Tips Archives - Digital Storyteller

Key Metrics for Social Media Success in B2B: Why LinkedIn Leads the Pack

LinkedIn Is Where Relationships Begin

Let’s be real. Not every social platform delivers meaningful results for B2B marketing. Instagram and Facebook can help showcase your company’s personality, but LinkedIn is where credibility grows and relationships start.

It’s the professional arena. The digital conference floor. The space where thought leadership meets opportunity.

While other platforms help show the people behind your brand, LinkedIn builds authority and visibility among the people who matter most: your peers, your clients, and your future partners.

Why Metrics Matter More Than Vanity

You can’t refine what you don’t measure. But not all numbers tell the same story. Likes and followers might look good on a dashboard, but they rarely tell you if your brand is earning trust or sparking conversations.

The real indicators of success lie in metrics that measure reach, engagement, and influence. These reflect how effectively your message resonates and how often your brand stays top of mind in your industry.

The LinkedIn Metrics That Actually Matter

1. Impressions and Reach: How Far Is Your Message Traveling?

Impressions track how often your content appears in feeds. Reach shows how many unique people saw it. Together, they tell you whether your content is getting in front of the right audience.

If reach is low, it might be a targeting issue or a content one. Keep an eye on who is seeing your posts. You want visibility among decision-makers and industry peers, not just random scrolls.

2. Engagement Rate: Are People Paying Attention?

Engagement rate measures how actively your audience interacts with your content. High engagement means your posts are resonating, sparking curiosity, agreement, or conversation.

When people engage, they remember your brand. And in B2B, awareness and familiarity often come long before a sales conversation ever begins.

3. Click-Through Rate: From Interest to Intent

Click-through rate (CTR) shows how often people click on your links to learn more. It’s less about sales and more about storytelling, proof that your message made someone curious enough to take the next step.

If clicks are low, check your copy. Vague headlines and generic calls to action can kill momentum. Write like you’re talking to a human, not a marketing report.

4. Follower Growth: Quality Over Quantity

Follower growth matters, but it’s not about chasing big numbers. A smaller, highly relevant audience is far more valuable than a large, disengaged one.

Review your follower demographics regularly. If your audience includes professionals who could realistically become clients, partners, or advocates, you’re moving in the right direction.

5. Employee Engagement: Your Built-In Amplifier

One of the most overlooked growth drivers on LinkedIn is your own team. When employees engage with company posts, the algorithm rewards it by pushing content to new audiences through their networks.

Encourage your team to like, comment, and share company updates. When the people who work for you believe in what you post, the reach and credibility multiply naturally.

Companies that consistently involve their teams see stronger visibility, higher credibility, and better brand awareness.

How Instagram and Facebook Fit In

Instagram and Facebook still play valuable supporting roles. They are great for highlighting company culture, team moments, and community involvement. These platforms humanize your brand and make it more approachable.

But when it comes to industry conversations, thought leadership, and professional credibility, LinkedIn is the platform that builds long-term trust and recognition.

Think of it this way: Instagram shows who you are. LinkedIn shows what you know.

How to Improve Your LinkedIn Metrics

1. Post Consistently and Intentionally

Consistency keeps your brand top of mind. Aim for three to four posts per week that balance education, thought leadership, and behind-the-scenes authenticity.

2. Use Native Formats

Videos, carousels, and document uploads perform better than links that take users off the platform. Keep people on LinkedIn and give them value right where they are.

3. Start Conversations, Not Broadcasts

Ask questions. Tag relevant voices. Respond to comments. LinkedIn’s algorithm rewards engagement, not one-way communication.

4. Review and Refine Regularly

Check your analytics monthly. Identify patterns, replicate what works, and experiment with new formats. The goal is ongoing improvement, not perfection.

Final Thoughts: Measure What Matters

In B2B marketing, social media isn’t about chasing viral fame. It’s about consistency, credibility, and connection.

LinkedIn may not always drive revenue directly, but it drives something even more powerful: trust. That’s the currency that opens doors, starts conversations, and eventually leads to business growth.

If you’re ready to strengthen your brand’s presence, increase engagement, and turn your social strategy into measurable growth, contact us. Our team specializes in organic marketing that builds trust, authority, and momentum where it matters most.Because in the long game of B2B marketing, trust beats trends every single time.

December 5, 2025/by Digital Storyteller Team

News, SEO

10 Tips to Maximize your SEO in 2021

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an excellent tool to bring traffic to your website … if you’re doing it right.

How To Use Hubspot To Automate Social Media Posts

Automating your social media can be useful for developing a content plan, so you’re always prepared. As a Hubspot partner, we use their unique automation software to optimize our content and schedule it out weeks in advance — so all you have to do is watch the engagement roll in.

These social media tools are meant to free up your time so you can engage and personally interact with your followers, have authentic conversations, and strategize about what you post and when. So, now that we know more about social media automation, let’s go over how you can use these tools to automate your posts.

1. Look at social listening tools.

Many social media automation tools can be used for social listening. Essentially, social listening is the process of monitoring what people are saying about your brand or industry online.

With automation tools, you can see brand mentions across all platforms in one place. Additionally, you can follow certain keywords, topics, or hashtags to see what’s going on in your industry. Moreover, social media automation tools can be used to follow your competitors. What’s the latest news? What are people talking about?

Ultimately, social listening tools can help you come up with ideas for social media posts or even product ideas.

2. Use chatbots.

Another way to use social media automation tools is to create chatbots. Chatbots can be used with sites like Facebook Messenger to streamline your marketing, provide customer support, and improve the customer experience.

For example, you can create automated replies or suggested replies to customer questions or comments. When a customer asks for your hours, for instance, your chatbot can automatically respond. Additionally, you can use a chatbot to let customers know that you’ll get back to them in a certain amount of time and provide resources.

Ultimately, a social media chatbot should help customers with small issues, but escalate larger issues to a human.

3. Gain valuable insights across several networks.

Most social media automation tools provide analytics that can be helpful to your social media strategy.

For example, after using and connecting these tools to your social platforms, you can use the analytics to determine the best time to post. You can answer questions like, “When does my audience interact more?” and “What’s my engagement rate?”

A large benefit to automation tools is that you can get analytics such as impressions, reach, and engagement on all your social media platforms in one place. These reports make it easier to compare the success of a campaign across different platforms.

4. Produce content curation ideas.

While not all automation tools provide content curation, some of them do. This means that you can choose industries or topics that you think your audience is interested in. Then, the software will curate content that you can share and post on your social media platforms.

Some automation tools might draft a social media post for you, however, those should just be used as a starting point. You should write all your own social media posts. Additionally, using the tactics mentioned above should help you get to know your audience better, facilitating more content ideas.

5. Engage with your audience.

One of the most important benefits of social media automation tools is that they can help you engage with your audience across several platforms in one place.

With this type of software, you can monitor brand mentions, replies, and messages. With all of these gathered in one place, it makes it easier to connect with your audience and helps your team respond in a timely manner.

6. Achieve consistent scheduling.

Consistency is one of the best ways to earn your follower’s trust and improve your online presence. With social media automation tools, you can keep a steady queue of posts. This can help you plan ahead and spend more time on creativity and less time on the tedious posting tasks.

Additionally, you can use this software to schedule posts in bulk. Many automation software can be used to input a spreadsheet of posts and schedule them.

These are just some of the top ways to use social media automation tools. However, a human should still be interacting with the community, and planning creative, exciting content. At Digital Storyteller, we have partnered with Hubspot to schedule, manage, and optimize the content we create in-house. Contact us today to learn what we can do to improve the way you tell your story online.

May 19, 2020/by Digital Storyteller Team

Culture, News

Quarantine Survival Guide

As a team that works entirely from home, the Digital Storytellers have definitely had some time to adjust to this unique way of working and living, which has left us feeling more prepared than we’d like to admit for a crisis nobody saw coming. Here are our tips for surviving quarantine without giving up on your routine:

Build a master list of chores:

Go around your house with a notepad or your phone and make note of the tasks you’ve pushed aside before the excuse of being “too busy” was ripped out from underneath us all. My master chore list looked something like this:

Reorganize hallway cabinets
Clean out closet and donate clothes
Clean the oven and microwave
Organize lonely socks
Clean out dress drawers

After making your list, add a section to your daily power list that includes an hour or two of chores every day. It doesn’t have to be overly organized or scheduled — just set aside the time, consult your list, and start chipping away.

Work on creating a new habit

More time at home means more opportunities to focus our energy inward and develop ourselves in meaningful, internal ways. We also have more control over our environment when we are at home — as opposed to being at work or school — which means we can set ourselves up for success.

If you are trying to create new healthy habits in your diet, empty your fridge and pantry of anything that might derail you. If you are trying to spend more time outdoors, replace your daily commute with a solo walk around your neighborhood.

Make your home a sanctuary of self-love and self-development and none of this time will feel wasted, no matter the outcome. And remember — it takes 60 days to build a habit, so you’ll be able to challenge yourself to keep it up once you’ve returned to work too!

Find a yoga class or guided meditation

While the new habit you choose to start working on is entirely up to you, we would recommend that everyone incorporate either a daily yoga session or a daily meditation practice (or both!) into their daily routines.

However, despite having access to thousands of online resources, it can still be challenging to find an instructor or guide that makes you feel grounded or eager to show up each day. This is especially important if you are just beginning to practice yoga or meditation; like with every new habit, you must set yourself up for success at the beginning!

Here are a few of our favorite resources for online yoga and meditation practices:

Incorporate daily movement

Being trapped inside doesn’t have to mean being chained to your chair. Whether you are feeling lethargic or antsy, movement is probably the solution your body is begging you to provide.

If working out is something new for you, start with 20 minutes of walking or stretching every day and then slowly add more time and more challenging activities each week. If you are a newly trapped gym rat, it’s time to hit Amazon. You won’t need much but here’s what we’d recommend for maintaining your fitness at home:

Light Dumbbells (or two full water bottles — we use Hydro flasks!)
Heavy Kettlebell (or one full gallon water jug)
Sliders
Long Band
Short Band
Pull-up Bar

There are dozens of workouts that can be done with these pieces of equipment and you should be able to buy it all for less than $100 (or for free if you can come up with some creative substitutes!) The lightweight dumbbells are ideal for online barre workouts, which you can find on Youtube.

Whether you are new to working from home or have been using your spare bedroom as an office since you moved in, Quarantine can be challenging for everyone. Our final (and most important) recommendation? Stay calm and take care of yourself and the people you care about. We’re going to get through this together — and you might even have a positive new habit by the time it’s over!

May 18, 2020/by Digital Storyteller Team

Digital Marketing, News

HubSpot Makes Digital Marketing Simple

Is investing in a marketing tool like HubSpot going to be worth it for your company? As digital marketers, there are many intelligent tools to navigate email marketing, website design, analytics, and more. With HubSpot, everything you need is in one place. It allows your processes to run more smoothly and provides a big picture analysis of how your company’s marketing is performing.

HubSpot is a software that combines marketing, sales, service, and analytics all in one place. Under each of those umbrellas, you are able to utilize the tools you need to be successful. For example, in the marketing section, there is a place for web design, blogs, email marketing, live chat, web traffic analytics, and more!

As a digital marketing company, this simplifies all of our processes by creating a one-stop-shop for everything we need to know about our clients. Not only does it give us what we need to know, but it also provides the tools necessary to put that knowledge to work. In addition to making our lives a bit simpler, it streamlines processes for our clients, too.

In HubSpot, the “customer lifecycle” can be mimicked virtually. It begins with designing a site that will attract your target market. Once you attract customers, you build sales leads and turn those leads into customer relationships. After successfully connecting with your audience, you can provide excellent customer service and gather data to maximize your marketing efficiency. All of this happens in one place, so there is little room for error between steps.

There are so many tools within HubSpot, that it can be difficult to navigate as you begin to use it. But if you take the time to learn the intricacies of the software, it will be a huge benefit to your company. It has made our lives simpler at Digital Storyteller as we continue to implement it with our clients.

May 14, 2020/by Digital Storyteller Team

Financial Services Companies, News, Social Media

5 Essential Social Media Tips For Financial Services

Despite the industry’s old school tendencies, the use of social media in financial services organizations is no longer an option. According to research from Medium, at least 98% of all Fortune 500 companies use at least one form of social media.

At the advisor level, Putnam Retail Management found 84% use social media for the finance industry business. Ninety-two percent of them said social media has helped them gain new clients.

The average asset gain for financial advisors using social media was $1.4 million in the 12 months before the Putnam survey. The most effective advisors using social media in financial services increased assets under management by 10% in just a year.

Is your financial services organization using social media effectively? If not, you’re losing business to your competitors.

Of course, finding new clients is not the only benefit of social media. And at the same time, there can be plenty of challenges to using social media in a regulated industry. Here’s everything you need to know about developing a social media strategy for financial services in 2020.

1. Focus on compliance

FINRA, FCA, FFIEC, IIROC, SEC, PCI, AMF, GDPR—all the compliance requirements can make your head spin. Many advisors and agents now work remotely. It’s critical to have compliance processes and tools to guide their use of social media.

Get your compliance team involved as you develop your social media strategy. They’ll have important guidance on the steps you need to take to protect your brand.

For example, they can explain separating personal and business use of social media. They should also weigh in on what kinds of links advisors share.

It’s also important to have the right chain of approvals in place for all social media posts. For example, FINRA states: “A registered principal must review prior to use any social media site that an associated person intends to use for business.”

2. Archive everything

This falls under compliance, but it’s important enough that it’s worth calling out on its own. According to FINRA, “firms and their registered representatives must retain records of communications related to their “‘business as such.’” Those records must be kept for at least three years.

3. Conduct a social media audit

In a social media audit, you document all your company’s social channels in one place. You also note any key information relevant to each. At the same time, you will hunt down any impostor or unofficial accounts so you can have those shut down.

Start by listing all the accounts your internal team uses regularly. But remember—this is just a starting point. You’ll need to look for old or abandoned accounts and department-specific accounts.

While you’re at it, make note of the social platforms where you don’t have any social accounts. It might be time to register profiles there. Even if you’re not ready to use those tools yet, you might want to reserve your brand handles for future use.

SIX is a Swiss finance company. When they conducted a social media audit, they discovered 80 unofficial social media accounts. Among them were dozens of fake accounts on Facebook. Fake accounts create a significant risk for financial companies and can erode public trust.

4. Implement a social media policy

A social media policy is a living document. It guides social media use within your organization. That includes accounts for your advisors and agents.

Your compliance, legal, IT, information security, human resources, public relations, and marketing teams should all have input into this document. It will help you maintain a consistent brand identity while reducing compliance challenges.

It will also define team roles and approval structures so everyone understands the workflow of a social post. This clarity upfront can help reduce frustrations that social media in financial services might not move as quickly as it does in other industries.

Using social media for finance industry purposes can also come with security risks. Be sure to include a section in your social media policy that outlines security protocols for the less-sexy aspects of social media. For example, prescribe how often to change passwords and how often software should be updated.

5. Commit to doing it right

The Putnam survey found that an active presence is a critical component of a social media marketing strategy for financial service accounts. Simply creating a social profile is not enough. Zero percent of the advisors who have only a passive presence on social media gained new assets through social channels.

Compare that to the highest achievers. They brought in average new assets under management of $15.3 million. Eighty percent of those high achievers pay for a premium level of service on a social network, rather than sticking only to free tools.

Training is also an important factor. The high-achieving advisors were much more likely to have received training. They learned from colleagues or a consultant, rather than figuring out how to use social tools by themselves.

Don’t you think you need training? Consider that 61% of those Putnam surveyed identified themselves as social media experts. However, Putnam found only 15% of them really were.

And when you’re ready to take your social strategy to the next level, we have the tools to help!

May 11, 2020/by Digital Storyteller Team

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