[Case Study] How beehiiv Built a Distinctive B2B Social Media Brand
There are a ton of people who are online and making content. But not everyone is gonna be able to translate that well into a brand social.
Hello, introduce yourself and briefly share what you do and your work
Hi! Nice to meet everyone. I’m Bella Rose Mortel, I’m based in Austin, Texas, and I’m currently the Social Media Strategist at beehiiv, a newsletter platform for growing and monetizing your audience. I’ve been in the newsletter / media / content space for a while. I came to beehiiv by way of Morning Brew’s branded content team and Workweek’s growth marketing team.
Since I joined beehiiv, we’ve grown to over 70k followers across platforms, and we work hard to make our social content more fun to see than the typical content in the B2B space. You can find beehiiv on X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.
How were you introduced to the social media industry?
Well, first of all, I would say that I genuinely enjoy social media. I’ve always enjoyed making my own silly little TikToks and curating my Instagram photo dumps. In my roles at Morning Brew and Workweek, I created social media content used as ads for multiple Morning Brew brands or Workweek brands. I think I’ve always wanted to do some sort of work in social media, and right now, I’m so lucky to be running the brand accounts for beehiiv!
I got my role at beehiiv through a connection! The newsletter/media world is so small. Turns out that my manager at Workweek knew the CEO at beehiiv, and after my Workweek internship was over, my manager introduced me to the beehiiv CEO over email. I initially interviewed for an open “Content Creator” contract role that beehiiv was looking for, but I somehow impressed them enough to make them give me the keys to the social media kingdom. I’m so grateful it worked out this way!
And what’s, in your opinion, one skill that helped you land a job managing a brand’s social media presence?
One of my opinions on working in social media is that you have to get someone who just “gets it,” and that’s kind of hard to find. There are a ton of people who are online and making content. But not everyone is gonna be able to translate that well into a brand social.
And so I think something important is someone who is online and who understands the jokes and understands how to curate this sort of message into a way that’s gonna land from a meme, or it’s gonna land from a video, or it’s gonna land in this like super straight up clear type of like written post.
So, I’ll say it: I think I get it.
I think that I get the vibe, but I also don’t want to ignore the fact that my manager at Workweek knew Tyler. And so I got that warm intro. Shout out to my manager. I love him. He’s the best. He definitely vouched for me and got me in the door. So that’s a big part of it, too. Knowing the right people but also, knowing what you bring to the table.
What would be your advice to someone who wants to become a social media professional?
If you want to be a social media professional, the easiest way to get “experience” is to actually use the apps. Actually, spend time on social media. It sounds obvious, but I didn’t have formal “organic social” experience before getting my job at beehiiv, but boy was I chronically online. Organizations will want someone who just ‘gets it,’ and make sure that’s you!
When you finally get the job, don’t wait so long to start posting. I made this mistake when I started at beehiiv with all of this overplanning and strategy, I waited weeks before posting our first new piece of content and had 20 slide presentations about our brand voice. You have to know that you don’t know what your audience will like or resonate with until you actually know. The only way to know is to experiment and post a lot early on. Even if you nail down a strategy or a content type, things are going to change every 6 months anyway, and you’ll have to adjust.
Repurpose content more than you think you should. People have the shortest memories ever. If you are not absolutely sick of talking about something, you probably haven’t talked about it enough.
You will get caught up in this cycle where you want this dopamine rush of something going viral. Remember that not all good content is viral content, and not all viral content is good content. The best social pages have a mix of content meant for eyeballs and content made for retention and education of your target audience.
You can’t expect an unfunny person to make the most unhinged social media content. In my opinion, people just want to enjoy what they see on their timeline. A lot of times that means a good, relatable joke.
Let’s talk now about beehiiv’s B2B social media marketing strategy. Something that stands out is how all the employees seem to be heavily invested—using the bee emoji in their username and posting regularly about the company and the product. Is it part of a deliberate strategy, or did it just happen naturally?
Our leadership and early employees did that before I joined the team. They were posting a lot from their social media accounts to be high off the ground and get the word out about beehiiv. So, they were really leveraging their personal brands before I joined the team.
But since I joined the team, I’ve definitely wanted to motivate the team to have more of these like mini beehiiv influencers and turn our employees into advocates for the company. So I definitely tell everybody to put that bee next to their name because that is now like a status symbol, and I feel like people whenever people see that bee next to people’s names, their reaction is, “oh my god, they work at beehiiv.”
It’s just a really small thing that compounds over time because of that brand recognition. Now that we own this emoji, every time you see a bee, people will think of beehiiv. And we have a social media onboarding for new employees, so whenever we have new employees join the team, I give them a quick 15-minute presentation about how we show up online, and I kind of give them a brief overview of ways that they can use and leverage their personal brand to talk about beehiiv and also grow their own audience. So it’s not just one-sided.
We give the team guidelines and content ideas. But I feel like people kind of see the vibe, though, within working at beehiiv. Obviously, no one’s forced to be a beehiiv influencer because we have people who are not on social media. They don’t like to post, they don’t like having their photo online, and their name online. So we’re obviously not gonna force them to do it.
Our founding team, Tyler specifically, our CEO, does a really great job talking about how he’s built beehiiv with our co-founders, and he writes a newsletter all about beehiiv and how he runs the company. There are a lot of different little avenues where different parts of the beehiiv story are coming out online. I don’t see many companies really leaning into employee advocacy the way we do. I think it definitely sets us apart in the industry.
It sounds like X/Twitter is a big player in your B2B social media strategy. Can you walk us through the other platforms you’re active on and the role each one plays?
I think that our biggest go-to hub is Twitter still. I would say we have a very engaged community there. We have a lot of people liking and replying, people excited about our product updates, and those really pop off on Twitter.
LinkedIn is the one that I’m most excited about right now. When I first started running beehiiv socials, Linkedin wasn’t my favorite platform because it felt too buttoned up. I started integrating more of our humorous and team content onto Linkedin, and it quickly became the platform where our following is growing the fastest. We’ve been seeing a lot of success with short-form videos on Linkedin, and I’ve even taken some TikTok-esque humor and formats there, and it’s been working well for us. I’m planning to increase the amount of videos we’re posting, both humorous videos but also with case study videos about our users.
We also post all of our tutorials on YouTube, as well as some growth strategies and things like that. People go to our YouTube channel to learn how to use the product.
We still have a presence on Instagram and TikTok, which are experiencing slower growth. We’re in a unique position where it makes sense for us to be kind of everywhere because not only do we want these newsletter media people, but we’re also trying to reach an audience of influencers, content creators, and people with these really large audiences on social media. Those people are on Instagram. Those people are on TikTok.
Thanks to the haters for engaging with my content!
Are there any brands or accounts that you love and feel are nailing having a unique, interesting voice online?
tl.dv has such a unique social presence!! They’re an AI meeting recorder / Chrome extension. But what I really like about their videos is that they make them about their target customer. Every video is a funny skit about a relatable experience between the sales guy, the UX guy, the engineers, the CEO, the marketing guy.
Those are all the types of people who tl.dv want to use their product, and I think it’s done in such a creative way and they are not over-selling the product literally at all.
I’ve talked to one of their content creators / social media managers, Ian, and he’s such a smart and funny guy. He’s really doing a great job with it. It’s fun to see these other B2B social accounts really doing well.
Now, a round of rapid-fire questions…
What’s your most controversial social media hot take?
Personality matters.
Not sure if that’s super controversial, but you can’t expect an unfunny person to make the most unhinged social media content. In my opinion, people just want to enjoy what they see on their timeline. A lot of times that means a good, relatable joke.
The job is 100000000000x easier (and more fun) if you’re silly, goofy, witty, and like to make jokes in your day-to-day life.
What’s your screen time and most used app?
My daily average is 6-7 hours.
And my most used apps are definitely social, going back and forth between TikTok and Instagram.
Have you ever gone viral for something completely unexpected?
YES haha. I had been working at beehiiv for maybe 4 months, and I got out of a meeting that felt really serious the whole time, and we didn’t spend much time with pleasantries or anything. I usually love the 5 minutes at the beginning of a call when you can talk about anything and just catch up.
But, as soon as I left this meeting, I made a light-hearted video about how I thought we didn’t laugh enough or have enough fun. I thought it was going to get max 300 views – it turns out it got over 960k! I showed it to the team, and everyone thought it was funny.
That was the start of 3-4 videos I made as replies to comments on that video, which (later) inspired my very own newsletter, The Personality Hire.
What’s your go-to strategy for dealing with internet trolls? Are you a muter or a blocker?
I am a muter/hide the comment. I will only block you if I’m getting tagged in stories telling me that they can get me 10k followers. I think if something is getting comments that aren’t ideal, we can leave them there. Thanks to the haters for engaging with my content!
And last but not least, where are all the places people can find you?
@bellarosemortel everywhere! Twitter, Linkedin, TikTok, Instagram & I write The Personality Hire newsletter on beehiiv, of course 🙂
