Megan Thudium of MTC | The Content Agency: How to Use LinkedIn To Dramatically Improve Your Business
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
… I would say is to engage in the community. The easiest thing you can do on LinkedIn is just to get onto the platform and start leaving authentic and original comments, building connections with people, connecting with new people within a niche.
As part of my series of interviews about “How to Use LinkedIn To Dramatically Improve Your Business”, I had the pleasure of interviewing
Megan Thudium is an American marketer working in Berlin, founder of MTC | The Content Agency. As a branding, content, and LinkedIn B2B marketing specialist, Megan works primarily with innovative tech brands in Germany and throughout Europe. These are startups and corporations focused on scaling their operations and offering their sustainable solutions into the native-English North American market.
Her agency infuses cutting-edge LinkedIn social selling and brand management strategy, content marketing, SEO, and thought-leadership best practices to drive awareness, credibility, and leads through a human-focused lens.
She’s an expert on all things B2B content marketing and building people-first business relationships on trending social networks like LinkedIn. Her strategic marketing insight has been featured in publications like Under30CEO, ClickZ, Advertising Week, European Business Magazine, Forbes, Business.com, Upwork.com, and Managers.org.uk.
You can find Megan on LinkedIn actively sharing insights and networking with technologists and B2B leaders. With her agency and clients, Megan is looking to make meaningful connections in today’s digital-first, socially-connected world.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I’m currently the CEO of MTC, a B2B content marketing agency in Berlin focused on sustainability and cleantech startups. I originally moved to Berlin because I wanted the experience of living in a different country. And I also wanted the business experience of owning an international company and working with people from other countries and other cultures.
I was involved in the startup community and technology developments, I like to know what’s happening in this space. Berlin naturally was a very comfortable fit for that, and I have been here for five years now. I don’t see myself leaving.
I’m really happy that we’re building our business here because MTC works with environmental companies. That’s our core passion project at the moment. And business community for the climate action space here in Berlin is ever-growing and really exciting. There are many innovative projects going on. We’re really happy to be part of and supporting that, and helping businesses get known in the market.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started this career?
I live in a foreign country and I have an international company — so there are always interesting stories to talk about! At the moment, I have a lot of great experiences working with different cultures. That alone is a collection of really interesting and intriguing moments. At MTC, we work with people from Germany, Spain, the US, the UK, Poland, Austria… Working with people from different cultures and hearing the differences between what they want and how they approach a project — even to the point of how much small talk are you allowed to have at the beginning of a marketing meeting! The most interesting story in my career and building my company is not necessarily a marketing-related one, but it’s how to work with people from different cultures and the fun tid-bits that come with that cultural exchange.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I first started my career in marketing at a nonprofit, a performing arts centre. I was 21 and very naive. I wanted to learn everything, and I was very ambitious. It’s not really a funny story, I just thought I was *the shit*… But that came with so many learning points: to listen to mentors, really listen to them and not think that you know everything. They have more experience, absorb that into your own career.
And don’t be in a rush to be the expert at everything. I mean, at the beginning of your career, it’s always a learning experience and a growing experience. You’re trying a lot of different things and seeing and feeling what you’re most passionate and excited about. And for me right now, of course, that’s content marketing and everything we do at MTC. I thought I knew what I wanted to do when I first started. Because I loved it, I thought nothing was ever going to change. But welcome to life! Things are always changing. And what we’re doing at MTC now is even cooler. Always look for opportunities to change, change is a good thing.
Which social media platform have you found to be most effective to use to increase business revenues? Can you share a story from your experience?
LinkedIn is the best social media platform for B2B businesses — 100%. It’s also helpful for people who want to grow their career, build connections and networks, find new job opportunities, etc. It’s an outstanding platform because it does very well organically. Other platforms are kind of tightening in and you have to basically pay to play. LinkedIn has really opened up and their business model allows anybody to really take advantage of the organic algorithm to get known and get out there. It has helped me with my personal brand. I’ve made lots of great connections on LinkedIn, with other female founders and marketing agencies worldwide. It’s also a platform to connect people and to build relationships with others.
Can you share 5 ways to leverage LinkedIn to dramatically improve your business? Please share a story or example for each.
So the first step on how to leverage LinkedIn is to optimise your profile. That is always the first thing. The profile is basically your storefront to your business and to your personal brand, whichever one is the end goal on LinkedIn. It’s everything: from making sure you have the correct settings so your profile is searchable and easy to find, to the content that you publish.
The second step, I would say is to engage in the community. The easiest thing you can do on LinkedIn is just to get onto the platform and start leaving authentic and original comments, building connections with people, connecting with new people within a niche.
Number three is consistency. I think when people go into LinkedIn, they have all this ambition and excitement, but then they realise that it actually takes work. That is essentially hard work to build up your personal brand, to maintain a presence — especially if you don’t have the time. This is why you reach out to an agency like MTC and have someone help you do it.
Spend something like 30 minutes on the platform every single morning, drinking your coffee, engaging, leaving comments, making sure that your posting is consistent throughout the week. People always ask me how many times they should be posting, and I say consistency is better than quantity. Post once a week and be consistent with that. Make sure you can be consistent and show up for your audience, be trustworthy.
Number four would be messaging. Because as we know, the way that you make sales and business connections is through conversation, engaging, and connecting with people. And a great way to do that naturally is through messaging. I think a lot of people on LinkedIn don’t use messaging correctly. They use it as a sales tool, they make a hard pitch from the beginning. Think about messaging as you would in a community or a networking event, you first connect with them. You do a little bit of chit chat, ask them how they are, hey, it was great to connect with you. But just personalise the conversation. It’s not just a business transaction. Good conversations lead to business opportunities.
Number five, I’d say quality content. I love content. Quality content is an important piece of the puzzle to dramatically improve your business presence on LinkedIn. You should be posting quality content that is unique and individual to you but also supports either product or service that you’re selling, or this piece of thought leadership that you want to become known for. So at MTC, we always create our content and LinkedIn strategy around three pillars, and one of those pillars is always a personality pillar. I mean, it’s a social media platform, people want to make connections with people and build up those relationships. So you need to show some sort of human side of your content.
Because of the position that you are in, you are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
If I could inspire a movement, I would inspire climate action. Bring more awareness towards the importance of climate action, and climate change, that they are a big deal. And I think most people are aware of it, but I’d like to inspire even the littlest action or behavior change: flying less, or eating more plant-based products. These little pieces of education, trying to inspire people to be a little bit more sustainably-minded and focused. And also to communicate to people that it’s a journey — a lot of times, people think they have to be perfect. You don’t have to be perfect to enact change!
Is there a person in the world or the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why?
I would love to have lunch with Michelle Obama. I really love Michelle Obama. She is a really strong woman and individual, very smart and clever. And she also did things for herself in her career even before she meant Barack. To me, she is the one who is really into hard work and getting things done. If you put the hard work in, you’ll get there and I really much admire that about her. Michelle was the one who kept the family together. How many women can do their thing — her think: bring more awareness to topics like health, food, obesity, and family — and keep the family together, and be in the public eye? She has a really great career and also kept her family together, travelled around the world… That takes a really special somebody, so I would love to have breakfast with her.
Thank you so much for these great insights. This was very enlightening!
Megan Thudium of MTC | The Content Agency: How to Use LinkedIn To Dramatically Improve Your… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.