What is valuable content for social media posts? This is a very common question that we hear from our customers and salespeople in our social selling training program. In fact, over the past several years, as part of our digital sales training program, we have done extensive research on content value for social media. Our intent was to determine what kind of content delivers the most value for the person posting, as well as for the contacts of that person. We wanted to know what kind of content gets the most engagement, and the best results.
What Is Valuable Content For Social Media?
There are many ways that teams look at content value. Here are just a few valuable uses for content.
- Drive top-of-funnel visits
- Nurture leads to deeper levels of education and understanding of your services
- PDF or white paper content that helps a buyer with deeper insights and learning
Of course, there are numerous ways that marketing and sales teams use content to add value to their lead generation, demand generation and pipeline creation programs. When it comes to social media, our research has found very clear data that leads to the type of content that is most valuable for sales professionals to build their personal brand, expand a target network and gain new conversations with ideal customers.
The Content Value Pyramid
The Content Value Pyramid demonstrates the type of content that gets the most value, engagement, earned media and creates the most conversations for sales professionals and business leaders. 
Low-Value Social Media Content Posts
At the bottom of the pyramid and content that has the least value or results on social media are co-branded, advertising, and corporate profile posts.
Check out a case study from a sales rep who followed our program and made a simple change to how he posts and increased his engagement by over 3,000% and received inbound leads from ideal customers.
Here is an example of one of my own company co-branded posts that I published over a year ago. I was so excited to share the news about our Chrome Extension, the ease of use, and the value it added for our users. But, my audience didn’t seem to really care. 😒 Notice I only received 2 Likes and only 126 views. Worst of all, it got no comments at all. By the way, the 2 Likes I did receive were from a co-worker and a friend who was just being nice to me. This type of post virtually produced zero communication value for me nor did it help the LinkedIn algorithm share my posts with more people. I equate this to speaking into a room and no one is there to listen. I showed up and tried to share information but my audience was not interested in this type of information.
Ask Yourself
It makes sense if one thinks about it. We are all busy. We don’t take our time to consume content that adds value to ourselves. By sharing our brochure-style marketing information it did not capture many people’s attention.
Do you look at your social post effectiveness? Do you capture the data to see what type of content is giving you the most engagement, creates conversations and helps you build your brand? If you are not, you need to start monitoring it today. One big value of FunnelAmplified is that we capture this data for you and present it to each sales professional in an easy to review manner. Plus, we compile data across your entire team and help create insights into the most engaging content shared across all users. It is a powerful tool to help content creation teams respond to customer experiences and expectations.
Higher Value Social Media Posts
Let’s move up the Content Value Pyramid and see how we can create more engaging and therefore more valuable social posts to help sales professionals earn more conversations with ideal customers. 
The post below is considered a curated article or advocacy, thought leadership style of content. I share this post intentionally because the graphics are not very good. Graphic design is not my strength. But, I was on a call with a prospective customer and they asked a great question. I wanted to answer their question by writing an article and sharing it with them. 
Plus, I was able to share it with a lot of other prospective clients who I thought may have had the same question. Can you see the pattern here? When they ask questions, we answer with content. That is how we demonstrate our knowledge, insights, and thought leadership. This post performed much better for me. A big improvement from my co-branded post that didn’t capture any attention. 21 Likes 20 comments 2,682 views
Highest Value Social Media Posts
Now, the most highly engaging and therefore valuable content for sales professionals and business leaders is human content. 
Some may believe that personal content does not belong on LinkedIn. I aggressively disagree with this thinking. Business is personal. We do business with those who we know, like, and trust. Companies spend millions of dollars every year on entertainment. Why? Personal relationships help solidify opportunities and move deals faster through the process. When we are at dinners with customers we talk about our families, our vacations, hobbies, and volunteer activities. This helps create stronger connections and personal relationships Over the years, my best customers have all become more friends than just customers. I prefer to do business this way too. Here is an example of a humanizing post I shared and the business value that I generated from it. 
I shared how my dad was in the hospital with Covid and how it made me think about work-life balance and what was truly important to me. I shared a picture of my family from our last vacation and my thoughts around the brevity of life. My network reacted and they reacted well for me. This post received the following engagement. 178 Likes 69 comments Nearly 16,000 views So this begs the question, so what? What does this have to do with sales and closing new business? At FunnelAmlified we teach how to turn every social engagement, including Likes and comments into an opportunity for a conversation. We have a system that teaches and leads sales professionals to strategically use, among other types of social posts and content, human-style posts to create conversations with ideal customers.
Results Of Using Valuable Content
Here are my results from this single post.
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- 54 leads
- 28 new outbound connections
- 9 new inbound connections
- 8 Zoom calls (1 CEO, 1 COO, 2 EVPs, 4 SVP’s)
- 3 Social Selling & Influence presentations
- 2 proposals sent
- 1 purchase order confirmed
- Over 15,000 people ‘saw’ me / profile / FA
… from just about 10 minutes of work The confirmed purchase order generated a new customer for a company of 10 sales professionals to use our platform and go through our 12-week social selling training program. It is a $63,000 deal for FunnelAmplified. Want to learn more about our Social Selling program which includes our easy-to-use platform and excellent training for your sales team? We would love to explore our offering with you and see if we can add value to your sales team. Or, if you are an individual sales professional looking for training and community with social selling, we have a program for you too. Every month we offer an Open Class for up to 12-students. Ready to kickstart your social selling skills and successes? We would love to help. Learn more about our social selling training and platform program here.
Thanks for reading. I typically write about modern selling, virtual selling, prospecting, sales reps reputation and how content helps all of these with modern buyers. My primary audience includes CEOs, CROs, CMOs, and other executives responsible for increasing bottom line. Post your questions in the comments section below and let’s discuss this!
