Behind the Post is a podcast by Social Media Managers, for Social Media Managers.
From cracking the code of algorithms to crafting thumb-stopping content, host Alina Dallal takes you on a thrilling journey behind the scenes of what it truly takes to captivate online audiences. The conversations are as diverse as the platforms they discuss, covering everything from the psychology of engagement to the latest trends that redefine the social media game.
Behind the making of B2B Social’s Rising 30 with Alina Dallal
Host Alina Dallal and CMO Colin Day discuss Alina Dallal's creation and execution of B2B Social's Rising 30 campaign, revealing how to build impactful, community-driven initiatives.
5 May 2026TRANSCRIPT
How WD grew their LinkedIn following from 600K to 800K in less than a year
In the world of B2B social media, there is often a great divide: the "Organic Island" focused on storytelling and the "Paid Powerhouse" focused on demand gen. But what happens when you bridge that gap?
Ask Melissa Dawson (https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissdawson/), Corporate Social Media Lead at WD (https://www.linkedin.com/company/western-digital/), who drove a massive 30% follower growth and over 80 million impressions in just one year.
In this episode of Behind the Post, Melissa breaks down the strategy that took WD’s LinkedIn following from 600K to 800K. She challenges the notion that organic and paid should live in separate silos, arguing that treating them as distinct entities is the biggest mistake a B2B team can make. Melissa shares her "social-first" approach to translating complex topics like AI infrastructure and sustainability into engaging content, while revealing the specific performance indicators, like the nuances of engagement rate, that signal when it’s time to put dollars behind a post.
From leveraging high-level brand storytelling to humanizing a technical brand through employee stories, Melissa provides a tactical roadmap for social media managers looking to justify a bigger budget and reach the right people. Whether you’re a team of one managing both sides of the coin or trying to align with a separate demand gen team, this episode is packed with insights on how to make your audience the true north of your strategy.
Hot Topics:
Why treating paid media as a distribution channel and organic as "the real work" is a missed opportunity
How to use engagement rates and content pillars to decide exactly which posts deserve a budget boost.
The specific types of storytelling and employee-centric content that drove 200,000 new followers on LinkedIn.
How to build a business case for social media budget by focusing on audience precision over vanity metrics.
14 Apr 2026TRANSCRIPT
Building from scratch: How to bake an advocacy program that’s a total showstopper
What do you do when you’re tasked with launching an employee advocacy program from absolute zero? If you’re Keara Klose, the Social Media Manager at TTEC Digital, you roll up your sleeves and go "super duper grassroots".
In this episode, Keara joins us to share her incredible journey of building a pilot program manually, using nothing but Teams chats and pure tenacity, and how she eventually leveled up to a professional-grade strategy with Oktopost.
Keara dives into the early days of coaching advocates on LinkedIn basics and profile polishing, all while acting as a human "copy-paste" machine to get posts live. While her manual efforts were a massive success in proving the concept, Keara explains the "aha!" moment when scaling required a real solution. We discuss how moving to a dedicated tool transformed the advocate experience from a time-consuming chore into a seamless "two-click" process.
Beyond just sharing content, Keara reveals how she uses the tool to track explosive growth and foster friendly competition through automated leaderboards. Whether you're looking to move away from manual spreadsheets or want to learn how to bake feedback into your program to avoid burnout, Keara’s tactical advice is the secret ingredient you’ve been looking for.
Hot Topics:
Why starting scrappy is often the fastest way to prove and scale an advocacy program
How making advocacy effortless is the key to driving real, consistent adoption
Why visibility, results, and a little competition dramatically boost engagement
How balancing structure with flexibility helps advocates show up more authentically
Inside a recent episode
Behind the making of B2B Social’s Rising 30 with Alina Dallal
Published 7 May 2026 · Transcript excerpt
[…] And I was very fortunate enough to go on this journey at Octopost, speak to loads of our customers, to our marketers, and really understand the kind of things that they're doing. And I also learned through stepping into B2B social when I turned up at Octopost stores is that it's so misunderstood People see it as an intern's job. It's something really easy. It's not. It's really strategic. It's really creative. It drives real business value. And B2B, by the way, is anything but boring. And I'm determined to prove that. So it didn't take that long for me through speaking to our customers, speaking to people in the sales journey at Octopost and all different things that this is a very underrepresented profession and it doesn't get the credit it deserves. […]
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