We regularly see that content published by people gets 50x the reach versus the company page post, and up to 1,000x the engagement. People pay more attention to people than products.
There are many proof points that lead us to this conclusion.
Multiple eye-tracking studies from Lumen Research have shown that people look at people first, and for longer, and the rise of influencer marketing in both B2C and B2B is testament to that fact. B2C brands are turning to influencer marketing because they know that people pay more attention to people than brands, but the B2B world has been slower to adopt a people-first approach.
This research from Dentsu gives further evidence that people pay more attention to people than brands.
Then we must consider how business is done, and in most B2B companies, sales are achieved by people in your organisation, talking to people in your ideal clients' organisation ... yet most B2B marketing is published by faceless brands. It's clear that there is a big disconnect in B2B communications.
Nudge versus nurture
Company pages are important on social media platforms like LinkedIn, of course, but they are not where the most attention can be found.
People pay far more attention to the personable content of familiar people than they do to the corporate content published by faceless brands - it’s human nature.
Your company page can however quickly nudge one of your ideal clients to bring your brand to mind, and perhaps land a one-liner about your brand. That helps deliver your distinctive brand assets, and your core value proposition statements. It can help to build your brand, using what Havas Media Network refer to as 'aggregate attention'.
However, your people will get more attention, so they can both nudge and nurture real human relationships with the people who have influence over the decision to work with your company.
It pays to be the content
Lumen Research benchmark data shows that attention to advertising is fleeting - 1-2 seconds, if you are lucky. If you visit Google Analytics and check out the dwell time on your content, it is likely 60-120 seconds - that's a big difference, so it pays to be the content.
On LinkedIn and other social platforms, your people are the content and your company page is the advertising.
So mathematically speaking, it pays to be the content, in a personable, authentic way.
Consistent messages, delivered frequently
At Six Sells, we build a communications framework for the companies we work for that focusses on the audiences they wish to speak to, and the core stories they wish to tell to each audience.
This communications framework keeps the company page content honest, but it also helps multiple executives to stick to the company comms plan, but with their own unique voice, tone, and stories.
If you look at something we ghostwrote for Rory Sutherland and compare it to the work we have done for Karen Stacey, they sound completely different, because they are completely different!
Authentic, personable content that delivers value is what gets the attention on platforms like LinkedIn.
The business pages
You may have found this article via an ad in the business pages of a UK news site, and while I may well have a face for radio, the face would have caught your attention, because instinctively, people respond to other people.
We deliver your people and stories into the business pages, and the right LinkedIn newsfeeds, to get the attention of the people that matter to your business.
You will see some of the companies we have supported scrolling along the bottom of this webpage - if you are interested in learning how you could be one of them, please connect with me on LinkedIn or email me at mike@sixsells.co.uk
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