If Dave Gerhardt was running your marketing department

You'll have, like, one in every 10 posts because you're in a regular rhythm where you're like, I have a very original thought or I have a very outspoken idea. But it's the rhythm of doing it consistently with those small jabs that then give you that kind of power punch.

I am so proud of my sister right now.

Benji, let's hear it.

I have to tell you why. So, you know, we. We sit here and we talk about media brands all day and whatever and how it's the future. So my sister recently, she works with kids with autism and does a lot of work with toddlers and things like that. So she's developed a potty training course for the longest time, and it's what we actually used with our kids to potty train. She decided she's going to start selling it, and she realized the way to grab people's attention is to create, like, a social media page and that she basically does a mix of, like, toddler, like, hacks, and she also does, like, memes, like templates and jokes like that. Well, she just started it, like, probably weeks ago, and she's finally having her, like, first big hits in her, like, memes, and they're actually super funny. And I was like, I text her. I was like, welcome to, like, having a viral page. I was like, it's so cool to see. And she was, I know. And now. And, you know, she's like, now I'm just waiting for, like, the sales to come in. And we had, like, good conversations about, like, you know, you need to be consistent and all of that. But it's so cool to see her actually, like, seeing the results of, like, this thing that she's wanted to do for a long time and how things like jokes and interacting and, like, tips and hacks can actually sell courses is, like, so cool to see and seeing her benefit from it. It's like a proud brother moment. So, I mean, I feel like I have to promote it now. It's unraveling underscore behavior on. On Instagram. She's having so much fun with it, and I'm just like, I'm so proud.

Well, I might have to check that out because we're about to have a baby and we'll be in need of potty training at some point.

So any parent who's. Who's been through potty training for us, I mean, maybe we're just the dumb ones, but for us, like, when we realized we had to potty train, we just Googled, like, we were like, what do we do? And then my sister had. We told my sister and she's like, oh, no, I got a course. You can try and. And, man, it's crazy how, like, there are just some bad ones out there. Or it's like, just sit your kid there and hope for the best. Like, you get things like that. But yeah, it's. It's. It's really, really cool.

Well, it's actually a really fitting story, Brent, to bring on this episode, because what I wanted to. The post I want to talk about is from Dave Gerhardt. And everybody in B2B knows Dave. He's done a lot of work, moving from large enterprise business to Solopreneur, building his own media brand. He actually just hired someone. He's been talking about, like, the amazing. He's like, I don't know why I didn't hire someone sooner. I thought solopreneur was so cool. Now he's on this, like, kick of man. It's pretty fun to build a team. But I've always admired him. We've talked to him a couple times on the podcast and he has a post that I wanted to bring, basically outlining if he was running a B2B startup today, what he would do. This post also so many responses. It had over 1500 interactions and then 300 comments and 60 reposts. So for LinkedIn, he's doing pretty good on this. That said, here is the first half of the post, Brent, and then I'll get your reaction and kind of go back and forth. So the first half is this. LinkedIn would be our primary PR channel. So. So if he's a B2B startup, he's going to view LinkedIn as the primary PR channel. I've heard you. I'll just caveat this real quick. I've heard you say, think about LinkedIn like you're standing on a stage, right. You're in front of your ideal audience at a conference or something, and you're sharing with them your thoughts. So I think this is very.

Yeah, I said that the best way to think about it is, yeah, you're the keynote speaker at a conference in your niche. If you're writing content, you should always be thinking of that. Yep.

And I love that analogy because I always think of imagery. So I. That stuck with me. But. So he says, LinkedIn would be our primary PR channel. The founder would be sharing content three to five times a week. The head of marketing, head of sales, head of customer success would be as well. They would be sharing what they're learning about customers as they are building. This could be quick write ups after a customer call. This could be learning from pain points, content about the life or the job of the person they're trying to sell to. He says I don't believe that these people don't have time to write because those same people are writing in Slack, email Google Docs all day. They can find ways to turn this into LinkedIn content. It doesn't have to be super polished but it has to be real. People want real tactical examples, experiences and lessons. You'll get that every day. If you're actually building a company, selling a product and trying to help customers win every now and then you could do some non work content. That's great too. But that, that's the first half of his like strategy. Everyone on our essentially like that's leading needs to be sharing content on LinkedIn from day one. So what's your instant thought?

Yeah, this is so true because the thing is people think that people love to overthink LinkedIn content. They love to think they have to have this big like you know, world altering thought that that will change the, the whole, you know, world of, of their business. But in reality a lot of the best pieces of advice are just those day to day things that you think about like while you're talking on Slack or like something interesting that you learned. Like anything like that can be turned into content. Like if you have a really good chat with, with your sales manager about, you know, a really unique prospect that came through like, like you can post about why that was unique, like how you landed it, you know, things like that, just to educate other people out there because especially in the B2B sphere, they're on LinkedIn looking to soak up like as much information as you can. I mean, let's be honest, a lot of people outside the B2B sphere, they're just on LinkedIn to like to network and try to find their next job. But the B2B people are actually there to, you know, stay and learn. So you want to make sure that you're in the driver's seat that you're posting those tips and to say to do it as you're learning it. That's where people overthink like crazy. They think I have to sit and I have to come up with this brilliant idea for LinkedIn that's going to change everything when in reality it's the most natural human experiences that you go through day to day that are going to have the biggest impact.

Brent, remember Gary Vee's book. Jab, jab, jab. Right hook was like viral like 10 years ago. Whatever. He was applying it in the sake of like, okay, 75 to. You know, even 90% of the time you're giving away valuable content and then you're throwing in like a product or whatever. Think about that on LinkedIn from a content perspective. Less about even the product but more about how much value you like or original, I should not say value how much original thought you're giving away each post. You could have curation, curation, curation of your industry. I thought this was interesting. I saw this thing and it's not monumental. And then you'll have like one in every 10 posts because you're in a regular rhythm where you're like, I have a very original thought or I have a very outspoken idea. But it's the rhythm of doing it consistently with those small jabs that then give you that kind of power punch of. I actually think I have a pretty well spoken thing to say right now. Keeps people from posting when they feel like it. It always has to be. I don't know, you just like thought leadership. Yeah.

Another great exercise you can do is, is it seems so simple and like my family, at the end of our day we always, I mean I feel like people do similar things, but we call it high, low, buffalo where it's like what was the high of your day, the low of your day? And then the buffalo is just like the most random crazy thing that happened throughout your day. If you look at what those three things are and think about what you can learn from them, there's three pieces of content right there. Everybody has a high and a low every day. Everyone has a weird thing kind of happen that's unexpected every day. So, so take that story and add what you can learn to it and you got great content right there.

Let's go on to the next few things he says and we can kind of quick react to each of these bullet points. He said I would also create a list of your target customers. Connect with everyone I can via LinkedIn. Over 50% of people will accept connections from you and this means that they are now opting in to see your content. So now your dream customers are in the audience of eyeballs are who, who will see what you write.

Yeah, that's a no brainer. This is absolutely genius because LinkedIn is a little different from the other platforms because on other platforms that, I mean, I guess it can. On LinkedIn too, it can seem spammy if you're just following A bunch of people. There's actually a lot of the social platforms will block you and stop you if you do that too much, because they know that when you follow people and interact with people, it makes them more likely to follow you. A lot of people, when they see a brand or something follow following them, they. They just hit the follow back button. So it's a great easy way if you have people who are in your niche who can, you know, who are your target demo. If you follow them and interact with them on LinkedIn, they're more likely just to, out of politeness, click back. I mean, I don't particularly love it as a strategy to grow a following. It should be more organic. It's always better when they can find you organically. But it's not a bad idea if you know exactly who your demo is and can start following them. Um, because it at least puts you in their line of sight and they can make a decision in that moment if they like you or not.

When I first got hired at Sweet Fish, I had a lot to learn about B2B. I had never been in B2B before. I had done social content, I had done podcasting, I had done marketing, but never within B2B. And so I got a list from James of about, I would say, 100 to 200 individuals who. He's like, you need to follow these people. And I just started, like, looking at their content, watching their videos, interacting, and it caught me up to speed so quickly. Yes, I was also hosting a podcast or I was getting to talk to a lot of these people, but the content that you also start to see from them is really helpful. So it, like, caught me up to speed, but it also developed a rhythm in me where I'm like, oh, I'm connecting with people regularly. I see someone that I think is interesting or that might be in our niche, and I. There's no hesitation in me to hit connect and then even just type out a couple things like, this is what we have in common, or this, you know, this thing. This is what made me want to connect. You know, cheers to whatever you're doing and the work that you're up to. Right. Like, people respond to that stuff on LinkedIn. It's not spammy if you do it in with the right kind of authenticity. And I have.

It's.

Yeah, it's.

It's also like, you know, not to get too deep and psychological here, but I think it's. It's also goes in the same vein of like, you know, we're all adults here. And we all know it's. It's harder to make friends as an adult than it is, you know, as like a teenager when you're surrounded by people your age. And we all have that desire. And it relates back to work too, where we want people to, like, come up to us and say hi and ask us questions and get to know us. Like, we want that to happen, but also we always want the other person to do it. So if we're the person who, like, stick your hands out, who sticks your hand out, shakes their hand and said, hi, how are you? Like, like, what are you up to? Like, if you do that from a workplace environment too, where it's like, hey, I'm a new business. I'd love to meet you. Like, that's not a bad thing. People overthink. Like, oh, I don't want to bother people. I don't want to bother that person. When most of the time, if someone walked up to us and just said hi and asked who we were, we're happy because we like that kind of interaction. So as long as you're not being annoying with it, just relate it back to, like, you wouldn't want someone bothering you all the time when you're, like, out at a coffee shop, but you wouldn't mind if someone said, hey, I really like that book you're reading. I like it too. It's finding those things that can make you seem human and connect with people on, like, a human level.

Yeah. And in the sea of spam on LinkedIn and people only reaching out because they need something from you. If you reach out and you're just genuinely interested in someone, or if you're just like, hey, this is what I saw we have in common. And like, you know, that's kind of it. Those are the best relationships I've had over the last couple years. As far as, like, professional on LinkedIn, the people, like, we. There's actually been genuine want and desire to, like, work with, with those people. Because you can tell we're were genuinely, like, interested. But we're not coming at this from like, I need you to put me on your show, or I need you to buy my product, or I need you to do this demo. It's. There's a way to show up. Okay, I'm going to skip this next one because we talk about it a lot, but he talks about the power of commenting. We don't need to go.

I was ready. I was ready to go. My wheels are spinning on the tar right now. To say And I'll just put it simply. Like our social media specialist, Scott always, he, I don't know if he coined the term, but he likes to use it a lot. He always says, just as a business, don't post and ghost. Like, you can't just post and walk away and expect everybody to love your content. You have to be on there commenting, you have to be on there interacting and being active on that social channel instead of just posting and ghosting.

Yeah, that's. That is where I understand more of the pushback. Because, because posting consistently, if you feel like that's a heavy lift, commenting can feel like much heavier lift. Like I now I gotta spend a bunch of time on platform and all this stuff, but that's the way to actually grow.

So yeah, people don't like to admit it, but all, every social platform, all of them know how active you are. And it's never been proven, but every piece of evidence out there from creators say the more active you are on a channel, the more they benefit you.

Interesting.

B2B brands are on a hamster wheel trying to create more and more awareness. They're putting so much work into creating awareness and not nearly enough work into making sure that the content they're putting out is actually good. You can pay to build awareness. Brands do that all the time. But does the content resonate? The question should be how do we create content that builds affinity? That's where Sweetfish comes in. We, we're here to help you build your market's favorite show, not just another show. Learn more@sweetfish media.com.

The next one. Be consistent. You can't read this post, do what I recommend for three weeks and then throw your hands up and declare it's not working. We see that across content channels, right? People want instant results and they think that if we just, if we make one video, everyone should stop what they're doing and they should come watch it. The world should stop when this thing premieres and everyone should care about it. And the thinking there.

There's something very humbling that I want to say that a lot of people who do content marketing don't want to hear. And that's it takes. The studies vary somewhere between, between 10 and 20 times of seeing content before you actually act on it and you know, before you're ready to push back. On me, I always put it like this. Whenever you're scrolling Instagram or Facebook or whatever, and you get a targeted ad for something that you actually like, you don't usually buy it that first time you See it, usually, look at it, glance at it. You even say like, wow, I really like this. And then it takes you a couple more times of seeing that ad before you actually put your credit card information in there and actually do it. Now, the stat that's really hard for a lot of people to hear is when you post content, only about 10% of your audience is seeing it. So if you need people to see your content 10 to 20 times before they actually take their credit card out and only 10% of your audience is seeing it, you have to be consistent for a long, long, long time before people start seeing your stuff consistently. That means it has to be good, it has to be high quality, has to be getting high reach for a long time. And it's. What always happens is people start making content, they're super excited about it, they love it. And then all of a sudden, after about a month, it starts to feel like work and it's not fun anymore. But that's when you've. That's when you have to push past that. Cause that's where everybody gets tired and goes away. If you can keep it going and be consistent in your quality and quantity of your posting, you will see that come back to you in sales as long as you keep going with it.

Yeah, okay, we're about to wrap up, but I think the end of his post is just too good not to read. This is what he says it really comes down to. Are you willing to put in the time and do this every week, or is it easier to light $20,000 a month on fire and pay a PR agency to get you earned media in your niche as a series A, B or C startup when the only publication you can pitch these days is TechCrunch, and that publication is a complete waste of your time anyway. Also, LinkedIn has 875 million users, and 3 and 310 million of them are monthly active users. Fantastic ending to that post. I absolutely love that.

It's crazy how dumb some people are with lighting money on fire like that because a lot of people, especially if they do something like influencer marketing or something like this. Now I've been in a really unique scene because I've worked with influencers and basically, you know, helped coach them on how to make more money and how to say no and those things like that and how much they're worth. But I've also worked on the other side where I've taught businesses like what influencers are worth your money and what promotions are worth your money. So I've been in the unique seat where I know how to take advantage of the, of the other. Like I know what influencers we're going to get the most bang for our buck because frankly they're too dumb to know their worth. And I mean that with, with all the respect. Like there's a lot of people have really high engagement, can promote your product like crazy, but they're newer to the market and they just don't know their worth. So you can really take advantage of that and get them for a low cost. So because a lot of people think that follower count equals ROI and they're like this person has a million followers so if we go with them, we're going to see a big roi. So let's do this big kind of marketing campaign with them. And they don't realize like if you don't look at their engagement, if you don't look at who they're attracting, all of those, it seems so simple. But people forget when they get like blinded by the light of like an influencer or some sort of campaign that they just end up lighting that money on fire when, if you take the, if you take a deep breath and build your own audience over time, you can have the same power as that influencer with, without spending a cent if you have it yourself.

Okay, a couple of the comments here that I thought were interesting. One of them is probably the most, maybe this is the most common pushback or question is if you're a founder and you're super busy, can someone else post for you? Can someone else and I think Dave put it pretty good here in the comments. He said someone can help the founder, but the founder needs to do the work. Would the founder outsource media interviews? No. Also the 99 other things, I'd argue not all of the other 99 things they're doing are important. Make some trade offs, find other things to not do. I want to make one point on this because I do think it's interesting as the, as content and our thinking on content evolves. When you think of social media 10 years ago, the fact that you would pay an intern to do the most public facing thing for your company is absolutely wild because we did not understand how much could be gained from doing that thing really well and who would be public on those platforms. And now when you think about it, if you're going to outsource the voice of your founder, the person that is leading your company, your CEO, your C suite and you want someone else to be able to give them thoughts that functionally does not make sense. You would not put someone on a stage and then have someone else speak for them. So you have to take their thoughts and then be able to repurpose them. But that's very different than having someone just like, own their social media and do it all for them.

No, it's because I. Benji, I understand what you're saying and there is a lot of truth to it, but there is a way to do it. Right. The thing is, when it comes to hiring someone to do social, I hate to say it, but you get what you pay for. Like, if you're paying an intern to run your founder's social media, that is absolutely the, the dumbest decision you can make. If you have somebody who can actually, who works closely with the founder, who knows their habits, who knows their writing habits, who knows their thought leadership. I've been in the seat where I have had to write, you know, social posts for CEOs and they have, they have said, like, that's exactly how I would say it. Like, they've said things like that where it can be done with the right person, but that right person is very difficult to find.

And let me ask you a follow up question on that, Brent. What? Okay, like, just because I know there's people listening to this podcast right now who are in that seat. What are the questions that you asked? Or are there some specific things that you're thinking through when you're like, okay, I'm going to be posting for this CEO, what are the things you're doing ahead of time that make you most effective at posting for them?

Here's what's what, what's hard, because it's not so much about that as it is having a close, trusting relationship with the founder. It will never work if the founder doesn't trust you and if you don't trust the founder, because there have been so many times where I've written things, they have to feel comfortable enough with you to say, this sucks. This is not how I would say it. You need to change this and that. Like, this is just awful. Like, they have to be comfortable saying that to you. And not every founder is comfortable saying that. But on the, on the flip side, not every social media person is risky enough to pitch kind of that idea that could put their founder at risk. Because the hot takes and those sorts of things are the things that do best. But it takes a social media social media manager with balls to walk up to their founder and say, hey, I want to put this hot take that you have. And I Want to put it online and let people come at you. Like, that's a really tricky relationship. But it's not impossible to find. And there are some, even some of our clients at Sweetfish, I know that some of them do that and they do it really, really well, but it's, it's nearly impossible. Like, you have to have a very close situation with the right person at the right time.

We were joking before and just talking before we hit record on this episode about how do you get people that aren't posting consistently or aren't creating consistently to create? How do you incentivize it? And that's the other comment here. That is just a true one. Evan Johnson, he commented, he said, what's your advice for convincing department heads to be More active on LinkedIn? And Dave was just joking, but he's like, read this post to them out loud in a really stern voice.

Yeah, here's something that actually just happened this week to me, and it was a really hard pill for me to swallow. We were talking with one of our clients about, and they had asked us the question, why, how do we get our hosts of our podcast to share our content? Because they have their own page. But the unfortunate thing they have is they have two hosts who are not active on social media. So they just said, like, they're, they are already not passionate about it. And I had to, I. The hard pill I had to swallow was I said, we need to be making content that they want to share. Like, it could be on quality. And that was really hard for me to say, to say, like, what are we doing wrong? That when they're seeing it, and I mean, the answer was they weren't seeing it because they were kind of disconnected. They're never on social media anyway. But the, the flattering thing was when they did see it, they got back on social media because they were proud.

To show it off.

Which is a breath of, of relief for me because I had to, I had to admit, like, maybe we're the problem. Like, why? So I always say, like, when it comes to getting those C suite level people to share content, it could be the content itself. Because I've even said with James, you know, at Sweet Fish, I want our creative team to be creating content that James wants to share, not that he has to share. That is the ultimate compliment you can get as somebody who's, who's a creative. Creating for other people is if they love it so much, they don't have to share it. They want to share it.

Yeah, I think the that's one of the problems. I think that comment was more about the, the people that like just aren't active on LinkedIn and maybe you aren't creating content for them or they don't have like, you know, interviews or, or other places that they're already being public. So you're kind of like trying to get the momentum from the ground up. Like zero, go zero to 100. And that is one where you end up kind of being like, well, we can't really force people to post because that doesn't work and we can't really like force enthusiasm about our niche. And I've talked to companies where it's like you hired a marketing team and they're really good at content creation for the company, but they're not really good at being creators. And so that is a space where I. It's not, there's not a perfect, like this is the line to get everyone in your company posting. It's more of a. From the top down, are you modeling it and are you showing the benefits of it? And people, I think at least my. I'll hit raise my hand and say it was more caught than taught to me. You could tell me to do it. But when I see people that are doing it and are doing it well and then you watch how that benefits them over time, it's like I see the benefits for the company and for the individual. This is a no brainer. I need to go and do this more. So this has been really fun. Brent, did we make, did we tell people where Ali was? No. I just realized before we hit record, Allie reached out to us and she's like, hey, I'm so sorry our neighborhood doesn't have power. I guess she lives in like, I don't know, it's like the 1920s over there or something. But her neighborhood doesn't have power. So she's like driving right now to a co working space. So she's not on this episode. But yeah, this was fun. This was a good one.

Yeah.

All right. I don't have a YouTube. Do you have a YouTube? No, there's no YouTube.

This is why, see, this is why we need Ally. Allie is like, is like the one who pulls us together and makes sure that we're, you know, we need our mom back.

I want everyone to know that when we record these episodes, YouTube, after months and months, like it's really hard to bring all of you a new YouTube channel every single episode. And that's worth stating on one of these. So really we will just push B2B growth quick. I love that we're trying to build our YouTube channel in 2024. You will see more concerted effort towards what we're doing on YouTube. And I'll just tease we're going to do some special stuff over there. We're going to be trying a lot of whether that's new content, series and new formats. So excited for what we're building and if you haven't followed that page, go do it. Thanks for listening to B2B growth, Brent. This was so fun. We'll be back soon with another episode.