The Power of Social Selling: How to Use It to Your Advantage

In today’s digital landscape, social selling has emerged as a powerful strategy for businesses to connect with potential customers, build trust, and drive sales. Withbillions of people actively using social media platforms like LinkedIn, leveraging social selling techniques can help companiesincrease their reach, nurture leads, and boost revenue streams. Social selling goes beyond traditional sales tactics by utilizing the vast online ecosystem, including social networks, content creation, and sales technology tools.

Top-performing salespeople leverage social selling to engage with the right prospects at the right time, sharing valuable content and establishing credibility. This comprehensive guide delves into the intricacies of social selling, exploring its definition, best practices, benefits for B2B companies, measuring success, and comparing various platforms. It also highlights the pivotal role of integrating your customer relationship management (CRM) system with social selling efforts to maximize results.

What is social selling?

Social selling refers to the practice of leveraging social media networks to connect with potential customers, build relationships, and drive sales leads. As Julie Atherton aptly puts it, “social selling is about supercharging your personal profile, and building relationships that really last a long time, and are mutually beneficial to you and to the people that you’re trying to sell to.”

Definition and Scope

Social selling is an umbrella term that encompasses various strategies and techniques used by sales and marketing teams to engage with prospects through social media platforms. Its primary objectives are:

1. Making authentic connections with the right prospects
2. Establishing thought leadership by sharing valuable and timely content
3. Developing trust-based relationships with potential clients

While social selling revolves around using social media for engagement, the broader term “digital selling” encompasses the use of online technologies and sales tech tools like websites, chatbots, data analytics, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, automation, online presentations, and sales intelligence.

Approach and Benefits

Social selling is not just about adding new contacts to a sales list; it’s about forming meaningful social interactions and presenting your brand as a trusted source to solve a customer’s problem through your product or service. Rather than a hard-closing plan or one-and-done deal, social selling aligns more closely with lead generation – the process of forming and maintaining relationships with customers through every stage of the sales pipeline and sales funnel.

The data speaks volumes about the effectiveness of social selling:

• Social sellersleverage a combination of strategies and tools to learn targeted information about their customers’ pain points, enabling them to tailor their social media marketing efforts accordingly.
• This approach allows salespeople to authentically offer the right value to the right prospects at the right time.
• Many salespeople use social selling to help reach their quotas by getting prospects into the sales funnel and providing relevant information at the opportune moment to drive a purchase.

Ultimately, social selling empowers businesses toreach their sales targets by nurturing modern relationships through the power of social media.

Different ways to socially sell your products and services

Social selling involves leveraging various social media platforms to connect with potential customers, build relationships, and ultimately drive sales. Here are some of the main platforms and strategies to consider:

LinkedIn for Business-to-Business (B2B) Interactions

LinkedIn is a powerful B2B platform where professionals refine their personal brands to pitch themselves as employees or business partners. It features the LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a proprietary tool that helps target and engage with business customers.

Instagram for Visual Engagement

Instagram is a visually-driven platform, making it an excellent choice for social selling. To succeed, businesses need to create captivating photo and video content for their feeds and Stories, leveraging Instagram’s massive base of engaged users.

TikTok to Reach a Younger Audience

TikTok’s unique algorithm offers social sellers the opportunity to go viral quickly. Products can gain immense popularity on the platform, often selling out within days due to the rapid spread of viral trends.

Facebook for Discussion and Direct Sales

Facebook is a great channel for both discussing and selling products on social media. Nearlythree-quarters of Facebook users browse the site to discover new brands and products. Facebook Shops, the platform’s native e-commerce solution, allows businesses to showcase and sell products directly on Facebook.

Twitter for Customer Service and Social Listening

Twitter is an influential discussion forum, particularly for customer service. Social sellers can use Twitter to monitor brand mentions, respond to customer queries, and promptly address negative feedback. It’s also a valuable social listening tool for understanding customer conversations.

YouTube for Video Content and Promotion

While you can’t sell directly on YouTube, it’s an important promotional channel and outlet for connecting with shoppers through video content. Social sellers can leverage YouTube to inform and engage with their audience.

To effectively implement social selling, businesses should follow these steps:

1. Identify the platforms where their target audience is most active.
2. Optimize their social media profiles with relevant information.
3. Join industry-specific groups and forums to stay updated on trends.
4. Set up social listening alerts to monitor potential sales opportunities.
5. Share original, industry-specific content to build credibility and engagement.
6. Actively participate in relevant conversations and engage with prospects.
7. Leverage social proof, such as testimonials, to build trust with potential customers.
8. Aim for consistent posting and engagement on their chosen platforms.
9. Analyze social media metrics to refine their messaging and outreach strategies.
10. Offer to continue conversations offline after building a solid connection with prospects.

By implementing a well-rounded social selling strategy across multiple platforms, businesses can effectively connect with their target audience, nurture relationships, and ultimately drive more sales.

Social selling tips

1. Look your best

Your image is just as important in the digital world as it is in the real world. Your profile image is the first thing prospective clients will see, so make a good impression with a professional photo that strikes the right balance between authenticity, trustworthiness and friendliness.

The copy in your social network bio has to accomplish everything a greeting, handshake and elevator pitch would do in person. Write every word with your prospect in mind and write in the first person. Be clear about sharing your contact info, sharing multiple avenues if there’s room.

On LinkedIn, you have more real estate in your summary section to tell a story about who you are, why you do what you do and how you can help. Remember, LinkedIn is different from a resume. Use your headline not just for your title but for a short phrase explaining how you help your clients.

2. Build your credibility

Social networks can help you build your personal brand. With every Tweet, LinkedIn comment or Facebook post, you can grow your reputation and establish a solid foundation. It’s a record of your authenticity and a great place to demonstrate your understanding of your industry and potential clients.

Quality social selling isn’t about slipping into someone’s DMs in a ‘classy’ way. It’s about being recognized in a public way as the leaders within a certain space. People at companies like Chili Piper have built massive inbound interests in their products by humanizing their brands and developing affinity with relevant audiences on the individual level through employee accounts.

The easiest way to build trust online is by having public conversations that showcase your unique perspective on topics you care about.

3. Find your prospects

Pay attention: where do your potential clients seek more information about problems they may have? Is it a LinkedIn group? A weekly Twitter chat or Twitter Space? A private Facebook Group? Plant yourself there, listen to their conversations and get involved.

While LinkedIn is the place to turn for business connections, Twitter has a stronger search function and a lower barrier to entry. You can follow anyone you want, from a CEO to a celebrity, and they don’t have to accept your request as they do on LinkedIn or Facebook. They might even follow you back.

You can also use the Twitter Chat Schedule on Tweet Reports to discover upcoming and/or trending Twitter Chats. Look through conversations relevant to your industry, join in on the chat and start following the best prospects.

4. Monitor relevant conversations to find prospects

Using social listening for sales and social monitoring are the most effective tactics to understand what your prospects want and need.

Monitor relevant conversations about your brand to see what issues existing customers are experiencing. Maybe they’re venting their frustrations about your service on social media. Or they could be raving about you but mentioning some possible areas that need improvement.

Social media monitoring also enables you to keep track of other relevant conversations you can use to enhance your social selling strategy. Find out what your target audience is saying about your competitors or the industry in general to discover their pain points.

5. Participate and engage in relevant online communities

There are so many social media networks out there for social selling, but you don’t need to be active on all of them. Picking the right online community to accelerate your professional development starts from understanding what questions your prospects are asking. Not only about your product, but about the problems they face in their roles.

LinkedIn Groups are an excellent source of prospects—especially for B2B companies—because some of the best conversations happen in industry-specific groups. All you need to do is find relevant groups, submit a request to join and start conversing with members.

6. Stay active and provide value consistently

Social networks are a time commitment. Once you’ve started following the right people, you must continuously provide valuable contributions. So choose your network wisely and don’t spread yourself too thin.

Every Tweet, comment and post matters and you don’t want to disappear for weeks at a time. An abandoned network could call your reputation and trustworthiness into question.

7. Nurture your prospects

You don’t necessarily have to create your own content or fill your feed with generalized tips that appeal to everyone. A crucial aspect of any social etiquette—and especially that of social selling—is to pay attention to and respond to what others share and say.

When starting a conversation or participating in a pre-existing one on a social network (like a Twitter Chat), remember it’s just that, a conversation. Be sure to listen. Every day you should leave comments or ‘Like’ posts from others.

8. Earn trust by sharing success stories

Showcase success stories and reviews from your existing customers. Share links to the success stories published on your site. Or create custom images with a photo of the customer or the brand logo and a brief summary of the results they achieved with your help.

Once your prospects see that you’ve delivered impressive results for real people, they’ll be more interested to work with you. You can even encourage your customers to leave reviews about your business on Facebook. Then, you can point other prospects to those reviews and share them on your own social profiles.

9. Track results of your existing social selling efforts

The best way to get better at social selling is by learning from your existing efforts. Research and pay attention to the social selling metrics that are the most relevant to you and your brand.

Collect insights from your current efforts and see what’s effective as well as what isn’t. Use native analytics like Twitter Analytics to determine the performance of your personal posts. What posts do your prospects respond to the best?

10. Get offline

If you can convert your social media followers to email conversations, that’s a great first step. But what you really want to do is convert these digital friends into real-life connections. Use social media to establish that warm connection.

Once you’ve established a back-and-forth conversation with someone on social, it’s easier to suggest a phone call or coffee date via a Tweet, direct message or email. Think about it: a prospect might be more likely to open an email with a subject line referencing your Twitter conversation. Now it’s up to you to ensure your real-life persona is just as great as your digital one.

What are the pitfalls of selling with social media?

While social selling offers numerous advantages, it’s crucial to be aware of potential pitfalls to avoid missteps and maximize your efforts. Here are some common pitfalls to watch out for:

Treating Social Networks as Promotional Channels

Social media platforms are designed for engagement and relationship-building, not blatant promotion. Treating them solely as promotional channels can alienate potential customers and damage your brand’s reputation. The art of using social media to grow revenue lies in fostering exchanges that directly support sales or deliver value to customers in terms of information, service, or the ability to shape future products and services.

Not Investing in Social Selling Training

If your sales team isn’t adequately trained in social selling, they won’t be able to engage new and existing prospects properly, discuss their needs, and offer the right solutions. Training your sales personnel is crucial for driving traffic to your social content, increasing engagement, and building deeper connections. Without proper training, your social selling efforts may fall flat.

Not Using Digital Tools to Aid in Social Selling

While the right tools can improve and streamline your social selling efforts, the wrong ones can make things worse for your business, leading to wasted time and efforts, inaccurate insights, and difficulty in use. Failing to leverage the right digital tools can hinder your social selling success.

Not Optimizing Your Social Media Profile

A fully updated and optimized social media profile makes a good impression on customers and makes you look more approachable and professional. Not optimizing your profile can lead to missed opportunities and a lack of credibility with potential clients.

Trying to Sell Without Establishing Trust

When it comes to social selling, building relationships is always going to be more effective than cold selling. Buyers don’t want to feel like they’re being sold a product at all times. Trying to sell without first establishing trust and rapport can be a major turnoff for potential customers.

Under-Researching Prospects

Not being aware of your prospects’ pain points can make social selling difficult, as you may create posts and content that fail to demonstrate your trustworthiness and authority in your space. Proper research and understanding of your target audience’s needs are essential for effective social selling.

Randomly Sharing Irrelevant Content

Without a content calendar, you won’t be able to focus on your long-term goals and understand what’s working and what’s not. Randomly sharing irrelevant content can confuse and alienate your audience, undermining your social selling efforts.

Not Tracking Results

Without tracking metrics, you won’t be able to figure out what’s working in your social selling strategy and what’s not. Failing to measure and analyze your results can lead to a lack of improvement and missed opportunities for optimization.

By being mindful of these potential pitfalls, you can avoid common mistakes and maximize the effectiveness of your social selling efforts, fostering meaningful connections and driving sales success.

Benefits of social selling in B2B

Building Trust and Credibility

Social selling empowers B2B companies to build real connections, not just sales pitches. By engaging with prospects on social media, businesses learn what their potential customers need and demonstrate expertise through valuable content and personalized interactions. This approach builds trust and positions the company as a go-to advisor, rather than just another salesperson trying to make a sale.

Targeted Lead Generation

With social selling, businesses have a lead-generation expert on their team. Thanks to AI-powered tools and data analytics, companies can identify and focus on the most promising leads in the vast social media landscape – saving time and boosting conversions. Social media revolutionizes lead generation by precisely targeting audiences based on their demographics, interests, likes, and online habits.

Effective Lead Nurturing

Businesses can keep potential customers engaged and informed throughout their buying journey. Sales reps can share valuable content like industry insights, case studies, and success stories, building credibility and trust. By being helpful and responsive, companies can create a positive brand perception, making prospects more likely to choose them when it’s time to make a purchase.

Establishing Thought Leadership

Social selling allows B2B companies to flaunt their expertise and thought leadership by sharing informative content such as blog posts, articles, and webinars. Doing so makes the company a trusted authority in the eyes of potential customers. It also sets the business apart from competitors and boosts its brand reputation.

Efficient Sales Process

Social selling is like a sales shortcut that helps sales reps zero in on interested prospects, skipping the time-consuming cold calling and generic outreach. By focusing on leads who’ve engaged on social media, the team getshigher conversion rates and more time to build strong relationships and eventually seal the deal with promising prospects.

Comparing social selling on different platforms

Facebook for Business-to-Consumer (B2C) Interactions

Facebook is the most popular social network among middle-aged adults, popular in both rural and urban areas, and used by people at every income level and educational background. With70% of users logging on daily and 43% logging on more than once daily, Facebook allows brands to create their own business page and offers tools to be creative, such as live video, offers, and slideshows. If a user “Likes” your page, they become your “Follower,” and your posts will appear in their News Feed. However, Facebook’s algorithms may cause your posts to disappear from a Follower’s News Feed if they don’t engage with your content. Facebook’s Page Insights and Analytics can help determine if your business page needs improvement. Facebook is ideally suited for small businesses, as it allows you to fine-tune your target audience and create a significant impact with clever content and correct targeting, making it the best platform for many B2C companies.

Instagram for Visual Engagement

Instagram is popular among younger generations, withover half of its 200 million active users aged 18-29, and most users visiting the site daily. Instagram is mainly accessed via mobile and is more heavily used by affluent youth. Instagram users tend to be well-informed and open to engaging with brands. Instagram’s Insights tool allows you to measure post performance, engagement rate, and audience growth, helping you understand who is viewing and engaging with your content. Instagram is all about photo and video content, making it a great way to build a brand community by getting the content right and using hashtags for discoverability. Instagram is designed for customer engagement and visual appeal, offering increased visibility and improved engagement through hashtags and quick comments/reactions. Clothing brands, restaurants, gyms, make-up brands, and hairdressers typically benefit from Instagram, as it’s ideal for image-based products and services targeting a younger audience with an established brand.

Twitter for Real-Time Engagement

Twitter has become a conduit for news, particularly with users aged 18-29. It provides a way for users to follow real-time news feeds and allows advertisers to promote targeted messages. Twitter’s users are generally younger, with95 million in 2014 stating they were aged between 18 and 29. Twitter is more popular among the affluent, highly educated, and those living in urban areas. It’s well-liked by businesses in the tech sector, celebrities, politicians, journalists, and news outlets. Twitter allows you to “Tweet” short, public messages, making it good for promoting events or positioning yourself as a thought leader, but not suitable for messages with substance due to the character limit. Twitter is great for answering customer concerns in real-time (if you can respond in real-time) and for businesses that want to reach journalists. The primary content type on Twitter is short-form text, images, videos, and GIFs, with a character limit of 280 characters, making it unsuitable for in-depth posts. However, links to external content are commonly shared on the platform.

LinkedIn for Business-to-Business (B2B) Interactions

LinkedIn can be used to position your business as an “expert” on a topic by sharing your business knowledge and helping others find solutions to their problems using LinkedIn Answers. Sharing content regularly is the key to reaching and converting using LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a great way to target your sales prospects, using its tools to fine-tune your reach to your ideal audience. As a LinkedIn user, you can grab your followers’ attention with insightful updates and even share a blog post as part of your marketing efforts. LinkedIn is a business-focused site, which can be both a pro and a con depending on your requirements. While LinkedIn is great for networking opportunities, it isn’t as “social” as other social media platforms due to its solely business emphasis. B2B companies would particularly benefit from using LinkedIn. Your LinkedIn profile should be seen as an extension of your business, with your logo, description, and information about yourself or your company, allowing you to create a profile that effectively represents your business and share content related to your business with other LinkedIn users.

Comparing Messaging and Tone Across Platforms

Facebook needs well-defined messaging geared toward your businesses’ audience, with your page serving as a place to display thought leadership and well-branded content. Facebook also has powerful advertising tools for small business owners, but these tools can get pricey when not optimized.

Twitter embraces short, breaking news-style updates that need to have a hook to capture your followers’ attention and entice them to click through to your site or landing page. Building strong community engagement through content distribution also helps promote the linkability of your content by being shared across the web.

LinkedIn offers longer post lengths that allow you to create more insightful updates that offer more than just a headline and some hashtags. The audience is business-minded, so it’s important to match that tone. Business users are also pressed for time, so updates should be concise and to the point.

These platforms have distinct advantages and disadvantages for small business owners, and it’s important to understand your target audience to better understand where to reach them.

Social Selling Platforms and Tools

Social selling platforms offer tools for brands that engage in social commerce, allowing users to post and sell on social media sites. Many social selling platforms are optimized for specific social platforms and contain analytics features for tracking content performance.

Some popular social selling platforms include:

1. Facebook & Instagram: The official app lets you connect your store to both platforms and manage orders from your Shopify admin dashboard, set up in-app shopping and checkout, add data-tracking pixels, create ads, and gain insights into your top-performing content and products.
2. Social Connector: This third-party app syncs your Shopify store with Facebook, Instagram, and other social sites, taking advantage of Meta’s unified selling across its two platforms. It lets you plan marketing campaigns, collect data, conduct sales, and monitor inventory.
3. Instagram Shop & Facebook Shop: This third-party tool lets customers shop and pay without leaving Instagram and Facebook, allowing you to add call-to-actions, schedule content, and automate replies when selling on Instagram.
4. Pinterest: The official app lets you connect your Pinterest account with your Shopify store and post product pins, syncing your entire product catalog to make every product pinnable.
5. Google & YouTube: This app facilitates social selling across Google Search and YouTube videos by syncing your Shopify store with the Google Merchant Center, allowing your products to be featured on Google shopping listings and under relevant videos.
6. TikTok: The official app lets you create and manage ads on TikTok and sync your Shopify store with activity on TikTok Shop, the platform’s internal selling tool.
7. Instafeed: This app gives you options for posting content from your Shopify store on Instagram, including Instagram Reels, video posts, or still photos to create shoppable Instagram feeds.
8. Sales Navigator: This LinkedIn app provides access to the Social Selling Index, LinkedIn’s proprietary profiling tool for canvassing its large user base of employees and companies.
9. TikTok & Insta Feed: This app brings your Shopify store to TikTok through shoppable video feeds showcasing your products, with a large call-to-action button to persuade viewers to purchase featured items.
10. TagEmbed: Instead of bringing your Shopify storefront to social media, this app lets you embed social media feeds and Google customer reviews into your website to increase social proof.

These social selling platforms and tools can help businesses effectively leverage social media for commerce, reach their target audience, and drive sales through various social channels.

Why is leveraging your CRM important in social selling?

Leveraging a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is crucial for successful social selling strategies. CRM systems serve as the central hub for consolidating and analyzing customer data from various touchpoints, including social media interactions. [31, 32]

Centralized Customer Data

CRM systems consolidateall relevant customer information, including social media interactions, in a centralized database. This unified view empowers businesses with a comprehensive understanding of their customers’ preferences, behaviors, and engagement patterns across multiple channels.

Enhanced Customer Engagement

CRM integration facilitates proactive and personalized engagement with prospects and customers on social media platforms. By mapping social media interactions to specific stages of the customer journey, businesses gain invaluable insights into the effectiveness of their marketing efforts at each touchpoint.

Improved Lead Management

Social media leads can be seamlessly integrated into the CRM system, enabling effective lead tracking and nurturing. This ensures timely follow-ups and personalized communication, fostering stronger relationships and trust with potential customers. [31, 32]

Analytics and Reporting

CRM analytics provide insights into the effectiveness of social selling strategies by analyzing social media engagement metrics,tracking conversions, and measuring the impact of social selling efforts. This data-driven approach enables continuous optimization of strategies based on quantitative and qualitative success metrics. [30, 31]

Cross-Channel Coordination

Social selling is just one component of a broader sales and marketing strategy. CRM systems facilitate cross-channel coordination by integrating social selling efforts with other customer touchpoints, ensuring a cohesive and consistent customer experience.

Lead Qualification and Scoring

Byassigning scores based on engagement levels, interactions, and predefined criteria, CRM automation facilitates lead qualification with unparalleled precision. This enables businesses to prioritize and focus their efforts on the most qualified prospects, increasing sales productivity and efficiency.

Predictive Analytics

CRM systems act as custodians of digital interactions, aggregating data from various touchpoints and synthesizing them into actionable insights. Through the lens of CRM, businesses can identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement in their social selling efforts, enabling predictive analytics success.

Integrating CRM with social media platforms empowers businesses with a wealth of information, enabling them to craft highly targeted, personalized campaigns that resonate deeply with their audience. By leveraging CRM for social selling, companies can enhance customer relationships, increase sales productivity, and boost their overall social selling ROI. [30, 31, 32]

Conclusion

In summary, social selling has become an indispensable strategy for businesses to connect with their target audience, establish trust and credibility, and drive sales success in today’s digital landscape. By leveraging social media platforms and leveraging the power of content creation and engagement, companies can effectively nurture relationships with potential customers throughout the sales funnel. However, social selling requires a well-planned approach, including identifying the right platforms, optimizing profiles, consistently sharing valuable content, and actively participating in relevant conversations.

Integrating a robust CRM system with social selling efforts is crucial for centralizing customer data, enhancing engagement, improving lead management, and gaining valuable insights through analytics and reporting. By seamlessly combining social selling strategies with their broader sales and marketing initiatives, businesses can create a cohesive and personalized customer experience, ultimately boosting their overallsocial selling ROI and achieving long-term success in the digital age.

FAQs

What is Social Selling and Its Impact?

Q: What exactly is social selling and why is it powerful?
A: Social selling is the strategic use of social media platforms to locate, connect with, engage, and nurture sales leads. It is a powerful tool for both companies and individual salespeople because it significantly increases the likelihood of meeting sales quotas—social sellers are 66% more successful in achieving their sales targets compared to those using traditional methods.

Leveraging Social Media Marketing

Q: How can leveraging social media marketing work to your benefit?
A: Utilizing social media marketing can be highly beneficial by allowing you to understand what interests your customers and how your brand can evolve to meet their needs. Benefits include increased website traffic, attracting leads at the top of the sales funnel, achieving higher return on investment (ROI), reconnecting with customers who were not converted initially, gaining insights about your audience, forming strategic partnerships, staying updated with industry trends, and finding talented individuals for your team.

The Advantages of Social Selling for Buyers

Q: In what ways does social selling offer advantages to buyers?
A: Social selling greatly benefits buyers by fostering trust through personal recommendations. A significant 76% of people are more inclined to trust content shared by individuals over that shared by brands. This trust factor is a key reason why businesses that implement social selling strategies outperform those that do not, with 78% of such businesses achieving better results.

Growth Opportunities Through Social Selling

Q: How can social selling contribute to the growth of your business?
A: Social selling can significantly enhance your business’s brand visibility and loyalty. By optimizing social profiles and sharing content regularly, your networks will seem more active and engaged, thereby increasing your online brand awareness. This heightened visibility encourages consumers to interact with a brand they might have previously overlooked, leading to potential growth opportunities for your business.