What's Up with Tech?
Tech Transformation with Evan Kirstel: A podcast exploring the latest trends and innovations in the tech industry, and how businesses can leverage them for growth, diving into the world of B2B, discussing strategies, trends, and sharing insights from industry leaders!
With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Cloud, Telecom, 5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
Does Your Social Strategy Match Your Business Goals?
Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com
The modern B2B buyer journey has fundamentally transformed, with prospects now conducting 60-80% of their research before ever contacting a vendor—and increasingly, that research happens on social media platforms. Daniel Kushner, co-founder and CEO of Oktopost, reveals how this shift demands a complete rethinking of B2B social strategy.
At the heart of successful B2B social media lies a critical mindset shift that must start at the top. "If social is a part-time job of an intern in the basement office, it's not going to work," Kushner explains. "It has to come from leadership." This leadership commitment ensures social becomes a strategic business function rather than a marketing afterthought.
Data emerges as the foundation that unifies fragmented organizational approaches to social media. Breaking down silos between departments allows companies to properly attribute social interactions to business outcomes. For example, when a prospect comments on LinkedIn, that engagement shouldn't automatically be owned by the social media manager—it might be more appropriate for sales to respond depending on where that prospect is in their journey.
Kushner shares compelling ROI calculations that transform how businesses view social engagement. For salespeople posting consistently, the math becomes clarifying: if one in 500 posts generates a $100,000 deal, each post essentially represents $200 in value. Similarly, account executives who establish thought leadership might see their close rates improve by just 2%, potentially increasing annual closed business by $200,000.
Beyond platform features, Oktopost distinguishes itself through deep B2B expertise. "We have the privilege of having the collective knowledge of hundreds of B2B organizations," Kushner notes. Looking ahead, the company is launching Marketing Intelligence on April 2nd, a tool that analyzes competitors' content strategies across channels.
Ready to transform how your organization approaches social media? Start by examining whether your current strategy reflects where your buyers actually spend their research time.
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Hey everybody, Really excited and intrigued for this chat today with a true innovator in the world of B2B social media and content at Octopost. Daniel, how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great, great Evan, I'm really excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks for being here. Maybe start with some introductions to both yourself and Octopost, and what's the big idea behind the company.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, as I said, I'm Daniel Kushner, one of the co-founders here at Octopost and CEO, and, in a nutshell, octopost is a B2B social media management platform. So think about everything social media posting to LinkedIn, facebook, Twitter or X, we should say, youtube built for B2B organizations. So when we look at B2B organizations, it's really imperative that they understand the value that marketing brings to the business and normally it's pretty easy to measure.
Speaker 2:So if I'm going to a trade show, you know we put down like a hundred thousand dollars for a trade show booth and then in the olden days we used to collect business cards and now you zap people and those things.
Speaker 2:They go into crm, it goes into market automation and then at the end of the day, you can understand how much you invested, how many leads, how much pipeline and how much revenue you get. Even when you're doing things like ads, you have all the tracking abilities and understand how much I'm putting into ads and what I'm getting from the other end. When it comes to social media, it's a little bit more complex because the metrics they start to change on us. We're looking at things like likes, shares, retweets, comments, and those metrics don't normally correlate to business values and business metrics. So what we do here at Octopost, not only do we provide a platform that enables marketers to manage and measure the social content and the social investment, but also to understand the outcome and the business value that social brings to the organization things like lead generation opportunity and pipeline influence and revenue.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a brilliant proposition and I'm super excited because I've been on a 15-year journey on social media in the B2B world and it's only now, recently. I find that social has become a cornerstone for B2B organizations and it's really because of the buyer journey. Maybe talk about how the buyer journey has changed and has been evolving.
Speaker 2:Yeah, trend over the past, even two decades, that more and more of the research is done before there's ever a connection between a prospect and a brand or a company.
Speaker 2:You know, we've heard this from the forest and gardeners. 20 years ago it used to be 10%, 20%, 30%, now's up to 60%, 70%, 80% of that research is done. And today a lot of that research is being done on social and it's being done between people and not necessarily the brands and the person. So if my old business card was the website where I can give all the information and a place for me to educate the community and my prospects and my customers, the website today is becoming less relevant and people are really turning to social to get that education, education. So you know, social is becoming the way that people are educating themselves for possible solutions out there and when they do contact a company, they've already done their research. They know what you can provide, the value proposition. They've looked at reviews online. They maybe even spoke to some of your customers and that's done mainly through the social channels these days.
Speaker 1:Indeed. And yet, you know, I've worked with hundreds, if not thousands of clients over 10 years as a content creator, an influencer, an analyst, and yet there are many hurdles. Organizations have trying to become a really best in class social first company. Uh, but what, in your opinion, are the hurdles, the challenges and roadblocks, and and how are they overcoming them?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah. So so I think that the the main hurdle is around mindsets, when, when you think about social, you're it's normally, normally the correlation that you get Okay, this is a B2C, this is TikTok, this is people dancing, people doing funny, funny stuff, and there is a world on the B2C social side, but there's a very, very different world on B2B social and it's something real and something that's happening. So, first of all, on the hurdle side, it's understanding one that B2B social exists and it's understanding that the way that B2B social behaves is nowhere like or nowhere near B2C social. It's understanding the concept. And the second hurdle is understanding that, because social is critical, as we said, it's like the cornerstone of B2B organizations. It has to be a top-down approach. It has to come from leadership. If social is a part-time job of an intern in the basement office not that we should be putting interns in the basement office it's not going to work. It has to be coming from the leadership, coming from the C-suites From then to understand that social it does have an impact on revenue, it does have an impact on pipeline, it does have an impact on customer retention.
Speaker 2:That's where your audience is. An audience is the mix between the existing customers and your future customers. That's where your audience is. An audience is the mix between the existing customers and your future customers, and that's where you need to be and that's where you have to be having your conversations. And it's not just the social team, right? It's not just the social media manager. It has to be the entire organization.
Speaker 1:Well, well said. But speaking of the entire organization, as you know, most large businesses, large enterprises, are very siloed. You've got you know marketing, sales, customer success are often different teams, sometimes even PR Communications are, of course, external agencies. So what's your approach or thoughts around unifying around a single strategy?
Speaker 2:unifying around a single strategy. Yeah, that's unification around strategy. I believe, evan, that we have to go back to the core basics. What do we unify around? At a B2B company, the most solid piece of infrastructure, solid foundation that we have is data. So we have to data right. So we have to be looking at the same data. We need unified data to have a unified strategy right to get the alignment on top of that. So, without taking care of the foundation, it's very hard to get alignment above.
Speaker 2:And you know, just like you know, we spoke about the buyer's journey and how they do their research, way before they talk to someone. And I said, evan, this is like a two decade old discussion. And also, you know, if you remember the 2000s, right, we're also talking about breaking down data silos. Right, way, way back then, and it is still true today. Right, way, way back then, and it is still true today.
Speaker 2:And when we, when we correlate social to the data silos, it's it's really understanding how can we share what's happening on social with the entire organization? So you know, I'll give you an example of someone comments on LinkedIn, right, who owns that comment within the B2B organization? Is it the social media manager? Right? Most probably not the fact that it's on social right. That piece of data, that comment, doesn't belong to the social media manager, right? It really depends who did the comments. If it's a customer, maybe this is the account manager or the customer success right. If this is someone who is in an active opportunity with sales, maybe the sales should take ownership of that comment and to engage into that conversation.
Speaker 2:So, when we're looking at alignment one, we need shared goals, right, and those shared goals is on top of the foundation of shared data and then to make sure that the correct data gets to the correct people so we can take action. And I think that that's the most important thing. It's understanding, right? It's not. Again, it comes from the leadership that I spoke to. If we're just shoving social down into a the leadership that I spoke to if we're just shoving social down into a corner of a social team or a social media manager, it's not going to work because it's not. Yeah, they're involved, they can organize, right, but it's not solely their responsibility.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really well. Said so, you work with many amazing brands. I'm looking at your website here. Said so, you work with many amazing brands. I'm looking at your website here companies like Snowflake and IFS and Suzy and many others here, Without picking any favorite children. Do you have any examples of social first organizations and how they're doing things differently?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the social first organizations I see and again, I don't want to name specifics, but I'll give you a customer in manufacturing so they're very heavy on what's called employee advocacy. So it's getting the employees of the organization to share content on their personal social networks. One, it increases amplification and social advocacy, or employee advocacy, it also positions these employees as thought leaders in the industry. So it's got a benefit for the employee and it's got a benefit for the business itself, for the business itself. And you know what they're doing is they're constantly, constantly having roadshows and internal webinars and seminars explaining how to do social, why to do social. What's the benefits? If we think about, you know, taking sales, you know, I believe that sales, they have a huge part of creating the social environment for the business. But why should a salesperson constantly be posting on social? Is this a chore or is this a benefit to the person? And one way that we can look at it is you know, there could be a social post the account executive posts. That in the end is going to turn into a $100,000 deal. There's that chance, right, it's going to happen. Is it going to happen on every post? No, Right, One in two posts, no, but maybe one in 500 posts, Right, I'm a salesperson. One in 500 posts, right, that's going to come. I'm going to get a new contact, a new prospect, have a conversation and it's going to turn into a $100,000 deal.
Speaker 2:Now for the mass. If I were an account executive, or if I were the social team training and speaking to my sales team right, I would explain the mass behind it. It's very simple If, out of 500 posts, one of those posts, it triggered a $100,000 deal, so I take 100,000. I'll do a bit of math in my head 100,000 divided by 500, that's $200. So me, as a salesperson, every time I'm posting to social media, I'm getting $200. Look at the ROI on that, right, it took me five minutes to draft a post, or to take a post that I got from my marketing team and to put it into my own words and to put that onto LinkedIn, right, Every time I'm doing that, I'm getting $200. I know that one in 500 is going to give me a $100,000 deal, right? So it's that mindset, right? You know another way to look at it and again, this is like I can turn into very mathematical, right, by being a thought leader in my industry and constantly posting on LinkedIn thought leadership content and company content, or maybe you know, webinars or case studies that we have.
Speaker 2:I increase. I have a bump in my close rates as an account executive a 2% bump rate, right. So I'm going from a 20% close rate to a 22% close rate, right. And you know I can associate that 2% bump through my thought leadership and my social activity, right. So what's going from 20% to 22%? Well, if I'm doing a million dollars a year in closed business, right now that's 1.2 million in closed business, it's $200,000, right, because I'm socially active and participating in the social activities activities. So, going back to the success, it's this constant, I would say training or discussion on how social. It helps everyone, from customer success to account managers, to account executives. It has to be repeated and constantly repeated, and the companies that are able to constantly get that message across employee onboarding, webinars, seminars those are the companies that we see succeed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would agree. And you know, fun anecdote from my end A few years ago, one of my clients a contact center software company, new client from a single tweet of mine they were able to generate a $3.5 million deal that was directly attributable to that post of mine tweet and they immediately signed me up for an annual retainer. They're like wow, now that's an outlier. Those things don't happen every day, but it's fun to look at attribution and actually a direct line between all that social goodness and revenue and sales. But that leads to the question of data and tracking and the role of proving ROI. I mean, that's a great ROI story but again, that doesn't happen every day. So how do you go about doing that? What are the metrics and the data points that B2B leaders should prioritize?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, yeah, it's always a topic Like daily can talk all day long about data and metrics and you know what to measure. I'm going to sidetrack a bit right, because I'm talking about data and metrics and what to measure. I'm going to sidetrack a bit right, because I'm talking about data and metrics and what to implement. So here at Oxford Post, we've recently, in the past eight months, we're implementing what's called EOS Entrepreneurial Operating System. There's a book called Traction, you know, very interesting, and it basically gives you a blueprint on how to manage everything from people to product, to meetings, to, you know, to what to track and what data. And they have this concept called scorecards, and a scorecard are these? It's a bunch of numbers that you look at on a weekly basis and these are the activities that you're meant to be doing. That moves the needle. Now, getting to those activities that you're meant to be measuring is a very complicated exercise. It took us like six months to get to those numbers, but it's not. I can't track. You know, if you're looking at sales, arr, right, because ARR it's a lagging indicator that happens at the end when you close the deal. You have to go back. What are the leading indicators that I'm looking at that, if I do those things, that I have 100% control. So it's my behaviors are going to get me to my goals are going to get me to my goals. And we're looking at ROI. You've got everything from the number of followers to the number of clicks, to the number of comments and reactions or likes, right. So what is the right metric to measure? Right, so, so, and you know what is the right metric to measure, so I always like the. If I have to look at one number, it's like the, the last leading indicator before something significant happens. So if we look at it, let's say we'll zoom out of social, then go back into social.
Speaker 2:So if we zoom out of social, we look at marketing in itself, like what is the golden number of marketing? In my opinion, the golden number or metric for marketing is marketing-influenced SQLs. Right, how many Salesforce-qualified leads have gone into the pipeline? Right? That's a leading indicator to revenue and it's like the end indicator for marketing. You've got one of the leading indicators to SQLs. You've got website traffic and conversions and MQLs and you can get a bunch of that, but you might not be producing SQLs, so SQL is like somewhere in the middle when it comes to social, you've got like the very, very early stage. You've got the clicks and the shares and the comments and the followers on that end.
Speaker 2:But then you also, if we're looking at the business, we want to understand how that influences opportunities. That influences opportunities, right. So for me, a good understanding or a good starting metric to understand the ROI of social is to have a simple indicator, which is the percentage of opportunities that were influenced by social. Right, there was like something happened in social during an opportunity and what is the percentage? And then you can start to understand my socially influenced opportunities what's my close rate versus non-social influenced opportunities? What's the close rate there? And to start to understand the impact. And when you're measuring always in my book of measurements it doesn't matter how accurate your measurement is, as long as it's consistent, because you want to see change, right, you're looking at trends. So even if my measurement is off 10%, 20%, 30% that's fine, as long as it's consistently off and then I can start to see a trend over time and want to get more influenced or see the more opportunities that are touching or that are touched by social have a higher closing rate.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. So let's move from the tangible data to the intangible, and that's crafting content that really connects and hits home. And there I think many B2B companies are not getting it. They're not creating content that you know, that uses storytelling techniques and thought leadership, thinks about, you know, connecting with their buyer personas. What advice would you have beyond just be clever and interesting, which isn't very good advice? How can they get better at this social art?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the first thing is every single social post. Why is it being written and not just a social post for a social? Am I right? Like what? What is my the, the reason I'm I'm writing this post? So let's first we can, we can, try to categorize them and you mentioned, uh, some of those.
Speaker 2:I've got posts which are around thought leadership. Thought leadership it creates awareness and it creates credibility. Then I've got posts which are around customers or storytelling. This is how one customer solved a solution. This is how we uncovered and solved a pain for another customer. You know use cases and customer testimonials or customer stories.
Speaker 2:And then we've got a bunch of posts which are very pure lead gen or demand gen-oriented posts. We're doing a webinar. Come download this gated piece of content. So we're doing this purely for lead gen. So it's to create the reasons why I'm creating these posts. And then every company, they have to, basically because it's based on the audience. An audience is the different, you know, for every industry or every company is what is the mix of these different top content types? Do I have an audience where they're very, very acceptive to the demand gen or lead gen type content? Every time I post that we're doing a webinar, I'm getting 1,000 signups, or do I have to have at least 40% of thought leadership content, right, or 30% of storytelling content? So it's understanding what that mix is.
Speaker 2:And then, when I'm creating my social calendar, when I'm understanding what am I going to write about this week or this month, is to make sure that I have that combination and I have that mix of different content types. And then, if we go back to the measurements, right, I'm going to be measuring them differently, right? If I'm looking at, for example, if, if, uh, I I could want a full leadership piece of content to get more engagements, likes, shares, comments. I want my lead generation content to get more clicks. So, is a piece of content that gets more clicks worse or better than a piece of content that gets more engagement? Well, it depends on what was the purpose of that content in the first place. So, to summarize that, so it's, even when it was, so it's. You know, like to summarize, that is understanding. You know what type of content. What is the purpose of the content I'm writing, what is the mix of those pieces of content that I have to have on a weekly or monthly basis, and then each one individual. How do I measure the success right?
Speaker 2:And understanding that it's not the same for everybody. There's no golden formula, golden triangle for social media content. It has to be figured out by each business. And the way that you figure these things out one is you brainstorm, you have a thesis and you test it with data. Is this working? Is my thought leadership content you know getting? Is it being shared? Because you know, if you're going to share something that's interesting on LinkedIn, I'm going to click the share button, right. I want my audience to see what Evan wrote because it's an interesting piece of content, right. And then it's got its goal right. If it was something that you wanted to start to generate a list from and to collect contact information, right, you want me to click on something to fill out my information to get a piece of content. So it's understanding that that mix it's going to create a successful kind of social content strategy. Got it Absolutely.
Speaker 1:The other thing, of course, that's happening is so much change, so much disruption, new platforms, emerging technologies. Of course, AI is changing everything, rewriting the rules. Even for my little business, completely upended, changed for the good of the last year through AI, the fact that I can do a daily podcast and show like this impossible without AI. Like this, impossible without AI. But what's your advice for leaders trying to navigate this new world and all this change and disruption that's ahead?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one I'll go back to. One of the answers that I gave you in the beginning of this show is about mindset and the mindset you have to be here fluid. What worked yesterday, it doesn't mean it's going to work today. We see this. Take it to a different industry. Take it to outbound and SDR. The email that got 20 meetings last year most likely it's going to get zero meetings this year. One has been used. It's been noticed. The pattern interrupt that I used last year is now a known technique this year for SDRs. So it's not going to work. So it's a mindset that I have to constantly be changing and reinventing here at Octopost internally, we call it ABL always be learning. You have to be learning and testing and not being afraid to fail, because if you have a new platform, you have new AI, so you're going to try these things out. They may work, they may not work. So it's this constant change. So you've got your core and the things that worked in the past and that's going to shift and change over time.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. So let's talk Octopost. How do you see yourself and the team sitting on the landscape of marketing tech? Let's say, you have these market maps that have thousands of companies, a constellation of stars. Why do customers, how and why do they choose Octopost over the many, many competitors you have out there?
Speaker 2:So one, if there's a matching DNA, and what's the matching DNA? If you're a B2B organization we're B2B social I'm not going to use. If I want to do off-road driving, I'm not going to buy a Ferrari. If I want to do off-road driving and I'm going to buy a Ferrari, I'm going to get like a 4x4, a Jeep or a Land Rover, something that's good for my purpose. So if you're a B2B organization, you need a company, a platform, that does B2B. We have the privilege of having the collective knowledge of hundreds of B2B organizations. So when we're talking to one company and they're sharing their problems, they're sharing their pains. You know, we'll dig into our CRM and our knowledge on. You know, how are the B2B organizations in that industry solving those pains and those problems right? And that's because we're very focused in that niche. We're able to provide those solutions. And it's not just the technical solution, it's not just the product, it's the knowledge sharing of the industry.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. So, as we head into the quarter and the year, what are you excited about? What are you up to in the team in terms of your own efforts? You know out in the field new releases, events, et cetera. What's on your radar?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one we're coming out. I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I'll say it anyway. Like you know, it's easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
Speaker 1:Well, it helps being the CEO as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I get in trouble all day long. We'll put it on this podcast. So we're releasing a new product coming out April 2nd Well, I'm really going to get in trouble here. It's called Marketing Intelligence and, in a nutshell, what marketing intelligence does? It gives you insights of your competitors' content marketing strategy Wow, right. So it's very exciting because when we're looking at the content marketing piece, where social is a part and content is more than social, it's always interesting to hear what are my competitors doing?
Speaker 2:What would someone give to be a fly on the wall inside that content strategy meeting at a competitor? That'll be a very interesting experience, but we can't be in a fly on the wall. We're not going to put microphones inside our competitors' boardrooms. But what we can do, we can look at the content they're producing, the content they're producing on social, on PR, on their website, on their blogs, events they're attending, and this is all the output, the end result, of their content strategy meetings. So this new product that we have, marketing Intelligence, is going to combine all this output of the content and, of course, using AI to analyze the changes and trends and changes and how these companies or these competitors are shifting in their content strategies. That's really exciting. And then on the AI front, this I'm not going to share because it's too secretive, but really interesting efforts that we're putting into the world of AI agents.
Speaker 1:Well, we'll have to catch up on that mic drop moment. Look forward to diving into that at some point. Thanks so much, Daniel, for joining and sharing the vision onwards and upwards.
Speaker 2:It's been my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Take care. Thanks everyone, Bye-bye.