How to Use Social Content to Drive Business Development
PR has traditionally focused on earned media: helping clients build relationships with reporters, earn press coverage, and place columns in third-party publications. The problem with this approach is twofold. First, there are fewer journalists to read pitches, run columns, and write stories (and this is only getting worse over time). Second, there is an entire universe of content (social platforms and owned media) available to marketers, and by failing to take advantage of them, they are shortchanging their ability to meet the ultimate goal of all forms of marketing: building relationships with current and prospective customers to drive revenue growth.
To more effectively use communications and content to drive revenue, marketers should expand their focus to channels outside of earned media, strive to build relationships via public-facing expertise, and hone content strategy based on what sparks audience feedback and pipeline.
Look beyond earned media for connections that lead to long-term growth
The fundamental purpose of anyone in communications can be simply put: How do we use differentiated ideas (thought leadership), helpful content, and relationships to grow our audience, nurture relationships with customers, and drive revenue?
Tactically, that might mean media relations campaigns. It might mean thought leadership columns. It might mean blog posts, podcasts, LinkedIn posts, analyst outreach, or all of the above. But we don't need to limit PR to these functions, and those items may not always make sense as top priorities.
Clients and comms agencies are often too focused on repetitive tactics to strategize. For example, too much focus on earned media tasks — monthly press campaigns, announcements — overlooks a wealth of channels that support longer-term strategy: social, owned, and other flexible platforms that allow marketing teams to get memorable and engaging content to customers, build relationships, and drive growth.
Great marketing and communications teams, whether external or internal, bring great content and savvy relationship skills to every platform where they can build relationships with customers. They do not limit themselves to the media.
Invest in social content to establish relationships based on helpful expertise
One advantage of social and non-earned media platforms is that they provide a daily way to grow the kinds of relationships that support long-term business development. LinkedIn is a great example. I mostly follow or am connected with two kinds of professionals on LinkedIn: 1) content/comms people and 2) in-house marketing leaders and execs at B2B tech (especially ad/martech) companies.
The first group accounts for more than 95% of the content I see on the site. In short, there’s a massive forum for B2B tech marketers to speak to an audience of professionals in or associated with their industry. Yet I don't know a single ad/martech company that is maximizing the value of LinkedIn content as a marketing tactic (I'm sure someone's doing it, but it's very uncommon). However, I know that almost every company is making some kind of investment in earned media bylines for AdExchanger, AdWeek, etc. and/or blog content.
What many ad/martech companies overlook is that LinkedIn provides a daily platform for showcasing the kind of knowledgeable content that builds relationships and supports growth. What if instead of relying on readers to come to you or editors to approve your articles, you could directly grow your audience by connecting with relevant prospects and providing them helpful content 4-5x per week? Consider: every column or blog post also contains 2-4 LinkedIn posts that could help your prospects do their jobs better and get them to see you as the person or company in their space qualified to solve their problems. Why wouldn’t you take that opportunity to reach your audience with helpful content?
Of course, accessing the value of social channels requires an understanding of the best practices that adhere to the conventions of the platform: when it comes to LinkedIn, this means posting consistently, striking a balance between helpful advice and more candid personal posts, and embracing a no-holds-barred mindset to growing your audience. (Regarding the last one, I mean that you need to treat your account like a media organization and add connections liberally; don’t view it as a gated community.)
With the content development systems and talent required to do it, social channels can provide an accessible and public-facing way to showcase expertise with higher and more frequent distribution than earned media.
Devise test-and-learn social strategy that iterates on performance to drive ROI
Most content strategy aims to serve the organization's “ideal customer” but lacks the means to evaluate and adapt the effectiveness of messaging over time. Instead of pumping out a few articles a month and hoping for the best, marketers should use the responsiveness of social channels to better understand and adapt campaigns based on what actually resonates with audiences.
Let’s go to LinkedIn again as an example. Here’s the strategy I recommend for B2B tech firms broken down into 11 steps:
Identify 25-100 actual orgs we'd love to have as customers
Find 1-3 people we need to reach at those organizations (the decision-makers)
Select thought leaders at our organization
Use our thought leader LinkedIn accounts to connect with the potential decision makers at our ideal customer organizations
Create 2-3 articles per month that would help our prospects do their jobs better, showcase our expertise, and differentiate us from competitors
Pitch those articles to industry trades and post on our blog pending level of promotion
Break each article into 5 LinkedIn posts and post 3-5x/week from deputized thought leader accounts
Measure which pieces of content resonate with our target audience
Use those performance insights to shape the next month's content so it gets more helpful over time
Continually grow our audience by adding 10-20 readers at prospective customer orgs each week
Poll existing and new customers on the trades they read (if any) and places they hang out online to optimize distribution strategy
By integrating social content into a holistic and growth-focused content strategy, we can clearly see how content drives customer connections and grows business. This way, we can create more and more helpful content over time based on what our current and prospective customers tell us. And after 3-6 months, we should be able to see clear growth in brand awareness, lead generation, and closed deals (ROI) to justify being even more ambitious. A strategic approach to social content helps marketers understand how to optimize topics and style based on what people respond to, and, most importantly, what drives leads and revenue.
Think about it — if you’re an ad/martech company, your average deal size may very well be $50k, $100k, or $150k/year (if not more). What if you could create super helpful content and get it in front of dozens, if not hundreds, of prospective decision-makers daily on LinkedIn? What if that content-led business development program cost, say, $100k/year? Do you think those 1,000 posts — 250 daily posts Monday to Friday by, say, four people at your organization — could generate 10 leads that convert, in turn generating 5-15x in ROI?
If you’re not maximizing your LinkedIn strategy, you’re likely leaving revenue on the table.
Tl;dr
Marketers and agencies stand to reexamine the strategic role of traditional and social media in their efforts to drive revenue and promote growth. The daily connections with prospects that social channels offer shouldn’t be written off. With a strategic mindset and the talent to execute it, marketers can use social content to nurture the relationships that drive long-term success.
