How your business can benefit from those social sales tools

With Christmas just one month away, this is the time many of us think about making a start on that Christmas shopping list.This gives businesses the perfect opportunity to advertise their products through social media channels leading to more online sales.

How to Use Social Media as a Sales Tool?

The best way to use social media as a sales tool is by building up a good follower and fan base this is important because good relationships will eventually turn into leads. Once you develop a relationship, you will be able to identify how your product or service might be something they want or need.

Here are some of the basics that your business should put in place on your social media sites:

• Make sure that you fill out those profile sections properly and add logos, Images, URL’s and contact details, failing to fill these out incorrectly or not at all can confuse your audience.
• Keep the brand messages and logos consistent across all social networks, so your customers can easily find you.
• Follow influencers in your industry for example followerwonk.com can search for twitter profiles based on the subject, location and name. Results will show the number of tweets, number of followers, twitter age, overall authority score.
• Check out Google for other tools, such as free tools for finding social influencers.

Tweet interesting topics and things that are helpful, fun and cheerful. Never appear negative in your messages. Twitter is a listening tool as well as an engaging tool so it’s important to listen to your prospects tweets and use them as bullet points to start a conversation on a business development call. Look out for trends in your competitors tweets. Are they launching new products? Buying new companies? Expanding to a new market?

• Add posts to facebook with fun helpful tips and don’t forget to promote any blog posts that you create through this channel.

• Join LinkedIn groups and Answer questions within LinkedIn. By engaging in conversation and answering questions you can showcase your expertise in a specific area.

The key is to make sure that you don’t go too over the top as you could drive customers away by appearing too false or desperate in your messages.

Social sales aren’t just about shops? 

For example, an Electrician could: Tweet ‘are your Xmas tree lights safe? ‘or create Facebook posts: ‘The best looking Xmas tree lights’ and a blog posts “Cut Your Lawn Mower Cable” adding a How To Safely Re-Connect and video it and post it to YouTube where you can gain lots of social shares.

Answer those linked In Questions that pop up for example look out for “Can anyone recommend a PAT tester?”

Creating good content and social interaction will gain natural followers, although you might not see this happen overnight, if you stay patient and do this on a regular basis, your hard work will eventually pay off leading to more customers and sales through social interaction.

Broaden You Horizons!

If you’re an electrician, why not  broaden your horizons by introducing  yourself to other business, for example plumbers as always being asked on twitter and facebook if they know of any electricians as are other businesses like Offices, Hotels, Leisure Centres, Shops,  and Cafes.

By following these businesses and tweeting on a daily basis, many businesses tweet at least 3 or 4 times per day, provides the perfect setting for those future sales to come flooding through those doors.