Social selling is now part of the overall sales process. In fact, social selling is now considered the best part of the sales process by many. This is because it drives qualified traffic back to your website through social media marketing. For those who have not yet started social selling on their websites, you might be wondering what exactly social selling entails. This article will help to demystify social selling for the sake of those who are still in the dark.
First, let’s make sure that we are all on the same page with this concept before we go any further. Social selling is really the process of building relationships through the sales process as a part of your online marketing strategy. You need to be able to reach out to your target market in a way that makes them feel like they are important. Today, this often happens through social networking platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest, but is possible both online and offline.
One method that many people use when they want to reach out to others for social selling is by using LinkedIn. LinkedIn has become extremely popular for a reason, it is a very powerful tool that allows you to build valuable professional relationships that can be leveraged to sell your products or services. Once you have established yourself with LinkedIn, you can then move on to other social marketing venues, such as Twitter and YouTube.
The reason that these other social media venues are important in social selling is because they allow you to engage with prospects who may not be online when you are. This gives you an edge over your competitors because many people are under the assumption that just because you do not post on your own social media pages that you do not care about your brand. This is far from the truth.
By building relationships with those people who are linked to your website or blog through social media channels, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, you are establishing a connection with them. You can then share thoughts, ideas, news, and other items relevant to your business on a regular basis through email, text message, and even direct messages. Many people do not take the time to really engage with prospects on LinkedIn, but doing so is one of the best ways to create a relationship with these prospects and even convince them to buy your product. For example, if you are promoting a health and fitness product, you can connect with a prospect through LinkedIn and suggest that they check out our Facebook page to find out more information about what we are offering. When you do this through Hootsuite, you are creating a series of highly targeted links from which prospects can click on to learn more about the services and products that you are offering.
The key to successful social selling is making sure that the connections you build are trustworthy and reliable. In addition to engaging with your connections through LinkedIn and other social sites, you also need to engage with those people when they are casually conversing online. You can do this through regular text messages, direct messages, and conversations on chat or instant messaging services. All of these communication formats will help you to build strong relationships with those people who are potentially interested in your products and services.