Embracing a Social-First Mindset in B2B (Colin Day)

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Welcome back to the podcast guys. Today we are joined by Colin Day, managing director and VP of business development at Octopost with a long track record across smart tech and fintech. Colin, welcome to the podcast. >> Thanks for having me. And uh hey that makes me sound very very old but to add one one job role to my extensive list that you uh rolled out. I'm also the chief marketing officer at Octopost as well. >> Would you share a little bit about your background and what you're focused on right now at Octopost? >> Yeah, so look Colin Dave as you mentioned been in business as you can tell this is not a young face. So uh been in and around the technology and financial services sectors for about 35 36 years now. Started off in product management, did some sales, did some marketing at a large financial technology company. I really cut my teeth or grew my wings, should we say, at a company called Sunuard, which we ultimately sold to a company called FIS and ended up becoming the first customer of a company called Octopost, which is where I I now work. So, uh, purchased licenses to the Octopost platform for my team back in 2015.

Like the product so much, couldn't quite afford to buy the company, so I joined it in March of 2020, and here I am today. You've said that B2B has to embrace a social first mindset to stay competitive. What do you think changed in the last 2 3 years that makes this nonnegotiable now? >> Yeah. So, look, I believe in it so much that I even wrote a book, right? It's like wrote a book with Daniel Kushner, the CEO and co-founder of of Octopost. We wrote this book and published it in April of 2025. So, it's an interesting question that you raised because we're actually thinking about writing book number two because so much has changed over the last 12 months. So, you say what's happened in the last 24 36 months. I'd actually say what's happened in the last 12 months. What's happened in the last 12 months is organizations in general, right? clamoring to understand how to use AI with inside their organizations to improve efficiency.

Companies are looking to get the speed of AI yeah with inside their traditional businesses but put you know guard rails and governance in place i.e. the human in the loop yeah to make sure that um you know AI doesn't overstep the mark. So that's some of the key things that our customers and the industries that uh we work with are certainly struggling with and that has a huge play. Yeah. On those companies that are looking to become social first organizations. This has a huge overlap and interplay or interoperability statement from an AI perspect and and those capabilities. >> And what will be in the book that you are planning to write? Let's get the crystal ball out and um you know if we think about the the social B2B organization, right? This is really a footprint on how do organizations use or change their mindset in order to become social first.

How do we use social media networks such as LinkedIn, not just as a brand awareness channel? Companies that um are just using LinkedIn to focus on their company page and get their company message out there is are missing the point. It's called social media. When was the last time you were social with a brand, right? People don't you don't get cool and jiggy. Yeah. With the brand. People have a conversation with people on social, right? And people they like and people they trust. Yeah. So, what we're all about at Opost is how do we enable those organizations Yeah. to be able to sure leverage the company page in order to use it for brand awareness um activities, but likewise, how do we empower yeah the organization from the top down, from the CEO down to someone on a factory floor in a manufacturing organization, right?

How do we empower those people across the enterprise to be able to take some of the company message or indeed curated content that the marketing team have created and empower them to share and amplify that across their own personal networks and then use the intelligence that comes back to drive other business behaviors. lead scoring, attribution modeling, segmentation, basically tie in that social engagement, that that activity that takes place all the way through to revenue. And that's what we do at Opost. That's problems that we help our customers solve on a daily basis. What's changed and what are we thinking of putting into uh book number two? It's that AI interplay. It's how as an organization do we empower authentic voices that we're able to take that authenticity, get the message out there, get the the the communication to go at the speed of AI. So, how do we use technology and AI initiatives? Yeah.

in order to take an authentic voice and stimulate the uh the conversation that needs to take place or should take place on social. >> And when you look at B2B teams trying to win on these social media platforms such as LinkedIn, what do you think are the two free plays that you see working consistently? And is there any misconception that people still have about social media? >> There's always going to be misconception that people have about social media, especially when everyone's trying to compete with the algorithms of the social networks. Everyone's trying to, you know, find the right play in order to get the algorithm to work for them, right? In order to get that competitive edge. Whether you be an individual contributor yet to to social or whether you be a brand, you know, running a uh an organic social strategy or or a wider organic and and paid strategy, everyone's always trying to compete with the algorithm. And that's where some of the myths, right, come about. Yeah.

And sometimes what may be a myth today or what may be an urban legend today may be reality tomorrow or something that may be reality yesterday is not reality today. Right? The networks are consistently changing yet the way that the algorithms work. So the the one thing that is consistent is change. Always has been, always will, right? Some people will call it change, some people will call it evolution, some people will call it a degrade, some people will call it an upgrade. So you know, it's wherever you're sitting on the side of the conversation, right? The one thing that is consistent is is change. Whether it's for the good or or or for the bad. Some of the other things to focus on is it's all well and good us having social conversations and and bringing social into the modernday sales and marketing mix. We hear a lot and there's a lot of talk if you went on LinkedIn and searched for social selling, right? There's a lot of conversation around social selling. Why is it called social selling? It's just selling. Yeah.

But guess what? The the channel that you're using, maybe it used to be a a trade show that someone would have gone to today, that conversation, the marketplace that you're meeting people on, right, um is is LinkedIn or other social networks do exist. It's all part of that evolution, right? Today it's social. Tomorrow, who knows? It may be the nanosphere or or something along those lines, right? Who knows where where the next marketplace is going to come from? >> Yeah. Change is definitely important and being able to innovate, >> innovate or die, right? To me, I'd always say, look, if a brand is not socially active and is not enabling their teams to be socially active, they've already lost out, right? Because if you're not having a conversation with your clients and your prospects on social media, someone else is, right? Someone else is already having that conversation. So, if you're not having it, who's filling the void? It's your competitors. Do you guys use AI in your business?

>> Yeah, that's that's a great question. In the business or in the platform, right, I'll give you a a look at both of those, right? In the platform, there's various aspects of the platform that uh the Octopus platform that that use AI, right? We started out from a generative perspective helping the social media managers, helping the employees who are creating content to go out on those social channels using generative um AI technology and capabilities in order to to do some of the heavy lift to help them ideulate some of the content creation process and help them do that at scale and at speed because AI is all about speed, right? It's it's about how do I do things, you know, quicker, more efficient. Um, and and from social, it's how do I build trust earlier in the sales process? Yeah. Before someone has even started to, you know, consider that they've got a a problem. How do I build that authenticity and how do I build that trust?

Some of the AI capabilities we've got with inside the Octopost platform started in the generative world um and now they're moving more into the agentic world across 2026 and beyond. We have a whole plan of new agents that we'll be launching and and rolling out into the platform. The very first one that is coming is to assist the advocate, the employee of the organization that wants to take curated content from the marketing team, turn it into their own voice, do that at scale, and then be able to publish that onto uh the relevant um social networks so that uh you know they've they're they're building their own personal brand presence and building their their thought leadership style. So that's some of how we do it inside the platform with inside the company all areas of of octopost right whether it be the finance team whether it be the operations team whether it be my marketing team or sales right we all have various aspects of the uh the business is is being assisted yeah not replaced but assisted by AI if I looked at my own world or the worlds that um I can control um you mentioned business development, right? And for us that means corporate business development, right? So, how are we growing the business through acquisitions?

How are we growing the business through third-party partnerships? Um, some of that uh research work is done using AI technology and AI capabilities, whether it be Gemini, Claude, Chat, GPT. maybe um my researchers the very first place they'll go is go and create a prompt to say hey look I'm looking to engage with companies that fit this profile can you give me the uh the top 10 in this particular sphere of marketing someone that fits this this profile if I looked across marketing it's how do I go about creating uh blog posts right like let me go through the ideation process let me go through copywriting process review and sign off process and let me use AI capabilities and technology to make me as a marketer more efficient but do that in a governed way in a a governed world. Make sure that um my brand guidelines are included in any content that I give to the prompt. Make sure that um the company tone of voice is provided to to the prompt. make sure that some historical examples are provided to the prompts so that um the LLM can understand how I go about writing as a content marketer at Octopost.

Just some examples and hopefully they're helpful to your audience. >> If there is a B2B company that's listening and want to build a predictable growth engine this year, what would you recommend to them? I love the term predictable growth engine. That's actually something that I talk about consistently with my team at Octopost. So, um, if I was talking to another peer from a a B2B organization in marketing or in sales, um, and a leader that was looking to, uh, understand how they go about building that engine or one would assume they've got an engine in the first place, how do you go about maybe tinkering with it to make sure that it's operating at its optimal capacity? Because look, as marketers, why are we here? What's our purpose? To grow shareholder value. Now, you could say, "Yeah, but not everyone's publicly traded." Doesn't matter, right?

There's still someone that's a shareholder of that company, whether it's public or or private, right? And the goal of the marketing team, in my view, my opinion, is to grow that shareholder value. The way that we do it is by advertising the products and services that we have with inside the organization that the organization is is looking to sell. Selling is a team sport and an important part of that team is marketing, right? So how do you go about getting that growth engine? The first thing is alignment, right? Alignment between marketing and sales. What is yeah the ideal customer profile. Do we all agree on that? Who are the people that are typically in the buying committee? Do we agree on that? Is that where my message as a marketer is is going to? Right? And then from a sales perspective, you know, once I get lead come over from marketing, do I trust them? Do I trust the data?

Do I trust that this is at the right time in the buying cycle, in the buying process? Have I got alignment and agreement on all of those? If the answer is yes, then guess what? You got a solid foundation. Yeah. If the answer is no, you got big problems, right? But um once you got that foundation, then it's about, you know, what are the marketing campaigns, programs, and tactics that we're now going to execute against in order to help our friends and colleagues in sales be successful. As a marketer at Octopost, I have a number. I I have a yearly commitment on revenue. Yeah. That my team are going to source for the organization. And that's a percentage of the overall number that my colleagues, my chief revenue officer has taken as his commitment for the year. So there's instant connection there because I've got to be successful in order for my sales colleagues to be successful. If there's a break in any of those, then the entire company isn't successful. So align alignment and trust are two very key things as you're building or or tinkering with that growth engine.

>> For people actually listening who maybe want to check what you do and learn more about Octopost, where should they go? >> That's a great question. You could go to our website which is www.otopost spelled o t o s t.com. You could go and follow us on LinkedIn. Other networks do exist. We are on those networks as well. Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, even Tik Tok, right? But Andex, you could go and find OctoPost there. You could come and find me, Colin Day on LinkedIn. That's my network of choice. Outside of that, go to Amazon, go put in the social B2B organization, buy a copy of the book, and uh hey, my family will be forever grateful with all of the royalties that coming off at the back. >> Perfect, Colin. Thanks again. I will add links so people can check you out. And >> Perfect. >> Thank you guys for watching. Hopefully that gave you some