The social equation:
Contact + Content = Engagement and Engagement = Sales
What is the number one over looked social network? We have heard time and time again, that companies are posting content into the social universe and it feels like they are yelling in a forrest where no one is listening. And these organizations tend to not incorporate email into their social communication mix. Not only does email still sustain the largest click rate, but surround it with social sharing and it goes up.
“Twitter, Facebook Social Sharing Buttons Boost Email Click-Throughs By Up To 115%”
http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/twitter-facebook-email-marketing_b17586
So our argument is that the power of social is getting people to engage in a conversation, and that conversations can lead to new sales opportunities, specifically for b2b companies. So use email as a social network, drive people towards a conversation using a weekly social digest. This is not new, it is being done everyday by LinkedIn for their Groups.
Now once you have started to understand how email is a viable part of your social strategy especially for initiating the engagement, we need to insure that we have strong regular content.
At Socialize Your Stuff we deal with many small to midsized technology companies, who often re-sell larger brands products. These companies struggle everyday to sustain and grow their business, but without strong content they will continue lag behind their competitors.
They are looking for easy way’s to publish engaging content, so they too can have high value conversations that will lead to sales. We work with these companies and their vendors to provide original or sourced content with the specific objective of helping people get engaged in socially with the brand.
Here is an example of a program that has been specifically helpful for technology partners who sell Microsoft products.
http://community.dynamics.com/b/dynpartnercommunity/archive/2011/08/05/microsoft-dynamics-marketing-professional-community-call-nurture-butterfly.aspx
For Julie Fuller, marketing manager at Pennsylvania-based Dynamics partner Cargas, the Nurture Butterfly program helped her company establish a social media presence. “Without a consistent source of valuable content, we were nervous about adding social media marketing.” Fuller said, “Now that we have reliable content and can interconnect the systems with an incredibly simple tool — it’s beyond easy.” (Redmond Channel Partner, Barb Levisay)
So we have the two parts of the equation. We use email to contact then we add strong content and that starts to create the engagement. And as we know people who are engaged with a brand are more likely to purchase from that brand when a need arises.
Contact (w/ email) + Content = Engagement