Content generation can be costly for large enterprise businesses. This can lead to them generating less content, or focusing more on branded content than providing value to their audience.
This is what social media marketers are used to doing. But as the landscape changes, and social media becomes increasingly crowded, this brand-centric approach is going to become less and less effective.
Advocacy is about so much more than sharing brand content.
Focusing too much on the brand, and not helping its target audience, is likely to cause less engagement on social media and reap fewer rewards in the short and long term.
Sharing content created by brand experts, on the other hand, can help businesses stand out and reach a wider audience. The right advocacy tool can make it easier to share.
Keep reading for more details on how to get your brand experts to help with content generation for social selling.
What We Recommend
We recommend sharing 60% third-party content, and 40% brand content. For some employees, such as brand representatives, 70% third-party content may be even better.
When employees share more third-party content, it helps to establish them as industry experts. They become the go-to person in the industry for the latest news and information, which means that the target audience will go to them to get the information they need, instead of trawling dozens of websites. It saves them time, which instantly builds a relationship. One which could later turn into sales.
How Can An Advocacy Tool Help?
Advocacy tools streamline the social selling process for anyone who’s publishing content as a part of a social selling or employee advocacy programme.
Instead of employees needing to think of content to share, they can find something inside the advocacy tool that will appeal to their audience.
Content curation is often one of the hardest parts of social selling, which is why some employees don’t do it, post infrequently, or stop completely.
The easier it is for employees to find the right content, the more likely they are to share it.
Once an employee has read the content, they can share their own thoughts alongside the link to it. It doesn’t have to be a novel, but something to show they’ve read the article and they’re aware of how it could affect customers, prospects, and the wider world. This will build their authority more than sharing the content alone.
What Content To Add To An Advocacy Tool
When adding content to an advocacy tool, aim to cover 8-12 topics. This is enough of a variety that there’ll be something for everyone, but not too much that it becomes overwhelming for the person responsible for finding and adding content.
Add in a handful of new posts a day, if possible, although how many you can add at any one time will depend on your tool and your plan.
Creating Content For An Advocacy Tool
The main focus of salespeople should be engaging with customers and prospects. The more they do this, the more they’re front of mind when their audience is looking to buy or upgrade.
However, that leaves them with little time to create content themselves.
The solution?
Get your technical experts to create the content!
These are the people who really know and understand the industry. They’re in the trenches, building, creating, and innovating. They can go into more depth than anyone else.
A few things they could talk about include: how a product is made, why a particular raw material was chosen, thoughts on big topics in the industry right now, sustainability practices, a day in the life, and FAQs.
Depending on the audience, content could be published in written form, recorded as a video, or recorded as a podcast. It could even be repurposed as multiple forms to appeal to even more people.
When that content has been created, it can be added to the advocacy tool, ready for social sellers to share with their audience.
It’s this approach which will give you the efficiencies you need to create a better social selling strategy.
Conclusion
Businesses need to use social selling for more than just talking about themselves if they want to connect with their audience. Sharing third-party content, and helpful information which builds up their experts and influencers, will build employees’ brands as well as the business’s.
Publishing content created by experts saves salespeople time, giving them more chances to engage with the right people at the right time, and leading to more sales.
