How B2B Businesses Leverage Social Media For Exponential Growth

When it comes to B2B companies, social media is still an incredibly untapped resource. If done strategically, social media marketing can help drive brand awareness, develop credibility and trust, establish thought leadership, and nurture relationships with industry peers and potential customers. So how can B2B businesses use social media in a strategic, relevant, and results-driven way?

That’s why we’re talking to Maggie Carey (CEO, Master It Media LLC), who shared proven strategies on how B2B businesses leverage social media for exponential growth. During our conversation, Maggie explained why a human-centric approach focusing on addressing client pain points and storytelling is crucial. She also elaborated on the winning Three C’s Framework: consistency, clarity, and capacity. Maggie highlighted the value of utilizing AI tools in marketing to enhance efficiency and strongly advised against spammy and transactional tactics. She also spoke about developing valuable, relationship-focused content and stressed the importance of ethical practices and continuous learning in the ever-evolving social media landscape.

https://youtu.be/uaxgMy9mrKk

[3:03] The challenges and misconceptions of leveraging social media in B2B

[4:28] The 3Cs in social media: Consistency, Clarity, and Capacity 

• Being too product-focused
• Not being audience-centric
• Posting without engaging on other peoples’ content
• Not repurposing content

• Maggie Carey on LinkedIn
• Master It Media LLC 
• Painless Posting
• Social Media Mastery – 7 Days Challenge (with free templates)
• ChatGPT
• Perplexity
• HeyGen
• Go Giver

When leveraged the right way, social media can help B2B businesses build trust, credibility, relationships and a stronger presence for brands online. That said, juggling social media while running a business and managing a marketing campaign with many moving parts can be overwhelming and challenging. So how can B2B companies leverage social media for greater impact. Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers on a Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp. Today I’ll be talking to Maggie Carey, who will be answering this question. She’s the CEO of Master It Media LLC, who helps elevate brands by inspiring an optimized online presence through strategic social media planning and engaging content. Tune in to find out more about what this B2B marketers mission is. 

And we are off. Maggie Carey, welcome to the show. 

Hey. Welcome Christian. So happy to be here. Thank you for having me as your guest today.

Absolutely delighted to have you on the show. And for the folks that are listening to the audio version of this, I’ve got to say that Maggie is very consistent in terms of color. I’m seeing a lot of purple here, right? Like, there’s a purple shirt, there’s a purple lampshade, there’s a pair of purple lips in the background there, and purple, light purple nails. I mean, it’s just, it’s just a purple world. 

It is. It is a purple world. It’s always a purple world in my world, it’s one of the best branding advice I ever received. Christian it is one of those things that just sets me apart in a sea of black. 

Yes, yes, absolutely. Be the signal amidst the noise, as they say, right? 

Yes, exactly. 

Yeah. And speaking of being the signal amidst the noise, I’d love to jump right into it, because I think this is going to be a very relevant topic to B2B marketers out there, some of them may already know something about this. Others don’t. And the people that you serve are people that are just struggling with the overwhelm, and you help them to get unstuck and pull them out of the quagmire, as it were, right?

Yeah, I say clear the cacophony of chaos.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s a great way of putting it, for sure, for sure. All right, so let’s dive in. So Maggie, you’re on a mission to elevate brands by inspiring, let’s say, an optimized online presence through strategic social media planning and engaging content. So for the purpose of this conversation, let’s narrow it down. Well, I say narrow it down, but like let’s focus on the topic of how B2B businesses can leverage social media for brand awareness, thought leadership and relationship building. So I’m gonna kick off this conversation with two questions, and I’m happy to repeat them. So what is it about social media that you think many B2B businesses don’t understand? And given that question, where do you see many marketing teams struggle?

You know, that’s a great question that we could have countless hours talking about. But in a nutshell, where I see marketers missing the mark is when they forget about the human element of social media. Now, I’ve got 40 years in IT. I’ve been an IT professional. I’ve seen technologies come and go. Social media is just another tool that we use to communicate. And I tend to find that sometimes marketers think of it more like a billboard or a you know, the marketing tool that’s more about promoting the product, and they forget about the human element. And that’s where I think they could really benefit from by focusing on the client’s pain points, their customers pain points, right? So we’re B2B marketers helping other businesses. We needed to explain to those businesses. Look, it’s yes, your product, your service, is amazing, but we need to story tell, show social proof. Give something real time that’s going on. You know, during covid, I ended up my business soared because so many people were looking for ways of promoting their business, right, without having an in person element. So how do you adjust and adapt. 

To answer your second question about where I see them struggle? I think it’s the, you know, the three Cs, consistency, clarity, capacity, right? Like, how are they posting consistently? And by consistently, it could be, you know, I’d like to see them posting three to four times a week for their clients, right? This is where, um, they maybe, if they can’t do every day, this will give them a solid presence. But if their message is muddied, if they’re not sure where they’re going or what like are you looking for brand awareness? Are you looking for lead gen? What’s your goal? It’s like having a conversation and not knowing where it’s going. You kind of get lost in the mix. Business owners face this all the time, right? If they don’t have a goal, they end up getting sidetracked by all this minutia, other people’s priorities, and they don’t have clarity. Same with your social media. You have to have a goal, and you have to have clarity on what you’re selling and why you’re selling it, and it’s always focused around that client, so you know, and it comes down to your capacity, your time. 

If I didn’t have time to do my social media, that’s an issue. How am I going to find the time? And a lot of that time is because they’re using a tool that helps them fast track their creation. They don’t get stuck. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve helped businesses and they’re stressing over finding the exact, beautiful, perfect photo. And there it’s time wasted. Get something that’s good enough that says what it needs to say, and go with it, or take that picture. Take multiple pictures. So those are kind of some, some pitfalls I see many of us. And look, I fall fallen into this trap as well, right? This is how I know what the problem is, because I’ve experienced it. And I think many business owners face that too. The reason they can address a problem, the reason they have a solution, is because they’ve been through it themselves, or someone that they know has been through this, and they’ve had the experience.

Absolutely, absolutely. And I’m with you on that one in terms of consistency, clarity and the capacity. Like, I think the consistency part is definitely something I can speak to. Like, even just from a podcast perspective, I always say everybody and their mom’s dog launched a podcast during the pandemic. But then, fast forward three years, not a lot of podcasts made it past episode 20, right? And it’s for similar. It’s like, same, same, but different, right? Because it’s also about like, Okay, you just publish an episode here and there. Is it every week? Is it every day? Every day? Is every day is quite an ambitious target, but it’s the consistency of it. And then, and then, some of them fizzled out. And the reason for that is because they did it without a clear strategy. Let’s just invite everyone, everyone on the show and talk about stuff. Well, what stuff are you talking about? How is it relevant to the listener? Or are you just, are you just bringing this person on because you thought it was a great topic, and will the audience find it interesting? Will it resonate with them? And that’s reflected in the I suppose that the numbers tell that story, right? You look at the dashboard and you see the number of downloads, and we even look at things like drop off rate or impactful plays. So like, do they listen to it from start to finish, or do they drop off after five minutes? Right?

Right? And you’re, you know, I actually created my podcast last year, and I made sure that it was a it’s about social media shortcuts. So along with that idea also comes the fact that it’s not going to be an hour long podcast, right? Because we’re talking about shortcuts, so it needed to be. And I think that’s where, you know, we’re talking social media today, but we could be talking about anything in the marketing world, or, you know, this is your podcast is a great way, you know, again, consistency, right? I don’t care if you post once a month if you’re consistent with the once a month in that podcast, but it has to be value. You always bring value with your podcast. You have a rich podcast with tons of episodes. People can go and pick and choose what they want, and they can binge listen to podcasts, which is great. When I started, I made sure I had content that kind of fed each other. Laid a foundation, and then build on it. When people are starting their social media, it’s the same thing. Build a strong foundation, then start promoting a little bit more, inviting people to follow. Don’t just invite people to follow and you don’t have anything on your social media.

Yeah. 

It’s like, why am I following you? 

Why am I following you for. Yeah.

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You brought up something earlier, and I have to ask this question, because you talked about having the human element. And you know, Maggie this 2025 so I need to ask you about AI (Artificial intelligence). How does AI, from your experience and from your perspective, how does it impact the work that you do and social media in general? I guess it’s the first part of the question. The second part of the question is, when is the right and the wrong time to be using AI and social media? 

Good question. So I am a proponent of AI. And I know that may sound strange coming from a content creator and a copywriter, but here’s the thing you know, flashback to when I was in college, 40 plus years ago. Yes, I’m that old. It’s fine. I still know technology. 40 years ago, I was learning about AI in college. This is not something that just came to be in the last three years. It became more accessible to people in a more an easier way to to utilize, again, a tool, right? Just like social media. Go back 20 years ago there, Facebook was just starting, LinkedIn was just starting. There wasn’t an Instagram, there wasn’t a TikTok. It was five years ago. I think I may be a little off on the numbers, but this is where we need to start embracing as marketers, you need to start embracing whatever technology is out there today, it’s AI. And I’ve, you know, I’ve changed my business because of AI. I could have let it sit by the wayside and say, I’m, you know, bury my head in the sand, but I knew three years ago this was going to change. I actually was at a mastermind when we started talking about ChatGPT and what it was doing and how it was going to change things, and I actually pivoted overnight my business, because this is where, and, you know, I’m just talking ChatGPT, but there are hundreds of tools that are out there. I’m a member of two organizations that are groups that keep me up in with what’s going on with AI. I have a tool painless posting. It has AI built into it. It helps people post easily because they have a tool that actually understands them. With AI, you need to train it. You need to have it understand your brand, understand you, so it can speak like you, give examples of your work. It’s very critical whatever tool you use, and not only just one tool, one tool may be good like ChatGPT may be good for idea generation, where Perplexity may be good for doing things like content. So it depends, like, maybe blog posting, you use something else, video creation, HeyGen, like, what are you doing and why are you using it? The challenge is, how do you keep up with this technology? It’s why I’m involved in multiple AI groups, because I get different information, and then I impart that to my clients and to because I teach how to do social media that helps them understand, okay, am I going to use this? Am I not going to use this? Which tool should I use? And that being said, this is, this is an evolution. This just the beginning. 

You know, am I going to have somebody working for me that is a virtual assistant that actually is an AI agent, and this is where we can use it as a tool. I always try to give people the example of when Canva came out, right, this graphics design tool, right? And designers were flipping out like this, going to take away my job, because it makes it so easy. We use it in our business. My clients use it. I teach how to use it. It actually. Their skills are so amazing that it makes them do their job faster and easier. And that’s the challenge. Are businesses? Are you able to create, say, a marketing plan in five seconds, because you have all of your skill and your knowledge that you’ve embedded into an AI tool, and you’ve asked your clients certain questions that are key to developing that marketing plan. And then you can create a marketing plan in five seconds. Yeah, of course, you’re going to take it and edit it. You know it’s, it’s not that. I always say, AI is the starting point, not the finish line. How are we doing this? I don’t spend hours cavelling over how I’m going to be writing an email to somebody. I say, Okay, here’s the email. I need to reply to this and say, point, point, point, take it, copy, paste, edit, done. Now it takes me five minutes to reply to an email instead of trying to compose everything from scratch.

Some really great points there. And as you said, there’s a time and place for it, right? And at the end of the day, AI is not supposed to replace your work. It’s supposed to be like your co-pilot. Let’s put it that way.

Yeah, yes. And enhance, you know, helping you enhance who you are and give you more time like this is what I find most the the two biggest things I find business owners struggle with. They say they don’t have money and they don’t have time. You know, for ChatGPT, you can spend $20 a month. There’s a tool that we have that’s $97 a month, right? Like these are if, you know, if somebody says they don’t have $97 a month to spend on something that’s going to save them, you know, six hours a week, then you’re in the wrong business. You have to invest in things that are going to save you time, because that time can then be used to sell your services, cater to your clients, do things that only you can do, and not a computer.

Absolutely, absolutely. I’m going to move us on to the next question, and I know you kind of brought it up already, but common pitfalls on the topic of social media. What are some of the common pitfalls that marketers should be avoiding and what should they do instead?

Yeah, the the biggest one is the Me, me, me pitfall. Okay, your your followers need to know about you, but it really has to be about them. It has if you’re telling a story, it has to be relatable. They have to understand this. It can’t be like we have the best product ever, and it does this, this and this, who cares what they want to know is, I understand how frustrating it can be. I’m just going to use social media for example. I understand how frustrating it can be to try to stay consistent on social media, and I know it takes a lot of time. There are ways you can shortcut doing this. You can do follow my help process and then I explain the help process. This will help you create content easier and faster. I’ve promoted my business, but in a way that’s helpful. I’m giving my clients or my followers a quick win. That’s a way to really market your business, not by saying, okay, buy my software. It’s amazing. Who cares? They want to know how it’s going to help them, what’s going to be the result. So that’s a pitfall. Don’t talk just about you and your products or services. Now I’m not saying don’t promote your products and services, saying, find creative ways to do it. And maybe one out of five posts should be a blank, blatant, sell your product, so the others should be a nice mix of content. 

The other one this. This is a big one, and I hope people really take this to heart. It’s you ever heard of the term post and ghost? So somebody will post and then they disappear. It’s like me going up, introducing myself, and saying, Hi, I’m Maggie. Nice to meet you. And you say, Hey, I’m Christian. How are you? And I turn and walk away. It’s the same concept. So when somebody leaves you were a reply on a post, you need to comment to it, but don’t just make it all again about you go to find out. I always I like my I have a LinkedIn process that I use, and what I do is I go on LinkedIn and I engage in other people’s content, and I’m strategic about it. I pick a variety of different maybe, you know, leaders and shakers in the social media world or the AI world. Maybe I’m commenting. On one of my clients posts, maybe I’m a colleague that’s a good referral partner. What I’m doing is, whenever you do that, it does help promote your business. Because remember, especially on LinkedIn, when I comment, my photo shows up. My name shows up in the first 60 characters of what I do, my headline shows up. So don’t make it you know, something like, you know, CEO of master at media, say, I’m a social media strategist. Now people know, in that first 60 characters who you are, what you do, the one thing like, I like to post on all platforms. So all the major ones. That’s why my software post to eight, eight major platforms. So I create one piece of content posted on eight platforms. However, don’t have time to engage in every single platform organically. So what I do is I pick the one that I feel is best suited for me, and B2B marketers know LinkedIn is a great fishing ground and but I still reply to all the other so I’ll reply to other comments on Instagram, and you Facebook and, you know, TikTok and do all that. But I spend my time, most of my time on LinkedIn, and I schedule 15 minutes a day. 

You know, you bring up a really interesting point. And I saw this trend during the pandemic, and assure you did as well. I guess it’s for lack of a better description, artificial engagement. So there’s a lot of people just putting out these absolute nothing burgers and them, and they’re getting like 500 likes, and they’re getting all this engagement, but when you read through the engagement, there’s nothing of substance. So it’s almost like they’re trying to, like, trick the algorithm, or something of that nature, like…

And it works against them. The algorithm is smart enough to know when another computer is doing something and the other like, sometimes you’ll see this a lot. We all are busy, right? But, you know, they’ll do, they’ll do the light, and they’ll, they’ll put the little fire emoji. Or they’ll, you know, like, what? Okay, but if I said something of value and, you know, look you can take this is where AI can help you. Have AI open on, you know, split your screen. Have AI here, have LinkedIn here, have a post that somebody created, copy paste it into, like I have an AI responder for each platform, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, because you’re going to reply differently based on the platform. And I put it in and I’ll say, can you reply to this? I want to make a point that you know brand it should be the foundation of everything you do have it come up with a reply. ChatGPT, does it? Copy, Paste, plug it in, do your little edits. Post now it takes me a minute to do something instead of trying to create everything from scratch, and I’m providing value that the remember because I’m editing it, I’m not just copying and pasting, that the algorithm in whatever platform you’re in is going to see as real engagement. And remember, you’re establishing yourself as a thought leader, especially on LinkedIn, in that platform.

Absolutely, absolutely. We’re going to get to that thought leadership piece in a second. But before we do, let’s, let’s take a step back, right? Because this is something I’m sure you probably have these discussions with your clients. Um. More often than you care to count. And you know there’s, there’s that point in the conversation where you probably tell them, like guys, I understand that there is urgency here. You want to get out there and build your online presence as quickly as possible. But let’s take a step back and do the right research and have the right strategy in place. You just talked about brand being the foundation, so there’s that piece of it as well. But there needs to be a content strategy. It’s not just like Maggie, where’s my content calendar at right? So talk to us about the importance of, if we’re going to use the real estate analogy, having that solid foundation before you build the rest of the house.

Yeah, oh, no, it’s so critical, you know, I have this plan that I give to people. It’s a freebie. It’s masteryoursocialmedia.com and in it, it helps businesses come up with categories so that they mix up their content. Remember, I was saying, like, one out of five posts could be blatant promotion of your product or service. The others, what are they? Is it? Are you providing tips? Like we have a lot of business coaches, I have life coaches. They want to provide inspiration. So they may have a Motivational Monday. You know, some people categorize by day, like a Motivational Monday, a tip. Tuesday, a Wisdom Wednesday, you know, a throwback Thursday and a feedback Friday, you know. So they’ll do things like that that mixes up the content, but also provide some kind of consistent feel to their social media. So, but planning out your content. I just had a client. The other day. She gave me an amazing testimonial, and she said, Maggie, because I’m using your system. Her son just had a baby. Very happy, right? But she’s in grandma mode, first grandchild. She is ready to motor. She is going on vacation. Help them, not only new baby, new house, new baby. She is not going to be on social media for at least two weeks. She said I spent two hours creating two weeks of content. She said it normally would take me six to 10 hours to do the same thing, but now I don’t have to, because I can schedule it out. It’s going to run for me in the background. These are things when you end she’s able to plan, right? So as she’s creating the content, she’s like, oh, wait a minute, I have like, two back to back motivational things. Let me move this motivational thing. She just drags and drops it to a new date and does her thing. 

And I think that does help. The other one, other little tip that I think people miss in the when they’re planning, when they’re looking at their schedule, they forget to look back. And you touched on this Christian, they forget to look back at their analytics. What performed well historically. And you know, for example, I’m not a fan of TikTok, and I’ll be honest with you, not that, you know, and I’m not dancing on TikTok, but you still use TikTok great marketing tool. You’re creating a real Why not post it on TikTok? Right? Different audience, different demographic, different people, maybe a different client for you might be a good choice, right? But here’s the interesting thing, I had these tips on LinkedIn on how to optimize your LinkedIn profile. Two of them hit over 1600 views in the first hour it was out. I didn’t get that on LinkedIn, but on TikTok, I got 1600 views about helping people with LinkedIn. I never would have thought that would have happened, but had I not looked at my analytics, I wouldn’t have even known that. So now I make sure that I provide LinkedIn tips every week and then make sure it’s videos so that I can post it on Tiktok. 

These are things that I think can drive more engagement, because what you’re doing is you’re answering the question, listen to your clients. It’s a great way of planning your content. One other tip that I had gotten, this is gold, by the way, and when you look at your clients competitors, alright? So we’re be in the B2B space. Say, you know, let’s keep on with the real estate agent. The real estate agent could look at negative comments from other real estate agents on, say, Google business, and see okay so they heard that the agent wasn’t available when they had an urgent need. So I would flip that positive. And I would say, I’m going to create a post that talks about how my agent, my real estate agent, that’s my client, right? My real estate agent is going to is available, give a story say, you know, this is what happened. And I’m sure that they could spin something that is their value added proposition, that the thing that sets them apart from other people, and use that as a way to promote their business. So research is also an analytics are two really important ways to that. I think people miss when they’re planning, because they’re thinking about again, we’re thinking about me, right? How am I going to promote me? Know? How are you going to help them? 

Absolutely, absolutely, those are some really great insights. And you know, you just made me think about something. And I’m going to talk about this more from a consumer perspective, and get your take on the B2B aspect. And this past summer, we actually used, I actually used a lot of like research from social media, primarily Instagram, to plan our trip right see what people were saying, and you know the tips of where to go and do’s and don’ts and top things to buy, and all of that fun stuff, and avoid getting ripped off, but you’re better off using this to purchase your train tickets and etc, etc. Do you see that kind of trend for B2B as well?

Yes, and what you know this, it’s a very harsh reality. But when I hit hear people who say, I I hate social media. You don’t know how many times I hear that, on any given day, I hate social media, and I’m like, if you’re a business, you need to be on social media. There’s no if anymore, you have to be the new generation is teaching their the older generation how to research things. So they’re going and looking at Google reviews, Amazon reviews. They’re looking to see if you have a social media presence. They want to find out, because what they’re saying is your website critical, important. Everybody needs a website, but your social is where they go for current information. Your website is more of a static place where you put things. It’s not where you share your everyday and that’s where social media comes in. So for businesses, if they’re promoting themselves. If they’re servicing other businesses, they need to be out there. And this is the harsh thing that I say to people. Don’t worry, because if you’re not on social media, your competitor is. That’s the harsh reality you need. 

So take LinkedIn, for example, perfect example. When I say, Do you have a business page on LinkedIn? And they say, yes. I said, Oh, tell me about it. And they say, well, it has my name, my experience, but I’m like, that’s not a business page. That is your personal profile. I said, there’s a distinction. And I’m not trying to be, you know, snarky about this, I’m being realistic. That is a your personal profile. It is a professional personal profile. It is not a business page or a company page, as they term it. A company page is your business name. So for example, I have one for Master It Media. I have one for Painless Posting. Those are my businesses. I post about my business. On those I post on my personal page, personal profile about me as well as my business, right? Because it’s a part of me. It’s part of who I am, those business, those company pages on LinkedIn, you can put your logo on it, and then, in your experience, your logo will show up next to your name under in your experience. That’s really important, because if you don’t have a company page, it then becomes this kind of gray box looking thing, and it does not look professional. Little things like this are where people are starting to find you. They may not remember your name, but maybe they remember your business name. You need to be there both ways. Your name optimized. We talked about optimizing your social media at the beginning. Your profiles are the first thing that need to be optimized. Get them completely filled out. You can actually, and I did a podcast episode on this you can actually give your Instagram account, just copy and paste it and give it to ChatGPT and say, roast my account. Remember those Dean Martin roasts back in the day, right? And and you can say, kindly roast it because it will be harsh. It told me that I had way too much purple. You know what I said to that? Like, that’s totally fine with me. I’m okay with having too much purple. But the point being is that when you’re looking at sometimes we can’t see things like that. We need somebody else’s viewpoint. So just a couple of little tips.

Absolutely, absolutely. And I hope the listeners have been taking notes or probably using an AI transcription tool as they’re listening to this, because those are all fantastic tips, Maggie, and I’m gonna move us on to the bit about actionable tips. And a lot of the stuff that you’ve told us is actionable, right? But if, if there’s somebody out there that’s either a B2B marketer or a business owner that’s thinking of upping their game in terms of social media, what are some things that you would advise them to do to help build trust, credibility and relationships?

Oh, that you know that relationships is so critical. You know, it comes down to just being you, who you are. I learned that lesson way too late in life. You know, just be yourself now. I don’t believe in over sharing on social that that’s my personal thing. I do know other businesses who do that. It works for their brand. I don’t believe in that. Nobody wants to know about things that are happening on that way to you know the TMI, the too much information we want to provide who we are. So things like sharing that you’re doing a speaking gig, does a lot of things you but you want to take it as I’m so excited to share these tips on insert whatever right at this event. I’m promoting that event. I’m promoting my knowledge. I’m sharing. I said, these are one of the tips I’m going to be sharing. But I’ve got so much I can’t wait to do that. When I go to an event, I share, I’m at an event, and this is what I’ve learned. Like, here’s a day one recap. These are things that give them a little behind the scenes. Look at your business. 

Another thing is that you talked about trust. Do what you say and say what you do that’s plain and simple, right? This is, you know, if you’re going to, you know, say you’re going to be doing a Monday video every Monday, you’re going to be doing a video and you don’t do it on Monday, you’re going to lose that trust if you were, you know, don’t promise the world and fall short. Don’t over over promise, over deliver. Don’t over promise. Don’t say, like, I had somebody who said, Well, can you guarantee me that I’m going to get clients out of this? And I’m like, No, I can’t. Nobody can get I said, I don’t, you know you could use Google ads and have a great Google ads campaign and but I can’t promise. Nobody can promise these things, and I don’t think you should. It goes a long way with trust. But say, I’m going to work hard at making sure that you have the best opportunity to land those clients. But you have to work with me. You have to provide this, this and this, so I can help your clients find you. These are ways to build trust. Relationships are critical, and that’s where remember, in the beginning, where I shared about people forget about the human element. They keep thinking that they’re because they’re working on a computer, that the other side is a computer and it’s a human being, yeah. So how do you build those relationships? Get to know them. Look at what they post about. When you direct message them, talk about that, you know, and say, Hey, I just heard, I just read on your feed that you’re going to be speaking at, you know, this AI conference, congratulations. Tell me more about it. This is ways of building a relationship. Ask them about them, and you will build the relationship faster.

Oh, Maggie, I really wish more people would follow that advice. I mean, like, you know, we all get these connection requests where it starts off with, Hey, Christian, really impressed by what you’re doing. And I’m like, do you even know what I do? Yeah, and then, in my head, I’m already mentally saying and cue sales pitch. And sure enough, bam, right? We do the da da da, and then we’ve helped, and we’ve helped, like, name drop all these people that I’ve never heard of. And do you have time for a 15 minute call? And I mean, let’s be honest, is it really only going to be 15 minutes? Like, what could you possibly close in 15 minutes?

And that’s what as B2B marketers, we have to fight against every day, because there’s so many people who are less than ethical. I’m just gonna say it. I was gonna pussyfoot around the word ethics, but no, they are less than ethical, and they’ve been burned. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard things like, Well, I’ve had five social media people before in the past, and they just posted content without me approving it. They took my money and didn’t give me what I asked for. They you know, the list goes on and on. Listen to them because they are giving you gold that information helps you promote you and your business and your clients businesses. 

So, for example, you know, when I hear that somebody says they took my money and, you know, didn’t give me anything, I say, you know, we offer a, you know, money back guarantee, or I could say the other thing is, they post without my approval. We have this very specific approval process that we go through. If you don’t like what we’ve created for you, you give us the comments. We adjust and adapt it. We send it to you again. It will not post unless you approve the content, and then once you approve it, even if it’s at midnight, it will be posted at the scheduled time without anybody having to do anything else. So Right? These are ways to kind of take the negative and make it a positive. So the ethical issue is so it and I get that on. 

I actually did this on LinkedIn once. I connected with somebody, he sent me three messages, one after the other. Like, they were definitely like, sent autopilot, right? And it was about promoting his product. And I said at the end of it, I’m like, Hey, I don’t know if you’ve looked at my profile, but I’m a social media strategist. I have some great ideas to help you avoid doing this thing that actually is turning people off from scheduling meetings with you. Never heard from the person again. Yep, they don’t want to. That’s the kind of person you want to avoid in your business. That is one who is not building trust, who’s not building a relationship, right? But we as marketers have to fight against that, and I feel so bad for because we have to fight against the unethical people in the world. But remember, because of that, you can set yourself apart. I want to see your listeners take to heart that you know, when they come here to listen to your podcast, they’re getting valuable information that they can use and reuse over and over again in their in their businesses, but in addition there, they can understand that, yes, you can be a good person and still make money and still have a thriving business. One of my favorite books is The Go Giver, right? If you haven’t read it, go out. Get it. Read it. Get it from your library. You don’t have to spend money. Give the author a great review, because you will love this book, and it’s done in a storytelling fashion. So we can learn by example, by like, what listening like following this journey that he brings us through. It’s an excellent book if you haven’t read it, and it is great for heart centered business owners. 

Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Okay, okay, I’ll keep that in mind that we’ll, we’ll definitely put the link in the show notes. Fantastic. We get to the point where I’m going to ask you a bonus question, right? And you, you mentioned this a little bit earlier, right? You gave us hints about like your past. I’m not saying that in a very cryptic or devious way. I rather I would say if you were to, if you were to talk to Maggie 20 or 30 years ago, the younger version of her of yourself, like, what advice would you give your younger self?

Yeah, the be more confident in your skills and your knowledge. Focus on other people first, because that will return to you tenfold and find people who will help you move the needle faster that it. If I had those three things in my life 20 years ago, I would probably be sitting somewhere on a beach in the Bahamas, relaxing and having my business run by having amazing people working for me, I would still be working. My husband keeps telling me, so when are you working till? And I’m like, well, probably about five o’clock. He goes, No, no. When are you working until I’m like, I love what I do. Why would I retire? It’s too much fun. 

And look, if I’m in the industry where things change every day, so if you’re not ready to learn. And just sharing about how Instagram just changed something again, if you have difficulty keeping up with that kind of stuff, please don’t drive yourself to insanity. Go find yourself another career that does not change every five seconds, because this is the world of marketing. We the core balance that is always the same, right? You’ve got that like that. Branding is your foundation. The core of marketing is the same, but the tools we use, the way we use them. We talked about AI, we talked about tools, we talked about the different platforms that keep popping up. Who knows what platform look how TikTok took over the world with fast you know how fast they became, the person to be, the company to be on the social media world. It is a never, an ever changing world that is exciting and thrilling. And we’re on the same platform, my friends, as the Nikes and the Macy’s and the Maybelline and the whatever, right? We are on the same playing field as they are. Think 20 years ago, I would never have thought that this would have been a career for me. Yeah, yeah, it wasn’t there yet.

Amazing story and fantastic advice. Maggie, thank you so much for coming on the show and for sharing what I think is absolute gold in terms of B2B social media. So please, before you go, quick introduction to yourself and how folks out there can get in touch with you, especially if they need help with social media.

So you can find me all over social media at Master It Media. And my software is painless posting. If you go to painless posting.com there’s a cute demo there that’ll tell you everything about the software. It’s about helping other people do what I do. Marketers can take this and use it. It just helps. If you’re a business owner and you’re listening to this, it just helps you get out of your own way and get a clear path and not have to worry about what I should do and how I should do it. And of course, I mentioned earlier, masteryoursocialmedia.com it’s packed with templates, and it’s like a seven day challenge to help you get going, but you can repurpose things so and of course, Maggie@masteritmedia.com email me. I love to hear from people you know. Again, there are multiple ways of reaching out to everybody, but I would say, you know, your website is your website. Masteritmedia.com Please reach out. Let me know if there’s anything I can help you with. I have complimentary AHA appointments, so if any, and they’re not a sales pitch. It is actually, I’ve got a problem with my social media. Here it is, can you help me with it? And I solve it that, and it’s my way of giving back to business owners, because I know the struggle of what it’s like to be trying to promote your business and running into some brick walls and you know, and not knowing basically how to do what you need to do to promote yourself.

Fantastic, fantastic. Once again. Maggie, thank you so much for coming on the show. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon. 

Oh, thank you so much. It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you. You are amazing at this. Thank you for sharing all of your great insights. I loved it. Thank you, Chris. 

Thank you. Bye for now.