Question: What are some ways we can promote and distribute content outside of Social Media? Our sales team feels that many of our customers aren’t reading their social media or sourcing our content from it.
No matter how many people take to social media channels and other online content consumption vehicles, there are still many that don’t; especially as a primary source of content.
As companies continue to invest more in creating content that will help them sell, the challenge of putting content in the hands of the buyers that need to read it continues to become greater. Primarily because the amount of content a consumer has to choose from is growing at exponential rates on a daily basis.
This means marketers need to get creative as to how they put their business value in front of buyers. No doubt social media has become a great way to accomplish this, but what do you do when you have customers that don’t use social media as a means of content discovery? Furthermore, can channels other than social media be used to drive more eyeballs to your content?
For sales pros, marketers and small businesses alike, there is a great way to put content in front of your clients by leveraging an old friend, email.
A Method To Using Content For Non Social Sharing.
1. Keep an eye out for content that is useful for your clients. Generally the content should be on topic and provide some good tips or actionable items. Note that these may also be good for future clients/prospects.
2. When you find the content it is a good practice to keep an excel or word doc where you keep the article titles, links and main topic.
3. Look for opportunities to pair the content with specific clients. Keep tabs of this in your document to know what you sent to whom. Over time you should build an aggregate of useful content that helps provide more clarity to your message and your customer needs.
4. Deliver the content with an email and a simple message that helps the customer or prospect understand the topic and why you think it is important. Often referring to a previous conversation where the topic was discussed.
5. Always include some type of call to action. Some examples may be, I will give you a call next week to catch up and discuss this or let me know if this is helpful and any other info I may be able to send over…
6. Be consistent. The response rate will likely not be 100% but that doesn’t mean they aren’t reading it. With so much information out there if you can be the person that consistently delivers solid content then you will be front of mind when buying decisions are being considered/made.
Have you ever tried sourcing, curating and sharing content with your clients via email to drive more engagement and sales opportunities? What other methods are you using to increase content visibility for your clients and prospects?
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Daniel Newman is the co-founder of V3*Broadsuite and is an experienced C-level executive, serving as a strategy consultant for small and mid-sized businesses. He’s also an insight/analyst partner to four Fortune 50 enterprises and previously served as the co-founder and CEO of EC3, a hosted IT and communications services provider. Prior to that, he served as the CEO of United Visual, Inc. in Chicago Illinois.
He is a widely published writer who contributes weekly to Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post and industry publications such as Commercial Integrator, Sound & Communication and Corporate Tech Decisions. He’s also author of three best-selling business books including The New Rules of Customer Engagement, The Millennial CEO, and just recently Evolve: Marketing (^as we know it) is Doomed.
Daniel has established a reputation as a leading thinker in topics such as Social, Big Data, Cloud and Mobile. He has been named to many top influencer lists in all of these areas, including recognition by the Huffington Post as one of the 100 business and leadership accounts to follow on Twitter. He is also an adjunct professor of management at North Central College.
