Using Content to Sell Without Selling

I was over on the BundlePost blog the other day and saw this post titled ‘My Biggest Social Media Mistake So Far’ and it got me thinking about my extremely right-sided (or maybe it’s left) leaning towards vendor-agnostic content.

I have always been the one within any organization I have worked for or spoken to that said ‘we are talking about ourselves too much. We aren’t helping anymore, we are just selling and we are pushing it too hard.’ That blog made me think about this a little differently.

My current company is targeting marketing professionals, the ones that make decisions when it comes to advertising. Now this group has a slew of things I can speak to. I can write posts on how to run a webinar or what’s the best approach to take when it comes to building a lead nurturing plan or how you can extend a whitepaper into multiple formats of content and of course about mobile advertising.

Now if I develop content for all these things and publish it, do you think that anyone reading our blog will know what we actually do? I’m not so sure. In fact, I am questioning this heavily right now.

My goal is to help. Become a thought leader in the space. To be the ‘voice’, the ‘answer’, the one that people go to when they have a question or are facing a challenge. But at what cost?

Am I costing the company potential business by posting a blog about how to run a successful webinar program and not mentioning our business? What would be the effect of staying on a straight line and focusing solely on mobile advertising?

I was in a live #blogchat once and Christina ‘CK’ Kerley said something very smart. She said ‘my website tells people what I do, but my blog convinces them that I know how to do it.’ Take a look at her blog and it’s straight-up focused on mobile marketing. She is selling without selling.

When you read a post a say to yourself ‘hey, this person/company knows their stuff, I’m going to check them out and give them a call’, the blog is effective.

Hey, if your blogging goals are not to support sales and grow revenue, then keep writing whatever and whenever. But if you are using it as a sales tool, then use Robert Caruso’s post as your cautionary tale.

The second you digress and start writing to write without having a clear point of view, a clear mission, your message gets muddy and your audience doesn’t know what you do or that you even do anything for that matter.

When it comes to content, help your audience but don’t digress too much from who you are and what you offer.

Read more:

• How Your Blog Can Sell Without Selling