The secret of a good content mix

When I create content for my audience I try to bring the “whole me” to the party and so should you. These days there is little divide between public and personal and, as anyone in a customer facing role will know, it is the personal stuff that creates the bond. So you should talk not just about what you do but who you are - don’t just talk about your job but talk about what’s happening in your life too because this is the stuff that really matters.

It’s also worth remembering that with over 1 billion people on LinkedIn alone there are plenty of prospects out there for you tow work with…so it’s in your best interests to publish things that stimulate conversations with with people you like rather than people you don’t!

It’s a business network…I hear this a lot. People don’t think it’s appropriate to share personal things because people some to LinkedIn to conduct business. Whilst that might be your view all of the evidence suggests that isn’t in fact the case. Post something about your company and then post something about your kids and see which post performs best you might be surprised.

That said, it is vital to have a blend of content because as well as liking you people need to be clear about what you do and that you are credible at it. Everyone loves cat videos but unless you run a pet shop you need to post other things too.

If you know me you will know that some of the cornerstones of who I am revolve around - my family, my job and music/guitars. Anyone who consumes my content will have seen this and therefore they will “know me” a little more that if I didn’t write this sort of content and it is this “get to know me content” that helps close the gap between me and my audience…and it will do for you too.

Some of my content (the personal/hard stuff) performs much better than others and this provides me with reach (and happiness by interacting with people who like me), some of my content is factual and (on the face of it) doesn’t perform as well but provides a work context to my audience so I can keep reminding them of my area of expertise.

So for me, broadly speaking, I share 8 types of content (and a mix of written, video and imagery):

?1. Posts about what DLA Ignite does

?2. Posts about what I do

?3. Posts about what I do that contain a picture of me

?4. Posts about my hobbies (guitars, cars, travel)

?5. Posts about my achievements (awards I have received and guitars pieces I have learnt)

?6. Happy life events (kids starting at university, what my wife has done, birthdays/celebrations)

?7. Sad things/challenges (diagnosis, bereavement)

?8. Good news (being given the all-clear)

Clearly there are other things that fit in to those categories that personally I haven’t had in recent years (or ever) such as - getting a new job (6), depression (7) and winning the lottery (8) but in terms of categories this is about it.

What’s interesting with this is that type 1 always performs the worst and type 8 always the best - for me, for you, for everyone. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a type 8 from me will outperform a type 4 from you because you may have a bigger or more engaged audience than me but you can run the test yourself and see.

We are constantly testing these ideas and always trying to learn from the results. The thing that you need to bear in mind across all of your social behaviours is that this is a balancing act. You want the maximum engagement you can get but you don’t want to cause fatigue in your audience - they will become desensitised to your good/bed personal experiences in exactly the same way that they will with your business posts - so you need to shake things up a little.

What you want also is an “appropriate” level of engagement. “Likes” are incredibly important because if someone has clicked you know exactly who they are which means you can connect to them or message them and say “thank you” but that only works up to a certain level. An ex-client of ours created a post that had 37 thousand likes…and nobody can look at that many profiles and send that many thank yous.

But for all of us this is a learning journey, you need to develop your own strategy in the same way you need to develop your own content…and that takes a little time to get right.

#socialselling #pipeline #digitalselling #content #sales?