Below, we unpack each insight and show how they fit into the strategic mindset we’ve cultivated here at EveryoneSocial.

1. People > Companies: It’s All About Real Connections

Erika Serow, CMO at Bain said it best:

“People don’t talk with companies, people talk with people.”

This reflects a fundamental change: as Erika explained, companies are just groups of individuals, and in the era of social media, B2B marketing means building real, human-to-human relationships at scale.

That philosophy echoes our approach on this blog—every post is crafted to empower employees to share authentic stories that resonate. When your people share your narrative, they don’t just distribute content—they drive network effects that amplify trust and extend reach  .

2. Imperfection Builds Trust: Let the Humans Tell Their Stories

Tim Hoppin, Chief Brand & Creative Officer at SAP emphasized the power of genuine storytelling:

“Let the HUMANS in the business tell their story.”

The message is clear: vulnerability matters. Budgets can be refined, campaigns planned—but it’s the real, unfiltered voices within your organization that cultivate trust.

Our content strategy encourages just that. Whether it’s through employee-generated content or third-party thought leadership, we’ve seen firsthand how authenticity drives engagement—and elevates both people and brand  .

3. Algorithms Aren’t Optional: Learn to Play, Or Be Left Behind

Rob Gold, President of Dentsu B2B issued a timely reminder:

“We live in the algorithmic era… You need to be in native platforms with human beings, building trust.”

Content alone won’t cut it—understanding how platforms distribute content is crucial. It’s not about funnel metrics or MQL quotas. It’s about audiences, native experiences, and strategic distribution in environments where your people are already engaging.

This is the core of modern B2B creativity and strategy. When your employees share content natively (rather than via broadcast channels), engagement grows. Our clients routinely see employee shares outperform paid ads, driving pipeline at a fraction of the cost  .

Bringing It All Together: A Framework for 2025-Ready Marketing

Here’s what happens when human authenticity meets platform mastery:

What You Can Do Now

1. Activate your people — Create structured programs for employee advocacy and provide social media training

2. Encourage authentic storytelling — Spotlight cross-functional voices (sales, customer success, product teams) to deepen brand narrative.

3. Optimize for platforms — Build content and distribution strategies tailored for native environments (e.g. LinkedIn, X, TikTok). Capture data and refine based on reach and engagement metrics.

Looking Ahead: The Human Algorithm Advantage

We’re at a tipping point. The companies that win in 2025 and beyond will do more than tell stories—they’ll lift the voices behind them, empowering human-to-human connections at scale. That combination of authenticity + distribution mastery is what defines modern B2B brand leaders.

Need help bringing this playbook to life? Whether it’s kickstarting an employee advocacy initiative, running a storytelling workshop, or optimizing your platform strategy—we’re here to help your CMO make those insights actionable.

The post People, Platforms & Imperfection: Why Modern B2B CMOs Are Rewriting the Playbook 🧩 appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

To help these folks out our team pulled together some of our recent greatest hits: data, case studies, stories, reports, etc. Resources that clearly paint the picture of the value of advocacy across marketing, sales, comms and recruiting. Advocacy can be applied to ANY person or team, and the beauty of it is that it directly impacts the things that are MOST important to any company: revenue and people. And fortunately, after more than a decade of supporting the world’s largest advocacy programs we have plenty of data and examples to share!

Sales: Driving Revenue

I’ve been an honorary salesperson all my life. You don’t have a choice when you’re a founder or CEO. And I’ve loved doing it. I love talking with prospects and customers. If I had to sum up what I’ve learned about sales over the last 20+ years it’s that being seen and heard, participating in the conversation and giving, contributing value is really the key. We buy from those we know, we like and we trust. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about buying a pair of socks or some multi-million dollar technical solution, the equation is fundamentally the same. That’s why social is SO important for salespeople. And contrary to what some salespeople and leaders may think, it’s not complicated. Your buyers are on social. Salespeople need to be talking with those buyers, they need to be engaging with them. Period. As the saying goes, 80% of life (of sales) is simply showing up (on time, with something to contribute).

Sales use case resource: Case study and data on how the use of EveryoneSocial + Linkedin Sales Navigator by sales teams led to increased pipelines, win rates and deal sizes.

Marketing: This Is Word Of Mouth

Marketing is the bread an butter of the advocacy world. This is where it all started and it’s still a core pillar of how advocacy drives ROI. I mean look, it’s really simple, advocacy is word of mouth marketing! This was the idea that drove us to start EveryoneSocial so many years ago, the idea that all of us, the PEOPLE inside companies were connected with everyone we wanted to reach as a business: customers, prospects, partners, candidates, etc. There isn’t a CEO in the world who hasn’t asked his team to share good news with their networks. Advocacy is how you do that repeatably and at scale and it’s the reason why Ogilvy called out advocacy as the #1 influencer trend for 2025.

Marketing use case resource: Ogilvy report highlighting advocacy as the #1 influencer marketing trend for 2025 (featuring EveryoneSocial customers!).

Recruiting: Winning The Talent War

If you’ve talked with me before you know that recruiting and employer branding is one the strongest use cases for advocacy. Honestly I would say that if you could only choose one way to use advocacy, use it for this. Why? Everyone you will hire is on social media. All of your current employees are on social. Everyone who has been a member of your team is on social media. Further, people LOVE sharing about their work, what it’s like to work at your company, and open opportunities to join the team. Further, there are LOTS of people looking for their next opportunity (something like >50% of the global workforce is open to new opportunities). Just a single example for you: the average job post (a link, leading to your company’s career site) shared from EveryoneSocial generates 36 clicks. Advocacy for employer branding and recruiting just works and there is NOTHING more important, there is NOTHING your CEO cares about more than people. The people are the business.

Recruiting use case resource: Comprehensive guide and data on why advocacy + (employer branding + recruiting) are a match made in ROI heaven.

Comms: How You Activate Your C-Suite

I think comms plays a way more important role at most companies than maybe it gets credit for. This is coming from me and I’m not a comms professional, but we’ve had the opportunity to work with comms teams and leaders and this is why I say that: unlike marketing, comms is crenated on people. They’re not afraid of people. Their job is to get messages to employees and get messages to key audiences outside the company. That’s advocacy! Advocacy is just a tool for them. AND they hold the ace, which is they’re the ones that support the senior most executives, the C-suite. And in 2025 the C-suite are quite possibly the most important advocates you can activate at your company. This is really the #1 trend amongst our customers right now and it makes sense. Activating your C-suite is absolutely critical. They can grow their networks faster than anyone at your company and the content they share will reach a bigger audience than anyone else. Perhaps most importantly (and unlike in the past) your C-suite knows they need to be seen and heard on social. It’s a critical pillar of any advocacy strategy in 2025.

Executive comms use case resource: Data on how your C-suite (especially your CEO) positively impacts all areas of your business when they’re active on social media.

The post The ROI of Advocacy in 2025: Resources, Case Studies, Data appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

“That’s one of the best parts of LinkedIn: Who is social stalking me? So, when I see those profiles, I’m most likely to click and view them back at that time.”

Today on Social At Scale we are excited to sit down with Liliana Christensen, our Head of Business Development and Partnerships here at EveryoneSocial.

Lily wears many hats. From sourcing new partners, to implementation and activating resellers, she’s always on the balls of her feet and keeping us on our toes. Which is appropriate, because she has a background in dance and fitness entrepreneurship as you’ll hear.

Some topics Lily and Cameron go over:

• Personal brand building
• Employee influencers
• Importance of partnerships
• Consolidation, and synergies
• Hunter gatherer mindset
• Sales leaders on social
• The long-tail is a big deal
• Start with relevance
• And much more…

Watch the Full Episode

Three valuable takeaways:

Key takeaway 1: Sharing content helps close deals

As a seller you’re just trying to close as many deals as you can. So how does social media factor in?

Lily explains why sharing social content wins in the long-term.

Leaning on the longtail, so to speak, of building out your social presence (and profile) with branded and non-branded content helps buyers understand who you are, and what sets you apart as a vendor.

Especially if you curate your content according to a targeted industry, beginning conversations and trust will be so much easier.

If you’ve ever been in a sales role, you understand that at the end of the day, activity and closed-won dollars are the two things you’ll be graded on at the EOQ. Sales leaders are often stuck on call-email-call-email, get on ZoomInfo, and they set metrics around that. 

Getting social might seem out of the ordinary, but it’s increasingly how buyers weigh their options, and how lucrative long-term partnerships are formed.

Key takeaway 2: Build influence like a dance studio owner

“End of the day, people buy from people.”

What does your profile and content activity say about you in the eyes of a prospect? Do you stand out as an expert in your field compared with all the other vendors they’re considering?

Through her past experiences of business ownership and entrepreneurship, Lily has found that influencing with your personal brand is the best way to start your pipeline on social media. 

What does fitness have to do with social selling?

NOTE: If you’re interested in taking a page out of Lily’s strategic playbook, you’ll want to make sure your profile is set up for social selling.

For sales, building influence through content engagement will prompt meaningful conversations that can lead to deal-making. 

Or, as Lily learned while running a dance studio, influence is how she got people to sign up for her fitness classes. By sharing her authentic self and why she loved the routines, people were enticed to sign up and get dancing!

Key takeaway 3: Hold off on the InMail until later

What’s the number-one no-no of social selling?

Sending cold InMails.

You probably already know that. But instead of blasting prospects, start out with your funnel wide open by sharing industry content that resonates with them and the greater group they belong to. This is a solid first step for building an effective social selling pipeline.

NOTE: An employee advocacy program can drive 16% better win rates, 2x pipeline, and deliver 48% larger deals. (EveryoneSocial)

After your content has started conversations with prospective buyers or partners, that’s when the InMail direct messaging becomes appropriate. 

We can all relate to Lily. After all, who doesn’t ignore the cold InMail or upfront DMs? A message without a shared (and often public) context doesn’t hold anyone’s attention. Social content is the conversational context.

Hear how sharing social content ultimately scores.

As you’ll hear Lily mention, relevance is key. Building trust, or a conversational context depends on relevant content — relevant to their industry, their business needs, their opportunities for growth, etc.

“You really need to be creating a persona.”
Getting in the comment section of your prospects is one of the best ways to get the attention of anyone across all social media. In addition to liking their content, also tag them on relevant content you see elsewhere if you think it would resonate with your prospects.

Lily has more tips on our blog for how to drive ROI with your social content strategy.

Learn more about the foundational value and future importance of employee advocacy and why everyone’s an influencer. Thanks for checking out this week’s Social At Scale episode, and until next time, happy sharing!

The post The Long-Term Value of Partnerships and Social Selling appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

Between internal meetings, prospecting, cold calling, building the perfect sales cadence and then actually, you know, selling things, there’s often little time to do much else. Much less think about building a personal brand on social media.

After all, if you’re in sales, you know what you’ll hear about every activity you invest time in: Is this going to retire quota?

Let’s explore that.

The Connection Between Social Media and Sales

So, is building your personal brand going to directly help you reach your sales quota?

The simple answer is “no.” You’re not going to instantly win sales simply by making posts on social media.

However, you might be surprised by just what building your personal brand online can do for your sales goals.

Did you know that leads generated through social selling are seven times more likely to close compared with other tactics?

Or that 88% of buyers make purchases only when they feel the seller they’re working with is a “trusted adviser”?

But how do you go from being just another salesperson on a sales call to becoming a prospect’s trusted advisor?

Well, the same way that person you swiped left on on Tinder went from being simply a name on a screen to a real person with hobbies and interests and an adorable puppy he regularly takes to the park.

You guessed it: social media stalking. I mean…uh, researching.

And I don’t just mean researching your prospects to see what they write about themselves in their bios or what they post about.

You also need to use social media to tell potential customers about yourself.

The best place to do that? LinkedIn.

With more than 900 million professionals on the professional networking site worldwide — at least 25% of senior-level buyers with influence — establishing yourself on social media not only as an all-around cool person, but also a subject matter expert, has never been more important.

To begin, optimize your own LinkedIn profile, so people can get to know you. Then it’s time to start sharing.

3 Content-Sharing Tips to Drive Pipeline

By sharing content on LinkedIn — about your job, your company’s culture and accolades, industry news, and your own personal thoughts and life updates — you go from being a quota-obsessed seller to a real person with expertise and insights on your industry.

In other words, you start to establish credibility and rapport with potential customers. And that generates pipeline.

Here are a few tips to get you started.

1. Make social sharing a weekly task.

Block off 30 minutes on your calendar each week just for posting. (FYI: Folks are most active on LinkedIn in the morning and during lunch!)

The content you share doesn’t have to be riveting. It can be as simple as sharing a personal win, industry insights, a photo of your work setup, or something cool or exciting happening at your company.

It can also be third-party content like a Forbes article relevant to your industry or even sharing someone else’s LinkedIn post and adding your own thoughts.

Want more ideas of what to share? We’ve got you covered.

Pro tip: Post around the time you view Linkedin profiles of new prospects.

2. Be authentic.

It’s essential to use your own voice when posting on social media.

Gone are the days of “professional me” and “real me.” Your voice makes buyers connect with you, so don’t hide it away.

And add your own take to what you post.

You might share a company blog post or an industry article, but you can personalize the content by including your thoughts on it, sharing a relevant experience you’ve had, or even adding a bit of humor — anything that reveals your personality.

Pro tip: Pictures and text perform better than links. (Think about it: LinkedIn wants to keep users on site.) You can definitely share links, but it’s a good idea to mix it up and post a variety of content. The LinkedIn algorithm will reward you.

3. Use an employee advocacy tool like EveryoneSocial.

Not sure what to share on LinkedIn? Enter EveryoneSocial.

Our pure-play advocacy solution is a library of content. You can share a post to your social media with just one click, and you have the choice of writing your own caption or using the suggested share copy.

And our Smart Scheduler feature will even schedule content to be posted on your behalf!

Plus, with new integrations inside of Salesloft and Outreach, social sharing can live right where you already spend most of your day, so social sharing will never be out of sight or out of mind!

Pro tip: Give your followers more of the content they like. EveryoneSocial makes it a breeze to see which of your posts people find most engaging, as well as who’s engaging with your content.

Let’s Get Sharing — And Selling!

While social sharing might not be as instantly gratifying as getting that signed DocuSign in your inbox, it’s a strategic way to influence your deals and increase your pipeline — as well as generate up to 48% larger deals.

After all, an active LinkedIn profile is one that people — including prospective customers — want to engage with.

Happy Sharing!

Want to see all the ways EveryoneSocial can supercharge your social selling efforts? Book a demo!

The post Why Social Sharing is Key for Sales Teams to Drive Pipeline appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

At what point did you decide to make social a professional priority?

Perhaps when you realize that your prospect or candidate is a human. And how important conversations are for building trust and generating mutual benefits through any social collaboration.

While at Twitter as the Global Program Manager of sales skills and sales social enablement, Thomas Benning knows a thing or two about storytelling, and how it empowers salespeople.

Now at HighSpot, Tommy continues to lead sales teams by social example, coaching SMB and Commercial Account Executives to optimize their revenue engine.

“Together we help organizations to centralize their content and information, standardize their go-to-market messaging, and measure the impact their teams and content have in the market.”

By providing a single unified platform, HighSpot allows you to measure the business outcomes of your strategic initiatives and foundational programs.

So when it comes to tying social initiatives to business outcomes, Tommy knows a thing or two about what works and how to succeed.

In this episode Tommy and Cameron explore:

• From inside Twitter seeing how brands use social
• Sales social enablement for recruiting and lead generation
• Converse and collaborate with hashtag browsing
• Some notes from Russ Laraway’s new book
• How does social media mix with sales leadership?
• What’s a good sales social routine or cadence?

Watch the full episode

Three pointers for sales social leadership:

Key takeaway 1: let your salespeople get creative on social

A common rift or tension between Sales and Marketing occurs on the topic of brand voice and messaging. 

Marketing often wants to stay in control of the company’s overall perception management, how customers, clients, and prospects see your brand.

But as many executives have pointed out, Sales and Marketing are increasingly converging. Either way, salespeople are incredibly creative on social media and are often itching to try their hand at some low-cost but potentially high-impact user generated content of their own.

Give your salespeople room to be creative and post company content in their own voice. For starters, amplifying colleagues and their UGC increases visibility for everyone in your company. 

Empowering salespeople on social media doesn’t have to start from a blank slate: reposting, sharing, and amplifying existing posts from within your team and company is a powerful way to gain momentum on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Key takeaway 2: going viral can only ever come from your people

Whether it’s Tommy’s experience from inside Twitter, or Cameron’s experience from inside Reddit, they both agree: what makes a splash is hard to predict.

“We could be the smartest people in the world and we wouldn’t be able to define what will go viral, it can come from anywhere and anyone!”

Of all the complex variables involved with social media, including algorithmic (platform-side) and creativity (human-side), one thing is for sure: viral hits come from authentic people.

Just keep this in mind: brand messages reached 561% further when shared by employees vs the same messages shared via official brand social channels (MSLGroup)

There are so many ways to speak to this, but in short: social media companies will always prioritize the individuals over a company page.

Look for yourself, company pages and official brand profiles typically have millions of followers, but often don’t reach even 1% of those followers with their posts.

Especially for sales recruitment, candidates want to interact with people who give them a view into the company, rather than an opaque billboard that keeps them on the outside.

Key takeaway 3: top reps and sales leaders are on social

If your company is unsure of how to best delineate or overlap Marketing and Sales on social, the simplest answer is: get involved. 

Just look at the social habits of your top reps and leaders, most likely they are already fostering valuable relationships on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Tommy sees this in action all the time with the VP of Marketing at HighSpot joining sales calls and helping to start and facilitate conversations that result in opportunities and hires.

“Social media is really an opportunity for individuals to open up channels for conversations that might not otherwise happen!”

Over the past few years, we’ve moved from Digital Transformation to the full on activation of leadership on social media. Especially for recruitment, when an executive goes off the brand script (tactfully) and shares something relatable, their content humanizes your company and gives candidates a feeling for what it might be like to work there. 

People relate to people, and your executives are only human.

If you’re ready to learn more about how to empower your salespeople for social enablement and recruiting, we’d love to talk more.

The post Sales Leadership and Recruiting is Totally Social Now w/ Thomas Benning appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

Sounds reasonable enough, but before you dive in ask yourself this: what’s the difference between Social Selling and Sales Social Engagement? 

We’re all familiar with the former: someone connects with you on Linkedin out of the blue and then immediately pitches their product or service.

Mary Shea (PhD) VP of Global Innovation Evangelist at Outreach asks, why are people still doing this ten years later? Cameron’s response (of a hypothetical scenario) is worth visualizing: would salespeople do the same move in person face to face at an event?

Of course not. So why do people cold pitch so often on social media? And how could they do better? 

This is where Sales Social Engagement differs from mere Social Selling. Instead of pushing a square transactional peg into a round hole, socially engaged salespeople build relationships in a community that is relevant to their territory.

In this episode Mary and Cameron explore:

• The tenets of Sales Social Engagement
• How personal values factor into buying decisions
• Bridging the Sales Execution Gap
• The top-three places buyers want to meet
• What the future CRO and CMO look like
• Exploration, Consolidation, Platformization
• The importance of one source of data truth

Watch the Full Episode

Three valuable lessons to remember:

Key takeaway 1: social is now table stakes for selling

However you want to call it, salespeople engaging on social media has been formally recognized as a proven strategy since at least 2011.

What began as perhaps supplemental to building pipeline and generating deals, the reality is simple: everyone is on social media now. Your buyers, your competition, your coworker’s dog.

Any company that doesn’t arm its sellers with a social engagement tool is putting themselves at a big disadvantage. And to avoid the aforementioned faux-pas of cold-pitch “Social Selling”, training is imperative to rise to higher ground of Sales Social Engagement.

The core tenets are quite simple and apply to more than just sales: deepen and extend the relationships in your community and contacts. You’re not selling, you’re growing trust.

Equally true for marketing and recruiting as well, social engagement involves curating content that resonates with your communities. Interact with your buyers, engage, educate, and most importantly: do digital good deeds!

Key takeaway 2: invest in platformization now

What are sales teams going to invest in during this recession?

As companies tighten the belts right, consolidation and driving efficiency and effectiveness will be imperative.

Time is not your friend as a salesperson, which is why social engagement tools like EveryoneSocial enable sales teams without tripping up your daily cadence.

Speaking of the crunch, Outreach has found that sellers are spending only 23% of their time actually in selling, and managers are only spending 14% of their time on coaching. 

This is why closing the gap for high-value activities is such an important and proven way to drive up revenue, and often very quickly if done effectively.

For execution, Outreach is leading the pack amidst the “Sales Tech Mayhem”, providing a full suite of capabilities across the entire revenue cycle.

If you’re like Mary, keeping a light touch almost exclusively via your mobile device is often enough to make an impact and stay engaged with the communities that matter to you.

Key takeaway 3: authenticity drives revenue

Cold pitching on LinkedIn is still a frustration we all encounter more than we’d want, but progress has occurred on another front: the acceptance of authenticity. 

Sharing your fully authentic self is not only permitted in a way it may have been frowned upon a decade ago, “personal performs” as Cameron puts it.

Being authentic and creating personal posts also involves sharing your values.

Mary explains in the episode, 77% of buyers said they would consider not moving forward with a supplier if their values did not align.

As with any relationship building, Sales Social Engagement depends upon sincerity and a genuine presentation of oneself.

If your sales team isn’t currently engaging on social media, feel free to reach out and we’d love to talk about how to fully enable your people.

The post What is Sales Without Social Media? w/ Mary Shea appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

But what exactly does social selling look like in action?

We gathered several social selling examples to illustrate the power of leveraging your social networks to attract prospects and build relationships with potential customers.

Take a look at the social selling examples and tips in this post to get a little inspiration to help you reach your sales goals.

1. Create an optimized profile that instills confidence.

We’re quick to form first impressions when we meet someone, and we do the exact same thing when we glimpse someone’s social media profile. So make that first impression count.

This goes for all your social media profiles, especially LinkedIn.

What exactly does an optimized LinkedIn profile look like? Take a look at the social selling examples below.

Here’s what your LinkedIn profile should have at a minimum:

• High-quality headshot
• Branded cover photo
• Job title and/or compelling headline
• Company name
• Contact information

But you don’t have to stop there. Here are some other tips to get the most out of your LinkedIn profile for social selling.

• Craft a bio that details who you are both professionally and personally.
• Explain exactly what you can do for your customers.
• Optimize your profile for search by organically incorporating relevant keywords and hashtags.
• Take advantage of the pronunciation feature to help people pronounce your name correctly — or use it to introduce yourself or include a call to action.

2. Share relevant, quality content.

Building an audience is essential to successful social selling, as well as establishing your personal brand, and what you post is key.

Focus on creating and posting content that your ideal customer would find useful, relevant, and interesting. In other words, give them a reason to follow you that’s not about the product or service you sell.

You can certainly post about your product, but it’s important not to bombard your followers with continuous sales pitches. Instead, share content that’s related to your product, educates people about your industry, showcases your expertise, or highlights the need for the solution you offer.

And don’t limit yourself to sharing company content alone.

In the social selling example above, our mid-market sales director does this well by sharing a non-branded article from a trusted source that offers a solution to a common problem, as well as showcases the need for the product he sells.

So follow his example and be helpful — not salesy.

Your content can also highlight your particular expertise

And always keep your audience front of mind when considering what to share.

Regularly sharing valuable content that truly serves your followers means they’re likely to think of you — and your product — at exactly the right time: when they’re ready to buy.

3. Introduce yourself.

Yes, you’ve already introduced yourself to current and potential customers because of the very fact that you have a social media presence.

However, reintroduce yourself on occasion and help your followers — both old and new — get to know you a little better. This is also a great opportunity to have some fun and show some personality.

As you can see from the social selling example above, the most engaging introductions aren’t purely professional. Sure, talk about your sales role and even plug your product, but tell people more about you than can be found on your resume.

After all, it’s called social selling for a reason.

4. Start a conversation.

Social selling is all about becoming part of the conversation with your prospects, which you can do by liking and commenting on posts. But one of the best ways is to kickstart the conversation yourself.

Again, what’s important to remember is that you want to engage your audience, so initiate a conversation that’s relevant to their interests. And if it’s also relevant to your product, even better.

Take a look at what Derek does in this social selling example.

He understands that recruiters and HR leaders are a key part of his LinkedIn audience — and they’re also ideal EveryoneSocial prospects — so he engages them with useful, pertinent information and raises a question to stimulate conversation.

5. Engage with prospects organically.

No list of social selling examples would be complete without what may be the most basic of social selling advice: Engage.

Like posts, comment on them, re-share them. Send invites to connect. Write recommendations for colleagues and customers. Participate in groups. Raise questions. Answer questions.

Resist the urge to send a sales pitch as soon as someone accepts your LinkedIn invitation though. The goal isn’t to get your product in as many inboxes as possible and just hope for the best.

The goal is to genuinely connect and engage, regardless of where people are in the buying process — even if they seem unlikely to buy right now at all.

It’s about establishing relationships so that when it comes time to learn more about your product or make a purchase, you’re top of mind as someone to reach out to or work with.

Research shows that this approach doesn’t work anymore. In fact, connecting with a prospect takes 18 or more calls, according to Harvard Business Review, and callback rates are below 1%. Plus, only 24% of outbound sales emails are ever even opened.

So if there’s one thing you take from these social selling examples, let it be this: Simply be human.

Meet new people, have a little fun, even talk about hot sauce if you want.

You never know where a conversation is going to lead.

Create Your Own Killer Social Selling Examples with EveryoneSocial

Have these social selling examples inspired you to see how you can take your own social selling efforts to the next level?

Then you need EveryoneSocial.

Social selling is one of our chief use cases, which is why companies like Genesys rely on us to empower their sales teams, drive increased pipeline, and get better win rates, and achieve up to 48% larger deals.

Sound like something you’d be interested in?

Schedule a demo and start wowing competitors with your own social selling examples.

The post 5 Social Selling Examples to Boost Sales Performance appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

Today, even before someone spends any actual face time with you, they can view your LinkedIn or Instagram profiles and make assumptions about who you are both personally and professionally. That can affect your personal brand, your effectiveness at social selling, and more.

That’s why it’s so important to ensure that your social media profiles accurately communicate who you are. So here are ten tips to improve your social media profiles in under an hour and in the long-term.

1. Be Picture Perfect.

No, you don’t need a stunning headshot. But what you do need is a high-quality profile picture.

This doesn’t have to be a buttoned-up professional pic in your best suit. It’s OK to have some fun and showcase your personality, especially if it fits your role (i.e. you work in a creative field vs. a highly regulated industry like financial services).

Use the same photo across your social networks to consistently communicate your personal brand and make it easy for people to identify you.

Finally, ensure that all your photos — whether they’re profile pics or header images — are the right size. Consider how they’ll look on both mobile and desktop devices or the photo is expanded.

Luckily, every social channel tells you exactly what image sizes to use.

2. Highlight What You Can Do For Your Audience.

Of course, the bio of your social media profile is a place to talk about yourself. But it’s a mistake to make it all about you.

When you use social media for business, you need to communicate not only who you are, but also what you can do for your followers.

A great place to do this is your LinkedIn headline, like Karly Wescott does in the example below.

Your posts — especially those you pin at the top of the page — should deliver this message as well.

When people first view your social media profiles, they’re not going to scroll too far back to discover who you are. So make sure your personal brand and the value you can deliver to your audience is clear and consistent in everything you post.

3. Pin Your Best Content.

Speaking of pinning your best content, you should pin your best content.

For example, you can pin updates to your LinkedIn page, showcase your top tweet, and highlight your favorite Instagram photos.

Showcase the posts that best communicate your skills and accomplishments, especially those that garnered a lot of engagement.

4. Optimize Your Profile for Search.

Whether you’re looking for new job opportunities or trying to connect with potential customers, you can’t effectively accomplish either on social media unless you’re easy to find.

That’s why your social media profiles need to contain relevant keywords and hashtags in the right places.

This is important both for search within individual social networks, as well as for organic search results on Google since social media sites often populate search results, such as in the example below.

So make yourself easy to find by using Google Keyword Planner, Semrush, Ahrefs, or another keyword-research tool to determine which keywords to populate your social media profiles with.

You can do the same thing to research hashtags and select the ones that’ll be the best for your bio.

Sprinkle these throughout your social media profile. For example, on LinkedIn, you may include them in your job title, headline, experience or skills.

However, be sure to use them organically — don’t just drop them in at random or create a long list of keywords.

Finally, be consistent in your keyword and hashtag use because you want your personal brand to be consistent across your social media profiles.

5. Ask for Contributions.

Reach out to individuals in your network and ask them to provide you with reviews, endorsements, and recommendations

This kind of positive feedback doesn’t only make you look appealing to potential employers who can easily see your top-rated skills, but it also builds social trust among your followers and shows them that you’ll deliver on the promise you make in your bio.

6. Get in Some Face Time.

Your profile photo shouldn’t be the only place your face appears — your followers should occasionally see the real you in photos, Stories, videos, and more.

You don’t have to post weekly selfies or feature your mug front and center as you share your top marketing tips in a social video. But you do want to ensure that you’re getting some face time in with your audience.

This improves your personal brand and makes you more relatable — and easily recognizable — to your followers.

7. Untag Yourself From Posts and Photos That Don’t Enhance Your Brand.

Go through all your social media profiles and untag yourself in pictures and posts that are inappropriate, unprofessional, or have the potential to harm your personal brand.

Also, take the time to set up your privacy settings and preferences to determine who can see your tagged posts and who’s permitted to tag you in posts.

You may also want to set your preferences to allow you to approve photos or posts that you’re tagged in before they appear on your profile.

8. Promote Your Other Social Media Profiles.

Cross-promote your social presence across various networks.

Some social channels, such as Instagram, allow you to include only one link on your social media profile. However, other networks have multiple fields for websites and links.

LinkedIn, for example, lets you include your twitter account, as well as your personal website and company site. And Facebook has several fields that let you showcase all the places your followers can find you.

9. Publish a Variety of Content.

It’s essential to provide your audience with numerous types of content. This not only keeps your audience engaged, but it also helps you win favor from algorithms and increases the odds that your content will appear in people’s feeds.

Take a multimedia approach and create text posts, upload videos, share memes, post links, and more. And don’t be afraid to experiment with new social features.

Not sure what to post? The most important thing to keep in mind is your audience.

Consider the kind of content they’d find helpful, interesting, or engaging, and continually ask yourself if what you create and share truly provides value.

10. Get the Right Tools.

There’s no shortage of tools available to help you improve your social media profiles, your social presence as a whole, and even your brand’s social presence.

Here’s a few to consider making part of your tech stack:

• Social-scheduling tools: Trying to maintain social media profiles across numerous networks and consistently share content on them? That can take up a lot of time, and you no doubt have countless other tasks to take care. That’s where a social-scheduling platform like Buffer or Hootsuite comes in handy, so you can queue up what you want to share and when.
• Employee advocacy solution: You’ll never have a shortage of great content to share — or wonder if your employer would approve of that link or post — when you have a pure-play advocacy program like EveryoneSocial. You’ll have all the best company-approved content at your fingertips, and you can easily add your own take before you share multimedia content across all your networks with just one click. Plus, you can schedule posts and get access to detailed analytics that show you exactly how your posts perform.
• Social listening tools: Today a social listening strategy is essential to allow you to understand your audience and customers. However, only 51% of brands tap into the power of social listening by using powerful tools like Brandwatch.
• Analytics: While every social network provides its own analytics information, if you’re serious about improving your social media profiles and how your posts perform, you may want to delve deeper. Many of the tools listed above pull double or triple duty in this regard. For example, EveryoneSocial not only curates content, but also allows for social scheduling and provides analytics tools so you can see how your employee influencer program is performing.

See What EveryoneSocial Can Do for Your Social Media Profiles

If you’ve taken all the steps outlined above, your social media profiles are no doubt looking more polished and professional, as well as attracting new followers and more engagement.

Ready to take them to the next level and enhance your overall social media presence? What about improving employee engagement and your employer brand?

You can do all this and more with EveryoneSocial!

Start using our platform right now for free or schedule a demo with our friendly sales team to get all the details. 

The post 10 Ways to Improve Your Social Media Profiles Right Now appeared first on EveryoneSocial.