Episode 16: Engaging on Content When Social Selling

Bill McCormick

Welcome to another episode of Making Sales Social Live! I’m with Bob Woods and Brynne Tillman, where we’re going to talk about engaging on content today.

Brynne Tillman 0:11

Yeah, I’m excited about this topic because, you know, a lot of people think they’re engaging or they randomly engage. But we’re going to talk today about how to purposefully engage for social selling. What are we doing that can help us create conversations with the right people? So I’ll start with just kind of a concept for me is, when there is an author of a really good post, they’re like the keynote. And all the people that are engaging on that keynote, are the audience, right? The people that are showing up and listening and liking this keynote. So if we’re in the audience, now, we’re participating as the audience and we comment, that’s awesome, and it should be a thoughtful comment, you know, you want to make sure that your comment is relevant to the content that was shared, maybe you even add a little extra value to that, whatever that might be. It is really, really, really important at every point, that when we engage, it’s not on the content. It’s not just “great post” or “nice” right? Like it’s thoughtful. The second piece is we’re engaging with the other people in the audience, right? So there are other people that are there to watch or listen or consume the content of that keynote. That’s a phenomenal way to start a conversation. Right? So I’m in the audience, and we’re here to see Bob speak. And Bill and I are chatting, we’re both commenters engaging on Bob’s keynote, and I’ll say, “Hey, Bill.You know, it looks like we both really like Bob’s content. Did you happen to hear him on the podcast he was on the other week on a, b, and c?” and you’re like, “Ohh, let’s connect!”. So you know, I sent a connection request “Bill, great engaging with you on Bob Woods’ post, let’s connect and I’ll send you a link to his podcast”, right? Or however, you might do that. But the bottom line is, you’ll start the conversation around the keynote, you will eventually move that in a direction where you could provide insights, potentially, if they’re exploring your solutions but not at first, you wouldn’t do that in the actual meeting, you wouldn’t say, “Hey, Bill! thrilled to meet you here at Bob Woods’ keynote. Let me tell you how we help companies like yours do ABC,”  we wouldn’t do that. We’re not going to do that here.

Bill McCormick 2:43

And so it’s important. You know, it’s called social media. My friend Ed Weeks says it’s called social media. Don’t forget to be social. Right? And so, add to Brynne’s point, it’s not just you know, when we’re talking about engaging with conversation, it has to be meaningful engagement, because it’s for conversations is to have a conversation. So we tend to scroll through our feed and do a lot of this, you know, give a lot of reactions, whether it’s the thumbs up, or the heart or the celebrate, or the curious or insightful, right, either remember them all, when we do that, I like it like you’re you’re driving down the road, you go past a friend’s house, and they’re outside, giving a thumbs up is just kind of waving at them. And keeping going. Like Bob says, it’s drive by engagement. It really doesn’t foster any kind of conversation. To Brynne’s point, what we want to do is we want to pull the car over, roll the window down, say, “Hey, Bob, hey, Brynne, how are you?” And begin to have a conversation. And it can lead to other conversations just this morning. One of the people that I follow on a regular basis, I commented on a post, somebody commented in my comment, I commented to their comment, we’ve got a whole comment, conversation going on someone else’s feed, and we connect it because it’s a networking site, we’re talking about networking, and networking leads to conversations, which can then eventually lead to sales when the time is right. But it’s really all about engagement. You know, when we talk about engaging, engaging means there’s a give, and there’s a take.

Bob Woods 4:21

Yep. And then I think the other thing to remember is that because you’re engaging in a public forum, being in the comments section, you also are just kind of naturally building credibility for yourself. You’re becoming a thought leader. So imagine if you’re having a conversation with someone else, but there’s a group of people around you, and they’re listening, and one of them says, “Hey, I got to talk with that gal. I got to talk with that guy,” because of whatever reason, basically, so that conversation can actually spread and give you more opportunities for conversations with other people that you’re not even talking to at that point.

Brynne Tillman 5:01

Jack has a question. “I’m wondering if you can also talk about keeping engagement high as well as visibility, and how long we have to keep that engagement going. I heard it was two hours.” This is a great question, and this is really an algorithm question for sure. Right? And so how do you keep engagement going, there are a few things to pump it up. It’s kind of a little bit of a flywheel effect when it comes to content, right. So we have to kind of get it going before it gets going. In the first two hours. If you can get likes and comments and read, you know, reactions and engagement, LinkedIn will say, Hey, this is really relevant, and they’ll keep it going. There are other things that we can do as well in engagement. Number one is get it in front of specific people. So at the bottom of every piece of content, there’s a little Send icon, it’s a little paper airplane. So I create a piece of content, and I send it to Bill and I say, “Hey, Bill, just posted an article on X, Y, and Z. As you know, a sales expert. I’d love to hear your opinion.” So Jack sells into bankers, right. So if he has a great pose that has some insight, and Jack, you can send that out to bankers and say, “Hey, just posted an article on X, Y, and Z. As a, you know, great banker in the industry, I’d love your insights.” That will get that going, making sure you’re using the right hashtags. And I know Jack, you use banking industry and some others that are huge but making sure you use some of those right hashtags really help. The other thing is, if you are sharing content that you curated, make sure you mentioned the author, make sure you mention their company, and the publication in the text, because that will bring them in, get them to engage. And that will help as well. Do you guys have anything you want to add to that?

Bill McCormick 7:04

When you’re originally crafting your posts, you want to ask questions, because that will induce a conversation. You’re not just making a statement that comes as somebody can say, Great point Jack, you’re asking a question that they answer, then that gives you an opportunity to reply back, they say that there’s the golden hour, when you’re posting that you should be replying to all the comments within that first hour, because that really ramps up the engagement and the reach. And reach can equal engagement. I don’t think it always happens that way. But the more people that your posts reach that LinkedIn releases it to the more opportunity there is for more comments, which will then increase engagement. And I think that Brynne’s point is getting into people’s inboxes is huge for continuing to get engagement. And then also recycling posts. If they’re evergreen. Going back and looking in them a week, a month. And then resharing that content again, this was so great. I just wanted to share it again can actually bring more people into the conversation. So I think those are some great ways that we can extend the reach and extend the amount of engagement we get on a post. So great question, Jack.

Brynne Tillman 8:15

I love what you just said, when you share it a couple of weeks later, maybe in caps do update. So you posted this a few weeks ago, a couple things have changed in the industry. I read something else that’s relevant to this. Yeah, I love that. I don’t do that enough.

Bob Woods 8:32

Yeah, I don’t either. That’s a great idea.

Bill McCormick 8:34

So you know, engagement is really all about having that conversation. And, you know, to the point of a post I was looking at today, making sure that we’re not listening, or you know, reading, listening to comments or reading comments, in order to react or respond. We’re listening so that we understand what that person’s trying to say, you know, and then this comes back to social listening, you know, we always want our point of view out there. And we think we know what’s best for our clients, we should make sure that we’re not responding in that way. But we’re actually trying to have a conversation, a real conversation with someone and looking for an opportunity, then connect with them. And then take that conversation offline, you know, from the digital space to the face-to-face, even if the face to face is faced to camera.

Brynne Tillman 9:22

“One more, when I share something that Brynne or you folks create, I get thousands of eyeballs on them. When I publish something I create, there are far fewer views. What’s the secret here? And what am I doing wrong?” So fun question and thank you for that. It’s because we engage on it right? when you publish something you haven’t mentioned anyone else. But if you’ve mentioned Brynne Tillman, right and then I go and engage and now goes to my people. So just mentioning someone isn’t enough, but mentioning them and getting them to engage, gets you to that next level

Bill McCormick 9:55

And you want to make sure you share what someone else has done, your curating content, especially posts. You want to give them credit for it. But you also want to write something up about that. Let LinkedIn know that you actually read that. So many people are just sharing just the post. And that’s it. And I know Jack, you don’t do that. But there are people that are doing that. So when you reshare content, make sure you’re giving the original author credit, and their company credit. And then you’re also putting your own thoughts in there, because that’s so very, very important to Bob’s point before, what we want to do is establish credibility so that people see us as that thought leader. So we’re the go-to guy the go-to gal in whatever area that we’re in.

Brynne Tillman 10:37

So I love that. And this topic we’re teammates is really, the topic is around engagement. So let’s bring that back. Make sure you comment and engage on that article before you share it. Yeah, on that post. (Great point) . Go in, see who else is engaging and engaged with them and then go ahead and share it. So what we have one more from Sandy, we love Sandy. “I never think about resharing posts.” good tip. (It was a good tip) .

Bob Woods 11:05

It was an excellent tip.

Brynne Tillman 11:07

Brilliant. That was the drop the mic moment.

Bill McCormick 11:09

Whoo. All right. Well, hey, thank you, everyone who listened to this episode of Making Sales Social Live! and we hope that you will join us next time. Have a great one.