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Will Barron:
This episode of the show is brought to you from the Salesman.org HubSpot studios. Welcome to the Social Selling Show with myself, Will Barron, founder Salesman.org and the king of social selling, Daniel Disney, Daniel, how’s it going, sir?
Daniel Disney:
Excited to be back Will, all is good this end. And we’ve got a really good topic to dig into today. We’re going to venture beyond LinkedIn. So I’m excited to get started today.
Do B2B Salespeople Need to Venture Beyond LinkedIn and Into Other Social Sites Such as YouTube or is LinkedIn Enough? · [00:39]
Will Barron:
For sure. I’m excited to get your thoughts on whether we even need to venture beyond LinkedIn. So today’s topic is LinkedIn alongside other social networks, when we’re social selling, when we’re getting attention of buyers, when we’re trying to influence them and when we’re trying to build relationships. So let me start with that, Daniel, and I’ll give you my thoughts on this as well. Do we need to in the B2B sales world venture beyond LinkedIn, or is LinkedIn enough, is there enough traffic attention and a prospect on LinkedIn for us to just spend all of our time there?
“If you have prospects and customers that are using Facebook, that are using Instagram, that are using Twitter, TikTok, Clubhouse, whatever it may be, if they’re on those platforms, then as a business, as a sales team, as a sales professional, you should be looking at utilising them.” – Daniel Disney · [00:58]
Daniel Disney:
The simplest answer, and we’re going to need to dig into this because there’s more complexities to it. The simple answer is you need to go wherever your prospects and customers are. So if you have prospects and customers that are using Facebook that are using Instagram, that are using Twitter, TikTok, Clubhouse, whatever it may be, if they’re on those platforms, then as a business, as a sales team, as a sales professional, you should be looking at utilising them, but they’re all very different. They all have their pros and cons and ways about utilising them, which we’ll discuss today. But that’s the only way you define it. If your prospects and customers are using a social media network, then you should be looking to utilise as well.
LinkedIn Should Be the Foundation of All Your B2B Selling Efforts · [02:01]
Will Barron:
For sure. And you mentioned TikTok there. So I guess that’s a great example in the fact that this landscape is constantly changing. So I doubt you’re selling many B2B products to a 13 year old girl dancing on TikTok right now, but those individuals on TikTok right now in four or five, six years, may be in B2B roles where you might want to sell to them. So maybe they’re 16 now, they might be graduating in 20, 22, 23 years old in a few years time. So TikTok might be the platform and things might change. That might be where the attention is then. So with that said, then Daniel, is it fair to say that if we’re going to experiment with all of this, LinkedIn is where we should start. We should get LinkedIn somewhat sorted and then look for other platforms and making the assumption that our audience is across multiple platforms, as opposed to just on Facebook or just on TikTok.
“I would say 80 to 90% of B2B selling will exist and be more fruitful on LinkedIn.” – Daniel Disney · [02:26]
Daniel Disney:
Yeah. Assuming, especially in the B2B space, LinkedIn is king, queen, is the ruler of all social media networks. I would say 80 to 90% of B2B selling will exist and be more fruitful on LinkedIn. But again, you need to look at where the majority or the larger percentage of your active prospects and customers are in the B2B space. And I would say to an extent in the B2C space as well, LinkedIn certainly reigns supreme.
Daniel Disney:
But again, just going back to what you were saying about TikTok, Will, yes, there are a lot of younger users, but I’ve seen C-level decision makers of B2B companies sharing TikTok videos on LinkedIn. So in terms of when even TikTok has some potential, there are customers, there’ll be salespeople that have their customers utilising TikTok and then bringing that on to LinkedIn as well. So there are decision-makers of senior positions, of older ages that are utilising some of these newer and maybe younger dominated networks.
Daniel’s Thoughts on How to Differentiate Between Personal and Professional Social Platforms or Profiles · [03:20]
Will Barron:
What are your thoughtson, I can’t think of a better way to describe this, but the appropriateness of engaging with a B2B sale or a B2B decision maker on a platform that isn’t designed for B2B. From my perspective, I don’t care. If they’re on there, and they’re willing to pay attention and they’re willing to engage on it, appropriateness isn’t really part of my vocabulary.But I know some people get hung up on the fact that Facebook is for families. It’s not really about families and friends, LinkedIn’s a business. So we should stick to our lanes here. Do you think it’s appropriate to just speak to anyone anywhere?
Daniel Disney:
You’ve got to tread carefully. So I spoke to a managing director of a big company a few weeks back who was complaining to no end about how many connection requests they get on Facebook from salespeople. And they were very clear. They said, “Look, Facebook for me, friends and family. Do not want to connect with anyone from work, any salesperson trying to pitch me or sell me, no chance.” But on the flip end of that spectrum last year, I created and won an opportunity through Instagram messenger. Now that decision may go against C-level of a large company, had all of my other contact details. They had my phone number, my email address. We were connected on LinkedIn, connected on Facebook, connected on Twitter, but Instagram was their choice. That was their preferred social network, that they were more active and more comfortable communicating through.
“Some people, Facebook, Instagram, they will use them in different ways. But there are people of all positions of all ages utilising some of those more personal ones in a professional context. What your role as a sales person in a business to do is to try and figure that out, tread carefully, do your homework first. Don’t just dive in and start spamming out Facebook messages and Instagram messages. Test the waters first, check, have a look at their activity, have a look at who they’re connected with, check before you then choose to progress.” – Daniel Disney · [04:40]
Daniel Disney:
So some people, absolutely Facebook, Instagram, they will use them in different ways, but there are people of all positions of all ages utilising some of those more personal ones in a professional context. What your role as a sales person in a business is to do is to try and figure that out, tread carefully, do your homework first. Don’t just dive in and start spamming our Facebook messages and Instagram messages. Test the waters first, check, have a look at their activity, have a look at who they’re connected with, check before you then choose to progress.
Should Salespeople Have Personal and Professional Accounts on Sites Like Facebook and Instagram? · [05:20]
Will Barron:
And I guess the flip side of when we’re reaching out to individuals on different platforms is should we use our own personal accounts on Facebook, Instagram to reach out, or should we set up a professional account on these platforms to do any engagement on there?
Daniel Disney:
My personal feeling on that is use your personal one because it aligns very much what we’ve talked about in the show Will, around personal brands, people buying from people. You could look at doing it from a company perspective, but that’s more of a marketing team thing and communicating through a central company page. But I would definitely recommend it and certainly from my experience. And I’ve been able to create small percentage of opportunities on all social media networks, but TikTok, I’ve yet to learn or master a TikTok dance, maybe that’s something we can do together, Will at some point. But yeah, it’s always been through my personal profile and not through some, yeah, created page.
Will and Daniel Debate on the Pros and Cons of Having Both Personal and Professional Social Media Accounts · [08:01]
Will Barron:
So for the first time, in what episode is this? This is episode nine. I think I might slightly disagree with you here, Daniel, just on this. And I’ll just give it from my perspective and I’ll give it from my partner’s perspective who’s a doctor as well. So everyone knows this, is no secret that my actual name is Raymond William Barron. And business-wise everyone calls me, Will Barron and that’s always been that way. If anyone who isn’t aware that is because when I started the business, I was still working at the medical device company, everyone at the device company called me Raymond. So I started the business in Will so that people in the medical device company couldn’t source out, I was starting a startup on the side and probably spending less time working in the sales job than what I should have been. So that’s why I had that split.
Will Barron:
Now, I find it really valuable from my perspective, to have a Facebook profile of will Barron of business head, business content, sharing, lots of cool Salesman.org and Social Selling Show content there. But if I shared that on my personal profile, well, all my friends would unfollow me in a hobby because they’ve no interest in any of the business stuff that I do whatsoever. So I’d like to build the business audience on one side and I have the personal profile on the other and very easily logistically it’s Raymond William Barron on Facebook for my personal profile and then Will Barron as my professional profile. And then as a business owner, of course, and I have a business page that adds to the complexity here, but I find it personally valuable for that. It stops any mixed messages.
Will Barron:
It means that if I do have a connection request, I do want to reach out to someone I want to connect with them on social media, on Facebook, for example, they know exactly what they’re getting. They know it’s a salesperson. They know it’s a small business owner. And so they’re not getting confused of, “Hey, did I go to uni with this person? Maybe I should out them because they’re a long-lost brother or cousin, Hey, he does look a little bit like me, he is just as skinny and lanky is what I am.” So it’s great that we’ve finally slightly disagreed on something, but what are your thoughts on that? Do you think that there’s potential case studies for having that split, or are you firmly set on the fact that who you are in businesses is who you are out of business as well?
Daniel Disney:
I think it’s fair to say it would depend on the person. I think your scenario absolutely makes a lot of sense, and you and I are both in that same boat where we started our side hustles up whilst working in full-time jobs. I built the Daily Sales as the separate brand. You created the Will Barron name and use that with the podcast. And that worked really, really well. I think, again, it will work differently for different people. The risk you have when you create either a different alias or a slightly different persona is you’re then having to manage two brands or in the sense, three brands when you’ve got a company name as well.
Daniel Disney:
And for some people, and I’ve certainly seen the benefit of utilising just my name and making that my brand. You look at people like Dale Dupree, Kevin Dorsey, there are a lot of sales names that are growing their brands and using it both to sell and build that longterm opportunity. So I think it can work both ways. What you’ve got to look at is your current situation, your company, your product, your service, your current audience.
Daniel Disney:
My network on Facebook and the other platforms, they like to see the work stuff. I’m not pitching to them. I’m not trying to sell stuff through my content on those platforms, but I’m sharing my journey. So same as LinkedIn, I’m just sharing, “I’m on this podcast, I’ve done this, my book’s coming out here.” It’s less salesy, horrible content. It’s the same stuff that’s applicable across all networks. So yeah, I think you can do it both ways. What you need to do is sit and look at your circumstances and look at your plan. What do you want to achieve in the next 3, 5, 10 years, and then look at what path might help you get there.
Will Barron:
Yes. That makes total sense. And I guess there’s two different approaches here, of I think it’s Gary V who said, or suggested that new content creators, and this is what he does. So it’s for massive audiences as well, but he focuses on documenting what’s going on as opposed to creating content out of thin air than the different approaches. A lot of the content that we publish is creating content. The Social Selling Show is creating something new. We do it within the show, but we’re not necessarily documenting what’s going on in our lives.
Will Barron:
So for my approach, if I was documenting more I guess, congruently, authentically, if I was sharing, “Oh, the businesses has done this today, I’ve done this, we’ve got these interviews coming up.” That might be a more appropriate personal profile versus as I said, what we do is publish basically… I don’t really care about Facebook. So maybe that’s sums up some of this, or we just repurpose content from elsewhere on Facebook and push it out there. So that makes total sense. And salespeople probably should be documenting rather than creating from scratch because what sales people do in each day, the insights that they’re picking up just as they move through their careers, that’s interesting to buyers in its own.
How to Push Your B2B Sales Efforts to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube · [11:15]
Will Barron:
So with that, then I want to cover if possible, depending on time. We’ll cover LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Weibo. I don’t know if you’ve come across Weibo before, but we’ll touch on that. Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, Clubhouse, TikTok, we’ll get through as many of these as we can, but after LinkedIn, is there anything we should be focusing on Daniel? Is there any one of these social networks where you go, “Okay, we’ve got LinkedIn covered here.” When you’re consulting, “We’ve got LinkedIn covered. Let’s cover this social network next.” Which one would be the one you’d follow up on?
Daniel Disney:
LinkedIn, as I said, 80 to 90% of time and effort is what I encourage. A lot of my customers, which obviously tend to be heavily B2B. Again, if their customers are on that platform, that’s where I’ll support them with. In terms of what I would use next, it’d be one of three things or these three things together, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Those would be the three where I’d encourage salespeople, sales teams, customers, to look at again, treating each one individually and treading carefully into how your prospects and customers are utilising it. And what we’ll talk about a bit in a minute is the newer ones like TikTok and Clubhouse. And especially Clubhouse, which as you say, has got 10 million users, but it feels like there’s 10 billion users with the amount of noise that’s happening. So again, there could be a lot of confusion about the potential that sits within those. But yeah, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter would be where I’d put underneath LinkedIn.
Daniel’s Thoughts on Why Clubhouse is Taking Social Media by Storm · [12:44]
Will Barron:
Sure. And as you mentioned it, we got in the doc here for the show. So Facebook has 2.5 billion active users. LinkedIn has 260 million active users and Clubhouse has 10 million active users. So those numbers surprised me because you called me out on the LinkedIn numbers. And we had to re-look at that because you were correct and I wrote it down wrong. But Clubhouse versus LinkedIn, there’s obviously a massive difference there in the numbers, but there’s also a massive difference in the user base of LinkedIn is more appropriate for more people. Clubhouse, if you don’t like just listening to stuff, you never going to download and get subscribed to Clubhouse. And it’s invitation only. So do those numbers surprise you, Daniel that so many people are on Clubhouse compared to a good incumbent social network like LinkedIn?
Daniel Disney:
Yeah. I think those numbers reflect our current circumstances in the world. I think we’ve got a pent up world at the moment where a new platform comes out, unique, different, audio only, probably a lot of people sick and tired of being on Zooms all day and Teams meetings. It’s accelerated the growth more than what it did, same as what helped TikTok last year. Now, I think as you say, it’s very active. It’s very noisy, but you’re right. It is very much specific to audio, which is a percentage, eight percentage of people’s preferences. Some people prefer video, some people prefer text. So it is a small group. I don’t know how the social network will evolve as it goes Live. But yeah, it’s surprising to see how active it is. We’ll talk about it probably properly in a minute, but when you go into it and you listen, it’s immensely, the most time consuming social media network out there by far.
Daniel Disney:
And it’s very noisy instantly. If you think people moan about the LinkedIn feed, the Facebook feed, Clubhouse is already 10 times noisier with a fraction of the audience. So yeah, there are a lot of challenges, but also a lot of opportunities, but we’ll cover Clubhouse in its own right.
Why YouTube is Full of Opportunities for B2B Salespeople · [14:41]
Will Barron:
Cool. So just on Facebook. And again, whether you use your own profile, whether you create a business profile, the content, whether you are creating new content for the platform or wherever you are documenting what you’re doing, which is interesting in its own right, there’s value there. Because you mentioned Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Let’s cover YouTube next because this is where I think there’s massive potential for B2B salespeople. And you only have to look at sales trainers on YouTube. There’s not that many people with big audiences at all.
Will Barron:
I may be slightly off of some of these numbers, but you have the likes of Grant Cardone. Now, he talks about sales trading, but he also talked probably a lot more about investing and financial freedom and mindset and all that kind of stuff more so. So I wouldn’t say he’s a 100% a sales training channel. Then you move down in sizes to my friend Victor Antonio, who has about 200,000 subscribers who only covers sales training content. And he does tonnes of new content. And I do a show of him called This Week in Sales, which you can find on his YouTube channel as well.
Will Barron:
And from there, then you have the likes of myself with, what are we on? I can’t see on this, 44,000 subscribers. Now, 44,000 subscribers on YouTube is not a lot of subscribers. That is the beginnings of a fledgling YouTube channel, as opposed to someone who’s really made it. So I feel like on YouTube, there’s a tone of opportunity on two fronts. One, even though it’s been around forever, the industry specific content, rather than teenagers doing stupid stuff and blogging and vlogging, the more corporate B2B informative content, there’s massive gaps in marketplaces further that salespeople can capitalise on.
Will Barron:
And because YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine after Google, even though it’s basically just the Google search, but for video, there’s massive opportunity for creating content that people will find because I find the issue when I publish content on LinkedIn, is it goes into LinkedIn black hole, does well, doesn’t do well. And then gets sput out into a bucket at the back of LinkedIn somewhere and it’s never seen again. Whereas on YouTube, I’ve got videos have done a 100,000 views, half million views that gets tens of thousand views a month. And we’ll do probably for the next five, six years onwards from here.
Will Barron:
So an investment into YouTube content, from a thought leadership perspective, and branding, which we talk about all the time on the show, has a long tail and has a longer lifetime than over platforms. So am I a foe in saying this Daniel, but… Well, though [inaudible 00:16:53] is my opinion, but do you agree with some of this, that YouTube might be the second best platform after LinkedIn for building thought leadership, as long as you have the time, energy, resources to build great content on the platform?
Daniel Disney:
No. I completely agree, Will. I mean, you talk about your 44,000 in that context, I’ve probably got like 400, so [inaudible 00:17:12] but I am late to the party and identifying the potential that exists on YouTube. And that’s where I’m going to be investing a lot of my time in the coming months and probably a few years because you’re right. I guess it’s an interesting one because if I was to go into a SaaS company, a B2B company and look at that sales team, it is hard to imagine all of them creating their own YouTube channels and how they would better utilise that effectively from an individual perspective, I would say, LinkedIn holds more potential.
Daniel Disney:
But what I would say is you’re going to get every team that I’ve teached. Every team that I’ve worked with, teached, taught. There was always one or two, I guess, thought leaders in the making. There’s one or two people that get social media, that have all those ingredients, have the personality, the creativity, those are the people you definitely want to be encouraging to create. See you’re Sarah Braziers, you’re Tom Bostons, the people that are out there putting out great content, SDL level, AE level. They could and should be setting up their own YouTube channels where the marketing team at the company should be supporting them to help with quality, to help with thumbnails and all those little details that they’re probably not going to know because you’re absolutely right. It’s something that’s going to churn and continue to convert in years to come. And then maybe more can join into that. Yes, YouTube is a huge opportunity. It’s just how you utilise it.
Will Barron:
And then some of the separates, LinkedIn and YouTube, from my perspective as well is I get paid to publish content on YouTube. Nobody pays me nothing on LinkedIn. Linkedin is just a time suck. Now, hopefully some of the content we put out on LinkedIn, people enjoy, and that then leads to direct selling opportunities. Some people sign up for our training programmes. But just for context, I think you’re not allowed to talk about your numbers of Google AdSense payments on YouTube with the terms of service. I’ll talk about anyway, because it’s not like there’s a… if a million people were going to watch this, Daniel, maybe I’d be slightly more hesitant, but where we are, I think YouTube’s got bigger fish to fry than us.
Will Barron:
So I’ve got, say 44, 45,000 subscribers. I think we get between say, I’ll do a random, say we get a hundred thousand views a month across all of the videos, or I get about $3,000 in ad revenue from that videos. Now, obviously it’s not going to change the world, $3,000, but it’s enough to pay the office rent. It’s enough to pay the electricity bills. And basically covers a lot of our bills, internet, infrastructure, the hosting bills that we have. And so it almost wipes, net neutral, a lot of the operating costs of the business. And it’s a nice little thing to have.
How Salespeople Can Create Online Assets and Earn More Revenue Using Youtube · [19:44]
Will Barron:
The reason I bring this up is I’ve had people on LinkedIn say, “Hey, why are you directing people from LinkedIn to YouTube to watch the full video?” So I do this all the time and you’ve done it as well, Daniel. We’ll create a trailer for the Social Selling Show. And then it will link to YouTube or I’ll link off to Salesman.org or wherever we’re trying to drive traffic to. And that’s why I do it because whoever clicks through that video, watches a whole video, it goes through two free adverts. They’re putting money in my pockets. Whereas again, on LinkedIn, we’re going after conversions over a longer period of time. And so at the beginning, I was going to get rich creating B2B sales training content on YouTube. But it’s a nice little benefits that as I said, pays a few of our bills.
Daniel Disney:
Yeah. No, Will, I completely agree. But what you’re doing is creating assets. So these videos, as you say, that’s what you’re earning now. It’s only going to go up because you’re putting out new content and you’re driving traffic to previous content. So it’s only going to grow from that. And you’re absolutely right, we’re going to be creating this content anyway. That’s what we’re encouraging with this show. We’re encouraging salespeople, sales teams to go out and create content.
“We’re encouraging salespeople, sales teams to go out and create content. And for those that are comfortable with video that are confident with video, why wouldn’t you look at utilising YouTube as well? You can generate some side income directly from the platform, but you’re also going to be able to utilise it in the same way you would on LinkedIn, by exposure, by building trust, earning credibility, giving value, you’re still doing all those things.” – Daniel Disney · [20:45]
Daniel Disney:
Now, for those that are comfortable with video that are confident with video, why wouldn’t you look at utilising YouTube as well? That’s what I’m slapping myself in the face with at the moment. Video content I’ve created and put out there, it makes sense to start leveraging a platform. As you say, that you can generate some side income directly from the platform, but you’re also going to be able to utilise it in the same way you would on LinkedIn, by exposure, by building trust, earning credibility, giving value, you’re still doing all those things. You’re just doing it on a slightly different platform where you’re also able to add a little bit of extra money on the side as well.
Will Barron:
For sure. And this reminds me something that we’ve not even listed here. It wasn’t on my radar whatsoever. So I assume, do you know Morgan Ingram?
Daniel Disney:
Yes.
Will Barron:
So Morgan, has just started a Twitch channel.
Daniel Disney:
Twitch.
Will Barron:
So if we’re going down the video routes and we’re going to see some Social Selling Show, Live Q&A’s coming in not too distant future, which will be streamed on LinkedIn and there’s no reason why we can’t also stream them on Twitch and other places. Maybe Twitch is in the background because again, it’s like TikTok. There’s so many, not just kids, but teenagers, young adults. I say young adults like I’m 34. I think I’m still a cool 16 year old, but I’m not.
B2B Sales opportunities on Twitch · [22:00]
Will Barron:
There’s so many I guess 12 to 25 year olds watching people game on Twitch. And there’s now talk shows coming up on Twitch and even the commentary around e-sports and that side of things, we’re not just watching games anymore. It’s the gossip, the behind the scenes, what’s going on with the teams, that’s becoming content in its own right. And as that develops on Twitch, there’s going to be more and more people ageing up into potential buying roles or at the very minimum, people who are in B2B sales roles who watch Twitch. And if they are documenting their journey for our sales and the business careers, other people will clearly want to tune into that as well. So have I been an idiot to not even included Twitch here in this list? Is that something that’s on your radar, Daniel?
Daniel Disney:
Do you know what, same as you, Will, only very loosely because of Morgan [inaudible 00:22:45]. I think Morgan’s going to be a trendsetter in that. So I really don’t know a lot about it, but Morgan’s clearly see. And I think you and I both respect Morgan for all he’s achieved on LinkedIn and beyond. If he’s seeing potential in it, then there must be something there. And maybe that’s something that we can revisit in a future episode, we’ll go and do some homework, Will and see what potential exists there.
Will Barron:
Yeah. And I’m just Googling this just so we don’t get ahead of ourselves. So Morgan has a 100,000 subscribers on LinkedIn or followers on LinkedIn and he has 200 or so followers on Twitch. So just maybe pull down our expectations and excitement slightly here of clearly, Morgan is pushing towards that and wants to be unique and is getting on Twitch for that reason because no one else in the sales training space is on Twitch. But clearly, LinkedIn is where he’s doing a 100% of his business as opposed to either the 200 people who are following him on Twitch. But it’d be interesting to see. And perhaps we’ll talk about this in the future. If Morgan does blow up on there, we can use him as a case study and I’m sure he’ll be happy to have us talk about him and even have him on the show and talk about this in the future.
How to Target Corporate Clients and C-Suite Executives on Twitter · [23:57]
Will Barron:
So we’ve covered some ground, Daniel, we’ve got Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, let’s touch on Twitter. Have you had anyone in your corporate clients have success with individuals on Twitter? Because for me, it’s a complete waste of time and energy and no one seems to care about it.
Daniel Disney:
There used to be a lot more resources than there are now. So when I started using LinkedIn about seven, eight years ago, Twitter was much bigger back then. Certainly, in B2B, I mean in the tech industry, especially for senior decision makers, it was a much bigger platform. I do feel it’s died down. I don’t know many companies at the moment, many sales teams or sales people that are generating significant or even any results from Twitter. Again, what I would say, some industries and for some decision-makers, Twitter is their go-to platform. They are a lot more active on it. It’s just very different to LinkedIn. It’s a lot more difficult to engage in conversation, but you can still like, and comment, you can start to get your name out there. You can build early levels of report and then maybe you take it offline. You give them a call, send them an email or try and engage them through a video message on LinkedIn or something like that. So there’s potential, but I’d say it’s small.
The Similarities Between Instagram and Facebook in B2B Sales · [25:43]
Will Barron:
Fair enough. And I agree. I guess it’s industry dependent. So there’s lots of C-suite executives on there, but they’re probably not managing their own Twitter profiles. If you’re an executive in a large company, large enterprise company, you probably got a team doing it. And it’s a PR thing as opposed to you really on Twitter, unless you name is Elon Musk. In which case, if you’re trying to sell to him, Twitter might be the best place. If your said name is Trump, probably a good place to get in contact with him as well. And then my experience is tech startups, all these Silicon Valley tech nerds, they like to be on Twitter and engage on there. So if you’re sound to those individuals, maybe that’s something to look at. So we’ve covered Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn. I guess we’ll cover Instagram and then we’ll touch on Weibo. So Instagram, is it fair to say that’s similar to Facebook, how we go about things and approach things there?
“I use the analogy when I do training sessions, but if you can imagine you’ve got loads of different ponds in front of you. You’ve got your LinkedIn pond or it’s probably quite an ocean really. You’ve got a Facebook pond, an Instagram pond, a Twitter pond. If you’re a fisherman, you want to catch lots of fish, why would you just fish in one pot? Why not set up a fishing rod in the Instagram pond, one then, maybe two in the Facebook pond, it’s all about looking at it like that. You’ve got fish in there, why not at least try and fish them out?” – Daniel Disney · [28:06]
Daniel Disney:
Very, very similar and for obvious reasons, but yeah, very similar to Facebook. Same type of content, obviously more image and video form, story form. But again, there’ll be some decision makers, some of your prospects and customers that just might be that a little bit more active on that platform. So it is worth utilising. I mean, I use the analogy when I do training sessions, but if you can imagine you’ve got loads of different ponds in front of you. You’ve got your LinkedIn pond or it’s probably quite an ocean really. You’ve got a Facebook pond, an Instagram pond, a Twitter pond. If you’re a fisherman, you want to catch lots of fish, why would you just fish in one pot? Why not set up a fishing rod in the Instagram pond, one then, maybe two in the Facebook pond, it’s all about looking at it like that. You’ve got fish in there, why not at least try and fish them out?
Will Barron:
For sure. So I’m going to butcher an analogy here, but I’ll try and throw out on the air. If I think of the social media channels as being tubes with perhaps water flowing through them. If you’re trying to communicate with a executive on LinkedIn, they’re probably getting tonnes of water being thrown at them all day and they splash them in the face and they’re going, “Hey, I can’t go through all this.” And they’re probably deleting stuff that they wouldn’t otherwise delete on other channels. And I find if I reach out to someone, if I DM, direct message someone on Instagram, for example, there’s less water flowing and splashing in their face, so they’re more likely to see the messages. Doesn’t mean they’re more likely to reply, doesn’t mean that they’re more likely to appreciate the fact I’ve reached out to them perhaps on more of a personal channel, but at least they see it. So that’s my thoughts on that, for that terrible analogy there.
Daniel Disney:
It’s a good analogy, Will. I like it. I like it.
A Short Introduction to Sina Weibo · [28:11]
Will Barron:
Trying to create a visual, not very good. It was a terrible analogy, but yeah, I feel like you can get attention on some of these other platforms if the person is engaging on there. And I’ll give myself an example, I’ve got Instagram, barely is… I think we’ve got 17,000 followers on there, on the company profile. And maybe a couple thousand on my own profile, never posted anything on there. Don’t use it. I don’t check the direct messages. So every time I do log in to check something or I occasionally post a post, then I get 25 direct messages that I’ve not even looked at over the past, three or four months. So you got to be conscious that the inbox of… especially people that have budgets, it’s going to be probably email first, LinkedIn, then everything else on the backend. So Daniel, have you come across Weibo before?
Daniel Disney:
I haven’t, although I have heard of it, I haven’t seen it or been on it, but I’ve heard of it alongside some other global specific or country specific social media networks. So please do tell me a bit more about Weibo.
Will Barron:
I don’t know anything about it, other than it is basically, the Facebook of the Chinese and Asian marketplaces. So the reason I brought it up is just this idea of all of this is cultural dependent. So we’re both in the UK. So we probably have very similar social networks that we’re all engaging on with people in the US, the rest of Europe. But if you are engaging with people internationally, if you’re engaging with people from vastly different cultures, whether that’d be Asia or Africa, there’s probably all the social media networks that might have a tonne of value for you to be on. Now, I’m just on the Weibo homepage and it’s all Chinese. I’m going to see if I can translate it to English. So Weibo allows you to log in with Facebook.
Daniel Disney:
Interesting.
The Pros of Using Reddit and How Salespeople Can Use it for Sales and Building Credibility · [30:01]
Will Barron:
And they legit have billions of users. It’s like the fourth or fifth biggest social media network on the planet. So again, if you’re selling into those marketplaces, it might be something that you want to check out. And I’m just on the homepage, again, as an example, there’s home, video, find, there’s game, there’s tonnes of just posts and content. Australia is a trending thing down the side of it as is cute pet. So there’s probably tonnes of content crowd there. And there’s probably other experts in this space that can give you more tips and advice on that. But I just wanted to bring up this idea of culture. It depends where you are, who you’re selling to and what they want to get out of your content as well, and your engagement. And so that will wrap up Weibo for us. And that leaves us now with, I think some of the more, what’s that? Esoteric is not the correct word, but more like random social media networks. So let’s touch on Reddit. Are you a Reddit user Daniel?
Daniel Disney:
I am not. My oldest son certainly uses it a bit more than I do, but it’s not been something that I’ve journaled to. So what about yourself, Will, are you a Reddit user?
Will Barron:
Yes. So I love Reddit. Incredible platform. I imagine for anyone who doesn’t understand or hasn’t been on Reddit before, you post content or people post content, you vote it or pour down, and then you have specific pages that house specific topics of content. So for example, there is a reddit.com/r/sales, which has a 142,000 members right now, 281 people on this page, consuming content and sharing content. And if I look through some of the posts, the top post on here has 94 people voted it. “I’m so under-qualified.” Then there is, “Underpaid? One to two million a year.” Becoming a software AE without industry experience. How to sell a partnership, I need help.
Will Barron:
So there are people asking questions, giving advice, and the best thing about Reddit, especially r/sales, is that they just don’t allow people to spam content on there. If I go on there and start throwing these videos in, I’ll just get banned from the subreddit and the content won’t be shown or be shadow banned in that, I think I posted it, but no one else sees it. They really want you to engage as an individual, to share advice and not be self promoting. And via that mechanism, you get really good advice. You also get a lot of really terrible advice, but if you can decipher the good from the bad, there’s tonnes of content on there.
Will Barron:
And there will be a subreddit for anything you could possibly imagine. If you’re selling CNC machines, you do metal engineering, there’ll be a… I’ll literally just go in now, just to make sure I’m not talking out my ass. Reddit.com/r, if I just go CNC, there’s a subreddit there with 35,000 people on there. And any industry you could possibly imagine, there will be subreddits, on Reddit that cover that industry in detail. So again, it’s more of you personally going on there, answering questions, giving advice, helping people, and there’ll be subreddits for your industry, which you can build personal brand and expertise in your industry, but they’ll also be what your customers are looking for and asking questions.
Will Barron:
And I find quite regularly, I will Google a question and it will be YouTube. There’ll be a blog post, and then Reddit will come up in that search results as well. So it’s a good way to piggyback on top of a massive social media network to get into Google results, as long as you are capable of posting interesting content. So, yeah, Daniel, if you’re not familiar with it, do you have any questions for me about Reddit and how perhaps we can use it?
The amount of time Will Spends on Reddit and Whether He’s Ever Generated Business from it · [32:50]
Daniel Disney:
Yeah. Well, first of all, you’ve sold it to me, Will, so I’m now going to go and spend a bit of time having a look through and seeing the potential that’s on there. How much time do you think you spend on a daily or weekly basis on Reddit? And then the flip side to that question is, have you generated business from it or is it purely from a content curation and learning perspective?
Will Barron:
I will go on the front page of Reddit from enough to do a work perspective as it will typically… So this is a wider conversation about politics and news and stuff, but I hate going on the BBC or CNBC or wherever these websites are, because it’s all political, especially, I don’t know why British websites are covering American politics all the time. I’m interested in the hilariousness of it, but I’m not interested in the ins and outs of it, all right. So I don’t want to see all that, but when I go… I’ll literally go in now, I’ll go on the front page of Reddit and we’ll see what we’ve got. So we’re on the front page of Reddit. And so it’s got, “A blind kid experiences his first cab himself while parents coach him. So he’s a kid using a stick to learn to… I’ll put this in the show notes. He’s sourcing out a cab, and he is invigorating audio content for anyone who’s listening to this.
Will Barron:
Of course, me talking about a video that I’m watching in real time with Daniel here, but the point is, there are feel-good stories, there are comics, there is a subreddit called Today I Learnt, and this is, “Today I Learnt Joseph Bazalgette was the man who designed London sewers in the 1960s.” And he said, “Well, we’re only going to do this once. And there’s never going to be opportunity to double the pipe diameter. And if he’d not done this, it would have overflowed in the 1960s.” So there’s content here that I’m learning from that the London sewer system was set up to be so expansive that they’ll never have to redo it in the future. Any science news crops up there regularly, all the content and coverage of the recent Rover being dropped on Mars was covered. And so it covers what people actually care about because it’s real people, or promoting content, as opposed to the BBC trying to clickbait to get headlines about Donald Trump, which seems to be what goes on in the mainstream media a lot.
Will Barron:
So long answer to a short question there, Daniel of personally, I go on Reddit, I probably check it once a day, twice a day, just to see what the headlines are, see if there’s anything interesting, any feel good stories, but then professionally, I have a tonnes of business from it. And importantly, I’ve shared videos on different subreddits where in an appropriate way, and commented and stayed after the video has been posted to comment underneath and engage people, answer questions. And we’ve had literally tens, if not hundreds of thousands of views from Reddit to YouTube, from Reddit to LinkedIn posts. And so to drive traffic, as long as you can do it in appropriate way, or you’ll just get banned immediately, as soon as you try and do it. You’ve got to come across as adding value as opposed to self promoting. It’s a great way to drive attention and traffic.
Daniel Disney:
That sounds really good. Well, there you go. I’m going to be taking action from today, going up onto Reddit and checking it out.
Should Salespeople Spend Time on Clubhouse? · [37:17]
Will Barron:
And Reddit.com/r/sales is the place. That’s where we should all be starting off. And it’s a great place to ask questions. And again, I will just reemphasize this. There’s lots of idiots on the there, there’s lots of smart people on there, you have to disconcern the correct answers with all of this. Okay. So that’s Reddit, let’s touch on… I feel like you really want to touch on this. Let’s touch on Clubhouse. If anyone is unfamiliar, Daniel, tell us what Clubhouse is and for B2B sales person, should we be spending time on there?
Daniel Disney:
I am itching to talk about Clubhouse, where I actually spent a couple of hours last night on Clubhouse, which I haven’t been committing a lot of time to. So for the last three weeks, got access a few weeks ago and started using it. And I’ve made a lot of observations, some opinions, good and bad. It’s a Clubhouse for anyone who doesn’t know, it’s an audio only social media network. So there’s no pictures. There’s no texts, there’s no videos. It is literally audio only.
Daniel Disney:
And the way it works, you follow people and they create rooms. So it’s like going to an event and each room will have a speaker or a panel of speakers. And you go in with an audience and you’ve listened and they teach you stuff. They share knowledge, share insights. They invite people to ask questions, but it’s all audio only, which as I mentioned at the start of this, I think after a couple of years of Zoom lifestyle, people were quite excited by the fact that they wouldn’t have to put a camera on or write anything they could literally just speak.
Daniel Disney:
So it’s an audio only social media network. It’s in the beta testing stage at the moment. So it’s currently invite only, you can’t just join. You have to get an invitation from an existing user. But as you said already, 10 million active users in testing phase is crazy. And I mean, I heard some rumours about investors valuing it over billion dollars already. And again, it’s not earning revenue, it’s not got any formal business model, but looking at the potential of its growth, it’s clearly making a lot of noise. And as we said at the start, Will, everyone’s talking about it. So if you haven’t heard of it already, you will do very soon because everyone’s making a lot of noise about it. So audio only, but yeah, I have a few opinions on it.
How to Effectively Use Clubhouse to Drive Sales · [38:05]
Will Barron:
Let’s put aside the, because it might be great to consume content. I know Elon Musk was on their show in Insights and Bitcoin spiked up in value because of what he was saying a few weeks ago, but let’s put aside always wanting to just consume content on there from a leisure perspective, is the value in a salesperson getting in over people’s rooms or creating their own room, is a value… I guess what I’m asking is a bad question. Do you need to bring an audience to Clubhouse that want to engage with you and you engage with them there. So if Morgan Ingram, for example, if he jumped on a Clubhouse call and posted it on LinkedIn and drive traffic to it, was that a valuable way for him to engage with his audience? Or can we go in there with new audience, which would be me because I’m not even signed up to it yet. I’m trying to put it off as long as possible. Can I get in there and have an interactive conversation and drive potential thought leadership and leads and attention from zero audience?
Daniel Disney:
So from what I’ve experienced over the last few weeks, I’ve tried starting rooms or co-hosting rooms with people. And it is very difficult to drive a significant amount of people into those rooms. It can be hard to get five people, 10 people, 25 people. And that’s not a big audience to be speaking to, especially when you’re looking at essentially a minimum of half an hour that you need to speak for. Average is half an hour to an hour. A lot of these rooms go on for 2, 3, 4 hours, some go on continuously for days and the panellists and the speakers need to be active throughout that whole time.
Daniel Disney:
So yeah, in terms of setting up your own room, very difficult to do. Probably the quickest way to grow your audience and speak to more people is to go into rooms that do have a decent audience, and either building a relationship with the speakers or being in a position where you’re invited to speak. So last night, as I said, I spent a couple of hours on Clubhouse and it was because I joined a room, there were 1300 people in this room and about 30 panellists. And I was luckily enough invited to come on as a speaker. So I’m there speaking in front of 1300 people. That’s a pretty good use of time. Clubhouse audience grew very healthily in that time. I had LinkedIn connection requests come through. So there will be the seeds of what may become opportunities over the coming days, weeks, and months. But that’s the difference. I mean, I spent an hour in a room a couple of weeks ago and there were 12 people in it. So from a ROI perspective, it’s there, but it’s not easy to find.
Why Building a Brand on Clubhouse Might be a lot of Work for Some People · [40:27]
Will Barron:
And I guess if it’s the right 12 people that could be an incredibly valuable use of your time. So if you’ve got 12 executives that you can even drag into a room and get them to mingle amongst each other and you, I guess, host a room and have these panellists go up and chat with each other… Well, I guess what I’m visualising here is, say we sell sales training to medical device companies. If we can get 12 CFOs in medical device companies, this is obviously never going to happen in the immediate future. But if we could get those individuals all in a room, because we’d just do this over Zoom, I don’t know why we’d use Clubhouse. But if we could do this, I don’t know if this is fair. So if we could get those 12 individuals, CFOs, there’s value in always creating that conversation.
Will Barron:
They’re going to cross pollinate, create value in themselves. And then it might be worth all the CFOs coming in and just listening to the conversation. But even as I’m saying this, it seems like a lot of work for the potential of a good upside here when we could probably just do a webinar and get some of the benefits, couldn’t we?
Daniel Disney:
Well, that’s exactly how I feel, Will. I mean, I spend a few times with some key names and decision makers and some audiences were 10 to 12, some were 20 to 30, and we’re spending half an hour to an hour talking to that small audience. And I could do, have done LinkedIn Lives, those same people and reach 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 people, same amount of time, same concepts, audio still. So you don’t have to look at us, but you can look at us if we’re looking at us as well. So there’s video as well. It’s captured, it’s kept, it’s saved, it’s usable. It can be put on YouTube. So at the moment, it’s hard to see the longevity. It’s leaning towards a B2C platform. It’s not leaning towards the B2B space. And I think if it remains audio only, it’s got a very limited future.
Daniel Disney:
It’s not going to be the next Facebook, it’s not going to take over Facebook or compete with it in any way because Facebook and what we’ve already seen is all of the social networks are now looking at creating audio rooms. So they’re all going to offer the same thing. Clubhouse will have its place and there is some potential. And if you go on there and you can find some of your target prospects are utilising it, then absolutely go in, listen in a room with them or try and get on stage that you’re seen as a thought leader in front of them. There may be some potential. I think it’s small. And I do think it will be more B2C than B2B.
Clubhouse Versus Podcasts · [43:35]
Will Barron:
So I think Clubhouse is going up against podcasts. I think podcasts are, if I want to consume one topic by two specific speakers or how many people are engaging, then very good, but I think from an entertainment standpoint, how our brains are wired, it’s going to be more addictive to go, “Okay, I’ll try this room.” And you just started to work where you would listen to a podcast. You’re in Clubhouse and it’s just a background noise. “Oh, these guys boring. I’ll go to this one, I’ll go to this one,” because you get that scroll effect, which you don’t get, and the feed effect that you don’t get on podcasts. Podcasts, you have to be very… this is why advertising a podcast is so effective because people are so deliberate when they tune into them. It’s very unlikely you just stumbled upon a podcast. You’ve chosen to listen to that specific episode of that specific show.
Will Barron:
But I think Clubhouse, I think they’re going to go up against podcasts in that… It’s basically a podcast. It’s people talking, it’s people having a conversation. It might even be interviews. We could literally be on Clubhouse right now. I’ll just have to take a feed out of the mixer and plug it into my phone. And there’d be perhaps only my icon speaking, but it would be our conversation going back and forth. So I think Clubhouse are going against podcasts in that they’re going to get this addictive nature of channel flipping of, “This is interesting. Okay. I’m not interested. This interesting, I’m not interested. Oh, what is this?” And you’re going to leverage this fear of missing out of, “Elon Musk might be back on the Clubhouse any moment.” And I don’t know, “Warren Buffett is giving his best investing advice right now this second. If you don’t tune in this second, you’re going to miss it.”
Will Barron:
Whereas podcasts, you can go, “I’ll tune into it next week.” And then of course we all forget about it and we never do. So I feel like that’s the angle Clubhouse is going at. And again, I agree with what you’re saying here, Daniel of, you need to be… For B2B salespeople, it’s different if you are a true thought leader and you’ve got 100,000 like yourself and thousands of followers on a platform. If you’re a mere individual, B2B sales person like myself with no large audience on a platform like Clubhouse, then you need to piggyback on other people. And that for me is something you could do for a little bit of time, but I hate asking for permission. I’d rather put in the hustle and build it myself and it seem difficult to build on the platform.
Daniel Disney:
Yeah, it’s a good point. But there is definitely an early adopter’s opportunity on Clubhouse right now. And I’ve seen some of the best Clubhouse users at the moment. They’re growing audiences of 50,000, a 100,000. The biggest one I see, are 200 odd thousand followers already, which when you compare to the size of the audiences is pretty impressive. So yes, there is an opportunity now, before it goes Live and goes public to start and that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m not saying I see huge potential in it, but why wouldn’t I want to have a presence while it is in that early stage. So if you are looking at growing your brand or looking at a longterm strategy around your personal brand, then it probably is looking at Clubhouse and utilising it because it’s an opportunity that you don’t have any more with Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, et cetera. We’re further down the line with those ones. So jump on it while you can.
Should Salespeople Build Personal Brands on Multiple Social Sites or Should They Focus on the One Platform They Think They Can Have the Most Influence On? · [45:50]
Will Barron:
And we’ll wrap up with this. And this is a conversation in its own right, Daniel. Is it more effective to spread ourselves thin and go across multiple platforms and spend… rather than doing seven pieces of content a week on LinkedIn, do one piece of content a day on all these different platforms. And obviously that’s going to be more stress. It’s more things to manage. We talked about in a previous episode about automation on LinkedIn to manage and schedule content ahead of time. Take SOC over platforms that are newer, like Clubhouse don’t have the… Clubhouse’s Lives, it doesn’t have the ability to do that. Should we spread ourselves thin or, I feel this is a loaded question, or should we really focus on the one platform that we think we’ve got out the most chance of success in?
“You might be able to go on Clubhouse and grow a big audience, but if it’s not converting any business for you, then there’s going to be a lot of time, but no return where you could be spending a fraction of that time on LinkedIn, but actually generating business. So go where the money is, test it. But when I say test it, test it properly. Don’t just go into LinkedIn, write a post, get two likes, and then think it doesn’t work. You need to do these things properly. S” – Daniel Disney · [46:40]
Daniel Disney:
Yeah. Well, focus on the platform, not that you just think you’re going to get the most success in, but hopefully after you test it, you do get the most success in. So where the majority of your prospects and customers are, where the majority of your industry, where you can convert better. Yes. You might be able to go on Clubhouse and grow a big audience, but if it’s not converting any business for you, then there’s going to be a lot of time, but no return where you could be spending a fraction of that time on LinkedIn, but actually generating business. So go where the money is, test it.
Daniel Disney:
But when I say test it, test it properly. Don’t just go into LinkedIn, write a post, get two likes, and then think it doesn’t work. You need to do these things properly. Same as going to Clubhouse, I’ve just joined Clubhouse. Only get 10 followers in a couple of weeks and then feel disheartened. You need to put a right amount of testing into it, but yeah, go where the business is. And don’t just look for those vanity metrics. Don’t look for that ego stroke of likes and followers and look for genuine conversions.
Will Barron:
I totally agree. Appreciate that. And I’ll add one final layer that unlike a B2B sale, this is not a zero sum game in that B2B sales you win, or your competitors lose, or your competitor wins, you lose and you’ve invested tonnes of time into the deal and you get nothing out of the back of it. Maybe some relationships that can be leveraged later on, but you don’t get the cashflow. Social media building thought leadership, building your personal brand. You could like Daniel’s content, you can like my content. You can like our combined content. There’s plenty of attention to go around. So don’t feel that just because Daniel has 70,000 followers on LinkedIn, and we mentioned Morgan with a 100,000 followers and I’ve got a mere seven or 8,000 or whatever it is on LinkedIn, don’t feel like you can’t drive attention and build a thought leadership in those spaces. It’s not a zero sum game. You can.
Will Barron:
People will buy products or services because they want to buy it from you. There’s plenty of sales training out there. If you like Daniel and his approach to all this, you’re going to buy Daniel’s trading and it might be Daniel’s training is great. And there might be another organisation that has great training as well, but you’re going to choose Daniel. Same with me, if you like me and the content [inaudible 00:48:26] Salesman.org, you’re going to choose our training when it’s probably somewhat comparable, even though the marketing will tell you otherwise, and we’ll tell you that this is the best and unique in all this, there’s probably other content and other training content that’s similar to ours as well, but you’ll choose me because you like this.
“As long as you can come up with and be congruent and have that unique voice, people will tune into you even when you’re getting started.” – Will Barron · [48:40]
Will Barron:
Same with your audience. They will consume multiple people, multiple markets, multiple levels and styles of content. And so as long as you can come up with and be congruent and have that unique voice, people will tune into you even when you’re getting started, it seems like you’ve probably not got too much to say, if you’re documenting your journey at the very minimum, you could have followers eventually. And Daniel, before we wrap up, anything else to tackle on top of that or we ready to rock and roll?
Parting Thoughts · [49:04]
Daniel Disney:
I think we’ve covered it well, Will. I think our closing thoughts will be go and look at where your prospects and customers are. Look at how they’re using these platforms and then spend your time appropriately with each of them. But as we’ve highlighted today, there are a lot of social media networks, it’s the same as sales. You’ve got the phone, email, text, video, with social media, there are different platforms, different ways to use them, go and explore, go and test, go and see what works and then put your time into it.
Will Barron:
I love it. Well, that was Daniel Disney, the king of social sells. My name is Will Barron. I’m the founder of Salesmen.org. This is the Social Selling Show. And we’ll speak to you again on next week’s episode.
Daniel Disney:
See you next time.
