Improving Sales with Social Media
As you may already know, social media represents one of the best ways to promote one’s business online. Social networks like Facebook, Twitter and even less popular ones like Quora can be used to promote content and generate precious leads and traffic for your business. Unfortunately few people out there ever make the most of what it really has to offer. Is your business making good use of some of the best social marketing tools and resources out there?
Now it may surprise you but social media can actually be used throughout one’s sales and marketing cycle as well as enabling businesses to effectively seal more deals. More importantly, these networks are expected to roll out more features that can be used by businesses to effectively boost sales and profit. Let’s go ahead and check out some of these great tools and features for closing more sales for any kind of business online
A look at some of the best social media tools and resources of today
This popular social media network is a gold mine for businesses looking to connect with as many prospects as possible and easily keep track of recent trends about their target market. The “Twitter List” can be a valuable tool for tracking leads from a single location especially subjects that interests them the most. As you may already know, it certainly helps when a salesperson already knows and understands their prospects prior to making any sales pitch.
Wondering where to actually get to your Twitter List? Just go to the Twitter Homepage and click on the “machine” icon which will reveal a drop-down lists. It’s here that you can view and manage your list. If it’s your first time using such a feature, you will have to create your list first by searching for potential leads via social networks
Wouldn’t it be great if you are able to start a conversation with a prospect and know that the two of you already have one thing in common such as shared interest, groups and industry? Well that’s just what LinkedIn’s “In Common With” feature enables you to do! It allows businesses to quickly establish common ground with leads. You can then use shared experiences and interests to more effectively engage prospects making it more likely for businesses to “seal the deal”.
Are you clueless about where to find such a feature on LinkedIn? Simply hover over the right side of your prospect’s profile on LinkedIn and scroll down until you see the details of your similarities. Pay attention to these details when trying to drive sales conversations.
Another great social marketing tool that you’ll find on LinkedIn is the “How You’re Connected” feature which can provide details about how you are connected with a prospect and the connections that you happen to have in common with. Use this feature to get a good introduction to a new prospect or lead – people are often more open and willing to listen if they know that you share a connection that they trust!
The “Skills & Expertise” feature is also one other feature that businesses can use from LinkedIn social networks. What can we say – LinkedIn is a great social marketing tool! It’s an area that lets you specify your niche and specialty giving prospects a good idea of what your business is all about. You can find this nifty feature under the Experience field on your LinkedIn profile.
Quora
Quora is another valuable social media marketing tool particularly for businesses that require a heap of information about their prospects prior to making any kind of sales pitch. As you may already know, Quora is a “question and answer” social network and potential leads on site will have the questions that they’ve posted recently on site available for review as well as the topics that they are most interested and knowledgeable in.
Thanks to Quora, businesses can practically present solutions to issues their prospects may be having prior to giving any kind of mention about it! More importantly as a social marketing tool, it provides an excellent opportunity to build a good reputation and business credibility by being an active user on site catering and addressing questions relevant to your business.
HootSuite
Last but not least is HootSuite which is a great social marketing tool for monitoring what we call “hash tags” on Twitter. It’s the same idea with coming up with a list of prospects to manage and monitor. This tool makes it simple to keep track of hash tags on Twitters along with phrases relevant to your business.
HootSuite and similar tools can help you keep an eye on issues your prospects may be having and gain valuable insights on what they think about your business versus the competition. So how do you use HootSuite to further your social media marketing goals? Just go to the HootSuite Streams page and select the “Add Stream” option. You can then put in a maximum of 3 keywords, phrases or hash tags that you wish to keep an eye on.
The tool offers a unique advantage for leveraging key strengths and deal with any weaknesses that your business may have in advance. Engage prospects in intelligent conversations perhaps by offering helpful advice on something that is of interest to them or simply encourage them to warm up to you at the very least.
So what other social media marketing tools had you found useful for your business?
