Episode 12: LinkedIn Content for Social Selling

Bill McCormick 

Welcome to Making Sales Social Live! Another episode. Today, we’re gonna talk about “LinkedIn Content for Social Selling”. Basically, four different areas we’re gonna talk about today. One is the five elements that were required for content to convert from connections to conversations. Another one we’re gonna talk about are the Types of Content, then content for the non-writer like, “Hey, I’m not a writer, how do I create content?” We’ll talk about that, and then also, using polls for content. So, Brynne, you want to kick it off?

Brynne Tillman 0:31 

Yeah, well, first, let’s talk about what social selling really is, which is ultimately building relationships, bringing value and insights, and being a resource, knowing that the sale will come when the time is right. Well, where do the insights come from? What is being a resource, much of that comes from content (or they come from Bob), much of the resources, the value, the insights, they come from content. So let’s talk about this. The first thing, Bill, that you mentioned, are the five elements that go into content for social selling, right? So, the first one is “Resonate with your Buyer”, right? We’ve got to resonate with our buyer. I’ll go through them quickly, and then we’ll talk about them. The second one is “Create Curiosity”, get them to lean in and want to read or listen, right? Consume that content. The third one is “Teach them Something New”, because if you’re not teaching them something new, it’s not insightful, it’s not resourceful, could be an interesting story but it’s not effective for social selling. So teach them something new is number three. Number four is “What you taught them needs to get them thinking differently about their current situation”, right? When we can do that, when we get them moving from “status-quo thinking” to thinking differently, it will create compelling moments, and compelling moments can be anything from a reaction, a comment, a share, an accepting your connection request, an asking you to connect, a mentioning someone else, whatever it might be, it gets them on our radar, it moves them from lurker to engager, and when we do that, it starts the ability to start the social selling process. So number five is creating that compelling moment leading to our solution, getting hands raised. Yeah. Exactly. So, let’s just quickly talk about number one, “Resonate”. How do we do that? 

Bob Woods 2:43 

First of all, you got to know who your buyer is. 

Brynne Tillman 2:45 

Hmm. And it’s not everyone.

Bob Woods 2:49 

Yep! 

Bill McCormick 2:50 

Yeah, so the content has to resonate with someone, so as to Bob’s point, you have to know who it is your “fishing for”, and use it, and then you have to use the right bait. So, by using the right bait, that’s what’s going to resonate, so that when they read the first part, they understand, He or She is talking to me, like this is me, I can identify myself in the content you’re creating, the story you’re telling, the challenger you’re addressing. This resonates with me, because then, that gets me to read more.

Bob Woods 3:24 

Yep. If you’re not resonating with your buyer (or you know) your buyer or whoever you want to start that conversation with then why are you doing it? 

Brynne Tillman 3:33 

Yeah, well, it’s not social selling. Right? 

Bob Woods 3:35 

Yes 

Bill McCormick 3:35 

Right. 

Brynne Tillman 3:37 

So number two is “Create Curiosity”. I think the most important thing in creating curiosity is “What does that first line say?” 

Bob Woods 3:46 

Right.

Brynne Tillman 3:47 

That first line draw them in. Is it an interesting statistic? Is it a question that makes them go “Hmm, that’s interesting… you know, I want to lean in”. So, creating that curiosity is really important. Teaching them something new. 

Bill McCormick 4:06 

So, this one can be hard, because, you know, if you’re doing the same thing, but you have to look for opportunities to do that. You know, how can you address something in a new and different way? That’s what we have to do, so that when they walk away from that piece of content, they have learned something, right? It isn’t just a waste of time. We talked about the ask-offer ratio, right? It’s not a bait and switch, you know, that you didn’t pitch them, but it’s also not, “yeah”, it’s not like neutral, it’s actually compelling. And so, when we teach someone new, they go away going, “Wow, I never knew that before!”

Bob Woods 4:45 

And that leads directly into thinking differently. 

Brynne Tillman 4:59 

The self-talk about. 

Bob Woods 4:50 

Thinking differently; I mean, a lot of times we’re in our jobs and we’re banging away on our keyboards, or whatever, and we’re not really thinking about what we need and we come up with something on LinkedIn, that just kind of makes you go “Huh!, that’s something I never considered before”, about something that, you know, maybe they do all the time, or maybe it’s something that they need, or whatever, but I mean, the reframe, their thought process around what it is you’re talking about is really important. Plus, it has the added benefit of making you the person who is doing the post or whatever, really a thought leader in their mind, because you got them think differently. 

Brynne Tillman 5:34 

I love reframing. (Yep). Get them to reframe the way they’re thinking; I just want to reiterate, that’s brilliant. I love that. Once we’ve done that, there are lots of different ways to create compelling, right? Like asking for their thoughts and comments, asking for their engagement, right? Whatever that might look like, but if we don’t create a compelling

moment with content, we don’t know who’s consuming it, right? and, we cannot take it to the conversation if we don’t know who they are. So, I love that. Bill, what was the second thing we’re gonna talk… 

Bill McCormick 6:10 

And so now let’s talk about content. So what are the types of content that we can put out on LinkedIn? 

Brynne Tillman 6:18 

We could list them, right? So, there’s text post (long form or short form) 

Bob Woods 6:23 

or Yeah, it could be short too. It doesn’t have to be long.

Bill McCormick 6:25 

Up to 3000 characters with spaces-form form, right? Because it used to be short-form, but really, 3000 can be kind of long. (So you can do up to that) So, that’s a text post, so there’s just text.  

Brynne Tillman 6:37 

Yeah, there’s image posts.

Bill McCormick 6:40 

Right, Yeah, you can put a picture with your text posts, so, images, (native video), native video – from three seconds to 10 minutes, right? 

Brynne Tillman 6:54 

Yeah, or six seconds, I always forget. 

Bill McCormick 6:56 

Yeah, but here’s the thing with that, you want it to be about two to three minutes, anything more than that, you’re gonna lose them. So, there’s native video, documents, so documents are really good as a PDF, this could be a SlideShare that you do, like a PowerPoint and then save it as a PDF and load that up. Don’t let it be 85 slides on something. Remember, it has to resonate, right? (Yes). And then the last thing is articles,

right? (Yep), so a blog, like a blog, LinkedIn’s blogging platform, it’s called an article and that’s a longer post. So those are the different types of content. 

Brynne Tillman 7:38 

There’s one more that we’re going to talk about at the end.

Bill McCormick 7:40 

Again which is a poll.

Bob Woods

Correct! Right! That’s up-coming.

Bill McCormick

So we’re gonna come back to that but what if I’m not a writer? Like, you listed all those out like “Listen, I just don’t write, you know, so how then do I create content?” 

Brynne Tillman 7:55 

I think you start with capturing your genius, right? Talk a little bit, how do you capture your genius? 

Bob Woods 8:03 

Yeah, so essentially, there are a couple of different ways to do that and probably the easiest is to just either record yourself with a, you know, remember recorders that you used to have in your hand and stuff like that? You could do that. You could take notes on what you’re talking about, but do that during client calls and do that during times when you’re discussing your product because you will say things, that it’s like, ”Oh, man, that was really good. I should write that down.” I call them t-shirt moments, so in other words, things, you know, like little quotes that you would put on t-shirts and things like that, but going, obviously listening to what your client is saying, but at the same time, when you say something you think is good. Guess what? It’s probably good. So, write it down and then you can base all of the (any up) any to all of the other things that we’ve discussed, based on just what you said during even just one client call. 

Brynne Tillman 9:02 

Yeah, I mean, the other thing is right now we’re doing a lot of these conversations on Zoom. So … 

Bob Woods 9:08 

Yeah, Zoom is a good way. Yeah. 

Brynne Tillman 9:09 

Here’s the other thing, is you can, if you’re on Zoom, and you’re recording, if you have any level of paid zoom, you can check a little box to get the transcription, right? And so from that, you can edit and create a blog, you can create your t-shirt moments ( I love those t-shirt quotes) There’s so much that you can get from that. If you don’t have paid zoom, upload it to Otter.AI, it will transcribe it for you and you’ve got lots of tidbits that you can then take quotes and as much as I’d love to get lots of t-shirts and if you want them, call Bill’s wife, but you can put them in Canva post, right? CANVA, C-A-N-V-A, just a great image with your quote, lots of things that we can do with that. And then, if you want to edit that video of you saying those things, you’ve got video that you can use as well. BM 

Bill McCormick 10:07 

And then another way to capture your genius is just emails of questions that you’ve gotten from your clients. Like they’re coming to you with questions and with problems all the time that you’re solving for them and so, just, you know, there’s a post, if one of your clients had a problem, and you solve it, that’s going to resonate with other clients like that. 

Bob Woods 10:29 

Absolutely!

Bill McCormick 10:30 

Another way that you can create content is by curating content, we can go out and find. So, curate means, to curate something means to collect, select, and present information or items such as pictures, video, music, posts, text posts, for people to use or enjoy (here’s the mic drop moment), using your professional or expert knowledge. So what that means is you go out, and you find an article online that you’re going to use, you’re going to curate that, but just don’t post the article. I see so many people do that. (Yeah). Put a text post with a quote from that article, what you got from it, and a little snippet of your thought leadership, of your expertise, tag the author of the original article, and that’s going to make it go farther, and boom, right there, you’ve created content using someone else’s content. So, that’s a great way to curate. So remember, when you’re curating, you have to put your own knowledge in there.

Brynne Tillman 11:29 

Love that, and the last one we’re going to talk about is one of my favorite subjects, which is polls. Now, I know there are a ton of polls out there, but there’s a lot of polls. They work. They work. So, if you don’t have any brilliant ideas and maybe you got a good idea from curating something, ask questions people love to share their point of view. So, put in a question with four options, and then don’t just hope and pray that people will answer that poll. Make a list, take inventory of your existing connections, you can export your connections, and take a look at all the people that you love to find out how they vote on that poll and click the little send underneath that poll and ask them to participate, you know, the poll auto-populates inside of the message. So, it’s a one-click vote and it’s absolutely phenomenal at the insights that you can gather, because people love to share their point of view. 

Bill McCormick 12:37 

And they can vote right in the message, right? It doesn’t click them out, or else they can … 

Brynne Tillman 12:43 

It’ll click and vote in the message but it does take you out because they want you to comment as well, but if they click, it’s voted.  

Bill McCormick 12:51 

Right, (Right). Yeah, and we’ve seen people within our coaching community have some amazing success with polls, by doing just what Brynne just said, what we say, getting in, getting into the inbox. So, not just posting it on your newsfeed and hoping and praying, some people will find it, because let’s face it, if you’re not posting a lot, not a lot of people are going to see that, it’s just the nature of the algorithm, but if you’re taking that and reaching out to people, and you’re asking them to vote, guess what, when they vote on it, it’s getting further and further and further reach and we’re seeing people get some amazing results on it. So, Brynne, I’ve created a poll, and I put it out there and I put it in a bunch of folks’ inboxes and I’ve gotten a vote, now what do I do with it?

Brynne Tillman 13:37 

Ah, so, if you post the poll, as the author of the poll, you’re the only one who can see who voted on what, and so, this is where social selling really starts, right? We get to see insights, and now we can do lots of things. One of the things Bill did, is from one of his polls, he created an e-book that he was able to share with people say “Hey, this is what you voted on. Here’s the benchmark of where you fell. I’ve got additional insights I’d be happy to share

with you.”, you know, “Here’s the e-book, if you’d like to chat, let me know I’m happy to send over a link to my calendar.” And you can book opportunities, have conversations around what matters to them because that was their vote. 

Bob Woods 14:19 

Absolutely, and then you also get to see how people voted.

Brynne Tillman 14:22 

That’s exactly right. So you’re saying, this is how you voted, this is where you benchmark with everyone else that voted. “Let’s chat. Let’s have other insights around this that might be helpful to you in your business. If you’re interested, let me know.” Ask permission. I don’t think I asked permission to send the document because they voted. I feel like they already opted into that. Yeah, but I would ask permission on; if you’re interested in additional insights around this topic. Let me know, I’ll send you a link to my account. BM 

Bill McCormick 14:46 

And another thing you can do is write in the insights you see, if you’re connected with someone, there’s messaging, okay, you can just send them a message, but if you’re not connected with them, you can then connect, or you have a reason to connect them. “Hey, hey, Brynne, thanks for voting on my poll, would love to have you as part of my network. Take a look at my profile. If you think it makes sense, Let’s connect. Thanks a lot – Bill.” And so, I was able to connect with many people because of that and I’ll just give you a quick stat, because people want to know, you know, I asked about 80 people via InMail to vote and none of them voted, right, InMail is really not working but …

Brynne Tillman 15:28 

That’s for pages for people that are listening, a lot of people mixed up InMail and think InMail is messaging inside of LinkedIn. InMail is a paid message that typically with Sales Navigator, you get so many Inmails, usually 90 every three months. 

Bill McCormick 15:44 

Right. And so, all that to say, organic outreach is working much, much better on LinkedIn, I think it always will because LinkedIn is a networking site. So, let’s wrap this up, and so we’ve talked about content, LinkedIn Content for social selling, and I hope you saw the process we went by there. We’re not just posting stuff just to post stuff. What we’re doing is we’re posting with an intention in mind to have more conversations. So …

Bob Woods 16:15 

No random acts of social.

Bill McCormick 16:16 

Exactly, exactly. So why don’t you just review those four pieces of content and take us home here? 

Brynne Tillman 16:23 

Okay, so, the first thing is, make sure you understand the five elements required to make your content social selling. Number two, really take a look at all of the types of content that are available to you and leverage the ones that make the most sense. If you are a non-writer, start recording yourself on zoom and getting that transcription, or on your phone, if you want to audio record, you can actually Otter.AI, has a free app where you can, for your mobile device where you can just talk into it and then get your transcription, really simple to do. And lastly, start to look at polls as an option for content. It’s such a great way to start conversations.  

Bill McCormick 17:09 

So hey, thanks everyone for joining us for another episode of Making Sales Social Live! We’ll see ‘ya and you’ll hear us next time. Bye bye everyone. Thanks.