Making Social Sell
By Jeff Molander
About Jeff
If you're a business owner or marketing executive who wants insightful, jargon-free tips on making social media work for your business—FAST—you're in the right place. Jeff Molander is the authority on making social media sell. He's an international speaker, publisher, adjunct digital marketing faculty at Loyola University and an entrepreneur who co-founded the Google Affiliate Network. His book, "Off the Hook Marketing: How to Make Social Media Sell for You," is first to show how fans, readers and followers can be converted to leads, subscribers and sales. Make Social Sell is your practical resource on making social media produce leads and sales.
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Showing your human side, proving there's a face behind the cold, maniacal business you represent, frequent blogging and telling stories about our businesses—it's a shame these simple ideas aren't generating leads and sales often enough. Yet, there is a better way to start generating leads with blogs.
Winning new business in this anemic economy means creating "dramatic distinction" and irresistible curiosity with social media—giving prospects a reason to get a focused conversation started with you. Sometimes that means blogging less often.
Content Marketing's Biggest Myth
Want to stand out in social media? Do you have something honestly new to say? Well until you do, say less. Why? Because it works. You'll become known for publishing less on your blog and, when doing so, releasing remarkably useful content more.
Tom Webster (one of the few wise voices willing to occasionally dissent) says the surest way to fail at blogging for sales leads is to write to a schedule, "and not in the service of ideas."
"The tyranny of the content calendar is responsible for a lot of weak content on the Web," says Webster.
He says, "keeping up that pace out of deference to some kind of received wisdom about publishing frequency" may not lead you to intellectual dishonesty, but it often does. At best, Webster says, it places dangerous stress on the system.
How to Stand Out—Fast
The key to success is giving prospects a compelling, irresistible reason to discover something new—a way to solve a problem that is contrary to popular wisdom. In other words, mythbusting.
Shutting-up until you have something honestly meaningful to say flies in the face of most content marketing experts. Sadly, many gurus over-emphasize the role of frequent blog posts, video uploads, etc., and point to keeping search engines busy crawling your site.
But having something new and useful to say works better and is the key to successfully using LinkedIn for sales leads, for instance.
Here is the mythbusting system in a nutshell:
- Make the myth clear up front: You're dismantling popular wisdom to prove it wrong (just like I did in this blog post!)
- Offer proof of better way—again, up front
- Create a pathway for prospects to get more details (to create leads!)
The Role of Original Thought
No, no, no say the experts. Google demands a constant stream of content. Indeed, it does, but what those same experts avoid confessing is powerful:
- The role of original thought is becoming increasingly influential in search engines given how ranking algorithms factor in the spreading of thought-leading ideas by humans (prospects).
- Netting more and better leads means creating "dramatic distinction" and irresistible curiosity on your blow.
Ironically, infrequency of blogging and reaching beyond curating content is the it's the key to getting found and making social media sell for you.
Follow These Steps: Take Action Now
Popular belief is powerful stuff. It's what cements our habits ... keeps them in place. Yet the status quo represents a big opportunity and always has. Social media gives B-to-B bloggers the chance to exploit the essence of truth-telling at the expense of every business's enemy: mediocrity.
Mythbusting also works because it's the story everyone wants to hear: "what you're doing is popular yet not effective... here's the secret on what actually works."
This creates distinction in what you're offering.
To generate a lead start blogging in a way that creates:
- Confidence: Shine a light on the success your unique perspective brings; do it in a way that gives prospects clarity; help the customer feel like they can experience success too.
- Curiosity: Explain your remedy in a way that creates clarity AND curiosity.
- A Way: Give prospects a way to immediately act on the thought you just provoked; help them choose a pathway to make the needed change a habit in their everyday lives.
My clients and I are having a lot of success by focusing messages away from very popular (yet unproductive) beliefs that stymie our clients' success.
For instance, I am currently mythbusting this false yet popular, positive-energy-filled belief that prevents success: "Storytelling and having a unique business personality/culture is what motivates prospects into engaging and doing business with you via social media."
By calling into question what the elements of a good content marketing plan are on my blog (and amplifying it on other social media) I'm creating intense curiosity (about a more complete "way to get what customers want") and presenting a clear way for customers to act on it (see the call-to-action half-way down the page).
Challenge yourself to go beyond messages and create tangible distinction by busting myths that stymie your customers' success. Start today!
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