The Difference Between Selling & Telling Your Brand’s Story Through Content Marketing & Social Media Marketing
I had a conversation yesterday with a colleague about utilizing social media for self-promotion and how selling is not necessarily my strongpoint. I don’t consider myself a salesperson in the traditional connotation of the word. However, much of social media can be used as a tool to sell and that’s exactly what I do for my clients, and in turn, for myself. So, I explain selling on social media like this: I believe that social media is a great place to tell your story, rather than sell it.
Telling The Story
I always say to people, “if you don’t tell people, how will they know?” You may have a killer website, but if you never tell anyone the url or how to find it, they will never see it. It’s the same thing with your brand and your expertise. You need to talk about it in order for people to know that they can use that expertise or service.
Of course, there is a fine line to walk when you look at telling your brand’s story online. I am going to admit that there are times where I do not do this well at all. I’m sure I come across as too self-promoting at times. I’m not perfect, and no one out there on social media is either. However, I can strive to have the perspective of talking about my expertise, my values, and my company’s services without pushing people to work with me. Only once someone knows WHAT I do, can they make the personal decision to decide WHY they need to work with me.
Getting Social
Social Media has that key word in it: social. Users are going on social media, whatever the platform, to be social and not to be sold to. We get enough sales messages through commercials, billboards, pop up ads, and fliers. Now, don’t get me wrong, advertising on social media has its benefits, but if all of social media was just one sales ploy after another, very few would actually want to go on.
If social media is in fact, social, then brands need to understand that concept in order to be successful. Infusing personality into the profiles is what will attract people. Honest writing that you can tell has been written by a real person, not just some offshore writing company or copy littered with SEO key words, will capture people’s attentions. Authentic pictures, flaws, and even (insert gasp) typos, should be embraced. (Admittedly, I literally cringe when I see typos, but when I do see them on social media, I get a little excited because that means there was a REAL person writing that post.)
Telling Sells
When I started my business a while back, it was pretty easy to get the word out. The reason was this: I had been working for a really fun client for an agency for a couple years before striking out on my own. This client was a home and design store and I just loved the content matter so much that I naturally shared the posts and contests a lot with my personal profiles. After a few months of sharing things every once in a while, people learned that I was involved somehow with social media marketing. Over time, this turned into people asking me to help them with their company’s social media management, or to help them with their profiles. They knew to talk to me about social media because I talked about social media first.
As business grew into more than just freelancing, it became necessary to flesh out my brand’s profiles with the right information to TELL someone who landed on them what I do and what I specialize in. Any person on LinkedIn does the same thing for their own persona. By putting the basic information on your profile, you are telling a prospective connection what you do and what you specialize in. It’s as simple as that.
When Telling Becomes Too Much
We all know those people. You know the ones…where you hit that “unfollow” button so that you stop seeing their updates, or maybe you even un – “like” them altogether. Remember that phrase I used earlier of “walking a fine line” between telling and talking too much? There is a fine line, and unfortunately that line is different for every viewer and every poster.
Here are a few things to do to keep yourself in check:
- Build Up An Honest Support System – Ask for some honest feedback from a few trusted friends or colleagues to see if you are being a bit much on social media. Look for people who will tell it to you straight and be real with you!
- Do An Audit – Take stock in your profile every once in a while. Just as we do business planning each year, so too should you take a look at how your profiles are doing and what message you are sending.
- Look At Metrics – Your web traffic and social stats can give you a good idea if you are dropping off in engagement after a huge sales push. If you see a huge drop off, you can make some observations about if your audience is ready for you to be that sales-driven in your messaging.
- Watch Others – Monitoring your competition or other similar businesses can help you see what messaging is getting positive responses and what messaging might be getting negative responses.
- Focus On Authenticity – If your focus is on sharing your authentic self, then that will shine above any of the sales-focused messages you are strategic with.
Is telling the perfect strategy for all? No, absolutely not. There are some products and services where the ad is perfect, and can create simple and effective transactions. However, if you are in a relationship-based business like mine, you tend to find that telling your story is the hook. Once you have that relationship, it is easy to shift gears to talk in technical terms.
Tintero is Italian for ink well, and it is where we developed our feather pen logo concept. The reason we chose this word as the name for the company is because we are in the business of telling brand’s stories online, including our own. Telling and selling that brand story can look drastically different, but yet both be effective. So, I leave you with this simple question: what story are you telling online today?