Recently, LinkedIn asked me (since “you’ve been posting some great stuff on LinkedIn” – wow, pretty cool!) what trends I see for 2019.

My answer: MORE

Strategy-level:

MORE mobile, digital, social and more data-driven and customer-centric decision-making and experimentation with innovations like AI and AR.

Tactics:

MORE social selling. I get so many spam calls, I don’t budge when my phone rings now, and I get so much spam email that I only view my Focused folder in Outlook. Social media will go from a “nice to have” to a “must have” for sales + business development.

MORE creativity with advertising. TV and traditional display ads get less eyeballs by the second. Companies will get more and more creative with advertising. For example:

• “In-game” TV ads – so you can’t DVR past them – that appear during sporting events today. These will become more prevalent,
• Ads on voice technology like Alexa – or even sponsored results, which gets dicey because you wouldn’t know if it’s the “best” answer or a sponsored answer
• “Anti-beacons” like Burger King’s new Whopper campaign. I’ve never understood why mall stores don’t have anti-beacons set up for their competitors’ stores. If I’m running Gap, I’m sending someone an offer every time they walk into H&M.
• Ads inside of video games – Roblox already does this. I saw an Aquaman movie ad on the wall of a building inside my son’s Xbox game recently. Integrated video game advertising!
• As automatic cars start to take off, how long will it be before we start seeing ads on our windshields?

MORE automation, and not always in a good way. Everyone wants to automate everything in marketing and sales, but many companies lack processes to support the automation, so they end up spamming the heck out of people, or they never follow-up outside of their automated sends, and thus, miss opportunities.

MORE video. As video comprises more and more of the internet’s content, everyone will be doing video in 2019. Facebook and LinkedIn already favor video over all other content. Those that are reluctant to do video in 2018, will be forced to do it in 2019 to sustain their current reach.

This will be an exciting year with a lot of big leaps forward in marketing in sales. It will be fun to watch it all unfold!

1.  To spend more time with my family
2.  To work with a variety of exciting clients
3.  To HELP people, especially non-profits.

So, I looked back over the past year. This year we were able to:

• Work with 23 clients including 3 Fortune 500s
• Help 4 non-profits make a real difference in their communities
• Set 5 start-ups companies up for success in both the short-term and the long-term
• Give away a lot knowledge that will help a lot of people via content and speaking events

And at the same time, I was able to:

• Pick my kids up from school almost every day
• Coach my sons’ soccer team (not once, but twice – including an all-star game)
• Take family vacations (plural – you can’t do that in corporateland!)

THOSE are the things that matter to me. Thus, I’m calling this year a landslide success.

Maybe you should too.

I’m not saying rest on your laurels, but I am saying to appreciate the good times – they don’t always last for long.

And most importantly, there are more important things than revenue.

Words matter. For example, “financial advisor” is searched for 10x more than “financial professional.”) When your team writes LinkedIn profiles, websites and sales materials, use words your prospects typically use. This will allow you to get found and be more easily understood.

Other surprising results:

• “Sales” 70x more than “business development” – no one wants to say they do sales, but you are much more likely to be found if you do
• “Innovation” 2x more than “innovative” – craft your content to use that tense instead
• “Strategy” 50% more than “strategies”
• “Online” 10x more searches than “digital” – an oldie, but a goodie
• “Digital marketing” 10x more searches than “online marketing” – but not when it comes to marketing
• “SEM” 20x more than “search engine marketing” – abbreviate this one
• “SEO” 15% more than “search engine optimization” – this one doesn’t matter at much
• “Social media” 80x more than “social networks” – it may not be grammatically correct at times, but using “social media” will get you found more
• “Facebook” 80x more than “social media” – if you are talking about Facebook, say “Facebook”

Want to run some searches on your own? Check our Google Trends (https://trends.google.com) to do comparisons between 2 or more words or phrases.

Tips to make your training sessions sing

My team has conducted a slew of training sessions this year. Based on those sessions, here are 4 key takeaways you can use to make your training more effective:

1) Make training interactive.

There’s nothing worse than talking at a group for 55 minutes, and then having 5 minutes of questions. Invite questions throughout the session, and cater your training to your audience’s answers. If no one is asking questions, ask them instead.

2) Show how to do things LIVE.

Yes, this adds an element of danger if the wi-fi isn’t strong at the venue, but live demos based on the needs and situations of your audiences are a lot more beneficial to them, and will keep them engaged.

3) Train small groups or conduct individual sessions.

Depending on the size of the group, this isn’t a possible, but try to get those groups down to small numbers. That way, participants won’t be afraid to ask questions, you will get a good dialogue going, and your message will stick.

4) Give homework. 

It’s easy for participants to attend a training session, think it’s great, but then go back to their desks and keep doing what they’ve always done. Have an “ask” for them (with a deadline), and follow-up to ensure they did it.

Follow these tips, and your training sessions will improve in 2018!

Early in my career, my boss called me into his office first thing on Monday morning. As anyone who has worked in a corporate role before knows, that’s not a good sign. As soon as I sat down, he blurted out “I looked at the numbers, and you’re messing up the online advertising campaigns, you need to fix it.”

I knew I had optimized the heck out of the display advertising campaigns, and every month, performance was increasing, so I asked to see which report he was viewing.

He showed me a report that tracked campaign results for two similar products (we’ll call them Product A and Product B).

The report tracked results down to the lead level. He said, “The Product A campaign received a lot more clicks and leads, but you are giving 5x the impressions to the Product B campaign. We need to shut the Product B campaign down, and move all our impressions to the Product A campaign immediately.”

So, I told him I’d be right back. I went to my desk to get the report that tracked results all the way down to profitability.

That report showed that at the end of the customer journey, even though the Product A campaign received far more clicks and leads, the company closed about the same number of sales from both the Product A and Product B campaigns. Furthermore, the company’s profit margin on Product B was 5x higher than Product A.

My boss looked at the report, thought for a second, and proclaimed “WE NEED TO SHUT DOWN THE PRODUCT A CAMPAIGN, AND ONLY RUN THE PRODUCT B CAMPAIGN!!”

I smiled and said, “just let me handle it.” And to his credit, he did.

So, how could this hour-long, semi-tense back and forth on a Monday morning have been prevented? To solve the problem, you have to diagnose the problem.

There were 2 problems here:

Problem #1:

My boss wasn’t looking at the full data picture. I’ve always told clients that I can get you a high click-through rate, for example, if that’s all you care about. I can get my team to design a “funny cat video” meets “shoot the zombie ad” that will get boat loads of clicks. But are those clicks going to convert to leads and ultimately to sales? Absolutely not.

Which is why having that end-to-end data picture was so incredibly important.

Now, let’s apply this thinking to social media. How do you measure the success of your social media efforts?

If you answered awareness or engagement, that’s not necessarily bad (it’s better than nothing!). However, at some point, senior management is going to ask “what is the value of our social media efforts?” If you only track to the awareness or engagement level, then how do you effectively answer that question? How do you know if social media is somewhere your marketing and sales teams should spend their time?

Well, let’s look at your non-social media sales and marketing efforts. How do you measure the success of those efforts? Leads? Revenue? Net income? WHICHEVER OF THOSE METRICS YOU USE ARE THE SAME METRICS YOU NEED TO USE TO TRACK YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA EFFORTS!

And the closer you get to the end of the journey, the better idea you’ll have as to the true success of your efforts (and the value to the organization).

Now, I know what some of you are thinking – that’s great for advertising and email, but it’s much harder to do for social, and besides we SHOULDN’T do that right? Social is different. It’s not a sales and marketing channel.

Most of us treat social like this magical purple pegasus that flies around spreading candy and rainbows everywhere – it doesn’t live by the rules of our other marketing and sales channels.

But we need to change that. We need to treat social like any other channel because:

Senior management measures social media success the same way as any other sales and marketing channel

Senior management wants to know how many sales our LinkedIn efforts are generating, or how many leads our Facebook campaign creates. That’s their job. They are running a business. A business needs to smartly spend money on things that generate profitable business.

Thus, you HAVE to measure your social media efforts in the same way you measure your other sales and marketing efforts.

This apples-to-apples measurement approach will help the two biggest problems that most social media teams face:

1. Lack of budget
2. Lack of resources

Apples-to-apples measurement solves these problems because it levels the playing field.

If you can compare display advertising campaigns to Twitter campaigns using the same metrics, you can show which is providing more value to the organization. If you can compare LinkedIn messaging to cold calls using the same metrics, you’ll know exactly with which of the two your sales team should spend their time (hint: it’s LinkedIn).

If you can prove social media is providing more value using the same metrics, then suddenly, the skies part, the sun comes out, cherubs start singing, and you will get the budget and resources you need. It may not be super-easy to track social like other channels, but it’s 100% worth it!

Problem #2:

My boss didn’t know the end-to-end results that we had. That was my fault. I wasn’t doing a good enough job socializing the data. Sure, I sent a report out every week via email, and you could argue that he should have been reading it, but VPs/SVPs are very busy people.

Sometimes, that extra step to open the document is too daunting of a task. It’s easy to say “I’ll look at it later,” and close the email.

So, proactive communication is key. If you have great numbers – tell EVERYONE, and ESPECIALLY your boss. In your 1/1s, talk about the numbers, how they are increasing, and what a great job the team is doing. How else will he/she know?

When you send out reports, include an executive summary (2-3 bulletpoints maximum) at the top of the email, so if they don’t have time to look at your incredibly detailed report, they get the high-level story. Senior leadership has zero time in the day. Make it easy for them.

This is also an effective way to influence change at an organization (it’s hard to argue with numbers). If you go to your sales managers, and say they need to spend as much time on LinkedIn as they do on the phone, you will be kindly escorted out of their office. If you show that you get 5x the meeting rate, for example, using social selling as compared to cold calling, NOW you’ve got those sales managers’ ears.

Summary

End-to-end measurement and apples-to-apples comparisons take the guesswork out of your social media efforts. They will tell you EXACTLY which channels, campaigns and content are most valuable to the business and the client alike, and it is imperative that you measure your social media efforts as close to the end of the purchase journey as possible to determine the bottom-line value.

About the author

Robert Knop is Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, helping companies GAIN + RETAIN clients using digital strategy and social media. He’s a proud member of the Wave3 network of consultants, and always happy to talk strategy, digital and social selling. To learn more about how to evolve your marketing and sales approaches for the digital age, reach out to Robert.

Photo: Kirinohana

For years, I told people not to connect on LinkedIn with everyone they knew. I recommended that people connect with the RIGHT people, such as co-workers, people you meet and know from other companies – especially in similar roles, and people you meet at conferences, but don’t connect with just anyone.

When someone would ask me who not to connect with on LinkedIn, the example I would always use was the pizza delivery guy. I’d say something like, “You don’t need to connect with a college student driving his mom’s car around town, delivering pizzas.” I would tell my clients and co-workers that connecting with this guy doesn’t add much value to your network, so don’t worry about it.

Recently, I’ve done a 180-degree turn on this stance for two reasons:

1) I’ve BEEN that delivery guy. 18 years ago, I delivered for restaurants in Burbank and Studio City, CA areas. That was my night job as I followed my dream of building a consulting company from scratch during the day.

Connecting with me at that time (if LinkedIn existed) could have potentially added a lot of value to folks from a digital marketing perspective. Also, since then as my career has matured, I have been in a position to help out a lot of people in many ways from a networking, hiring, digital marketing, e-commerce and social media perspective.

The pizza boy may be a delivery guy now, but he’s working, he’s hustling, and he’s going to make something of himself. Someday, the big tip you gave him, or the connection you made with him, may pay dividends, and worst case scenario, you may help someone out, and that’s never a bad thing.

2) On LinkedIn, you can only view profiles of people in your network (1st, 2nd and 3rd degree connections). If someone outside of your network appears in search results, the result looks like the screenshot below, and the profile is blank when you click on it (unless you have Sales Navigator Team, where you can view out-of-network profiles).

Currently, I’m working with a lot of restaurants in the certain area, many of which are pizza joints. You know who be helpful to know right now? A BUNCH OF PIZZA DELIVERY GUYS! They could connect me to different restaurant general managers and/or owners of local restaurants. But, alas, I have never connected to a pizza delivery guy due to my shortsightedness.

Now, I’m not saying you should accept every invitation to connect your receive, or to start sending out mass invitations to connect to strangers and people you hardly know. What I am saying is to not discount the people you know and interact with on a daily basis simply based on what they do now. You never know where they (or you) will end up!

So, the next time I order a pizza, I’m going to ask the delivery guy to connect with me on LinkedIn. Sure, he may be a little weirded-out, but hey, he’ll probably be my boss in a few years, so I need to start learning about him now.

Related articles:

Don’t ever click this button on LinkedIn!

NEW FEATURE in LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes company research faster and easier

5 common social media content mistakes (and how to avoid them)

About the Author

Robert Knop is Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, a company dedicated to helping companies transform their social media programs from driving engagement to driving revenue. He’s a proud member of the Wave3 network of consultants, and always happy to talk strategy, digital and social selling.

If you’d like to learn how to set-up a sales-driving social selling program at your organization, contact Robert at 323-972-3566, or simply complete the short form below.

  [contact-form] 

Photo: Yoshihide Nomura

I loved cartoons ever since I was a kid. Every Saturday morning, I was up at the crack of dawn to watch and watch and watch until my father would drag me outside to help him on his pet project of the day.

As I got older, one of my favorite cartoons was Ren and Stimpy. In one episode, Stimpy was charged with guarding the “History Eraser Button.” The button that erases everything, and the one button you should never push.

LinkedIn has a button like this as well. It doesn’t erase anything, but whatever you do, don’t click this button!

The one button on LinkedIn you should never click is the Connect button in the “People you may know” section in the top right of your home page. The button seems simple and innocuous. However, if you push this button, it will send a generic “I would like to add you to my professional network” Invitation to Connect to that person. You don’t have the opportunity to personalize the invite.

Why is personalizing invitations important?

Say you were getting an invite to a birthday party. If the invite said “I would like you to come to my party,” and you knew the person really well, you would probably go. However, if you weren’t that person’s best friend, and you received that invite, your incentive to attend would be low.

However, if you received an invite that said, “I would love for you to attend my birthday party. I know you like bounce houses, beer and baseball, and this party will have all three.”

Which party invite would make you want to attend the party more – the generic or the personalized invite?

Take this same approach to your Invitations to Connect on LinkedIn. If you are connecting with someone you have known for a long time, “I would like to add you to my professional network” is probably going to get accepted.

However, if you just met the person at a conference last week (along with the other 100 people that person met), they might not even remember you, let alone want to connect. So, give them some reasons – remind them where you met, how you met, what you talked about, things you have in common (schools, former companies, connections).

Most importantly, mention what VALUE are you going to provide. For example, you want to share thoughts and ideas, or you both belong to the same non-profit and you want to help out. For some specific language for Invitations to Connect, check out Brynne Tillman’s recent post.

So where do I connect then?

Always connect from the person’s profile page. To get there from that same “People you may know” section, click on the person’s photo or name instead of clicking on Connect button . You will then be taken to that person’s profile page. From there, you will see a giant, candy-colored blue Connect button. When you click on that button, you can then personalize your invitation, and your invite will have a much higher chance of being accepted!

Key takeaways:

1. Always personalize your Invitations to Connect
2. Always connect to someone via their profile page, so you can personalize your Invitation to Connect

Related articles:

• NEW FEATURE in LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes company research faster and easier
• The best part of LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index
• 5 common social media content mistakes (and how to avoid them)

About the Author

Robert Knop is a passionate helper of people, and Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, a company dedicated to helping companies harness the power of social media to add value their customers, build trust and drive sales. He’s always happy to talk all things strategy, digital and social selling.

If you’d like to learn how to set-up a profit-driving social selling program at your organization, whether big or small, feel free to reach out to Robert.

Photo: Doug Belshaw

All social media marketers want to create content that resonates with their target audience. However, I have noticed after years in social media that many companies seem to make similar mistakes when it comes to social media content marketing.

Here is a list of 5 common social media content mistakes to avoid:

1) Making it all about themselves.

In social media, content needs to be about the audience – based their needs and what resonates with them. What companies want to talk about is their products and services, and many companies post this content on a regular basis. The problem is, social media users did not log-on to see content about products and services, so social media marketers need to frame their content in a way that will be valuable to their audience.

To do this, social media content needs to be P.U.R.E. – Powerful (compelling, stands out, stands on its own), Useful (provides values, not selling products), Relevant (something pertinent to the target audience at that time) and Engaging (makes target audience want to do something with it – e.g. share it with others, sign-up for a newsletter, buy something).

2) Losing their identity.

When I conduct reviews for companies regarding their social strategy and content, I see many brands posting content that is not aligned with their target audience.

For example, they have a highly-sophisticated client base, but they are posting 101-level content because it gets the most engagement. So, even if they get a ton of engagement, it is not with the audience they want to buy their products and services. Thus, even though it’s “successful” on the surface, it’s ultimately unsuccessful because it will not lead to business.

It’s all about quality over quantity – 10 shares from a company’s target audience is better than 20 shares from people outside that target audience.

3) Not using data enough.

Every company has a plethora of valuable data on their customers from sales, social and traditional marketing, but many companies don’t use this data when they are creating their social content. The most successful companies on social segment their overall audiences and target messages only to certain segments to which it is relevant.

Also, the results of previous pieces and campaigns inform what audiences like, do not like, and what will drive leads and sales. To optimize this further, test, test, TEST different messages to continuously keep up with target audience preferences and changing needs. Data needs to be at the heart of all content decisions from original strategy to end-of-the journey optimization to ensure strong ROI.

4) Designing for desktop.

Per Comscore, 65% of all digital time in the US is spent on mobile. However, most companies are still creating and optimizing their content for desktop, which is a big disconnect with consumer preference.

Companies need to ditch those extra long articles, and especially those enormous infographics! After all, users can barely read those on a desktop device. To use this content, cut those big infographics, brochures and other materials into “snackable” pieces that can be easily consumed on any device. As added bonuses, companies will have 10x the content to use, and it will be much more likely to be viewed and shared this way!

5) Sharing the exact same content across multiple channels.

Many companies with slim social resources post the same content on many different social sites, which is understandable, but not ideal. Although, some things are universal like using imagery and video, the thought leadership content that works on LinkedIn doesn’t necessarily work on Facebook, and definitely doesn’t work on Pinterest.

If resources are scant, optimize for each channel by adding site-specific nuances, like adding a hashtag and/or tagging the appropriate @ on Twitter. Middleware programs like HubSpot and Buffer make it easy to do this.

If resources are not an issue, design for each channel, then look at the type of content that works for each channel, and create accordingly. For example, the content that results in the most engagement and conversations for me on LinkedIn is…content about LinkedIn – big surprise! When I post that same content on Twitter, it receives a lot less interest. The more time companies can take to create content that works with each channel, the more successful their social media efforts will be.

Key Takeaways

To avoid the biggest social media content mistakes, companies need to make sure they are:

• Designing content for their target audience’s needs and preferences
• Using data to shape their strategy and tactics
• Creating site-specific content

Related articles

• The value of social selling
• What should your social media objectives be?
• 4 steps to social media content success

About the author

Robert Knop is a passionate helper of people, and Founder of Assist You Today, a company focusing on helping companies get closer to their clients, build trust and drive sales by harnessing the power of strategy, data, digital and social.

To find out how to set your company up for long-term success in this new digital age, and generate more sales using strategy, data, digital and social, contact Robert at 323-972-3566, or simply complete the short form below.

  [contact-form] 

Photo: Andy Roberts

Although social selling is relatively new, some brands are already successfully leveraging it to drive business. When I talk to sales and marketing folks about social selling, one of the most common questions is “where do I begin?” So, how do you drive a social selling program – particularly at a large company?

Where to start

The first step is to find a high-level sponsor, preferably someone actually in the C-suite or a head of sales, but it needs to be someone that has a large amount of influence at the organization. Focus all of your time and energy on this person.

If you can convince this person your program will help the company better understand its customer needs, build trust with and retain current clients, as well as find and acquire new clients and drive sales, then doors will be opened for you within your company that would otherwise be closed (or take a large amount of time and effort trying to pry open)!

How to prove the value of social selling

Do your homework. You need to know a lot of things off the top of your head, so you can confidently speak to them on a moment’s notice. For example, you’ll need to know that sales professionals who use social media are 51% more likely to exceed quota (LinkedIn survey, 2014), and what successes others in your industry have had in social selling. Research what your company’s success rate is for cold calls and emails, and why/how your proposed social selling program is going to beat those numbers.

Have an end-to-end strategy and tactics already somewhat vetted at a high-level (e.g. who is the target audience, what kind of content you plan to use and why, which sales groups will be involved, what does compliance think about the program).

Having the answers to these questions will help you frame the conversation. Use this outreach to determine if your message resonates with these groups.  Be flexible, get the right people involved, ask their opinions, and be willing to morph the strategy based on their feedback.

Show the value…in their language. I mean this in two ways:

1. Use non-social media specific terms. Like in any marketing or sales proposal, you need to know your audience. If you start talking about Invitations to Connect, likes and video viewing times, those metrics aren’t necessarily relevant to C-suite members or heads of marketing and sales. Instead, use language they are familiar with like reach, leads and sales
2. Talk about results that they care about. This leads us to the next step, which is measuring what is important to your senior leadership. Typically, heads of sales and the C-suite care about measurable performance.

If it’s a data-driven organization, you need to be able to discuss the exact dollar figure impact to the bottom-line you expect to gain from the program and why. If it’s meetings they care about, show them how many more meetings you will be able to gain using social selling. If it’s more of a relationship-based company, get your stories and testimonials from comparable industries, and use them liberally.

How to get results that are valued

To get metrics that are comparable in a head-to-head format to other channels, you need to track your program end-to-end (from post to profitability).

(Note: You will hear numerous times that you can’t track social media and social selling end-to-end because there are a lot of other variables involved in the sales process. Yes, there are…just like in every other sales and marketing channel.)

So, keep pushing forward. If you are still putting a strategy together (and don’t have anything yet to track), propose a pilot with a test group and a control group to show the benefits head-to-head. You may have to use some proxies (if you do, make sure they are agree upon upfront) in the early stages. However, over time, you’ll have more and more accurate and actionable data.

Bringing it home

Once you have proven that social selling works in metrics that he/she cares about, you’ll most likely be able to get senior management buy-in, and that key influencer will be able to open a lot of doors. From there, leverage the buy-in as much as possible to schedule meetings with key folks, prioritize the effort highly and get things done. You may not have their attention for long, so capitalize on the opportunity!

Key Takeaways

• Concentrate your efforts on a key influencer in senior management
• Convince that individual of the value of social selling in their terms that are relevant
• Act quickly to capitalize on the opportunity

About the author

Robert Knop is a passionate helper of people, and Founder of Assist You Today, a company dedicated to helping companies get closer to their customers, build trust and drive sales by harnessing the power of social media. He’s always happy to talk about strategy, digital and social.

If you’d like to learn how to get closer to your customers, build trust and drive sales using social media and social selling, feel free to contact Robert at 323-972-3566, or simply complete the short form here.

Photo: Tim Dorr