternity leaves for particular, you know, whatever, and, and doesn't sound super controversial. But within the context of the United States, six weeks is bananas, right? Like there's no way that someone can heal within six weeks, but it's controversial because a lot of people are like, well, you know, we've done it for so long, blah, blah, blah, all the at nonsense. So if you can stake out like a controversial position within your industry that you can defend that you actually believe in that becomes really, really great content to be able to drive conversation. And there's no way that you're gonna be able to respond to that as an agency to be able to defend that position. So that's where that person really has to step in.
Kathleen (26:12):
Yeah, that makes sense. All right. So LinkedIn has evolved quite a bit, and it's been interesting to me to watch this evolution, you know, from gosh, 10 years ago when LinkedIn groups were still a thing now I feel like they're a wasteland.
Mark (26:30):
Unfortunately, cuz I thought it was gonna go great.
Kathleen (26:32):
Yeah, it was, they were great in the early days, but I think it was actually marketers that ruined them because we just started spamming them with all of our content. But and now today where the organic posts and the feed are getting a ton of traction, but there's also, you know, you have the ability to post the equivalent of a blog or an article on LinkedIn. Linkedin now has newsletters and events that you can list. So of all of these choices for ways to share your content on link and which are the ones that you are excited about and that you tend to encourage your clients to engage with,
Mark (27:12):
I'm a big fan of just written content. <Laugh> I, I know that sounds super lame, but like really well written good content I think is still a really great play. And the consistency see of that is fantastic. I think video is where LinkedIn is going to go eventually. I mean, I know that so many people are doing video right now anyway, but I think it's gonna become more prolific. I thought that LinkedIn live was gonna be way more exciting. I haven't seen it get to that level yet. But again, it does require you to be on at a certain time and there's still something there that I think is missing. I'm not a big fan of the newsletter. If I'm honest, I, I just think it's like, I, I unsubscribe for most newsletters anyway. There's no reason that I'm gonna read it on while I'm on LinkedIn. There's at very few people that I read their newsletters from. I would like to see a sort of clubhouse format come into it. I know that clubhouse totally bonded. But I think that there's a place for something like that on LinkedIn. I think that could be very interesting, but I think overall general like in feed video, in feed text posts, that's, that's where the money is.
Kathleen (28:37):
What about those longform articles that I feel like for a while that was a really big thing. It was almost like a competitor to Medium and it seems to have fizzled.
Mark (28:47):
Yeah. I, I just, I don't know why that the organic reach on that tanked. Right. And it was, it was really good for a while and then it just completely tanked. So I don't know. And there are so many things with LinkedIn's algorithm that I don't understand where you're like, this is one of the most well and things and like, how come I hadn't seen that before and why is there only 500 views of this article? I don't understand why that tanked and, and why it's not working, but then, then again, there are so many things around timing and your first three lines and where you're posting it from that seem to work for LinkedIn. That shouldn't make sense, but they do. So I don't know. I, I think I just generally in, in feed stuff is where, where it's at.
Kathleen (29:45):
So you just gave me the perfect segue, cuz my next question was going to be around when you're posting in the feed, let's talk about format and what you're seeing work and not work. And you mentioned a couple of the things that I too have noticed or things around the first few lines and video versus text. And I'm curious on your opinions about short versus long like breakdown format wise, what you're seeing work right now. Cuz obviously it changes all the time. So <laugh>
Mark (30:15):
Long form paragraphs are bombing generally. No more than two to three lines is gonna, it has to appear interesting on
Kathleen (30:26):
Two to three lines per paragraph,
Mark (30:28):
Per paragraph. Yeah. Yeah. Which by the way, I don't mean two to three sentences. I mean like two to three lines. Right. Which may be one sentence. I think as long as you can break it up that way you leave spaces in between your paragraphs, the length of the post doesn't necessarily matter, but it has to be broken up and be choppy enough. And I know that sounds weird from a copywriting perspective, but it has to be choppy enough to be able to keep the attention of the reader with the next thing that they're gonna be reading to your point. The first two, three lines of your post has to catch someone's attention. So there's gotta be some sort of a hook that exists in the post otherwise no one's gonna read it anyway. There, the visual component is really, really important to a lot auto posts. I find that pictures of the person who is posting generally drive the engagement and the views of that post up significantly, you could write a text based post the exact same text based post as another one, but add on a picture and you'll get like four X the reach on that particular. And it doesn't even have to be related to the post that you're post. It just could be a picture of you in San Francisco doing this with the golden gate bridge. Right. Like just going, Hey, look at that.
Kathleen (31:56):
That's interesting. That's an interesting observation because I've definitely seen well, I, I mean I've definitely, I, I think visuals helpful but it's sometimes can seem difficult if you're writing like a, a kind of an observation post let's call it. Like here's something I've observed to then think of a good way of attaching a photo. So it's interesting that you're saying it doesn't necessarily have to be like perfectly.
Mark (32:21):
Yeah. I don't, I don't think it really matters. I mean, if, look, if you're noticing an all observation, a picture of you being thoughtful, right? Like thinking about something with your hand on your chin or something like that, that would be interesting for that post or you speaking at an event or something like that would be really, really cool. Graphics tend to do really, really well, unless they're super wordy because I think that LinkedIn's algorithm picks up the words in the picture and that drives down the reach.
Kathleen (32:53):
Interesting.
Mark (32:54):
So I keep it less wordy, try and keep it more visual, that kind of stuff. And then of there's the no brainer ones are right, like don't post a link in the copy, post it in the comments, all that kind of stuff is. Yeah. That's what I would
Kathleen (33:09):
Recommend. Although you say no brainer, but I'm sure there are people out there who did not know that <laugh>
Mark (33:13):
Yeah. For those of you that are listening, don't post links in your post body because if you, it in the post body, LinkedIn wants to keep traffic on the platform. Right. So logically if you're trying to post a link in the platform to drive people away from the platform, LinkedIn's gonna look at that and go, well, no, where we don't want that to happen, which drives down your reach of that particular post. If you wanna post a link I'm posted in the comments.
Kathleen (33:41):
Yeah. I'm waiting for LinkedIn to use its algorithm to deprecate posts that have the words, LinkedIn comments <laugh>.
Mark (33:49):
Yeah. And we're starting to see a little bit of that right now. So people are just getting creative with like emojis, you know, that pointing down hand or something like that. But it's the goal of content is to get someone to read the content really. So as long as you can do that within the post, you, you may not necessarily have to do that to drive traffic back to the website. And if your goal is to drive traffic back to the website, probably paid is a better option than organic.
Kathleen (34:20):
Yeah. That makes all right. So I wanna talk a little bit about results. So you do this with a bunch of different clients and what kinds of results do you see from these efforts?
Mark (34:32):
It depends on the strength of that person's profile. To a large extent like the, the, the success of your content on social media is this is gonna be really oversimplifying it. But the success of your content on social media is a function of two things. Number one, it's a function of the quality of content that you're producing. Like are people actually gonna by, and by the way, quality is super subjective. We're not saying that you need to be, you know, a Pulitzer prize winning writer that doesn't matter just as long as people read it. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> right. That's what we determine quality as. And then the second thing is the eyeballs on that content. So if we think of it in those oversimplified terms, we can handle all of, of the quality content stuff. What we ask our customers to do is to grow their accounts, which comes down to you on LinkedIn, connecting with people in and around their industry, which so many people think that that is, you know, the content's gonna take care of that. It's not, it is to a certain degree. Some yeah, yes. But you still have to actively grow your account, which means that you're connecting with people in, in your target market or the influencers of the people in that target market so that you can have more people view your content to engage with it on an ongoing basis. That's where a lot of people get super uncomfortable.
Kathleen (36:10):
Yeah. So gimme some examples. Before and after, like I, if, if you've had a customer who's done a really good job of building out their profile, what kind of impact has that been able to have on the business,
Mark (36:23):
Significant sales growth? So right now, one of our customers is a major health tech company. And they've got B2B SaaS product where they help the operations of healthcare systems hospitals and acute acute care and all that kind of stuff. And we manage the social media profiles of their top five salespeople. And we create all the content for those salespeople. And we manage all of the engagement for all of those salespeople. And the result of course, is that they get better quality leads. They get better quality conversations and they drive more sales because what you're essentially doing, like Cialdini said in his Principles of Influence is you're creating authority within the industry where people can most see you. And you're creating an effect in the industry where people start to like you because of the content that you're starting to produce.
Mark (37:22):
And when we think of it within that context, it only makes sense that sales would increase. Now, when you start, it's not gonna happen right away. Because some of the sales people that we started with had 200 people that they were connected to on LinkedIn, which for the listeners is an, a small number, right? Like it's, there's no way that you're gonna get the growth in your sales at 200 people. So you have to grow that account. So teaching them how to grow that account, who to connect to, where to connect, how many connection invites to send before LinkedIn slaps you on the wrist. All that kind of stuff is really, really important, but over time it substantially increases
Kathleen (38:03):
Great. And this works for any kind of B2B business.
Mark (38:09):
I would argue that it does it, it, the only place I could see that it may not necessarily work is if you've picked the wrong person to be that quote unquote thought leader within the business, because you still need them to engage personally on an ongoing basis. But I would argue that it does work in pretty much all unless the product doesn't work, right? Like this is, this is the shitty reality of a lot of marketing. If the product doesn't work, there is no amount of marketing that's gonna help that it's just never gonna help. So if the product doesn't work and the service doesn't work, don't invest in content marketing because pointless fix the product first, fix the service first and then invest in the content marketing.
Kathleen (39:02):
Yeah. I believe that the phrase for that is putting lipstick on a pig.
Mark (39:06):
<Laugh> yeah, exactly, exactly.
Kathleen (39:09):
Right. Well, we're gonna switch over cuz I have two questions I ask at the end of every podcast and I wanna make sure I that in with you the first being the marketers, I talk to say that one of their big challenges is just keeping up with all the changes and this conversation is such a perfect example of that. Cuz LinkedIn has changed so much. Yeah. How do you personally stay on top of everything that's evolving and happening in the world of digital marketing.
Mark (39:37):
Wow. I mean, can you stay on top of everything? <Laugh> I, we are, we're really good at a few things, right? Like we don't do PPC, we don't do any kind of paid stuff in general. We don't do out of home. We don't do events. We really only focus on social and content. And so once you can narrow that down, you can stay on top of that. But if you're a marketing executive in a B2B SaaS company and you're trying to stay on top of everything that's going on, I would just say you need to be consuming as much as you can in terms of digital media personally, right? Reading everything you can in ad week and making sure that you're staying on top of all trends, joining an organization like pavilion, for example, to stay on top of what other people are talking to, going to events, listening to people talk, all of that is super, super critical.
Mark (40:33):
But if you're an agency that specializes in a particular area, then be the specialist in that area, don't try and do too many things for too many people because what inevitably ends up happening is that you can't stay on top of everything. That's intricate that's happening within the industry. And when that thing that you, you know, you should have seen coming comes, you're like, oh, I didn't see it coming. You're like, well, no, we knew about this for the last year. We knew it was coming. We had to adjust. So I would just say, if you're gonna be an agency it's generally better to be a niche agency than to try and be everything to everyone.
Kathleen (41:13):
Yeah. I totally agree with that. I was an agency owner for 11 years and definitely experienced that myself. I okay. Second question. This podcast is all about inbound marketing, which I define as anything that naturally attracts the best customer to you. Is there a particular brand or individual that you think is really setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer these days?
Mark (41:37):
I mean, everyone's talking about Refine Labs, right? Like if you look at anything that they're doing or Dave, Gerhart's doing they're doing really, really well in terms of attracting the right type of customer. HubSpot is the, is the obvious example of that in terms of inbound in general, because they basically created the category. So yeah, I would think of those two. There are some clients that we work with that I think are just doing an incredible job of being that leader of that thing in their space. And I think lot of older companies now are starting to begin to realize that they really need to invest in content marketing to create that inbound approach because we can't rely on events in the same way that we used to. I mean, it's great that we're doing it again. Don't get me wrong. It's amazing. And I really have happy about that. Cuz events are awesome, but who knows what next year holds? Yeah. Right. Like it may all come crashing down again. And so if you don't have alternatives to that, then it's gonna be, become very challenging for you very quickly. So I, people being more careful about their budget splitting their events budget, maybe even in 50% and putting it into digital is really important.
Kathleen (43:02):
Yeah. That, that makes sense. All right. So we're coming to the end of our time together and what I wanna make sure we share is if somebody has a question for you or wants to connect or learn more about Content Callout, what's the best way for them to do that
Mark (43:21):
Best way to do it is connect with me on LinkedIn. Let me know that you listen to this podcast and connect with me on LinkedIn. I'd love to connect with you whenever you're available or go to our website at contentcallout.com. And just submit a, Hey, I heard you on Kathleen's podcast and it was really great. I would love to hear from everyone.
Kathleen (43:41):
Great. Well, I'll put the links to Content Callout and your LinkedIn profile in the show notes, which are available kathleen-booth.com. And if you wanna connect with Mark head there, reach out to him on LinkedIn and tell him you heard about him here. If you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you would head to apple podcasts and consider leaving the podcast a review as that helps more people find us. And if you know somebody else who's doing really great marketing work, feel free to tweet me at @Kathleenlbooth on Twitter and I'd love to make that person my next guest. That is it for week. Thank you so much for joining me, Mark.
Mark (44:20):
Thank you so much for having me. It's a great conversation.
