In this article by The Drum, they quite rightly call out that readers of our content are not robots.

If you are a reader of mine, I tend to be more direct than that and say, you the reader are not stupid.

Let's look at The Drum article in more detail.

"82% of marketers are leveraging content marketing, creating god-knows-how-much content on an annual basis (it's impossible to measure accurately, but let’s estimate ‘a shit-ton’). All this work has created such an over-saturation that decision-makers can’t keep up. There is, undoubtedly, too much stuff. The question is: how can marketers cut through the noise and make an impact?

B2B audiences aren’t robots. They want to be amazed, entertained, and informed. Too often, B2B audiences churn out the same old PDFs and articles under the guise of thought leadership when it’s nothing of the sort. Quality over quantity is key."

As a buyer, what do I think of your brand?

As a buyer my first engagement with you as a brand or as a person that represents the brand is "I don't trust you, I don't want to talk to you, because you are going to pitch to me and try and sell me something."  This, of course, will impact how we engage with your content.

Let's look at content

I know you are totally amazed with your product and services because it pays your mortgage, I am not amazed.

It's not about content

As a marketer and a salesperson you have to get past this current thought process that it's all about content.  It isn't.

It's all about conversations, what you sell and I sell needs to have a conversation.  The content and posting it output is a conversation.  The content is not the output, the conversation is.

If your not creating content to create conversations, your dead in the water.

You also need a network as a brand or a individual contributor. 

Throwing content at strangers hasn't worked for 5 years, so why are businesses still doing it?

You are trying to influence people, sell to people, so why are you not connected to people.  

Want to know more about social selling, check out my new book

"social selling techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition".

In this brand new edition, I have updated all the text, I have also got 15 practitioners, so people who are doing this already to explain how they are get (practical) business benefit. From the CEO that has been running a digital business for over 18 months to sales leaders who use social selling every day.  

Articles on how these business have and are implementing digital, from Mercer, Telstra Purple, Ring Central, Cyberhawk, Namos, Ericsson, Crux Consulting, DLA Ignite and more.

It's available on Amazon worldwide.  Link to Amazon.com here and Amazon.co.uk here.