1. How to become a trusted expert on social media

--- tags: A2, Prospecting --- # 1. How to become a trusted expert on social media :::info 💡 **The short answer? by consistently sharing and interacting with great content that resonates with your target audience and adds value.** ::: Posting content is about building trust and providing value, not about selling. You want to contribute in a meaningful way, adding value and making yourself relevant to the people in your community. You should take content posting as a long term investment and be patient. Results will not be immediate and obvious, but they will arrive sooner or later! Here is a simple process to post and engage with great content that will establish you as a credible expert: 1. **Keep your audience in mind and decide what message you want to send.** This is the first and most crucial step. Ask yourself - what message do i want to send? What topics do i want to cover? Who do I want to reach with my content and message and why does my message add value to them. Make sure you have a clear list of no more than 3 topics and that your content revolves around these. Any time you're posting content, always keep your target audience in mind. Ideally your audience will match your ICP and/or IBP 2. **Know what platforms your prospects spend time on.** For the purpose of this course, we will focus on LinkedIn. This is because in the B2B tech space, this is where you will most likely encounter your IBP’s. But platforms change depending on each buyer persona. It’s important to always keep in mind: is this the channel where my prospects are hanging out? Are there any others? 3. **Adapt your social profiles.** Once you know what message you want to send, who your target audience is and where they spend their time, it's time to reflect it in your social profile! It needs to look professional and reflect the image and value proposition you want to deliver to your target audience. Tell a story! 4. **Do NOT spam or sell.** Make sure your content provides value. Social media is for connecting and building trust, not for selling. Start a dialogue and become genuinely interested in the person you’re interacting with. Be human and personal. Strive to consistently provide value. 5. **Post and interact regularly.** Be consistent. Create a cadence. Interacting with 20 people and then forgetting about it, or posting one update every two months will get you nowhere. You need to be consistent in your approach to get results. Commit to interacting with X amount of people a day and/or posting X amount of updates a week, and keep doing this in the long term. Here is a list of specific actions you can do to stay active: - Post helpful content regularly (your own or third party content) - Find and follow thought leaders on social media who your prospects follow - Find and join LinkedIn groups where your prospects are active - Find blogs your prospects follow and read them regularly - If possible, contribute articles to your company’s blog or write articles on LinkedIn yourself 6. **Make it engaging, to the point, brief.** Don't write essays, be brief and to the point. Generally, what works well is: * using personal stories and experiences * asking questions * sharing quotes (from customers etc.) * being provocative * sharing "how to's" and best practices 7. **Use images, videos, files.** In our experience, the best performing posts have been the ones using elements appealing to the human eye: images, videos or one-page files. Only text is boring and often overlooked ;)   Listen to Hubspot Academy leader Kyle Jepson, who shares a beautiful summary of what social selling means in practice including helpful examples. *p.s. in terms of quantity of posts, 3 times per day is unrealistic for you as SDR newbie and may actually be distracting. Our reommendation: start by sharing content twice a week.* <iframe class="vidyard_iframe" src="//play.vidyard.com/sEgsjZ5EvmXcM2MxVFDGGu.html?" width="100%" height="400" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen></iframe> <style> body > .ui-infobar, body > .ui-toc, body > .ui-affix-toc, body > .ui-community, body > .document-footer { display: none !important; } </style>