Here is a transcript generated by otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast with Linda Ghabain, global social media manager at Nilfisk:

Carlota Pico 0:13
Hi, everyone, I’m Carlota Pico from The Content Mix, and I’m excited to be here today with Linda Ghabain, who is Nilfisk global social media manager and has over 11 years of experience in marketing and communications. Linda, thank you so much for joining us on The Content Mix, and welcome!

Linda Ghabain 0:34
Thank you. Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me.

Carlota Pico 0:38
Linda to start the interview off, I’d like to learn a little bit about your background, your experience and how you got into your current role.

Linda Ghabain 0:48
Sure. So my name is Linda Ghabain. I’m the Social Media Manager for Nilfisk Group. We’re based here in Copenhagen, Denmark. I’ve been studying marketing communications, in… you know…maybe it was like 12 years ago when I decided to join social media and over the years it became a career. So I’ve been doing social media for major brands like DFDS, Helly Hansen and Flying Tiger Copenhagen, across multiple countries. And now I’m back in Denmark.

Carlota Pico 1:23
Wonderful. Could you tell me a little bit about your company and some of the sector nuances that goes along with your with your current job?

Linda Ghabain 1:34
Sure. So I’m responsible for the social media strategy and the rollout of that strategy globally across the group. We are primarily a b2b company. We’re in the cleaning industry. So professional cleaning industry, helping businesses across different industries from you know, agriculture to hospitality, tourism, even pharma, and other various industries. And my role here is to set up a strategy on social media, but also to educate and inform internal, our stakeholders on how social media should be done and which channels we should or shouldn’t be on and how to maintain those channels. So it, you could say that it’s a role that covers both strategy and operational tasks. So it could also be community management for some marketing—for some markets, but it’s primarily an educational role and more of a strategic position that I have right now.

Carlota Pico 2:36
Okay, what about… what does one have to keep in mind when communicating to their local audiences about the professional cleaning industry?

Linda Ghabain 2:50
Well, it really depends on the audience and the goal of the post. So internally, we have a team that I try to, you know, inform every day, that it’s a good idea to always keep in mind, why are you posting when you’re posting and always keep in mind the the and the target audience. So who are you trying to reach with that post and then take it from there work on copy, work on the visuals, work on things and maybe like landing pages or whatever you want to work on. So I think that would depend—it’s a…very case by case basis.

Carlota Pico 3:26
Okay, but are there any like special regulations or policies, for example, that go hand in hand with the cleaning technology professional cleaning industry?

Linda Ghabain 3:38
Not necessarily. I mean, apart from the, you know, main GDPR rules that we’re all aware of and copyright rules and, you know, the typical rules you would have in social media when doing social media for a global company. I think that the same applies for the cleaning industry as well.

Carlota Pico 3:56
Okay. To give our audience a little bit of background and Information about Milfisk—Nilfisk, excuse me, could you tell me about how many channels you’re currently present on and how many languages you’re communicating to your audiences in?

Linda Ghabain 4:12
Sure. So I started here last year last summer, we’ve had over 300 channels across, you know, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, both b2b and b2c channels, also Instagram. Right now our primary goal is to simplify and digitize this social media presence. So in the future, we are aiming to have one global channel for each social media channel. That doesn’t mean that we won’t be able to target locally still, because we will, you know, target the content towards the local market, but we would benefit from a global channel perspective and you know, in the case of Facebook for instance, it’s best if you if you use a global Facebook structure for a company this size.

Carlota Pico 5:03
Okay, could you give me a little bit more…Could you give me some more information about why you think it’s best to keep it global for a company of that size, especially on Facebook?

Linda Ghabain 5:14
Sure. I mean, again, it goes back to the resources that the company has internally. So in some cases, it might be best if you have a internal team to handle all the languages from headquarters. In other cases, you might find those resources in the markets. So it really, you know…what works for Nilfisk might not work for another company. But I started here last year by doing an audit on all the social media channels we are on and also to kind of figure out what are the resources and where the digital capabilities we have not only in Denmark, but also in the other 50 plus markets we’re in.

Carlota Pico 5:57
Right, so it’s more about time management, and also about the internal resources that you have, when it comes to deciding on how many channels your brand is able to be present on and to communicate on.

Linda Ghabain 6:09
Exactly how we need to keep in mind both in terms of you know, setting up a channel is not just a quick fix. If someone decides to do that they should take into account both community management, social customer care, reporting on analytics, and all those performance metrics. And I think that’s a big part of, you know, having a company the size on social media, because it’s very different from doing social media as a private individual or even for a startup or a smaller agency.

Carlota Pico 6:44
Absolutely, absolutely. The economic consequences of the Coronavirus pandemic are far reaching and advertising and marketing budgets were amongst the first things to go really within a business and people were also cutting back on influencers and different marketing initiatives. For that reason, I’d like to ask you about the major lessons that you’ve learned about marketing during this time. And what do you think the future of marketing will look like post COVID-19?

Linda Ghabain 7:19
Yeah, that’s a good question! I think no one no one knows for sure what the future of marketing looks like after this pandemic. But I think one of the main lessons that I’ve learned are primarily to be more agile, on marketing. Social media, in general needs to be more agile. So whenever we go live with a campaign, just these past six to eight weeks have really shown me that we can work faster and we can work better. And I think in a nutshell, it might apply to the saying that you know, done is better than perfect. And as long as we test and learn, I think we’re going to be fine. At the same time, I’m a bit disappointed that, you know, I’ve seen a lot of companies reducing their paid media budgets. And I’m not quite sure that’s the right tactic, if I look at it long term, because I think if you have the budget to invest in it now, I think you will end up winning in the long term. Obviously, you need to look into the resources and see if you can afford to do both branding campaigns and shorter lead gen campaigns at the same time. But in general b2b…in the b2b space, it’s a lot of, you know, campaigns that see the light of day for six months, and then then that’s done then we move on to that next campaign and next campaign. So we don’t really have that many branding campaigns as you would have in the b2c space.

Carlota Pico 8:52
Right. spinning off of that response. I do want to talk about some of the tactics that you’re using right now to attract the right type of attention to your brand, because there’s a lot of noise out there when it comes to social media networks and brands trying to engage with their audiences. What are some of the strategies that you’re currently implementing across your channels?

Linda Ghabain 9:13
Well, again, it depends on the market. So I could give you a good example. Lately, we’ve been looking into setting up Facebook live sessions. We are testing that out in the US market. Actually, today it’s the first one the first live session that we’re going to host. It’s one of the… yeah, it’s part of a series of Facebook live sessions. And then if we see that works, we will replicate it to the other markets.

Carlota Pico 9:41
Okay, what is the—

Linda Ghabain 9:42
Please, a reason, you know video content…we’ve seen that both both coming from brands and coming from the social media giants. We’ve seen Facebook investing in Giphy. LinkedIn focusing more on video, video events and video calls. So I think that’s the natural next step for us to focus on as well, whether that’s a webinar or a live session or an interview, you know, that’s up to us to decide depending on the campaigns we have. But I think video going forward is is definitely here to stay.

Carlota Pico 10:13
Okay, what do you think about TikTok then, spinning off with that question, especially for a b2b type of company?

Linda Ghabain 10:21
Yeah. Oh, well, I think TikTok is having its moments for sure. And I’ve tested it already. And I think it’s, it’s fun, and it’s great for, you know, the younger generation. So it’s probably where Snapchat started. But for b2b, I don’t really see us starting a TikTok account anytime soon. Also, because our audience simply might not be there yet. It’s not to say that we won’t have it ever, but probably not right now. It’s not it’s not a priority.

Carlota Pico 10:55
Okay, so then what do you think is missing in the world social media networks?

Linda Ghabain 11:02
That’s a good question…

Carlota Pico 11:03
Especially for a business to business type of company, let’s limit it to b2b.

Linda Ghabain 11:10
Well, obviously, the primary channels for a b2b company is LinkedIn, and Facebook. So…and YouTube, of course, for the search functionalities. But I would like to see a lot more, you know, a lot more of the functionalities that I see on Facebook, I would like to see them on LinkedIn as well. I’ve seen recently that LinkedIn has rolled out stories, which are the equivalent of Instagram stories or the way Snapchat works. And I’m not quite sure if that’s the right way to go. Simply because, you know, fundamentals are not there yet for LinkedIn. Before we can focus on… what what this means to us that, you know, we need to create more content that would cater to a LinkedIn story format now, and before we go in that space, I think we really need to hone in on the quality of the content we feed LinkedIn in the in the news feed first.

Carlota Pico 12:10
Okay.

Linda Ghabain 12:11
Also because LinkedIn—in terms of organic reach—are, I would say where Facebook were in 2012 before, you know, before you had to pay for, for every reach. So I think there’s there’s a huge potential on LinkedIn that we need to focus on before we move on to newer channels like, you know, TikTok and…

Carlota Pico 12:39
Okay, Linda, I am going to pick your brain a little bit more about this last response. So what’s missing on LinkedIn, then? What Facebook functions would you add to LinkedIn if you had the opportunity right now to speak to its founders or to speak to its management team?

Linda Ghabain 12:57
Yeah, that’s a funny question because I actually had a few weeks ago, one of the LinkedIn employees, they shared a question asking if if they should roll out LinkedIn stories or not, before they actually rolled it out. So I had the same kind of answer. You know, first of all, I think we need to have a better overview of the analytics in LinkedIn. I think that’s a big part that’s missing there. Like we don’t we have very limited overview of our audience within LinkedIn, compared to Facebook, where you can see really anything from interests to age groups to location to anything. So I think that it’s not to say that they’re not working on it. It’s just probably they’re not prioritizing that right now.

Carlota Pico 13:47
Right. Okay. So your main feedback would be to add more analytics so that you can use those analytics to later on zoom into more niche audiences.

Linda Ghabain 13:57
Exactly.

Carlota Pico 13:59
That’s fair enough. As a social media expert, I would expect you to want more analytics across your social media channels.

Linda Ghabain 14:08
I’m a big fan of that.

Carlota Pico 14:10
We all are we live in the world of data, right? So data right now is our number one will these, for me data is of utmost importance as well. Now we are moving into the end of the interview. But before we finish up, I do want to put some of the theory that’s available online into practical examples. And for that reason, I’d like to ask you about a social media initiative that you’re particularly proud of its results and how you made that happen.

Linda Ghabain 14:43
Is that linked to the last six weeks or just in general or…?

Carlota Pico 14:47
Whatever you want! This is your opportunity to talk about some of the results and highlight some of those initiatives.

Linda Ghabain 14:56
Well, I think it’s a bit too early to evaluate on the initiatives we’ve started since February. But I think internally in terms of, you know, our team being quite agile and really working extra in these, these days where everyone’s working from home, I think people working in digital are actually working even more. I think that’s, that’s one of the things that maybe I can’t really quantify it in numbers, but I can really see the value of that. And I can see that, you know, this is something we really need to focus on going forward. And, you know, bring that even more into focus in in our both in our campaign production, even starting from the ideation phase to the actual kind of content production for every campaign that we have.

Carlota Pico 15:49
Right.

Linda Ghabain 15:49
So we have had a Corona campaign that was started in March. We didn’t really know where we want to go with it in the beginning. I think it was received quite well. And I’m looking forward to evaluating it at the end of this period. You know, we don’t really know what that is, but hopefully soon.

Carlota Pico 16:11
Yeah, I agree hopefully soon. Okay, well, in the last section of our interview, I am going to be asking you about a set of recommendations that you would offer to our audience. This would be our rapid fire set of questions. The first one being a lesser known app or tool that you can’t live without or that you can’t work without. It would be awesome if you could zoom into a social media tool, for example, because you are a social media expert, but if you want to talk about something that you can’t live without, that’s definitely okay also.

Linda Ghabain 16:50
Alright. So as a social media manager, I do have a ton of apps on my phone, so it’s pretty hard to pick one I will go with the social media management tool that we use every day. It’s called Falcon. So it allows us to both publish schedule content, engage with our customers and report on our content performance. And it’s a social media management tool that I’ve been using for the past six years, maybe. I’ve used other tools as well, but I think for a social media manager that that would be the primary app, you would always check first thing in the morning.

Carlota Pico 17:31
Okay, what makes it stand out compared to other management apps?

Linda Ghabain 17:36
Well, I think it’s mostly their customer service that it’s, you know, available 24/7, and it’s across the globe. I think that’s why it’s usually preferred to other smaller social media management tools. But again, it depends on the size of the company. So if it’s a big enterprise, and obviously this would be preferred, whereas smaller agency might not find it useful for you know, if you don’t have two or three social media channels and you’re only located in let’s say three, four markets.

Carlota Pico 18:08
Right, your response is definitely in line with your expertise as well because customer service is such a big topic and such a… such a… big…excuse me, I’m finding it hard to find the right word to describe how important customer service is because there is no word to describe its importance across different social networks and also across one’s website and also in apps itself. I feel like everybody always brings it back to customer service to how supported they feel by the brand and by its team. So thank you definitely for bringing that up. What about what about a marketing influencer in Europe that you follow?

Linda Ghabain 18:56
I follow a lot, a lot of both influencers and brands that I think are doing pretty good on social media. I follow a lot of news outlets. So it’s hard to pick one again. It depends on what it is I want more information on. Nowadays, of course, I check WHO, both social media channels and their website, quite often for, you know, updated news on on the corona pandemic. But I think I think it really depends on which industry you’re working in. And you know, it’s also quite helpful to get inspired from other industries even though you might not work in the same industry. It might give you ideas of, you know, constant production or for any new campaigns you might be having in the pipeline.

Carlota Pico 19:49
Yeah, definitely. I definitely follow in different influencers as a source of inspiration more than anything else, as well as information but more than anything, I followed them to be inspired, because there are individuals that I admire, either for their work or for their lifestyle.

Linda Ghabain 20:06
Yeah.

Carlota Pico 20:08
Great. And usually I would ask about a European industry group association or event that you particularly like. But in this case, I’d like to ask you about a hashtag, because you are a social media expert. So what hashtag would you recommend that our audience also follows?

Linda Ghabain 20:28
Well, nowadays, the hashtag would be #COVID19, unfortunately. I guess that’s the hashtag everyone checking in the industry and both in the industry and outside of industry. But I think in terms of events, I would probably choose the Web Summit as a go to European event, which hopefully will still happen online this year. I’m not sure.

Carlota Pico 20:55
I actually went to the Web Summit last year, and it was fantastic. I’m a big fan of the Web Summit as well, I’m also really big fan of Lisbon, to be honest. I think it’s a fantastic city. So it’s like a two for one, I get to visit the city at the same time I get to attend this fantastic event and network my way, my way through several different industry leaders and also meet people that really inspire me with their everyday work and learn about how they get things done, and adapt to different situations because I think one of the biggest challenges when it comes to marketing is not only having to adapt to COVID-19, but having to adapt to everyday situations because we do live in such an agile world world and our consumers are so demanding. So we constantly have to adapt to what they want and how they expect us to engage with the, which is a challenge, hey.

Linda Ghabain 21:51
Yeah, it is a challenge. That’s true.

Carlota Pico 21:54
Wonderful. Well, Linda, thank you so much for joining us on TheContentMix.com It was a pleasure to…to talk with you and to learn about your experience at Nilfisk and across your career. Thank you.

Linda Ghabain 22:08
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Carlota Pico 22:10
And for everybody listening in, thank you so much for joining us today. For more perspectives on the content and marketing industry in Europe, please check out TheContentMix.com. We’ll be publishing interviews, just like this one every week, so tune in and see you next time. Bye!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai