Behind the Post

Sarah Hankins takes the hot seat on this episode of Behind the Post with host Alina Dallal to talk all things employee advocacy at CBIZ. With an impressive cohort of 2,700 advocates, Sarah dives into how she runs their successful advocacy program and how she plans to keep their momentum going throughout 2024.

From finding the right balance of content to the types she creates, Sarah dives all in with the best practices you should implement for any advocacy program. She also shares her top tips for keeping advocates engaged, including quarterly training and gamification ideas to hold their interest in the long-term – she even created her own spin on Spotify Wrapped to create an “Oktopost Wrapped” campaign at the end of 2023 to showcase their results to her team and shoutout there top performing advocates.

Communication is the foreground of any successful employee advocacy program. Sarah candidly shares how she supports her team while also learning from her advocates on ways she can better her program and continue to create more relevant content.

Running the employee advocacy program led Sarah to trade Zoom calls for an incredible tour of CBIZ’s offices across the U.S., which they called the “Oktopost Roadshow”. With pitstops to 12 offices across the country, Sarah met her advocates in person to further encourage participation and provide them with the guidance they needed to become champion advocates.

Even if we aren’t all lucky enough to tour the States on a company budget, Sarah leaves a multitude of practical tips that we can still use to train, support, and coach our advocates for success. 

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In this episode of Behind the Post, host Alina welcomes Etien Yanev, the Senior Social Media Manager at Payhawk. As the author of the book “Digital Marketing Compass” (currently only available in Bulgarian), and with 12 years of marketing experience under his belt, Etien shares all the expertise he’s picked up along the way. 

From content creation to video creation, Etien dives into all the use cases AI can provide to help scale social media content as well as help us serve our audiences better. He reveals his favorite tools to use and best practices for using them effectively. 

As well as showing his passion for AI, Etien also shines a light on the importance of leveraging your employees and executives as brand ambassadors to humanize your brand and maximize your impact. 

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Your employees are your company’s biggest asset, and learning how to utilize them as brand ambassadors can significantly enhance your social strategy and brand awareness.

Take it from Adrian Solomone, who is directly involved in building Finastra's employee advocacy program, and it's so successful that their employees are asking to join. 

In this episode, Adrian joined host Alina Dallal to reveal Finastra’s secrets for success and share valuable tips for implementing an advocacy program at a large organization. He also dives into how they capitalize on Oktopost’s AI tools to ensure their advocates are personalizing their content, quickly and efficiently.  

But, when it comes to advocacy, it’s not just the voices of your employees that you should be amplifying. Adrian walks us through how they encouraged their executives to get involved in thought leadership on LinkedIn, and the steps they're taking to guide them along the way.

What results are they seeing? Their advocacy program brought in the highest number of signups for a recent webinar, compared to other marketing strategies.

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In this episode, host Alina Dallal sits down with Brittany Otting, the Director of Social Media at CBIZ. With Brittany's extensive background spanning eight years in various industries, she brings a unique perspective on social media to the table.

Brittany walks us through CBIZ’s successful social selling program, sharing valuable tips on their best practices for training their revenue teams and advocates, how they are measuring their success, and how they are proving that social media influences revenue.  

As we know, no two days in social media are the same, and Brittany reveals how they approach their corporate strategy to navigate these changes. Given frequent algorithm updates, she shares how they experiment with different content types to stand out on social, and she doesn’t hold back from revealing her tips for a successful strategy. 

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Alina Dallal takes the mic in an exciting new season of Behind the Post. Alina is Oktopost's Content Marketing Manager, and is obsessed with all things B2B Social Media.

In this episode, you'll meet Alina and discover everything in store for you this year!

"When you step away from thinking that every person is a potential customer and think about every person as a human being, you can start being more curious and think about 100% of the territory, not just the 5% that might be in market for your solution.”

With over 30 years in B2B Sales and Marketing, Alex Abbott joins host Olivia Messina on Behind the Post to discuss one of the most prevalent topics in B2B sales today: social selling.

Alex urges that the traditional prospecting approach is no longer working. Buyers have lost trust in salespeople, and with the nature of cold calling and emailing being predicated on waste– B2B revenue teams need to embrace social selling to help hit their targets.

In this episode, Alex delves into the buyer/seller misalignment and sheds light on how social selling can bridge this gap and empower revenue teams to overcome their major challenges. He explains what social selling actually means and how you can stand out as a trusted advisor to not only initiate meaningful conversations but also create a presence that attracts inbound conversations.

Getting to the heart of social selling, Alex explains how every like and comment is an opportunity to engage in a conversation and how to take that next action. He also discusses how to scale social selling, what to measure, where it should sit within the organization, how to get started, what content to create, and how to meaningfully engage with your network.

Tell me the facts and I'll learn. Tell me the truth and I'll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.”

Born storyteller Solveig Rundquist, Senior Content Manager at Mentimeter, joins host Olivia Messina to discuss how she incorporates storytelling into her content marketing and the data-driven strategies she's implementing across social to drive results.

In this episode, Solveig breaks down what storytelling means to her, the science of crafting a compelling story, and how to bring it to life through your content and social media marketing. An expert in storytelling, she reveals how you can uncover stories within your organization or shift to "story doing" if the stories aren't explicitly clear.

With an impressive social presence within just a few months of joining Mentimeter, Solveig walks through her data-driven process and the fundamental changes she put in place to uphold a high engagement rate.

Delving into the importance of differentiating and tailoring content per channel, she explains how, with two very different target audiences– she gets the right content to land in front of the right people and how she uses data to make informed decisions.

To close the show, Solveig shares how she encourages key stakeholders to engage on social and why it's critical to make those already building their persona brands your heroes. You won't want to miss Solveig's take on AI in content marketing today– stay until the very end for an insightful take.

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Jordan Tennenbaum, Social Media Manager at Celigo, joins host Olivia Messina to discuss his transition from a 7-year sales career to social media and the framework he used to triple nearly every metric at his organization.

He emphasizes consistently publishing engaging, human-focused content to drive long-term growth. As an expert at crafting standout content, he reveals the power of being a little different and using relatable memes to connect with audiences.

From consistency and employee advocacy to creative social challenges and employer branding initiatives that celebrate his colleagues, Jordan unpacks the pillars of building a powerful, human-centric social presence that people want to be a part of.

He explores the ongoing debate around follower count–are they just vanity metrics or valuable indicators? Jordan provides a nuanced take, emphasizing an engaged following matters for social proof.

Jordan concludes the show by sharing how he built his personal brand, his favorite tools for efficiency as a social media marketer, and his perspective on whether brands should maintain a presence on X as many reevaluate their strategy.

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“You can’t cross your fingers and hope everyone will see your first post.” 

In this episode, host Olivia Messina welcomes Elizabeth Hilfrank, Content Marketing Manager at Drift, to the show. Over the past 5 years, Elizabeth has overseen several sectors of content at Drift, from video production to podcast to now their blog, ebook, newsletter, and social media strategy–and now she’s revealing what she’s learned along the way.

Elizabeth shares how to nail a social media video, emphasizing the importance of hooking the audience in the first couple of seconds and always including captions. With human-focused social campaigns, she reveals how her strategy and content are more in line with B2C. She even gives examples of current and past campaigns that have driven results for Drift.

With a proven record of success, she dives deep into her LinkedIn strategy, discussing how often she posts and whether or not you should put the link directly in the post or in the comments. Even though Drift is in B2B, she highlights the importance of showcasing they are human by jumping on trends and regularly engaging with their community.

To wrap up the show, Elizabeth reveals her social workflow process and how she determines what content makes it to the corporate feed. She shares the importance of her calendar and project management tool, her tips for managing content ownership outside of social, and the importance of early involvement of social media managers in content creation discussions.

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Employees are the lifeblood of every company, and for long-term success in attracting and retaining top talent, effective employer branding is crucial. But let's make one thing clear—it's not just a marketing tactic. Authenticity is the key to resonating with both employees and potential candidates.

In this episode of Behind the Post, host Olivia Messina sits down with two remarkable experts: Kinga Kusak, the Senior Content Marketing Manager at PlayPlay, and Ale Schlesinger, the Social Media Manager at HiBob.

Together, they take a deep dive into the world of employer branding, stressing the importance of an authentic strategy. Kinga and Ale reveal the best channels to implement your strategy and the optimal functions within your organization in which it should sit to make it shine.

As employer branding experts, Kinga and Ale share valuable tips on genuinely portraying your employer brand. Plus, they provide insights into previous social campaigns and best practices for creating employer branding videos that leave a lasting impact!

Olivia, Kinga, and Danyelle Felchner, Recruitment Marketing Manager–Social Media at CVS Health, are continuing the conversation in PlayPlay’s upcoming webinar, “How to Harness The Power of Employer Branding & Improve ROI.” Register now and don’t miss more tips and actionable insights!