Recently, Rachel Karten — author of the Link in Bio newsletter — ran a survey asking 800 marketers a simple question:
Which brands are crushing it on social media right now?
When she shared the results, something interesting (and kind of shocking) stood out to me:
Not a single B2B brand made it to the top 10.
And honestly? I wasn’t surprised.
Because a few months ago, while researching B2B and SaaS companies for a project, I noticed the exact same pattern playing out across their feeds.
Not even a single B2B company made it to the list.
A few months back, I was researching B2B/SaaS companies’ social media for a project and I noticed a trend among almost all of them.
All B2B/SaaS brands are acting like consumer brands on social media.
They’re posting a lot of memes, TikTok-style content, jumping on trending bandwagons all the stuff you’d expect from Duolingo or Poppi.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this kind of content.
In content strategy, there’s no “should” or “shouldn’t’ (as long as you don’t deviate from your brand voice). If it works, it works.
But here’s the problem:
I keep seeing them stick with this strategy even when the data is screaming that it’s not working.
You scroll through their feed, and it’s meme after meme, trend after trend, with some value-added posts sprinkled in between.
Then you look at the engagement and it’s embarrassing:
500K followers getting less than 0.5% engagement
100K followers struggling to hit even 1% engagement
And no, it’s not “the algorithm” working against them. If anything, algorithms favor trend-based content. It’s the content.
It’s uninspired. It’s misaligned.
And here’s the thing:
There’s a reason there’s only one Duolingo. One Ryanair. One Morning Brew. One Poppi. One Surreal.
Guess what’s common in all of them? They all have their own distinct style and voice. These brands do what they do because they know their audience.
Over time, they’ve carved out a strategy that fits them. It’s their signature.
Ryanair can tweet absurd stuff and be unhinged because they’re talking to college students booking €20 flights.
Morning Brew delivers business news with sharp wit and sketch-style comedy as it fits their tone, their audience, and their brand DNA.
But you? You’re selling CRM tools to executives in suits and you’re going unhinged, hoping it feels edgy and somehow drives results? It won’t. It is clearly not.
Do you really think they laugh at the same jokes 20-year-olds do? Their humor is different.
And don’t say, “We’re being experimental.” Yeah? You’re being experimental and that’s why, in the past year, you haven’t posted anything new or original. Just what everyone else is doing.
True experimentation means developing fresh ideas, innovative formats, and unique content angles that actually speak to your audience’s needs.
Copy-pasting what everyone else is doing isn’t experimentation. Or is it?
What’s the solution? I don’t know for sure.
But I believe many of these brands would be better off hiring an in-house creator:
– Someone who’s an expert in the domain
– Who speaks their language
– Who deeply understands the industry
– Who can translate things into compelling stories
– Who doesn’t need to force memes or awkward trend-hopping to stay relevant
Instead of relying on generalist social media managers who gets inspired by following few consumer brands and totally misses out the nuance.
Let me know your thoughts on this!
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