Unlocking Social Media Potential For Sales

Flickr CC via tfrancis

I’m Ken Lear, entrepreneur and leadership expert, and I want to talk about utilizing social media.

The golden rule of a successful sales transaction is getting to know a sales prospect while establishing a solid relationship for them to come back for more. New spectrums have been created to establish this digitally, using social media as the main influence. Salespeople now have an easy way to reach a target audience, and communicate with them at all times.

The biggest social media networks are worth billions of dollars. This is a large amount of money that could be worth a lot more to the sales industry. Utilizing social media can help with sales while also building engagement and reputation. Being familiar with these social networks regularly can help a business succeed, but it also could become trouble if not used correctly.

For many salespeople, social media can become time-consuming and distract from the real path to completing a sale. Salespeople should focus on growing the customer base and reach more than gaining followers and friends. Getting caught up with these interferences will not do the business any good.

Social media is centered on the idea that connections with others can turn into relationships. This helps business in many different ways. Relationships are the basis of business, which can lead to creating customers.  They also allow the company to gain notoriety on search engines and other social channels.

In a video by Jill Konrath, she explains that selling on social media is centered on 4 aspects: building a strong online brand, gathering sales intelligence, making connections, and sharing the good stuff. All four of these things can lead to greater outreach with potential customers that can lead to helping your brand on social media.

Trending topics are also great for sales. By taking advantage of hashtags, a salesperson can reach out to more users who are following the hot topics of the day. Not every visitor is a customer, but it will give you more opportunities to get the attention of someone looking to buy.

Social media engagement has even become a business itself. Celebrities and corporations have begun to buy fake Facebook likes and fake Twitter followers. There is a growing market for this fake engagement, and its leading to bad reputation from the public. Soon, it’s going to be difficult to

The most important thing to take away from social media and driving sales is to work on making your company an engaging brand. Users will come back to a page if they enjoy the content, and can trust it. You want to create an engaging and positive image for your brand. If you can do these things, social media can become another medium for the company to grow.

Ken Lear is a father and an entrepreneur specializing in leadership and business consulting.