Create a Social Media Strategy

Source: Create a Social Media Strategy – Sales Training Company – The Bitter Business

Use these steps to create a social media strategy. As social media and the social channels have grown in influencing buying decision, so too have the reasons to create a social an effective social media strategy. Using content, articles, video or online advertising, companies can potentially reach millions of buyers or potential consumers. It’s exciting to think that for any business it is now possible to reach people in different countries and markets. But this doesn’t mean that it is easy to connect with these people, reaching and connecting are two very different social media strategies. It is an important difference that many social media marketing campaigns fail to understand.

A social media strategy is more than marketing or likes, it should include digital selling, social selling, social reach, buyer or customer engagement, customer service and reputation.

While the main social platforms (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram) have a combined audience base of nearly 3.0 billion users, only a small fraction of them will be open to receiving your messages, with less again willing to connect with your business. The reality is that most people will know nothing about your business or your brand. This is the reason why it’s has become vital to create a social media strategy that you can execute against a clear purpose and goals.

The success of any social media strategy is rooted in the plan and messaging.  But success is never instant, so it’s essential to stick to the plan to allow it to take hold. To help create a social media strategy we have listed some steps below.

Create your social media marketing plan before you start any activity

Don’t get caught in the trap of “random acts of social marketing”, it is surprising the number of companies who just jump into social media with no other plan other to see what works.  They post a few comments, a few special offers or maybe a few articles. Then they get disappointed with the results. Just no point doing that, social media marketing is just like gardening, you reap what you sow but you must work hard to grow your audience and nurture relationships with them.

So, he first step is to create a SMART goals list for your social media activity.

Specific Measurable Attainable Relevant Time-bound

Using this methodology will make it easy to track progress and allow you to easily see what needs to be refined along the way. An example using LinkedIn, a SMART goal could be to “increase our connections with IT buyers in Ireland by 100 during Q1. In this one sentence, you have communicated a specific goal, one that is measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.  SMART goals work best when you can convey the objective in a short sentence or two.

Choosing which social media platforms to focus on

Depending on whether you are B2B or B2C you need to select which social media platforms you will focus on. Selecting which platforms is often overlooked when creating a social media strategy. Take the time to review your Ideal Customer Profile or Buyer Persona and then research where you are most likely to get engagement. The general thinking in random acts of social is if there are over 300 million profiles on LinkedIn, then surely the likelihood of some form of engagement happening is on.  While that is not entirely incorrect, it’s not the right approach to consistent social reach for your business.

Let your SMART goals be the guiding factor in determining what is it you want to achieve. You need to understand who you want to target, with what, when, and what type of engagement you want to have with them. Once these questions have been answered, then you decide which platforms will help you achieve your goals.

Have a social purpose and a clearly defined identity

Buyers today interact with companies whom they feel an affinity and a connection with.  One of the most effective ways to create this connection is for your business to have a social purpose.  This social purpose should form the basis of your marketing content, articles and social media activity. Can you help educate, inform, help, donate, entertain etc. as part social purpose. Consumers are becoming blind to naked sales and marketing pitches

Implement the 3×33 rule of Social Media

This point related back to your social purpose. While the goal of any business is to acquire and maintain profitably customers, when it comes to social media, remember that givers gain. To drive engagement, followers and connections, you must be seen as a useful or even valuable source of information. This means having a mix of content which is not self-generated or focused your brand.

• 33% of your social media content is stories and case studies to engage your target audience.
• 33% of your content is sharing ideas, insights, article and stories from thought leaders or experts in your industry.
• 33% of your social content should be about social purpose and personal insights to expand your social reach.

The above 3×33 rule will help you accomplish a couple things. Firstly, by sharing content other than your own, you’re showing that the interest of your audience comes above the interest you have in selling something and you are more than just blasting your followers with your own content.  Just like in real life, we avoid people who can only talk about themselves and what they do. Well the same is true for social media, this is why givers gain most.

If you fail to be seen as useful and valuable, then your social reach will be limited as people will not be attracted to your profile plus they are unlikely to engage or make a connect with you. To become a trusted adviser, your social accounts and social selling activity need to post educational and informative materials while subtly blending in details about company.

While I hope you find these social media marketing strategy guidelines someway helpful, they won’t guarantee your success in social. However, by creating SMART goals, doing the research into your customer profiles and social platforms to use, having a social purpose, and following the 3 x 33 rule of social media content, you’ll expand your social reach to engage with your target audience.

What is Social Media Credibility?

Building social media credibility allows us to nurture relationships online, stay top-of-mind with the purpose of creating “sales time” with buyers at the right time. It is about positioning the business and ourselves to have influence and high levels of perceived value with prospects or potential customers. It is not just about building up our own personal brand but also support the company’s brand online.

At a practical level it is about participating in online discussions on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Forums etc as well as writing and sharing content relevant to your customers. It also extends to being aware of industry trends, seeking referrals from clients and co-workers, and working every day towards being viewed as a subject matter expert in a given field. Social credibility is also constructed by connecting with industry experts, clients and potential prospects by engaging in social conversations. Most importantly, it invloves developing influence in your market so you contribute valuable and relevant insights to your social sphere.

What does this mean in reality?

I have my profile photos updated across all social media platforms

I have a tag line(s) on my social profiles that resonates with my ideal customer

My profile speaks to the pain points of my ideal customer

I have articles, multimedia, videos on public display across my social accounts

I have genuine recommendations from clients and connections on my social media profiles

My activity reflects my personal brand and my social purpose

I have a bank of connections that I constantly add to and engage with

I follow influencers and companies within my industry

My company page is visible to all and is active

I am socially active consistently and not just because I need leads

I can be seen and found on multiple platforms with uniform messaging

How can your social credibility be measured?

Social Selling Index

Number of Social Connections

Number of Connection requests you receive weekly/monthly

Number of followers – you and your company

Number of profile views you receive

Number of conversations you engage with or start

Number of shares and comments (on your content)

Number of leads you generate as a result of building your social credibility

Number of “sales time” events you manage to secure with potential customers

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Brian.

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,…

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

The 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 […]

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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 […]

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

Connecting Content Marketing to Sales – The Bitter Business

How to use content marketing for improved sales enablement is a big discussion point among sales and marketing leaders. Most B2B companies rely on selling by direct sales teams to generate a large

Source: Connecting Content Marketing to Sales – The Bitter Business

percentage of their revenues. For these companies, improving sales performance is a critical business objective, and sales enablement alongside the use of social media is seen as the best method for delivering company revenue goals.

When executed correctly, sales enablement has the involvement of both marketing and sales. Content marketing resources such as research articles, whitepapers, e-books, testimonials, video content and case studies plays a vital role in sales enablement. The marketing department are the ones usually tasked with creating the content assets.

Does your sales team understand your content strategy?

Research shows there can be a mismatch between the content that marketing produces and the content the sales people need to progress their sales opportunities. The findings included that:

• Only fifty four percent of sales people and sixty five percent of sales managers understand their company’s content marketing strategy.
• While 65 percent of sales people and seventy four percent of sales managers say the content their company publishes is valuable to their customers.
• However, a full fifty two percent of sales people and forty three percent of managers say the content their company publishes helps improve sales effectiveness.

The results show that nearly 50% of sales people do not understand the content strategy. So what is the issue?

Lack of Smarketing!! As sales and marketing are not aligned on how a buyer buys. They probably have not mapped out the buyer’s journey together leading to disconnects between the two teams. In fact Forrester reported that one-third of B2B marketing leaders acknowledge that their biggest problem is figuring out how to serve up appropriate content to specific buyers when the time is right.

In your business do sales and marketing define the buyer’s journey differently? Marketing may have segmented the buyer’s journey into 5 or 6 stages.

.Apart from some buying signals on social media (some social selling tools are starting to monitor early stage indicators of buyers journey), most companies see the buyer when they are about to exit the awareness stage and enter the consideration stage. At this point the buyer starts to identify the right people with the answers on how to solve their challenges. They are actively looking for solutions and are self educating by accessing content to help make informed decisions. They are socially active on the social media networks, reading articles, downloading reports, looking for research and interacting with different forms of content to shape their next movement in the buying process.

Social selling engagement and marketing technology can assist a business with this stage to understand and track buyers who are downloading and interacting with your content.

Now buyers move to engage with vendor partners, they will subtly seek out relationships with a select few, ones that can help solve the problems the buyer has identified as being critical.

According to IDC, 75% of B2B buyers use social media to research vendors. The majority of buyers are researching online where they should find you (as a sales individual who they value) and most likely your competitors. The research shows they are looking at product features, reviews, testimonials, pricing and company information. – Source: IDC’s Social Buying Meets Social Selling: How Trusted Networks Improve the Purchase Experience

The buyer has most likely now consumed enough content and the content produced from the companies which have proved they can provide the solutions to the challenges they face.

At the final stage, the buyer will choose a vendor as their preference with maybe one other as backup. If any business is waiting until the vendor engagement stage (which marketing may own up to now) then opportunities are being missed. Forrester has shown that 74% of B2B buyers conduct more than half of their research online before talking to a salesperson. If the content marketing strategy and sales enablement (social selling as an example) do not create value early enough and help guide the buyers journey then potential new customers are being missed.

You can bet that if the sales force feels disconnected from the marketing team, it also goes the other way. The marketing department can be frustrated that the sales teams are not sharing enough content. Maybe the reason is that marketing and sales have not had the conversations to figure out what type of content the buyers respond to at certain points of engagement. Marketing can only produce content to support the revenue goals if they understand the buyer’s journey.

Sales and Marketing Alignment is the solution

Create a revenue team, where sales and marketing come together and developed a unified version of the buyer’s’ journey. Segment the content tactics to mirror your sales pipeline and buyer’s journey. 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: This is mapped to the buyers why (Why do I have a problem?). This type of content is aimed at top of the funnel where the prospect acknowledges that there is a potential problem that needs a solution.

Consideration content: This reflects the buyers how (How should I solve this?)  Where by consuming more information they have identified what that problem is and who could maybe solve it.

Decision content: Getting the buyer to identify the “who.”(Who has proven they could solve this)They have defined their ideal solution strategy and who they will engage with based on relevancy of data they have accessed.

By mapping the ACD content strategy on the buyers “why” and the “how” will give the sales team earlier opportunities to engage with prospects.

By aligning sales and marketing as a revenue team they can work together to create content that is relevant to buyers to match what stage they are at. The power in connecting content marketing and marketing to sales will create powerful assets that the buyer truly values.

The Bitter Business

Social Selling, Sales and Social media marketing company based in Dublin, Ireland

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

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Social Media Marketing Tips for Business

Any 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…

Source: Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Business – The Bitter Business

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.

SEO Marketing Company Ireland – The Bitter Business

Why Every Irish Business Needs SEO Buyers are self educating meaning more and more people are using search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing to find the products and services they want to buy. Source: SEO Marketing Company Ireland – The Bitter Business

Social networks and content marketing also play a huge part in SEO and driving customer awareness.  You are most likely looking for an SEO service in Dublin or Ireland, and searched for SEO marketing company Ireland, or a similar search in order to have found this webpage. If you are selling products and services online or want to improve inbound lead generation for your business, then you know how important it is that your website appears as high up the search results as possible for targeted keywords.

90% of people searching only check the first page of results

75% click on the top five search results

A massive 40% of search traffic goes to the top ranked page for that keyword

Regardless of your business whether B2B or B2C or the purpose of your website, and no matter whether you are selling into Ireland, Europe or Internationally, part of your success may be down to Search Engine Optimisation. SEO alongside other marketing efforts like social selling and content marketing is a powerful combination to boost business result. As an Ireland SEO company, we understand that getting SEO right is not an easy task as the various search engines make updates to their criteria on a regular basis. However, real results can be achieved quicker than you think if a proper plan is implemented. This is were we can help, by offering the kind of SEO marketing services businesses in Ireland are looking for.

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SEO and Marketing Services

Keyword Research and Identification

Every SEO project and the results achieved depends on selecting the right keywords to target. We will work with you to understand your business and customers, then we will find the “search terms” your potential audience are using so we can maximise the balance between short term gains and longer term results.

Web Page Optimisation

Optimising every web page is important in achieving good rankings. Using a structured approach we optimise every page so they tell the search engines what they are about and why they are relevant to the keyword.

Content Creation and Marketing

Content creation and marketing is a key cog in search engine optimisation. So creating quality, relevant content for your blog and pages impacts on traffic and search engine results. We provide full content creation services that match your marketing strategy to attract visitors for the key search terms selected.

Link Building and Content Seeding

Knowing where to obtain trustworthy and authoritative links for your website is one of the cogs in getting pages to the top of the search results. Our methodology to link building ensures your website develops high quality, natural linking and Google rated sources to ensure real long lasting ranking results.

Social Media Marketing

Apart from content marketing, the whole area of social selling and social conversations have become an important part of SEO. We can work with you to set up profiles on all the main social networks plus ones you may not have heard of.  We can help develop plans and activities to make the most out of social media marketing which will lead to improve rankings,traffic, lead generation and sales.