AMA: Apollo.io Director of Social, Community & Customer Marketing , Katie Jane Parkes on Social Media Marketing Strategy

For me, it’s less about a 50/50 split and more about a flywheel. If you think about social as a distribution engine, every piece of content has to earn attention first. That means leading with value (insights, humour, relatability, or customer proof) so people actually want to engage. Then, once you’ve built trust and momentum, promotional content performs better because it doesn’t feel like an interruption or out of left field. It feels like the natural next step. At Apollo, that’s meant: Using ...Read More

The mistake I see a lot of teams make is continuing to measure their social media impact with just vanity metrics: likes, impressions, follower growth. Those still matter for directional awareness, but they don’t tell you if social is actually fuelling the business. For demand generation, I bucket metrics into three layers: Attention Metrics (Top of Funnel) Impressions, reach, shares, and engagement rate, number of non-followers we're reaching. These tell me if our content is breaking through an ...Read More

First, I don’t start with “how do we go viral.” I start with: what conversation does our audience already care about? And how can we show up in it in a way that feels both native (ownable) and distinct? At Apollo, some of the posts that have generated the biggest reach and inbound demand didn’t look like campaigns at all. They looked like memes, spicy hot takes, or UGC-style videos that captured the pain of being in sales. That relatability is what gets you viral reach. The key is pairing it wit ...Read More

I think about social proof as more than just a quote graphic or testimonial about how much they love the product. It's about turning customer success into content people actually want to watch and engage with. Here’s how I've done it at other organizations and how we're starting to build it out at Apollo: Tier your stories. Not every customer asset has the same purpose so break different types of customers into categories that make sense for company. Here's an example:• Tier 1 marquee / big bran ...Read More

I think of social listening as free, real-time market research. The goal isn’t just to track brand mentions, it’s to understand the conversations, frustrations, and jokes your audience is having every day, so your demand gen and content strategy reflects reality instead of assumptions. Here’s how I put it into practice: Map pain points. We pay close attention to Reddit threads, LinkedIn comments, and even other meme and video formats in the sales world. The things real reps vent about (bad cold ...Read More

On social, you need to expect that you might people where they are in different stages of their buying journey, so you need a constant mix of tones, formats, and call-to-actions. Here’s how I break it down generally: Top of Funnel (Awareness) — 60% of content Goal: earn attention, build trust, drive relatability. Content: memes, hot takes, thought-provoking stats, UGC videos. Personalization here = speaking to the emotions and pain points of your ICP. For sellers, that means humour about quota, ...Read More

I treat influencer marketing as an extension of our community and content strategy. The goal isn’t just reach; it’s credible reach that we can experiment with and then turn into demand. Here’s how I approach it: Build a tiered model. At Apollo we think of influencers / creators in three tiers:• Customers: power users who can share authentic wins.• Community creators: people active in sales/marketing spaces who make memes, videos, or content we know our ICP already trusts.• External B2B influence ...Read More