Everyone likes to be lucky but let's face it those that are lucky a lot usually have a plan.
The same applies to your online presence. We talk a lot to Passle Users about creating content deliberately and then sharing it strategically. If you set up a meeting by making sure the person you are meeting has read a post you created about something they are interested in - your meeting is likely to go better.
If you create a post saying how wonderful a speaker has just been at an event - with a lovely photo of them being brilliant - when you make your move to connect you are more likely to enjoy a positive outcome.
Basically, if you prepare you are more likely to be successful when the opportunity to influence arises.
In the last few months Sam - our marketing manager - has put together a timetable of the content he suggests we create as a commercial and client success team. This preparation has lead to a number of positive outcomes. We have become 'luckier' :)
On a quarterly basis, Sam has broken down the content he would like us to create. Below are the key types of content making up this core content plan:
- Event posts - Posts about and from events that we are we are attending, hosting or speaking at
- Hero Content posts - Posts related to large pieces of research we want to leverage such as the Thought Leadership Report published earlier this year but still want to leverage
- Podcast posts - Simply a plan of who is doing this quarter's podcasts and to ensure they then post that podcast on our blog at the right time
- Campaign posts - Posts around our community campaign this quarter
- Opportunity (sales pipeline) posts - These are the really important ones. We are creating these posts deliberately as 'sales assets' to drive a relationship with a key prospect/client. These posts are created deliberately with the aim of driving the relationship forward and therefore driving a specific deal towards a successful close.
IMPORTANT - every proposed post has a date and a User assigned. As a team of salespeople and client success people, we know what we have to post about, why we are creating that content and when we need to do it.
We can then be judged on whether we do what we said we would.
As our marketing manager, Sam can report on this at the end of the quarter to the Founders of Passle, for the wider team and to us on an individual level. We can discuss the impact of those posts, the return we saw from them and work out best practice for next quarter.
So, plan your online presence around possible opportunities. If you link what you create online to the opportunities you would like to realise then great things are more likely to happen!