How to Succeed With Social Selling
Selling your products or services on social media, or social selling for short, has increasingly become an effective way to make sales over the past few years. As more and more people spend more and more time surfing their social networks, the potential to sell to these people grows. When you approach this way of making sales, it is important to remember that becoming successful is a gradual process, just like every other method of doing so.
In order to get started you must first work to establish a social network made up of those who you consider to be your target market. You must then strive to build positive relationships with your followers. This will not only help to gain sales from them directly but also to increase the chance of referrals and recommendations. It is likely that as a business owner you will already have an offline network of present and potential customers. Do not shy away from connecting with these people online.
It is best to stick to just one or two platforms if you are managing the social sales process yourself. You should always learn to walk before you start running and mastering one platform at a time will help you to avoid failure. If you are already familiar with a particular network then perhaps that is the best place for you to start. You should also consider if this is a platform that your target audience are likely to spend moderate amounts of time on.
When you begin promoting your products or services on the social media channel of your choice, it is important to be slow and steady. Do not bombard your followers with a large amount of information. If you do they may quickly decide to unfollow you and your efforts will be for nothing. Do your research to best understand what kind of content is going to be of the most value to your target audience and then schedule posts accordingly. Every platform is different in this respect. For example, if you are using Facebook then one post a day should generally be your maximum amount. Whereas if you are using Twitter, you can send between five and ten short updates every day without running the risk of annoying your followers.
Once you get going with your strategy to use social media for sales, it is important not to lose momentum. Having a neglected social media presence can often be worse for your brand than having none at all! If you find that you do not have the time to maintain your efforts then outsourcing your social media management to a professional agency, such as Web3 Consulting, could be the best solution for you.
By Alix Jones
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