Digital strategy is a must for any company looking to communicate with its stakeholders via digital or social media. A panel of business leaders and digital managers at an Instinctif Partners event in London this week discussed just that.

The panel included Graze CEO Anthony Fletcher, Anna Granholm-Brun, digital content strategist at Maersk Group, Terri Lucas, director of marketing strategy at Hyman Robertson and Instinctif’s managing partner Tim Fallon. The discussion ranged from a look at innovation in B2C digital communications to changing perceptions in professional services and stakeholder engagement in a B2B landscape via social media.

“You have to see social media as a whole. All the elements are connected so you need to look at how it all comes together,” says Granholm-Brun. She discussed the ways in which Maersk Line built up a Twitter following from just 74 people to the more than 111,000 it has today. She admits to having coopted Coca-Cola’s successful strategy that a corporate website should be as exciting as social and consumer communications. Engagement has an impact not only on brand awareness and comms, but on employees’ loyalty to and understanding of the company.

On the B2C side of things, Fletcher recounted how Graze uses entirely social and digital means to gain feedback, engage with consumers and implement its services. “Food is one of the sectors least penetrated by technology,” he says, adding that that allows companies willing to innovate and use digital to their advantage to gain traction in the sector. Data, he says, can be a problem solver, and it was when the company launched in the U.S. It’s innovative postal tracking system received commendation from the postmaster general.

Lucas and Fallon discussed the ways in which consumers and employees are changing and how businesses must change with them. “Brands are having to create experiences and experiences create stories,” Fallon says as he discusses Instinctif’s corporate legitimacy concept – essentially, that a company must gain the trust of its stakeholders in order to maintain a sustainable business.

The event is the first in a series on digital business. See a recap of the event in the video below: