We often talk to business leaders and sales leaders and they say "we are all over social".

Which is interesting as social media is a totally transparent medium. 

What do I mean by that? Anybody can see your sales teams and your employees profiles and we can see how much they are engaging on social, in other words, anybody can measure the phrase "we are all over social".

Yesterday, I read a blog by Eric Doyle, which detailed how you can measure "being all over social", he describes it as follows.

"Check their profile. 

This needs to be buyer centric and digitally optimised, not easy to spot if you don’t know what you are looking for but…is it complete and interesting? Does it look as if they have spent time on it? Does it create a good image, does it feel right?

Check their follower count? 

You won’t be able to check how many connections they have but you can see how many followers the have on their profile in ‘Activity’ section. The average is around 950 these days, you are looking for more than average. Ask them how many connections they have and what they do to grow their network. What percentage of their digital network relates to what you want to be famous for…? If most of their network is in other sectors, you may have an issue.

Check their activity. 

Where do they hang out and interact? What content do they like and comment on and why? Are they actively engaging with others content and is that in any way related to what you do?

Check their content. 

Do they post regular content and what is it? Does their content get engagement, and do they follow up?

Check if they multi-channel. 

Do they take their Social Strategy to other platforms…?"

For example, are they digital where their clients are on Twitter, Instagram, Clubhouse tec.

You can find Eric on Linkedin here and his blog here.

Social as a tactic Vs social as a strategy

One of the issues that companies face with social today is that social media is treated as a tactic.  What do I mean?

A sales VP will post a piece of content and then ask their reports to like or comment on that content.  The problem with this is that the direct reports will have little or no network.  This means you won't be influencing the networks you want to and the post is probably just posted into an echo chamber.  In effect you are talking yourself and I doubt you will get anything from this and in fact it's a cost to the business. 

A recent article by Catherine Coale, from Telstra Purple caught my eye, partly because it's based on data and not some "gurus" opinion.

This has a massive impact on anybody wanting to use social media as part of your marketing and sales mix.  Here are two of Catherine's conclusions, these are direct quotes, from her article ....

3. Traditional B2B Marketing is Screwed

Forget product centric messages. Forget gated content on social platforms. Stop broadcasting branded messages in the hope that some of it will stick. Our pilot tells us that hardly anyone is listening anymore.   

4. If you’re doing structured Employee Advocacy today, consider reviewing your scope.

Edicts to share company content without putting your people in the narrative is just another form of broadcast marketing. It is not well received on this platform. Attempting to create a single brand voice is also a mistake.

Time, the internet, social media, mobile and the pandemic have created a perfect storm to change the way we sell and market and it's our role as leaders to make sure our sales teams have the skills to enable us to sell in this social, digital, virtual and remote world.