Social selling has become a hot topic.
Organizations in every industry are working feverishly to leverage social platforms and social networks for a number of reasons such as to:
Promote their products and services
Find leads
Connect and bond with prospects
Provide information
Generally push sales through the purchase funnel
All noble goals. Yet, the majority of organizations hoping to leverage social sales leave content strategy out of the equation. A fatal mistake.
Without “content,” all you have left in social sales is “social,” i.e., a platform, a forum or a social network. Devoid of content, all these channels amount to empty containers.
Researching social selling and working with a large global brand on social selling has helped me develop a short list of seven basic social selling content factors that can benefit any B2B (and not a few B2C) organizations.
1. Align Content To The Sales Funnel
Content can address every stage in the sales cycle, from awareness and consideration through purchase (and even post-purchase).
Assign relevant content types to each stage of the cycle and leverage content to help bridge buyer pain points and address their decision-making criteria. This might encompass comparison guides, tools and calculators or case studies and case examples.
2. Empower Staff To Curate & Aggregate
Content curation and aggregation are processes that aid in leveraging extant content in a meaningful way that’s both on-brand and relevant to campaign goals.
This can be particularly valuable if sales staff are empowered to share content with their constituencies of prospects and leads, provided they add value to the content they are sharing, and have access both to appropriate content and the tools with which to share it.
3. Listen & Respond
Social listening is a terrific way to know what kind of content to create. (And, content creation is the biggest B2B content marketing obstacle, according to Content Marketing Institute research).
Content can be crafted to address common questions, obstacles to conversion, issues and resolutions. It also provides opportunities to jump into conversations about the brand, product or product category.
4. Apply Metrics
And not just sales metrics! Content effectiveness can be measured through each stage of the customer journey and sales funnel.
Examples include decreased cost per lead, shortened sales cycles, increased traffic, engagement (but only if you define “engagement”), or the frequency of inbound inquiries or referrals (just to name a few).
5. Build Social Sales Content Into The Overall Content Strategy
Not all, but most organizations are committing “content marketing” without first having committed to content strategy. Though the Content Marketing Institute’s latest survey found that 83% of B2B marketers claim to have a content marketing strategy, only 35% have actually documented that strategy.
A documented strategy is what must underpin all content activity. It’s comprised of a thorough content audit, playbooks, assigned roles and responsibilities, an organizational chart, as well as tool and agency/vendor partner selection. Content strategy answers the essential questions: “what are we doing, why and how?” Don’t ignore it!
6. Train
Most employees who “do” content do something else with the bulk of their time. It may be sales, PR, social media, general marketing or something else.
Take the time to train these content producers on their content marketing roles and responsibilities. They are, after all, publicly representing the company, products and brand.
Great content doesn’t just happen, especially not on a consistent basis. Ensure they understand the value and potential of content marketing in general, and social selling in particular.
7. Hire Accordingly
Content is slowly but surely becoming part of company culture as organizations mature and embrace content marketing. More advanced companies are already showing a readiness and willingness to embrace content skills (creation, distribution, listening and responsiveness) as part of all kinds of job descriptions across departments and functions.
As social selling grows in importance, sales staff with content chops will have the edge over their less content-centric colleagues.
B2B organizations that try out these basic social selling tips should discover many benefits once the effects of implementation begin to show.
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