Cold calling and lead generation have long been the bane of every sales force. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could create timely or evergreen content and let that content generate the leads for you? What could you do with an enterprising burst or constant flow of warm leads and interested clients? Good content doesn’t do the job all by itself; you still have to put it to work.
Sharing your content over social media is the obvious first step to getting it into the market, but there’s a thin line between sharing content and spamming people. Social networks and exchange centers function on the premise that people will provide value with their postings and develop a relationship with others on the network. This system discourages direct calls to action, forcing you to promote your content for its inherent value. Your content must be relevant to the community, provide meaningful information or entertainment on its own, and build upon a pre-existing foundation.
Establishing that foundation takes a considerable investment of time and energy. Before you can promote content that contains a lead-generating call to action, you must provide some kind of content that only services the community. In a way, you are prepping the community to respond to your advertisement by building your reputation as a subject-matter expert and content provider. The amount of material you can use as advertising without being considered spam is directly related to that level of trust.
You need to keep your content both accessible and as near to the center of attention as possible. News-driven social networks rate the lifespan of posts in minutes, sometimes seconds. Time your media shares to match the activity pattern of your target audience, and vary your sharing pattern in order to catch stragglers and outliers. Change up your delivery and your venue in order to prevent overlapping audience messages. Keep your media shares fresh, continually presented to a fresh audience, and you’re unlikely to be accused of spam.
Finally, remember that even the best content gets tired. Since the production of content marketing is part of your advertising plan, use the opportunity to chain every piece of content to its successor. In this way you build the anticipation of your audience and provoke the first positive response towards your ultimate goal of converting a passive consumer into an active lead. After that, the rest is up to your sales force.
