This is the final installment in a three-part series on how to build your online presence for truly social selling, inspired by research from Jon Ferrara, founder and CEO of social CRM developer Nimble.
Last time, we discussed how to apply the research you conducted in Part I to create unique, sharable content. For the final installment in this socialized-selling series, we’ll talk about how you use this content to drive traffic to your website, and ultimately dollars to your business.
For the distribution phase, you will follow these four steps:
- Post your research in places where your persona gathers
- Keyword optimize articles on your site
- Use social listening technology to find relevant conversations
- Use lead capturing technology to add blog readers to your sales funnel
In this article, I will provide more detail on how your execute these final steps in the social-selling process.
1. Become Best Friends with Bloggers
In this step, you will re-use some of the research you conducted in the content production phase.
Previously, I suggested you use Advanced Search Operators (ASOs) to find and bookmark relevant blogs. You will use these same blogs and influencers as targets for re-posting the content you created.
Bloggers are always looking for ways to keep their content fresh. Guest posts and story pitches are a great way to do this.
First, make sure the blog you’ve targeted has outbound links. This is critical both for SEO, and ensuring readers have a place to click through to your website.
Next, you can use the same ASO to quickly find out if they allow guest writers. Search “inurl:www.blogwebsiteurl.com” and combination with “guest blog,” “guest writer,” “guest blogger,” and so on.
Even if the blog doesn’t allow guest writers, you can still pitch them on the idea. Write a personalized email saying something about how the content you created for your site (provide the link) would also be relevant to their audience, and you’d like to see if they’d also like to cover the topic.
Once the blogger writes about your article, or lets you write a unique version of it as guest post, use Topsy again to see who shared that post. Click through and see if those people have a blog and ask them if they’d like a version for their site. You can continue this process as long as you keep getting write ups, and those continue being shared.
2. Optimize Your Article
Next, you’ll want to make sure the original article you wrote for your website is keyword optimized. This will ensure that your website pops up when potential customers search relevant terms in Google.
I like to use Ubersuggest to find keywords relevant to my topic. You simply search for your keyword in and the website pulls up a list of relevant terms. But you don’t want to just stuff your article full of these words.
You need to make sure they actually have search traffic. Once you have your Ubersuggest list, plug those into Google Adwords. This will show you which of the words you found are searched the most. Pick some of the most highly-trafficked terms and plug those into your article, where it makes sense. You want to make sure it flows naturally in the sentence, and makes sense for the article.
3. Use Technology to Listen and Capture
Many products exist for social media monitoring. These can be customized to listen for conversations in social media that are relevant to your blog topic.
You can use the same Ubersuggest list, for example. These technologies will help you find conversations and blogs where you can chime and offer advice by way of your blog post. This approach seems much more genuine and helpful because you are providing content that addresses the specific question or conversation thread.
Finally, marketing automation products can turn these site visitors into leads. Depending on the kind of content (whether it targets buyers early or late in the sales funnel), and the number of times that person has visited your site (among other lead-scoring measures), the site visitor could be placed in a lead nurturing program, or called immediately by a sales person.
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What tactics have your used to socialize your sales strategy? Join the conversation by commenting here.