Social Selling is Telling a Good Story
Not sure if anyone remembers the very obvious product placements that took place decades ago in movies and local television shows where the actor/actress will suddenly whip out said placement mid script.
This form of selling gave way to slightly more subtle ones later on though they were still obvious enough as the actor/actress still needed to consciously position it. Else, the camera will pan it close enough for everyone to see what brand it was, even if it’s normally just a very easy to miss item like a watch or ring.
Nowadays, the selling is more experiential based where the bigger brands can curate a “look” tagged to the product, name it after their character in the movie, produce limited editions of it and invite the celebrity to grace their activations for the who-and-who in their social cliques.
When social media flourished, the selling started gradually and is now in full bloom with social influencers selling almost everything on a daily basis. There are a few ways observed in the way they sell currently:
1) invited to launch or preview events and activations in-store to take photos or videos of the products and try them out in person; then post about it on their social channels,
2) given the products to try in their own time and develop content based off key selling points to highlight on their social posts. Some will try to narrate it into a slightly more creative or humorous ways, so it’s almost a part of their day-to-day calendar of activities,
3) pure educational reviews type of content where they will give their so-called “honest” feedback after using the product but often, it comes as once-off and they are seen doing the same for other brands offering similar products.
These examples shared, especially 2) and 3) so far have been largely very obvious as product placements, even if they try to inject humour into the script and create them into everyday scenarios. The humour is quite ‘forced’ usually, including them cracking jokes or some dressing up as certain characters to invoke laughter.
The other observation is that it depends largely on the company that is paying for the influencer, and their own brand of voice, tone of voice and style. While this might be ideal in helping the company stay on brand, it limits the creativity of the influencer and creates a somewhat dystopia state for the influencers as they will be observed to have quite a varied way of selling, which makes it all the more obvious it’s a form of paid sponsorship.
I recently came across one example by an overseas social influencer comedian using a product to prank his partner. I don’t know if it’s intentional product placement at his end but I thought it could be another interesting way to do more subtle product placement but still provide entertainment value that gels with the overall original style of the influencer; making it more natural and not so product pushing.
In that video, which you can watch here, he’s using this brand of butter spread to pretend it’s coming out of his ear and tasting it in front of his partner, who obviously gagged upon seeing it. All I remember then was - 1) the brand looks familiar, 2) I didn’t know they produce butter spread as they are more known for their biscuits, and 3) I googled to validate and check on where I can find the butter spread out of curiosity.
It would be interesting to have companies trial this form of paid sponsorship so it helps the influencer to stay true to his/her style of content, evolved the way they do social selling just as how product placements in movies have evolved too into more subtle selling; sort of like a type of subliminal messaging. It also doesn’t always to be funny but can tap on other emotive style of story-telling, which again is based on the influencer’s unique style.
Perhaps somewhat ironic for me to say this but social selling to me only works if it’s based on my defined needs at that point or if the content is interesting enough for me to check it out. Thereafter, it would of course be down to the product level value proposition and how well it addresses my wants/needs/issues at hand.
Why Your Employees Can Be Your Best Brand Ambassadors
Today’s post is back to one of my favorites around employer branding, social media profiling and how some companies are still under utilizing it.
In the aspect of social media profiling and using it for brand, I personally find B2B companies slightly more advanced, especially in the LinkedIn space as compared to B2C. B2C brands have been largely posting more entertainment type of content when it comes to employer related branding efforts or lots and lots of corporate social responsibility types of content. Photos of tree planting, employees walking or running or swimming or all three for charity, shaking hands with the local government officials, sharing the limelight on some customer events and then some…
B2B companies do that too of course but they do also often go a step further to empower their employees more to be their brand advocates. This is often done through their own subject matter experts or key opinion leaders aka KOLs in the original context that share their perspectives of company updates, happenings around their industry or sometimes, around the world.
They also empower their employees with content that they have produced as part of their content strategy, enabling them to share through social media advocacy tools. LinkedIn used to have a function that enables that called “LinkedIn Elevate” that I have helped companies implement previously. They retired it in 2020 but integrated a similar function onto LinkedIn’s “My Company” tab and allows for admins of the page to recommend organic posts and curate content for other employees to share. Other social media content management platforms like Hootsuite and, SproutSocial have the same functions.
Usually, the folks who hold the golden key to social guardrails and policies for employees are marketing and communications, corporate communications or sometimes even human resource. While there is no right or wrong, I personally think all parties need to hold joint ownership of the policy and enablement of their employees in the right way.
Most companies are still way too cautious about employee advocacy or rigid on policies around what their employees can share, some going as far as wanting to clear every single post, dictate every single post or simply only allowing selected employees of certain seniority to post on their social pages. They often are also ignorant (maybe too blissfully) that not all senior level employees have either time, actual interest, interesting views or sufficient “social clout” versus some other employees who might have one or all of the above.
My personal belief is that every employee has the potential to be your next brand ambassador on social and should be encouraged, empowered and enabled in the right way to share posts on activities your company has participated in publicly, views related to their professional field and/or the industry your company is specializing in. This can be done with varying levels of review and control instead of just clamping down with a hard “no” out of fear.
If this is new to your company, you can start small with curated key messages and posts they can use, though that to me is becoming almost too infancy in nature and looking like boring corporate spiel. Classic examples are when you see employees all copying and pasting the exact same message and photos and posting on their own LinkedIn/other social accounts without even bothering to add their own one or two liners. It’s almost like robots have taken over the control of their accounts and helping to spam the social platform with the exact same thing - next!
It’s not rocket science actually to come up with your own thoughts, even if you are not as good in writing, at least it comes from your head and heart. It’s about sincerity and being authentic when it comes to content and social content.
Some guiding principles for employees and companies to consider are:
Is this sharing something that will be helpful for your network and their network to know?
Will it cause unnecessary pain, conflict or worse, tensions in race, religion, creed and culture?
Is it harmful to someone’s reputation if you share it? If so, do you have facts to back it and how is it helpful for others to know about this?
Will it inspire others to learn and benefit from the learning in a positive way?
Imagine if your parents, siblings, partner or best friend or someone you profoundly respect and care about were to read it; would it be something they would be proud or supportive of?
Think about it the next time your splurge thousands on some KOLs; look within your employee network to see if there isn’t already some who can be your true brand ambassador and KOL. Afterall, if they work for you, they should genuinely like, support and believe in what you offer as a value proposition, correct?
About the Author
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Ally for CMOs, Heads of Marketing and Fractional CMO for other C-Suites to work with you and your marketing teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.