Not in themselves it may seem?

We hit a tipping point in July, 51% of the global population is now on social media, therefore if you are not, you are in the minority. Check out the full report here .

Social media is baked into everything that we do. Do we even consider that we are using social media anymore. The fact that Google, Zoom, Uber etc are now verbs suggests it is now just part of what we do every day.

Yet in the corporate world, it is still on a learning curve around all of this. Yes corporates use social media channels, but this is typically at the broadcast level, broad messaging for "brand" awareness. It is not at the human level. This is where they need to be. It would seem the same is for VCs and Private Equity.

There are 2 plays here.

Origination :

The first is, as Katie articulately writes, for helping raise awareness of the VCs to their intended audience - ie their next investment and / or co-investors. VCs and PE firms can use this as a way to highlight what they will and won't invest in. Share valuable insights and learnings for their intended audience on what their successful investments and exits have typically looked like.  The do's and do not's if you will. 

As Katie goes on to say, there needs to be a mixture of content, audio, video, blogs etc. 

The key to all of this is, do not just rely on your social media team or marketing team to be sharing the content. The individual Principals / Partners / Directors / Associates need to be engaging themselves and leveraging their networks. That is who your intended audience wants to be talking with. The experts who will help them realize their business goals.

I was once told "To change the narrative, you have to be part of the conversation" which is a great way to look at social media in a business context.

In the current climate, where one cannot go to conferences and expos, we all have access to one of the biggest conferences in the world, and it is happening right now. LinkedIn. Their latest stats put it 706 million members and growing.

A quick search on LinkedIn Sales Navigator shows there are over 1million privately owned businesses, who are 1- 10 in employee size and have the word "Founder" in their profiles. Granted, not all of them will be seeking investment, however, I guarantee there will be some who are the next $bn business. Time to go find them.

Point 2 

Flip it on its head - how are your portfolio companies leveraging all of this to drive revenue? That's why you invest in them in the first place, right? 

You have seen people mentioning social selling, digital selling, modern selling, virtual selling - they are all one and the same. Social Selling is the original thinking and framework around all of this.

For all of this to be successful, you need to change your perception of what social media is in the 21st Century and how you can use it in a business context.

I will end on a quote from Simon Kemp who published the report I linked at the beginning 

"Given the broadening role of social media in people’s lives, it’s important that marketers and communicators think more broadly about where social media fits in their plans.

Critically, social media is increasingly a ‘layer’ that permeates almost every aspect of our audiences’ daily lives, rather than being a distinct ‘destination’ with a more siloed sphere of influence.

The trick to making the most of social media today is to understand how these platforms can complement and augment all of our marketing and communication activities.

My advice would be to think less about populating a content calendar, and focus more on identifying and initiating the conversations that matter most to you and the audiences that you care about. "