{"id":4731,"date":"2018-04-26T15:40:20","date_gmt":"2018-04-26T14:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodpecker.co\/blog\/?p=4731"},"modified":"2025-01-21T10:26:07","modified_gmt":"2025-01-21T09:26:07","slug":"social-media-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodpecker.co\/blog\/social-media-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Which Social Media Channels Can Boost Email Outreach and How?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A while back I wrote a blog\u00a0post about\u00a0taking care of the way\u00a0you present your brand online<\/a>\u00a0before you\u00a0start an email outreach campaign<\/a>. In this one, I wanted to\u00a0build on that idea. I prepared a little guide for you on strengthening your brand by working hard on your social media profiles.<\/p>\n

Why social media\u00a0can boost email outreach?<\/h2>\n

As I said in the previous blog post, having a well-defined social media presence will strengthen your cold email<\/span> outreach efforts. Prospects are sure to google you if they find your cold email<\/span> interesting. They will check out your website for sure.<\/p>\n

But did you know that YouTube is\u00a0the second largest search engine<\/a>? What about Facebook? Have you ever used it to find a business<\/span>? I can say I did. Instagram, on the other hand, seems to be more in a B2C realm. Nonetheless, consumers are influenced by the stuff they find there too. What about Quora? The Quora questions rank very well in Google, so it’s worth to give it a shot.<\/p>\n

Conversely, a lousy\u00a0social media strategy can\u00a0hurt your cold email<\/span> campaign. It’s not enough to have a top-notch\u00a0cold email template<\/a>, highly personalized mail\u00a0merge fields<\/a>\u00a0and very precise\u00a0targeting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You need to tend to your online presence in order to gather the response rate you hope for. According to Brian Dean’s research, linking to social media in the signature<\/a> can result in a better response rate.<\/p>\n

Email<\/span> is an uber-personal, 1-to-1 communication channel. I think this is part of why many write off cold emails<\/span> as spam and refuse to try that lead generation technique. Email<\/span> feels intrusive. A leaflet-like cold email<\/span> is particularly annoying. That’s why when prospects read something that piques their interest, they want to get to know the sender to check how they found their email<\/span> address.<\/p>\n

What platforms should you be on?<\/h2>\n

Now, I’ll go from platform to platform and try to explain how to make a strong impression there. Let’s start with Twitter.<\/p>\n

Twitter<\/h3>\n

Twitter is a good place to start doing social media, especially when you’re targeting US businesses. Set up a profile, upload a company logo as a profile photo and write a quick note about your business<\/span>. You can use hashtags to describe your tool. Upload a header image.<\/p>\n

Previously we had a photo of the whole team in the header. We wanted to show a human side of our startup. Currently, we’re working on unifying all the headers in our social media channels. That’s why we uploaded a black graphic with a simple call to action “Follow to get cold emailing<\/span> know-how.” We have an almost identical header on our Facebook profile.<\/p>\n

Every one of our team members has a Twitter profile. Some are more active like\u00a0Kamila<\/a>, our office manager, some\u00a0has recently joined the Twitter tribe, for example, our Customer Support new hires.<\/p>\n

What\u00a0can I post on Twitter?<\/h4>\n

We use Twitter for spreading our content, mentions, and of course, talking with our customers. We also use it to share articles we found some value in. We focus on articles about cold emailing<\/span>, customer success, lead generation, and SaaS companies.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0use two tools to manage\u00a0Woodpecker Twitter account.<\/p>\n

The first one is\u00a0Buffer<\/a>. I schedule tweets via Buffer and monitor\u00a0the performance of those tweets. When I don’t have time to post something on our account, I do it a day or two days before on Buffer.<\/p>\n

The other app we’re still trying out. It’s\u00a0Quuu<\/a>, a tool that chooses articles from\u00a0its database and posts it on your Twitter page using your Buffer account. When you’re on a free plan, the tool posts two articles per day. You just pick general topics you want the articles to be about. And that’s all. As I\u00a0prefer to have control over Woodpecker Twitter account, I always review the articles before they get posted. But they go out automatically, so you don’t have to do that. Quuu is a great time saver.<\/p>\n

Another feature that Quuu has is promoting your content. It’s a premium plan feature. You can upload your article\u00a0to Quuu and it will distribute your content to Twitter accounts. We’re not using it at Woodpecker<\/span>, but a few well-known websites distribute their content that way.<\/p>\n

Tweet about the topics that are related to your business<\/span> and your company. If you’re a person who sends cold emails<\/span> at your company, make sure your private Twitter is well-taken care of too.<\/p>\n

Facebook<\/h3>\n

Woodpecker\u00a0set up an official\u00a0fan page a few months ago. We still fresh and don’t have many likes. There still works to be done in that department. Nevertheless, we have many positive reviews\u00a0to the number of likes ratio. So that at least boosts social proof for us.<\/p>\n

How can\u00a0I polish my Facebook fan page?<\/h4>\n

You can start by updating your about page, adding a profile image and the header one, nothing new here. However, when it comes to Facebook, you can add additional tabs to the left-hand menu. You can add your Instagram account, MailChimp newsletter signup form, and some more things.<\/p>\n

What I like best about fan page is the article “About the company” that appears on the right-hand side, next to the number of likes you get. It’s the spot where you can write a personal note about your team and what you deal with. I used it to tell a Woodpecker story, using Cathy’s old blog post. Some note on how everything started, how we came up with the name and logo. I plan on switching the illustration into a team photo.<\/p>\n

We also have a private group that’s linked to our main fan page, so that anyone could find it easily. Some companies have private customers group where customers share their experience. It’s a good strategy to add to the way you do marketing. Especially now, when fan pages lost their reach.<\/p>\n

I use our fan page to spread our cold emailing<\/span> intelligence. I think that no matter what you post there, your profile should look full and active. You can see\u00a0Woodpecker profile<\/a>\u00a0here.<\/p>\n

YouTube<\/h3>\n

That’s a new\u00a0addition to Woodpecker social media strategy too. We don’t have many subscribers, nor do we have a lot of videos uploaded.\u00a0Just one of the first webinars we did, customer reviews, and app intro.<\/p>\n

But what I did is I searched through YouTube to find interviews with our CEO, Matt, and customer reviews we got and created a couple of playlists. So now we have 5 playlists I keep an eye on. You can see them\u00a0here<\/a>. Browse YouTube, maybe some of your customers reviewed your service or mentioned that they use you. As I said before in this post, YouTube is the second largest search engine.<\/p>\n

A great strategy would be to produce some vlogs as\u00a0Drift<\/a>\u00a0does. That’s actually an example of a well-managed YouTube channel. They have different vlog segments divided into different topics and hosted by different employees.\u00a0Brand24<\/a>\u00a0also has a well-polished YouTube channel. Their CEO has his own YouTube video blog too. Think how you can implement their strategy at your company. The videos don’t need to be long, nor amazing quality, to be effective.<\/p>\n

Quora<\/h3>\n

That social media channel is the one which sparked the idea to write this blog post. I spend a lot of time on Quora. It’s a social media platform that has been gaining ground for some time now. It comes at a cost though. In its nascent stage, it was a community of people who loved pouring their heart and soul into answering questions. The number of questions skyrocketed.<\/p>\n

There are so many questions that it’s hard to focus and spend some time on giving in-depth answers. Yet, a thoughtful answer is what is the most valued on Quora. It will get more attention than a slobby pack of answers. It will also be upvoted by the Quora users the most and placed at the top of the page. That’s why it’s worth to put some time when answering a Quora question.<\/p>\n

How do I start with Quora?<\/h4>\n

Set up an account on Quora, write a short profile description. Follow topics which you can share your expertise in and start answering questions to the best of your abilities.<\/p>\n

Write your Quora answers the same way you\u2019d written a blog post. Give it a logical structure. Start with a short introduction and cover around three points. There are some editing hacks you may\u00a0use to make your posts nicer looking. Your paragraphs should be short and coherent.<\/p>\n

You can link to your website or blog. But don\u2019t treat Quora as a link amalgamator. Nobody in the community will click on the self-promotional link. The link has to\u00a0fit the context.<\/p>\n

Don’t post answers with external links only. That has never worked well. There are cases in which an aggressive link posting resulted in the user being banned.<\/p>\n

If you want to use Quora to target the people on there,\u00a0read this blog post:<\/p>\n

How We Found Our Prospects on Quora: Vol. 1 >><\/a><\/p>\n

Podcasting<\/h3>\n

Although podcasting is not a social media channel, it’s worth mentioning here. Podcasting is a great way to boost your image online. And podcasts,\u00a0in general, are mushrooming throughout the web. Loads of people prefer to listen to a piece of content rather than spend time on reading it. They can then multitask.<\/p>\n

Podcasting can reinforce your authenticity, after all, your prospects can hear your very own voice when they’re listening to the podcast you produce. It’s easier to build rapport with the prospective customers through your voice than written content.<\/p>\n

Some great podcasts are\u00a0The Startup Chat<\/a>,\u00a0Masters of Scale<\/a>, and\u00a0SaaStr<\/a>. With today’s technology, you don’t need a lot to produce a great quality podcast. You don’t even need a website. Record it, upload it on Soundcloud or even on YouTube and you’re all set.<\/p>\n

Summing up<\/h2>\n

I wrote this blog post to extrapolate on the points from the other blog post on\u00a0auditing your brand online presence<\/a>\u00a0before doing an outbound email campaign.\u00a0Prospects are bound to type your brand and you into Google and what they find should put you in a good light.\u00a0You should appear to be a\u00a0genuine and reliable business professional.<\/p>\n

If you mismanage your social profiles or neglect them, it may unnecessarily sabotage your cold email campaign. No matter how hard you worked on your col email template.<\/p>\n

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