Social media tools for social selling

There are so many social media tools out there. In this blog I will explore the tools that will help you to find, distribute and automate great content, so you can step up as THE expert, and accelerate your social selling skills!

Social Media Misconception: “It’s free.”

Yes, in theory. It is free.

But it can be massively time consuming too.

It’s difficult these days to know whether you’re wasting your time on the various digital platforms. After all there are so many of them and lots more social media tools available to help you to streamline and optimise your time.

Which social platforms should I be active on?

A general rule of thumb. The ones that your customers are on.

As long as you have the right strategies in place to share content with them and you automate as much as you can, you will not waste your time.

The bulk of maintaining a digital presence can be reduced to a couple of hours a week.

How to reduce your social media time and increase effectiveness

Here are the steps involved:

  1. Have a clear idea of which platforms your customers are on. For example, Pinterest is around 81% female. Let’s say your target audience is executives in the construction industry. With only 19% of Pinterest’s demographic being male, it’s unlikely that your target customer will be hanging around on Pinterest. Rule that one out and focus on the platforms that your target audience ARE active on.
  2. Map out the sources of content that will help your audience. Make a list of which blogs and articles provide useful content that solve or discuss their problems, as well as the industry websites they follow.
  3. Google Alerts is a great tool for finding out when new industry news is published on the web. Set up notifications for relevant keywords. When any new content is published anywhere on the internet, you will receive a notification. Use this to stay on top of industry news and trends that may be useful to your target audience.
  4. Tools such as Feedly and Buffer can take the leg work out of content curation and publishing. You can get started for free, but if you are going to use them more intensely, the paid versions aren’t that expensive. The amount of time they save you will be offset by the cost.
Social media tools

Feedly: https://feedly.com

Feedly finds news from all of your favourite websites and puts them into one place.

It saves you time from regularly visiting each of those sites individually and losing time when you start to read the content!

You can access it through your browser and there are apps available for mobiles.

The two main benefits:

1. It will save you time.

2. It will give you the latest information at your fingertips.

Feedly aggregates all the articles from all of your chosen sites into one feed. You can quickly scroll down and either share them directly to your social profiles or add them to your Buffer queue.

For example, if you are an accountant and your target clients are small businesses, you can stay on top of:

  • The industry as a whole
  • Tips for reducing the amount of time that your clients need to spend on accounting
  • Changes to legislation that affects small businesses
  • Grants and funding opportunities relevant to your clients.
  • Ways your clients can (legally) reduce their tax bill
  • Software that can help streamline your clients accounting needs
  • Your professional network
  • New training that gives you the edge over your clients
  • Professional advancement opportunities

 

Buffer: https://buffer.com/app

Buffer is a social media dashboard.

Begin by setting up a schedule. For example, you might want to post to LinkedIn every work day at 10am and 3pm. Then connect your LinkedIn account and pre-determine the schedule. Then find content.

The two main ways that I use Buffer are as follows:

  1. Install the Chrome plugin. When you are browsing around the internet and you find an article you think will be useful to your target audience, click the Buffer icon and add it to your queue.
  2. Connect it to Feedly. Once set up, social media becomes a quick job once a week. You can simply sit down for an hour or two, browse through that weeks content and add it to your Buffer queue. Providing you keep it topped up, it will auto publish at your predefined schedule.

 

IFTTT (If this then that) www.ifttt.com 

This really helps me supercharge and automate my content creation.

I hook up many of the apps I use online to create workflows. This means I never miss articles from my favourite blogs. I can hook up ‘Applets’ (what they used to call recipes) that trigger different online apps.

For example, I can create a rule that says ‘every time I post to my Facebook page, post the same content to my Twitter page’. I can auto-post my favourite blogs every time they publish a new article. Every time I post content to my Twitter feed, I can keep a record of it in my Google Drive. And my favourite, if it’s going to snow tomorrow, send me a text to remind me to take my umbrella!

You only have to worry about the other 20% – coming up with your own content. More on that later.

For more information about the inbound marketing process, read about our COG™ System.

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