E031- Social Selling & How to Use it: Jeff Leo Herrmann

In this episode, I speak with Digital Marketing and Sales guru, Jeff Leo Herrmann, about social selling.  Jeff is one of the country’s leading experts on this topic.  He shares with me his mission of helping business leaders to transform into thought leaders and to build global audiences.  He is currently the Chief Revenue Officer for Fathom, a 20-million-dollar digital marketing and analytics agency.  

Smart business owners understand that the traditional world of marketing has become less and less relevant (i.e., television and magazine advertising, online banners, and spam from businesses trying to sell you stuff).  Gone are the days of leading with a volumetric prospecting approach and pitching one-sided value propositions.  Nowadays, these approaches just drive people away!  There has got to be a better way.  Enter social media content marketing (social selling) – it’s the present, and here to stay!   According to Jeff, instead of trying to pitch your products and services, you should deliver valuable, relevant, and consistent information (writing or video) using a social media platform on an ongoing basis, to attract customers, and ultimately retain them.  Think of yourself as a teacher within your selected platform, and this will create opportunities for you. In order to rise above the noise of the feed, stop focusing on the end game of making money, but rather, focus on becoming more authentic and forming emotional connections.  This is where the magic is, and your intended audience will take the time to learn your content, engage with you, and in due time, compensate you with their trust, credibility, and business.  

Here are the ways you can go from a business leader to thought leader:

Develop a social selling strategy or mission statement.  Take a few minutes to decide 1) who your target audience is; 2) what you will deliver to them; and, 3) what outcome you envision for this audience.  

Once you strategize, then frame everything you do by this strategy, and just keep going.  Otherwise your content could end up scattered across a variety of feeds, buried in timelines, and locked up in emails.  

Choose your platform.  Examples include, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or Instagram.  Jeff personally concentrates on LinkedIn because it of its strong social network and great reach.

Embrace one medium, writing or video, and develop content!  Jeff prefers video because he believes that rapport can be built more quickly by producing video content.  Additionally, a nice by-product of doing live video is that it will push you beyond your comfort zone, allow you to get feedback, and will make you a better communicator.  

Choose a problem-solving topic or theme; stick to it; and, become known for it!  You must FOCUS in order to filter out all the noise.

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