How to Use Social Media to Increase Sales

Join a community and create a persona:

Companies needs to spend time with the tool they plan to use, whether It's Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. It’s important to build up a personal account, have conversations, and become acquainted with the norms and expectations of the community. Companies needs to keep in mind that their brand image needs to be a likable and trustworthy within social network communities. It’s effective when companies comment a lot to get people to go to their site. Once you have a lot of traffic and a live feed then the network will consider your company to be a trustworthy resource.

Determine the best way to connect with prospects:

• Facebook is the popular place for a business to drive consumer sales.
• Linkedin is a platform for sales of business to business products or services.
• Twitter can be employed for all kinds of sales.
• Blogs ignite all types of live chats and encourages for live comments.

 

Connect:

Friend, follow, or connect with individuals with profiles that match your clients. The company can conduct a search on each social networking website to find people who are talking about their industry or using their products and services. Companies can drive consumers to their site by encouraging consumers to “retweet” a comment.

Build a relationship:

Companies need to develop relationships more than they need to develop leads. Relationships go a long way and will then create leads. After establishing the relationship, you can tell if the prospect might want or need your product or service.

Engage in a conversation:

As recently discussed in my interview post, Interview with David Prince, VP of Marketing at CQ Fluency, you must be sure to engage your readers. Don’t just post a message with a pitch, because that will not interests your potential consumers. If you really listen to what the prospects are saying online, you can open doors to conversation without having to force it. Encourage consumers to contribute to a conversations and share content, it will increase awareness. Their friends will see it and their friend’s friend and their friend’s friend friend will see it.

Social media is about being social but most importantly it’s about building relationships between consumer and companies. People buy from a brand they live and trust. The questions is, how do companies build relationships and eventually increase sales? The preceded were ways to increase sales. The above are simple strategies that companies can implement to help them closer to the goal of increased sales. It’s not difficult, it’s about building rapport and connection with your desired audience.

Social Activism

Social media serve an important role in campaigns whether it’s presidential elections or a gay right movement. Social media can really increase the awareness of the campaign by marketing it to a wide network. The posts, blogs, tweets, likes, or shares will engage audiences and get them involved in the campaign. As I previously mentioned in my earlier blog , Social Media Trends in Presidential Elections, social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are primary avenues for online campaigning. They have a goal to reach out to millions of users of all demographics. Social campaigns creates a marketplace that encourages consumer engagement. Online buzz makes your campaign more valuable. Social media platforms allows brands and companies to engage in new opportunities but also to create awesome campaigns. Social media tracks how people are enjoying and participating in a campaign. It allows participants to provide feedback which makes it interactive.

 

 

You may ask, “Do viral campaigns on social media make adifference?”. As you may know there has been much deliberation for same-sex marriages. Religious and Republican communities have much to say about this very controversial topic. But, I know you have seen the red equal signs this past week. Whether it was on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. The Human Rights Campaign icon was originally blue and yellow but they altered it to red to represent LOVE. According to the blog the image for marriage equality has been searched more than 1 million times on Google and has been shared more than 100,000 times from its initial Facebook posting on Monday. I think it’s amazing how powerful social media can be. As millions of people from all over shared the new altered logo throughout the World-Wide-Web, I strongly felt that the campaign was successful due to social media. It was impactful.  

 

Did you participate in this viral campaign in support of marriage equality?

Where Social Media Will Take Us

Remember everything I spoke about in my previous post about the power of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms to help develop modern businesses. It’s evident that Facebook creates opportunities for companies. Social media sites continue to increase sales for companies and widen their networks of connections.  The fact that Facebook hit 1 billion users means businesses have more potential users to appeal to. Customers appreciate how easily accessible information can be found online. The benefits of sharing information online are that it’s quick and easy. This generation wants everything at the tip of their fingers. Social networks are becoming a new kind of virtual currency for companies and corporations. You may ask yourself how much social media will evolve over the years? Companies are behind the eight ball when it comes to adapting to the newest technologies and change. Social media provides companies with power and allows them the opportunity to become market leaders and influencers.

Companies should know the following about social media:

1. They know what their consumers are interested in. They know what you’re interested in buying, selling, and seeing. With a simple "like" on Facebook or "follow" on Twitter companies know what their consumers are looking into.


2. Companies know before they know. They do their best to know things before their consumers know. Companies want to know what the customers thinking of. They are sites like Chango with information about what their prospects and consumers are looking at. This benefits the company because it will lure the potential consumer into their services or products.


3. It’s not who you are it’s what you know! The power of networking will benefit you in the long run because the contacts you gain may help you book an interview or meeting with a potential employer. To measure your online influence, visit Klout and login with your social media accounts. The site will generate a score that measures your influence among the media platforms you are active in. It also has a this cool feature, “pulse”, in which you can keep up to date with the world’s top influencers and see where they stand among the rest.

Here you can see how influential Justin Bieber is compared to our President on social media

These many changes continue to shape how companies and well known corporations such as CBS, NBC, and etc., conduct their business. We live in a social media driven world, embracing change is optional but then again so is survival.