What’s the Right Light Production Content for Channel Partners to Share on Social Media?

Don’t you hate it when people constantly sell to you on social media?

We’ve all seen the feeds that constantly self-promote.  They are all “me, me, me”. Their only focus is to get you to buy their products and services.

These sorts of feeds usually achieve the opposite of what they intend. The constant focus on themselves turns social media visitors away. In some cases, they actually end up harming their brand. Unfortunately, it can be all too easy for each of us to create social media feeds like this as well.

It’s time to take a long, hard look at our own social media feeds.

How many reseller feeds have you seen that focus solely on machine releases and on “special offers”? Feeds like this do nothing more than encourage people to think purely about buying products on price.

Remember the purpose of a good social media feed: it is to create warm prospects. You want potential customers who are engaged with your feed. They want to do business with you. The best way to achieve this is to make sure that you are sharing what they want to read.

Here are the three elements of a successful reseller social media feed:

1. Updates
   Yes, it is OK to share details about the new machines that you are offering customers! After all, they need to know what you are offering. They will want to learn about new models. Just make sure that this is only a part of a varied feed.
   
   Your updates should also let people know about events you are running or attending. If your company has won an award or something else good has happened, then this should be shared as well. However, you should think about your prospects and customers as well. This is where the next type of content comes in.
2. Resources
   This about what will be useful for your clients. What can you help them with? This is the sort of content that should help them grow their printing businesses. Here are some of the things that you might include:
• equipment performance data or comparisons
• information on how to improve performance: either maintenance and servicing advice or ways to improve workflow
• ideas on how to grow their company. This doesn’t have to be production related. You can include ideas about sales and customer service as well
• industry trends and white papers

Remember, this information doesn’t have to be produced by you. It’s fine to share other peoples’ content on social media as long as you give them appropriate credit.  This rule also applies to the third type of content.

3. Inspiration
   Don’t just tell prospects and customers how to do what they do better. Inspire them to do something new and different! Show them new ideas that they can adopt. Naturally, some of these ideas may also encourage them to buy some of your services or products! Here are some ideas for the inspiration element of your feed:
• case studies, particularly of ways in which you have helped your clients to grow or improve their printing businesses
• examples successful campaigns or products that printing companies have produced for their clients
• illustrations of inspirational pieces of print

If you include a good mix of these three types of content in your social media feed then you will be well on the way to creating warm prospects. However, there is one more important rule that you must put into action.

Make Sure You Share Your Content

Here’s a quick checklist of the place that you should be sharing this type of content:

• LinkedIn status updates
• LinkedIn publishing
• LinkedIn groups
• LinkedIn company pages
• Twitter
• Facebook pages
• E-mails to prospects and customers
• Company newsletter
• Direct mail

As you can see from the list, you should share your content in places other than social media.

Get Going with the Right Content Today

Here are three action points to make sure that you start your content sharing right now:

1. Find an educational or inspirational piece of content to share with your social media audience
2. Write an update on how you or your company have helped a customer
3. Post these to your LinkedIn status update or company page and to your Twitter feed.

Follow these action points and you can start sharing the right sort of content in less than ten minutes. Most importantly, your audience won’t be hating your feed.

5 LinkedIn Groups Where Print Providers Should Be Active
If you’re on LinkedIn (and you should be), it is important to use the groups facility. LinkedIn groups allow you to connect and discuss specialized topics with like-minded people.

Become a Xerox Channel Partner
Ready to become a Xerox Channel Partner? Contact your Xerox account manager, or review the Xerox Global Partner Program and apply to become a Xerox channel partner today, to find out how we will help grow your business.

To learn more about creating social content that will drive sales, subscribe to the Channel Connection blog today, and join the conversation on our Xerox Channel Partners LinkedIn group to learn what is working for other partners just like you.

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