Social media selling is easy but a tactical way of targeting audience based on their demographics through the most relevant social media channel at a particular time.
Social selling generally equates to selling on social media. The concept involves salespeople, who make use of social media to find and engage with new prospects. Social selling is a crucial tool that can show your audience that your company is active and easily approachable.
By using social media, social selling allows salespeople to identify their customers, connect with them and encourage them to make a purchase.
The concept of social media selling can be broken down into four main approaches:
• Cultivating brand awareness
• Building strong relationships with the customers
• Creating personalized interactions
• Focusing on prospects
As per recent social selling statistics, 65 % of salespeople using social selling are able to fill their pipeline, compared to 47% of salespeople who do not.
LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are no doubt the important platforms but the major part involves the value-added content with the intended audience.
How to Get Started with Social Media Selling
Choose the right network
Choosing the most relevant social network is the crucial aspect. Salespeople need to identify the platform that matches their potential customers. Among Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook, you need to understand which social media sites are best for your brand or business.
The only thing you need to know about social media sites is where your potential customer is actually spending time.
If your focus is on teenagers, then you should focus on Facebook and Instagram. And, if you want to appeal to businesses and decision makers, then use LinkedIn or Twitter.
Share relevant content
There is no doubt that social selling and content go hand in hand. Compelling and valuable content is the heart of successful social selling. The strategic content will allow you to successfully address all of the milestones of your marketing strategy. Today’s modern buyers need informative content rather than promotional content. So it is important to include useful information for their businesses. Adding the right content to your social selling strategy is a necessity.
The right content has the power to produce better results for your business than you can imagine.
Add quality people to your network
A smart network can give you the right exposure and access to important people. It will help you attract new prospects, generate referrals, uncover media and keep you in front of existing clients. It is the responsibility of salespeople to identify people to start conversations with. There are so many ways to identify your target audience on a social network. Know what your customers like, their subscriptions, what they share and view on a daily basis.
Start building your network with your targeted audience by inviting them to like and share your pages. Make good use of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+ to start the process.
Connect with potential customers on LinkedIn
Social selling is all about maintaining and offering value to the relationships you already have. With 600 million users, LinkedIn is a great platform that can provide you with numerous opportunities for networking, referrals etc.
A smart LinkedIn network does not just occur naturally. Begin the process with sending invitation requests to existing contacts. LinkedIn allows you to import email contacts, so initiate by connecting with people you already trust.
Another way to expand your network is through a LinkedIn group, which is a great source for finding new connections.
Respond to Conversations
Engaging with your customers is a great way to build trust and long-term loyalty. In order to add value, try implementing a social listening strategy and start responding to what people are saying about your products.
Contributing to conversations means you are adding value to a prospects network and they are much more likely to recommend your products and services.
So keep up the conversation flow!
Employ Social Listening
Another important part of the social media selling strategy is social listening. The concept of social listening is crucial as it provides insights into how you are perceived by potential customers and current clients. The social listening tool is used to frequently monitor and track discussions about the company, competitors, industry buzzwords and potential prospects. It shows that you are considering the needs of clients, not focusing solely to sell a product or service.
By listening to your online connections, you will learn about what your customers actually need. It will make you put in the right effort to satisfy those needs.
Social selling is all about building strong relationships to provide value to prospects and nurture leads. And to succeed on social media selling, you need to work strategically .The above are some of the best tips that every selling rep should follow in order to be successful on social media.
