Author: Tal Harel

Every founder wants their startup to be noticed. They want people to stop. Pay attention. And get passionate about an idea that they believe will make a significant impact on society.

And why do you care what other people think?

You care because the more people get behind you, the larger your audience and reach. Reach equals exposure. Exposure equals interest. And interest equals investors.

Good marketing efforts are important, but with tight budgets and large expenses, it’s hard to garner the attention you want with your limited resources.

That’s where thought leadership comes in.

As founder/co-founder/CEO, you are in a unique position to own the space, position yourself and your company as a leader, future, and trendsetter.

Investors are turning towards more than just a solid business plan (although don’t under-estimate its importance); they want to invest in the people they believe in. Investors are looking for startups with a solid foundation of experts in their field, with a breadth of knowledge that spans the industry.

A thought leader is someone who holds a unique perspective on a particular topic (or topics) based on their skill set, experience, or intelligence and who shares their thoughts and opinions with the public, mostly through various social media platforms.

If you need any more convincing, check out this study by Edelman showing:

55% of decision-makers say they use thought leadership content as an important way to vet business. 

Becoming a thought leader

Start by creating your own calendar, writing your social media posts, and organizing your content in advance. This allows you to keep true to your authentic self while giving you the space and time to organize your thoughts and opinions.

Set aside a certain amount of time a week to create your posts. The benefit of a fixed time is two-fold. It ensures you keep your thought leadership efforts alive, and it protects you from the one thing that is guaranteed to ruin everything. Overthinking. Overthinking will drag you down and drain your enthusiasm. Thought leadership is content that comes from you. Authentic, genuine, and individualized.

During the initial stages, your thoughts might feel rough, and somewhat fake. Persevere, it’s o.k. Especially if sharing your opinion publicly doesn’t come naturally to you, this is all a part of growth. Remember to imagine yourself talking to your audience in person. This should take away the fear of sharing in a permanence forum.

Thought leadership is the golden ticket you’ve been searching for. Optimizing your skills and knowledge will prove to investors to trust your startup in a way that no elevator pitch will.

Best of luck on your journey. Great things are in the pipeline for you. We can feel it.

2021 was a big one for us. We are so proud of how far Cognis has come and how big our team has grown. But most of all, we are so excited to reflect on the growth of our portfolio and the verticals that have joined the list of our valuable clients. Here are our top 3 picks.

Agri-tech-

One of our biggest projects this year was a client in Agri-tech. Not only did we participate in a new product launch, they even went on Television. We joined with two wonderful PR teams, based in the U.S and Israel and together, magic happened. Their LinkedIn numbers were incredible; with a jump of 200% in custom button links and 185% in new followers!!! In all honesty, we wish everyone a client like these- with stellar work ethics and the coolest personalities, we had so much fun working with them and look forward to continuing the relationship in 2022.

Finance-

Breaking into the finance industry is tricky business for a startup, luckily for them, our CEO’s background secured them the traction they needed. Not only did we work on their social media presence (duh,) we created a wide range of marketing and PR materials for them; such as newsletters, brochures, digital content, and PR’s. Fortunately for us, their offices are on stunning grounds, and they throw awesome parties- what could be better?

Digital Health-

After a year of Covid, it should come as no surprise that digital health is on our Top 3 list. Cognis has had many clients in Health-tech, but what stood out this year was the emphasis on remote health otherwise known as e-health or digital health. With the world focusing on adapting to remote capabilities in all arena’s many startups in the medical (remote) field, were keen to leverage this power and make 2021 their year. And make it we did. Our clients participated in a range of conferences across the globe (which we covered on social media so everyone could be a part of it) and the love came pouring in. From the ground up we built their social media presence together with our incredible team – and some new additions.

So here’s our Blessing for 2022; that it should be bigger and better than 2021! We can’t wait for this time next year to show you what we’ve done- we know there will be lots of hard work until then, but we are more than ready to smash it.

The Cognis family wishes you a Happy New Year, may all your dreams come true. Otherwise, you can always contact us to make them happen ????

When we look back at 2021, we can say with certainty that it was the year of social media for startups. We achieved impressive results for our customers, some that surprised even us. Below we compiled our most exciting why’s and how’s for you. So let’s dig in.

Customers
In 2021 social media took the number one place as THE tool to reach customers. Here’s why:
 It’s incredibly dynamic, showing progress metrics from day to day and allowing you to adapt quickly to what your customers want.
 It allows you to reach potential customers easily without capturing them (like you do with inbound marketing). Why is this important? Because it saves you money, is friendlier and looks less predative to the potential customers.
You know the classic inbound marketing process – Attract, Convert, Close, and Delight? We think the Attract and Convert stages could be more effective and cheaper on social media.
 It gives you opportunities to join a conversation, not just sell. Because selling by “not selling” is the biggest trend in sales right now.

Investors
2021 proved the power of social media marketing in startup funding in all rounds from A up to IPO. You can show the investor community what you’re doing and target specific investment companies and position holders with social media.

This year at Cognis, we used both organic and paid promotions on social media, and the results we achieved surprised even us. For example, we helped the investor community know about an IPO, helping generate awareness, interest, and stock buying.

Employees
Do you think finding customers and investors is a challenge? Try hiring a full-stack engineer. In 2021, employer branding became hot, red hot.

Many tech startups have Instagram accounts showing youngish people eating ice cream, sprawling on poofs, and drinking beer. But to attract serious talent, you have to dig deeper.

For example, show your employees – present and future – that you read about them. That you give them good training and fair compensation programs, that you help them keep a good work-life balance through a hybrid workplace.

How? When you post your jobs on LinkedIn, when you upload employee spotlights, showcase employee experience. Many times, after changing a LinkedIn job post description, our customer was finally able to nail that elusive DevOps engineer.

The scarcity of tech employees coupled with the post-Corona great resignation turned the job market into an employee’s market. And we saw it as our job to enlighten customers and help them understand this new reality.

For us, this switch to seeing your employees as your prized customers is the biggest trend of 2021.

Happy new year, everyone, and let’s see what 2022 brings us.

Social Media paid campaigns, otherwise known as Social PPC (Paid Per Click) can be very powerful. However, like any source of power, you have to know when to shoot, how much force to use and most importantly – who you are aiming at.

Anyone can open up an ad account on any social media platform and begin operating a paid campaign. But then most likely you’ll be flushing money down the drain.

Case in point:

After an initial meeting, a client decided to start a PPC Campaign on Instagram with the goal of increasing company awareness. Before every paid campaign, @Zeev, our partner and the best PPC guy in town, holds a meeting to understand the campaign, give his two cents on the kind of posts that should be promoted, explain the process, and most importantly – synchronize the desired outcome with the client.

This client chose to skip this important meeting and asked us to proceed with the goals they had outlined.

Take a look at the results of this campaign below:

As you can see, the results from the PPC Campaign could be interpreted as fantastic: increased company awareness was achieved, attested by the amount of LIKES the promoted post received.

The client, however, was confused as to why the number of their FOLLOWERS stayed the same.

Now, when the client realized that it was in their best interest to meet with Zeev and us; we explained that in order to increase the number of FOLLOWERS, the aim of the campaign had to change.

PPC Campaign redone

We ran a second campaign with the new goals. Take a look at the results:

Conclusion:

As a CEO, you marketing strategy so may think you know how to run your social PPC Campaigns. But social paid campaigns are complex, and they often require a careful interplay between organic and paid posts in order to achieve return on investments.

You need someone who has expertise in the field. And it’s always wise to meet with your PPC Manager; lay out the aim – be sure that what you’re aiming for is achievable or even necessary, understand the means (paid plus organic), and execute them, so you can truly leverage social PPC to achieve your business goals.

After unveiling a new feature, LinkedIn Stories, with much fanfare on September 2020, LinkedIn shut it down less than a year later. The fate of its equivalent on Twitter ‘Fleets’, was the same. Although the feature was beloved by advertisers, this didn’t come as a surprise to anyone who is active on the two platforms.

Writing on the wall

So why did everyone see the writing on the wall while LinkedIn and Twitter were seemingly in the dark? Why did the Instagram Story become and remain a stunning success, while a similar version of the feature on LinkedIn and Twitter was a cataclysmic failure?

The answer is that even the largest corporations sometimes forget the number one 1 rule: always stay true to your mission statement. Because if you do not know your own self, you cannot expect this of others.

Let us explain.

Currently, there are seven social media platforms that claim more than one billion monthly active users, each of them competing for their competitor’s audience.

History has shown that when one platform unveils a successful new feature, the competing platforms will rush to introduce a similar version, often without analyzing whether it provides benefit to their users.

Let’s take a closer look at the mission statements of Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn:

Instagram: “to capture and share the world’s moments.”
Twitter: We serve the public conversation….to strengthen our communities…to give everyone the power to create and share ideas…free and global conversation.
LinkedIn: To create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce…connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.

Note how the focus differs on each platform.

While one platform highlights sharing moments, namely images, another puts emphasis on conversation and community and the third on professionals and the workforce. Their separate values and focus constitutes their unique selling proposition and the reason people signed to each one and stay engaged and active on their platform.

The Stories feature on Instagram adds value by enabling the user to create a richer and poignant depiction of their “moments”, to express their moments better. Understandably, people on LinkedIn and Twitter are not interested in showcasing visually based moments. They are here for conversation, or alternatively to connect to other professionals. That is what the two platforms forgot.

Copying isn’t always bad

When Twitter unveiled its new feature; Tip Jar the world said, “Yes!”- it showed an understanding of the needs of their users and added-value, all while staying true to their mission statement.

When TikTok followed suit two weeks ago– the world continued expressing support. The aim to ”reward creators by making it easier for them to receive payment for their work” adds value to users on both platforms.

All eyes are on Twitter who last week revealed their latest addition, ‘Twitter Blue’ which allows users to subscribe to get additional offerings and features. If successful, which platform will turn copycat?

We’ll find out soon enough.