Episode 222: 5 Content Ideas for Salespeople Without Access to Marketing

Bob Woods  00:00

A Big Welcome to all of our B2B Sales and Marketing peeps to Making Sales Social Live, Coming to you from the Social Sales Link Studios. I’m Bob Woods, the LinkedIn Sherpa and I’m joined as always by fellow social selling trainer consultant and professional herself in her own right also known as the LinkedIn whisperer, Brynne Tillman, Sup Brynne.

Brynne Tillman  00:24

Sup Bob, you in your tan for those of you listening on podcast that can’t see him, but just came back from St. Lucia. And it’s obvious, you look back.

Bob Woods  00:35

Thank you, I appreciate it. 

Intro 00:38

Welcome to Making Sales Social Live, as we share LinkedIn and Social Selling Training Strategies and Tips that will have an immediate impact on your business. Join Brynne Tillman, and me, Bob Woods, every week, Making Sales Social Live! This is the recorded version of our weekly Making Sales Social Live Show.

Bob Woods  01:02

It felt good to be out in the sun, and also miss all of the really hot weather here because it was hot there. But it was actually hotter back here in the States, or at least in the areas that we’re in than it was in St. Lucia, which is actually really interesting. 

Brynne Tillman  01:16

Wow. Like you had a blast, you’re nice, rested and came back with this great topic. Tell us about it.

Bob Woods  01:22

Yeah, exactly. So um, many salespeople, as well as entrepreneurs, and those who work for very small companies, don’t have access to full marketing departments. So when these people hear about social selling, they may in their minds focus on the social part of that equation and think, Man, I can’t do that. I don’t have any marketing support, or any kind of marketing know how or strategies or whatever, I can’t do it. 

I’m just going to push it off to the side and keep doing how I’ve been doing things. Well, think again, Because Brynne and I are here with five different ideas, pretty easy ones that’ll help you create content that you can then use and publish yourself without having any kind of marketing department whatsoever. So with that, no excuses type of mentality in mind, here are five ideas to help you create content without marketing, and I just realized I don’t have chat up.

Brynne Tillman  02:26

I want to start with one that’s not on your list if you’re not ready. 

Bob Woods  02:30

Oh, yeah. 

Brynne Tillman  02:31

Live.

Bob Woods  02:33

Live. Okay. Yeah.

Brynne Tillman  02:37

So bonus, usually we do bonus at the end, but you’re looking for content. So right now, I’m looking at 24 people live. We literally posted this tool one two minutes ago, a couple hours ago. Right, and we’ve got lots of folks listening in. This is a wonderful way to have content. We stream it to YouTube, LinkedIn and to Acts, Like.

Bob Woods  03:08

Formally. Twitter. Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Brynne Tillman  03:12

Right. Yeah. So we’ve got content that’s going out. We’re having fun. We don’t need marketing to do anything. It’s live. And it lives on your LinkedIn. So you can reshare it with people, people can come back and watch it. So it’s reoccurring content. And you can actually schedule it to go live again. 

So if you let’s say you work globally, and we’re doing this, we do this almost every single Monday at 12: 30. Except for holidays, Eastern Time, and we’re hitting Pacific time. But we’re missing Singapore because they’re sleeping. So we could actually schedule this in 12 hours if we wanted to. And we’ve got additional content. So I mean, so I thought hey, just came to me. Did you find the five?

Bob Woods  04:06

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I definitely found that but that is a but that is an excellent extra one type of thing. Just realize that the only thing about LinkedIn lives is you need to have a streaming platform to do it. You can’t just go directly to LinkedIn. So we use Surrey Street as another good one. And there are others that will let you do the same thing. Zoom is not one of them by the way. So yeah, work yet. Hopefully it will one of these days but as of now it’s not.

Brynne Tillman  04:38

Okay, so now let’s take us to the five that you thought about on the airplane.

Bob Woods  04:43

Yes. So number one, which is now number two is polling. So you’re going to use polls in a very specific way this time now. You’re going to ask your audience, so that’s really simple to do. So you do a post with a poll and then you have three options of potential things that you could write about whatever those may be in your industry. And then for your fourth choice, you always have other listed comments, or whatever. 

And then people can tell you whether or not you hit on something in the questions within the poll themselves, or someone else thinks something different. They can put it in there. Ask your audience because they will tell you what they want to know more about. And because you are the expert, you are the thought leader, you can then develop all these pieces of content surrounding the type of stuff that you know that they want to listen to. How awesome can that be? 

Brynne Tillman  05:41

That’s pretty awesome. Yeah. And the poll itself is content. And then what you learned from the poll is content. Right? So it’s this big win? What we have found and you know, a lot of folks will say to us, aren’t poles overused? Well, they are because they still work. Right? They’re being used because they work. LinkedIn has done a brilliant thing, believe it or not, you can actually yeah, I love you LinkedIn, massively. But you can’t see how other people voted until you vote. 

So if you have any ounce of curiosity around the topic, or how your peers might be thinking about that topic, you want to vote, not just so you can share your vote, but so you can see how others voted. The wonderful thing right to your point is we now have content we can write about, we did a mini study, 123 people voted, and this is what we found. That’s the content. And then we can, you know, we can reach out to some of those people that voted for prospects, particularly and say, “Hey, I love a quote from you, in a blog post that I’m writing about that poll, would you jump on a 15 minute zoom call with me.” 

And now you can begin a relationship with the right person, not around sales, but you’ve got this call that’s talking about the topic, you want their perspective, now you quote them, maybe have three quotes or five quotes in a blog post, or an ebook, or whatever you do with that ebook, you probably need a little more marketing, a blog post you don’t. And on LinkedIn, you can create an article from that content. You don’t even need a website that has a blog post to do that. There is so much that we can do with a poll that we don’t need marketing for.

Bob Woods  07:47

Right. Although marketing people, we love you, we love marketing, we all just know that not everyone has access to marketing. So this is specifically for those people. So numero Tres, record conversations with clients that you have. And then when they have questions, or thoughts or whatever, use those to base a post on because clients are a part of your audience, when you think about it. 

If they have questions, other people who are interested in your products or services are probably going to have the same questions. Why not use those questions, those thoughts, those ideas in content that can be especially powerful? Because sometimes they will say things that you’re like, “Oh, I know. I never thought of that question before.” But that’s an excellent question. You answer the question. You turn that around, and then you use it in a post.

Brynne Tillman  08:43

So brilliant, two things on this. The first thing is, if you don’t ask permission, you can only use your talk piece, Right? So be careful. Now, if you’re going to include the client, you need to ask permission, send it to them before you publish it. There’s a little more work in that if you’re including their voice or video in that question. The way around that is, you know, you can start the recording with my client who asked me this question today. 

Go back, so sorry, finish it, finish the conversation, jump back into zoom, and record. My client asked me this question today. This is what she was going through. This is what we talked about. And here are some of the insights. So you can take that and if you don’t remember what you said, you recorded it so you can listen to it and then go re-record. So just a couple of things to keep in mind as you’re doing this but Bob, That’s a great one.

Bob Woods  09:54

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, we’re also working on video and that video still works. The video is hot, the video is huge. Get comfortable with it. Because when you do video, you’re already going to be way ahead of probably most of your competition, if not all of your competition. And people like to see people when they are consuming content. So, you know, just like if you’re watching us live right now you’re watching me and brand you can see us look into the camera and pretend like we’re talking to you directly, although we are you know, everything. Yeah, so yeah, that’s true. 

Brynne Tillman  10:32

So can I add? Can I add real quick? Absolutely. I haven’t done it yet. But when I logged into zoom today, there’s a new feature called clips. So I think with Zoom, we may be able to pull out clips and download them from our recording.

Bob Woods  10:51

Oh, if that happens. A lot thought that it would be absolutely hot. If it zoom would do that. Because there are certain websites out there that will do that and use AI to do all that. And that’s something that I’m just hearing about. So we’ll definitely look into that a little more and let you know what that’s all about when we learn more. But if that’s the case, that could be absolutely huge. ginormous. Exactly, exactly. So number four clips, beta, clips beta, okay, so a may not work perfectly, but it’s there.

 And they’re definitely working on making it into a real live finished product, which is very cool. And hopefully they won’t charge extra for it. Number four, base a comment that you write on someone else’s content as the basis I guess I should say, for your own posts. So if you’re commenting and you do like a really good comment on someone’s post, and LinkedIn actually supports you doing this now, because whenever you leave a comment on a post, LinkedIn pops up a very helpful box.

I forget exactly what it says. But it’s basically like, “Hey, turn this into a post, your comment and other words into a post.” So why not do what LinkedIn is suggesting? Because it’s a brilliant idea. Because you’re already sharing your thought leadership and you’re adding value to that person’s post, why not just take it to the next step? And actually do it in your own post?

Brynne Tillman  12:27

That’s an awesome idea. Awesome, awesome. Um, some of this also, I don’t know that it works exactly the same way. But collaborative articles, is also another way where they’re asking questions, and you’re providing answers that will inspire you, I don’t think they have that feature. Right, where when we comment, it says “Make your own post,” it doesn’t in collaborative articles, however, take your comment, and expand on that potentially, as opposed to.

Bob Woods  13:03

Bonus number two, we just keep on coming up with bonuses as we go throughout this thing.

Brynne Tillman  13:08

I’m a big fan of bonuses.

Bob Woods  13:11

Bonuses, where this is just snowballing into a fiesta. So numbers, I don’t even know what the numbers are anymore after this bullet point, curating content from other sources and offering opinions, thought leadership, etc. So if you see a good article out there, that you definitely have opinions on, get the URL, paste it into, paste it into the post area, so it will link to it. And then offer your own brilliance on whatever the topic may be.

Brynne Tillman  13:47

Awesome. So where can we find stuff, you can use hashtags to find content based on topics. You can use Listen notes to find podcasts, and you can certainly use a podcast and then talk about the host and the guest and the pot and mention the podcast and then talk about your perspective on it and why you loved it. Huge opportunity there. And then you can use something which I haven’t used in a long time. But we used to use it all the time, which is Feedly. It’s a place where you can curate content based on topics. It’s a freemium. 

So you can use that and if you are really and this is a paid, there are paid products around curating content, things. Um, well, I mean, we can put some stuff in the show notes, but there are definitely places that you know, industry content. The big thing you have to make sure is that what you’re sharing, you may see because you’ve paid to access the site, but it could be gated for other people. And so you want to make sure that if you’re using freemium content through a paid subscription, that you test the link in an incognito window to first see if it’s available for anyone to view. 

I am so frustrated when I get so excited about clicking through a link. And then it’s gated. Yeah. So yeah, we have a couple. Can we answer some of these questions that are coming in? Absolutely. Up, we just have a hello from Sierra Leone. Hello back. Definitely a bucket list place to be. And then, um, I haven’t, how would I be a direct salesperson from see oh, well, that’s a much bigger question than this particular topic. 

But I’m going to share so the question is if we have someone globally who wants to sell, the best thing you can do is find companies. And we will just answer, find companies where you like their product and find out if they have affiliate links, and then go ahead and sell via an affiliate link, then you don’t have to be employed, but you can sell Alright, that way too. 

Bob Woods  16:12

So that’s a good one. I said. “That’s an excellent point.” So getting back to the topic, our final topic, that yes, exactly. Our final one is the thing that everyone’s been talking about lately. But it really is important. And it ain’t going away, learn how to use it or get left behind Chat GPT or the generative AI types of things like Claude and Bard and those types of things. We just, I think, chat. Right? Yeah, Chat GPT is going to become what Xerox became the copying? I think.

Brynne Tillman  16:48

We came to teach you.

Bob Woods  16:50

Yes, exactly, exactly. 

Brynne Tillman  16:52

So. Chat GPT, there’s so many ways to use this the wrong way. And we’re going to share with you for a moment, the right way, you just recorded something maybe from your client, or maybe you went in and recorded a three to five minute video on a topic. Take that transcript, and use that transcript only. And tell Chat GPT, who I’ll let you do crisp in a minute, because that’ll help to understand. But the key is, in my opinion, to tell it not research, use the following transcript only. And I’ve been doing this a lot. And it’s way more authentic and in your voice. But before you tell it that you want to tell it crisp, go ahead and share crisp for everyone.

Bob Woods  17:39

Yeah, so Crisp that is our way of writing Chat GPT prompts, which everything is done via prompt, prompt is like a question essentially. But you do it in specific ways. So crisp is a content, ours roll, eyes, inspiration SS scope, and P is prohibition. So the big prohibition that Brynne mentioned was to not go out and research everything else. That’s the perfect example of prohibition. The other things set the tone, they set the roles they set, the scope of what to look at and what not to look at. 

The example that I want to bring up really quickly is, let’s say that you really don’t know what you want to write, or you’ve gone through all of the other ideas. And you’re like, “Okay, now what am I going to write about?” So what you can do is you can within a prompt and put your role as a salesperson in whatever type of company, your audience that you’re trying to reach buyers, decision makers, sea level in specific companies or whatever, even sizes of companies. 

And the fact that you want to create posts for LinkedIn that your audience will find a value, you can ask it for like 10 different subjects that it spits them out. Once that’s done, you can say  “Oh, I like number five, whatever that is, write a 100 word post on that.” Hopefully, it’ll write a post for you and that, at that point, put it into your own voice. Read it out loud, make sure it doesn’t sound like a robot because I guarantee you it’s going to sound like a robot and then make sure that it sounds like you and then you can actually use that for the post itself.

Brynne Tillman  19:13

I love that. I am going to do it. Perfect. And if you don’t want to ask it’s 100 You can take the topic that it’s suggested get on Zoom recorded for three minutes in your own voice on that topic. And then go back and use Chris with the prohibition of do not Research Use the following text only or the following transcript only Bob This is fun. Maybe we should go, maybe we’ll cut out our team for a week and try this. Oh no, I love our team.

Bob Woods  19:50

People are cringing right now and trust us we would never do that. We would never do that. But, But. 

Brynne Tillman  19:56

Experiment a little bit and do a little bit on our own, and report back because these are all our ideas, but we have a marketing team.

Bob Woods  20:07

Yeah. So yeah, and sometimes if you actually do have a marketing team, but you’re listening to this and you’re like, my marketing team doesn’t do things like this, I wonder if I should suggest to them, you know that they should do that. A couple of episodes, have them give us a call, we are always happy to talk with anyone out there. So, um, speaking of content, we have an e book that we actually introduced a little while ago that’s adjacent to this, it’s not exactly the same, but I do think it’s a big help. 

It’s called the seven types of content for the buyer’s journey. So anyone can use this ebook to come up with content in general and in particular, come up with content, where that can be used wherever the buyer is falling in the different stages of your buying process. So the proverbial funnel, top of funnel, middle funnel, getting ready to close. You can if you’re interested in getting that ebook, it’s at socialsaleslink.com/journey As in journey as in the band, Don’t Stop Believin journey, socialsaleslink.com/journey.

You can go there, but your email address, you can have that will not only help you with ideas just in general of types of content, but specific types of content for wherever they are at your buyers are at in their journey of buying from you. So thank you again for joining us on making sales social live. If you are with us live on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or x formerly known as Twitter right now we do this every week, so keep an eye out for our live sessions. If you’re listening to us on our podcast and you haven’t subscribed already.

Go ahead and hit that subscribe or follow button to access all of our previous shows and be alerted to when our new ones drop. More info on our podcast is available at socialsales link.com/podcast. We do two shows weekly, this one and the making sales social interview series where we talk with leaders and experts in sales, marketing, business, and many more business types of areas. So when you are out and about, be sure to make your sales.

Brynne Tillman  22:23

Social.

Outro  22:24

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