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4 Tips for Social Selling Success
Hands up if you’ve recently winced at your smart phone’s Weekly Screen Time notification? Now more than ever, we’re all spending more time stuck to our devices. Well, why wouldn’t we? Social media opens up a whole new world that’s accessible through our fingertips. Whether it’s a click, swipe or purchase, there’s not much we can’t do from our phones.
So why don’t we give our business pages the same consideration? Social selling is fast becoming the modern day prospecting. Traditional strategies of cold calling and networking are waning, with the Harvard Business Review reporting that 90% of decision-makers never respond to cold calls, while 76% are open to having a conversation on social media.
With margins that high, start using these tips across your professional social media platforms to leverage relationships with potential customers.
1. Tidy up your profile
Before you can even try to start selling, make sure your profiles are up to scratch. Ensure you have consistency across all your platforms and keep your basic information clear. You don’t want to leave any holes in your details that will leave a potential customer with questions.
Have a short, succinct summary of yourself/ your company that is tailored towards your prospects. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a hundred times, your customers don’t care that much about you personally. What they do care about is what you can do for them. Gear your profiles around the problems they might face and how you and your company can offer the solution.
2. Create good content
Not to state the obvious, but this is a big one. I mean, sharing the same content across various platforms counts as social selling, right? Wrong. With all the creative content out there these days, it’s not enough to blind-share the same post over and over.
Creating good content starts with knowing your audience. Too often, marketing sounds so robotic. Think about how your customers talk in real life. It’s highly unlikely that they sit down at night wondering where they can find a ground-breaking, world-shaking AI tool for website tracking (even though at CANDDi, we have actually made one). If you want to engage, find their level, then work your content around that.
3. Branding
If you want to stand out from the masses, you need to establish your own brand. Try not to focus too much on what sounds right and trust your intuition. Prospects need to know what value they’re going to get from you, if you’re worth taking a risk on.
Share your own insights, knowledge and experience through tailored opinion pieces as well as hints and tips. It’s worth sticking to an 80:20 rule - 80% engaging and helpful stories, with 20% company information.
If you want to know which of your marketing efforts are working best, let CANDDi help you compare ROI across different channels so you can channel your focus into the right platform.
4. Making connections
Social media is a two-way street! Make a conscious effort to get your company’s name out there by making relevant and informed connections. Why not start by adding a number of new connections each month based on your upcoming content plans. You can’t expect people to reach out to you and your company if you’re not prepared to reach out to them.
Remember engagement is important too. Social media is full of crazy algorithms designed for popular posts. The more likes, comments and shares, the more likely it is to stay at the top of each feed. That doesn’t mean you have to be the one posting though, get your name into the likes and comments. Start discussions with the people you follow. No publicity is bad publicity, you don’t need to be a Kardashian to work that one out!
