I spent yesterday morning at this stunning venue (during a rare spell of sunshine) on top of the Gherkin where fellow B2B and B2C marketeers discussed how to drive business results from impactful social media strategies. Below are summary of some memorable speakers. My key takeaway was the need for B2B organisations to create compelling stories around their brand - stories that are emotionally evoking, centred around customer problems and addressed buyer fears, rather than the average noise created to fill the content and campaigns gaps.

I have been recently reading around the topics of B2B decision maker's mindset - specifically the buyer’s anxiety, which often gets neglected (I am guilty at times of this). It was interesting to hear this being brought up by Paul Cash (@Rooster Punk, where he discussed using the B.R.A.V.E methodology (Buyer emotions, Recognition, Appreciation, Value and Engagement) to understand and emotionally influence decision makers. 

During the panel discussion (led by Abby Guthkelch @Three, Gemma Davies @ServiceNow, Bennett Golder @Finsbury and Leo Ryan @Spredfast) it was interesting hearing how tech companies like Three, ServiceNow and financial organisations are using social media to promote the personal brands of executives and leading individuals. At the heart of their approach, is empowering executives to actively voice their brand and values on social media. There is no value in having this written by someone else, where it’s often just parroting the same unimpactful corporate messaging. When you can get executives to speak authentically, this can be a very powerful way to connect with their customers. I particularly liked Gemma’s quote: "social is a great platform to humanise the experts in an organisation…and get their expertise out". 

One of Bain Consulting's recent research shows 'expertise' as one of the top two elements B2B IT buyers value (Tom looked at this research in more details in another post). If you can empower experts in a firm to regularly demonstrate their knowledge in a compelling and authentic way online, the impact on your potential buyers will be very significant.