How Content Makes Social Selling Successful

Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Social selling is important nowadays for your business and effective, compelling content is at the heart of successful social selling. With so much interaction for your business online, it is extremely important that your content does exactly what you need it to do in order to make your business a raging success.
The power of social media platforms
Chances are that you have chosen the social media platforms that work most effectively for your business and you use them on a regular basis to interact with your online business connections. You may or may not be extremely comfortable with interacting online but even if you are, there is a chance that you are not even aware yet how much social media and social selling can do to bring your business to the next level when it comes to connecting with B2B companies. There are several different really good reasons why you should be doing this if you haven't started doing it already. Some of those are:
  • To provide useful information to your online connections.
  • To generate leads.
  • To connect with prospective customers. Once you have been able to do that, you will want to solidify the relationship that you have been able to form.
  • To push your products and/or services.
  • To eventually sell your products and/or services.
However, it is extremely important to bear in mind that although the reasons listed above are all legitimate, your approach must be considered very carefully and you must keep the other person's wants and needs in mind at all times. Of course, as was stated above, your content is at the heart of anything and everything that you communicate online and that also applies to social selling. Great content and social selling go hand in hand. There are several steps that you should follow in order to leverage your content as much as possible so that the desired result is a booming success.
  • Marry your content to your online marketing strategy: If you write your content the way that it should be written, you will successfully address all of the milestones of your online marketing strategy. It is important that you marry specific content to specific aspects of your strategy. It is important to make sure that you include helpful information for your readers so that they can use your tips to improve upon what they have. If you can manage to do that, the next time they need that sort of help, you will be the first person they contact.

  • Use your staff effectively: As much as you may feel as though you are the only person who can possibly manage the content and truly leverage it, it is important for you to recognize that you are only one person and if you spread yourself too thin, it won't help anyone or anything to succeed. If you work with other people, you should make the most of their skills and expertise. Being delegate for the greater good is necessary and it will free you up to do what you need to do. If this makes you uneasy, it may be a good idea to sit down and diagram what you need. Chances are very good that you have a great handle on the talents of the people with whom you work. Getting them to help you will be good for you and it will be something that they are probably very happy to do. Keeping everything close to the vest and not allowing anyone else to get involved is not a wise business decision.

  • Learn how to listen: In many cases, it is more important to listen than to talk. If you listen to your online connections, you will learn about what they want and need and you will be able to satisfy those needs. Of course, you must always keep in mind that you are writing content for businesses like yours. The chances are that the other business owners will see things in exactly the same way and will want to listen to what you have to say and what you need as well. Once you have figured out what the other people want, you can customize your content so that it gives them what they are looking for.

  • Pay attention to the analytics: Analytics are important and it behooves you to pay close attention to them for your business. There are some free analytics tools that are very effective and you should learn how to use them and keep using them. You should understand that not all analytics are important for your business. You need to choose the ones that are important and pay attention to those. They will tell you an extremely important story and you need to listen to that story. It is your story.

  • Incorporate your social content into your online marketing strategy: Most likely, you have an overall marketing strategy that includes content marketing. Well, it is an easy transition (if you aren't doing it already) to incorporate your social content into your overall marketing strategy. Once you do that, you will see how effective it is and how much you will make with your brand and your strategy.
Conclusion
Marrying your content with your social selling strategy is extremely intelligent and it will produce better results for your business than you may imagine. The fact is that you are writing content anyway. It won't take much extra effort to connect the content to the selling and you will get a tremendous amount of mileage from it. Remember that you need to take advantage of the social media platforms that work for your business best. It is important that all of your profiles are in order because you will be sharing content on those social media channels and you want to make yourself and your business accessible to your online connections. Those platforms will work well and you will be able to take your business very far.