
Don’t underestimate the ability of the social elevator pitch
Folks spend hours rehearsing their elevator pitch. Getting it proper means delivering a strong worth proposition within the time it takes to journey between flooring – 30 seconds to 2 minutes. The aim is to attach and proceed the dialog after the doorways slide shut.
If you concentrate on it, your social media bios are the elevator pitch of the digital age. You could have ten to thirty seconds – and 160 characters – to persuade somebody to have interaction with you.


Are you investing time in your social media profiles? If you happen to’re not, you ought to be.
To assist maximize your “elevator time”, I’m going to share greatest practices, reveal the perception you’ll be able to acquire out of your rivals’ descriptions and in an actual world software of what we cowl I’ll make a set of suggestions for a way Silverpop can enhance their Twitter, FaceBook and Google+ social bios.
In The Elevator With Marketo
Think about you’ve come throughout a terrific tweet on advertising and marketing automation and go to the corporate’s twitter web page to study extra – the equal of leaping on the elevator and listening to their pitch. You’re going to spend 20 seconds, then resolve whether or not to comply with them. In that state of affairs, who will you discover extra compelling Ad2action or Marketo?


The vast majority of you’ll decide to comply with Marketo. Their digital elevator pitch is visually fascinating and so they’ve used their 160 characters to inform you the advantages and breadth of what they do.
Perfecting Your Social Media Profile Bios
Think about the gross sales rep pacing his workplace rehearsing his elevator pitch, prepping for the second he finds himself face-to-face with the CEO of his key goal. That’s you perfecting your social media bio. It takes work to get it proper.
Fast Ideas:
- Share your worth proposition. Keep in mind, you’re attempting to persuade prospects and influencers to have interaction with you – comply with, circle, like and remark in your social media exercise. Your bio ought to inform them what your organization does and what advantages you ship.
- Maintain search engine optimisation in thoughts. A lot of the major search engines are utilizing social media bios of their algorithms. Craft your bios to leverage key phrases whereas nonetheless providing prospects a compelling motive to have interaction.
- Use CTAs. Contemplate including a name to motion to your bio. Additional interact your viewers with the provide of a free trial, free style, free obtain, and many others.
- Embody Hyperlinks and Contemplate Touchdown Pages. You’ll want to embrace a hyperlink in your bios and you must take into account sending them to a landing page with focused messaging as an alternative of your homepage. Learn extra about this idea from ConversionXL.
- Be Visible. The visible richness of social media has elevated dramatically—from the huge hero picture on Google+ to the brand new twitter profile pages. Study concerning the new visible specs on this submit from LunaMetrics.
- Maximize Your Actual Property. It’s important each phrase in your bio works laborious. Widespread errors embrace informing guests that they’ve reached “The Official channel of [company name]” and figuring out the crew of contributors.
Sadly for Chrysler, their Twitter bio is a superb illustration of each the above errors.


Fast Reference
Retaining monitor of greatest practices and specs generally is a problem. All of the channels have made adjustments in final 12 months. I’ve captured the fundamentals within the reference software under.
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Stand Out From The Crowd.
Each three months you must evaluate your social bios to make sure they’re in keeping with your present worth proposition. On the similar time, check out your rivals’ social media “elevator pitch” and decide if it’s good to counter their positioning.
You should utilize a spreadsheet, or a side-by-side comparability just like the one under from, Rival IQ. Try the Fb quick descriptions from firms within the advertising and marketing automation house.
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Rapidly you get a way of every firm’s worth proposition. For instance, Eloqua is claiming acceleration of income development, Hubspot is selling an “multi functional” resolution and extra leads and Pardo is targeted on “no trouble” advertising and marketing automation.
Historical past Is Telling
If you happen to monitor adjustments to your competitor’s social bios, you’ll have the ability to extract insights about how the market is evolving and inform your personal advertising and marketing technique. Right here’s a have a look at how the advertising and marketing automation gamers modified their Twitter positioning over six months.


9 months in the past, Marketo deletes positioning for B2B entrepreneurs and expands the breadth of their providing.


8 months in the past, Eloqua expands their bio to incorporate “fashionable advertising and marketing methods.” Doubtless not a key phrase addition, however a solution to Marketo’s change.


7 months in the past, Pardot provides acquisition messaging, consists of extra advantages and particularly calls out SMBs.


3 months in the past , Pardot expands their market, deleting the earlier deal with B2B and SMBs. Additionally revise their advantages.
Primarily based on this sequence of bio adjustments, I’d posit that Marketo kicked off a positioning shift that rippled via the market.
Consistency Counts.
The people you attain on social media don’t restrict themselves to only one channel. They’re more likely to interact with you on Twitter and Fb, or Linked In and Twitter or possibly on three or 4 channels without delay. Once you’re optimizing one social media bio, it’s essential to optimize all of them, reinforcing each key messages and key phrases.
Persevering with to take a look at the advertising and marketing automation panorama, I’ve created a side-by-side comparability of Twitter, FaceBook and Google+ bios. Have a look and see who will get excessive marks.
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Whereas all the businesses have room for enchancment, I’m giving HubSpot the best grade for consistency and use of greatest practices. Marketo goes too far by having equivalent bios throughout all channels and fails to make use of hyperlinks or calls to motion. Add to Marketo’s downfall the failure to maximise the size of their bios, and we discover Silverpop on the backside of the category.
Placing Studying Into Observe.
Let’s put our studying to work and counsel methods for Silverpop to enhance their social media bios.
Under are the corporate’s present descriptions:


Finest Practices Observations
- Share Your Worth Proposition. Silverpop constantly describes what they do, however exterior of the long-form Linked In description, fails to clarify the advantages they ship. This makes their bios much less compelling to the reader.
- Maximize Your Actual Property. Silverpop can lengthen their bios to be extra participating. They’ve ~50 extra characters accessible on Twitter alone.
- Embody Hyperlinks. Including a hyperlink to SilverPop’s Fb description just isn’t solely a greatest observe, it could carry them in keeping with what their rivals are doing. They’d obtain bonus factors for steering site visitors to a touchdown web page with extra focused messaging.
- Aggressive Positioning. Studying via the aggressive bios reveals that “unifying” channels might not differentiate Silverpop. HubSpot’s “multi functional” positioning is nearly equivalent.
Suggestions
A fast survey of Silverpop’s web site reveals components of their worth proposition that might higher differentiate them of their social bios, together with:
- “We all know entrepreneurs as a result of we’re entrepreneurs.”
- They provide a “return on relationship” by leveraging distinctive buyer conduct to ship outcomes
- They empower entrepreneurs to create and handle refined campaigns that drive income, construct model loyalty and improve ROI.
- They’re trusted by greater than 5,000 manufacturers worldwide.
Clearly the advertising and marketing crew at Silverpop has a greater understanding of their worth proposition than I ever will – however to encourage them to guage their social media bios, I’ve drafted the next descriptions for consideration.
Advertising automation constructed by entrepreneurs. Leverage buyer conduct throughout electronic mail, cellular and social to extend income & loyalty. Be part of us. www.silverpop.com (160 characters) | |
Fb | Advertising automation constructed by entrepreneurs, trusted by over 5,000 manufacturers. Leverage buyer conduct throughout electronic mail, cellular and social to extend income, loyalty & ROI. Discover your Return on Relationship. www.silverpop.com/FB (220 characters – excellent for 3 favourite tiles) |
Google+ | Leverage buyer conduct throughout channels to extend income and loyalty. (10 phrases) |
Though these suggestions leverage greatest practices, they might not precisely talk Silverpop’s distinctive worth proposition. My level is that a fast evaluate of your social bios, compared to the market, is all it’s good to encourage positioning adjustments that lead to higher differentiation and a terrific digital elevator pitch.
Key Takeaways
- Because the elevator pitch of the digital age social bios are important expressions of your worth proposition and must be reviewed and optimized each 3 months
- Keep updated on greatest practices and visible specs so your bios are working laborious for you
- Consider the your rivals bios (and people of firms you aspire to be like) for positioning perception and inspiration
- Observe adjustments in positioning to determine delicate shifts that sign market motion
- Leverage advertising and marketing intelligence instruments like Rival IQ to make monitoring adjustments and evaluating positioning straightforward (sure this can be a shameless plug) or use your intern and a spreadsheet in the event that they don’t thoughts tedious however extremely worthwhile work :-).