Content Curations Role in Uniting Your Marketing Strategy Webinar | Digital Marketing Institute

Key Takeaways

[Music] i'm here to talk about content curation and its role in uniting your sales and marketing strategy two seconds background on me i've been in and around the learning technology world for about 25 years now i've started three businesses and successfully sold to those so far third one will be a charm i'm sure driving all of that has been running sales teams running marketing teams and underlying all that has been using content to build relationships primarily b2b relationships so let's to step back a little bit let's go back to basics content curation what is it what does this phrase mean why does it matter in social selling and in content marketing and how to get started with it i want to start exploring those three questions by taking it even further step back and just asking ourselves about buyers what do we know about buyers i'm going to make some assumptions that most of you are in a sales or marketing role or aspire towards being in such roles and that you're primarily interested in building relationships with b2b audience b2c is a little bit different i'm going to be focusing more on b2b today but the lessons do extend across both points if you're in that market as i have been for a long time you will have noticed a shift you will have noticed a shift in power and control towards buyers buyers have changed the opportunities available to buyers have shifted dramatically and we as sales and marketing professionals we always need to constantly evolve we need to be continuously learning we need to be changing our behavior we need to be changing it in response to the changing world that buyers are operating in a few things to summarize that this is research from from forrester from a couple of years ago if anything these numbers have gone up um since since this report the buyers are in control the the shift to power is with buyers 92 of b2b purchases will start with an online search or a social search of some kind 74 percent of buyers say they much prefer using websites and they prefer to go online they prefer to do the research and understand what is out there for me what are the options available to me for whatever product or service i might be looking for who is going to solve my problem the best they are researching they're looking at you they're looking at what you say and when they are ready they will engage with you so they use social networks primarily linkedin but the others as well to learn about different vendors different offers in the marketplace and 90 of them um will not take a cold call so if you're trying to cold call recently and it hasn't been working this is why buyers much prefer to be in charge of what they're what they're doing themselves uh rather than waiting for you to do it what is really important in all of this content content has always been king i would promote it to queen content has always been the vital thing that enables buyers or prospects or people considering you your brand your product your company your service to make decisions about you so if buyers are using social and search to find this content what experience are they having well they're having the same experience that you and i have when we use google or when we use linkedin or twitter or facebook to find things they are getting overwhelmed there's an enormous amount of content produced every day and the experience that people have is a great phrase by mark schaefer who's excellent on all matters of content marketing and really recommend you read his work he's come up with this phrase content shock so content shock he defines is when exponentially increasing volumes of content inter-intersect our limited human capacity to consume it what does that mean it's more content produced than we are ever going to be able to consume we are never going to be able to keep up with everything that's written published videos articles it's so easy to publish content it's so easy to put content on social on the web but the problem is it's just it's out of control we can't keep up with the consumption of it i think i experience that on a daily basis i'm sure you do too we're all overwhelmed and if you use google as um i imagine some of you do you just do a simple search like sales tips as i did recently you get 180 million results well good luck getting past page one in those results it's just too much content too little time we're all experiencing this cnn estimated recently where we're exposed to about 74 gigabytes of content every day ironically cnn is probably adding to that number by publishing that and sharing more content but much of this information is just coming at us as noise it's not controlled there are signals in there there are vital there are clues of content in there for us and for our buyers and our prospects but it's disorganized clay shirky another great writer he's done an awful lot of work around echo chambers and being diverse in terms of the content that you look at has an even better phrase i think with respect to mark yes we can call it content shock we can call it information overload but really what it is is filter failure we're letting too much of the wrong content come at us each and every one of us us as individuals as sales professionals marketing professionals and as buyers as prospects it's filter failure now i don't want all that to sound depressing that there's just too much content there's nothing we can do about it because i believe and i've seen this work that a filter failure or a content shock is a sales and marketing opportunity now why is that it is because buyers are having the same experience as us too much of the wrong content coming at them in linkedin in in their inboxes in all of their social networks that they that they participate in we can play a role in absorbing some of this content shock reducing it for them we can play a role in ensuring that our buyers and our prospects and the people that we want to build trusted relationships on social networks get meaningful content so they get more signal and less noise and if we do that we help to build credibility and trust with them we help to say to them we know there's an awful lot of information out there we don't want to just add to the landfill we want to bring you relevant timely engaging content and that's really what content curation is all about is ensuring that you are acting as a trusted filter for your buyers and your prospects on social networks it is powered it powers social selling so i am going to get into what content curation is i want to give it a context for you because i know so many of you are in sales roles and want to understand how sales and marketing support this concept of social selling social selling is powered by content curation let's just talk about social selling for a moment to give some context of that so let's go back to that changing world i was speaking about how buyers are more in control relationships b2b relationships have changed dramatically they're not transactional based if if your first move is by my product by my service you're going to get that kickback that you should probably expect if that's what you're leading with it's about building relationships it's about building one-to-one relationships over time with individuals it's about educating and selling and those of you who are in content marketing roles will know this really well the content that really moves the needle for you is not content that's promotional it's content that helps people understand an issue it's where you share your insights you share your best practices and bring people on board through that it's less about pitching and prospect there's a time for that of course but you have to earn the right to do that and you do that by listening by listening first seeking first to help and inform and educate and seeking to sell and pitch later so it's about listening and adding value really all of that is what social selling is so a definition of social selling many of them are out there linkedin i think of a particularly good one leveraging your social network to find the right prospects build trusted relationships and ultimately achieve your sales goals so it is selling it is selling in a social network but it's doing it differently it's about building um relationships with people through content through information through education it's it's consultative selling at a scale four steps to it um in terms of linkedin model building a professional brand uh who you are who you stand for what you believe in and that's a lot of that is to do with the content that you share and i'll come on to that in a little while connecting with the right people obviously you need to be targeting the people who are most likely to engage with you your target clients your target audience and there's lots of tools to help you to do that there's a whole separate module on about finding an audience building a module which is in the academy which i'd really recommend you have a look at engaging with insight so you find people you do the work to build to to identify who you want to build a relationship with now the hard work starts what have you got to share with them what have you got to say to them that will make them believe that you are a trusted credible authority an expert a consultant who will help them and that is how you build relationships so engaging with insights and building relationships is a circular activity that you do over time those four steps are powered by content okay the what we what we share on these on these social networks primarily linkedin is what will help people understand that we are worth connecting with that we have insights that are worth listening to and that we have a relationship that is worth is worth developing so content underpins it all social selling works many many stats to support that i'm going to share a book at the end of this that has lots of case studies and examples but just to pick some highlighted stats these are from hubspot again really echoing kind of the converse of what forrester is saying is that um b2b buyers 75 of them willing will use social media to engage on buying decisions they're asking their peers they're asking their colleagues what do you think who's out there that's worth engaging with you're five times more likely to get results if you engage and you share insights about your business and your industry okay not just about your product not about jumping to the pitch but sharing insights to show that you understand the industry that you're working in and the trends in that industry social makes a huge difference on uh getting buying decisions 82 percent of vendors saying that it has an impact on them and you're far more likely to outperform your peers if you're using social media correctly to identify opportunities build those relationships and engage with insight so it works so i won't overlap with the point okay so social selling works content power social selling what type of content are we supposed to be sharing to build these relationships and engage these insights well let me start by answering the opposite question here's what won't work if you share content that's just not relevant that it just doesn't matter to buyers it's it's just not in their industry it's not in their space it's not solving their problems that won't help in fact it's possible to do an awful lot of damage to your professional brand at scale if you share the wrong things at the wrong time content that pushes too quickly for a next step you know we've all had this someone connects with us on linkedin and the next thing you get is a message saying buy my product or you know a slightly dressed up way of saying let's have a meeting why i want to show you what i'm doing all of those things are pushing too quickly this is a long game and if you go straight into that pitch mode too quickly you will switch people off you you've seen it happen if the content is unclear if it's all about you if it's seller-centric if it's just purely promotional or over-marketing or if it's just overly generic if it's just not specific enough and it's already been shared a lot already these are things that will not help you build trusted relationships with people and engage with insights the content that will help you is content that is timely relevant and engaging relevance and engaging are subjective those are in the eye of the beholder or in the eye of the buyer which is why we need to understand our buyers and prospects very very well to understand what relevance and engagement means for them timely is of course self-explanatory you want to be in the early stages of people sharing content or getting out there first before it preferably jumps the shark you want to get in there early on with it so timely relevant engaging those are your watch words for the content that you should be sharing on social networks okay we've talked about content and here's a question i often get asked at this point particularly by people in marketing and sales roles which is we get it we should be sharing this content on social networks primarily on linkedin to build these relationships with buyers we do not have time or budget to make all of this content we just don't have time we're kind of busy you know we have targets we're already trying to hit quotas we are already engaged in all sorts of pitching conversations etc i cannot as a salesperson suddenly become an author a blogger i can't be creating videos i don't have the time to do it i may not feel like i have the skills to do it marketing teams will have time and budget and i should hope you all who are professional marketers have a content marketing plan that's budgeted and allocated to but even then you can't just double down or triple down on the amount of content you're creating and i get that i wouldn't do it either and this is where content curation i told you we'd get there in the end really makes a difference content curation is your new best friend and a very powerful weapon in this activity of social selling because you don't have to make all the content you can curate it so what is content curation lots of definitions out there here's what i particularly like from rohit bhagava he talks about what is a content curator content curator i mean simply borrowed from the museum or art gallery metaphor you're organizing content you're grouping it finding it organizing it and sharing the best and most relevant content for on a specific issue online and the key thing is you are doing that continually content curation is not a one and done activity you're repeatedly looking out there for the most recent relevant timely and engaging content you're adding your insights to it and you're sharing it with the right people at the right time now we'll pick apart this definition go through some steps in a moment but just i want you just to think about that role of content curation there's a balance in terms of the content that you should share to achieve your social selling and content marketing rules it's not all of one it's not all of the other so created content content that you have made within your organization versus curated content curated content is third-party content that's been authored by somebody else that you have sourced you want to balance between those two things of course you have to have your own content you're in the business of promoting your product your services your company you need your own content to be in control of that message and that raises brand awareness it's hugely valuable as long as it doesn't fit into that category of this is just a brochure this is just a pitch this is not really answering any questions for me so you need to think about the structure of that and making sure that it's relevant and engaging for for your buyers and for your audience but even if you do those two things you cannot cover all the needs and interest that your buyers have that is a moving target new things happen every day in every industry there are three million blog posts if not more published every day some of those will be relevant to your buyers budget and time prevents you from answering every single question that your buyers could possibly have and even if you had unlimited resources to create an unlimited amount of your own content i wouldn't recommend that's what you do because you're only talking about yourself even if we're doing it in a very well structured and valuable meaningful way it's still your content it still has a you know an underlying intent about about buying that's not a great way to build credibility someone used the analogy of a dinner party or cocktail party if someone just walks up to you and immediately starts talking about their own company and their product and them and them you're probably going to walk away which is what people will do on linkedin if that's what you if that's what you approach with so none of us have a monopoly on good ideas and if we're going to ensure that we have a balanced view that we're trusted advisors we need to balance our created our own content with curated content third-party content from around the web so that curated content should be from diverse sources big benefit of it it takes no effort to produce it you're not writing it you have to find it and we're going to talk a little bit about how to do that in an efficient way in a couple of minutes but it's it's a fraction of the effort that it takes to create a new piece of content because you all know as content marketers the effort it takes to research a report to write it to edit it to produce it put it together same for videos podcasts and all the other different formats that you use you um you don't have the time to do it all so curate uh content as well as creating it it also sends a couple of other signals as well it shows that you are an open-minded diverse person you are interested in content from multiple different sites and sources you don't just talk about yourself you tap into industry trends you're tapped into publications that produce really good quality content that are trusted sources and that you're consuming it and that you're sharing it with people in a sensitive meaningful way and i'll come on to that in a couple of moments but you're showing your buyers we understand the issues that you're facing we have some of the answers but other people have some of the answers as well and you're adding your own insights a great phrase that's been used around this is being a good content curator is almost like being a content concierge if you borrow that hotel analogy of a concierge saying whatever it is you need i will get it for you and i will bring it to you no problem at all that's what you're trying to do when you're curating content you're going out there you're finding it you're organizing it you're bringing it back and you're making it very personalized for people and sharing it in the right way it's a great way to build those trusted relationships get that engagement and ultimately move towards profitable relationships with with individuals so that's creative versus curated content anthony iannaro great writer on content marketing and social selling i think really nailed it with with this particular quote here he stepped back and said okay well well social sellers or any person with a sales role on what you're really trying to be is a trusted advisor trusted advisor means doing two things building trust and sharing advice and you don't need to create content to do that you need to have awareness you need to be very tapped into the trends the issues what matters the problems the challenges in the sector and the industry that you're operating in you need to know that stuff you need to curate it you need to organize it and you need to work as a team sales and marketing together to do that and you need to share those insights with the right people now sounds easy to say but i think he's really nailed it there's think of yourself as a trusted advisor what can you do to help to build that trust and build that advice over time so created versus curated content what is the right balance i regularly get asked this question is so should we stop producing content and just share other people's content all the time no of course not it's about finding the right balance view now there's lots of different metrics out there you may have heard four one one you may have heard 70 2010 all approximately in the same proportions i quite like this from joe palitzi 532. um so maybe you know three numbers you can take away from today five three two fifty percent of the content that you share he recommends should be third party content so content that you have not made that you've curated from third-party sources fifty percent of it so from many of you that might be quite a shift if you think about what you're sharing on linkedin right now or twitter or on other social networks would you say that 50 of that content is not your content if not have a look at that and think about addressing that balance 30 of it should be yours should be your own content you have to get your own name out there you have to promote your product your brand your services of course the other 20 you know an unscientific way of saying it other stuff so fun inspirational stuff that just really got your attention um humorous content content that just shows that you're a person as well that you're a human and that you share things that you like so think about that balance your mileage may vary of course but it's important i think to have a ratio in mind about how much of each of these types of content that you're sharing all right so if i'm now saying that 50 of your content should be curated content let me anticipate a question that might be coming true so where is this content how do i curate this content and then what do i do with it when i find it so let's dig into that a little bit more detail so we have rohit's definition of content curation about going out grouping finding content and organizing it i'm going to break it down into three practical steps for you so i'll ask you to remember maybe 532 from today i'll ask you to remember three more words from today and that's all you take away i'll be very happy seek sense share so three great steps for content curation from a framework by a guy called harold jarkey who's a good friend of mine and it's is a really great guy when it comes to talking about this stuff seek by finding that content the relevant timely useful engaging content for your audience making sense of it so you need to consume the content yourself understand it listen to it read it and then share it put it where it matters go where the traffic is go where your audience are already spending their time so seek send share let's look at each of these in a little bit more detail so seeking content to seek we must first understand we need to understand our buyers what are the challenges that our buyers are facing what are they reading where are they going to get insights right now uh what are they engaging with what do they respond to what do they add to the discussion of on linkedin or twitter what are they like what do they share with other people what you share is a really good signal for what you value which will come on to talk to a little bit more detail what groups are they in in in primarily linkedin but elsewhere as well you need to understand all of that really at the core of this is building personas and you know there's a i know you know about building personas already we could do a whole hour on on what it takes to do that but do build them do you work as sales and marketing teams together to try to get a very very clear picture of who your buyers are and they may be at different levels there may be different stakeholder groups in different organizations um their profiles might be quite different you need to draw that profile you need to have a very clear mental image of who they are and you need that to be backed by data and we'll talk about a couple of tools that can help you to do that as well understand your buyers first don't start sharing things until you know it's landing with the right people because they are interested in it look at the types of content that engage them there's a whole range of content types that can be created or curated from detailed reports from academic journals from short videos podcasts um quizzes pdfs etc you know you know that you can run the full gamut there share the formats of content that you've already see that your buyers are engaging with and responding to well once you have that sense of who they are what the challenges are and to borrow a phrase from jay baer how you can be the best answer to the questions that they have then you can start seeking the content when you do make sure that you don't give yourself content shock to go back to that phrase don't just browse don't just say okay well they're on linkedin i'll just go and get this content from linkedin by just flicking through my linkedin feed and finding it and then sharing it that's going to be overwhelming for you as you already know by doing that same on twitter and absolutely on google or any search engine that you use you're going to get overwhelmed with information and if you're sharing stuff without really having a pattern or having a structure to it you're going to find yourself going down a rabbit hole yeah i guarantee you'll find yourself looking at a cat video and thinking how did i get here it happens to us all using the internet will happen if you start searching for for content like this as well use tools there are plenty of tools out there that will help accelerate the seek part of this process i'm going to highlight four and i'm going to just do a quick tour of one of them so hubspot you know hubspot um they have a great content strategy tool helps you to create content around the topics that your customers are interested in um so you can use their uh use their tool to identify good content they will engage with your customers and they have a great blog as well and they're a great example of a content marketing powerhouse that is really really good at this they run a great sales blog as well read what they have to say always important but sumo a company i helped to set up it's a tool that helps you to analyze what content is popular in any particular industry how well shared the content has been across social networks so remember the more the more someone shares content the more they're effectively voting for it they're giving it they're they're giving a signal of value to it so if you want to analyze which content is most shared it's a great tool to use for that you can also use it so going back to that buyer persona question if you want to identify a particular buyer and find out what content have they shared you can use both sumo to do that so you can do some really deep analysis of buyers you can identify who the influences are in any industry and see what content they share because you want them to be sharing your content as well so great tool for doing some data driven analysis to help you make better informed decisions about the content that you create or the content that you curate anders pink my company we're totally focused on content curation so we have a tool i'll show it to you in a couple of moments that enables you to set up what we call briefings these are constantly updating feeds of content on whatever topic you are interested in filtered whatever way you want to so again going back to that whole idea of filter failure we're trying to help to you to set your own filters to decide what matters to you and to ensure that you have a constant feed of content as a sales and marketing team that you can then use to curate and share effectively we'll show you that in a moment sprout social great platform as well i'm sure many of you are familiar with with the great work that they do great hub for social media publishing analytics engagement across all your profiles and there are many more i'm highlighting four here the key thing is use the ones that work for you try them all they all have free trials um and you and settle on the right tool for you but use a tool when you're doing it when you're doing seeking so i'm going to shift gears for just a moment and dive into one of these tools just to give you a sense of how they work and i'm going to go into the andis pink platform just to give you a sense of how how it operates here so as i mentioned this is the content curation tool it's trying to help you do that seek sense share cycle of activities in a structured way i'm in our web app here you can also do it on native mobile apps as well i know someone in the preparation for the webinar today was asking a question and i believe you were from a fisheries organization or a maritime organization so i thought it might be interesting just for your benefit but for everyone else as well to show you an example of of an organization in the same space as cat marine one of our one of our clients here this is helping the sales and marketing team in cat marine to do some content curation so what you're seeing here is a series of briefings on various different topics so they're interested in consultative selling because they are sales professionals but also industry topics so ferry phishing crews initial emissions technology and so on each of these briefings has content within it so if i go into uh one of these for example so let's just say offshore i'm now seeing content about uh this topic of offshore and offshore meaning offshore offshore drilling oil and gas from their perspective that's what their clients are interested in and this is what the sales professionals in this organization want to stay up to date on need to stay up to date on to know understand what's happening in their industry of course they publish and produce their own content but they are well aware other people publish and produce valuable content around this topic as well so what they have here is they have a feed of content in this briefing they can go back a month a week three days to see what's been published recently as you can see there's a series of of pieces of content coming coming through here from various different sites and sources so if they want to go and look at any of this content to have a closer read of it they can do that it'll just pop into a new window so the seeking has been done for them these briefings are updating every four hours so the tool is going back out to the web looking for content that is being well shared that is published on authoritative sites that they've chosen that matches whatever topics that they've asked for and has been published in the last in the last four hours so something might not have been published in the last four hours in which case it will an update but on topics like offshore there's always something new happening so even in the last 24 hours there's six or seven articles coming in here so this is content that is being that is being automated for them the seeking has been handled for them they don't have to go out and look at 25 different websites to find this content it's been brought in aggregated and organized and ranked for them from here they can then do some sense making from it so they can start a conversation about it so i could say you know we should we should really talk about this etc i can flag a member of the team to let them know that they should look at it it's particularly relevant to their clients um i can save it if i want to build a little library of i think is really good evergreen content that i might want to come back to or track what my competitors are doing or saying i can do all of that as well and of course i can share it so i can share it to all the main social networks and then doing that add my insights and my thoughts as i do that as well so it's handling some of that seek sense sharing for me as well and i can also train it over time to say i want to see more like this i want to see less like this as well in the background what's happening here is you know so i talked about filter failure and how important it is to get the right content for you this client has said we don't want to just see content from everywhere on offshore drilling because that's no better than going to google and looking for it we want to see it from specific places so they've chosen sites and sources these can be websites rss feeds twitter handles that they want to see content from they don't want to see everything from these sites they only want to see content about offshore oil or gas from these sites and they could also go further and say we don't want to see content that mentions specific competitors or specific markets or industries as well do it in any language that they want to as well so you set your filters you decide what you're interested in i'll just show you for example if i wanted to for example say i am interested in the topic of ai or big data say for example if i was trying to share useful content because i know my customers are interested in that but not just anything about ai or big data only if it mentions hr or if it mentions i don't know recruitment say for example so hot topic at the moment how is artificial intelligence and big data driving change in hr and recruitment so that's just very quickly said bring in content about these things only if it mentions these things i could say don't mention anything that mentions say machine learning for example entirely driven by me and then i can further say where do i want to see this content from so i can see it from 6 000 sites which is a list that we run on the top sites or we could say you know for this i'm particularly interested in what ibm has to say about this and i'm interested in what uh say techcrunch has to say about this so i could say i want to be quite discerning here because maybe i'm engaging with really senior stakeholders and i only want to see things from very specific sites and sources so these could be any sites and sources could be academic journals it could be wider publications whatever you choose or you can just choose one of these lists so you set up your filters whatever way you want to and then we'll just automatically bring in content for you and as you saw there it's going to keep updating every four hours bringing me content that i can get value from so i just wanted to quickly show you that you can obviously do in the tool or have it come into another platform as well so you want this appearing in your slack channel or microsoft teams or your crm or somewhere else or a learning management system where we often integrate that will help keep people up to date so cat marine used this to help keep their sales teams continuously updated on what is happening in their industry so that they can have better conversations with their clients they know the sales teams are busy we all are they don't have time to go out looking for this content on a manual basis every day or every four hours so they do it together and then they collaborate choose the very best and then share it so that's just one tool of many that are out there just wanted to give you a quick quick tour of it again my key point is whatever tool you choose to use use something use algorithms to help you particularly with this seeking activity so that's all i wanted to show around this so that's uh just a quick tour of one particular tool um but do have do consider which tool um is right for you and then you can uh you can share that share the content um effect effectively from it so that's that's seeking um i want to come on now and talk about um making making sense of the content so seeking is something that algorithms tools can help you with making sense of content is something that only humans can do so we talk a lot about how the bots are going to take all our jobs and ai is going to wipe out all of our professional um opportunities not the case when it comes to content curation because sense making is um absolutely about an individual um understanding and reading content what does it mean to make sense of content well it means adding your insights it means adding your insights to drive engagement so what you don't want to do you go to the trouble of seeking out a piece of content in a tool like anders pink or one of the others or you just find something on the web yourself you need to personalize it don't just flick on a link many people do they will just share a link without adding any context to it to me that's just you're kind of just adding to the noise and please please please don't do this thing that unfortunately some people still do which is share something that they haven't actually read um that is damaging your credibility if you do that you must read listen watch whatever content you're about to share um so that you're ready to answer questions about it and you're ready to ready to respond to individuals about it um you need to do a couple of things when you do it when you're sharing content three ps remember um personalize it you're an individual you're a human being what did you learn from this content is the easiest question to ask yourself is what did i take from this what did i learn um if you summarize that you show a couple of things you show that you're not trying to say that you're an expert on the subject you're continuing to learn like everybody else is and you have some insights that you'd like to share with it so ask you ask people hey explain what you learned and ask people what did they take from it what's their view on it and by doing that you start a debate you start a question so you can be as provocative as you want to here so you might share a piece of content with a stakeholder that you're trying to build a relationship with that maybe it's from a competitor of theirs it's a pretty provocative thing to do but if you do that in the right context and you say look i i noticed this is happening in the industry this is my take on it this is where i think this trend is going i would love to discuss this with you that's a far more interesting conversation to my mind in terms of engagement than saying here's my product so have a debate start a conversation you can do that privately or you can do that publicly and we'll talk about different pros and cons of both in a couple of moments and then provide context as the third p is providing that context so in we're in curation we are all trend spotters we're looking out there for patterns around content about um this is this bit is relevant this is the fifth piece of content addressing this particular issue of artificial intelligence driving hr for example or a particular type of vessel equipment within the fishery industry we're seeing a particular pattern here you have an opportunity to then observe that pattern call it out and say i think this is particularly relevant because it's fitting into a key trend in our sector or it's providing a different point of view how does it build another content that's been published and produced so curated content wrap your sense around it show that you are engaged with the content and then people will engage with you so that's sense making you can sense make in a couple different ways and sensing and sharing we're now kind of bleeding into the the sharepoint but you can do that on linkedin in a number of different ways you can do it publicly so here's an example on the left is from my own linkedin feed where i shared a piece of content about um social selling about how account-based marketing relates to social selling it's not my content i didn't write it demandbase wrote it really really good piece of research i shared it i added some thoughts around it and particularly called out one about frequency key thing to look at here is i didn't write a 500 word blog post about it i wrote a paragraph okay so it does not take long to do this you know you've read the report you have an insight you share it you can share with individuals you can share it as a public um post on your your linkedin feed i personally like to call out individuals who i think will be particularly interested in this people i'm trying to build a relationship with um but i'm constantly sharing content with them so that's the public one on the left you can also do it privately so on the right this is a private linkedin message that i sent to somebody shared a specific piece of content with them again it's curated content from from the web it's about their sector they're they work in ed tech it's a case study and i shared a little bit about the case study i said this is interesting based on what you said in the past so we've had a dialogue i'm building a relationship i'm listening to what they've said before i'm sharing this piece of content because i know they are interested in this because they've mentioned something to me and then i've slightly provoked them um i've said you know maybe you should be doing something like this be great to see you guys follow the lead of estonia in this particular case so i don't know how provocative that is depends on the tone in which you do it but you're you know you're trying to say here i'm trying to help you i'm giving you some advice information i'm not asking you to buy anything i'm not even trying to get into that conversation because i'm building a relationship and of course this is not just about prospects or people that you've never met or engaged with in person before or never sold anything to this is part of account based marketing and selling as well you do this for the people that you already have relationships with who have already invested trust with you because they've bought something from you we all know in b2b sales it is about keeping that relationship alive renewing it every day with new insights and new information to share with them because they always have a decision to change and you can be sure your competitors are trying to build the same type of relationship that you have so not just for new uh prospects and new opportunities it's for existing ones as well really really important we're already kind of moving into the share when i showed those couple of examples sharing of course is you're going to do the work to seek the content you're going to do the work to read listen watch and engage with it make sense of it you've got to share it you've got to put it in the right place the right time for the right people and in social selling bear in mind you know we are all we're only as good as our professional brand and i really like it if you haven't read this book really recommend it deep dive into the phenomenon of of a social theory but it's a great it's a great title i think you are what you share by charles ledbeter what we share signals what we place value in if i'm sharing something and i'm doing it with some meaning i'm saying i think this is good and i think it is worth your attention that is why i am sharing it you're asking people to take time take time to have a look at it and engage with not just the content but your thoughts and your insights around it as well it is your trust it is the currency of trust on social networks is what you share and it's your expertise on show so with that in mind share in a discerning way this is not about going into broadcasting and every single time a piece of content comes your way that you're just pushing it back out there is about being very very selective you know we're going back to that point about content shock we are not trying to add to content shock we are trying to absorb a content shot for people and only share really good quality content what does quality mean timeliness i think is really really important for this if something has already been shared a thousand times on linkedin very little point being a thousand and one unless you're sharing it with someone you absolutely know has not seen it before um but you know we have to be aware of the timeliness of content and that will vary by industry some industries if something is is breaking news you want to be among the first to share it sometimes the cycle might be a little bit longer that's for you to decide but do think about timeliness is it targeted are you sharing with the right people are you adding value to the prospect are you adding insights are you providing context for them is it relevant which hopefully should be self-explanatory are you bringing in your insight so it's not just about sharing everything the other point i would make about this is don't just share what is already in linkedin so linkedin has a fantastic tool sales navigator i'm sure many of you use it it will bring you content that is worth sharing a lot of that content has already been shared on linkedin that's how it's in there so you're not going to be the first person to share that think about being diverse in terms of your sources somebody use the analogy about being a content curator is about being a really cool underground dj who's found this track that nobody else has heard and is playing it for the first time that may be going too far in terms of hipsterness for what we're trying to do here today but it's an analogy to bear in mind you're trying to find things that are a little bit underground that maybe people have missed maybe you've zoomed past them in their feeds but you're drawing their attention back to it so by all means look at the big sites the big publishers they tend to dominate anyway you know who they are in your industry but also look at the niche ones think back to that cat marine example they've picked out very specific academic publications that they think are high quality high authority for their audience and they're pulling content from those rather than just something that's been shared maybe in the broader news media so think about going niche think about being really specific think about long tail content that might not have come to anybody else's attention you're uncovering that it's valuable and relevant and has a great meaning for your audience that's great content to share so where you share it obviously matters hugely and i've already kind of alluded to this several times today linkedin for social selling for b2b is your go-to network the stats bear it out it's by by far where most uh b2b buyers are getting their insights spending their time having conversations it's where you have to be yes twitter yes facebook but if it's about focusing and if this is new charity to you and you're building your social selling strategy linkedin is where you have to start it's become a publishing platform in its own right as you know you can publish articles on linkedin you can publish videos now on linkedin as well so they follow the lead from facebook and twitter in terms of embedding live video so it's a great place to produce original content that content can also be curated content and we'll come on to have a look at that as well when you're using linkedin a couple of things um you know common what we said before obviously you need to make it valuable you need to make it personalized you need to let people know what you're sharing with them why you think it's useful and building that question a couple of examples it might be an industry report industry reports are great to share and you know whatever industry you're in i'm sure there is um facts stats updates quarterly reports that help people to understand what's happening in the industry you can share those but even better you share your take on them do you agree with them do you think that there's a missing trend do you have further insights to add really valuable to do we already talked about looking at competitors it pays to be healthily paranoid i like to say looking left and right looking what other people are doing in in the field and helping your buyers and your prospects stay aware of those things even if it's just to say does this matter to you is this a distraction or is this really meaningful to you comment on something that their business is doing if you know someone has merged or been acquired or or is acquiring or expanding or adding a new product or service line note that congratulate them and then ask us some questions about it listen to them and then add value with curated content over time so a number of different ways you can engage with prospects on linkedin um just quickly run through them messaging people directly i already showed you an example of that so you can message people directly once you've connected with them if you use sales navigator you get i think 15 messages a month where you can reach out to someone if you're going to do that and it's someone that you don't know you really need to think very carefully about the structure of how you do that you can introduce yourself explain professionally while you're connecting with them i would always add value in a first contact with anybody even if it's just accepting a connection i would always seek to add value or always seek to share something meaningful for them or ask them a question to get the conversation going sales navigator mentions in post we've already looked at linkedin groups they kind of have come and gone over time i still find them really really useful whatever industry or whatever sector you're working in there is a linkedin group where your targets your target prospects your audience are hanging out and your competitors are probably in there as well so you should be too and then you can do it at scale through updates articles and videos as well when you're sharing content on linkedin always remember it is it's a b2b professional network um keep the tone professional it's it and so you know it's that is that 50 30 rather than that 20 on l