Your Next Brand Advocate Might Have 800 Followers

Evan White featured in Senior Executive on where influence actually happens.

A big following looks great in a pitch deck. But when someone is deciding whether to trust your company, whose opinion actually matters?

That’s the question I explored in a recent Senior Executive article on social media shifts CMOs can’t ignore.

My take:

“Stop asking who’s got the biggest audience. Start asking whose opinion actually changes minds.”

It’s a useful question for any brand. For HR tech and B2B companies, I’d put it near the top of the marketing planning agenda.

Who would your buyer call?

Imagine an HR leader evaluating a new platform. They’ve seen the ads. They’ve watched the demo. Everyone’s website promises to transform something.

Before signing, they ask a former colleague: “Have you used these people?”

That’s the conversation I want brands to earn their way into.

A useful exercise: write down the ten people you’d want a prospective customer to call for an honest opinion about your company. Customers, practitioners, industry analysts, community organizers. Then ask whether those people know enough about your work to recommend it.

If the list is mostly your investors and your mom, there’s some work to do.

Give people something specific to recommend

“Great company” is nice. “They helped our HR team solve this exact problem” gives someone a reason to make an introduction.

Build your PR and content around that specificity.

For an HR tech company, that could mean a customer explaining how implementation worked, a founder answering a difficult buyer question, or a product expert walking through a problem without turning every sentence into a sales pitch.

Before publishing, ask: What could someone confidently tell a colleague after reading this?

If the answer is only your tagline, keep editing.

Make this part of your PR plan

When I’m thinking about a communications program, I want each opportunity to have a job. A podcast interview can address a buyer’s hesitation. An expert byline can explain a difficult decision. A customer story can show what working with the company actually looks like.

That gives you a better brief than “we need more exposure.”

Exposure to whom? And what should they understand afterward?

Read the full Senior Executive article here.

Want help turning your company’s expertise into a PR strategy that gives the right people a reason to recommend you? Let’s talk.