Oliver Lawal
A week ago you had a nice office, meetings, deadlines, a full inbox and a nice pay-cheque. Your personal brand was enhanced by the corporation you were part of. Now you’re sitting with a dog at your feet, next to a laundry-laden exercise bike. You did it. You started a new company. You secured a URL and set up social media accounts. Now your task is to use your personal brand to enhance your new business. To translate your ideas, passion, experience and personal gravitas into marketable credibility under the banner of your new business-to-business (B2B) technology start-up.
Standing out
Social media claims to have the advantage of allowing everyone to have an equal voice. The reality is that you will need to be more than equal. You will need to stand out.
The most obvious use of social media for a technology start-up is to engage with potential customers, because you need them to become actual customers. You’re desperate to start showing some sales revenue to your investors, so you find interesting ways to explain how awesome your product is. You make sure everyone knows what problem you’ve solved, what your value proposition is and that the lead time is less than two weeks. You’re fast, you’re nimble, your product is so much better than what’s currently available.
That’s all good. No harm done. However, with a new company in the B2B space, no matter how good your widget is, it’s unlikely that you will have brand credibility or volume of followers that will move the needle on sales revenue. So, while you won’t do any harm, you may be limited in your scope of good.
Effective social media use is about telling your story. Of course that includes telling it to potential customers, but there are other target audiences for your story too. These include the following:
• Investors. If you want to move out of your basement office, you’re going to need investors. Whether it’s Uncle Jim, or Venture Capital Mary, you need to attract them and keep them attracted. Targeting product messages to investors (and potential investors) is good to show confidence in your development progress, but you can also show elements of your hard work and dedication. Early morning images of a well-used keyboard will play well, but posting pictures of a new car to someone that just gave you a large cheque should be avoided. It can seem odd to target a message to a tiny group of two or three people, but in the early days, these are the most important two or three people in your world.
• Employees. Attracting and retaining the best and brightest will be aided by a solid social media feed. In much the same way as investors are, these internal stakeholders will be buoyed by you publicly celebrating their achievements and sharing them with those they care about most.
• Supply chain. Credibility is the key here. As a new entity you are trading more on hopes than on history. It’s important to show the future value in partnering with you.
• Competitors. Trolling is a very effective way to get in someone’s head. I personally avoid directly commenting on a competitor’s thread in order to avoid drawing other’s attention to them. However, targeted messaging that will be clearly understood by them can draw benefits. Announcing achievements can be demoralizing to them. This is a double-edged sword – if you’re not careful you will motivate them into action. So careful application of misdirection should be used. For example, if you’re keen on entering market area A, then following twelve companies in market B will throw the best cyber-stalker off the scent.
Telling your story is important. Maintaining the lead voice in your market is important. However, it’s also important to understand that your ‘market’ is more than paying customers. You’re marketing to all resources: investors, employees and suppliers.
The benefits of being a social CEO
Being active in a field of discussion and having a consistently honest voice help others to trust you. This is particularly important when communicating within the B2B sector, because you’re dealing with fellow engineers and designers. They may well be in need of your product, but will often have a natural scepticism.
Direct communication as a CEO can pay real dividends as it’s unlikely that the established technology providers will have meaningful communications from their CEO. Your ability to show a clarity of message, vision and credibility will be an advantage. Following and taking a sincere interest in other, more junior members of your industry will set you apart.
Avoiding exaggerated claims, negative messages and technical errors is critical. Having a consistent, sincere tone is key, as this is the beginning of a potentially long business relationship. Also, developing content marketing that emphasizes education over direct selling is important. White papers, web pages, patent references, journal articles, case studies and infographics are all great tools. Assuming you’re a CEO with a technology background, it’s important that you stay closely connected to the content generation. This will ensure content quality is maintained and changes based on constant market learnings can be reflected.
My approach
Authenticity might be an overused term, but it’s needed. I know a fellow CEO who has posted no content apart from pictures of exhibition booths and golf outings in two years – not a single share/like/comment/engagement outside of that. For him that might be authentic, but it’s not even remotely creative. As such, for me, authenticity needs some caveats.
My personal approach is to maintain an online voice that reflects a high-level vision for the whole organization: the problem we’re solving, with a special product, made by amazing people – while still being involved in the daily details. In other words, I try to show variety between the strategic and the tactical.
On LinkedIn I keep posts, shares, likes and so on strictly on-topic to my industry sector, albeit being mindful of all stakeholders: end users, distribution channel, direct customers, consultants, academics, regulators, competitors, employees, suppliers and so on. On Twitter I feel more open to reflect my true work -life balance and show involvement in family, hobbies and community, in addition to the variety of work-based engagements. I stay away from party politics but feel it’s important to engage in conversations related to specific issues that relate to my industry.
It’s important to remember you are talking to people. Some tend to forget that in the B2B sector. These people are interested in your technological product advancements – which are achieved by your team of real people – so celebrate them. By having a focus on people and their achievements you can better connect with others who are ultimately their peers.
Challenges
I spent twenty years developing a career in a specific industry sector, moving across three continents, taking increasing levels of responsibility in executive positions with publicly traded companies. My interactions with others were judged by a combination of the corporation brand and the job title on my business card. I was a good-sized fish in a good-sized pond.
In many ways starting a new company made me a minnow overnight – even though my knowledge, passion and experience remained unchanged. I needed to lean more heavily on my personal brand to develop the new company brand. Then, as the new company expanded, I needed to constantly re-adjust the lens to focus onto the growing team and their achievements.
In the B2B space new, disruptive technologies are often met with resistance. The time and cost to integrate a new technology is often significant, and it’s not uncommon for bold claims to be less than bold in the cold light of day. Therefore, overcoming adoption-inertia from a customer requires patience. In addition, the conventional technology providers will have greater credibility in negative messaging to prevent adoption (or delaying until they think it will work for them).
Educating an industry on the benefits of this paradigm shift takes incremental effort which can seem juxtaposed to the instant pace of social media.
It’s important to establish and maintain a position of thought leadership. However, creating meaningful, high-quality content over the long periods of time needed to impact B2B new technology can be exhausting. I have seen many well-intentioned blogs or newsletters extend little past the first few issues. Viewing a social media account or company news web page that hasn’t posted in twelve months probably does more harm than good for a new technology company. It may be necessary to teach new employees (or yourself) that have come from large organizations to treat messaging as a marathon and not a sprint.
It’s exciting to develop something new – and introducing it to the world is exhilarating. However, in the small world inhabited by a B2B technology start-up company, any new introductions will probably be watched more closely by competitors than by potential customers. Additionally, the integration and scale-up time can be long; therefore in developing a new technology platform, I have found that it can be tricky to balance the showcasing of your own product’s capabilities without motivating competitive challenges. This should not be a reason to stay in ‘stealthmode’ indefinitely, but being thoughtful about the timing and level of detail of sharing is important. I have found that placing ‘teasers’ to allow you to screen detailed product information can be effective.
Five social media tips for B2B technology start-up CEOs
1 Patience. It will take twice as long, with double the effort, to achieve half the reward. It will still be worth it.
2 Quality over quantity. A large content pool and network is nice, but quality content and a quality network are better. Ensure you have a balanced network of all relevant stakeholders.
3 Balance focus with pivot opportunities. Make sure everyone (customers, investors, employees, supply chain, distribution channel) has a crystal-clear understanding of what you’re doing, but don’t paint yourself into a corner should a pivot be required.
4 Leverage your membership or leadership of other organizations, whether they be industry-related or not. As the CEO of a small organization it’s important that you show greater depth and capabilities.
5 Be creative. Not all your social media interactions will work, but the more creative you are, the increased chance you have to be interesting to others. Learn from those that work and those that don’t.