B2B marketers often focus their social media strategies on promoting their brand. Social media thought leadership takes a different perspective.
It’s about giving a voice to your company’s opinion leaders and subject-matter experts. You want to appeal to your B2B audience by sharing a personal and hands-on view of the market.
Here’s how you can recognize this type of thought leadership content and some great examples to inspire you.
What defines a thought leadership post on social media?
B2B social media are often underdeveloped channels only used to promote company news or announcements. This makes branded content often dull and impersonal.
Thought leadership social media posts stand out of their assertive and opinionated nature. They express an honest view on a hot and business-critical subject.
You can identify them thanks to key attributes:
- Thought-provoking subject
- Relies on hands-on experience
- Express a personal opinion
- Spark conversation and create engagement
Another feature of thought leadership posts is that they are the expression not of the brand but of the company’s insiders.
- CEOs giving their perspective on the company and the market.
- Executives giving their professional takeaways.
- Subject-Matter Experts promoting their latest research or experiments on a hot subject.
Company or personal social media account: which one to express thought leadership?
As a marketer, you can leverage B2B social media in two ways: by posting on your company’s social media account or on your collaborators’ personal accounts. The default way is usually to promote on the brand account. It’s convenient if you already have a large following, and you want to easily streamline your content initiatives in one place.
But you’ll get more engagement if you share your ideas through your internal executives, thought leaders, or subject-matter experts’ accounts. This makes it more personal and increases your reach since social media algorithms usually favor individual posts over brand posts.
What we’ll recommend is to do both when you want to promote your following content materials, and also to develop the personal branding of key collaborators. CEOs and thought leaders in your company can provide authenticity, authority and help grow a community around your brand.
The best social media for thought leadership
LinkedIn is the king of B2B social media. By growing your base of followers and posting on it, you can reach out to a very targeted audience of professionals. You can also leverage many engaging content formats, like pictures, PDFs, or videos. But the best way is to give personal takeaways and honest opinions via a copywriting format. LinkedIn text-based posts should be short and sweet and always start with an enticing catchphrase.
Twitter is all about tweets. You want your brand or your thought leaders to give their best insights and personal takes within 280 characters. You can elaborate your ideas further by developing a thread or using longer-format notes. What makes Twitter interesting is that you can easily take part in an active discussion. Be sure to follow like-minded users or related hashtags to not miss any crucial conversations.
Medium
Medium is a popular publishing platform for writers. With its smooth and esthetic interface, it is made to share deep and researched ideas. It’s also a great way for B2B brands to grow their thought leadership on popular subjects on the platform like AI, data science, leadership and marketing. You can give voice to your specialists to write engaging and thoughtful articles.
5 Great Examples of Social Media Thought Leadership Posts
Andy Byrne – Clari – How CFOs make their buying decision
Andy Byrne, CEO of Clari – a revenue intelligence platform- regularly shares his insights on the way to manage revenue for tech companies. As buyers are increasingly investigating solutions by themselves, revenue has become more unpredictable, and so Andy gives them its take on the market. His post demonstrates many features of great thought leadership posts:
- A subject important for revenue professionals: how CFOs make their buying decision.
- A hands-on analysis: Andy spoke with CFOs and got from them insights on their buying process and criteria.
- A clear opinion and recommendation: when selling your solution, insist on the value you can deliver right now to the company.
Jamil Farshchi – Equifax – If cybersecurity was a sport, Vegas would never bet on us.
Jami Farschi is an experienced cybersecurity professional who advises companies on the topic. He knows that cyber threats have increased in recent years, and he does his best to raise awareness in an engaging way. His post achieves thought leadership for several reasons :
- A key topic for cybersecurity professionals: how to prevent 100% of cyberattacks with AI?
- An insightful problem/solution framework: attackers have to be right only once, but we have a better knowledge of our IT system.
- Concrete tips: AI prompts to see vulnerabilities in your system.
Janet Mui – RBC Brewin Dolphin – The US Debt Ceiling Deal
Janet Mui is a market analyst in one of the most reputable UK and Irish wealth management banks, RBC Brewin Dolphin. On LinkedIn, she has been known to give her professional takes on the latest financial news. Her post is giving thought leadership insights in three ways :
- Crucial news for investors and wealth managers: the way the US Debt ceiling deal is impacting the market.
- Market statistics and facts that describe the situation.
- Expert analysis of the main causes that are currently driving the economy.
Jay Lipman – Ethic – Where does the money going into ‘Climate Tech’ actually go
Jay Lipman is an expert in sustainable investments collaborating in Ethic, a company selling an asset manager. He regularly gives his views on the state of the green economy and the latest climate tech companies. In this post, he builds thought leadership via 3 elements :
- An overview of a crucial subject for green investors: what types of technology do green venture capital funds invest in?
- Engaging infographics with compelling data.
- Honest opinion: we need to go further on biodiversity issues.
Nader Dabit – Dev Rel – it’s much harder to build a crypto app that anyone actually wants to use
Nader Dabit is a developer and founder enthusiast about the possibilities of Web3. He’s very active on Twitter and has gathered a community of Web3 developers. In this post, he gives his honest take on the state of web3 development: developers are much more focused on building foundational infrastructures than apps people are actually using.
There you have it, everything to get you started on social media thought leadership!
