Scaling your impact on social media for B2B is often linked to just ads only. “Let’s throw extra money at it and keep on trying to sell all of the time.” We all get annoyed when we see another ad in this style, however, most companies only want this shortcut. So how do we fix this?
Maxiem Depypere, the founder of Wolfpack Branding, joins the Chaos Show to discuss how you need to go back to find your soul in order to scale your impact. Maxiem shares some great pragmatic advice on where to focus, social media storytelling, measuring impact and so much more… Oh and yes we talk about automation and what to automate.
Michael Humblet:
Welcome to the Chaos Show. One of the things that is very difficult is how to balance your personal brand versus a company brand and how on which media are you posting and how do I keep it all consistent? So I’ve invited Maxiem to come help us, educate us, inspire us. How the hell do we do this? Maxiem, tell us who you are and what you do.
Maxiem:
I’m Maxiem. I’m the founder of Wolfpack Branding. It’s a social media agency, social media storytelling agency. We strive to inspire people, give them a lot of value instead of just pushing, our sales via social media. Next to that, during the weekdays, I’m still a DJ.
Michael Humblet:
let’s dive straight in. So, I’m a company, I want to build a brand, I already probably have a brand. Wha-what’s the major thing you see going wrong? Or what’s the thing that annoys you the most where you say, “C’mon!”
Maxiem:
That’s the thing. Everybody wants to sell.
Maxiem:
Sometimes people push ads on social media.
Michael Humblet:
We have a quote for that.
Not selling is the new sales.
Maxiem:
Right. That has provided me with so much value. Because it’s a really important quote. Because everybody just wants to sell but it means if companies are selling worldwide, you’re just one of the millions.
Michael Humblet:
So what should they do?
Maxiem:
The major key is that lot of companies, they don’t have a soul. Or they do have a soul but nobody knows they have a soul. I have some clients and it’s just like the people are buying from the company, they are buying from the website but nobody knows what are the values, what’s the team behind the company.
Michael Humblet:
How do I balance the mix between social media? I mean a question I get all the time is, “Here Michael, should we go Facebook? Should we go instagram, …” So how do you balance that one?
Maxiem:
You shouldn’t do everything. That’s an important one.
Michael Humblet:
So you’re saying, “Michael, stop what you’re doing,” because I’m doing everything.
Maxiem:
You have to pick some ones that are, good for you because people are saying like, “TikTok is the new hype.”
Maxiem:
This is a very important one. You shouldn’t, you should keep an eye on that, that you have to put that next to your values. Is TikTok important for my business? Is the way TikTok works important for my business?
Maxiem:
Does that provide value?
Michael Humblet:
What would you say for instance, uh, LinkedIn, B2B, classic there but I would need to see, shouldn’t go there, what, what, what? Give us some advice.
Maxiem:
The most important thing is to look at what works for me, what do I love working with?
Maxiem:
And what works and my market, what works for my competitors. Um, depending on the business you’re in, the sector you’re in, you have to check, um, what works over there and you have to make a mix between both of them.
Michael Humblet:
So I’m gonna ask you a tough one. Automation or not? And how far do I stretch it?
Maxiem:
You have to automate some thoughts but when somebody sells, sends me a text message or sends me a message via LinkedIn, and I know it’s automated, I’m almost never going to respond.
Michael Humblet:
But you were saying that what you could do then is automate the planning, scheduling, the posting
Maxiem:
Yes.
Michael Humblet:
All of that, that’s okay to automate.
Maxiem:
You have to automate to make it scaleable. Cause otherwise, It’s too much of a hassle. But you have to give it a very personal touch. You have to know what to automate and what not. If you’re going to connect with someone or ask about them, you have to ask them personally and not just as a, an extra question to your big sales pitch that will follow
Maxiem:
As a LinkedIn message for example.
Michael Humblet:
Any other things that you say, “I see that so many times. Don’t do it. Don’t every do that? Cause I get annoyed a lot on social.
Maxiem:
Yeah me too (laughs).
Michael Humblet:
I’m like, “Come on. Look at this.” Right? So, so better now we can say it to the world.
Maxiem:
Yeah. I always try to be friendly and respond to most messages. It’s just like I just said, when I receive a message and it’s one long sales pitch. Without interest in me, without interest in what I do, just a sales pitch
Maxiem:
I don’t respond and I’m a friendly guy.
Michael Humblet:
When you’re in a, in a business and you’re in, uh, let’s say B2B. And you, want to spend money on what you’re doing
Maxiem:
Yeah.
Michael Humblet:
How on earth do you measure it? And that’s a very tough one, especially when you’re an agency. So how do you deal with it? Do you agree on a, “We’re gonna hit that?” Or how do you do that?
Maxiem:
Depends on what you are doing. We are not the classic agency who says, “For 1,000 euros, you’re gonna have so many lists or so many sales.”
Maxiem:
Because we’re doing the storytelling too and, a lot of the people we’re working for, have people who have seen our posts. We have inspired them via Facebook, via Instagram, but they, they let us rest for a while afterwards, they come back, they go to the website. So the metric is not, is n-not by via us, it’s not via Facebook.
Maxiem:
But we know they were inspired by Facebook and their Instagram but it’s, it’s really hard to report that to clients. So we need to have a client who thinks further and that who knows yeah, they were inspired. I just built an Academy. For now, it’s on social media. The next step I wanted to take was like to have a really high ticket, really high level.
Michael Humblet:
On what? Like an online course?
Maxiem:
Yeah. Really good online course, really for social media marketers but then I started to think further because there are not a lot of social media experts that are really high level in Belgium.
Maxiem:
It would take me a lot more resources. It would take me lot more time and money to build, uh, a course for these people. I-
Michael Humblet:
I would probably mix it.
Michael Humblet:
Part off-line, part on-line.
Michael Humblet:
Even companies, they always want to have the highest level of service, which is they don’t need to worry. They want you to do it for them. That, that’s like the highest you can go.
Maxiem:
Yeah. Maybe as a closure, just like you said, in the land of the blind, you’re a lot cheaper to reach. They don’t need as much value to have a lot of extra money for them. You don’t have to put in as many resources.
Maxiem:
To make their lives better.
Michael Humblet:
And you don’t … One of the things that I realized when I started doing YouTube, is that I started doing really high and deep-dive things around forecasting. I was living in the world of having lots of sales people very high in forecasting but people were just not watching.
Maxiem:
They have to get to know you, , like you said, it has to be, low threshold to start. And you have to simplify everything. Even the smartest people I know, they just want to have a simplified version of the things I say.
Michael Humblet:
Yeah. Time.
Maxiem:
That’s why a lot of people … That’s a mistake a lot of people even … Mostly lot of young business men make is they want to make it as complex as possible.
To impress managers but they, they think If you have to make it so complex, it’s because you have something to hide. Or you’re not smart enough to, to simplify it for normal people.
Michael Humblet:
The highest value you can have is time. With that, thank you very much for coming.
Maxiem:
See you back soon.
Michael Humblet:
We’ll be back in a few months and we’ll figure out how it’s going and all the best with the course
Maxiem:
Looking forward. Thank you.
Michael Humblet:
Thank you.