← The Digital Marketing Podcast
The Digital Marketing Podcast
Social Selling for B2B Businesses
00:34:44
Ciaran talks to Margherita Maspero, from SoAmpli, about effective social selling for B2B businesses. We explore how to use different social channels with the right marketing materials and Margherita shares some practical tips they use within their own...
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the Digital Marketing Podcast brought to you by targetinternet.com hello, and welcome back to the Digital Marketing Podcast. My name is Kieran Rogers and today we are joined by Maggie Maspero from so Amply. Hello, Maggie.
- [00:25]
B
Hello, Kieran.
- [00:25]
A
Hello. So, Maggie, tell us, first of all, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. And once we've covered that, we're going to go on and speak about actually making use of social media in a B2B environment, which I'm really, really looking forward to. But first of all, let's. Let's introduce yourself and tell us who you are and what you do. Why do you know so much about this space?
- [00:47]
B
Of course. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I'm a big fan, so it's really a pleasure to be here. So, yeah, for the last three years, I've been working in this space, specifically helping B2B companies activate their teams on social media, making the most of it for the company called so Amply. It's a lovely startup. We're based in London. I do marketing for them. And the interesting thing is that, you know, everything that we're going to talk about today, I do this on a daily basis for my own company. We are a B2B company, and we are getting most of our sales and most of our revenue and clients through social media by making the most of social media.
- [01:27]
A
Fantastic. So we want to explore this myth, and I've heard this time and time again, that social media is not for B2B, and B2B organizations don't need to bother with it. We'll just carry on doing things the way we've always done, and we'll do email blasts and we'll do mail shots and we'll do things the proper way, the traditional, traditional way. What do you have to say about that?
- [01:49]
B
I think that's really interesting that you say that because it's something we hear very often. We're very used to that sort of first reaction. No, not for us. Us, not for our team. We know it's a very traditional industry.
- [02:01]
A
Or my favorite. We tried that and didn't work. It was disaster. Yeah, it's like, well, what did you try and how did you do it and where were all the pieces lined up? Were you doing it right?
- [02:10]
B
Exactly. That's exactly it. It's a myth in a way that we can and we are trying to debunk on a daily basis because people are just people and social media is just another place where you can find them, where you can talk to them, where you can build a relationship and start a business relationship really. So it's is, it's just another medium that you can use to find business and to build your business. If you know how to approach it.
- [02:37]
A
So amply, you've got a great tool that helps businesses make use of social media and really leverage on it as an effective communication channel. I'm sure you've got lots of customers who are B2B organizations. Can you actually see the kind of knock on effect that social media can have if a B2B organization is putting into practice correctly?
- [02:57]
B
Yes. Like what we are seeing with Most of our B2B clients is that you can actually see within the first 30 days you can have an increase in prospecting of 30%. What it means is that it's basically you're going to have an increase of 30% of people in your network that you realize are actually interested and could be good prospects for your business. Just because you know, you are having more conversations, you are pushing out more content and you can really quickly and really effectively understand who is interested in that type of content. And you know, if it's a good starter for you to start talking with these people and build a relationship.
- [03:35]
A
It is, I think when I've seen it done really well, what it does is it moves away from this cold calling which is just a numbers game. Like if you throw enough mud at the wall, some of it will stick. And that, that's just, I mean that is a way of doing it. And businesses have done that for years. But it's very inefficient way of doing. It's very demoralizing way of doing it. So you see that as like a key strategy, making use of content for people to come to you rather than simply spraying out as much as you can and hoping some of it sticks.
- [04:07]
B
Exactly. Like, I don't know about you, but I've never heard someone saying, oh my God, I love cold calling. It's my favorite, it's my favorite activity. I could do it all day. I would do it also on a Saturday when I'm not at the office.
- [04:18]
A
It is, it's one of those classic lose lose scenarios. The people doing it hate it and the people on the receiving end hate it as well. Like, why don't we all just move on?
- [04:26]
B
Yeah, exactly. And if you think about your own experience as a buyer as well, right now, what you're doing more and more is you go, you do research yourself. If there is someone you actually want to talk to, you're going to reach out to them. So being active on social media helps you, first of all, making sure that that content that you put out is seen by people. Yeah, what we're really seeing more and more of as we are becoming researchers, as buyers, as B2B buyers, we want to go out there and we want to see, see what is out there and research that for ourselves. But if you are active on social media, then you can actively help people find you. Social media traffic has an impact on search traffic as well. Yeah, yeah, quite extensively. And at the same time you want to make sure that if someone wants to talk to you, they can find you really quickly. And one of the ways to do that is make sure that your LinkedIn profile is up to date, that all your information are easy. If someone prefers Twitter, that you're on Twitter, they can contact you quite easily.
- [05:21]
A
LinkedIn in particular is fabulous from an SEO perspective. I know if you Google your own name, it's very likely that your LinkedIn profile will come up. The reason why Google likes it so much is very often it's the most up to date piece of content. It's got a lot of detail and the detail is broken down into bite sized chunks, which it loves because it can understand context and analyze that. So one of the reasons I always give that everybody should be involved with social media within their marketing plans is it's literally joined at the hip with the search engine results. A lot of people don't realize that, but of course the search engines are looking for social signals in social media areas to see what content is popular and what isn't. And there's lots of signals. Those social media sites give off likes and shares and retweets or whatever the platform, platform is. So it makes sense, I think, to make sure that that's a part of your, your overall background activity. But I think, I think what's really interesting about what you guys do is you show organizations how to leverage on content and really, I suppose, pull together that whole area of the sales team and marketing team. So they're all pulling together in the same direction. So let's, let's talk about which channels are most effective because you hear all sorts of theories on this and some people say, well, you know, it's all about LinkedIn or it's all about Twitter. A lot of people in B2B say Facebook's a waste of time. You know, what would you say to some of these theories that did around?
- [06:49]
B
Well, it's a pretty Good question. I think there's, as always, there is not one success formula that works for everyone. Every business, Even in the B2B space, it's quite unique. So you have to make sure that you understand your audience and you understand where people are. For our own experience, what we see works best is definitely LinkedIn. Like, LinkedIn is the first one to start. You need to be there, you need to be active. LinkedIn groups could be interesting as well. Some of them now have just become a way of broadcasting your own content. So it may be a little bit hard to start conversations. But one of the great things that we see quite often is that people are starting to ask their LinkedIn networks about specific recommendations.
- [07:32]
A
So it's a bit of an ongoing trend, isn't it?
- [07:34]
B
Exactly like. And that's such a perfect way of finding opportunities. Opportunities in a very relevant way, in a quick way, but still very relevant. And it's also, it's always a value exchange. You always need to really focus on value exchange. For instance, one of the things that we've started seeing quite a lot is that some of our clients that are really happy with us would just recommend us to other people. So one of the things that you do quite often when you see something like that, you see a LinkedIn post something saying, oh, hey, I need a new pest control for my chain of hotels, or whatever it could be, does anybody know someone good, someone I should talk to? And what you see is in the comments, people tagging their own providers or people that they know work in that space because they really want to recommend them. So that's just an example of how being on LinkedIn can really help your business.
- [08:21]
A
So the other channels, I mean, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, where do they feature in this?
- [08:25]
B
So I think Twitter is definitely, again, very important, in my opinion, especially for events in the B2B space. We know that a lot of industry events are really important. They're like just a few throughout the years. And everyone is going, everyone in the industry is going to attend. So for those, something like live tweeting and connecting on those people also on Twitter could be really helpful. One of the things that we suggest quite often is to make sure, before you go to an event, to make sure that you look at all their attendees. Look, if they're on Twitter, if there's anyone that you really, really want to speak to, it's also a good idea to just reach out to them. It's a little bit softer than something sending them an email or private message on LinkedIn could just be hey, we're looking forward to this event. I would love to connect. And that just makes the whole breaking the ice when you actually meet that person so much easier in a way. It's not great to just go on. You know, even if at an event, even if you're good at networking, it's always a bit weird to do that first step, I think.
- [09:25]
A
So those first steps, it feels more natural and less force, isn't it? It's interesting. So I'll let you into a bit of a background to this interview. Maggie and I literally met on the phone yesterday, didn't we? So I, I was down to come and speak at an IABM event and Maggie's boss Maz was also there. So we, me and he have been planning this for a while and at last minute he was pulled away. Something cropped up that had to be attended so Maggie was put into the place really. But actually it was great to meet you this morning because we touched base on the phone only briefly, but it was enough. It was like that first I felt like I. You weren't like a complete stranger to me and I guess, you know, when you interact with people a little bit on via social media channels. As long as it makes sense, right? Like you both going to the same event. I know for the Brighton SEO event they've got an app and lots of people have all sorts of bantery conversations before them but actually they get to know one another a little bit and then you'll see them meeting up actually at the event and it's so much stronger than doing the whole round of Push a Business Card because that feels fake and false. Whereas this is, this is real. You know, it's kind of sort of a bit of a mixture of coincidence and function, but I think it's particularly. I agree, I think it's particularly powerful.
- [10:38]
B
Yeah. And again, not everyone's cup of tea, but if you are in a space where you need to go to events and conferences and anything like that, Twitter can be extremely, extremely helpful also because not too many people are doing it. So I think this is a good moment to get into it. So you can help you stand out a lot if you, if you just start doing it straight away.
- [11:00]
A
Way better than just pestering people on LinkedIn.
- [11:02]
B
Yes.
- [11:03]
A
Seems to be the par for the.
- [11:04]
B
Course at the moment when it comes to the other channels, to be honest. It's. Again, it just depends a lot on your company. For us specifically, Instagram is not as relevant. We do it because it's fun. We're in the startup space where it's happening a little bit more. So we've tried different things and it could be helpful from an employer branding point of view, which is not necessarily something that people think about, but something like Facebook and Instagram where, you know, maybe people that you want to hire graduates are not on or not as much on as other generations. It could be a good place to, to reach these demographics. Like if you need to hire people to make sure that they're aware of your company, what you do, what life at the office is like. So it could be helpful for, for that as well.
- [11:46]
A
So I think the big thing a lot of people miss is they look for like the engagement stats with the website and whether you post stuff out or what people engaging with. And that's relevant. Yeah, that makes sense to do that. But never underestimate how many people actually just lurk in the background. I mean, I think Twitter's a really good example of this. Like, I very rarely interact with a lot of the tweets that I read, but I'm reading them and I'm taking note of who's saying what. And I'm sort of bit like you do in a busy room. Right. You know, you, you don't necessarily, you're not necessarily speaking all of the time, you're sort of networking go around listening in to snippets here and there, jumping in if it's relevant. But a lot of time you don't. But you do get kind of case the joint engage a view of who's in what space and who's talking sense and who's talking absolute rubbish now, all of those things. And actually I think people are doing this on social media way, way more. And it's one of the great things you can't measure properly at. But it's still going on. I think a lot of people realize that. And if you're not, if you're not there either listening into the conversations or taking part in the conversations, you. Well, you've got to be in it to win it, haven't you? You're just not going to be able to leverage on that at all. So of course it's not going to work. So let's talk a little bit about sales teams.
- [12:59]
B
Yeah.
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A
And how a sales team can make social media work for them, particularly in a B2B environment.
- [13:05]
B
Yeah, I think because it's something that I'm really excited about because it's, it's what we specialize in, basically. It's to make sure that sales teams understand how to leverage social media, how they can use their social media networks to build connections and find prospects online. What we traditionally, what we see quite a lot, what we've seen in the past was that you had the marketing, creating the content and pushing it out, sending emails, creating content for what it's called the top of the funnel. And then you had sales teams at the end they would have to pick up the phone, call people, close a deal, make people sign on the dotted line. Well, the moment that you start bringing specific tools and a specific strategy into the picture, then you can really align the two discipline in a completely different way. So you can give the ammunition to the sales team, even the people that are not particularly digitally savvy, even the people that don't really know how to spell hashtag or you know, that are really not familiar with the tool. But you can take that expertise from the market when it comes to digital, when it comes to social, and really fit it into the sales team to help them empower them reach buyers. You know, there was a study from Google that showed that an ever increasing percentage of people in charge of researching new products at companies are quite younger. Millennials are even younger than that. And these people are online, are on social media. So if you want to reach them and you want to be part of that first phase of evaluation, trying to understand what solutions are on the market, then you really need to make sure that your sales team is, is there as well, is present there as well, and can be really easy to contact. So yeah, it's what you know, in the industry we call social selling is the idea that you can empower your whole team, your whole sales team to be active on social media, putting content out, seeing who engages with it, and really leverage all the different channels that they have available.
- [15:03]
A
I love that as a concept that you sort of taking marketing superpowers and providing them for the use of the sales team. But that's, you know, these are effective techniques that work right in marketing model. Why not apply them to a sales discipline?
- [15:19]
B
Yeah, and what I think is interesting is that it's not only a matter of marketing like sharing their expertise and empowering the sales team, but it's very much a two way street in a way. But because you also have the sales team being able to share feedback with the marketing team. Like you really create a connection. For example, like the sales team, the members of the sales team are the ones who have conversations with the clients who would really understand their pain points, like what are the challenges that they're going through. How a specific product or a specific service can help them. And once you build this connection and once you make the two departments work together more closely, also in terms of content marketing and social media marketing, then what you have is that you can really feed back that information to the marketing team as well and can give them ideas of, you know, what content to focus on, what sort of resources they should be putting out more of. Like you really build all of that not only on the analytics that you already have, but also on real life experiences.
- [16:18]
A
So what you're saying here is marketing conscious exist in their own bubble and just churn stuff out. Will nearly they've got to get feedback on it. And this is brilliant. But you know, we laugh that this would be an alien concept in some organizations because marketing do just that. Or sometimes in some organizations I've seen sales teams doing just that because they're not really gelling together. The magic doesn't really happen.
- [16:39]
B
There's a bit of a disconnect and it's almost like the two are in opposition when really we're all trying to do the same thing. We're all trying to just sell more. So let's do it together.
- [16:49]
A
So can you share any proven techniques that work in a B2B scenario in this space?
- [16:55]
B
Of course. So the first thing is to be consistent. It's very important that once you start being on social media, you just don't do it like once every three months. You have to be there. You can test different things, test different frequencies, but it's really important that once you give it a shot, you give it like a proper shot. It's not just a one off. The other thing I would say is to make sure that you spend some time not only posting content out and we're gonna see in a moment how you can do it in the most, I guess, effective way from a time saving point of view. But it's also not so not only that put content out, but also take some time to do exactly what you were talking about earlier, which is to read, to listen, what are other people talking about? Is this something that I should interested in? Should I jump on this? What are some of my competitors doing? What are some of the sales people in my space doing to make sure that they talk to people. Is there anything I can learn about it? I mean, one of the great things of social media is really that it's all out there in a way, especially on Twitter to an extent, on LinkedIn as well. So you can really, really learn.
- [18:09]
A
I love that. And I Think I've learned a lot just by lurking in dark corners and listening to what's going on. And you do you come across stuff that doesn't work or that puts people in a very bad light. And you come across stuff that's really, truly remarkable in the real sense of the word, in that it's so brilliant I will talk about it, I will remark on it. Yeah, I think that's kind of what you need to aim at. I think all too often the tendency is to just churn out stuff for the sake of it. And actually that's not going to help anybody. It needs to be really good. So you need to have a very good gauge on what else is out there, who are the best voices in this space, what are they doing? And then the next step on from that is how can you do it better? You know, what insights and experts do you have access to that you could really leverage on in this space and think if you can apply that to some of your content. I've challenged the whole audience out there to think about the last four or five weeks when what pieces of content have you come across that are truly remarkable? And I know for all of you there will be certain real standout pieces you can start to analyze. What was that, particularly in a business to business space, what was it about that that made it really, really good? And how could we start aspiring to that kind of quality? And I'm a great believer that actually yes, you do need regular stuff, but far better to have maybe one or two really good thought leadership pieces that are really thought long and hard about and researched and done your homework on than it is to just push out, you know, another 20, 30, badly written, hurriedly rushed off short two 300 word pieces that you're going to splatter everywhere across the social sphere.
- [19:46]
B
Yeah, no, I agree. And especially when it comes to, I don't know, writing a blog for LinkedIn for instance. We can all put articles out on LinkedIn. I think it's really think about what is the one thing that I feel like I'm truly an expert in, what is the topic that I feel confident that I can talk about? And it is going to be very helpful for the people in my network. And that's, that's where you need to start. This is how you can create your niche and become a sort of the go to person for that specific topic. And that's what's going to help you eventually, even if you're in sales, you know, have people come to you, which is sounds like A dream come true.
- [20:26]
A
But it does work like that. You know, if you get people, you push out nice thought provoking content piece and people within your network comment on it, you gain a real insight into who's really interested. And actually the fact that they've gone, actually that was really interesting. Thanks. Or I really enjoyed this. Or have you thought about that? That tells you that they're thinking along similar, they're interacting with the content and that's definitely a really good foot in the door. You know, that's the time to start not making a sale and going in for the kill like that. It's about building that relationship. Right. But they've put their hand up and said actually what you did there was, was interesting. This is what I think and actually that's very similar in a way to that first foot in the door when you both go into the same event or what have you. It works in that way.
- [21:09]
B
Yeah. I think we should think about it in a very similar way to how we think about traditional sales in general. It's just a different meaning. As we were saying at the beginning because you know, you wouldn't just try to do the hard sell straight away when you met Someone. Especially in B2B, the sales cycles can be very, very long. You need to understand the business, you need to understand where your solution fits into the business, how you can add value, which stakeholders you need to get involved. So again, if you start that conversation in a way or even if you've started that conversation, but at the same time you can use social media to make sure that the prospect of the person doesn't forget about you and you keep adding value and keep answering the questions that they may be asking. That's when really, you know, it becomes powerful.
- [21:55]
A
You do. I love an analogy as anyone listens to podcasts now and I do, forgive me if I've used this one before, it's particularly graphic one but you know, it's, it's the age old joke of the, you know, goes down like a French kiss at a family reunion. You know, on first meeting you don't want to go straight in for tongues. You've got to build this relationship a little bit, get to know one another first. Let's see, that's how relationships work. And okay, that's talking about a bit more of a sexual relationship, which is what makes the whole analogy a bit more amusing. But relationships are like, I like that. You know, we've all been at those parties where you meet somebody who's just a little bit too full on and just a little bit too much too soon. And actually that sets us on edge and we're like, oh, I don't know, this could be a bad thing. And you don't want to be, you don't want to be that, that person. And yet in the world of business we're so obsessed with buy our stuff and making the sale, we become that person. We become that person in the social media room that people start to avoid. It's like, oh, it's a bit too much, a bit too up front, bit.
- [22:54]
B
Forward to the point that you're almost scared of interacting with their content because you think they're gonna get like, oh yeah, 10,000 emails. No, it's, it's a good balance.
- [23:03]
A
The business equivalent of a bunny boy. Then we don't want that. We don't want that.
- [23:07]
B
Well, we use the, the analogy we use at Sampley is, you know, you wouldn't ask someone to marry you on the first date.
- [23:12]
A
No, exactly.
- [23:13]
B
You need to.
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A
That's a nicer way, but less craft. So how do we kind of effectively use content on social media? Where do you think companies do go wrong? Is it all about being too forward and too upfront?
- [23:30]
B
This is one of the mistakes that we see most often, I would say. But in general, I think a good guideline to keep in mind is to follow what we call the 8020 rule. So it would be 20% of the time you're allowed to promote your services, you can talk about yourself, you can really share your great achievements and that's great. But then for the remaining 80%, you need to make sure that you actually add value to your network so that you share thought. Leadership research is the thing that we are all really, really interested in. We can benchmark our own activity against the ones of people in the industry. So if you have any data that you're allowed to use in that sense, this is always very, very helpful. And in a way, you know, you're still promoting your business, you're still making people come to your website, but in a way that actually makes them feel like they're gaining something in the process. You're not begging for their time and attention.
- [24:25]
A
I like that and I think I do. Increasingly I look at all social media platforms as like a party. There are different types of party. I spoke about that stated I and, and actually, you know, LinkedIn is much more like a business networking party, but it's still a party and same social conventions still exist. So actually you don't want to be the guy at the party that just always talks about himself or herself. Because that's dull. Right. It's like, oh, you want to be taking an interest in other. Like a genuine. Not fake, a genuine interest and actually interacting with other people in the room like you would do in real life and taking an interest in them and what they're sharing. I think. But in LinkedIn, it's far better to keep that within a business context. If you start asking too many questions about their personal life and stuff, that can be a little bit. Whereas in a face to face, that can sometimes be a bit more appropriate. I've never really found that. So on LinkedIn, it's sort of slightly removed from that personal. It's a good stepping stone to that place when you do meet face to face. Okay, interesting. So what's best practice in terms of coordinating sales teams and markets marketing teams? Because I'm really interested in the. Yeah, I just think only because I've seen so often they're just at war with one another, chucking brick bats over a wall. Sales blame marketing that they're not getting the right type of leads and marketing blame sales because they're not closing their deals. And so it carries on.
- [25:46]
B
Yeah, I think again, it's something that anyone who has worked at a large company or even at a small one can probably relate to, that there is this, this sort of war or well, friendly war of like, oh, no, it was because of me. No, because of this, what you did. So I guess the best practice is to just make it extreme. As always, as quite often is the case is to make it extremely easy for them to work together. So to come up with a strategy that is backed by both the sales leadership and the marketing leadership to, you know, really understand what the objective is and how we can work together for this. It's. It doesn't have to be painful. Like a lot of people think it may be painful, but the moment that you start working together on a social selling program, in reality, you're actually helping everyone and you can really showcase that. So from the marketing point of view, you're giving them an extra way of amplifying and distributing the content, the content that they spend so much time and, you know, hard work on and that they just want to get as many people to see as possible. And at the same time, you give them a lot more. If you have a dedicated platform, you give them a lot more data that they can analyze and understand. So it's not only the data that they could get from their official social media channels or their emails that they send out. You also have all the networks of all your salespeople and you can really understand what that audience, which is extremely relevant here. You, what it is that they like, what it is that they want to interact with, what it is that they, you know, they're really interested in as a topic. So that's extremely. If this is clear, then it doesn't become, oh, I don't want to give my content to sales, my precious content. It's really, oh, I can get so much more if I activate the sales team as well and get them to share.
- [27:32]
A
Yeah.
- [27:33]
B
And on the other hand for sales teams, I mean it's, it's just so much easier than having to copy paste things into the, into their LinkedIn or into their Twitter. You know, it's just one place. You go in there three minutes a day, you push all your content out. You can see what works, you can see what doesn't. You can get amazing insights in a very simple way about the people that you're trying to talk to to help you understand them better and find an opening. So again, you're just doing something that is quite a lot more fun than cold calling, but can use the same results and the, a lot of the anxiety that you could have. If you're not very sure about social media, if you don't have much social media, confidence is completely taken away because everything is approved, everything has this sort of, you know, it's has been approved by the marketing team and you know that you're able to share and it's the most updated information, you know, is what the company is trying to do right now.
- [28:26]
A
Certainly we were talking about this a little bit earlier, but having everything lined up so it's ready to go, I mean, this is something we do at Target Internet. It saves so much time. So every time we produce a blog post, we've got team members who will make sure we've got suitably sized graphics. As we found, if we include an image with each social post, generally get more interaction with them than not including an image. So we'll always have suitably sized up graphics, but for all the multiple platforms that we might use it on. So Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, Instagram, they've all got slightly different sizes that work really well. And it's so lovely for me in pushing the content out as part of my role, that's what I do is to have everything there lined up, ready to go. I guess that's really what you're saying with the sales teams. They need all of that work to be done so they can just get on and do what they do and it's not hard to do if you've got the systems in place. And I think that leads us nicely on to talking about so Amply. I've never come across it before actually and really found it interesting. There are a lot of tools out there enable you to share content on lots of different social networks. But I think what's particularly impressive about so Amply is you've really thought about, you know, how do people in a business environment, how do they need to interact and leverage on these social channels and that's what you've built a tool around, around doing. And I can see actually yeah, I can see how it would be particularly beloved by sales teams and marketing teams because we're all, I've been in both roles and it's extremely busy role. There's not a lot much time to fuss about with stuff. You need to get on and get it done because you've got a to do list like nothing else in both those roles. And actually that's what you've really focused on, creating a really simple to use interface. I know you use the phrase it's kind of stupidly simple, but it is, it's nice and nice and clear. So it does that, but it does some extra stuff on top of that which I think really makes it shine. Do you just want to share with us what those things are?
- [30:27]
B
So yeah, like we take the fact that a few of our users have called it stupid simple as a big compliment. You know, we're really proud of that. It's exactly what we are trying to do. So even if you don't have any so social media confidence, even if you're really shy from a social media point of view, you can use it. It's literally two clicks. It is that simple. But the other thing that it helps you so it helps you share content, it helps you schedule it in advance. You can even set up your own automated queue so that you know, if you know that your audience is online in the morning, during the morning commute and in the evenings you can just set those laws up and then you, you just add the post to the queue and they will go out when you want them to. So this is like the big, the first big part of it. But then we also have the other aspect which is we bring you a lot of real time insights that can really, really help you understand your prospects better, understand your clients, your partners, analyze what is their social media activity, what to the point of what publications are they reading, what influencers are they talking to or retweeting content from. So you can really, in just a few minutes, the information is really simple. It's, you know, it's really. The information is showcased in a very simple way. You can read it quite easily and straight away you can do something about it.
- [31:46]
A
It is, I was impressed with it. It's very actionable. What you see, see there and you don't have to have, you know, detailed knowledge of social media platforms and how they work to be able to see. Okay, this is, this is, this is interesting. There's some leads that we could follow up here. I think I can imagine particularly powerful for taking a look at what's working particularly effectively for maybe partner organizations or maybe even competitors. But the insights you can gain from that, from your insights, part of the tool is phenomenal. I've not seen anything quite like it. Really, really good. And to have that integrated with the actual platform where you're posting this stuff out just seems that little bit more joined up. Cool. So if we want to find out more about so amply and any kind of like help and assistance you can give us in this space. Where do we go and what do we do? What do you have?
- [32:37]
B
So well, samply.com that's the place to go. You can find all our information.
- [32:42]
A
So that's S O A M P L I.
- [32:45]
B
Yes, correct dot com. You can find us on Twitter and LinkedIn and of course all other social media platforms. And yeah, this, you know, it's been so much fun.
- [32:55]
A
Fantastic. And you mentioned you've got a book of tips.
- [32:57]
B
Oh yes.
- [32:58]
A
Yeah, tell me about that.
- [32:59]
B
So we just released as a little of, you know, a kind of end of year present for all our readers. It's just a ebook full of really actionable, really easy social media tips. So especially if you're just getting started with social selling, if you're just getting started using social media to grow your business, it we just give you a lot of tips and these are things that you don't need specific tools to do. It's just okay when it comes to Twitter, when it comes to LinkedIn, what should I do? How can I reach more people? How can I do anything that is good?
- [33:31]
A
Well, we'll, we'll include a link to that in the show notes for any of you new to the podcast. If you go along to targetinternet.com podcast and you can get to all of the shows. Each show has a list of show notes will include link to that specific resource. I'm a big fan of tips and things because actually, you can cover a lot of ground quite quickly and then start digging in behind, you know, some of the thinking behind those processes. Read up about it. It's a great way to learn, actually, but there's instant things that you can try out, and what better time of the year to try out a few new things than coming into the end of the beginning of the. Thanks for listening to the Digital Marketing Podcast brought to you by Target Internet. If you're investing in your digital marketing skills, take a look at our free Benchmark Skills Test and look at the wealth of online learning we provide. To help marketers get up to speed and stay up to date, just visit targetinternet.combenchmark.