Many people have asked me how Social Media can help their businesses in a practical sense, they wanted to know how it works and what it takes.  

I’ve put together some scenarios to help you visualise how this all fits together and could work for you in your organisation - Here is number 1...

Imagine this situation…

The business took a series of body blows in 2020, like many others it lost some people, took advantage of the furlough schemes and other support packages as much as it could. The management team trimmed all that was viewed as ‘unnecessary expense’ to get that overhead as low as possible. This meant cancelling any marketing spend, advertising, the PR service, that agency that ran emailing…. all gone. Some of the Salespeople were let go because, “less people are buying so we don’t need so many people selling”. 2020’s primary focus became cash preservations and keeping a now reduced team in gainful employment, less people doing more.

The Sales team had a network that they could tap into but struggled to get new business as their old school methods were wearing thin. Modern buyers are digitally savvy and more and more often, need less and less from Salespeople…so the cold calling and mass email spamming didn’t work. Now there are non- Salespeople ‘doing sales’…they are even further behind than the Sales team were in terms of skills and network. 

There is one person in the organisation who thinks they 'know a thing or two about Social Media', they have convinced the team that it must be them that posts on Social. So they post pictures of your products and/or services with ‘contact me for more information’, nobody does.  They may even make the odd video showing your products and/services with ‘contact me if you are interested’ as a closing line.... another ‘contact me’ advert.  It’s all tactical, random, non-strategic and doesn’t harness the latent Social Media power within your team.  

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The net result in 2021, your organisation is now invisible. All the good work you did in 18 and 19 is gone. 

You are invisible and are struggling to get close to prospects with the team now in the shape it is. We start the year straight back into lockdown, so what can you as the leader do to react to this? 

You’ve heard about Social Media, but you are not convinced, you don’t understand how Social Media can help you and the business.

Here is a plan and a business case...

Step 1: Talk to an expert. Not a ‘1-hour masterclass’ type or an amateur who has ‘found some LinkedIn hacks’, a trained and experienced professional who is used to taking management teams though Strategic Social Media transformation programmes to get results.

Step 2: Develop a Social Media Strategy.  Starting without a strategy is like setting off on a trip around the world without a map. Why – How – What, Challenges and levers, what you want to be famous for and where, your Social Media Mission, your expectation and what it will take to deliver it – etc, etc, etc.

Step 3: Select 5-10-20 of your team and train them in Social Selling & Influence, not just Sales and Marketing people – Managers, Directors, C level, Technical people, HR specialists, HSE people – all of them.  This programme takes 12 weeks to establish the training, the coaching and embed the necessary habits and behaviours. Don’t worry, you will start to see results during the programme, if the team do what they are asked to do. 

The team will get optimised online profiles that are tuned to work for them and work for you, even when they are not on the platform. Profiles that work on a psychological and biological level and generate digital credit. This all links back to your profile, if your profile is no optimised and you are producing content, it’s the same as attracting people to your shop when it has broken windows, missing walls and no stock… 

Your team will learn how to strategically grow their network and be found by those that are important to your business.  As their leader, you should understand that supporting them growing their network is critical to your growth.

They will learn how to build influence in the verticals of your business focus. 

They will be taught how to create engaging content and what to do with it. How to turn content engagement into leads.

They will receive instruction in how to digitally position themselves and your business to have more conversations with prospects than they could by any other means.

They will be shown a tested methodology, the regime and the format to position themselves to increase sales, company visibility and company reputation.

If they follow the programme your team will begin to receive inbound. They will be digitally deploying themselves and your organisation, ahead of your competition.   Most large companies miss the point on Social Media and continue to spew out bland corporate profiles and content that is sanitised and homogenised. When trained, smaller competitors can take control of the digital share of voice in their sectors, even when there is a much larger competitor. We know this because we do this over and over. 

There will be a new buzz around the team as they will all be involved and connected to the recovery plan and the pipeline will begin to look healthy again.

When we train teams on Social Selling & Influence, they see on average a 30% increase in Sales and a 40% decrease in Sales cycles.  You don't believe these numbers right now but the fact is, they are conservative.    

Have a think about your team….do you believe right now that your COO could be the biggest Social Media influencer in your digital sectors? They can…we know they can.

Put what you believe you know about Social Media on hold and take the modern step forward to Strategic Social Media.  You and your team will learn new skills and begin to see the results and benefits stack up.

As an MD recently put it “it’s a bloody great feeling of being alive again…!”

Live Social ’21…

Eric Doyle

Crux / DLA Ignite