Know What Social Content Resonates Most With Your Audience (w/ Darien Payton, Antidote)

Ah, the brand social accounts. We all have them, and we all link to them in the footer of our websites.

But what are you supposed to post on them? What do you use them for?

In B2B, every company uses them differently. Some simply drop links to their latest content. Others use them for employer brand and hiring. But some use them to drive pipeline. 

Darien Payton is one of them. At Antiode (the agency he founded) he’s generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in pipeline using organic social, helping companies use their brand accounts in conjunction with the team’s personal accounts. Read on to learn how he does it.

Watch the interview

Watch the full episode to learn:

• The importance of identifying and naming the problem you solve
• What the people in your company should be posting
• Answers to listener questions

Or listen to it on Spotify or Apple.

Stop posting generic education content, start engaging with the community

Lots of companies use their brand accounts to publish educational content, but Darien doesn’t recommend it. It’s a hot take, but he stands by it.

“There are a few exceptions [but] I have not seen, generally speaking, that educational content works for brand accounts. Everyone is going to fight with me on this. 

‘But our audience wants education!’

‘But our customers always ask us about it!’ 

Yes, they do. But they are not asking you for that on their social accounts.”

As always, there are exceptions. If you’re a data aggregator, or sharing truly novel data that no one else has access to (like the content we help our partners create), Darien has seen that work. But in his experience, case studies, tactical “how-to” content, and the like, simply won’t stop your audience’s scroll.

So if dropping blog posts, case studies, and “how-to” guides doesn’t work, what does?

Campaign posts: these are the ones that drive the actual results. We’ll talk more about these in a minute.

Engagement posts: posts designed to get maximum engagement, that resonate with the community you’re marketing to. 

Darien says mosts of your posts should be designed to engage with the community and get maximum visibility and awareness. Then some should be targeted campaign posts where you’re extending an incredible offer.

“We like to focus on the engagement content because we know that we can build an audience that actually cares about the brand, and wants to come back and see what our brand is saying. [Something] that feels like, ‘okay, this brand is part of our community.’”

How do you know what engagement content you should be posting? As you might expect, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. But here are a couple of guiding questions:

If you scrolled a feed of your target customers, what are they posting about? What questions are they asking? What content are they resonating with? What are they sharing?

Answering these questions will help you understand what kinds of engaging content you should focus on from the brand account.

So… what about educational content? 

This should be posted by your “talent platform”: a group of senior-level subject-matter experts who post on their personal accounts.

“If you focus on building engagement and using your brand account to be a part of the community, that is where the talent brand and having a platform of founder-led content and senior-level subject-matter experts work for educating the market. This is how we bifurcate the two.”

Your audience wants to hear from subject-matter experts, not marketers

When it comes to building said talent platform, you need senior-level subject-matter experts. If you’re lucky enough to be marketing to marketers, that can simply be your content person, the VP of Marketing, and the Director of Demand Gen.

But what if you sell a SaaS product for cybersecurity, and your target audience is the Chief Information Officer (CIO), IT Director, or Cybersecurity Manager? They don’t want to hear from your marketing team. They want to hear from your Chief Security Officer. 

So when you assemble your talent platform, make sure it’s made up of actual subject-matter experts who are part of the community you’re targeting.

You need a POV

What do you believe about your market that your competitors don’t? What’s the “right way” to solve the problem your customers face? What lines do you draw in the sand? What beliefs shape the way you built your product?

When Darien walks clients through crafting a social strategy, one of the things he focuses on is helping them craft and articulate a point of view (POV). Many companies don’t have a point of view. And many who do, don’t articulate it often enough. But you should have one, and it should be a core part of your social strategy.

Run more campaigns, using the “TCO” framework

When your brand accounts aren’t posting engagement content, they should be publishing campaign posts. And Darien says most B2B companies run too few. 

Typically, they’ll only run one when there’s a big product launch. But in reality, they could be launching campaigns every quarter, even when there’s nothing to “launch”. You could run a campaign responding to a competitor’s announcement. Or highlight a use case your product serves. Or even run a campaign specifically designed to target a job title or role you want to emphasize that quarter.

When crafting your social campaigns, Darien advises using the “TCO” framework:

Target: Tailor your posts to a specific audience. Many companies make the mistake of posting to everyone, rather than matching a specific message to a specific segment.

Creative: Use engaging, “platform native” content. Don’t post the same creative across all social platforms. Your audience on X expects a different format than your followers on LinkedIn.

Offer: Clearly articulate a compelling offer. Many of us think in terms of “CTAs”: the action we want the user to take next, like “Learn More” or “Sign Up”. But Darien advises crafting an offer you’d use on sales calls, “Get Free Setup” or “Try It Free for 30 Days”.

Use social channels to generate pipeline with Databox

Learn how to track social media campaigns to see what’s working, how to use demographic data to validate your audiences for paid campaigns,

With Databox, you can easily use social channels to generate pipeline for your company. Watch our tutorial to learn how to:

• Track social media campaigns to see what’s working
• Use demographic data to validate your audiences for paid campaigns
• Loop your dashboards into one view to track different performance metrics