A godsend for a company!
The idea is to be present on social networks, disseminating relevant content that will arouse the interest of web users as they search for information. This approach, driven by the company, doesn't mix personal and professional content, as we saw in the first post on the subject, "4 tips for increasing sales with social selling".. It's set up and managed by marketing, with a view to generating inbound contacts. To exist on social networks, there are three levels of action corresponding to three levels of involvement:
- react to other people's publications (likes, comments, sharing...); consumes few resources, generates few results, maintains activity.
- choose curation, a practice that consists in selecting, editing and sharing the most relevant content on the Internet for a given query or subject; consumes a little more resources, brings visibility, but doesn't contribute to building an identity.
- produce your own content ; consumes a lot of resources, requires a strategy, but brings significant results.
It's this third point that deserves a little more attention. To succeed, there are a few rules to observe:
1 > Be interesting
To attract attention, to be perceived as a valuable resource providing useful content, it's better to talk about what interests the interlocutor than about yourself, i.e. to talk about subjects in which the company is an expert from the potential customer's point of view. In other words, prefer "How office furniture improves productivity" to "We sell desks at the best quality/price ratio".
2 > Know your target
To address your target properly, you need to know who they are. Ideally, marketing and sales departments should work together to describe these targets, addressing the following themes: their profiles, their career paths, their responsibilities, their objectives, their challenges, their stresses, their constraints, the projects they're working on, their decision-making processes, the types of customers they serve, and so on: Their profiles, their career paths, their responsibilities, their objectives, their challenges, their stresses, their constraints, the projects they're working on, their decision-making processes, their beliefs, their constraints, what's important to them... It's understood that we're describing a typical profile that doesn't exist per se, a bit like the "average French person" in INSEE statistics. However, by clarifying these points, we can better visualize the target, employees will have a shared representation, and we'll become more audible thanks to adapted content.
We can do this for every type of customer.
3 > List themes
It's time to work on the editorial line, to find the points of convergence (content and form) between the company's offering and the expectations of the targeted Internet users. At this stage, it's a good idea to organize a brainstorming session with your collaborators, producing a maximum number of content themes on post-it notes, with a very broad exploratory work, and then synthesizing them by asking everyone for the 10 most important. This shortlist becomes the backbone of the editorial line. This is an exercise to be repeated every 6 months, with a mix of news and cold topics. Based on the chosen themes, all that's left to do is come up with article topics and organize production.
4 > Writing content
For the editorial department, there are two possible solutions.
Or the workload can be shared between several editors, but not everyone is comfortable with the written word. In this case, you still need to appoint an editorial manager to validate the articles and ensure a certain degree of consistency.
Soit un rédacteur interne ou externe qui pourra se charger d’interviewer les experts pour produire ensuite le contenu. Cette solution a été retenue par Kestio. Il s’agit ensuite de varier les formats pour apporter de la diversité et intéresser encore plus largement sa cible avec des formats longs (articles…), des témoignages, des infographies…
This is how a company, start-up or SME can initiate high-quality communication with its potential targets and then trigger sales conversations.
Eventually, digital tools will make it possible to check the effectiveness of what is produced, to ensure that what is produced is well aligned with the problems faced by web users. We'll be able to measure impact and audience by looking, for example, at interactions such as shares and comments, and then fine-tune if necessary.
To develop your company's communication tools, think Webinar! Webinars are a great way to showcase your company's activities. However, there are a few rules to follow: in this webinar, you'll learn how to organize a webinar that will generate more participants and leads.
