According to Wikipedia “Social selling is the process of developing relationships as part of the sales process.” Everyone has their own definition of social selling or, in actuality, how they integrate social selling as part of the social media strategy.
Social Selling in a Digital World
For me, social selling isn’t just about promoting products or services; it’s about building relationships with clients and future clients in a digital world.
When social media sites, such as Facebook, were first introduced more than a decade ago, a few businesses made use of them, but plenty of others stayed away. Nowadays, however, thriving businesses know that they have to utilize hot social media sites and social selling techniques in order to survive.
Growing the Social Network
You might feel like your social selling techniques are working pretty well, but I can’t emphasize this enough, every day you should be networking and making connections with others. Whether you are adding new friends to your Facebook account, finding followers for your Twitter account or connecting with other businesses via LinkedIn, you need to be adding to your network daily.
Social media moves fast and getting lazy and content is the kiss of death for your business. It’s easy to get off track but you can’t afford to become complacent.
Replace Social Selling with Social Caring
Customers are into supporting businesses that are involved with a worthy cause and cares about the community around them.
It’s fairly easy to link your business to an important cause via your social media account or like green businesses on Facebook, but tweeting about your business’s latest volunteer activities really demonstrates your organization’s willingness to go the extra mile.
Create Social Content Instead of Selling Content
People have short attention spans and if your content doesn’t “grab” them immediately, you’re likely to get un-followed or un-friended. Don’t create long, boring posts or heavy-handed marketing ploys on your social media.
Find relevant and entertaining news stories to share and include pictures, plus other “fun” things in your post to grab and keep the attention of your audience.
Monitor Your Reputation
One of the downsides of social media is that people can post just about anything they want, at any time, which includes negative comments on your pages and review sites.
In many cases, what they post will be visible to anyone who happens across your account. To keep social media disasters at bay, constantly monitor your accounts and address negative comments quickly and effectively.
There’s no doubt about it: social selling is here to stay. Jump on board, or be left behind. You can create your own definition of social selling and build out from there. If you need more help with social media for small business download our ebook.
Whether you are new to the game or a veteran in social selling, I’d love to hear how you are managing (and mastering!) all of your social media accounts.
