In this post I'm going to be sharing six social media tips that B2Bs can use to help them strategically develop business. I'll be looking at some of the main challenges and how they can be solved. Whilst this article is aimed at anyone who's responsible for selling in a B2B environment, if you're looking to build your influence (and brand) as a consultant I'm pretty confident that you'll get mileage out of it.
Now let's get started!
In case you've not noticed social media is maturing. No longer is it just seen as a tool for marketers. Now, there's a growing amount of buzz around using it as a sales tool especially for B2Bs. Many understand its value. They know from experience that when it's implemented correctly it delivers a solid return on the investment. And, that's why more and more businesses and individuals (brands), year-on-year, are keen to get it right and use social media as a tool for increasing their influence and business development.
So let's look how you can set yourself up for success by giving you six social media tips that address the main challenges. These are:
- What to say
- How to find the time
- What content to create
- How to engage with your audience
- What the cost implications will be
- How to integrate social media fully into your business
6 Social Media Tips
#1 What to Say
When companies or individuals struggle to find their voice on social media it's usually on account of two things: 1) they've not developed a strategy, and 2) they're using old marketing techniques. Typically you’ll see them announcing. That means they’ll be posting and tweeting information about themselves or their company as they seek to tell the world about how great they are.
Now obviously this approach doesn’t work. The content they deliver doesn't resonate or add value to those that they're pursuing. Predictably few follow, let alone engage with their brand, and as this happens, announcements dry up and faith is lost in the technology. And, who could blame their thinking? So far social media has wasted their time and delivered diddlysquat!
Those that persevere, however, modify their efforts. They adapt by responding to mentions of their brand and actively contribute to conversations, adding value – all the way!
Forward-thinkers take it a stage further by developing a strategic plan. They start off by instigating conversations and positioning themselves as conversation leaders instead of participants. They determine what they’re going to communicate, to whom and by when. They get their sales team involved so that they can spread the message further. Additionally, they implement systems to help them track, measure and improve their efforts.
There's a lot to do!
So in order to achieve success you must differentiate yourself from the mass of information in circulation and this means being able to answer ‘yes’ to these questions:
- Is my content engaging, empowering and entertaining?
- Is my content relevant and does it add value to my target market?
- Is my content of value to my target market’s network i.e. will they want to share it?
If your activity just adds to the ‘noise', then it’s more than likely that you’ll be un-followed, un-liked, and you’ll fail to grow your prospects. So, it’s imperative for you to think carefully and differently about your voice and the information you deliver.
Smart brands think differently about the content that they distribute on social media. You'll find that they devote as much time and attention to it as they would to the content of a brochure, newsletter or website. They plan it strategically and meticulously. It’s never random or irrelevant. They collaborate with their sales teams and find out from those on the front line what’s really needed. They use content to position themselves as experts in their niche, as credible sources of information, which enables them to build relationships with their target audience long before their services are actually required.
#2 Finding Time
In the early days it's easy to see why so many businesses give up on social media. Continuous, time-consuming and unlike many other aspects of marketing which tend to be task or campaign based, the challenges they face in terms of planning and implementing often seem insurmountable compared to the return.
To achieve effective results with social media takes time.
You see, there’s a lot more to social media than just publishing the odd blog and linking to it from Twitter or LinkedIn. You need to be chipping away at it every single day, determining what messages you want to deliver, writing original content that’s going to interest your target market and taking time out to actually engage with your audience.
Alarmingly, many (particularly in marketing) don’t schedule time for this. Instead they leave it sitting in the ad hoc section of their to-do list, week-after-week. And, this is hugely disappointing.
So what’s the best way to address this?
Well, the answer lies within the sales team. You see, using social media as a tool to drive sales can be quite a strange concept to those who aren’t used to chatting with their prospects and clients in an informal way. However, those in sales are extremely used to doing this (unless of course they're an order taker)!
By spending time with the sales team you can train them how to data mine for better intelligence and listen out for what's being said about your brand and your competitors so better conversations can be had. There's so much valuable insight that they can gain which is so readily available. Using social media to enable sales this way means you can distribute the work, play to the strengths of your team and quickly gain profits.
#3 What Content to Create
When Google released Panda it forced unique content to be created and valued. Fed up of being manipulated by companies who were publishing significant amounts of low quality content solely to drive traffic to their websites and increase their online advertising revenues, Google decided that it was time for content that was consumed, liked and original to rank more highly in their organic search results.
So what constitutes unique content?
Well, companies that produce unique content fall into two categories. They are either 1) curators or 2) creators.
Curators seek out information from several sources. They filter out useful nuggets of information and then circulate it amongst their networks. They’re useful portals, channelling traffic towards the original sources of information and promoting them as the experts in their niche.
Creators are more influential. They keep abreast of what’s going on in their particular niche and then reproduce it with an additional layer of their wisdom. They drive traffic to their own content and position themselves as the experts in their niche. And, this is exactly what you need to do if you’re going to ignite social media and drive sales.
#4 How to Engage
Once you’ve decided on the content for your social media, you need to ensure that your target market is engaged with it and there are several ways to do this.
Both involve planning what to say and creating original content. However, one requires far more of a commitment. To give you an example of exactly what I mean, imagine that you’ve got a great piece of content to publicize, do you:
A) Publish it on your website and then link to it from your social media platforms, or
B) Publish it on your website; link to it from your social media platforms; ask employees to re-tweet it, post it, like it, comment on it and share it amongst their own networks encouraging further comments and posts supporting articles or images?
I'm sure you know that the right answer is B.
When your content is entertaining and adds value to your market, it sparks engagement and this extends its reach 10 fold. By adding your brand's personality and showing your authenticity, you’ll further increase the engagement and push it up to the next level. As a result, your market will feel welcomed into your business and on the way to getting to know you a little better and developing a more trusting relationship.
#5 What are the Cost Implications?
If you’re a smart brand that understands the power of social media then you’ll look closely at the ROI when you’re asked about the cost implications. And, you’ll know that in order to measure the ROI, you need to define your social media objectives. So, consider whether you want to better position yourself as an influencer in your market, drive more targeted traffic to your website, or generate leads, and then schedule timescales.
Once you’ve done this you can set some metrics for measuring success.
Now when it comes to using social media as a tool to enable sales it’s very tempting to set metrics based on lead generation and sales conversion volumes. However, this approach is flawed. Given that social media is a contact nurturing process and takes time, measuring it in this way is not necessarily a good indication of how well your social media activities are performing – at least in the short-term. It’s also highly likely that if your objective from day one is to generate sales then the messages that you’re delivering may be the wrong type.
For example, to generate leads, you need to be publishing content that’s enticing. It needs to persuade your prospects to submit their email addresses. Unfortunately, however, many prospects aren’t willing to give you this information straight away, so your content will only serve to put them off engaging with you. A better way would be to interact with those prospects and develop a relationship before they get to the point when they’re selecting potential suppliers.
So, before examining sales, in the short-to-medium term, you really need to be looking at other metrics, such as organic search results, content engagement and brand engagement.
Let’s look at these.
Organic search results: Google’s Panda algorithm looks for websites that are seen as authorities in their niche. Their aim is for brands to provide valuable content for their audiences and they’ve committed to penalizing those who aren’t playing their game. So if you produce original, quality content, link to it from your social media sites, and get good engagement, your website will be continually indexed by Google and it will rank highly in the organic search results.
Content engagement: Despite what you may have told, having lots of followers or fans is not necessarily a good indication of your social media success. What’s more important is how many of them are actually engaging with you. High quality content thrives in social media environments, sparking high levels of likes, share, re-tweets, comments etc.
Brand engagement: Brand mentions are another good indication of how well you’re doing on social media and an ideal way to keep track of the, is by setting up a Google Alert for your company name. It’s also a handy way to keep abreast of any brand negativity so you can react accordingly.
Finally, let’s look at your longer-term sales objective metric.
Google Analytics: The best way to track this is by setting goals on Google Analytics. You can tie traffic sources to ‘goals’ (such as opt-ins) that enable you to analyse if particular campaigns are actually resulting in sales.
#6 How to Integrate it into the Business
The world of business is changing as technology rapidly advances and social media has been instrumental in revolutionizing everything.
As a result, some believe that because of it marketing is now taking over the sales cycle and leaving sales people on the brink of extinction.
It’s a dramatic statement to make but with 50%-70% of a B2B buyers journey almost complete prior to engaging with sales they may have a point.
Others believe that sales people have never been so important. Thanks to social media, sales people now have an opportunity to get involved earlier in the sales cycle and if equipped with the right tools to mine data on their prospects they're actually in a stronger position with regards to influencing the sale.
My take on this is that teamwork between both sales and marketing is what’s required. Both have a wealth of value for the client and for the business. Marketers are skilled at positioning, researching and analysing, yet sales people are on the ground floor – hearing directly from their market exactly what they want.
So to wrap this up…
If brands are to succeed with social media to enable business then they must use it as a means to leverage. They need to educate and train their sales and marketing teams first, followed by key personnel. Then, they need to extend it to all members of their company. By doing this they empower everyone to take an active part as brand ambassadors. With an open, authentic approach to doing business this way and inspiring their employees to get involved, they business is driven forward and sales grow.
So, to wrap this up, I encourage you, as always to up your game and to seek out better ways to sell and market your business. Thank you, as always for reading. If you found this useful, tell your “friends” and get them to sign up to receive my information.
Now I want to hear your social media tips…
Tell me in the comments below or in a private email:
- What aspect of selling in these digital times (social selling) do you find the most challenging?
- What social media tips do you use that work well?
Please share your stories and experience here, and if you've got a question, just pop it down here.
Thanks for being a sport and participating!
P.S.
Finally, if you know someone who'd LOVE the insight from this social media tips post, please send them a link. You’ll find solo entrepreneurs, consultants and yes, even sales and marketing managers who manage people who'll be interested to hear about this. Read more