How Content Makes Social Selling Successful

Social Selling

Social selling is important nowadays for your business and effective, compelling content is at the heart of successful social selling. With so much interaction for your business online, it is extremely important that your content does exactly what you need it to do in order to make your business a raging success.

The power of social media platforms

Chances are that you have chosen the social media platforms that work most effectively for your business and you use them on a regular basis to interact with your online business connections. You may or may not be extremely comfortable with interacting online but even if you are, there is a chance that you are not even aware yet how much social media and social selling can do to bring your business to the next level when it comes to connecting with B2B companies. There are several different really good reasons why you should be doing this if you haven’t started doing it already. Some of those are:

  • To provide useful information to your online connections.
  • To generate leads.
  • To connect with prospective customers. Once you have been able to do that, you will want to solidify the relationship that you have been able to form.
  • To push your products and/or services.
  • To eventually sell your products and/or services. 

However, it is extremely important to bear in mind that although the reasons listed above are all legitimate, your approach must be considered very carefully and you must keep the other person’s wants and needs in mind at all times. Of course, as was stated above, your content is at the heart of anything and everything that you communicate online and that also applies to social selling. Great content and social selling go hand in hand. There are several steps that you should follow in order to leverage your content as much as possible so that the desired result is a booming success.

  • Marry your content to your online marketing strategy: If you write your content the way that it should be written, you will successfully address all of the milestones of your online marketing strategy. It is important that you marry specific content to specific aspects of your strategy.

    [tweetthis]Your content will help your online connections to respond positively to what you are offering.[/tweetthis]

    It is important to make sure that you include helpful information for your readers so that they can use your tips to improve upon what they have. If you can manage to do that, the next time they need that sort of help, you will be the first person they contact.

  • Use your staff effectively: As  much as you may feel as though you are the only person who can possibly manage the content and truly leverage it, it is important for you to recognize that you are only one person and if you spread yourself too thin, it won’t help anyone or anything to succeed.

    If you work with other people, you should make the most of their skills and expertise. Being delegate for the greater good is necessary and it will free you up to do what you need to do. If this makes you uneasy, it may be a good idea to sit down and diagram what you need. Chances are very good that you have a great handle on the talents of the people with whom you work. Getting them to help you will be good for you and it will be something that they are probably very happy to do. Keeping everything close to the vest and not allowing anyone else to get involved is not a wise business decision.

  • Learn how to listen: In many cases, it is more important to listen than to talk. If you listen to your online connections, you will learn about what they want and need and you will be able to satisfy those needs. Of course, you must always keep in mind that you are writing content for businesses like yours. The chances are that the other business owners will see things in exactly the same way and will want to listen to what you have to say and what you need as well. Once you have figured out what the other people want, you can customize your content so that it gives them what they are looking for. 

  • Pay attention to the analytics: Analytics are important and it behooves you to pay close attention to them for your business. There are some free analytics tools that are very effective and you should learn how to use them and keep using them. You should understand that not all analytics are important for your business. You need to choose the ones that are important and pay attention to those. They will tell you an extremely important story and you need to listen to that story. It is your story.

  • Incorporate your social content into your online marketing strategy: Most likely, you have an overall marketing strategy that includes content marketing. Well, it is an easy transition (if you aren’t doing it already) to incorporate your social content into your overall marketing strategy. Once you do that, you will see how effective it is and how much you will make with your brand and your strategy.

Conclusion

Marrying your content with your social selling strategy is extremely intelligent and it will produce better results for your business than you may imagine. The fact is that you are writing content anyway. It won’t take much extra effort to connect the content to the selling and you will get a tremendous amount of mileage from it. Remember that you need to take advantage of the social media platforms that work for your business best. It is important that all of your profiles are in order because you will be sharing content on those social media channels and you want to make yourself and your business accessible to your online connections. Those platforms will work well and you will be able to take your business very far.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a complimentary assessment of your online presence, let’s have coffee.

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Author

  • Michael Cohn

    Michael Cohn is the founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of CompuKol Communications. He has decades of experience in IT and web technologies. Michael founded CompuKol Communications to help small businesses and entrepreneurs increase their visibility and reputation. CompuKol consults, creates, and implements communication strategies for small businesses to monopolize their markets with a unique business voice, vision, and visibility. Mr. Cohn earned a Master’s degree in project management from George Washington University in Washington, DC; and a Master’s degree in computer science and a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, NJ.

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6 Responses

  1. RAM KUMAR says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups
    Group: Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Network – #1 Group for CMOs
    Discussion: Do You Use Content in Your Social Selling Strategy and How?

    Need to have a strong content development team…while developing content marketers must know buyers persona so that content may designed to deliver taste, interest and buyers value.. secondly for social selling too…..selling team must be trained well and adequately to enable them to deliver results…..social selling process is different from normal selling process…
    By RAM KUMAR

  2. Daniel Abi Mjahed says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups
    Group: Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Network – #1 Group for CMOs
    Discussion: Do You Use Content in Your Social Selling Strategy and How?

    I think the best approach is to improve marketing team by improving the training and the importance of virtual teams which will benefit in better productivity and communicating between suppliers and employees also it help in reaching products to customer in different areas, although nowadays social selling is the most needed and number of social customer are increasing daily since it prove that social selling is easier for customer and less effort and all of us know customer like to find their products easily without putting effort so the best way to provide that by building a chain of expert selling team which will help in delivering customers need and at the same time improve the market strategy by spreading the company’s product faster and increasing the selling process rate ….
    By Daniel Abi Mjahed

  3. Mike Boogaard says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups
    Group: Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Network – #1 Group for CMOs
    Discussion: Do You Use Content in Your Social Selling Strategy and How?

    As a marketer in a commercial role, I think content is the essence of social selling. Social selling is a very difficult thing to get right. Most still see it as liking prospect customers comments or answer post with ‘my company can help you’. First you need to know who your buyers are and where they hang out (personas – as mentioned above). You also need a social selling strategy that tells your sales team the type of conversations that drive sales for your service/products (engagement & conversation plan). And they definitely need the content assets to enable them to not just comment on topics but to develop a conversation. Nothing better than “I loved reading your article on social selling.
    By Mike Boogaard

  4. Joseph Kwok says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups
    Group: Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Network – #1 Group for CMOs
    Discussion: Do You Use Content in Your Social Selling Strategy and How?

    It is so interesting to see such discussion here. I work for a media in Hong Kong. We sell content, and also we have to promote ourselves too. I would say, till now, most of the marketers still don’t see the value of content marketing.

    If your business is not highly specific, I would prefer hire a third party to do content creation instead of developing your own team. Also, you need to think about distribution channel for your content. I have seen too many companies wasted their content in their website.
    By Joseph Kwok

  5. Jasmine Qiu says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups
    Group: Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Network – #1 Group for CMOs
    Discussion: Do You Use Content in Your Social Selling Strategy and How?

    To some sectors, social selling is not easy as it’s not only about the content, but the product itself as well, but can help on the establishment of “top of mind awareness”.
    By Jasmine Qiu

  6. Kari Simmerman says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups
    Group: Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Network – #1 Group for CMOs
    Discussion: Do You Use Content in Your Social Selling Strategy and How?

    I feel content creation needs to be owned by the entire company vs. just the marketing team. The sales and technical team write content every day in communication with clients which can be repurposed for marketing content if harnessed properly.
    By Kari Simmerman