Sprout Sessions: The Top Takeaways

Last week, social media software Sprout Social hosted 10 free, 20-minute webinars focused on “smart, strategic, social discussions.” I tuned into two of these sessions, “Why Your Business Must Make Social Selling a Daily Routine” and “How Social Can Inform, Impact and Shape Your Brilliant Brand Voice.” The first session stressed the need to take ownership of your social channels to gain clients, while the second session emphasized the importance of thinking through your brand voice and positioning.

Here are the most insightful takeaways from the two webinars:

  • Feeling discouraged by your business development progress? Connecting with a prospective client takes 18 or more phone calls and less than a quarter of outbound sales emails are ever opened.
  • “Social selling” is utilizing social channels to gain clients with more of a focus on “social” and less focus on “selling.” Social selling can establish credibility, such as posting articles about your company on your own social channel, and assist in research/discovery, such as leveraging LinkedIn to find out who you should connect with at a prospective company.
  • The ROI on social selling is twice as high as emailing, cold calling or networking – meaning you should make the time to beef up your social channels and spend time looking at others.
  • Your brand positioning lies at the intersection of your differentiators, the audience’s functional needs and the audience’s emotional needs.
  • To create a brand voice, follow a three-step process. 1. Identify 3-4 personality traits that you admire in people. 2. Examine how each trait comes to life and the limitations. For example, if you want your brand to be “fun”, make sure you’re not slapstick. If you want your brand to be straightforward, make sure you’re not going to be plain. 3. Think about your content pillars. Use your voice to extend to your culture, customer service, elevator pitch, etc. – everything involved with your company.

Some of the other webinars were focused on social crises, insight into agency life, how to market a software product and more. If you’re in the marketing field, there’s a webinar for you. Find the full list and descriptions of sessions here, and check out their YouTube page containing all of these webinars and mo