Social Selling Summarized in Three Key Aspects

By thought-horizon | Aug 27, 2019

Social media provides businesses with an unprecedented opportunity to connect and engage with buyers. While there are many social networks out there touting numerous tools to foster customer services, advertise your products and services, and promote your brand, it’s vital to understand that simply having a social media presence does not guarantee success. 

Social media is a crowded universe. It’s competitive, and it is critical for your business. After all, with most of your buyers and competitors out there, it’s not wise to miss out on it. And that’s typically how social selling provides 45% more sales opportunities, 51% higher chances of hitting the sales quota, and an edge that enables 78% social sellers to outsell peers who don’t use social media.

But, is it wise to jump on the bandwagon without having a thorough knowledge of it? Obviously not. 

Today, we are discussing the important elements of social selling and how they represent the essence of social selling. 

1. Network

It’s called Social selling for a reason. Can you imagine the social arena without a network which you can rely on? Certainly not. 

The digital age gives an all-new definition to networking wherein one social media profile serves as your virtual business card and a social network offers a layer of opportunities for you to harness. And isn’t that exactly what we are using the social platform for? 

Your social selling team needs to grow its online networks. But that’s not the only aspect to it. The key is to build a network that does not only generate leads but is also relevant to your business. Someone who is a beginner will gain no benefit from your chain of restaurants that’s popular for serving exotic seafood, no matter how good you are at it. 

Look for the profiles that align with your buyer persona and add value to your network. Once you figure that out, don’t rush to present a sales pitch in front of them. That is only going to land you as one of the salespeople they hate and eventually on their ‘block’ list. Add value to their profiles, demonstrate your expertise, and encourage them to engage with you. 

And don’t stop there – identify more prospects from their list, and find the people you can connect with. If you do not add new followers, you are doomed. Why? Because they can only generate so much web traffic from their current followers, but by increasing in size and quality, there are more opportunities to find interested prospects. 

Make it a priority to visit your competitors once in a while. Who are they following? Who is engaging with them? What do they like, and how can you offer them that value? Once you have everything in place, send them a personalized request to show them the value you have to provide to them EXCLUSIVELY. 

2. Engagements

Building a social network is not enough. Remember, social selling is more social and less selling. The best way to do this is by fostering engagements. Although the engagements don’t translate to sales, they have always been at the core of social media, helping one to understand the common metrics and evaluating social performance. While networking helps you build the foundation of social selling, engagements enable you to transform these profiles into meaningful relationships. 

There are two ways to foster social media engagements: you can either exhaust your audience with a series of posts announcing yourself so much to the chagrin of the passerby; or, you can set the table and let people know what you bring to it to address their challenges.

While the first one is the most commonly used, it is also an answer as to why only some social sellers succeed. It’s easier to use social media as a platform to blast your content out. However, if you use it strategically to engage your audience, you may be able to leverage it to increase leads, build a brand, and foster customer support. 

Watch for metrics such as likes, follows, shares, comments, retweets, and click-throughs. 

Share content often and analyze what resonates best with your audience. Make sure to keep it an equal mix of all elements. Find what message performs the best and constantly tweak the content to enhance its performance. If you do this, you will see more leads come from your site visitors and less ‘abandons’ after the first few seconds on your site.  

Don’t miss the regular social listening activity. Check what the audience wants to see and identify how you can align their expectations with your offerings. When ready, create a social copy that suits them best and share. Ask questions, propose solutions, create quizzes, promote surveys, and interact with your customers. That way, you will be able to stand out from the crowd and establish your brand credibility. 

3. Analytics

Analytics are integral to a promising social selling strategy. 

Building a social selling strategy without considering analytics will only land you in trouble. It is almost like trying to drive in the middle of a dark night without headlights on. Moreover, you may be unaware of the wealth of information that is behind your social media activity. 

All of the content you have ever shared or will be sharing in future, the interaction it generates from the followers, those comments you replied to, and other activities amass together to deliver extremely useful data. The unique information, in turn, proves useful as you refine your future strategies. 

Analytics offers a business a way to understand its audience, identify the best social network, create compelling content, understand the competitors, and last but not least, know how your social selling campaign is performing. 

Signing Off

Now that we are at the end of this informative write-up, it’s pretty clear – to build a network, add value so your consumers interact and keep tracking the results to be better. Simple, isn’t it? Well, not exactly, but if you follow the plan religiously, gradually but eventually, things will fall into place.