Develop your brand personality – Aoife Noone, founder of Babushka Social

Carlota Pico recently interviewed Aoife Noone, founder of Babushka Social, to learn more about her expertise as a social media marketer. In their conversation, Aoife covered the ins and outs of B2B marketing on social media. She also shared some advice on social media best practices, adapting your strategy in response to COVID-19 and developing your brand personality on LinkedIn—which is essential, as modern consumers want to see the human side of the companies they follow.

You can watch the full conversation in the video above or on YouTube, listen to the podcast on Apple and Spotify, and read our recap below.

Key takeaways

What separates good marketing from great marketing is a deep understanding of your audience’s needs, as well as the courage to have a strong brand personality and to convey it through your content.

Brands often use the same content and copy for different channels because they want to get their content out as quickly as possible. What they fail to consider is that audiences on different channels have different motivations for being online, so what works for one won’t necessarily work for another.

Another mistake some brands make is aiming to post a certain number of times per week, and then posting low-quality content to meet that goal. While post frequency is important, quality should never be compromised in favor of quantity.

On LinkedIn, commenting on a post boosts engagement much more than sharing it (unlike on Facebook). Leaving well-crafted, insightful comments on posts is one useful way to build your professional brand.

Employees are a company’s best brand ambassadors. Consumers trust humans much more than corporate brands, so companies should train their employees to be more active and effective on social media.

For a great example of how to respond to negative comments online, check out Aoife’s LinkedIn post about kindness, inspired by Yorkshire Tea.

When it comes to frequency of posting, my rule is quality over quantity—but you do have to maintain a reasonable level of frequency so that your brand isn’t forgotten.

Rapid-fire recs

Who is someone you admire?

I would say Simon Sinek. I think his Golden Circle Model—which asks businesses to examine their “why”—is so powerful for marketers and business leaders alike.

I also admire a number of people from my professional network: Joe Glover, from The Marketing Meetup, and Sarah Goodall from Tribal Impact, an agency I worked with as a client and freelancer before founding Babushka Social. Neither is arrogant about their achievements, but they’re hugely successful in their fields and generous in sharing their knowledge with others.

A valuable group, book or publication?

At the moment I’m reading “The Challenger Sale.” It’s a super useful resource for marketers that provides fascinating insights into the world of sales. It’s really valuable not only to grow my own business, but to understand my B2B target audience—many of whom are sales professionals.

I’m a big fan of The Marketing Meetup, which has pivoted to online events. The beauty of this is that it makes them more location agnostic, and they now attract a decent following from outside the UK.

There’s also a Facebook group for freelance social media managers called The Social Media Managers Hub, which is a great source of tips and support, particularly in the B2C space.

Your favorite app at the moment?

Naturally, I love social media—Twitter and LinkedIn in particular. I’ve also been experimenting with Canva (a design tool), Feedly (for content curation) and Biteable (to create videos). I recommend tapping into your network for suggestions, as there’s such a wealth of options when it comes to social media tools.

Connect with Aoife and Carlota on LinkedIn.

This post was edited by Rishabh Agrawal, a freelance content creator based in Madrid.