Social Media Marketing Plan

A social media marketing plan should not pose any major challenges to
a small business. As in any growing business with a great product or
service, the marketing team or person is most likely to be working on
different tasks at different times and these tasks can change rapidly
depending on the business needs. However, even with taking this into
consideration, social media is now so vital to business success there
are some tasks that need to be planned as part of the daily marketing
routine.





Set the social media goals and objectives.


Every article, news release, research or whitepaper are assets in a
social media strategy to serve the goals that have been set. As with any
business strategy you must know what you are working toward. Is it
drive brand awareness, customer acquisition, generate new sales drive
traffic, build up your network, reduce the cost per lead. Whatever of
any or all of these you need goals and associated objectives clearly
defined.


Work on the content strategy


When it comes to marketing the product or service, social media
marketing success depends on the content strategy a business decides
upon. Prior to writing, commissioning or publishing any content, a
business needs to understand, what audience(s) are going to be
 targeted?, What type of voice (expert, commentator, industry) will you
use to communicate? Who are you trying to influence? What specifically
do you want to achieve (leads, likes, traffic, views or authority)?
 Allot of strategy answers are to be found in questioning the content
strategy so everyone involved in the marketing and sales efforts need to
know the why, what and who, understand it and is always in their minds.
Content marketing strategy can then be tweaked and optimised as
necessary.


Make sure there is new quality content to post


Fresh, quality, informative and relevant content is at the core of
every social media campaign to reach target audiences and ensure
engagement. To be seen as an influencer and sector expert it is vital to
share new content consistently and regularly. New content when well
written (not self- promotional or product articles) and engaging can
propel a business forward. This is why the person in charge of the
social media plan needs to make sure there is always some new content
ready to be shared. There is no hiding the fact that writing content
does take time and continuous effort so it needs to be planned.


Set up a content sharing schedule


The social media plan needs to have a schedule when content will be
shared so all social media marketing activities tie back into other marketing
events or business plans. Also a schedule will take account for any
external events, key word targeting, launches, promotions or seasonal
trends that impacts your industry. This is why the content sharing
calendar is so important for deciding what social media activities are
in the pipeline. While not all content can be created and planned for
weeks in advance of sharing, the core, and keyword targeted content
pieces that demand more care and effort should be.





Sharing sector Expertise


Selling is not sharing. Share your sector expertise on a regular
basis in terms of marketing, insights, research, social stories and
commentary to establish your business, product or service as an
influencer. For every 1 self-promotional content pieces shared, share 4
quality “industry relevant” articles, also share insightful articles
from other authors, comment and add value (not plugging your own
business) on forums and groups.


Generate new content ideas


As stated above the value a great, insightful and quality piece of
content can bring to a social media campaign cannot be overstated. This
is why a business needs to spend the time brainstorming content and
article ideas. Every business should always allocate time for it on a
weekly basis. The reality is that without interesting ideas on content
your goals and results will suffer in the long run. Content needs to be
kept fresh, up-to-date and interesting in order to continue engaging an
audience. An easy way of generating content ideas is to track your
competitors and other influential blogs to see what content is working
for them.


Following news for current and relevant content


As with most companies, some of your content marketing will be
focused on industry news and events. This is why keeping informed of
relevant news and events means you will be able to react quickly and
creatively to opportunities which can boost your on-line exposure. Many
social media managers monitor several different keywords, hashtags,
social group and Twitter in order to keep up the date and in the know on
trending topics. When the opportunity presents itself, it is vital to
be ready to respond.


Include images, video and design


Social media is also a visual channel where images, video and good
design can give an added edge in the awareness stakes. Using nice
imagery or videos and a visually stimulating way of presenting content
is far more likely to reach and engage a large audience. As the volume
of content rises across social channel, great content should be
complimented with visual impact. A business should working with a
designer in order to produce visual elements like photos, infographics
and video.


Run social advertising


To add to organic reach on social networks, depending on your social
media goals and business then social advertising on Facebook, Twitter
and LinkedIn may be a consideration. Running a paid social campaign
might help get the content out to a wider audience and more relevant
readers.


Communicate with all stakeholders


Whether you are a social media manager working in an agency or
working directly for a company, you will need to work with all the
stakeholders (management, sales, product, marketing and service) in
order to agree on the content to be shared. This is why social media
marketers should be spending time with the all the stakeholders to plan
for the future as part of the marketing daily tasks. Meeting all
concerned can help gain more insights into deciding what type content to
create, what upcoming events are there in the pipeline, launches or
news that may be of interest and any other ideas to use content to
engage the target audiences.


Reporting


Finally but as important is the reporting on social media actions,
activities and results. Whether you work for a company or an agency, it
is vital to report on the social networks achievements and the upcoming
plans in place. This is done by setting up and agreeing on regular
reports that monitor the KPI’s or metrics you have agreed on with the
stakeholders.


For more social media marketing tips, read the marketing category on The Bitter Business.



 Republished from original article at : Social Media Marketing Plan – The Bitter Business

Using Social Data to Leverage Generation C

One of the ways to grow your brand on social media is to use the huge
amount of social data to target a new demographic. So, what about
Generation C? Contrary to popular belief, Generation C is not some
demographics in alphabetic order such as Y (people born 1980 to late
1990s) and Z (people born early 2000s and on), but it is composed of all
generations of connected consumers.


Actually, Generation C changes the demographic concept based on the
age gap to a psycho graphic mold. While it is composed mainly by people
under 35 years old, it is really defined by their way of thinking and
interaction in different social platforms and screens.


Creation, curation, connection and community are part of these
consumer lives that they live out daily on the social networks. They are
enthusiastic early adopters, have huge purchasing power regardless of
age, and have new demands to be fulfilled by you.


This generation can be reached with the use of inside sales and content marketing through social media, where you are able to integrate social data to help orchestrate your business decisions.


Whereas there is no magical wand to effectively improve sales levels to this generation, here are 4 ways you can use social data to make sure social selling happens more effectively.


USE REAL-TIME INSIGHTS ON THE SOCIAL NETWORKS

On Twitter for example you can reach people in a space where they are
spending their time and research in real time, interacting and finding
people that are talking about your brand.





TARGET PROSPECTS AND CUSTOMERS WITHIN GROUPS


On LinkedIn, you are able to target people in selected groups across
your industry and research what sales suspects talk about your brand or
sector within your area to convert them into prospects.





CHOOSE THE RIGHT BRAND AMBASSADORS


Use social data to find an influencer who
meets your idea of brand ambassador, checking if they cover the
demographics that meet the criteria of your marketing campaign, size of
their audience and especially, if they are open to engaging in a
long-term relationship.


Once you find them, feed your brand ambassador team with both general
and exclusive information, making their work easier and helping both
parts to decide how to promote your brand or where to share reviews of
your products or services.


The way you act partnering with the right brand ambassadors will put
you on the right track to improving people consideration levels and to
enhance your social media marketing.


PROVIDE ENGAGING CONTENT


Social Media provides unlimited information to understand which of
your consumer’s or buyers aspirations and interests are at. So, take
advantage of the data these networks can throw up by sharing substantial
information that matches the considerations of your consumers
motivations.


Today, people are time poor and just don’t have the patience or time
to concentrate on content for a long time, but according to Google, a
significant part of daily information needs on the web involves people
learning a broad topic, which sets a great way to nurture existing leads and attracting new prospects.


You can grab people’s attention with good headlines, but to make your
consumer really engage with your brand, strive to provide information
they can learn from, mix in long and short content while always giving
your public easy opportunities and ways to interact with you.


Social data now provides so many opportunities to
grow your brand on social media. Marketing departments now have all the
tools to use social data to target new demographics like generation C.



Originally published by Connectors Marketplace at Using Social Data to Leverage Generation C

Content Marketing Company in Ireland

This is a content marketing company based in Ireland. Good links and articles on how to use content marketing.





Content Marketing – The Bitter Business

Content Marketing

Content marketing forms part of a social
media strategy. Content marketing is the process of creating and sharing
valuable content to a a clearly defined target audience on a consistent
basis.


Content marketing is primarily about sharing great stories and as you
earn the audiences trust , they will engage with your brand so you can
begin selling your products. Real content marketing is about sharing
thought leadership or research, addressing problems or market trends
your customers or potential customers face. This stream of valuable
content acts like a seed, planting the ideas which overtime grows into
the realisation to prospects that they need your product or service.





The Bitter Business understands business, this is why we offer results driven content marketing solutions
which are tailored to each individual customers social media goals and
business objectives.  Feel free to contact me for a chat on your social
media challenges and goals.


Articles on Content Marketing.

Content Marketing Done Right

Content Marketing Tips

Content Marketing Plan

Social Selling Tips of the Month

The importance of social selling in lead generation and the sales
process continues to rise. For those new to social selling maybe this
explanation might help “Social Selling is a process whereby sales
professionals engage and build relationships with decision makers
through sharing of content and information”. This can be achieved by
subtle input into conversations and publishing articles on the various
social media channels. Creating relevant and engaging content which is
then shared will get you noticed as a knowledgeable ally and thought
leader. Buyers have adapted to using Social Media for vendor evaluation,
so business and sales must also adapt, or get left behind.





Here are this month’s Social Selling tips:


1. Social Selling Training:

Social selling training is as important as sales training.
It has been found that 93% of salespeople have not been formally coached
on the social selling process. Whilst another study has found that
LinkedIn is utilized at least once weekly for an average of 6 hours by
96% of salespeople. Considering 93% of sales professionals have not been
trained on social selling, therefore they do not understand how to
social sell – why are 96% of them spending roughly 6 hours per week on
the networking site?

To combat this, I would suggest specific training days lead by a social
selling expert. I believe the sales professionals will adapt better to
an industry expert relaying the information, rather than assuming it is
just a random strategy being pushed by the management team.

For social selling to be prosperous, it must be fully integrated into
the whole sales process and every sales person needs to know what is and
what is not social selling.

After the coaching, the sales team should engage in an exercise to test
their knowledge of social selling, and present their findings to confirm
they understand the process.


2. Create A Social Selling Policy:

The sales and marketing teams need to work together to
share information and KPI’s on social selling. Everyone in sales and
marketing needs to have a clear understanding of what exactly social
selling is, how it is measured and how they should approach it. This
strategy will not work unless everyone understands it. Social selling is
not smash and grab. Sales teams need to be aware that it is a gradual
and subtle process that will benefit them hugely in the longer term.
Ensure the rules on content sharing, social media profiles and
interactions are clearly defined as sales professionals who engage
potential buyers in a pushy manner will only damage the brand and
business reputation. At the beginning of this process, it is important
to set guidelines and assist the sales team in order to protect the
brand, by ensuring that only approved content and messages are
publically shared.


3. Build Credibility

Sales professionals are the face of the company, they
represent the brand and therefore must focus on enhancing the company’s
reputation as well as their own. Establishing a strong influencing
presence within a given industry can be done through regular engagement
on social media platforms; LinkedIn Groups, Twitter and Facebook.

Social networks can be utilized to display industry knowledge, focusing
on challenges prospects may have, and sharing solutions to these
problems. Genuine engagement and input into social conversations while
sharing great content will establish the “social seller” as a trusted
advisor. Others will notice input and contributions which may kick-start
a business discussion. Remember; select groups and conversations that
potential customers are interested in, then position yourself as a
thought leader within THEIR industry.

Everyone’s LinkedIn profiles should be professional, such as head shot
photos against a neutral background with the company logo in it, NOT a
cute photo from the weekend with strobe lights and lasers in the
background. Do not be afraid to ask for recommendations and endorsements
from colleagues or alumni. To improve credibility means striving to be
original and write engaging content to get noticed. Always remain
professional, genuine and credible

 Published from an original article at

Social Selling Tips of the Month | Instant Lead Generation For Social Selling

Sales Prospecting Guide

Even with the rapid growth in big data and social media – sales
prospecting or social prospecting is still a critical component in the
sales process. So what has changed when it comes to finding leads today?
Well sales prospecting has become “social prospecting” where sales
people research their prospects accessing data on the social media
channels. Prospecting does not stop at connection requests on LinkedIn,
or briefly looking at a buyers profile before making contact. Buyers are
evolving in how they source vendors, as should salespeople evolve in
how they source sales prospects.





Here is a guide and some tips to help improve sales prospecting.


Use A Tool To Save Time On Lead Generation:

In all industries, you must firstly generate leads. You
cannot make sales without first engaging with your prospects. But where
do you find a steady flow of prospects? This brings me to the dreaded
LinkedIn search – from my own experience (in recruitment) I know all too
well how much time and effort is spent sourcing leads. So after hours
spent creating a list of prospects now you have to go selling. You know
the story; you find the leads, quick Google search before the cold-call,
you are ecstatic to find the decision makers name somehow, now you can
call them and act casual like you know each other. Surprisingly, the
gatekeeper will not transfer you, they don’t know who you are, what
brand you represent and are highly skilled in finding out if this is in
fact – a sales call! You accept the rebuttal and follow up with a
friendly email, why? Because you spent so much time identifying them in
the first place that you need to hang on to them.

I know better than anyone how genuinely frustrating it is to spend so
much time generating leads, calling them, only to fall at the first
hurdle. We’ve all done the webinars and breakfast briefings teaching us
how to source leads. Think about how much time, money and effort you put
into sourcing leads. Wouldn’t this time be better off selling?
Salespeople are not source people! There are social media lead
generation tools you can use to eliminate the time, cost and

hard work in identifying prospects, freeing up your time to sell.


Cyber Stalking Is A Must:

Researching the company for clues on who they buy from and
existing vendor relationships is a must, but it is also imperative to
research the decision makers. Just researching the company’s strategy,
industry and challenges is not enough, in an ideal world you must try to
build a relationship with the decision maker before you do the sales
pitch. This can be done through social selling; basically you (the
salesperson) create awareness for your brand through engagement on
social media platforms. Become a thought leader and show how much you
know about their industry, engage with them on blog posts and
conversations. Be subtle, the idea here is to show a genuine interest in
the changes or developments within their industry and give advice, as
you are now on your way to becoming a trusted advisor and thought
leader. Learn to become a ninja in cyber stalking.


Relationship Building:

We all know that developing relationships plays an intrinsic role in
sales prospecting. As you can imagine, decision makers are extremely
busy, they receive on average 3,800 marketing messages daily. Let us
assume you now have your lead generation tool in place, giving you lists
of prospects, so what’s next? You need to engage right? How?

Well how about positioning yourself as a thought leader, one who is
highly knowledgeable in the prospects field. You see, as modern sales
people we must be of value to the prospects, this can be done by
offering advice, problem solving and demonstrating your expertise
through blog posts and whitepapers. Salespeople must acknowledge that
this is a gradual process, when you finally do speak with the prospect –
they should feel like they have met you before – you need to be that
familiar to them.


Befriend The Gate Keeper:

Many decision makers reach out to someone they trust for advice
and referrals, a large percentage of senior execs will turn down a
direct approach. However, if a mutual connection, influencer or
colleague were to make the introduction – 80% of senior execs would be
open to meeting.

As I mentioned earlier, many senior executives attempt to deter
salespeople by appointing gatekeepers. So what if you could engage with
the gatekeeper? And they could refer you to the decision maker? It is
important to be known within these circles, gaining a status within this
particular industry, ‘It is not who you know, but who knows you’, so an
introduction by a peer or colleague would be greatly beneficial. As I
mentioned in my previous point, genuine relationship building is an
inherent part of the process.





Find A Common Interest Or Connection:

From your cyber stalking – you should by now have a pretty good
sense of what your prospect really cares about. What are their
motivations, passions in life, involvement in clubs or societies – ask
yourself what really drives them? Count your lucky stars if you source
an article or press release stating whether a particular cause or
society is close to their heart!

This process is more about utilizing mutual interests, connections,
backgrounds, or causes. This is a great way to now develop the
relationship as you both have an interest in the same sports club,
charitable organization or society. Common interests or mutual links is a
great basis for relationship building as you can discuss what the cause
or society means to you both, thus gaining a mutual trust.



 Read the rest of this article as originally published on Connectors Marketplace

Sales Prospecting Guide | Instant Lead Generation For Social Selling

Social Selling | Instant Lead Generation For Social Selling

Articles on social selling,social data and lead generation from Connectors Marketplace.

Read all the articles here:



Social Selling | Instant Lead Generation For Social Selling

We are a group of leading data scientists, researchers, developers, designers and marketers, based in NovaUCD, Dublin, Ireland.


Our team hail from diverse corners of the globe,
including Ireland, UK, India, China, US and Brazil. We combine our
unique talents to bring you a cutting edge social media intelligence
platform that is second to none.

How to Improve Lead Nurturing with Social Media

Sales and selling is changing rapidly; to improve the vital “lead
nurturing” sales activity we have to learn the impact social media is
having on business today. Lead nurturing is an often undervalued or even
misunderstood sales activity in terms of time and effort. Social media
has now become the go to channel in lead generation so it is critical
that every sales person understands how to improve lead nurturing on the
social networks.


So what is lead nurturing? Lead Nurturing is a process of developing
relationships by utilizing various social media channels. This can be
done by supporting prospects with valuable, relevant and engaging
information so that the prospect will become more aware of you based on
your knowledge off the industry. The first goal of social selling for
any sales and marketing person in improving the lead nurturing process,
is to support and educate prospects with the goal that in future they
will convert to paying customers.


The second goal in improving the lead nurturing process is moving a
prospect from just been aware off your product and services to one where
they actually considering you as a viable vendor.

Tips To Improve Your Lead Nurturing Process :

• Map Out The Prospects In The Decision Making Process :

It is important to realize that numerous larger organization have
various partners involved in the general decision-making procedure, so
it’s really important to know which people we have to target from top to
bottom management and accordingly plan the right technique and content
to reach those people. When you map out how to reach prospects or
decision makers in the business, you’ll have improved your chances to
nurturing that lead.


The solution for a beneficial lead nurturing system is to make the
on-going communications (blogs, white papers, articles, case studies)
with your prospects as relevant to them as possible. This is your chance
to segment your prospect database and think about your social media
content which matters most to them, targeting their specific hot topics
by industry, geography and roles. Keep in mind, the more your messaging
is relevant to their buying criteria the more they should react
positively leading them to convert to a customer overtime.

• Be Consistent With Sharing Your Content :

It is vital to be constant on social media sites and continually
sharing your content with your prospects. Today emails blast are seen as
interruption marketing and will only lead to reduce message
reinforcement, this could lead to a poor view of your organization. As
you create your various content pieces such as white papers, case
studies, videos and webinars, make sure that the content is useful plus
select the correct channel (LinkedIn , Twitter , Blogs) to share that
correspondence.

• Focus On Quality Content Marketing :

The solution to achieve incredible success in lead nurturing lies in
creating quality content. It can be instructive, informative,
educational, humorous, entertaining, inspiring. Incredible content not
only achieves good response rates but also can lead on into more deeper
discussions with prospects. Quality content marketing is about thinking
from customer point of view. A strong rule in how to create quality
content is to out-educate your competitor. While other people are out
“Interruption Selling”, focusing on sharing your content through social
media platform which adds valuable knowledge generate more leads. The
greater part of lead nurturing can be repurposed to educate your
audience through messages, whitepapers, site content, webinars, blog
entries, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.


Build your social media marketing machine to deliver quality content
as this has been proven to drive more leads and positioning yourself as a
thought leader in your field. In time this content sharing will see
transformations in your sales pipeline. The hard work pays off at the
point when clients are prepared to engage with you in a sales
discussion, and you are their first choice of contact.

• Buyer’s Buying Journey

The initial phase in developing lead nurturing procedure is to have a
reasonable understanding of the buyer’s buying cycle. You should have
the capacity to analyze your buyer’s buying cycle. It is the premise of
any great lead nurturing effort to develop your content and messaging to
match progression of the buying cycle. One of the best methods to
analyze your buyer’s buying cycle is to analyze social media
interactions around events or time of year.



 Finish reading original article here



How to Improve Lead Nurturing with Social Media | Instant Lead Generation For Social Selling

Social Data in The Sales Process

Big data and the use of social data in the sales process trumps
people. The reality is that due to changing buying cycles, more
educated buyers and the use of social media to source and inform, most
sales managers if given the choice between an exceptionally talented
sales person or a highly accurate database with deep social insights,
then data will trump people nearly every time.


This article is not suggesting for one minute that a sales manager
should stop searching or recruiting great sales talent to his or her
team. However no matter how good a sales person is, the benefits of
providing sales teams with the latest social data, detailed profiles,
social media insights and the most accurate information available are
telling. Because when it comes to sales performance, an average sales
person equipped with better data will outperform a talented sales person
who has little or poor data every time.





To sell successfully today, every piece of detail can matter to win
over customers, from social media activity to information management,
who is connected to whom, what articles do they read, what they talk
about on the social networks, who is the gatekeeper and what messaging
do the decision makers like. Each answer to these details relies on
having accurate data.


Here are more reasons why data and social data are important.

Data Provides Sales Focus

The instant access to data and social media insights saves sales
teams both time and hassle, saving hour after hour of a sales person’s
time in having to research information like LinkedIn profile, twitter
name, email addresses and phone numbers. The market is full of contact
databases that make it possible to start with good basic contact
details. But in a socially connected business world to generate sales
leads the sales teams now need a source for more social data like
LinkedIn connections, social conversations, social media insights,
articles, and news plus company information.


As the sales teams no longer need to spend thankless hours
researching prospects or leads, they can use this time to research the
best sales approach. This allows any sales person the opportunity and
time to develop a more educated approach when he starts the contact
phase in the sales process. Social selling and the use of social data is
all about the more relevant information a sales person has on things
the buyer or company cares about, the more specific they can be with the
sales message.


Social data empowers sales teams with the necessary level of insight
to lead nurture and interact with the right person, at the right time,
and to convert the lead into a demo, a trial or even a meeting. The use
of social insights means sales people will be able to identify the
problems that the potential buyers have, and already have a plan
formulated on how they will articulate the solution to their problems.
Remember buyers today do not buy features, they buy solutions, they buy
partners and thanks to social media they are better informed than ever
about what solutions they will consider.

Social Data Provides Guidance

In the old sales models, a direct line or phone number was gold as it
meant sales people could reach the decision-maker. And it is still a
valid sales activity as research shows a sales person is more than 46
percent more likely to be successful in selling when they reach a
director or VP. But what happens when sales people cannot get to talk to
a prospect on the phone to explain the company’s solution. Too many
sales teams still hope that a prospect will make a decision to engage
with a business based solely on some email communication and what
content is published on the website. This can work out from time to time
but often leads nowhere.


Still too few sales managers are changing mindsets by teaching their
sales teams to look deeper at social selling and using social data from
the likes of LinkedIn and Twitter to find prospects or to engage with
lead nurturing. No matter where you source your prospect or leads list
from, it is crucial the sales teams have the tools, content and data to
influence the decision makers. The more data, especially social data a
sales team has on the prospects or buyers, the greater the understanding
about the true issues the proposed solution they are selling will
solve.

Social Data Brings Speed

Social data is way more than some contact information. Today, social
selling and social media tools gives sales the ability to access
real-time data from the social networks, which helps create a more
consistent and sustainable sales process. Using social data allows a
business to identify and target specific prospects or accounts that are
more likely to buy, and buy sooner (based on social insights or
conversations). And because selling with social data returns a higher
level of success for the solution being offered, customer churn will
likely go down as well. We live in a fast paced sales environment,
finding leads and prospects is hard enough without them leaking at the
other end of the funnel due to wrong target selection, so social data
helps sales to target the right buyers to fill up the sales funnel.


The better trained and educated the sales teams are on social data
and social selling; the more a business can fine tune the customer
acquisition and development efforts. Companies using these methods
accelerate the sales forces ability to acquire new customers and to grow
existing clients.


In the digital sales era, social data is king. Investing in social
media tools and social selling solutions will only improve the health of
a sales organization plus they are much more cost-effective than having
your valuable sales resource spend hours trolling through websites and
social networks. Create a culture, mindset and the selling skills around
ensuring that your sales organization is using data to power the sales
engine and watch your sales grow. Social data combined with real sales
talent with drive revenue growth.





Social Data in Sales – The Bitter Business