7 Ways to Get Your Content to Produce Sales Leads – Now

If your content marketing plan is producing a steady flow of sales leads, then save yourself some time and don’t bother reading this article. Every marketing article I read tells me how much business has fallen in love with content marketing and why not. I know from experience that whether selling to consumers or business the challenge (for both marketing and sales) is to get content to produce sales leads and not just brand awareness. However the reality is that today’s social media channels are being bombarded with content (some great, some good and lots of crap) on a daily basis.





7 Ways to Get Your Content to Produce Sales Leads – Now – The Bitter Business

Social Media Agency – The Bitter Business

Social Media Agency – The Bitter Business

Social Media Agency specialising in Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing including SaaS, Online and Small business promotion. We live and breath social media for customer acquisition, social reach, social selling, account and business development, buyer engagement, lead generation and sales revenue.

What makes us different?

We understand what it takes to grow a business. So we start with social insights. Social insights puts “the buyer” centre stage, starting with ideal customer profiles/buyer personas so we understand the context of your social relationships, communities and network reach to customers. Then we work with you to find untapped, hidden, unexpected or unspoken opportunities that can cause buyers to see the brand, product or people who work in your business differently. Our social insights are the pillars of the social ideas we develop for our clients.

How do we measure success?

Understanding how our social insights work and drive business value (qualified leads, sales,traffic, buyer engagement) for clients is at the heart to our social approach. We have a framework of metrics and KPI’s for measuring the social impact of our social media marketing plans which provides both a methodology for ensuring our activities will have the greatest impact and a transparent success measure to our customers.

A Cost Effect, sensible marketing partner.

Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube,Facebook and the many business forums can be great for attracting or engaging potential and existing customers. As a business owner we know that you require structure and the ability to accurately measure the impact of Social Media Marketing on your business. We also understand you expect results, not excuses, actions not theory. So whether it is social media training or a cost effective social media partner solution, we are here to chat over a coffee and listen to your challenges.

TIPS ON WRITING LINKEDIN MESSAGES – The Bitter Business

TIPS ON WRITING LINKEDIN MESSAGES – The Bitter Business

When implementing a
digital sales or social selling program, the biggest single point of failure
can be writing LinkedIn messages to buyers. Or to put it in simpler language,
the ability to craft well thought out messages that convert into offline
conversations between seller and buyer.

Every sales
strategy most likely has a multi activity approach which may include phoning,
emailing and social interaction. However, sales people who use social selling as
their primary customer acquisition channel are now getting the majority of
their leads via well crafted and well timed messages via social media platforms
such as LinkedIn.  

So here are some
tips on writing LinkedIn messages (or indeed for any social media platform) to
potential buyers so sales people can generate sales pipeline quicker.

Tip. 1: UNDERSTAND YOUR BUYER

Long before a sales person ever writes “that message” whether it is for
a connection request or for conversion to pipeline, we need to take a step back
and consider how much we really understand our buyers. For example at The
Bitter Business, I target 3 ideal customer profiles (ICP’s)/buyer personas:
Sales Leaders, Marketing Leaders, and Sales Trainers.

I created these ICP’s
so I can create content that speaks and resonates with people who are
interested in using social media to drive sales. I also use these buyer personas
to gain an understanding of my target audience, their needs, wants, concerns and
business challenges within their industry.

Remember the 5 Buyer Why’s when developing Ideal Customer
Profiles and content that matches for social selling. Why listen? Why care? Why
change? Why you? Why now?

Every sales person and every sales team should sit down with
marketing and create 1, 2 or 3 ICP’s as to take targeting of buyer personas to
the next level. Use this exercise between sales and marketing to explore what
are your prospect’s biggest fears or challenges, the consequences of them maintaining
a status quo position, and the biggest win you and your business can deliver to
them.

It may sound
simplistic but the better you understand your buyer, the better chance sales
people have of being able to move buyers out of their status quo and walk with
them on their buyers journey.

Tip 2: USE INSIGHTS TO BUILD VALUE

Value is the
currency for buyer connectivity. So once we understand the buyer’s position and
needs, we need to source insights (news, data, information, research) which prove
that we understand them and their industry. There are many content curation
tools such as Owler, Scoop.it. Crunchbase, Google Alerts, Twitter Lists, and
LinkedIn.

To build value with
insights, sales people should focus on 3 areas:

The Buyer: Start by
following the buyer on LinkedIn, Twitter even Facebook. The objective is to
discover how socially active they are plus what content or conversations are they
engaging with as to ascertain what they are interested in. Also try to find out
if the prospect has been referenced in an article, has been complimented in a
conversation or writes blog posts. There are great opportunities to engage the
buyer in a starter conversation.

The Buyers Company: The level of
data or insight you can get on a company depends on their size. A good place to
start is their blog and do a Google search for news and announcements. Remember
there are 5.4 decision makers involved in a business purchase so do some
LinkedIn research on the senior players. What groups do they belong to, what
level of connectivity do they have and who are they connected to. Make sure to
follow their company page and twitter accounts. Then repeat a Google search for
these names to find out some information or news. Also look out for press
releases, newly appointed people, announcements, press mention and maybe sign
up to their company blog posts.

The Buyers Industry: Another way to
build value is to understand the industry dynamics of your buyer. What trends,
data or insights can you gleam from business research companies such as Forester,
Aberdeen Group, McKinsey and Gartner.

By focusing and
investing time on these three areas, sales people will uncover insights that:

1. Put’s themselves
in the shoes of the buyer so they can anticipate future needs; plus

2. Become valuable
to the buyer in sharing quality information while gradually positioning
themselves as a trusted source.

Tip 3: BUILD YOUR MESSAGE

Once a sales person feels they can bring value to a buyer (via understanding
and relevant insights) with content worthy of sharing or to spark a
conversation then they can proceed to the message or engaging phase. Do not
rush into this.

Regardless of whether it is a connection request, a conversation starter
or a conversion message, crafting the correct wording is critical.

So let us move on to how to construct the messages:

The Subject
Line: Very few buyers will open a direct social media message/email/InMail
unless they are intrigued by your Subject Line. It is essentially the gateway
to opening a relationship. To increase the chances of a buyer opening the
message, make it relevant and avoid spam sounding sentences. A subject line
like “You mentioned recently” or “I noticed you”, plus include their first name
and any snippet of information that will spark an interest or curiosity.

Make it 100% Personalised: Always state your
name, and give the buyer the context into why you are reaching out. Then add in
the value exchange (what is in it for them – research/information/similarities
etc). Then maybe reference a piece of content you found from insights research.
These elements are what separate your messaging from the raft of other messages
they get every day from sales people doing a brochure dump or vanilla flavoured
template.

Include an Impact/Value
Statement: If this is a conversion message, then every sales person should address
the buyer WIIFM (What is in it for me). Talk about what you can do for them
referencing specific case studies, facts or clients. Include a statistic and a
timeframe.

Value Statement
example: “I help SaaS technology
companies who are launching a new product into the marketplace – and need it to
be successful in the short-term to achieve their sales forecast. Where I help
my clients is to generate more leads faster using social selling. As a result, my
customers are able to more easily meet projected sales targets and
significantly reduce the time to profitability.”

As Harvard
marketing professor Theodore Levitt put it: "People don't want to buy a
quarter-inch drill. They want to buy a quarter-inch hole." You must
understand why your customer wants that hole. Cultivating relationships within
that context is much more powerful.

Every message
should ideally end with a question asking them to take a specific action. If
this is a connection request, then keep it with context and zero sales pitch.
If a conversion message (moment of truth), maybe end by asking for a time to have
a chat (reference some specific times you are available).

A few MESSAGE EXAMPLES:

 Subject Line: John, You mentioned you
plan to grow 250% in 2017

Hi John,

I read your quote
in the Irish Times where you mentioned you plan to growth 250% in 2017 with a
particular focus on SaaS companies and you are now putting your plans in place.
Social selling will enable your sales teams to generate additional sales pipeline
in these areas, which will enhance your company’s ability for larger deal sizes.

Companies like Dell,
Schneider, and smaller companies have leveraged our Social Selling Methodology
to:

Increase their qualified leads pipeline by 35% plus within 12 months.

Create team revenue
(sales & marketing alignment) to accelerate revenue.

Drive sales
enablement and account development through leadership buy-in and measures.

Can I have 15
minutes of your time for me to share the digital transformation success we are
seeing across many Irish companies?

Can we set out 15 minutes
on [Date1] or [Date2]?”

Regards

Brian

Subject Line: Dave,
I noticed your interest in this article

Hi Dave,

I noticed that you looked at my profile and
commenting on the article “How to Social Sell” I shared in some LinkedIn groups.
I research and write articles on using social media to drive business, so if
you ever require information on social
selling, feel free to use me as a resource for whitepapers
and research. Look forward to connecting with you.

Regards,

Brian

Creating the right
message is all about creating value for the buyer at the right time, this value
has to be separated in connecting, being useful (conversations) and being
valuable (conversion into pipeline). Sales people need to understand the buyer
(ICP’s/buyer personas) from all fronts, individual, company and industry. The skill
is to do the research and craft messaging around the buyer’s journey you have
plotted.

How to Use Social Media To Promote Your Business – The Bitter Business

How to Use Social Media To Promote Your Business – The Bitter Business

he use of social media is now the most effective way when you need to promote or launch a business or new product. The free access to social networks for prospect identification and the ability to reach a large audience of buyers via content means every marketing or sales leader has to use these channels as part of a go-to-market strategy. When launching a new product or service,   social media provides a rich media platform that with some planning can make it easy for people to share around your message.

It doesn’t seem like so long ago that promoting, marketing and launching a product whether nationally or global required a massive budget and was one of the barriers to entry the traditional multi-nationals relied upon. But the digital switch by buyers to self-educate on the social networks has re-written both the sales and marketing rules.

The following approach or any part of it can be used by anyone with the right discipline and time.

Use Facebook

Action:

Create a Facebook fan page specifically for your brand or product, then share and network with the Facebook community as it is the largest single social networking site on the web. Remember it is about engagement and then sharing. To build up your fan and advocacy base to give you that critical mass to share your stories/messages, why not offer an incentive to “like” your page, maybe by giving some merchandise or prize.

Suggested Primary Goal:

Create an incentive for people to “like” your page by providing via a free product giveaway in order to grow your fan base.

Use LinkedIn

Action:

With over 400 million business users, one of your first actions should be to create a company page, followed by joining interest groups related to what you are selling. Don’t forget to pimp up your profile with a photo and fill out as much detail in your profile as possible. Learn about “social selling” and how to use content from your blog (see below) along with other content to engage connections. You can also search and tag prospects, influencers and potential partners.

Suggested Primary Goal:

To identify potential buyers and partners for your brand or products.

Website and Blog

Action:

Thanks to WordPress, Weebly, Medium, Blogger etc it has never been easier or cheaper to create your own branded web presence and attract potential buyers (with some SEO and promotional activity). For less than €100 you can have your own domain and less than €500 can give you a fully branded website. Learn to target keywords, read up on SEO and how to share your website URL’s on sites like Plurk, Scoop.it, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Pinterest to name but a few, will start to give you a trickle of traffic to build upon.

Learn to write 1000 plus word blogs with titles like Tips, How to, A guide to or Top 10 so you can further use social media to attract potential buyers and improve your search engine results. Try to write a blog weekly but monthly at a minimum. Don’t forget to share and post your blog articles around the web.

Suggested Primary Goal

To make it easier for potential buyers to engage with you while finding out more about your business.

Product Reviews by Social Influencers

Action:

If possible, prior to formal launch try to get some external product reviews, even recommendations. As the trust between buyer and suppliers is at an all time low, peer recommendations instead of marketing blurb can give your business a much needed injection of interest. Maybe offer your product free in return for publishable references.  Apart from using LinkedIn there is a whole host of social tools (lots are free) that you can use to identify social influencers or connectors. Also do not forget journalists and online magazines, approaching them can be as simple as crafting an introduction letter with an invitation to review or sample your offerings. Ensure you put a unique slant on your business, what problem is it solving and why would people be interested in your personal story.

Suggest Primary Goal:

To gather independent and verifiable 3rd party authority as social proof, which you will then share with potential customers.

Have a Contest

Action:

Who doesn’t love a good ole a contest and they work well on Social media especially in the B2C space. Using your social media channels, offer up some real goodies (if not your actual product then something related to it). Keep it simple, you are not trying to snare emails, you chasing “share ability”

Suggest Primary Goal

Note: Get a fan base engaged before you officially launch your business or product so that when you do launch you have a fan base that could be ready to buy and spread your message for you whether that is on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. The combination of your regularly updated blog, website and your social media community activity can be a powerful platform for getting in revenue faster.

Try a Quiz

Action:

It is also easy to create and publish a quiz on your website and social channels. Just do a Google search for “create a quiz”. There are some free and paid options. People like to test their knowledge and if you can relate or match the quiz to your product even better.

There doesn’t have to be a prize but you could combine it with a contest as above.

Suggested Primary Goal: To engage customers and also create more buzz.

Create Infographics or Video

Action:

The rise in popularity of infographics and video content in social media cannot be ignored. Sites like Canva, Visualize, Piktochart and Easel.ly make it easy for anyone with some patience to create stunning graphic stories. You can even create video content online but there is a higher price to be paid here, if your product is very visual then maybe a 20-30 second video for YouTube or Vimeo maybe a must.

Suggested Primary Goal: To provide some wow media formats that could go ‘viral’.

SlideShare

Action:

You can create a PowerPoint presentation that could not serve as a key note presentation but would also publish on Slideshare to spread your message while reinforcing your professional image.

Suggested Primary Goal: Publish on the Slideshare platform to make it easy for people to

These few tips on using social media when launching a business or product are by no mean exhaustive, what else have you tried? The purpose of the article is that with a limited budget and the learning of new skills (social selling, social media marketing, creating infographics, writing blogs, running contests etc) most of us can achieve results beyond our expectations. Oh yeah, did I mention lots of hard work but no pain no gain.

A Guide to Content Marketing for Start-ups – The Bitter Business

This article on content marketing has been republished from The Bitter Business.

A Guide to Content Marketing for Start-ups – The Bitter Business

How can content marketing help satisfy a start-ups customer acquisition and quest for growth. Old sales tactics are declining and the push sales cycle can mean a new business is out of runway long before their business gets off the ground with revenue. The rapid change in buyer behaviour for both B2B and B2C means an unforgiving economic climate in which a start-up has to function. Thankfully, the meteoric rise of inbound marketing together with social selling has added a suite of new tools to the business sales and marketing toolkit.

While the sales and marketing field have been levelled they are also becoming more complex as buyers seek out useful and valuable vendors via quality content as they self educate like never before. So how can a start-up business win with content marketing and what does it stand to gain from it?

It begins with a plan

To develop a content marketing strategy, we must first understand the role of content in attracting the buyer in the digital economy. As buyers self educate online in both B2C and B2B markets they consume content as part of the buying journey. When we refer to “Content” we are referring to whitepapers, video, infographics, images, press releases, newsletters, help guides right through to thought leadership articles. Also, focus content themes and topics that match the interest of your “Ideal Customer Profiles” or “Buyer Personas”. When it comes to content curation do not consider content to be anything you find funny or amusing as you dive into the sea of digital content being published about your industry. Instead, think of content that adds value to customer or buyers journey, information that is useful and benefits the reader in some way. Start-ups who remember that content is bait and the better the content, the better the fish will have taken a big step towards getting their business moving forward. So ask yourself, “Who is your customer?” “What is their need?” and “How will you deliver on their need”. Now you can start to assemble a content marketing plan.

The first step as mentioned above is to define your target audience (ideal customer profile/buyer persona) in terms of Firmographics, demographics, age, occupation, habits, etc. Then, the start-up needs to plan who and from where will they create and source a steady stream of content for publishing. Next it is time to research what is their favourite social media platforms. This information allows us to define clear goals and social KPI’s. These may cover items such as content views, content downloads, traffic, blog visitors, total traffic, social reach and social engagement. Now the start-up can proceed with moving their plans from the drawing board into social media reality.

Put the start-up on the social media stage

We know from research that over 75% of B2B buyers seek business information online. Over 90% of consumers now consume content prior to making an online purchase. So it is no surprise to know that one of the greatest benefits of content marketing is increasing the exposure to potential customers whether it is locally, nationally or globally. That is why building a social brand and social reach through content is closely tied to the process of developing closer relations with the target audience, and getting to know each other. The ultimate goal of any content plan is to inform, educate, engage, inspire, and spark attention. This is no easy task as the work of attracting buyer’s attention has fierce competition. The best shot for a new business is to become a valuable information source with real insights and fresh, challenging points of view. Content blindness or overload can be avoided if the start-up can separate itself from the competition and rise above the noise generated by vanilla flavoured content.

Also it is important to avoid the pitfalls that go with content marketing. Don’t be tempted to write about product superiority and service excellence without social proof which may include influencer opinions or valid customer reviews. Do not overlook the value of visual content and videos. A whooping eight seven percent of the top posts on Facebook have pictures included, while it is thirty five percent on Twitter.

Another critical point is to convey the businesses personality and social purpose. Content should reflect the business culture and be used to plant seeds with targeted buyers on your beliefs and philosophy around serving customers. Finally, create a content sharing schedule so that the selected content must is posted regularly. Creating a calendar is paramount, as this enables start-ups to plan themes and topics to match buyer interests while scheduling posts ahead of time.

A content publishing engine room

Content creation falls into two main categories, “First click content” and “Second click content”. First click content is designed around the search engine optimisation (SEO) and driving traffic. It is heavily keyword focused with “Tips” “Guides” and “How to” type content the best themes to ensure sharing and thus getting the content at the forefront of search engine results page (SERP). Using content to build inbound links is one of the best marketing strategies there is, so ensure your content publishing engine knows what keywords to target.

Remember Google carefully monitors the content surrounding the anchor link (title, topic, theme, keywords) so it is vital that the quality of the content has to be top-drawer when doing link building. Other aspects of a content publishing plan are to monitor industry trends and new relevant keywords as to develop content or visuals. Identifying these elements can boost a business’s search ranking and drive more traffic.

While content marketing can be an inexpensive, yet highly effective lead generation method to reach ideal customer profiles, it does require investment in the production of the assets to be published. Create a content publishing engine that will help your start-up to attain a position of industry leader over a period of months. Sometimes if not often start-ups have little room for manoeuvre and must operate on a shoestring budget. So to make every Euro count, content marketing can have both short tailed and long tailed benefits by aligning all social media marketing to target buyers supported by quality, relevant content.

The runway is shorter than you think

A sense of paranoid can be healthy when launching a new business; one can live or die by their ability to quickly identify real wants and needs of buyers. The runway to getting the start-up of the ground maybe shorter than you think with more effort than you planned. This requires social selling with content, social media marketing, social reach and social engagement. To pull this off, the business must make the best use of content marketing strategies. Relevant, regular, appropriately themed quality content that engages the target audience to find you useful and valuable is the only way to make a name for the business quickly. If content is king, then badly written, irrelevant or copied articles, have little chance of becoming royalty. Always refer to the plan and only produce content that is tailored to the needs of the customers. It is about using content to be seen, be found, be useful and be valuable in the eyes and minds of buyers so the start-up can generate revenue sooner rather than later.

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The Bitter Business

The Bitter Business

Social Selling – Social Media – Sales

The Bitter Business is a sales and social media marketing company based In Dublin.

Helping business grow by delivering innovative, sales, content marketing, social selling, lead generation, and customer acquisition strategies. A real performance based sales and marketing partner.

Focus on Sales, Marketing and Business Growth.

The Bitter Business is a risk-reward focused social media marketing, content marketing and social selling services company, capable of tailoring and implementing a sales and marketing strategy to fit the unique needs of a business. When you need sales, sales outsourcing, social selling, social media marketing, inbound marketing and lead generation, The Bitter Business will deliver the results.

 

 The Bitter Business is 100% Results Driven

We work with business owners, sales and marketers to deliver social media marketing and sales services that generate measurable business results.

• Speed up time to market and customer acquisition
• Optimise marketing, social selling and sales coverage
• Content Marketing Services
• Social Media Marketing Strategy
• Social Selling Training
• Proven results in SEO and SEM
• Customer Acquisition Services
• Drive Sales and Lead Generation
• Hands on selling and business development resource
• Outsourced sales services

FREE Consultation

FREE 1 hour – no obligation – sales to social selling and social media marketing consultation for your business!

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How to Use Content Marketing the ACD way. – The Bitter Business

How to Use Content Marketing the ACD way. – The Bitter Business

Many companies struggle in how to use content marketing to drive their sales or business upwards. No big surprise as today’s buyer is more educated and savvy than ever. Smart marketing leaders know that traditional marketing methods are becoming less and less effective by the day, so turning to social media and content marketing as a means to drive traffic and leads makes sense . In fact social media/online advertising will overtake traditional advertising this year, posing opportunities and challenges for many companies.

But social media and content marketing is not the same thing. Yes they do operate hand in glove with each other however one is focused on “consumption” while the other is based on “participation”.  The goal of content is audience consumption, while social media is all about audience participation.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 80% of decision makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus advertisements.

So think of content as a beautifully prepared meal that people want to consume, social media as the room where they sit talking about the lovely meal they just have eaten and social networking is how you make people aware of your food in the first place.  They key to using content marketing is to create different meals aka content themes (chicken dinners become boring after a while) to keep people coming back for more. The same way we create different meals for different times of the day or weather, we also need to vary our content according to the different stages our prospective buyers are at.

I call this

ACD Content Marketing   

I believe your content tactics should mirror both your company stage of development and your sales pipeline. ACD content marketing focuses the type of content created to match the three stages in customer acquisition. These are Awareness, Consideration and Decision.

Awareness Content

Awareness content is heavily SEO focused, a new business or one targeting a set of keywords for Google traffic will create allot of this type of content. It is aimed at potential buyers whom have no previous awareness or interaction with your business. The goal here is using keyworded content to get searched and seen by as many people as possible. Themes for awareness content include such titles as – how to, tips on, a guide to etc.

Awareness Content is served up on:

• Social Media Sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Instagram, YouTube etc.
• Posted on Blogs – Medium, WordPress, LinkedIn Pulse and Blogger.
• Published to your own Website and Landing Pages
• As presentations on Slideshare or Learnist.
• Visuals (including Infographics) on Visual.ly or Imgur.
• SEO link building to places like Scoop.it, Quora, Pearltrees.

This type of content is usually on-going as a business targets new keywords or sets of customers. It is important to capture their interest via newsletter or update sign-ups. Then you can now move to creating “consideration content” or content that is focused on getting customers to select you as a vendor.

Consideration Content

As you build traffic, repeat visitors, newsletter subscriptions and social network connections a business should start to blend in consideration type content into their content strategy. This is where you use content to nurture (lead nurturing) prospective customers.

The goal is to create content that will “nurturing the customer” meaning informing them on why/how your product or solutions will solve their problems. At the beginning consideration and awareness content can often be have similar traits as in keyword focused, but try to leave the SEO to aside as you progress, switching the focus on going deeper with informative and insightful content. The content is still served up on all the channels lists in the previous section plus emailed to your subscriber base.

Consideration Content should include:

• Whitepapers
• Research articles
• Success Stories
• Case Studies
• Valid and Verifiable Customer Testimonials
• Interviews (text and video)
• Webinars
• Sharing other forms of proof (reviews/awards/wins)

Decision Content

Decision content is offered to your qualified leads (sales and marketing working together) from lead nurturing them during the consideration phase. This content should be personalised, specific and introduced at the right time in the sales process. I suggest business splits decision content into “pre-close” and “post-close”. Pre-close content can be vital to closing a sale so should be planned out carefully.

Types of Pre-close Content may include:

• Onsite or Virtual Product Demonstrations
• Existing customer reference with detailed implementation
• Personalised Proposal
• Pricing Documents
• ROI Presentations using existing customer cases

Lastly, there is the “post-close content”, this can include surveys, up-selling and cross selling content and referral requests.

Ensure you create content to welcome new customers and solicit feedback as part of your content arsenal. Also make sure to produce content templates that thank them for their purchase. Also post-close content should include sharing information on your newest products and upgrades.

Wrapping it All

The ACD marketing method has other benefits, used correctly it can be a superb way to gather valuable insights. Content marketing is the marketing of the here and now plus the future. It will only develop in its sophistication and personalisation as the social media networks become central to sales and customer interactions. Content is the always on, 24/7 plug-in to the internet world, always there guiding your potential customers even when you are asleep. The key to to create attractive and appealing content that will be consumed by the reader that matches where they are in your sales pipeline.

The Bitter Business can help create or work with your social media marketing or content marketingstrategy, helping you to understand what type of content works and which aspect of your content creation needs to be improved to deliver more traffic, more leads and more customers.

Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Business

Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Business

Small business can struggle to strategically use social media marketing to get their message out. In fact at times social media can feel a bit overwhelming. The top 10 social network sites, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr, Instagram, VK, Flickr, Vine and a host of other niche networks generate huge audience participation for a business to market themselves to.  But where does one start, which social network suits best and what are the best methods to market a small business using social media?

Here is a list of tips to help any small business to better use social media to get their message in front of their target audience.

Create a social media marketing plan. Plan out what you want to achieve, how you are going to achieve it and what resources you need prior to kick starting any social campaign. Too many businesses just dive in and start plastering links on LinkedIn, posting images on a Facebook page or tweeting messages without first considering how social media activity can help drive their business. The reality is that to do social media in a meaningful matter requires committing resources (content creation, social selling, and social conversations) and people (content seeding, managing social profiles, community engagement) to the task. Effective social presence means constantly updating, sharing and posting to keep everything fresh to attract potential customers. Old, outdated and “infrequent” activity will just not cut it. The plan should map out a schedule that works best for the business based on resources or budgets. Social media should be viewed as a strategy investment with goals and then needs to be prioritised with clear ROI on the planned activity.

Create a buyer persona to define your target audience. Not all social media platforms work for every business, B2B is different from B2C, are you looking to sell online generate traffic or do lead generation? If you’re trying to reach B2B buyers then LinkedIn maybe your best bet or if teenagers are your target audience then Instagram could be the way to go. If the marketing or creative community is on your radar then Google+ communities is worth targeting. Also consider when this audience is most active and then plan out the posting schedule accordingly to maximise your results.

If your potential customers are teenagers then schedule social shares during the evening when they check their profiles. A good tip is start with one network and get skilled at doing it well. Then add in other networks over time.

The 3 C’s of a social media plan. Content, content and content. Content (your own and 3^rd party shares) is what powers social media. Always have a fresh supply of content and make it current to the topics, season, conversations or news. A few blog posts of 1000 words plus is a good starting point. A thousand words might seem long but as a small business you need to become a subject matter expert for your industry. Share stories, insights, tips, lessons and learning’s in a friendly tone.

Use content/images/videos/guides/insights from complimentary 3^rd party sources to build up your content library. In fact readers value quality content regardless of the source and recognise the person posting it as a valued contributor to the community.

Social media is multimedia. While article content is the main tool for social promotion, video is fast becoming the engagement channel among certain demographics. Video is getting easy to shoot and share. Customer interview videos with detailed discussion can be powerful. Also use imagery, pictures and infographics that showcase your company’s products.

Social media platforms are for engagement. As with social selling, all your activity should strive to drive engagement not pushing out blatant sales promotions . Follow the steps – Awareness, Consideration, Nurture and Develop. Selling comes later once you have developed a relationship. Social media is the channel for potential customers and buyers to become aware of you, to get to know you, to understand what value your can bring and to learn what your company stands for so be authentic and share content that brings value to the reader.

Become a thought influencer and source of quality information, this will attract customers to notice you and in time they become receptive to buying from you. So share quality content that reflects your own personal brand and watch as people joins you in your journey.

Stay engaged on conversations and comments. Don’t just share and disappear, stay on top of discussions and your postings. If a customer leaves a comment about something you posted (positive or negative) then don’t over react, just reply back. Buyers need to know you are listening, responsive and can engage with discussions. Listening and replying to social media conversations requires time so ensure you have planned for this activity.

The social media road should lead to your website. As you generate more awareness and consideration amongst buyers then over time they will end up visiting your website to learn more about you. So ensure you have your website in ship shape order including newsletter sign-ups, landing pages and contact us points before starting social media activities

Your activity and content should reflect your brand. It is important to plan out so that all your social media channels, blogs, content and website reflect your brand. People want to engage with real and genuine businesses. Your content should mirror your own voice and match the topics or relevancy of your content to your business. For example, if a business is selling a HR solution, then the content needs to be factual in nature with a business tone.

If a business is selling a lifestyle product, then energetic or inspirational tones might work better. Where possible use real customer stories and always uses real testimonials on web pages.

Share to receive. Social media is not about you, it is about your customers or prospects. Study and research the language your target audience uses to talk about your industry. What topics interest them and what social conversations they engage with? Then engage them with content and insights that match these terms. The use of hashtags is a great way to join in on conversations on social media. Also optimise your content, blog and website with the keyword terms that will help you get found in web search results.

Another tip is as people do allot of question type searches (“how do polish my car?”), so a business selling car care related products will need to use this type of language in the content they publish on their blog.

Mobile is a must. Now most Facebook posts and tweets on Twitter are being done on mobile devices. Social platforms will gradually deliver a mobile first experience so your site and blog should be mobile optimised to provide a great browsing and shopping experience.

There you have it, a few social media marketing tips that might help you get the word out about your business and get the attention of the buyers you want to sell to.