Previously, we explored the ways that social selling training and sales enablement can work hand-in-hand to achieve outstanding results. In our article “Enhancing Social Selling Training with Sales Enablement,” you’ll learn the basics about how to use social media to land leads and increase conversions.

The three key areas you need to focus on when reinvigorating your social selling strategy are: Content management, customer engagement, and social selling analytics. Today, we’re digging a little deeper into one of the biggest pain points (and opportunities) for sales leaders: content management and social selling. 

Influencer-Branded Content on Social Media

Even if traditional sales reps and social selling reps have the same end goal in mind, they tend to pursue it very differently. We already know that in social sales, using social media as a conduit is key. Yet the use of influencers shows that there are more opportunities to social than what most sales reps realize.

The top two ways social selling reps retrieve the content they’re looking for is through their marketing departments, or by using content already pushed out by influencers. Influencers are unique to social media, to a degree. They could be the author of a book, someone who has authority on a topic, and overall they are establishing their own personal brand and contributing to the community around a unique thought that they have. Whether you’re sharing content directly from their profile, or writing your own blog post about what they’ve said on a particular topic, utilizing the expertise and reputation of an influencer is a great step in the right direction when curating your social selling content.

All-up, influencers are creating a powerful type of content for customers. And until you implement a modern sales enablement technology to organize, prioritize, and optimize this ever-important content, you’re losing valuable insights into the content influencers prefer.

Curating Your Social Selling Content

As you’re preparing a social selling content strategy, follow the 70/20/10 rule:

• 70% of your content should come from recommended sources, industry blogs, and marketing-curated content. In this step we’re building the brand of the individual sharing the content, which will be a direct reflection onto the company which the individual represents.
• 20% of this content will be reserved for company-specific content: White papers, case studies, and blog posts.
• 10% of the content you share with potential customers should focus on fun! This portion is reserved for your sales personality, your goal here is to help the prospect see that this isn’t just about the business; it’s about fostering a relationship that may lead to deeper customer engagement.

While these pieces of content can be distributed by email or shared folders, it’s important to incorporate social media in every activity– not just for prospecting but also for continued engagement, throughout the buying process, and even beyond the sale.

Smarter Content Management Analytics

A consequence of the focus on social media means that content is shared by popularity or engagement within its user’s feed. Reps on the ground level will pick up the next hottest piece of content that’s available to them. Even if it’s not the best strategy in the long run, this method satisfies their immediate needs. This means that most social salespeople’s top content is prioritized by popularity rather than deep insights.

That’s where implementing a sales enablement tool with content management analytics can come into play. These technologies help break through the pattern of relying on data that is often less relevant to performance and instead show sales executives what’s really working (and what’s not). The metrics illuminated via sales enablement can then be harnessed to learn from missed opportunities, and drive a social selling strategy forward.

Content Competition Vs. Collaboration

The ability of sales reps to work with one another depends on the environment. If they’re in a highly competitive space, it’s survival of the fittest. If it’s a very encouraging environment – which hopefully social selling does indeed promote – then social selling reps are able to work with each other instead of against each other to find out what types of content are working.

In the same light, all of your important resources and pieces of content need to be stored in the same place and on the same platform. Some of the best sales enablement tools and technology will do just that; present your social selling content in the same context as the rest of your sales content. In fact, these smart feeds use technology like machine learning and content genomics to use reviews, feedback, and insights from salespeople’s colleagues to show what’s working – and what’s not. Thanks to your social selling comrades, the content that you need will be available to you exactly when and where you need it.

All Together Now

Social selling not only changes the way that we interact with content, but also the types of content we find, pitch, and share with prospects and like-minded reps. So it’s a good thing that at the end of the day, sales enablement makes it easy to keep track of all of your social selling content, no matter what or where it is, as it matters to you.

Join us next time as we explore one of the most important topics to social selling: Fostering greater customer engagement via social media.