Social selling – get on the bus or be flattened by it

If you think “social selling” is just the latest marketing buzzword, then spend a half hour checking out the websites of the startups covered on TechCrunch on VentureBeat each day. Every one of these dynamic young technology firms, which are raising millions of dollars in venture capital funding, has one or more blogs and multiple social network accounts. This at a time when the most recent research by the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth finds that blogging among the Fortune 500 is actually on the decline. What these growing companies understand that many big corporations apparently don’t is that the terms of engagement wit…

Are your employees doing your brand more harm than good?

If you’re a savvy marketing leader, you’re already implementing or thinking about implementing an employee advocacy program.  Employee advocacy is a popular topic with B2C and B2B marketers these days. It should be. But are your employees doing more harm than good? What is employee advocacy? Employee advocacy is not a new concept however the name and the tools to implement it are relatively new. Employee advocacy is empowering your employees to extend your brand’s reach to their network. Not so complicated, right? And thanks to social media and platforms like Dynamic Signal’s, employees can quickly and easily share corporate-appr…

5 Tips for Social Selling

Conventional wisdom these days says that social media is a poor lead generator. Conventional wisdom is wrong. While social media doesn’t lend itself to the hard sell, it provides some excellent opportunities to find and qualify buyers who can become leads. Here are five ways to do that. Research prospects Nothing is more flattering to prospective customers than showing interest in them personally. The Web is the greatest prospect research tool ever invented. Look up the LinkedIn and Twitter profiles of prospects before you contact them. Google them to see if they have online bios or blogs. Look for connection points. Was your prospect…